PART 5:SECRET AGENDA:OPERATION PAPERCLIP, EXPERIMENTS IN DEATH,ESCAPE FROM JUSTICE

Secret Agenda The United States Government, Nazi Scientists and 

Project Paperclip 1945 to 1990 

By Linda Hunt 

5 

Experiments in Death 

IT was mid-afternoon, March 16, 1946, when the guests arrived at the old Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. Hundreds of Americans had been invited to the open house at the new AAF Aero Medical Center set up to exploit German aviation medicine. The center's commander, Air Corps Colonel Robert Benford, greeted guests at the door and sent them to the large library that had been transformed into a cheerful cocktail lounge decorated with brightly colored flowers. A bartender recruited from a local hotel kept the liquor flowing throughout the afternoon.1 

The party provided an opportunity for the guests to meet more than a hundred German scientists working at the A.A.F Center under Paperclip. Benford and other A.A.F officers had recruited some of Germany's best-known specialists in aviation medicine. Many Americans at the party already knew Hubertus Strughold, who was in charge of the German staff. During the war, Strughold headed the Luftwaffe Institute for Aviation Medicine in Berlin under Oskar Schroeder, chief of the Luftwaffe's Medical Service. The German staff at the AAF Center included Strughold's former wartime subordinates at the institute, Konrad Schaefer, Otto Gauer, and Hans Clamann.2 

As part of the festivities, guests toured the AAF Center to get firsthand information about the more interesting projects underway. Thousands of captured German documents and copies of the scientists' published and unpublished research were being translated into English for later publication in AAF monographs.3 

Konrad Schaefer's study, "Thirst and Thirst Quenching in Emergency Situations at Sea," was part of this project. Schaefer had worked at Strughold's institute on problems of how to make seawater relatively safe to drink. The Luftwaffeand now the AAF-considered this research an important step toward saving the lives of downed fliers with no water available to them except seawater.4 

Other Paperclip scientists had conducted aeromedical experiments using the scientific equipment housed at the A.A.F Center. One was the well-known high-altitude specialist Siegfried Ruff-who works today as a consultant for Lufthansa German Airlines in West Germany. He was wartime head of aeromedicine at the German Experimental Institute for Aviation, the D.V.L (Deutsche Versuchsanstalt fuer Luftfahrt). Ruff and Strughold coauthored several articles and a book on aviation medicine.5 

Ruff recalled his work under Paperclip at the A.A.F Center. "I worked on ejector seats," Ruff said in an interview. "We tested how much humans can stand." He and Gauer conducted experiments to test the body's ability to withstand sudden thrust accelerations simulating a flyer's experience when catapulted from an aircraft after an accident or ramming.6 

Another Paperclip recruit, Hermann Becker-Freyseng, worked on high-altitude experiments with Ruff at the A.A.F Center. Becker-Freyseng was formerly head of the Department for Aviation Medicine under Schroeder and worked afternoons at Strughold's institute. Under Paperclip he and Ruff conducted seventy experiments  with a German low-pressure chamber to study ways to prevent the bends. They put volunteer test subjects into a chamber and simulated an altitude of 39,260 feet to determine whether the bends were less painful when the body was in a prone position or sitting up.7 

But a dark side of the Germans' work was kept secret from the guests at the party. Both Schaefer and Becker-Freyseng knew far more about seawater's effects on the human body than was stated in the published version of Schaefer's study. And men had been driven insane and died due to lack of oxygen when they ascended to simulated extreme high altitudes in the pressure chamber. 

Karl Hoellenrainer was an innocent victim of gruesome seawater experiments at Dachau. The scars on his back where his liver had been punctured and his ruined health from being forced to drink putrid yellow seawater told the story of what was missing from Schaefer's study. SS chief Himmler had tried to eliminate gypsies from Nazi Germany. As a result Hoellenrainer was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz. He was only there a month, but that was long enough for the Nazis to kill his child, his sister, and both of her children, and throw their bodies into the smoldering furnaces at Birkenau. Then he was loaded onto a train bound for Buchenwald to be imprisoned until the SS decided his and other gypsies' fate.8 

As Hoellenrainer sat waiting, Schaefer, Becker-Freyseng, and others held a conference at the German Air Ministry to discuss problems of fliers whose planes crashed at sea, forcing them to live on seawater. In 1944 the Luftwaffe's Medical Service had only two methods for making seawater potable. Schaefer's method was relatively safe but required substantial amounts of silver, which was in limited supply. The second method, called Berkatit, was a substance that changed the taste of seawater but did not remove the salt.9 

During the conference, Becker-Freyseng reported that clinical experiments had not yet been conducted under sufficiently realistic conditions of sea distress. He and Schaefer were convinced that if a man took Berkatit his health would be damaged within six days and after twelve days it would kill him. Several meetings were held to plan the experiments, including one at Strughold's institute that Clamann also attended. The group agreed that a new set of experiments should be conducted using concentration camp prisoners, since experiments with Berkatit probably would result in deaths.10 

Becker-Freyseng wrote a letter to SS chief Himmler, signed by Schroeder, asking for "40 healthy test subjects" and permission to conduct the experiments at Dachau. A particularly nauseating Nazi discussion ensued among SS officials over whether to use Jews or "asocial gypsy half-breeds." One SS man objected to gypsies because they were "of somewhat different racial composition" than Aryan Germans. Himmler finally arranged to transfer gypsies to Dachau for the experiments.11 

Hoellenrainer got the word when the SS summoned him and forty other gypsies to the camp yard and said they were being transferred to a work detail at Dachau. When they arrived, however, they were sent to a hospital ward, stripped, and X-rayed. Wilhelm Beiglboeck, a Luftwaffe doctor in charge of the experiments, told them their fate. When one gypsy protested, Beiglboeck pulled out a gun and said, "If you are not quiet, and want to rebel, I will shoot you on the spot."12 

The prisoners were fed cookies, rusks, and brown sugar during the first week of the experiments and then were starved. Over the next month they were forced to drink plain seawater or water that was treated in either the Schaefer or the Berkatit method. Those who refused to drink the putrid water, which made them violently ill, were tied up and force-fed with long tubes stuffed down their throats.13 

"The people were crazy from thirst and hunger, we were so hungry-but the doctor had no pity on us," said Hoellenrainer. "Then one gypsy . . . ate a little piece of bread once,  or drank some water. The doctor from the Luftwaffe got very angry and mad. He took the gypsy and tied him to a bed post and sealed his mouth."14 

A number of victims suffered heart seizures and went into comas; others were seriously wounded when Beiglboeck took a long, sharp instrument and punctured their livers to drain the saltwater along with blood. When it was over, Hoellenrainer could barely walk, but he was still assigned to a work detail in another camp. The bodies of his dead companions were covered with sheets and carried across the camp yard to be burned in the crematories.15 

The story behind the pressure chamber experiments involved Dachau prisoners who met an equally grim fate. Many victims died from being sent to high altitudes without oxygen, and others were driven mad from the horrifying experience. The idea for the experiments originated in 1941, when Sigmund Rascher attended a course in aviation medicine at the German air force headquarters in Munich. He told Himmler that he was disappointed to learn that no tests at extremely high altitudes had ever been made using human subjects, "as such experiments are very dangerous and nobody volunteers for them." Rascher asked the SS to make "two or three professional criminals" available to him for experiments that he boldly predicted would kill the participants. Himmler approved his using 200 Dachau inmates whose "crimes" were being Jews, Russian prisoners of war, or members of the Polish Resistance.16 

