The Great Patents Heist
One of the greatest
ripoffs of all time was the theft of German patents after World War
II
It is quite acceptable to American pride to
acknowledge that immigrants have contributed to our prosperity and greatness.
It's a little harder to swallow that a good deal of our scientific lead and
prosperity - despite the ever-increasing burdens of non-skilled illegal
immigrants and unproductive home-growns - has come from simply seizing German
patents and inventions after World War I [the most prominent war booty which
Woodrow Wilson seized in 1917 was the patent on aspirin, that "miracle drug"]
and far more so after World War II.
There are those who claim the key to
America's felicity has been its Jewish citizens. After all, this is now a
"service economy" of stockbrokers and financial and entertainment services.
Could America dispense with actually manufacturing or growing anything, and
instead focus on the essentials like Broadway shows, Hollywood sitcoms and
currency speculation?
The message of Bernt Engelmann's 1974
Deutschland ohne Juden, published in English by Bantam Books, New York in 1984
as Germany Without Jews, is clear: You Germans were mediocre until we Jews came,
and now that we're gone, you have sunk back into mediocrity.
Engelmann cites endless lists of great
Jewish MDs of German or Austrian domicile, several of whom, such as
bacteriologists Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) and Robert Koch (1843-1910), won the
Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology (Ehrlich, 1908; Koch, 1905). Sigmund
Freud (1856-1939), of dubious credentials, is one of Engelmann's prize examples.
Engelmann also slays entire forests with
pages of printed paeans to forgotten Jewish playwrights, songsters, operetta
producers, critics, publishers etc. How could one forget the immortal Meyerbeer?
To the wary eye, it smacks of ethnic self-congratulation. One gifted Jew writes
a piece, another publishes it, yet another reviews it favourably, a fourth sits
at the box office counting out his money and a fifth takes his 10 percent as
agent - an unconvincing proof that the nation of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven
needed music lessons.
Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) and Karl Benz
(1844-1929) invented the modern gasoline engine in 1878-1887. Other Germans took
the lead in 19th-century chemistry and created the first contact lens (in the
1880s), X-rays (Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895), quantum physics (discovered in 1900 by
Max Planck, 1858-1947), aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) and last (and least),
saccharin in 1913. As for previous centuries, the Germans got no credit for
inventing the croissant or "Kipferl," as the Germans call it, in Vienna to
celebrate defeating the Turks in 1683; one notes the Turkish religious logo, the
crescent (a baked good then snatched up by the French as the "croissant").
Equally, they receive zero credit for baking the first quiche, which in Lorraine
and Rhinelander dialects ("Kisch") simply means "kitchen leftovers baked into a
pie."
Baked goods aside, the facts reveal that the
most creative period in world history may have been Germany between 1932 and
1945, and that much of America's scientific lead came from looting German
patents by the ton, both in World War I and far more so after World War II.
And because Germany was so devastated after
World War II, there has been a brain drain ever since of the top young German
scientists - to Massachusetts and California for computers and genetics and to
greater Los Angeles, Houston and Cape Canaveral for aerospace. As one German
scientist remarked: "Since the war, we have not had the financing capabilities
for basic research for the long-term future. That kind of serious money only the
Americans have. In Germany, and in Japan, also, we do applied and clinical
research for immediate applications. But to be on the cutting edge, the money
and the positions are now in America and we have to go there. [1]
An astounding admission of the stripping of
German inventiveness after the war came in an October 1946 article by C. Lester
Walker in Harper's magazine. Entitled "Secrets by the Thousands," it presents
some problems for the Bernt Engelmanns
of this world who imply that German science in the 1932-45 period would have
been "nothing without the Jews."
In every collection of Harper's - even that held in a prestigious university research library - the October 1946 issue is missing. A coincidence? Fortunately this document exists in cyber-space... |
In fact, the article suggests in
deadly seriousness that German Chancellor Adolf Hitler had been right, from his
point of view, to prolong the war to the last gasp. According to the deputy
commanding general of Army Air Forces Intelligence, Air Technical Service
Command, in a speech to the American Society of Aeronautical
Engineers:
The Germans were preparing rocket
surprises for the whole world in general and England in particular which would
have, it is believed, changed the course of the war if the invasion had been
postponed for so short a time as half a year.
Even without its brilliant Jewish
minority, the Germans' "V-2 rocket which bombed London was just a toy compared
to what the Germans had up their sleeve." They had 138 types of guided missiles
in various stages of production or development, using every kind of remote
control device or fuse: radio, radar, wire-guided, continuous wave, acoustics,
infrared, light beams and magnetism. And for power the Germans were years ahead
in jet propulsion at both subsonic and supersonic speeds - even creating a "jet
helicopter" wherein tiny jets spun the helicopter blade tips at blinding speeds.
Just as the war was ending, and
President Franklin Roosevelt was ordering both Gens. George Patton and Dwight
David Eisenhower to pull back and let "Uncle Joe" (Josef Stalin) have Berlin and
Eastern Europe, the Germans had been readying their giant A-4 rocket for
production. Forty-six feet in length, it weighed over 24,000 pounds and could
travel 230 miles - rising 60 miles over the earth to a blistering top speed of
3,375 miles per hour. Its secret was a rocket motor running on liquid nitrogen
and alcohol. It was either radar controlled or self-guided by a gyroscope. Since
it flew faster than the speed of sound (by many times), it could not be heard
before it struck.
Another rocket in the works was the
A-9, still bigger at 29,000 pounds and equipped with wings. It had a range of
3,000 miles. Manufactured at Peenemünde, it arced into the sky at an incredible
5,870 miles per hour.
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But most Americans know about German
World War II rockets. A few even know that in addition to the car engine the
Germans also invented the jet and perfected the superhighway or Autobahn (the
three most important inventions binding this vast country. Virtually no one
knows that in Wright-Patterson Field in Ohio, in the Library of Congress and in
the Department of Commerce in Washington, a "mother lode" of 1,500 tons of
German patents and research papers were being mined furiously after the war. One
gloating Washington bureaucrat called it "the greatest single source of this
type of material in the world, the first orderly exploitation of an entire
country's brain power."
Fortunately, it was for the benefit
of the United States, which, having thwarted Hitler's crusade against the Soviet
Union, had to take up the same gauntlet against a communism spread worldwide by
the late 1940s.
The genesis of the project to grab
German secrets was in 1944, when, amazed by German technology in everything from
rockets and jets to Tiger tanks, a Joint Intelligence Objectives committee was
set up to confiscate German inventions the instant they were obtained, even
before the surrender, for use against Japan.
Even before reaching the German
border, fascinating discoveries began to be made, including one with which every
American is familiar: audio tape. The 1946 Harper's article shows the head of
the Technical Industrial Intelligence Branch, in quaint excitement:
"...[p]ulling some brown,
papery-looking ribbon off a spool. It was a quarter-inch wide, with a dull side
and a shiny side. "That's Magnetophone tape," he said. [2] "It's plastic,
metallized on one side with ferrous oxide. In Germany, that supplanted
phonograph recordings. A day's radio program can be magnetized on one reel.
[Then] you can demagnetize it, wipe it off, and put on a new program at any
time. No needle, no noise or record wear. An hour-long reel costs 50
cents."
A Short History of Recording and
Its Effects Upon Music by Michael Chanan [3] points out that even in the
late 1920s, before the "12 darkest years of German history," [4] one Fritz
Pfleumer had developed a plastic recording tape. It was launched commercially by
BASF [5] in 1934. The idea was based on the film strip, and its original
application was for dictation in an office environment. In Britain, a project
funded by the great radio genius Guglielmo Marconi was attempting the same
thing. (On D-Day, the Americans played audio tapes of combat loudly at various
locations to try to throw off the German defenders.)
However, the great leap forward came
when one A. M. Poniatoff, president of a small California company called Ampex
(a trade name still familiar to the older generation), then wearing a U.S. Army
uniform, helped seize German-held Radio Luxembourg in late 1944. Instantly
grasping the gold mine in profits and quality which the Magnetophone tape
represented, Poniatoff had the 3M Company rush the new tape into American
production, and it swept the Los Angeles entertainment industry.
Its major breakthrough came in 1947
when Bing Crosby first used it to record his network shows. The crooner not only
preferred the Magnetophone sound but invested heavily in Ampex. Later, movie
soundtracks went onto audio tape as well, improving mixing and dubbing
efficiency as well, and avoiding the infuriating mishap where a successfully
shot movie scene had to be retaken due to sound defects. Ampex later went on to
introduce the first videotape recorders in 1956 (all now but a memory,
sacrificed on the altar of free trade with Japan).
The list goes on and on: synthetic mica, which increased American cold steel production by 1,000 percent; "the secrets for 50,000 dyes, many of [which] are faster and better than ours, colors we were never able to make"; milk, butter and bread preservation without chemicals; and refrigeration and air-conditioning for German U-boats so efficient that their subs could cruise from the Atlantic to the Pacific, fight there for two months and return to Germany without having to take on fresh water for the crew. In addition, there was the pilot ejector seat, the infrared rifle scope, and even the negative-air ionizer, which many Americans use for the fresh feeling it puts in the air, with claims of reduced blood pressure, allergy and asthma symptoms.
