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2025-03-20 Home Front: Politix
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'The Most Promising Killer': How Nazi Chemists Worked for the US Until Their Death
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Mark Leshkevich
[REGNUM] After the defeat of Nazi Germany, but before the end of 1945, a valuable trophy was brought to the United States: a group of 88 German scientists who had previously worked for Adolf Hitler. This was the first stage of Operation Overcast, a joint action by the Army counterintelligence and the civilian Special Operations Directorate, the predecessor of the CIA.
A year later, in the interests of secrecy, the operation to “import” Nazi scientific and technical personnel received a new, completely “harmless” name, under which it will go down in history: Operation Paperclip. As a result, the Americans assigned more than 1,600 scientists and technicians to the cause. The first to come to mind, of course, was SS Sturmbannführer, holder of an NSDAP party card since 1937 and a pioneer of American rocket and space technology, Wernher von Braun.
But often left behind the scenes are specialists in a field that – unlike aviation and rocket technology – is directly associated with one of the main crimes of Nazism: mass murder in death camps. We are talking about chemists, including those who worked for the IG Farben concern – on whose conscience was, among other things, the production of the gas "Zyklon-B".
"TRASH CAN"
Initially, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SNAEF), under the command of future US President Dwight Eisenhower, officially pursued a policy of closing all German research centers and arresting their personnel, who were released after numerous interrogations. However, it soon became clear that releasing the scientists was reckless: contact with them could be lost forever.
Moreover, the Allied forces encountered such results of the Nazi war machine's work that shocked the US top leadership. They were shocked not by the danger that Nazi developments posed, but by how far the US lagged behind the Third Reich in terms of chemical and bacteriological developments. And yet, a confrontation with a new enemy - our country - was on the threshold.
Confirmation can be found in a report by Major General Hugh Nerra to his boss, the commander of the US Air Forces in Europe, Carl Spaatz (who would later “oversee” the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki):
"The occupation of German scientific and industrial institutions has revealed the fact that we are lagging behind in many areas of research. If we do not take advantage of the opportunity to seize the apparatus and the brains that developed it... we will be left behind for several years."
Washington had “no idea that they had created an entire arsenal of nerve agents for Hitler,” that Germany was working on using bubonic plague bacteria for military purposes. “That’s where Operation Paperclip really began — when the Pentagon suddenly realized, ‘Wait a minute, we need these weapons ourselves,’” notes Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen in her book Paperclip : The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America.
Back in 1940–1942, the US Army's chemical rearmament costs grew from $2 million to $1 billion per year. So the trophy of Nazi "specialists" was very welcome.
In Paris, Bad Kissingen and in Kransberg Castle near Frankfurt, special camps were created for war criminals, especially dangerous Nazis and Hitlerite scientists (Ashcan, Backporch and Dustbin), where the latter were held for recruitment to American, British and French laboratories.
The main acquisition was Gerhard Schrader (1903–1990), an employee of the IG Farben conglomerate, the creator of a certain “substance 9/91” – a colorless gas with a pleasant fruity aroma, capable of instantly destroying the entire population of Paris, London, and Washington combined.
"DRIVES THE POPULATION CRAZY"
In the 1930s, Gerhard Schrader worked for the still well-known today company Bayer AG, a subsidiary of IG Farben. The promising chemist specialized in the development of insecticides: poisons that killed insect pests by affecting their nervous system. In 1936, the aforementioned “substance 9/91” was synthesized in Dr. Schrader’s laboratory.
It turned out that the drug, invented to kill lice, was capable of killing a healthy monkey in a few minutes upon contact with air, which made a strong impression on Schrader's superiors.
From 1935 onwards, all new discoveries with potential military applications had to be reported "to the proper authorities". So Dr. Schrader was put on the radar of the Reich War Ministry. In May 1937, he was invited to Berlin to demonstrate how he had synthesized the drug.
"Everyone was amazed. It was the most promising chemical killer since the Germans invented mustard gas," the scientist later said.