Ruff and his subordinate at the D.V.L, Hans Romberg, agreed to help Rascher conduct the experiments. They held several planning meetings, including one at Dachau, where the SS commandant took them on a guided tour of the camp's experimental facilities. Ruff's low-pressure chamber was used for the experiments, but to hide D.V.L's collaboration the chamber was not delivered directly to the camp. D.V.L employees took the chamber to Munich, where they were met by SS drivers, who delivered it to the final destination.17 

During the experiments victims were locked inside the windowed airtight chamber, with the pressure altered to simulate  atmospheric conditions of altitudes up to 68,000 feet. According to one of Rascher's assistants, "Some experiments gave men such pressure in their heads that they would go mad and pull out their hair in an effort to relieve such pressure. They would tear their heads and faces with their fingernails. . . . They would beat the walls with their hands and head and scream in an effort to relieve pressure on their eardrums."18 

Nearly eighty men died when they were kept at high altitudes without oxygen for up to thirty minutes. Others were dragged out of the chamber and held under water until they drowned. Rascher cut open their skulls, chest cavities, and abdomens underwater to determine the amount of air embolism in the vessels of their brains.19 

Those who lived through the experiments were driven insane. One of the victims, a former Jewish delicatessen clerk, was used as a guinea pig in an experiment to simulate what would happen to a flier parachuting out of an airplane at high altitudes without an oxygen mask. The experiment was described in detail in a report signed by Ruff, Rascher, and Romberg. The victim was locked inside the chamber, given an oxygen mask, and raised to a simulated altitude of 47,000 feet. According to the report, when the mask was removed, Ruff reported that the victim "yells loudly" and "gives the impression of someone who is completely out of his mind." As the poor man huddled in the corner of the chamber, doubled over with convulsions and gasping for air, his tormentors cold-bloodedly filmed the experiment to make a faithful record of his agony.20 

The U.S. military still viewed Ruff and Becker-Freyseng as valuable assets, despite their connection to these crimes. They were even employed under Paperclip to continue the same type of research that had resulted in the murder of Dachau prisoners! By June 1946 AAF headquarters in Washington was flooded with requests to bring Ruff and the others to America. Brigadier General Norris Harbold asked for Paperclip contracts for Ruff and Becker-Freyseng.21 

At the same time, an Army war crimes unit also was interested in these men. Investigators sifted through SS chief Himmler's files and found the records of the experiments. The scientists' names were placed on Army war crimes wanted lists. On September 16 Army C.I.C agents arrived at the A.A.F Center with a handful of arrest warrants. Colonel Benford recalled that when the C.I.C agents arrived, "some of my people were on their list," but he still believes that the charges against them were "nothing serious." Ruff, Schaefer, Becker-Freyseng, Schroeder, and Theodor Benzinger were arrested and taken to a Nuremberg prison.22 

Benzinger claims his arrest was a "set up" by Strughold to take the heat off Strughold's own questionable wartime activities. When he arrived at Nuremberg he was interrogated but not charged. His interrogators were interested in who had been present, besides Benzinger, at two meetings with high-ranking Nazis in which the experiments were openly discussed. Benzinger, former head of the Department of Aviation at the Luftwaffe institute in Rechlin, had attended one meeting in which film of high-altitude experiments was shown in the office of the secretary of the German Air Ministry. He also had attended a conference where Dachau cold experiments were discussed in detail, including information that concentration camp prisoners had died during the experiments. Benzinger's interrogators never mentioned Strughold or a dozen other Paperclip scientists who also had attended the conference, even though Strughold's subordinates, Schaefer and Clamann, had presented research papers at the conference.23 

Benzinger said he and his colleagues had conducted explosive decompression experiments on themselves at his institute during the war. They were trying to find out what happens when the pressurized cabin in an aircraft fails. During one experiment Benzinger was sitting in a chamber across from a Junkers factory engineer. "I did not panic when the explosion came, [but] this man . . . fell right into my lap," Benzinger said. "After a few minutes he came to and he was all right." But one colleague died during the experiments. Benzinger said he was away from the institute at the time, flying a spy mission over England to photograph an aluminum factory near Oxford. Benzinger was released after spending a month in the Nuremberg prison. He was brought to the United States by the Navy and worked under Paperclip contract at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.24 

Eight days after Becker-Freyseng's arrest, Nuremberg investigator Herbert Meyer questioned him at length about Strughold's role in the Dachau experiments. Strughold had been directly subordinate to Erich Hippke, chief of the Luftwaffe's Medical Service, and then to Schroeder when he replaced Hippke later in the war. Both men had signed orders that authorized experiments in the camps. Becker-Freyseng was intimately familiar with the three men's activities; he had been an assistant in Schroeder's office and also worked afternoons at Strughold's institute. He told the investigator that Strughold had advised Hippke and Schroeder on research matters, especially regarding high-altitude testing; that Strughold had known about the experiments; and that he had received copies of Becker-Freyseng's reports and those submitted by Ruff and Schaefer. Meyer then repeatedly asked Becker-Freyseng whether Strughold had had the authority to stop the experiments:25 

"If Dr. Strughold did not agree with a specific experiment, could he interrupt it?" Meyer asked Becker-Freyseng. 

"I would assume, yes," Becker-Freyseng replied. "Did he have the power at his disposal?" "Of course, he was the director of the Institute. He could do what he wanted there." "If he had not agreed with the work of the doctors, could he have sent for them and said: `You must stop that or go to another Institute.' " "Yes. That is, he would have had to report to his superiors, because it was a military institution." "As director of the Institute he could distribute and stop work?" "Yes."26 

Strughold was not arrested, interrogated, or even called as a witness at the trial, despite the derogatory information against him. It was a glaring example of how far the U.S. military went to protect him. His wartime superior, close associates, and a subordinate all were tried at Nuremberg, while Strughold blithely continued business as usual at the A.A.F Center. 

The trial, known as the "Medical Case," was the first of twelve war crimes trials conducted by the U.S. government at Nuremberg. A tribunal of American judges presided over the trial. The case involved a long, grisly list of experiments and other medical crimes, such as experiments with bone transplant techniques, sterilization with X rays, and deliberate infection with malaria and typhoid. 