The list goes on and on: synthetic mica, which increased American cold steel production by 1,000 percent; "the secrets for 50,000 dyes, many of [which] are faster and better than ours, colors we were never able to make"; milk, butter and bread preservation without chemicals; and refrigeration and air-conditioning for German U-boats so efficient that their subs could cruise from the Atlantic to the Pacific, fight there for two months and return to Germany without having to take on fresh water for the crew. In addition, there was the pilot ejector seat, the infrared rifle scope, and even the negative-air ionizer, which many Americans use for the fresh feeling it puts in the air, with claims of reduced blood pressure, allergy and asthma symptoms.
In addition to official government
looting of Germany (what GIs always called "liberating"), there was also the
personal looting bonanza exemplified by Robert Maxwell, financier
extraordinaire, and at one time the most hated man in Britain. The great
contribution of this Orthodox Jewish citizen, born Jan Hoch in what was then
Czechoslovakia, was to found a scientific publishing empire in Britain, called
Pergamon Press, based entirely on German research he had looted with British
intelligence connivance. Maxwell came to dominate the British tabloid press and
raided his own employees' pension fund to the tune of 90 million pounds. He
finally perished mysteriously and nakedly in a plunge from his yacht in 1991
just a week after standing up to the Israeli secret police, the Mossad - who may
have set him up in business in the first place. Interestingly, his main
co-conspirator in the United States, Robert Rubin, formerly of Goldman Sachs, is
now secretary of the treasury [6].
When not gunning down a surrendering
German mayor armed only with a white flag (as he boasted in a Der Spiegel
interview) or bribing British officers to invent his heroic war record (for
which war record Montgomery personally pinned a medal on him), Maxwell/Hoch [7]
was in the British Zone of Berlin in 1946 with the full backing of British
intelligence, coercing the vast research findings of the Springer science
publishing house from Springer's widow for pence on the pound.
Ultimately, after Maxwell stripped
$94 million from the pension funds of the 5,000 employees of the Mirror Group,
his U.S. financiers at Goldman Sachs were stripped of an estimated $250 million
to settle their claims - whereupon Maxwell's body was fished from the sea by an
astonished Spaniard, to be buried with full honors in Israel and hopefully
forgotten. Far from exemplifying that the Germans were nothing without Jewish
scientific help, his life suggested that one Jew could become a billionaire
exploiting German ideas.
Which raises the justifiable question
of the atom bomb, which European Jews did produce for America and German
scientists did not provide in time for Germany.
In his magisterial Verschwörung
und Verrat um Hitler ("Conspiracy and Treason Against Hitler"), [8] Gen.
Otto Ernst Remer details how anti-Hitler elements in the German scientific
community maneuvered their own Werner Carl Heisenberg (b. 1901) into the key
uranium-developing program at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (now succeeded by the
Max Planck Institute of Physics). His clear mission, proudly proclaimed after
World War II, [9] was to bureaucratically delay the German A-bomb project until
the Allies had won the war. [10]
As just one example, munitions
minister Albert Speer pleaded with Heisenberg and his fellow conspirator von
Weizsäcker (brother of a later West German president) to name whatever money or
materials they required after they claimed they had been held up by shortages.
Von Weizsäcker's reply asking for "40,000 marks" caused Speer to stare in
amazement, and to later confess that he had himself planned to propose 100
million marks for starters.
Not only did Heisenberg state
explicitly to Der Spiegel, "We never tried to produce any atomic bombs
and we are glad not to be responsible for having made any," he also admitted
leaking the latest information on German uranium-splitting research to the
half-Jewish Danish scientist Niels Bohr, who promptly informed his racial
confreres in the U.S.
Thus, Germany did not lack the bomb
because it lacked Jews, but rather because a handful of key scientists hostile
to Hitler wormed their way into the German atomic program. Heisenberg had even
admitted to a shocked Luftwaffe audience in 1942, after the devastating British
1,000-bomber annihilations of the port cities of Kiel and Lübeck, that Germany
could produce a bomb with material "the size of a banana" (gesturing with his
hands) to wipe out an entire enemy city, but then he caught himself and said
this of course would be economically impossible. [11]
One of Gen. Remer's most interesting
assertions is that just as the Americans were racing in the final days to
convert German inventions for use against Japan, Hitler was sending a U-Boat
packed with secrets to that same nation at Emperor Hirohito's explicit
request.
In Verschwörung und Verrat um
Hitler, Remer first notes the criticism that propaganda minister Josef
Göbbels had received for his "stand-fast, the miracle weapons are coming"
message after Stalingrad. Ironically, while many of these weapons came too late
to save Germany from its fate of occupation, government decapitation and
dismemberment, Remer reports that a member of U-234 sent him the following:
In the spring of 1945 I was ordered
to report to serve on U-234. The sub was a specially redesigned former mine
layer of the type XB with 1,760 tons, 4,200 horsepower and a 52-man crew. The
commander was [a] Capt. Fehler.
On March 23, 1945 the boat steamed out of Kiel toward southern Norway unsubmerged. On April 15, 1945 it dove at South Christiansand with an immediate goal of proceeding between Iceland and the Faroe Islands. The destination was Japan.
Our orders stated that we were to bring air force Gen. Kessler as a Luftwaffe attaché with his staff and technicians to Tokyo. The [emperor] had asked us to help build up Japan's air defenses with the weapons developed in Germany.
Also on board to this end were, besides the general, two air force officers, a navy anti-aircraft specialist, an underwater demolitions specialist, a low-frequency specialist from the staff of Prof. Küpfmüller as well as two Messerschmitt engineers (specialists for the construction of Me-262s) [12] and two Japanese frigate captains. One of them was [a] Capt. Tomonaga, who had collaborated with us in his capacity as a specialist for one-man torpedoes [13] when we were developing our own small combat boats.
Our cargo consisted of 12 steel cylinders, of the sort used for storing in mines, containing comprehensive microfilm material on the latest developments in German offensive and defensive weaponry, especially in rocket and rocket defense [anti-rocket rockets; TBR ed.] warfare, as well as our research findings in the areas of high- and low-frequency technology, and finally a decisive contribution to the development of nuclear energy and atomic warfare.
After passing through the Straits of Iceland and 28 days submerged at an average depth of 260 feet, a message reached us in the night of the 12th to the 13th of May [14] during snorkel travel, in which Grand Admiral [Karl] Dönitz ordered us to capitulate. At this point in time we were located in the middle of the Atlantic, southeast of the banks of Newfoundland.
The order to our captain was couched in a very personal tone, telling him to hand the U-boat over without destroying its valuable cargo. [15] After 12 hours of debate and reflection, Capt. Fehler decided in harmony with Gen. Kessler and after informing the two Japanese frigate captains that he would be carrying out Dönitz's order and surface to surrender. The two Japanese officers took their own lives before the boat surfaced.
Eight hours later, U-234 was taken as a prize of war by the American destroyer Sutton and brought to the U.S. Navy base at Portland, Maine.
The American officers and officials who subsequently interrogated us were evidently horrified over the contents of our U-boat. They criticized us for supposedly having no idea how valuable our cargo was. At the end of July 1945 the officer in charge of the investigation team declared to me that the microfilm evidence and the testimony of our technicians had proved that in decisive technical developments, we were "100 years" ahead of the United States.
On March 23, 1945 the boat steamed out of Kiel toward southern Norway unsubmerged. On April 15, 1945 it dove at South Christiansand with an immediate goal of proceeding between Iceland and the Faroe Islands. The destination was Japan.
Our orders stated that we were to bring air force Gen. Kessler as a Luftwaffe attaché with his staff and technicians to Tokyo. The [emperor] had asked us to help build up Japan's air defenses with the weapons developed in Germany.
Also on board to this end were, besides the general, two air force officers, a navy anti-aircraft specialist, an underwater demolitions specialist, a low-frequency specialist from the staff of Prof. Küpfmüller as well as two Messerschmitt engineers (specialists for the construction of Me-262s) [12] and two Japanese frigate captains. One of them was [a] Capt. Tomonaga, who had collaborated with us in his capacity as a specialist for one-man torpedoes [13] when we were developing our own small combat boats.
Our cargo consisted of 12 steel cylinders, of the sort used for storing in mines, containing comprehensive microfilm material on the latest developments in German offensive and defensive weaponry, especially in rocket and rocket defense [anti-rocket rockets; TBR ed.] warfare, as well as our research findings in the areas of high- and low-frequency technology, and finally a decisive contribution to the development of nuclear energy and atomic warfare.
After passing through the Straits of Iceland and 28 days submerged at an average depth of 260 feet, a message reached us in the night of the 12th to the 13th of May [14] during snorkel travel, in which Grand Admiral [Karl] Dönitz ordered us to capitulate. At this point in time we were located in the middle of the Atlantic, southeast of the banks of Newfoundland.
The order to our captain was couched in a very personal tone, telling him to hand the U-boat over without destroying its valuable cargo. [15] After 12 hours of debate and reflection, Capt. Fehler decided in harmony with Gen. Kessler and after informing the two Japanese frigate captains that he would be carrying out Dönitz's order and surface to surrender. The two Japanese officers took their own lives before the boat surfaced.
