- Born 8 May 1945 German capitulations II. It brought the end of the World War, and immediately the United States launched the Overcast, which would later be Operation Paperclip, bringing the United States with the largest number of German scientists to engage in gun research and technology to serve them. In total, 1,600 scientists gathered.
Although the covert operation was authorized directly by President Harry Truman, it made it clear that the recruitment of members of the Nazi party or investigators who supported the Nazis was prohibited. Direct compliance with the order would cause the number and quality of the scientists gathered to decrease significantly. They cleaned up the dossiers of many, bleached the past and so overcame the “ethical hurdles”.
One of the clearest examples was Werner Von Braun. A member of the SS, was one of the main creators of the V2 rocket. To make the rocket, they used prisoners of war and other hand-slaves, and thousands of people died in the process. The V2 also caused great havoc in the war, especially in England. The preliminary report of Operation Anti-Washing considered Von Braun a "security risk," but he was named director of the Marshall space flight area of NASA and co-founder of the Saturn V rocket that was used 50 years ago to launch Apollo XI.
Kurt Debus was also an officer of the SS and a member of the Nazi party and the SA. His report said that it was a “threat to the security of the Allied Forces” and that it should be locked in. He was appointed head of launching operations NASA.Por commissioned by physiologist
Hubertus Strughold, various experiments were carried out in the Dachau and Auschwitz camps: they left the prisoners at low temperatures, they put them in low-pressure rooms, they reduced oxygen to epileptic children… He designed Apollo’s pressure suit and the support systems of the “spaceship” and called it.
The United States was not the only one with the help of German researchers in the Cold War and the Space Race. The Soviet Union also set in motion the recruitment of researchers as soon as the war is over. But the Soviets decided that these scientists should be treated as “second-class” citizens. Honours and medals were granted in the United States; in the USSR, it was decided to send it to Germany after having squeezed as many juices as possible. And as far as the moon is concerned, it seems that the kindest methods of the Americans got better results.
In honor of Werner Von Braun, a Moon crater was named after him and Kurt Debus also has its crater on the Earth's only natural satellite.