On December 6, 1946, the chief of counsel for war crimes, Brigadier General Telford Taylor, stood before a podium in the makeshift courtroom crowded with spectators and delivered the prosecution's opening statement. He spoke of nameless victims who numbered in the millions and of those who still did not believe the crimes had occurred: "For them it is far more important that these incredible events be established by clear and public proof, so that no one can ever doubt that they were fact and not fable; and that this Court, as the agent of the United States and as the voice of humanity, stamp these acts, and the ideas which engendered them, as barbarous and criminal."27 

To Taylor's right, twenty-three defendants sat in the dock accused of crimes committed under the guise of scientific research. Both Schroeder and Becker-Freyseng were charged with personal responsibility for high-altitude, freezing, sulfanilamide, seawater, epidemic jaundice, and typhus experiments. Schaefer was charged with participation in seawater experiments. Ruff and his associate, Romberg, were charged with being criminally implicated in the high-altitude experiments. Beiglboeck, also a defendant, was charged with conducting seawater experiments. All were accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity that included the murder of innocent civilians on political, racial, or religious grounds.28 

Taylor pointed out that the defendants were not ignorant people. All but three were physicians. They had been department chiefs, members of German research institutes, or high officials of the Luftwaffe, Wehrmacht, or SS medical services. "Yet these defendants, all of whom were exceptionally qualified to form a moral and professional judgment in this respect, are responsible for wholesale murder and unspeakably cruel tortures," said Taylor.29 

Nineteen German defense attorneys prepared for the battle. Four represented more than one defendant. They were paid by the U.S. government and received cheap meals, free cigarettes, and other benefits. Even former Nazis were allowed to act as defense counsel. Thirteen of these lawyers had been Nazi party members; one had been in the SS.30 

There was no disposition for some of that group to worry about scruples when it came to their clients' defense. Beiglboeck's attorney submitted evidence in court that he knew had been altered by his client. Names of experimental subjects had been erased from clinical charts of the seawater experiments in an effort to stop prosecutors from locating survivors and using them as prosecution witnesses. Beiglboeck also admitted having erased information about how critically ill a prisoner had become as a result of the experiments. He and his attorney "were in agreement at all times" that the charts should be submitted in court only after derogatory information had been removed.31 

Each of the defendants had an excuse for his behavior. They had merely carried out orders and their experiments were no different from those conducted by scientists in Allied countries. No one was a criminal. Becker-Freyseng said the experiments benefited society. Schaefer had only attended meetings. Ruff's victims were well-fed, model prisoners who had volunteered to be guinea pigs. Everyone blamed the dead. Rascher was the murderer; his experiments were the ones that had killed the prisoners. Ruff and his cohorts could not be blamed if their superiors had ordered them to work with that murderer.32 

Defense attorneys also piled the blame on the victims. To them, all concentration camp inmates were criminals deserving of punishment. Their deaths were justified, since the experiments had been conducted in the national interest of the Third Reich. Hoellenrainer was caught in this crossfire when he was called as a witness and ruthlessly questioned by Beiglboeck's attorney. Did he beat his wife? Was he crazy? Mentally retarded? Mad? When he tried to answer, he was admonished not to be evasive, "as gypsies usually are. "33 

Hoellenrainer fought back in the court and paid for it. When prosecutors asked him to identify the Luftwaffe doctor who had punctured his liver at Dachau, he ran over to the dock and tried to assault Beiglboeck. The presiding judge had him restrained and told him he was in contempt of court.34 

"This man is a murderer. He gave me salt water and he performed a liver puncture on me. I am still under medical treatment. Please do not send me to prison," he begged the judge.35 

"That is no extenuation. The contempt before this court must be punished," said the judge, and he sentenced Hoellenrainer to ninety days in prison.36 

The defendants who had worked under Paperclip played their American connections to the hilt. Strughold, Gauer, and Clamann submitted glowing references in their behalf. Strughold described Schaefer as "very humane and socially minded;" Ruff was "a scientist of extraordinary experimental talent and ingenuity." While prosecutors piled up evidence exposing Schroeder as a raving Nazi who personally had approved experiments tantamount to outright murder, Strughold portrayed him as "the typical honorable, conscientious and self sacrificing Medical Officer with a frank, natural and modest nature."37 

Ruff's defense attorney told the court that he was most impressed with Gauer and emphasized that he was "working in America." Of course, it was no secret that Gauer, Strughold, and Clamann were all on the U.S. payroll. Gauer's comments were informative, but more for what they revealed about Gauer than about Ruff. He went into great detail about how he and Ruff had "frequently carried out experiments together" at the D.V.L and Strughold's institute. He made no apologies for Ruffs participation in Dachau experiments and surmised that Ruff had been "called" to Dachau "because he was the medical scientist who was best acquainted with the development of the stratosphere." Although Dachau victims had suffered "extraordinary" long periods of unconsciousness during the experiments, Gauer thought that was "no proof of a particularly reckless method of experimenting." Gauer cited a report that Ruff, Rascher, and the others had sent to Himmler that explicitly detailed the victims' plight and brazenly suggested that further experiments on humans should be conducted. "If we do not wish to stop half way, corresponding experiments are categorically demanded by the above-named results," he exclaimed. Using animals as subjects was "unsuitable" to him, since they differed from humans in size and metabolism.38 

The trial lasted for nine months before the tribunal rendered a decision. Part of that decision included written guidelines covering the legal and ethical use of humans as experimental subjects. Throughout the trial, defendants had excused their crimes on the grounds that there was no consistency in international scientific circles regarding rules governing use of human subjects. The argument raised several pertinent questions: Should prisoners be used as experimental subjects? What rights should human volunteers have during experiments? Do the rules apply if a government contends that the experiments were conducted in the interest of national security? As a result of these and other questions, the tribunal listed ten basic principles that should be observed during any experiments using human subjects in order to satisfy moral, ethical, and legal concepts. 

These important guidelines will surface later in the Paperclip story. First, in the 1950s Paperclip scientists at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, violated the guidelines-particularly the first rule, that the "voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential"-when American soldiers were used in LSD experiments in an atmosphere disturbingly similar to Dachau. Thirty years later, in 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ignored the guidelines in the case of James Stanley, an American soldier who was an unwitting guinea pig in the LSD experiments.39 

When the Nuremberg tribunal announced its verdict, Schroeder and Becker-Freyseng were found guilty and sentenced to life and twenty years' imprisonment, respectively. Beiglboeck was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment. Although Schaefer had attended meetings where the seawater experiments were planned, the tribunal acquitted him, stating, "Nowhere have we been able to find that Schaefer was a principal in, or accessory to, or was otherwise criminally involved in or connected with the experiments mentioned."40 

The court's 'verdict concerning Ruff and his assistant, Romberg, was a closer call. Both admitted having been involved with high-altitude experiments. "At one time I went to Dachau while these experiments were carried on and I observed them," Ruff testified. But they maintained that two separate groups of experiments had been carried out at Dachau-one conducted by them with the use of "exhibition subjects" in which no one died; the other conducted by Rascher on a group of nonvolunteers in which seventy to eighty died. In the end Ruff was acquitted, but the court conceded that the question of his guilt or innocence was "close" and found "much in the record to create at least a grave suspicion" that Ruff was "implicated in criminal experiments at Dachau." Romberg was acquitted for the same reason.41 

By the time the trial ended, Strughold, Gauer, Clamann, and others had already been brought to the United States under Paperclip. The A.A.F Aero Medical Center was shut down for violating U.S. law, which forbade certain types of military research from being conducted in the U. S. zone of Germany. Under a reorganization of the U.S. military in 1947, the A.A.F became a separate military service, the U.S. Air Force. Strughold headed a new Air Force School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, Texas, and two years later was placed in charge of a newly created Department of Space Medicine. 