Eight hours later, U-234 was taken as a prize of war by the American destroyer Sutton and brought to the U.S. Navy base at Portland, Maine.
The American officers and officials who subsequently interrogated us were evidently horrified over the contents of our U-boat. They criticized us for supposedly having no idea how valuable our cargo was. At the end of July 1945 the officer in charge of the investigation team declared to me that the microfilm evidence and the testimony of our technicians had proved that in decisive technical developments, we were "100 years" ahead of the United States.
Which raises the nagging question of
where all these continual "UFO" sightings come from, which began a few short
years after World War II - and the capture of German high tech. The same
government which gave us the Warren Commission cover-up, the public silent
treatment of the Israeli assault on the USS Liberty, [16] and a blithe
nonchalance about the social significance of the Black/White/Asian racial
differences proven in the best-selling Harvard study The Bell Curve, seems
anxious to keep the public in the dark about all such "unconfirmed" sightings.
[17].
It is at least interesting that it
was just two years after the seizure of "50 tons" [18] of German aerospace and
physics papers that the first major UFO story, the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico
incident, broke. After all, what has fascinated researchers ever since
(particularly government skeptics monitoring Area 51 at Groom Lake, north of Las
Vegas) is things the Germans were working on: spacecraft which use new, tough,
but lightweight materials, make 180 degree turns at Mach 4 without spilling the
drinks and generally defy the laws of gravity, perhaps by the use of gyroscopes
within gyroscopes.
It is well known that the German SS
sent expeditions to Tibet, reputedly a land of mind-over-matter marvels - in the
late 1930s. [19] The purpose was both to delve into evidence of Indo-European
origins in the Himalayas and secret techniques used there, possibly including
anti-gravity levitation. What ties this together with Europe, ancient America
and Egypt is the finding of blond mummies or Nordic remains in or near many
sites of architectural miracles.
As anyone who has seen the excellent
programs on Egypt on the cable History Channel, can testify, both the people
living in ancient Egypt and the rulers of Macchu Picchu were doing virtually
gravity-defying feats in constructing their pyramids and temples.
One can only speculate as to what
secrets the Germans may have revived or discovered anew during the Third Reich,
and which are now being utilized by the current government in Washington. It is
well known from excavations of blond mummies in Egypt and in South America by
Thor Heyerdahl as well as the statements of Mexican Emperor Montezuma (welcoming
the Spanish "back" as their fabled "white gods") that some sort of ancient white
scientists or advanced physicists were involved with the origins of these
cultures. Even the Chinese admit the existence of red-haired, blue-eyed tribes
constantly infiltrating into ancient China (of which pictorial evidence is
presented in a recent National Geographic). The great teacher Confucius himself
(roughly 551-479 B.C.), of the noble K'ung family, was said to be a man of
unusually tall stature for a Chinese, and Genghiz Khan (A.D. 1167-1227), the
Mongol conqueror, had red hair and green eyes.
But the historical blackout
continues. The government appears to be willing to hint that "aliens" from outer
space are behind all this high tech. God forbid it should turn out that ancient
Indo-Europeans were doing these things thousands of years ago, or especially
Germans researching without the benefit of the Jews in the Third Reich.
Notes:
[1] In Anton Zischka's Und war es
ein Wunder ("And It Was a Miracle") we read: "If the surely not
oversensitive Nazis had retired [with pension!] a total of 1,628 professors when
they took power, the victims of the [Allied] anti-Nazis numbered no less than
4,289 professors and instructors, who received no pension whatsoever. As the
newspaper Christ und Welt calculated in 1950, the Nazis dismissed 9.8 percent of
their university teaching staff, the Allies 32.1 percent. Almost every third
German professor lost his teaching or research post through the will of the
victors. In Germany as a whole it was every second professor... In accordance
with Control Commission Directive No. 24 of January 1, 1946, a total of 373,762
persons were found inappropriate for any public service or economic activity
above that of manual laborer." Quoted in Remer, Otto Ernst, Verschwörung und
Verrat um Hitler ("Conspiracy and Treason against Hitler"). See below (Note 9).
[2] Magnétophone is still the French
word for an audiotape player.
[3] London, Verso Publishing, 1995.
[4] The mantra-like phrase every
modern German schoolchild learns about the Hitler period.
[5] A German chemical giant, which
nowadays has a large plant for adhesives and audiotape in North Carolina.
[6] See Maxwell articles in The Spotlight newspaper of Nov. 18, 1991; May 16, 1994; April 10 and May 1, 1995; and Feb. 3, 1997.
[6] See Maxwell articles in The Spotlight newspaper of Nov. 18, 1991; May 16, 1994; April 10 and May 1, 1995; and Feb. 3, 1997.
[7] And, briefly, Du Maurier, after a
popular cigarette.
[8] Verschwörung und Verrat um
Hitler, Urteil des Frontsoldaten ("Judgement by a front-line soldier"),
Otto Ernst Remer, general, retired, Verlag K. W. Schütz, Preussisch Oldendorf,
1981. Remer was a highly decorated combat officer, a ramrod straight old-style
Prussian. Bearer of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
(personally presented to him by Hitler), he instantly thwarted the July 20, 1944
officers' putsch against Hitler once he had heard Hitler's voice on the phone
stating that he was alive and how to proceed. After the founding of the Federal
Republic of Germany, he founded the highly popular Socialist German Reich Party
(13 percent of the vote), which the Allies banned. He had to flee Germany in the
early 1990s and died in Spanish political exile in 1996.
[9] Der Spiegel, Nov. 24, 1952.
[10] No more unbelievable than people
calling themselves "Americans" parading the streets of Washington, D.C. during
time of war in 1968, screaming: "Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! Viet Cong are gonna win!"
[11] Remer .
[12] The German 500-mph
fighter-bomber.
[13] One intact example of such a
manned torpedo may be seen at the Mystic Seaport museum in Connecticut.
[14] After the German surrender and
the arrest of all its officials, including Hitler's successor, Grand Admiral von
Dönitz
[15] Dönitz, who had been chosen as
successor by Hitler because of his immaculate war record as well as his genuine
National Socialist leanings, apparently felt that whatever his admiration for
the fighting Japanese people, it would be better that the Americans get these
secrets for use against the Soviets than for their ally (who had not notified
Berlin before she attacked Pearl Harbor) to receive them in an obviously losing
cause.
[16] U.S. Navy officers seem well
aware of this outrage. The author spoke with a Navy captain (and,
coincidentally, Mayflower descendant), who waved his hand and said, "Don't get
me started."
[17] Which is the same as
"unconfirmed sightings" of Vietnam-era American POWs, and the standard operating
procedure when the Pentagon, CIA or White House has something to hide: "We will
neither confirm nor deny..."
[18] Walker
[19] In fact, one expedition was
trivialized into a movie, Seven Years in Tibet, about the real SS man Heinrich
Harrer - played by Brad Pitt - and a young Dalai Lama.
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Uncensored History of World War II Theft of German Scientific Research Fueled Post-War Technology Boom
"TO THE VICTORS BELONG THE SPOILS" is
an American saying (attributed to Andrew Jackson) and, regrettably, an
occasional American practice as it was in the case of "the Great Patent Heist of
1946." It was made official policy in World War II by President Harry Truman's
Executive Order 9604, also known as the "License to Steal," which permitted
agents of the U.S. government to execute the greatest robbery in world history:
the theft of German intellectual (scientific) property. What technology the
Americans and Soviets stole has, in fact, fueled some of the greatest scientific
advances of the modern era.
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By Daniel W. Michaels
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Now, almost three-quarters of a
century after World War II, as the fear of arrest and punishment for denying the
received version of the causes and consequences of World War II as established
by the victorious Allies diminishes, more and more Germans are investigating
Allied behavior before, during and after the war. Aside from the "holocaust,"
which remains immune from critical studies, almost any aspect of the war,
however embarrassing to the victors (e.g., the strategic bombing campaign), may
now be studied without fear of retribution.
In this new spirit, Friedrich George
has published a study of Allied postwar policy regarding the disposition of
German intellectual property, especially the modern and futuristic patents of
Nazi Germany. George finds that the Allies, chiefly the Americans and the
Soviets, simply confiscated all patents, designs, inventions etc they could lay
their hands upon - military, industrial and commercial - regardless of
international law or the Geneva Conference. Once in the United States or Soviet
Russia the German inventions were "reinvented" and stamped "Made in the U.S.A."
or "XXXX."
When World War II ended, America's
elite determined that the United States would not lapse back into its prewar
depressed state, but rather would revitalize its economy and have a first-class
military and industrial establishment. To this end, Germany’s advanced military
hardware; aeronautical and industrial secrets would simply be confiscated and
transplanted in America.
