What was Operation Paperclip?
With rising technology being a problem as each country saw each other as enemies, the US sought to use the German science powerhouse to our own advantage, with the Soviets having the same idea. This resulted in Operations Paperclip and Osoaviakhim where 1,500 and 2,000 scientists, technicians, and engineers were taken back to either the US or the USSR in order to bolster the science workforce and to gain an advantage over the other. The US began the operation to curb the British and Soviet research, as well as keep German weapon research down after being defeated, while the Soviets gathered their own around a year later, mostly by gunpoint. Operation paperclip excluded anyone who had been apart of the Nazi party or supported it, as President Truman allowed, but was repealed as to get many lead scientists and others who were regarded as a must have when the lists on who to recruit were put out. Included on this list were some of the most important people to US research history like scientists Wernher von Braun, Kurt H. Debus, and Arthur Rudolph, as well as Physician Hubertus Strughold, each having been earlier classified as a “Menace to the security of the Allied Forces”.
Known to many Americans, it was deemed not right for these men to be allowed into the US for work, since their work was directly apart of the Nazi Regime and created terror around the world. But with the Cold War starting to reveal its true nature, the need for advancement outweighed the morals.
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