Several Air Force officers complained angrily about Strughold's employment at Randolph. General Harry Armstrong, who was commandant of the school, admitted that he protected Strughold by appointing himself director of the new space medicine laboratory. "If it came down to a fight, I wanted to take the brunt of it," Armstrong said. "I thought if there was any adverse reaction it should fall on me and not on Dr. Strughold. "42 

Strughold also spent considerable time in Germany recruiting other German scientists to work for the Air Force under Paperclip. His colleague and friend Siegfried Ruff was once again recruited and the Air Force planned to bring him to America. The plan was squelched, however, after reporter Drew Pearson uncovered it and threatened to tell President Truman. Colonel Benford is still angry that the scheme to bring his "friend" Ruff to America failed. In his view, "the Air Force lost a great man."43 

The Air Force did hire Schaefer, and when he arrived in San Antonio in 1950 he was touted as "the leading German authority on thirst and desalinization of seawater." No one, including J.I.O.A Director Colonel Daniel Ellis, cared that he had been a Nuremberg defendant. Schaefer admitted on his entry papers that he had been arrested and tried at Nuremberg. Despite that admission, Ellis recommended his immigration and told the State Department that the J.I.O.A had investigated Schaefer's background and found "nothing in his records indicating that he was a war criminal or an ardent Nazi, or is otherwise objectionable for admission into the United States as an immigrant."44 

Nevertheless, it was not long before the Air Force repatriated Schaefer to Germany. After choosing to ignore his past, Air Force officers then raised questions about his competency. They said Schaefer had been assigned to three different departments at Randolph Field in a little over a year and had produced no finished work at any of them. Air Force Captain Seymour Schwartz told the director of intelligence that Schaefer had "displayed very little real scientific acumen" and recommended that he be returned to Germany. "The experience of this Headquarters indicates that this man is a most ineffective research worker and on the basis of his performance here his future worth to the U.S. Armed Forces is nil," said Schwartz. He also recommended that Schaefer not be placed on any future J.I.O.A hiring lists, since "it is doubtful if he will be of interest to anyone. "45 

In 1949, Nuremberg prosecutor Telford Taylor submitted his Final Report to the Secretary of the Army, which outlined what had been accomplished by the Nuremberg trials. He felt that one significant accomplishment was that there was now a public record of the Nazis' crimes and of the United States' prosecution of the perpetrators. In the aftermath of Nazi Germany's defeat, the victors bore sole responsibility for stating the principles that should be followed regarding crimes "so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated." The Nuremberg trial records provided an unprecedented reminder of those principles. Taylor therefore strongly recommended that those records be published, so that future generations would know the terrible secrets of the men who sat in the dock at Nuremberg. But it would be years before all of the volumes of the twelve trials were printed.46 

Around the same time, the Department of the Air Force expanded the Paperclip cover up when it proudly published translations of the Germans' wartime research in two volumes as German Aviation Medicine: World War II. In these books, the Air Force not only ignored the lessons of Nuremberg but embraced what the Nazis had done.47 

The collection's introduction, alleged to be "a comprehensive and detailed picture" of the history of German aviation medicine, was written by Becker-Freyseng while imprisoned at Nuremberg for Nazi war crimes. It glorified the Nazis and boldly put forth their lies as fact. Hippke and convicted Nazi war criminal Schroeder were portrayed as heroic men who "showed great scientific understanding, interest, sincere helpfulness, and personal concern in aeromedical research." The Luftwaffe's aeromedical institutes, which employed so many men, including Rascher and Ruff, who conducted experiments in the camps, suddenly became honorable institutions renowned for maintaining their "free and academic character" in Hitler's Third Reich. Regarding decompression chambers, other than accidents involving two physicians, "neither technical accidents nor permanent injuries . . . occurred in any of the chambers." Dachau prisoners murdered in the chamber were conveniently forgotten in the Air Force's revisionist history of Nazi science.48 

The volumes contained heavily censored versions of the Nazi scientists' work. There was no mention that the authors of two chapters, Becker-Freyseng and Schroeder, were convicted Nazi war criminals whose research had involved cold-blooded murder. No reference was made to Ruff and Schaefer having been Nuremberg defendants. No information was revealed that would in any way raise suspicions about Strughold or others whom the Air Force now praised as great scientists.49 

Their secret was safe. 

Chapter 6 

Escape from Justice 

IN late 1947 numerous critics in Germany were charging that scientists had escaped denazification trials by fleeing to America under the auspices of Project Paperclip. Peenemunde Chief of Staff Herbert Axster and his wife Ilse were the focus of much of this criticism. Their former neighbors marched into the Public Safety Branch of the Office of Military Government U.S. (O.M.G.U.S), which enforced the denazification law in the U.S. zone of Germany. They were furious that the Axsters had escaped justice for mistreating foreign laborers during the war.1 

J.I.O.A Director Bosquet Wev had a serious problem with denazification, since the Axsters were not the only ones evading justice. Less than a handful of the 350 German specialists living in the United States had been through the process. New arrivals left Germany before their court cases were finalized. And none of the early Overcast group had been denazified, including Wernher von Braun and Theodor Zobel, who had been living in America for nearly two years. 

At the same time, the director of intelligence of the European Command had a similar problem in Germany. U.S. Air Force General Robert L. Walsh was employing another group of Nazis who also had not been through the denazification process. Fifty-three SS officers and Abwehr intelligence agents were giving U.S. Army intelligence information about the USSR under a project code-named "Greenhouse." Now their work was over, but the men were unable to obtain regular jobs in Germany because they had not been cleared by denazification courts.2 

The solution to both groups' problems provides an example of how Paperclip was used as a guide by other U.S. intelligence agencies employing Nazis. As a result, both the J.I.O.A and E.U.C.O.M circumvented the law and helped accused criminals escape justice. 

Denazification was supposed to help democratize the German population. Under U.S. denazification law, every German over the age of eighteen was required to disclose his or her wartime Nazi affiliations on a Fragebogen, or questionnaire. These forms were then submitted to a denazification court (Spruchkammer) for review. The law categorized individuals according to their Nazi activities. These categories ranged from Class I "major offenders," which included war criminals, to Class V, made up of persons who either actively resisted national socialism or showed a passive attitude toward Hitler's policies. Penalties ranged from imprisonment to small fines. Under the law, persons judged to be ardent Nazis were forbidden to work or hold public office in Germany. As noted earlier, Paperclip policy barred war criminals and Class II "offenders" from U.S. entry.3 

Despite the law, denazification proved difficult, if not impossible, to execute. O.M.G.U.S status reports filed in 1947 noted some of the problems encountered by Public Safety Branch officers in Germany. O.M.G.U.S was understaffed, underfunded,  and overwhelmed with work, since they had to distribute questionnaires to over twelve million people. German denazification officials, who were supposed to be anti-Nazis, were accused of accepting bribes and threatening prosecution witnesses. One report noted that falsification of questionnaires was "flourishing." And despite American policies designed to eliminate nazism, the Germans blamed Jews for the Allies' policies and anti-Semitism was rampant, particularly in the schools. For example, a speaker at the Munich Institute of Technology was forced to cancel a lecture after students stomped their feet at the mere mention of Albert Einstein's name.4 

General Lucius Clay was the man ultimately responsible for enforcing the denazification law. He was the military governor of the U.S. zone in Germany and served as commander in chief of E.U.C.O.M and head of O.M.G.U.S. His views on denazification were far different from those of the intelligence officers involved with Paperclip. He was a hard-liner when it came to America's attempt to "denazify" the entire German population and make them believers in democracy. "Our job, as I see it, is to see that only the right type of Germans are permitted to take leadership until democratic processes become a habit," Clay said.5 