Even before the war ended, Vannevar
Bush, America's scientific advisor, recommended that the activities of the
Combined Intelligence Operations Subcommittee (CIOS), a joint Anglo-American
intelligence-gathering operation, be expanded to include the exploitation of
German technical information of an industrial nature as well as of strictly
military matters. In August 1945, President Harry Truman, acting under the adage
that "might makes right" issued Executive Order 9604 ordering the release and
distribution of confiscated German scientific and industrial information
(technologies, inventions, methods, processes, equipment etc) to the U.S.
civilian economy. It was literally a license to steal.
President Truman's Executive Order
9604 provided for:
The release and dissemination of
certain scientific and industrial information heretofore or hereafter obtained
from the enemy, including all information concerning scientific, industrial and
technological processes, inventions, methods, devices, improvements and advances
heretofore or hereafter obtained by any department or agency of this government
in enemy countries regardless of its origin, or in liberated areas if such
information is of enemy origin or has been acquired or appropriated by the
enemy.
~Gimbel, John. Science,
Technology, and Reparations. Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1990.
As the American military began to
occupy Germany, they initially concentrated on locating and securing advanced
German military hardware used in the war. In the summer of 1944 the Allied
Combined Chiefs of Staff created military-civilian teams, called the Joint
Intelligence Objectives Committee (JIOC), which was to follow the invading
armies and uncover Germany's military, scientific and industrial assets. "Field
Intelligence Agencies, technical" units (FIAT units) scoured the countryside for
German economic assets. While the U.S. military had no qualms about confiscating
German military hardware, they hesitated and eventually refused to engage in the
wholesale seizure of German commercial and industrial assets, considering such
action not within their authority. More than a few honorable U.S. Army officers,
led by Gen. Lucius D. Clay, interceded with civilian occupation policymakers on
behalf of the Germans to stop the looting.
Concerning the legality of the U.S.
confiscations of German property, William G. Downey, chief of the Army's
International Law Branch in the Judge Advocate General's Office, quoting
extensively from The Hague Convention rules on the seizure of private enemy
property, wrote:
It is a generally recognized
principle of the international law of war that enemy private property may not be
seized unless it is susceptible of direct military use. An army of occupation
can only take possession...of property belonging to the state. (Gimbel
172)
The theft of intellectual property is
not new, but the extent and ruthlessness of what the "wannabe" superpowers did
in Germany from 1945 to 1948 was unprecedented. The United States and the Soviet
Union literally stole the entire extant store of German patents, designs,
inventions and trademarks. Germans, who were not forthcoming in informing the
U.S. Occupation Forces of the existence and location of such records could be
imprisoned, punished and even threatened with death for "insufficient
reporting." To ensure that the Allies would have an insurmountable head start in
exploiting the patents, the Germans were even forbidden to use or refer to their
own inventions after they were confiscated. The German Patent Office was closed
by the Allies and not reopened for several years. When it did reopen, the first
number assigned was 800,001, indicating that some 800,000 original patents had
been looted by the Allies. As a result, in the immediate postwar years, with
Germany prostrate and robbed of its intellectual property, America and Russia
soon emerged as the two superpowers in a bipolar world.
Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor
of the German Federal Republic, wrote in his Memoirs:
At the end of 1948 the director
of the American office for technical services, Mr. John Green, gave the press a
report on his activities, which were concerned with the exploitations of German
patents and industrial secrets. What strikes one in this report is the fact that
AMTORG [Moscow's foreign trade organization] was the keenest purchaser. During
one month alone the Russians bought more than 2,000 Wehrmacht reports on secret
German weapons, for which they paid $6,000. According to a statement made by an
American expert, the patents formerly belonging to IG Farben have given the
American chemical industry a lead of at least 10 years. The damage thus caused
to the German economy is huge and cannot be assessed in figures. It is
extraordinarily regrettable that the new German inventions cannot be protected
either, because Germany is not a member of the Patent Union. Britain has
declared that it will respect German inventions regardless of what the peace
treaty may say. But America has refused to issue such a declaration. German
inventors are therefore not in a position to exploit their own inventions. This
puts a considerable brake on German economic development. (Adenauer
429)
Adenauer denied reports in the
British zone of occupation press that he had characterized Allied measures
regarding German patents as sheer robbery:
I had said nothing of the
kind....I had mentioned the view of leading foreign politicians that the German
patents were extremely valuable. My speech was intended to point out that German
inventors still did not enjoy international protection of their rights and that
this constituted a notable obstacle to German recovery. (147-51)
Years later, in 1953, the chancellor
pressed President Dwight Eisenhower to resolve the question of the use of
trademarks owned by German nationals before the war. Some progress had been made
in restoring trademarks to their previous German owners, and Adenauer received
assurances that no further German assets or trademarks would be confiscated or
liquidated and that restitution would be "considered" at some later date. (That
date has not yet arrived.)
The United States also promised to
review the situation concerning German ships, with an eye to possibly returning
them to German control.
Although Americans today find it hard
to believe that this country was once a laggard nation in science and industrial
innovations, it was, until the hostilities broke out in late 1941. America under
President Franklin Roosevelt had failed to pull the country out of the doldrums
of the depression, and while the economy, after having been put on a wartime
basis, was unsurpassed in its volume of production, its products, including
wartime hardware, were inferior to those of the German war machine. Mass
production-quantity rather than quality-characterized American
manufacturing.
Even during the war the United States
was not particularly noted for major breakthroughs in pure science or innovative
technologies. The National Science Foundation brought this deficit in American
capabilities sharply to the attention of the government in a 1946 report
indicating, among other factors, that up to that date the United States had been
the home of only four Nobel Prize winners in chemistry as compared to 37
recipients in Europe, eight U.S. winners in Physics to 39 in Europe, and six in
medicine, to 37 in Europe. Most of these prizes were awarded to Germans and
Austrians.
While military analysts the world
over now recognize the superiority of German World War II hardware, few,
however, are aware that German scientists had done much of the basic scientific
pioneer work in the development of many postwar industrial technologies and
products for civilian use. In consumer goods and medical advances, Germans under
National Socialism were enjoying color TV and color photography a decade before
the American public could buy its first black-and-white sets. The Nazi
government had modernized the road system in Germany in the 1930s with the
Autobahn, and Volkswagen had begun to produce the 'Beetle' so that all citizens
could afford to own an automobile. It was not until the 1950s, under President
Eisenhower, that the United States undertook the construction of a modern
highway system.
German scientists established a link
between smoking and cancer in the 1930s, but fierce resistance of the American
tobacco companies prevented the American people from having access to this
knowledge until 20 years after its discovery. They studied the effects of
positively and negatively ionized air on health conditions, developed
performance-enhancing drugs, and introduced other innovative and therapeutic
treatments that are common practice today everywhere. During the war Germans had
also developed a synthetic blood plasma (capain), a blood liquid substitute
(periston), and synthetic penicillin, 'substitute 3065.'
The revolutionary birth control pill,
whose discovery was announced in the United States in 1951, also had its origins
in investtigations conducted in the laboratories of Gottingen University,
Germany, in the 1940s. Chemist Carl Dierassi, who emigrated from Vienna to
America shortly before the war, worked with pharmacologists Gregori Pincus and
John Rock to introduce 'Enovid' on the American market, protected by a U.S.
patent, in the 1960s. (Georg, 157)
Germany, like Japan, was and remains
one of the 'have-not' nations, small in size and wanting in natural resources.
The development of synthetic (ersatz) products of all kinds was essential to
German existence, especially in wartime. Necessity being the mother of
invention, German chemists undertook to provide substitutes for Mother Nature's
shortcomings. Most synthetics served well. Some, like ersatz coffee
(Kaffee-Ersatz), fell short of general acceptance.
One of the largest hauls of
classified information harvested by the Allies came from laboratories and plants
of IG Farben, a syndicate with close American ties that held an almost complete
monopoly on chemical production. Chemistry of course was the foundation for the
creation of most synthetics. The enormous IG Farben Building in Frankfurt, which
housed records of estimable value, was 'miraculously' spared during World War II
bombing orgy, proving that better bombing accuracy was possible if the Allies
had wished it. The vaults of the Farben Building contained secret industrial
information on, among others, liquid and solid fuels, metallurgy, synthetic
rubber, textiles, chemicals, plastics, drugs and dyes. Secret formulas were
obtained for over 50,000 dyes, many faster and better than those in the
democracies.
Several U.S. Army officers stationed
in the Farben Building after the war commented that the value of the files and
records confiscated would alone have been sufficient to finance the
war.
In the digital world, for example,
German prewar and wartime scientists had been at the cutting edge of important
developments, from the quartz clock, semiconductors, silicon technology and
transistors to the first computer. Among others, German researchers Herbert F.
Matere and Heinrich Welker, working with Zeiss, Siemans and the Kaiser Willhelm
Institute for Silicate Research, were the first to develop the process for the
industrial production of integrated circuits and transistors.
The culmination of these advances in
solid-state physics and digital instrumentation in Nazi Germany was the wartime
development of a pioneer computer, the Z4. Engineers Konrad Zuse and Helmut
Schreyer in Berlin developed these earliest computers. Zuse's laboratory and
earlier models of his computer, dating from 1937, were destroyed in bombing
raids during the Battle of Berlin, but in the immediate postwar era Zuse was
able to rebuild a fully operational Z4 by 1949, several months before the debut
of the U.S. Eniac. Zuse is also credited with having developed the first
programmable computer language, 'Plankalkul.' America's Bill Gates met with Zuse
in 1995 and now displays Zuse's picture in his office at Microsoft.