Clay strongly believed that all Germans, scientists included, needed denazifying. Once he fired a scientific adviser who insisted that German scientists were not Nazis, an attitude that caused extreme friction in O.M.G.U.S. Clay complained bitterly to Assistant Secretary of State John Hilldring that the scientific adviser "blamed Public Safety Branch severely for treating scientists as Nazis, even though the record is clear." That record included the Dachau experiments conducted by scientists who were tried for murder in the Nuremberg Medical Case.6 

Clay was getting criticism from both sides over how O.M.G.U.S was handling the denazification of Paperclip recruits. On the one hand, The New York Times charged that Paperclip provided an escape route whereby ardent Nazis evaded the denazification process altogether. American officials in Europe generally absolved Clay of the blame. But critics told The Times that many of Clay's subordinates "do not know what makes a Nazi or do not care so long as the German has good table manners, speaks good English and is efficient in the job assigned to him. "7 

On the other hand, military officers who recruited scientists for Paperclip in Germany were angry that U.S. enforcement of denazification-stiffer than in the other three zones of Germany-hindered their recruiting efforts. Many Germans refused to sign Paperclip contracts because they were afraid that if they went to America prior to denazification, they risked being categorized as unemployable if they returned to Germany. Furthermore, competition was fierce, since the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR were all competing for the same men. The British offered the Germans a variety of places they could go, including Canada, Australia, and Pakistan. The French offered higher pay. And, as one American officer noted, the Soviets offered everyone contracts, even Germans whose names were on automatic arrest lists.8 

In this atmosphere J.I.O.A officers were trying to solve two types of problem cases under Paperclip. The first group consisted of specialists like Axster and Arthur Rudolph who had arrived in the United States before their denazification process even began. J..I.O.A Governing Committee members suggested that General Clay handle these cases by trying the scientists in absentia. The scientists' Fragebogen would be submitted to a court in Germany, while the scientists stayed in America. JIOA Director Wev was afraid that pro-Communists might interrogate the scientists in court about their work in America if the group was returned to Germany.9 

But Clay's decision on the matter went ever further than Wev's idea. He decided to fore go trials of any sort for Paperclip recruits. Clay noted that trials in absentia were not permitted even in cases of Nazis located in Germany. Special treatment like that would only draw attention to the project and indicate to the German people that special procedures would be used if American interests were involved. "It would be much better to permit them to remain in the U.S. as Nazis without bringing them to trial than to establish special procedures not now within the purview of the German law," Clay concluded.10 

Nevertheless, Clay's policy did in fact establish special procedures for the group. As one O.M.G.U.S official noted, "we are, for the first time, removing a group of Germans from normal denazificiation process." Paperclip policy already required U.S. agencies to conduct background investigations of the scientists' Nazi pasts. Clay thought those investigations would exclude ardent Nazis from the group. But as noted earlier, the JIOA "screeners" had turned those investigations into a farce.11 

In the second type of cases, the J.I.O.A officers brazenly flaunted the law. This group involved scientists whose denazification process had begun prior to their U.S. entry. First, J.I.O.A Director Wev asked Clay's personal advisor, Dr. Walter Dorn, to expedite their trials. Dorn was against the scheme because it contravened normal procedures. But the Public Safety Branch did not think the request was unusual. "Assigning of priority of trials of individuals has been frequently carried out in the past so that it is almost routine," Public Safety Branch officer G. F. Corrigan said.12 

Perhaps expediting trials in special cases had become routine, as Corrigan said. What was not routine, however, was that once courts judged some of the scientists as ardent Nazis, the Germans quickly left for America while U.S. intelligence officers in Europe intervened in the court decisions. 

One case involved Hans Zeigler, chief scientist for the U.S. Army Signal Corps in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Zeigler had been a dues-paying member of the Nazi party and five other organizations and a candidate for membership in the SA. Denazification court officials accused him of falsifying information on his Fragebogen. But Zeigler left for the United States and never appeared at a scheduled hearing. When asked about his case, Zeigler stated in a sworn affidavit that Army C.I.C  agents had obtained an "exemption" for him from the denazification law. One O.M.G.U.S officer, Captain Jack James, explained that dubious excuse in a report on Zeigler's denazification status: "The Subject never came to trial because of the interference of certain persons in Munich. The subsequent qualifications of Dr. Zeigler for Project Paperclip seemed to terminate all further actions in the denazification."13 

Another case involved Rudolf Thauer, a medical specialist on the effect of heat on pilots during flight, who worked for the Navy Air Materiel Center in Philadelphia. During the war, Thauer had worked at the Institute for Animal Physiology in Frankfurt. A denazification court originally had judged him to be a Class II "offender" because of his membership in the Nazi party, the SS, the SA, and five other Nazi organizations. As a result Thauer should have been barred from employment under the project. Instead the court decision was changed and Thauer was reclassified as a mere Class IV "follower" after the court received twenty-one "trustworthy" statements from "well known personalities" in Thauer's behalf. Thereafter Thauer stopped mentioning his SS membership on Paperclip forms.14 

But SS membership was not the only problem with Thauer's Nazi past. In October 1942 Thauer, along with more than a dozen other Paperclip specialists, had attended a scientific conference in Nuremberg at which Professor Holzlohner openly discussed the freezing experiments he was conducting on Dachau prisoners. At the very least, J.I.O.A officers or the Navy should have confronted Thauer and asked him what else he had learned about the Dachau experiments at the conference. The officers also should have confronted the other Paperclip scientists in attendance, including Hubertus Strughold and three of his associates, Hans Clamann, Konrad Schaefer, and Konrad Buettner, a speaker at the Nuremberg conference.15 

Colonel Putt actively fought to get his specialists cleared of charges, and he was backed by Air Force Headquarters. The Germans' technical expertise was considered even more important after the birth of the U.S. Air Force in September 1947. Putt brought many new recruits to the air base in Dayton, Ohio, which was renamed. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. When a Spruchkammer imposed a fine on Ernst Sielaff, Putt asked the court to postpone the proceedings until Sielaff returned to Germany-which, of course, he never did. Putt got Winnibald Kamm's case postponed as well. Kamm had been dismissed from his faculty position in Germany as a result of denazification judgments that he was an ardent Nazi. Like Sielaff, Kamm never returned to Germany.16 

Putt even turned down one scientist's request for permission to return to Germany voluntarily to clear his name. Radiation specialist Heinz Fischer had signed a six-month contract and wanted to return to Germany to settle his denazification. But Putt was afraid that Fischer would not return, since the scientist had told him he was unhappy at Wright-Patterson because opportunities for new research assignments were limited. The colonel denied Fischer's request and Air Force Headquarters backed him up.17 

Even the most blatant Nazis in Putt's group slipped through the net. Emil Salmon, a jet engineer, signed a Paperclip contract on June 2, 1947. One month later he was convicted by a denazification court of helping the SS torch a synagogue and participating in an SA assault unit assigned to squelch an anti Nazi revolt. The court sentenced him to six months of hard labor. Police reports had noted that Salmon, a troop leader in the SA, was a "good" Nazi who frequently wore his SA uniform and took his rifle to work. Witnesses said that Salmon had bragged to co-workers about the torching incident the next day. "There, we have done a proper job," Salmon reportedly had told them. He had said he did feel sorry for the Jewish women who were forced to flee the synagogue as it burst into flames.18 