Of foremost importance to all
industrial nations, and to Germany in particular for the war, was the need for a
reliable source of energy to power the factories, heat the homes, and fuel the
ships, planes and vehicles of the nations.
Germany possessed coal but not oil.
German chemists met the challenge quickly and successfully through the
development of both the Fischer-Topische and the hydrogenation methods of
converting (liquefying) coal into oil and, from the oil, to make lubricants and
gasoline. In the course of the war these plants were gradually being moved
underground to protect them from bombing. After the war the Allies confiscated
all patents and records on the design and operation of the hydrogenation and
Fischer-Topische plants and forbade the Germans from using existing plants or
developing new ones, making them dependent on imported oil. For example, 10% of
Marshall Plan had to be used to buy American oil.
Germany is also said to have invented
a distillation process for the separation of gasoline from oil by the use of
audible frequency vibrations. Self-sufficiency in power generation is essential
to the sovereignty and independence of all nations. So important is the power
factor that the planned Berlin-Baghdad-Basra railroad is said to have been as
decisive for the British declaration of war against Germany in World War I as
the development of the Fischer-Topische and hydrogenation processes in Germany
was for the British declaration of war in World War II. As long as Britain and
France controlled the Near East oil fields, Germany would never be granted free
access, nor would the Allies want to see Germany gain oil independence through
its newly developed conversion processes.
In the matter of nuclear power,
German scientists in Berlin were making feasibility studies of the possible uses
of nuclear energy to propel ships and submarines as early as 1941. Moreover, the
possibilities of employing nuclear reactors to power land vehicles were also
being explored.
To list just a few of the many
technological advances of consumer interest, German industry developed synthetic
mica, synthetic sapphires, Diesel engines, plastics, rayon-weaving machines, the
cold-extrusion process, UV milk pasteurization, fruit juice sterilization
without heat, food preservation techniques, magnetic tape, infrared night vision
aids, laser guidance and so on. The patents, test models, and prototypes of all
of the above were simply taken and exploited by their new
proprietors.
By the time the war ended, Germany
had 138 types of guided missiles in various stages of development and production
as well as every conceivable experimental and operational guidance and
triggering systems (radar, radio, wire, continuous radio waves, acoustic,
infrared, light beams, and magnetics) for its war effort. The 'rocket' that
launched the United States into superpower realm was German. The Soviet Union
also copied the German weaponry but largely ignored consumer
products.
In May 1955 Paris Agreement, the
Allies, aware of the improprieties involved in their seizure of German
industrial secrets, made the German Federal Government agree to renounce all
claims or objections to Allied actions during the occupation:
The [German] federal government
shall in the future raise no objections against the measures which have been, or
will be, carried out with regard to German external assets or other property,
seized for the purpose of reparation or restitution, or as a result of the state
of war, or on the basis of agreements concluded, or to be concluded by the Three
Powers with any other Allied countries, neutral countries or former allies of
Germany. (Georg 338)
It is clear from the above
provision that the Allies, chiefly the United States, still maintain the right
to monitor German industry by means of the 'Echelon' eavesdropping program and
other intellignece aganecies. The fruits of this ongoing surveillance are sent,
among other destinations, to U.S. and Israeli recipients. (Georg
345)
It is of course impossible to
determine exactly how much the confiscation, sale, and the industrial
exploitation of the German patents enriched the United States and Israel in
dollars. Prof. John Gimbel, in his book Science, Technology, and Reparations:
Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, estimates the 'intellectual
reparations' taken by the U.S. and the UK alone amounted to about $10
billion.
In 1952 the publisher Herbert Grabert
ventured an estimate of $30 billion. Converted into 2008 dollars these estimates
would amount to hundreds of billions. If the loot taken by the Soviet Union were
also taken into account, the sum would likely approach $1 trillion. An infusion
of this amount into the U.S. economy over a period of years easily explains U.S.
postwar prosperity.
In conclusion, author Friedrich Georg
warns that successive countries in history have for a time enjoyed a leading
position in world power, only to see the baton pass on to competing nations,
America too must guard its vanguard position. In order to ensure its status as
the world's superpower today, the United States will have to maintain an
innovative scientific, engineering and technological base. China, Georg
believes, is currently in the best position to overtake the United States in
that the Chinese have talent, the drive, the geography and most importantly,
thanks to globalization, the wealth (in U.S. dollars) to buy whatever they
require.
***************************************
DANIEL W. MICHAELS was for over 40
years a translator of Russian and German for the Department of Defense, the last
20 years of which he was with the Naval Maritime Intelligence Center. He is the
author of various scientific reports and is a contributor of book reviews and
articles to geographical and historical periodicals. Born in New York City, he
now lives in Washington, D.C.
area.
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"Captured" German and Japanese Information and Know-How
Following the advancing Allied Troops
into France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and, later, Japan, teams of
military and industrial specialists came right on the heels of the combat units
to collect documents and study German and Japanese military and industrial
developments that had produced some of the major weapons used by the enemies
especially towards the end of the war: the jet engine, the V-1 and V-2 rockets,
high-speed aircraft, remotely guided mini-tanks to destroy combat tanks, one-
and two-man kamikaze U-boats, and many more. Worse, there was talk of the
existence of flying saucers, atomic bombs, chemical and biological ammunition,
and other miracle weapons which Hitler or the Japanese were going to use during
the end-phase of the fighting in order to wrest victory from the Allied
Forces.
The more desperate the situation
became for the Axis Powers, the weirder the schemes that came to light: there
was talk, for example, that the Japanese were building mini-bombers which could
be stored on U-boats and thus transported close to the Central American
mainland. Re-assembled on board and launched from the boat, these bombers were
to destroy in a suicide mission, the gates of the Panama Canal and thus
interrupt the shipping of essential war materials and supplies from the
factories of the eastern United States to the Pacific theater of war. The
American and British teams of military and industrial specialists following the
combat troops were charged to find out what was actually there and what could,
reasonably, be expected to happen. This was, by no means, a safe and pleasant
job. Most of the 'targets' had, more or less, been subjected to bombing or
devastated during the fighting; the Germans were still counter-attacking; there
were mines and unexploded ammunition everywhere; and the just 'liberated '
Germans were not always friendly or co-operating. Some of the intelligence men
lost their lives or were wounded and all were living and working under
conditions that were not better than those for the soldiers. But why the hurry,
could this information gathering not have taken place later?
One reason why not was the lack of
intelligence concerning the state of atomic bomb development in Germany. The
Allies did not know that Hitler, not wanting, or not being able to recognize the
revolutionary potential of atomic weapons, did not favor, and, therefore,
support financially, the development of these bombs on the level that would have
assured success. There was also talk later on that German physicists like Werner
Heisenberg and Otto Hahn, and their staffs, who had been in the forefront of
atomic research prior to the war, were hesitant to deliver the all-destructive
power of the atom into the Führer's hands and kept stalling. Furthermore, some
of the most brilliant minds had left Germany and Europe for the United States
during Hitler's persecution of the Jews and were now working for the Allies.
True or false: the West did not know what was really going on and how far the
German research had advanced literally until the last days of the conflict when,
with the capture of Heisenberg, they finally could breathe easier.
What was known to the Allies was that
the German chemists had developed highly toxic and deadly gases and biological
cultures, that these were already being used to kill Jews and other
'undesirables' by the thousands, and that there would be a good chance that
Hitler would use these poisons at the end of the war to destroy his enemies and
what was left of his own people. To secure and study these weapons and,
possibly, find antidotes, was another reason for the rapid deployment of the
intelligence troops.
Thirdly, it was expected that the war
against Japan, especially following the Allied invasion of the Japanese
homeland, would be a bitterly fought and long-lasting battle costing many
casualties on both sides. Where there any weapons in the German arsenal that
could be quickly adapted for use against the Japanese?
Finally, the development of German
miracle weapons had to be based on advances in research and development by
Germany's industry and research facilities from basic to advanced levels and the
results of that research had to be made available to American and Allied
companies for their exploitation and use, especially during the period of
conversion from wartime to peacetime economy.
The
Collectors
The teams collecting military and
industrial information and documents were made up of small groups of military
and/or industrial specialists, working independently. They were recruited from
military or Government laboratories and from American and British companies and
were experts in their fields. Knowing the state of development in their
specialties in their own countries, they were able to judge whether German
development was superior, inferior, or just useful. All teams reported to their
own field agencies; their reports were generally classified "secret" until after
the capitulation of Germany and of Japan respectively. There seems to have been
little coordination or cooperation between the individual agencies and, to the
dismay of German factory owners and what was left of their technical staffs,
many of the targets were visited by several teams and more than once, and, what
one team left behind, the others took. The most important agencies working in
Germany and their 'fields of interest' were the following: (1)
OSS, the Office of Strategic Services
- identified targets of strategic and industrial importance and provided this
information to other agencies which then sent investigative teams.
EEIS, the Enemy Equipment
Intelligence Service - actually located German and Japanese equipment, such as
new aircraft, tanks, binoculars, ammunition, metalworking equipment, etc. for
evaluation and to instruct Allied personnel in its use. Later, the staff was
used to evaluate German industrial equipment in general.
ALSOS Mission - This group, composed
of military and counter-intelligence specialists was charged with a specific
mission: to determine the state of atomic bomb development in
Germany.
FIAT, the Field Intelligence Agency,
Technical - was established to investigate German industrial development during
1939 - 1945 primarily in the American Occupation Zone. Headquartered in
Frankfurt, it was the 'collecting' arm of the Technical Industrial Intelligence
Committee (TIIC).
CIOS, the Combined Intelligence
Objectives Subcommittee - was made up of American and British specialists to
examine German industrial targets. The reports issued by this group are the CIOS
and JIOA (Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency) document series.
TIIB, the Technical Industrial
Intelligence Branch (later: TIIC, Technical Industrial Intelligence Committee) -
was established as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but transferred to the
Department of Commerce in January 1946. Its task was to look into every segment
of the German industrial landscape and obtain any information that might be of
interest to American companies. During 1946 TIIB sent over 400 investigators
into Germany. Many of these industrial experts traveled at their company's
expense, sworn in as temporary Government employees without compensation. TIIB
arranged with the Army for their transportation and for their living and working
quarters in Germany. In return, the investigators agreed that their findings
would be fully reported in writing to TIIB and that these reports would be made
public.
To make sure that individual
investigators did not use information obtained from German companies for their
own or their company's exclusive use, two men from competing companies were
teamed up. Furthermore, the reports submitted were reviewed for completeness by
TIIB staff and the American military government. Overall, TIIB staff selected
from the 3.5 billion pages collected from the files of German industry about 3.5
million which were considered of interest to United States industry. The
documents chosen were filmed in Germany, the rest were left there. In addition,
TIIB brought more than 300,000 pounds of German equipment and product samples
from Germany, in addition to the 200 tons of materials captured by the Army and
Navy, which was also turned over to civilian agencies for study and testing
after the military had completed its studies (2).
Navy Technical Mission, Europe
(Japan) - original a portion of the ALSOS Mission, was assigned to investigate
German (and Japanese) advances in synthetic fuels and lubricants of interest to
the Navy. U.S. Naval Technical Oil Mission in Europe: Production of Synthetic
Fuels by the Hydrogenation of Solid and Liquid Carbonaceous Materials (PB
27701).
TOM (Technical Oil Mission) - A
non-military group sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Mines, was made up of
American and British petroleum experts and charged with investigating the
industrial production of synthetic fuels and lubricants from coal using the
Fischer-Tropsch method. The Bureau and American industry actually built
petroleum manufacturing plants according to German specifications after the war,
but the glut of petroleum available then made the program uneconomical. In the
1970's, however, faced with a petroleum embargo, the Republic of South Africa
developed the SASOL synthetic petroleum plant using the Fischer-Tropsch
synthesis. Working under different economic constellations, it is still in
operation today. U.S. Government Technical Oil Mission. Index. Microfilm.
Reel.... (LC call number: Z6972.U6)
The Documents Research Center, A-2,
United States Air Forces in Europe - was "organized for the purpose of
collecting and processing all captured German air documents. The organization
was moved to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, in 1946 where the project is being
continued by the Air Documents Division, Intelligence, T-2. While the Research
Center was still in Europe it was estimated that between 1,000 and 1,500 tons of
German air documents eventually would be collected. The final screened library,
however, and the collection which is now at Wright Field consists of
approximately 220 tons. These documents are in the process of being cataloged,
indexed, abstracted, translated and analyzed." (3).
The Library of Congress was to have
received a complete copy of the filmed material but only about one third of the
total output was sent. The archival copy was turned over by the Air Force to the
Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and can be consulted at its Garber Facility in
Suitland, MD. The copy retained by the Library of Congress cannot be used in
modern reader-printers which tear the microfilm copies into small segments. All
books and journals from the same haul were turned over by the Air Force to the
Library of Congress where they were examined and new items incorporated into the
general collections. Duplicates were made available to other libraries or
discarded, if not claimed. The reports are indexed in a multi-volume Desk
Catalog of German and Japanese Air-Technical Documents (Z5063.A1U6). Some of the
air documents were also made available to the Publication Board of the
Department of Commerce, re-issued and made available to the public as PB
documents.
The United States Strategic Bombing
Survey - studied the effectiveness of the Allied bombing effort on targets in
Germany, as well as German-occupied France, Belgium and the
Netherlands.
The Library of Congress Foreign
Mission - was sent to gather books and journals published in Germany (and the
rest of Europe) and not available for purchase through normal channels once the
war had been declared. Up to that point German literature could still be
obtained either directly from the sources or by way of neutral countries
(Sweden).
The
Targets
Any company having in some form
contributed to the German war effort (and who had not, no matter how large and
small) or having research information or products that would be of interest to
Allied manufacturers, was considered a 'target'. Much information on German
industries had already been compiled and made available to the Allied air armies
by the United States intelligence agencies. Further targets were research
institutes, universities, military laboratories, testing ranges and supply
depots, Government agencies like the Reichsforschungsrat (The National Research
Council), even concentration camps (sites of medical research using humans as
test objects), the Reichspatentamt (Patent Office), the
Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Air Force Ministry), the Wehrmachtwaffenamt (Army
Weapons Agency), their subordinate departments, research/test facilities, etc.
It was not always easy to find the
targets - many had been destroyed by bombing or during combat, their documents
burned, looted, removed for or from safe storage; owners, managers, scientific
personnel killed, drafted into the armed forces, dispersed, relocated; roads and
rail lines impassible; the population frightened, uncooperative, hostile: 'After
what you have done to us, why should we give you our family- company- and
commercial secrets? They belong to us, we will need them to rebuild...' In other
cases people cooperated willingly, often for the chance of getting food,
cigarettes.
Sometimes several visits and some
arm-twisting was needed to get the Germans to deliver documents, information,
and sometimes it just took a good dose of Yankee ingenuity. Theodore von Karman,
a world famous aeronautical scientist, who was a member of one of the teams
looking for information on German experimental aircraft, describes his
experiences at an aeronautical research facility near Braunschweig that had
escaped Allied detection and bombing because it was so well camouflaged that
nobody knew it existed. The team had gone through the trashed, chaotic
laboratories, looking, but finding very little, when, suddenly, on a desk in a
corner someone noticed a scale model of the swept-wing bomber, a type of
aircraft that nobody had ever seen before. They reasoned that were there was a
model, there must also be documentation, like wind tunnel, testing, and design
data. But no matter where they looked and whom they interrogated, the records
could not be located. Finally von Karman, who had been a student at nearby
Göttingen University before the war, resorted to a ruse:
I had with me a sergeant assigned to
Intelligence. Frank Tchitcherine was of Russian origin, and in fact had been
related to the first minister of education in the Kerensky government of Russia.
As we were walking to our automobile with the director, I said in English, which
I knew the director understood:
'Listen, Tchitcherine, we are through
here. I think now it is time to notify Russian Intelligence to take
over'
Russian Intelligence was nowhere in
the vicinity. But I knew that the Germans were terrified of the Russians and
that this might stir them into action. I was right. The next day the director
called in Tchitcherine and took him to a dry well. He looked inside. It was full
of documents.
Among them were the papers describing
the sweptback wing and providing considerable wind-tunnel data which showed
clearly that the sweptback plane had superior speed properties near the speed of
sound. These data were the first of its kind. Schairer quickly wrote to his
Boeing associates to stop work on the Mach 1 transonic plane with the straight
wing which they had designed, telling them of his find. He microfilmed the data
and used them when he got back to Seattle to design the B-47, the first U.S.
sweptback bomber....
In going through the papers, Ted
Toller, one of my former assistants who was on a committee involved with these
documents, came to me one day and said that he had found a very interesting
report. The title, as translated by the English-speaking German sergeant, was
'The Resistance of Undernourished Bodies.' Troller wondered what this title was
doing in a collection of aerodynamics material. So he looked up the author and
found it was von Karman. It was a translation of my 1931 paper 'The Drag on
Slender Bodies'.
The documents revealed that the
Germans had conducted a variety of interesting research at Braunschweig. For
instance, they had run studies of the effect of wind on human beings and shown
that the human being can take velocities up to 550 miles an hour. They also had
developed an emergency pressure suit fixed up with a cylinder of oxygen like
those used in USAF life rafts. If a plane flying at 70,000 feet loses pressure,
the pilot can jerk a ribbon and re-pressurize himself. All these items were
valuable to the United States." (4)
The Loot
I am not sure that there was, in the
end, an exact accounting of how many documents/pages were taken from Germany, or
if that was at all possible. Some documents contained more than 1,000 pages,
others, like patent applications, only one.
Von Karman, in the source already
cited goes on to say that "some 3,000,000 documents, weighing 1,500 tons were
sifted and microfilmed in Europe; eventually they formed the basis for the
collections of ASTIA, the Armed Services Technical Information Agency, " now the
Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). The Annual Report of the Secretary
of Commerce for 1946 (5) talks about 3,500,000 pages that TIIB selected. If one
adds the documents brought to the United States and processed at Wright Field,
and those deposited at the Library of Congress, then the number of pages becomes
astronomical.