Two days after Salmon's conviction Paperclip officers shipped him to America, where he went to work for Putt at Wright-Patterson. Neither the Air Force nor J.I.O.A officers cared about Salmon's offenses or that he had escaped imprisonment due to his Air Force contract. They were only worried that State or Justice Department officials might turn Salmon down for immigration to the United States, since Class II Nazis were barred from employment under Paperclip. Putt had Salmon sign a statement claiming that his SA activities had involved only "athletics and sports." The police reports detailing the synagogue torching, court records, and Salmon's Fragebogen were ignored.19 

J.I.O.A officers hid Salmon's dossier from State and Justice Department officials for three years because they were afraid that Salmon would be denied a visa as a result of his Class II status. J.I.O.A officers finally settled the problem in 1950 when they told the Intelligence Division at EUCOM to change Salmon's court decision. A short time later Salmon was reclassified as a mere Class IV "follower." Air Force Headquarters admitted that the military was "cognizant of Mr. Salmon's Nazi activities and certain allegations made by some of his associates in Europe, but desires his immigration in spite of this."20 

Meanwhile, EUCOM Director of Intelligence Robert Walsh had been observing the Paperclip process and decided to copy the J.I.O.A's methods to help the Project Greenhouse group. Prior to this book, Walsh's significant involvement in Paperclip has not been exposed. The fifty-three-year-old general's wartime assignments had given him firsthand experience with Soviet operations. He had been commanding general of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the USSR and air member of the U.S. Military Mission to Moscow. Now, as director of intelligence at EUCOM, Walsh made decisions that directly involved Nazis employed by U.S. Army intelligence in Europe as well as the Paperclip group.21 

Fifty-three individuals in Greenhouse worked at the EUCOM Intelligence Center in Oberusel. This was a high-level POW interrogation center, commonly known as Camp King, where Reinhard Gehlen's Nazi intelligence organization was reactivated by the CIA. Klaus Barbie was among the more notorious individuals who passed through the camp. The Greenhouse group wrote reports and gave Army intelligence agents information about Soviet military tactics and the Soviet intelligence service.22 

"At the time, we desperately needed intelligence information on the Russians," recalled former Army C.I.C agent Albert Losche, who ran operations using other types of Germans for intelligence purposes. "We thought there was going to be a Russian army invasion of the U.S. zone and the Germans were the only ones with good information on the Soviets."23 

Most of the Greenhouse group had connections with Gehlen and all were knowledgeable about the USSR. For example, Herbert von Dirksen had been the German ambassador to Russia. Nazi historian Peter-Heinz Seraphim got his expertise on Eastern Europe by tracking the whereabouts of Jews in Poland and other areas in Eastern Europe. He had been brought to the United States for interrogation at Fort Hunt in 1945. Several other Greenhouse employees had served in the Waffen SS on the eastern front. Karl Herrnberger, for example, had been an officer in an SS battalion in Poland, Holland, Belgium, France, and Russia.24 

Some men in the group had been Abwehr intelligence agents. Heinz Schmalschlaeger claimed he was the nephew of Abwehr chief Wilhelm Canaris, who was executed in connection with the July 20, 1944, plot on Hitler's life. Schmalschlaeger had been head of the Abwehr in Vienna and Poland. In 1941 he was named commander of Leitstelle III Ost, the center for tactical counterintelligence for the eastern front. Based in Warsaw, Schmalschlaeger had operated in Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Hungary.25 

Most of the Abwehr agents in Greenhouse were Russian born citizens of Nazi Germany and had worked under Schmalschlaeger's command. Their fluency in Russian had made them valuable assets to Nazi Germany's intelligence service. Dietrich Abels, for example, had been in charge of a Leitstelle III Ost department that investigated the Soviet intelligence service. He had traveled along the entire eastern front and made a detailed psychological study of Soviet intelligence agents from information obtained from captured Russian P.O.W's. Another Abwehr agent, Georg Striedter, had interrogated Russian P.O.W's and translated captured Russian documents.26 

In 1945 U.S. intelligence agents had even gotten Gestapo officers released from internment camps so they could work on the Greenhouse project. One Gestapo officer, Fritz Fischer, had been judged an "offender" under the denazification law and was imprisoned at Dachau. Another Gestapo officer, Franz Regnath, had been head of the criminal police in Munich until 1943, when he was transferred to Poland. At one point Regnath had run a unit that recruited spies to work for the Gestapo.27 

Now they were about to be released from the project at Camp King, but they could not work in Germany because they had not been denazified. The men had not even turned in a Fragebogen, as required by American denazification law. On September 15, 1947, Walsh's executive officer, Major Thomas Grant, told the EUCOM Intelligence Division and the OMGUS Public Safety Branch that he wanted the Greenhouse group to be amnestied from the denazification proceedings. Walsh felt that the services they had rendered the United States were of such high value that a request for exemption under the law was justified.28 

Intelligence officers were concerned about the denazification proceedings for the exact same reasons that the JIOA was concerned about Paperclip. Colonel W. L. Fagg, the executive officer in the Intelligence Division who also worked with Paperclip, agreed with Walsh's proposal and noted the division's concerns. If the Greenhouse group appeared before denazification courts, they might be forced to reveal the work they had done for U.S. intelligence. If any pro-Communists were on the courts, they might compromise U.S. intelligence activities or give the group harsher sentences because of their employment.29 

But Public Safety Branch chief Theo Hall objected to the amnesty proposal. He felt that an outright pardon would create a security hazard rather than protect information about U.S. intelligence activities. Germans on the courts certainly would speculate as to why they were being asked to pardon the group in the first place. Hall suggested they use Paperclip as the model for handling the cases. The denazification cases would proceed normally through the courts but would be "carefully watched." If any individuals were fined or given jail sentences, either the court decisions could be modified or the individuals could be amnestied.30 

Hall sent his suggestions to Walsh and explained why he thought the procedure would work. "A procedure similiar to that outlined above has been applied with success in the cases of persons desired in connection with Operation Paperclip and other persons who had been employed on highly classified projects," he said. On November 20, 1947, Walsh approved the recommendation and told the Public Safety Branch to take action on the Greenhouse cases.31 

The resulting legal action was a charade. Only a few individuals were even fined, and those cases were cleared upon appeal. Johannes Hoheisel originally was given three years' probation and fined DM 5,000 for his wartime Nazi activities. His case was immediately appealed with a change of venue to Frankfurt, where OMGUS officials watched over the proceedings. The Frankfurt court vacated the original decision and Hoheisel was cleared.32 

SS officer Herrnberger was first jailed for falsifying papers he had submitted to the denazification court. During a hearing, he claimed he did not know about his SS membership. He had no idea how his signature got on the forms in his SS file from the Berlin Document Center. He merely had been a Wehrmacht soldier during the war. The court cleared him and issued no sanctions whatsoever. Herrnberger then obtained a position as chief of police in Garmisch.33 