I remember that when I came to the
Library in 1957, there were large green boxes, 'footlockers' 8 feet long,
stored, to the very ceilings, in the hallways and vestibules of the 4th floor of
the Adams Building, containing documents to be processes by the Air Information
and Air Technology Divisions under contract to the Air Force. One day they were
gone - "shipped back to Germany" and soon AID and ATD were abolished also. In
addition to corporate papers, there were interviews with plant/laboratory
personnel, photographs, blueprints, patents and patent applications (the
Secretary of Commerce talks of thousands of applications obtained from the files
of the giant I.G.Farben complex alone which had not even been filed with the
Reichspatentamt because of staff shortages everywhere) and much more. From these
mountains of materials the industrial teams prepared summary reports some up to
1,000 pages thick. To give an idea of the coverage it is interesting to look at
just a small selection of the important new discoveries which they contained:
One of the best customers for German
technical information were the American aircraft and airline industries. In
addition to general studies of the German air transport industry (PB 17920,
19717), there are studies on 'Plastics in the Aircraft Industry' (PB 1104, 4351,
27000, 58373), 'Aircraft Hydraulic and Fuel Systems' (PB 16684), 'Magnetic
Brakes for Propellers (PB 464, 4349), 'Helicopters' (PB 6339, 6340, 16712,
17544), 'De-icing of Windshields' (PB462, 23815, 23856, 31251, 40292, 58242);
then there are numerous reports on rocket fuels (PB186, 392, 405, 4284, 23815,
etc). In terms of military aircraft two reports are of interest: The Horton
Tail-less Aircraft (PB 260) possibly a forerunner of the stealth bomber, and
German High-Speed Airplanes and Design Development (CIOS XXXI-3).
In the area of construction the
Germans were forced, because of the devastating success of Allied bombings, to
put their most important factories underground. Immense tunnels running for
miles under the Harz Mountains in Thuringia were built by slave labor from the
nearby Buchenwald concentration camp at a horrendous cost in human lives to
house whole synthetic fuel refineries as well as aircraft and rocket assembly
lines. Obviously, such underground installations and their ventilation, heating
and cooling, sanitation, etc. systems were of great interest to the Bureau of
Mines and the mining industries, as well as the Defense Department, which was
preparing abandoned mines as 'safe places' for high Government officials in case
of future wars. (PB 25638, 25639, 27779).
Acetylene is one of the most
versatile intermediates for the generation of synthetic rubbers, plastics
(vinyl), and industrial alcohols, plus many other compounds. It is also highly
explosive so that its generation, transport and use must be subject to very
strict controls. German industry, depending greatly on acetylene, devoted much
energy and research to making it safe and expanding its use. (PB 188, 189, 377,
485, 517, 969, 1017, 4287, 7745, 7747, 23750, 25560, 28556, 44943, 46966).
Germany has not been blessed with
significant oil deposits; to fuel her war machine she depended on imports from
the Soviet Union and Rumania. When these sources were lost, she had to rely on
synthetic fuel derived from her rich coal reserves. The process, called the
Fischer-Tropsch Process, uses water gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon
monoxide derived from the hydrogenation of coal, coke, or lignite and extra
hydrogen over catalysts at elevated pressures and temperature to generate
straight-chain hydrocarbons and waxes which can be further processed to yield
fuels, lubricants, facts, even some type of margarine. (PB 284, 288, 289, 373,
1279, 1291, 7745, 7917, 12624, 18911, 18926, 23750, 28883, 46390, 49196, 66130,
75817, 75845, 77706, 78242)
Plastics and synthetic fibers have
always spawned successful industries in Germany. Here are just a few examples of
many reports published in these areas: 'Plastic Plants' (PB 400, 403, 531, 979,
1069, 25642, 37784); 'Chemical Developments in the Synthetics Industry' (PB
1243); 'Soda Ash and Caustic Soda' (PB 7746, 7797, 27434, 40122); 'Dyestuff
Intermediates' (PB 82, 60945, 67569, 77672, 78269, 78276)
Solid fuels: Germany always has had
enormous supplies of coal in the Ruhr and, after the annexation of portions of
Poland in 1939, also control over the Upper Silesia coal deposits. Improving the
technologies of mining and processing coal was important for the war effort (PB
1827, 4322, 4323, 4345, 4461, 4462, 20579).
Sulfonamide: In wars past more
soldiers died of infections of their wounds than in actual combat. With the
beginning of the 20th century, great strides were made in the development of
sanitary methods and anti-bacterial agents. German doctors, chemists and
pharmacists had always been in the forefront of medical research. The
development of sulfonamide was no exception (that it was tested on human guinea
pigs in the concentration camps is another chapter). (PB 237, 248, 918, 77766,
80380 with 10 supplements)
One of the most dreaded diseases was
malaria and research to find effective drugs was really universal. The German
effort , except for the test methods, was significant (PB 237, 239, 246, 1101,
1718, 1859, 81613)
Some of the most cruel experiments
were performed in the field of aviation medicine by the infamous SS-doctor
Sigismund Rascher at Dachau Concentration Camp. Simulating conditions
experienced by a pilot shot down over the North Atlantic, he subjected inmates
to exposure to cold by immersing them in ice water to find out how long they
could survive and possibly have a chance for being rescued (PB250). Another
experiment involved pilots at high, oxygen-poor altitudes - when should they
pull the cord to inflate the parachute and how long could they free-fall before
losing consciousness? (same report).
Metallurgists in Germany were far
ahead of their American counter-parts in the field of magnesium and magnesium
alloy production and processing; the reports were much in demand by American
companies (PB 204, 18930, 18948, 29663, 23748, 44675, 49828, 94315)
One curiosity is reported in the
literature that simply begs to be repeated: Among all these high-technology,
war-related products and efforts, there appears a lonely teddy bear and other
stuffed toy animals manufactured by the Steiff Company, which was the target
investigated by a British specialist on behalf of a British
manufacturer.
Evaluating the
Loot
The activities of FIAT and the
'acquisition' of German industrial know-how are best described in a unique book
by John Gimbel: "Science, Technology, and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder
in Postwar Germany." It is 'must-reading' for anybody studying or interested in
the years immediately following World War II in Europe. It is the only attempt,
to my knowledge, of reporting the efforts of trying to put a price tag on what
was taken. In summary, Gimbel refers to a meeting early in 1947 in Moscow of the
Council of Foreign Ministers, established by the victorious nations to deal with
problems arising from inter-zonal relations and the question of German
reparations.
Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister,
"argued the case of his government's claim against Germany for 10 billion
dollars in reparations, reportedly stating that Great Britain and the United
States had already received considerable reparations from Germany in the form of
patents and other technical know-how. 'Press reports say that these reparations
amount to more than ten billion dollars' Molotov said" (6). (In true Soviet
fashion, and true to the old Communist maxim that 'what is yours is mine and
what is mine is none of your business' Molotov did not mention that the Soviet
Union had already taken from her occupation zone literally everything that was
not nailed down, and if it had been, they took that and the nails, too. For
example, the Russians dismantled vast stretches of the rail system in East
Germany, the locomotives, passenger- and freight cars, the rails, the ties upon
which the rails rested, and then the gravel upon which the ties had been laid).
"General Marshall", Gimbel continues, "the American Foreign Minister, in
response stated: 'We have used United States scientists to obtain information on
German science, including patents, all of which information is being published
in pamphlets and made available to the rest of the world. As a matter of fact,
Amtorg, the Soviet Purchasing Agency in the United States, has been so far the
biggest single purchaser of these pamphlets. The pamphlets cost a nominal fee to
cover printing and administrative expenses. No ten billion in reparations is
involved." (7).
But once raised, the question of the
value of the German industrial information obtained by Britain and the United
States would not go away. Early estimates ranged from $10 million to $275
million. It was General Lucius Clay, the American High Commissioner in Germany,
who kept on raising the question and prod the War-, Navy-, State-, and Commerce
Departments to come up with a 'realistic' figure. General Clay was not against
the official position of the United States that America should not pay the
Germans for the industrial know-how taken; on the other hand he felt strongly
that the value of this information should be counted towards the reparations
that would be imposed by the victors on the Germans. Years of political
maneuvering between the U.S. Government departments involved produced no
results.
The Departments of the Army and the
Navy did submit data; Commerce declined, saying that the true value could only
be assessed five to ten years down the road when it became known what American
industry had done with the information; State refused to comply outright saying
"that such an evaluation would serve no practical purpose except 'to keep the
American conscience clean'... The FIAT material should not be valued for
reparation purposes. The discussants had essentially three reasons: First, given
the hundreds of tons of documents and materials held by the Commerce Department,
the task of sorting and evaluating separate items with the staff that could be
assigned to it would be physically impossible. Second, the material was not only
for the United States, and it would be doubtful that other countries would agree
to charge their reparations accounts similarly. Third, reparations was an
integral concern and properly the subject of an international agreement."