Other SS officers in Greenhouse received amnesty. Fritz Fischer's status suddenly plummeted from being an "offender" and jailed, to complete amnesty in 1948. Willi Fuellgraf's case was completely suspended. Fuellgraf had been an officer in the Waffen SS, a Hitler Youth leader, and a longtime member of the Nazi party. Former Gestapo officer Regnath also was exonerated.34 

In addition, the favors extended to the Greenhouse group included more than merely taking care of their denazification. Former Abwehr agent Schmalschlaeger had been ordered evicted from his apartment to make room for homeless Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. German authorities cited an earlier Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) ruling that gave displaced persons priority in housing as the reason for the eviction. Intelligence officers quickly intervened, stopped the eviction order, and the Schmalschlaeger family remained in the apartment. According to Army intelligence files, in the 1950s Schmalschlaeger headed the Nuremberg branch of West Germany's intelligence service, which was run by Gehlen.35 

Meanwhile in Washington, congressmen were listening to testimony that eight hundred Waffen SS officers and other incriminated individuals had entered the United States disguised as political refugees. "The American authorities have not, in fact, made any attempt even of a superficial nature, to check on the identity of these political refugees," one critic charged. "They have, as a matter of record, released collaborationist murderers who have been recognized as such by survivors."36 

But the congressmen were more worried about Communists than they were about Nazis. By 1948 the whole U.S. denazification system crumbled, and war crimes trials soon met the same fate. Clay had been under constant pressure from right wing congressmen to shut down the trials. The House Appropriations Committee was the most vocal congressional entity on this score, and it threatened to cut off Clay's funds. Clay was a realist in choosing between forces on the political Right or Left in Congress. "Between the two I have to choose the strong-the Right on whom our Congressional appropriations depend," he said.37 

First Clay announced that the trials would cease by the end of 1948. Then both the United States and Great Britain decided they would no longer accept war crimes evidence or extradition orders against suspects after November 1, 1947.38 

The cold war had begun. 

CHAPTER 5: EXPERIMENTS IN DEATH 

1. Robert J. Benford, Report From Heidelberg (Heidelberg, Germany: 1947). The administrative records of the AAF Aero Medical Center never have surfaced. Some original reports by German scientists that were trans lated at the center are located at the WNRC. Monthly status reports of research conducted at the center and lists of the center's Paperclip employees, including Ruff, Schaefer, and Becker-Freyseng, are in the appendix of documents attached to AAF Participation in Project Paperclip. The history's narrative never mentions the employees tried at Nuremberg. 

2. Biography of Hubertus Strughold is in the Strughold JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 

3. AAF Participation in Project Paperclip. 

4. Konrad Schaefer biography: in the Schaefer JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. The research paper "Durst and Durstbekampfung in Seenotfallen" that Schaefer delivered to the 1942 Nuremberg conference is found in Nuremberg doc. NO-401. 

5. Ruff biography is in Brandt; Ruff and Strughold's publications are listed in the Strughold JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 

6. CNN West Germany News Bureau telephone interview with Siegfried Ruff, for author's "Nazi Coverup" series on CNN. RufPs work at the AAF Center: AAF Aero Medical Center, "Monthly Status Report No. 6," 31 March 1946, in the appendix of AAF Participation in Project Paperclip. 

7. Becker-Freyseng biography: from Brandt. His work at the AAF Center: in "Monthly Status Report" in the appendix of AAF Participation in Project Paperclip. 

8. Karl Hcellenrainer testimony, Brandt, transcript pp. 10229-34 and 10508-44. 

9. Brandt, NO-177, prosecution exhibit 133. 

10. Ibid.; Brandt, NO-184, prosecution exhibit 132; and interrogation of Konrad Schaefer, M1019, RG 238, NARS. 

11. Brandt, NO-185, prosecution exhibit 134. Becker-Freyseng admitted on the witpess stand that he was the author of the letter signed by Schrceder; Hilberg, Destruction of the European ~ews. 

12. Hoellenrainer testimony, in Brandt. 

13. Ibid. 

14. Ibid. 

15. Ibid. 

16. Brandt, PS-1602, prosecution exhibit 44. 

17. Weltz testimony, transcript p. 7188; NO-476, prosecution exhibit 40; NO-437, prosecution exhibit 42; NO-263, prosecution exhibit 47; and transcript pp. 6550 and 7199-a11 in Brandt. 

18. Affidavit of Dr. Pacholegg, Brandt, transcript p. 15348. 

19. Brandt, NO-220, prosecution exhibit 61. 

20. Brandt, NO-402, prosecution exhibit 66. 

21. Author telephone interview with Robert Benford. Benford considers Ruff to be his "close friend" and says he still is angry with Drew Pearson (and reporters in general) for keeping Ruff out of the United States. For documentation of requests to employ Schaefer, Ruff, and Becker-Freyseng 286 Notes see Brigadier General Norris B. Harbold to Director of Intelligence, WDGS, 2 June 1946; and Harbold to Director of Intelligence, 14 June 1946-both in JIOA administrative files, RG 330, NARS. 

22. Benford interview; and Army CIC arrest warrants, Nuremberg defendant case files, RG 238, NARS. 

23. Author interview with Theodor Benzinger; interrogation of Theodor Benzinger, 20 September 1946, M1019, RG 238, NARS; and Brandt, NO-224, NO-401, and prosecution exhibit 76. 

24. "Sworn Statement of Theodor Hannes Benzinger," U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations, 22 November 1983 (given to the author by Benzinger). The best source of information on Benzinger's Paperclip activities is the Theodor Benzinger INSCOM dossier XE073663; see also the Benzinger JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 

25. Interrogation of Hermann Becker-Freyseng, 24 September 1946, M1019, RG 238, NARS. 

26. Ibid. 

27. Prosecution's opening statement, Brandt, transcript pp. 12-24. For a published account of the Nuremberg trials that is valuable for atmospheric details see Victor Bernstein, Final ,~udgment (London: Latimer House, 1947). Bernstein's news stories in PM also contain information not found elsewhere, particularly regarding the American liberation of Dachau, Nordhausen, and other camps where he was on the front line with combat troops. See also-Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke, Doctors of Infamy (New York: Henry Schuman, 1949). 

28. Brandt. 

29. Ibid. 

30. Taylor, Final Report, pp. 300-304; Hilberg, Destruction of the European Jews. 

31. Beiglbceck testimony, in Brandt, 8978. 

32. Final Pleas, Brandt, roll 37-38. 

33. Hoellenrainer testimony, Brandt. 

34. Ibid. 

35. Ibid. 

36. Ibid. 

37. Ruff defense document book, exhibit 4; Schaefer defense document book, exhibit 1; Schroeder defense document book, exhibit 6-all in Brandt, roll 35. 

38. Ruff defense document book, Brandt, exhibit 10, roll 35. 

39. U.S. vs Stanley, 483 U.S. 669 (1987) (hereafter cited as Stanley). 

40. Brandt, transcript pp. 11504-5. 

41. Ruff testimony, Brandt, transcript p. 6558. transcript pp. 8970, 8921, and Notes 287 

42. John Bullard and T. A. Glasgow oral history interview with Major General Harry Armstrong, April 1976, Brooks Air Force Base, MAX. 

43. Benford interview. 

44. Schaefer lists Nuremberg trial information in Basic Personnel Record and Biographical and Professional Data forms; and Security Certificate From the ,~'IOA, 28 April 1950, signed by JIOA Director Daniel Ellis, in the Konrad Schaefer JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 

45. Captain Seymour Schwartz to Directorate of Intelligence, Headquarters USAF, 27 March 1951, JIOA administrative files, RG 330, NARS. 

46. Taylor, Final Report. 

47. Department of the Air Force, German Aviation Medicine: World War II, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1950). 

48. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 12-51. Becker-Freyseng is identified as the author of this chapter in an obscure reference on p. 51, noting that the chapter was based on material "meticulously compiled by the last chief of the aeromedical section [Becker-Freyseng] attached to the Chief des Sanitatswesens der Luftwaff [Schrceder]." 

49. Ibid.

CHAPTER 6: ESCAPE FROM JUSTICE 
1. Complaints against the Axsters are in the Herbert Axster JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARs. 
2. List of names, denazification information, and correspondence on Greenhouse are located in: records of U.S. Occupation Headquarters, OMGUS Civil Affairs Division, Public Safety Branch, RG 260, WNRC (hereafter cited as Greenhouse files). 
3. Denazification law: in OMGUS booklet, "Military Government Regulations: Title 24 Important German Legislation," 22 April 1946, JIOA administration files, RG 330, NARS. 
4. Lieutenant Colonel Clarence Howe, "Semi-Monthly Trend Report," report to the Deputy Director of Intelligence, 20 August 1947, RG 319, WNRC. 
5. James F. Tent, Mission on the Rhine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); and Lucius Clay, Decision in Germany (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1950). 
6. Ibid. 
7. Delbert Clark, "Nazis Sent to U.S. as Technicians," The New York Times, 4 January 1947. 
8. For problems recruiting see Lieutenant Colonel Edward Sheley, Assistant Chief of Air Staff-2 to CPM Branch MIS, 16 May 1946, G-2 "Top Secret" Paperclip files, RG 319, WNRC. 
9. Commander C. R. Welte, "July Report, Exploitation Division," memo to the JIOA director, 5 August 1947, JIOA administrative files, RG 330, NARS. 
10. General Lucius Clay to AGWAR, cable CC-1671, 20 September 1947, JIOA administrative files, RG 330, NARS. 
11. OMGUS, IA and C Division, to Chief of Staff, "Political Clearance of German Scientists Presently in the U.S.," and supporting documents, August 1947, OMGUS Civil Affairs Division, RG 260, WNRC. Stephen S. Wise to Secretary of War Robert Patterson, 14 April 1947, G-2 Paperclip files, RG 319, WNRC. 
12. OMGUS, IA and C Division, to Chief of Staff, "Denazification of Scientists Desired for Operation Paperclip," and supporting documents, 6 February 1945, OMGUS AG files, RG 260, WNRC. 
13. Hans Zeigler's Nazi membership information is in Berlin Document Center reports and Meldebogen; a sworn statement by Hans Zeigler dated 28 October 1947; and Captain Jack James, "Report on Denazification Pro cedure," memo to the Office of Military Government of Bavaria, 13 April 1946-a11 in the Hans Zeigler JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 
14. Rudolf Thauer's Nazi membership information, his and his denazification court information are in the Thauer G-2 319, WNRC. 
15. Nuremberg doc. NO-401. 
16. On Kamm see memo, Colonel L. Williams, Acting Chief, Intelligence Group, to Commander in Chief, EUCOM, 11 June 1947. On Sielaff see Colonel Laurin L. Williams, "Subject: Denazification of Ernst Sielaff," memo to the chief of Navy intelligence, 29 July 1947. Both are in the G-2 Paperclip files, 400.112 Research, RG 319, WNRC. 
17. Letter, Dr. Heinz Fischer to Colonel Donald Putt, 25 June 1946; memo, Colonel Harold Watson to Commanding General, AAF,13 July 1946; and memo, Lieutenant Colonel Monroe Hagood to Assistant Chief of Air Staff-2, 22 July 1946-all in JIOA administrative files, RG 330, NARS. 
18. Denazification court decision, 12 August 1947, and police and witness reports are in the Emil Salmon JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 
19. See memo, Air Materiel Command to Director of Air Force Intelligence, 28 April 1950, asking JIOA to reopen the case to secure a new sentence "sufficiently mitigated" to allow Salmon's immigration, in the Salmon JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 
20. OMGUS Security Report, 19 April 1949; and memo, Colonel Daniel Ellis to Director, Intelligence Division, 11 May 1950-both in the Emil Salmon JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. Fragebogen, dossier, RG Notes Notes 289 
21. Major General Robert L. Walsh biography: from U.S. Air Force. 
22. Information on individuals is in the Greenhouse files. 
23. Author interview with Albert Losche. 
24. General background: in Greenhouse files; and Army CIC agent B. C. Harness, "Personality Report," 3 January 1949, in Karl Herrnberger INSCOM dossier XE253550. 
25. Heinz Schmalschlaeger background: in Army CIC report, 1 March 1956, in Schmalschlaeger INSCOM dossier F8085185. 
26. Background of Abels and Striedter: in Arnold Silver, CI Section, "Information on Greenhouse Personnel Needed for Denazification," memo to the Office of the Deputy Director of Intelligence, EUCOM, 27 August 1947, in the Greenhouse files. 
27. Fischer's status: G. F. Corrigan, Denazification Analyst, "Status of Denazification Cases of German Nationals of Interest to Intelligence Agencies," memo to Theo Hall, Chief, Public Safety Branch, 27 April 1948, in the Greenhouse files. Regnath background is in "Interrogation of Franz Regnath," Headquarters, Third Army, Interrogation Center report, M 1019, NARS. 
28. Major Thomas Grant, ODI, EUCOM, "Request for Amnesty From Denazification for Certain German Nationals," memo to Colonel W. L. Fagg, Office of the Deputy Director of Intelligence, EUCOM, and Theo E. Hall, 13 October 1947, in the Greenhouse files. 
29. Colonel W. L. Fagg to ODI, EUCOM, 7 November 1947, Greenhouse files. 
30. Theo Hall, OMGUS, Public Safety Branch, to ODI, EUCOM, 13 October 1947, Greenhouse files. 
31. Ibid.; Major General Robert Walsh to Public Safety Branch, 20 November 1947, Greenhouse files. 
32. Albert Schweizer, Civil Administration Division, "Denazification of German Nationals Formerly Employed on Intelligence Project," memo to OMGUS, 1 June 1948, Greenhouse files. 
33. "Personality Report," Army CIC agent B. C. Harness, 3 January 1949, in Herrnberger's INSCOM dossier. 
34. Robert Bruce, OMGUS, "Denazification of German National Formerly Employed on Intelligence Project," memo to the Office of the Military Governor, 6 May 1948, Greenhouse files. 
35. Eviction order: see memo, Peter Vacca, OMGUS, to Office of the Director of Intelligence, OMGUS, 2 April 1947, Heinz Schmalschlaeger INSCOM dossier. 
36. House hearings "On the Need for Screening Displaced Persons for Entry Into the U.S." 80th Cong., 2d sess., August 2, 5, and 6, 1948. 
37. Petersen, American Occupation. 290 Notes 
38. OMGUS to Chief of Staff, cable CC-2102, October 1947, ODI, OMGUS, RG 260, WNRC.