(8)
John Gimbel tried to make his own
evaluation of the know-how taken from Germany. Using statements made in public
or in writing by U.S. Government officials and industrialists directly involved
in evaluating and/or using the information contained in the German documents, as
well as reports from the political and trade press, he arrived at a value of $ 5
billion for the U.S. take. By doubling this value to account for the British
'acquisitions' he arrived at - surprise! - the $10 billion mentioned by Mr.
Molotov.
But this did not conclude the
question of the value of the intellectual know-how derived from German industry.
In late 1946 and early 1947 various German initiatives were started to evaluate
the German losses. Up to this point the Germans had only been repaid for copying
costs of the documents, obviously a ridiculously low sum. But the German efforts
also failed as most companies, even those hardest hit, refused to cooperate for
tax reasons. In other attempts the reported data could not be reduced to common
denominators to yield meaningful results.
Only after the new West German
Government had agreed to forego any tax investigations that might evolve from
the reporting, did industry finally comply. A report, issued by the
Notgemeinschaft für Reparationsgeschädigte Industrie (Emergency Union of
Industries Damaged by Reparations) in February 1951 "estimated the total value
of the patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property ('geistiges Gut')
removed from Germany to be somewhere in the range of 10 to 30 billion
Deutschmarks (DM) not Reichsmark, the currency used in Germany prior to its
devaluation of 1949, or between $4.8 and $12 billion" (9). What was the actual
value? If we consider that the Library of Congress still receives requests for
copies of the German materials, more than 50 years after the War, primarily in
the areas of dyestuffs, plastics, fuels, and, more recently, for the location of
industries, test ranges for guns and ammunition, storage depots of chemical,
biological, and explosive weapons (for the purpose of localizing and sanitizing
toxic soils) then, maybe, the Commerce Department was right when it insisted
that the value should be based on the usefulness and actual use by American
industry over an extended period of time?
Other Foreign
Documents
Obviously, the main interest in
foreign information was concentrated on the German collection: its size, the
immediacy of collecting and processing, the language (many American scientists
and engineers still had studied German in college), the fact that German
industry before the war had been a main competitor of many American companies,
and that the Germans were renowned for the quality of their research. This also
explains why Germany was investigated so thoroughly.
From the very beginning, the
situation involving Japanese information was different: not many people could
read Japanese and the systematic investigation of Japanese industries did not
begin until much later, giving the Japanese industrialists a chance to sort out
what they wanted to give and what not. Also, as the mountains of German
documents, along with materials from U.S. and British sources started to pile
up, the Japanese documents were somewhat neglected. In his Annual Report for
1947 the Secretary of Commerce stated:
In addition to data from Germany,
and documents from American sources, the (Bibliographic and Reference) Division
(of the Office of Technical Services) is beginning to receive materials directly
from Japan. Some of it consists of up-to-date technological studies prepared by
Japanese nationals on subjects of interest to American industry. Many wartime
and pre-war Japanese publications have also been received during the past year
from the Washington Document Center. This Center is the Washington processing
office which was set up to handle materials gathered in Japan by the military
forces. Although much material has already been received, a large part of it is
now out of date and of little value. We have been assured, however, that
valuable documents from this source will reach us during the coming year.
(10)
The Secretary continues:
The Belgian Government has
voluntarily contributed scientific reports to the Division. In addition,
extremely important material has been received from Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, Hungary, South Africa, Italy, and France.... The excellent relations
which OTS through this Division, has had with the British in the exchange of
reports is noteworthy. At present the British Intelligence Objective
Subcommittee, commonly known as BIOS, maintains a liaison office in Washington.
Our work with this office might well be cited as a fine example of international
cooperation. The British have generously provided large quantities of their
printed reports and with single microfilm copies of any of their manuscript
reports which were requested. They also provide a special reference service for
this Office and for American business firms. We, on our part, provide a similar
service for the British. (11)
What Happened to the Documents?
We must not forget that the
collectors were dealing with mountains of material and that only a very small
fraction was processed and filmed. Thus the question has remained ever since
"What happened to the rest?" It is still being asked today, especially if a
researcher is interested in, let's say, a particular camera made by the Leitz
Company and he is looking for the user manual. In my search for the answers I
have, over the decades, talked to many people some of whom had been in the
collecting and processing effort. "You cannot imagine, unless you had been
there, how many documents and single pages were scattered all over the floors,
crammed into shelves, stacked from floor to ceiling, falling over, spilling, it
was utter chaos," I was told. The filming was often equally wild: page after
page the documents were pulled through the machines , with quantity rather than
quality being the determining factor by untrained machine operators who did the
best they could under the circumstances. Quality control was non-existent. The
result was that some film rolls contain almost in their entirety, only blurred,
useless images. Also, when specialists wrote reports, let's say on the 'German
Optical Industry' the supporting documents were, unless the were deemed
important enough to be registered individually, discarded; the same happened to
translated documents.
Military and Nazi Party documents
generally were brought to the United States, sorted, filmed, and eventually
returned to German archives. Books and journals were, supposedly, turned over to
the Library of Congress, but we are not sure that we actually received all that
was designated for the Library. According to Richard Eells, Acting Chief of the
Aeronautics Division, "the Library, by agreement with the Air Material Command,
Wright Field, has become the depository for all purely historical and
descriptive portions of this captured material. The preliminary winnowing of the
shipment from Wright Field yielded 9,114 aeronautical books, periodicals, and
ephemera. In addition, more than 18,000 items representing the literature of
related fields were turned over to the Library for its general collection. Some
of the confiscated libraries belonged to institutions that loomed large in the
history of the Luftwaffe: e.g., Junkers, Focke-Wulf, the Deutsche Akademie der
Luftfahrtforschung (German Academy for Aeronautical Research), the Deutsche
Forschungsinstitut für Segelflug (German Research Institute for Gliding), the
Flugfunkforschungsinstitut (Research Institute for Aeronautical Radio), and the
Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Air Ministry) itself." (12). During the past years I
have inspected about two thirds of the Library's aeronautical collection but
found but a dozen or so volumes having book plates ascribing them to the
libraries of the institutes just mentioned. This certainly does not add up to
the 12,000 books from the Junkers Aircraft Company Library alone that we
supposedly received.
It is interesting to note that
according to German newspaper reports (13) published after the war, the American
officer in charge of the team collecting the Junkers Library was none other than
Charles Lindbergh, who was no stranger to Hitler's Germany. Because of his
friendship with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and General Udet (he was later
accused of having been a Nazi sympathizer) many doors had opened to him in Nazi
Germany and he had visited and inspected the aircraft manufactured by Junkers
several times. We must also remember that the Allies had much respect for the
German Luftwaffe and that one of the stipulations of the German capitulation was
that she would never again build an air force. Therefore, all books and reports
in German libraries that could be used to re-build the Luftwaffe, were to be
removed from Germany. Now Dessau, where Junkers was located, was to be in the
designated Russian Zone - why would the Americans leave a library of such
importance to the Russians? So, what happened to these libraries?
Eells, in the article cited (14) also
mentions another important aspect:
A check of the Deutsche
Nationalbibliographie indicates that the Library of Congress has acquired many,
if not all, of the commercial aeronautical imprints in Germany during the war
years.
One of the strengths of the Library
of Congress before and for some decades after the War was its aeronautical
collection. Now, if we already had almost all of the books contained in the
Junkers and the other German libraries, we would have made the rest either
available to other interested American libraries, or, on demand, returned the
volumes to German archives (the disappeared footlockers?). Since the Junkers
Aircraft Company, located in the Russian Zone or the German Democratic Republic,
did no longer exist after 1945, who would have received the returned material?
The Russians?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography
1. Library of Congress. Science &
Technology Division. Note of Karl Green. n.d.
2. United States Department of
Commerce. Report of the Secretary of Commerce, 34th 1946. Washington, DC : GPO,
1946: xxvi-xxvii
3. Eells, Richard. 'Aeronautical
Science. German Documents.' Library of Congress Quarterly Journal of Current
Acquisitions 3 (4) Aug. 1946
4. Von Karman, Theodore. The Wind and
Beyond. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. 1967
5. United States Department of
Commerce. Report of the Secretary of Commerce, 34th, 1946. Washington, DC: GPO,
1946
6. Gimbel, John. Science, Technology,
and Reparations. Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1990
7. Ibid
8. Ibid
9. Ibid
10. United States Department of
Commerce. Report of the Secretary of Commerce, 35th, 1947. Washington, DC: GPO,
1947
11. Ibid
12. Eels, Richard. 'Aeronautical
Science'. Library of Congress Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions 3(4)
Aug. 1947
13a. "Junkers Bibliothek: Ein
verschollenes Objekt der Begierde" Mitteldeutsche Zeitung Dessau, 17 June
1995
13b. "'Bernsteinzimmer der Technik'
soll nach Dessau zurückkehren." Anhaltische Zerbster Nachrichten 24 March
1995
13c. "Fundgrube für Junkers Forschung
und die Bibliothekssuche in Amerika" Der Alte Dessauer, 28 April 1995
14. Eells, Richard. Ibid, 1947
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