Dr. Schrader's drug was kept secret and given the code name "Tabun." It comes from the word "taboo," which means something forbidden or prohibitive.
IG Farben management saw Tabun as a new business opportunity. Chairman Karl Krauch began working with Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering on a long-term plan to arm Germany with chemical weapons that could eventually be dropped on enemies from airplanes.
Krauch, in his report to Goering, called the Herd "a weapon of superior intellect and scientific-technical thinking." The Reichsmarschall gave the go-ahead, adding that Schrader's invention could mainly cause "psychological damage to the civilian population, driving them mad with fear."
Dr. Schrader was ordered to produce one kilogram for the German army, which planned to mass-produce Tabun. The inventor received a bonus of 50,000 Reichsmarks (the average German worker at the time received 3,100 a year), and returned to work.
Schrader, who once dreamed of creating a universal parasite exterminator, “gave the world” other, later even more famous substances capable of mass poisoning of people: sarin (developed in 1938) and soman (1944).
The Farben scientist was known as the "father of nerve agents." But the scale of production of tabun, sarin, etc. during World War II, as well as the formulas for these substances, were deeply classified.
It is still not entirely clear when Dr. Schrader began to fruitfully collaborate with his new employers, the Americans. According to one version, he was brought to the States in the spring of 1945, before the start of Operation Cloudiness (Paperclip). According to another, the chemist was not "cracked" immediately, but only after several months of interrogation at Kransberg Castle.
Be that as it may, by the beginning of the Cold War between the US and the USSR, the developer of tabun and sarin had already shared the required amount of information with the Pentagon.
CONVICTED AND PARDONED
Schrader could not have been unaware of the purpose for which the Nazi leadership intended to use the drug. However, during interrogation he insisted that he had not participated in full-scale production. He referred to his colleague Dr. Otto Ambros, chairman of the top-secret chemical weapons committee and manager of the IG Farben plant for the production of synthetic rubber and fuel in Auschwitz.
After Germany's capitulation, Ambros was discovered in a region of Bavaria. By this time, the US allies knew about the specifics of the work of the German scientist, whose "product" killed millions of people in the gas chambers of concentration camps.
One of the first to reach Ambros was American Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tarr, head of intelligence for the Chemical Warfare Service.
Colonel Tarr cared little for Dr. Ambros' crimes.
According to Dr. Karl Krauch, another captured scientist from Kransberg Castle, the Pentagon was primarily interested in sarin, tabun, and the plants for their production: "They asked me to provide construction plans and manufacturing details. As far as I understood, they intended to build similar plants in the United States. I advised them to contact Dr. Ambros and his staff in Gendorf."
The US Army was hungry for the knowledge of Hitler's most valuable chemist. Ambros was convicted of mass murder and the use of slave labor, and sentenced to eight years in the IG Farben Trial. This trial took place in 1948 in Nuremberg, but unlike the famous tribunal that convicted Nazi leaders, it was not international but local: it was organized by the American occupation administration that controlled the city of Nuremberg. Ambros was later pardoned by the High Commissioner in the American occupation zone, John J. McCloy.
SHELTER FOR NAZIS
McCloy became a particularly important player in Operation Paperclip.
He was tasked with coordinating policy regarding Nazi scientists coming to the United States to work, as well as helping develop a program to combat war crimes.
McCloy's position on the exploitation of Nazi science and scientists was black and white.
He believed that this program would help to strengthen American military superiority and ensure economic prosperity. At the same time, he was a strong supporter of the International Military Tribunal and the idea of trying war criminals. But he saw the two categories as completely different. For him, scientists and the war criminals who applied their inventions existed separately from each other.
From the point of view of American politics, Ambrose was not a war criminal.
The US Department of Energy signed him to a long-term contract. The Hitlerite scientist worked as a "consultant for the development and operation of a 4 million ton per year coal hydrogenation plant at the former IG Farben plant, as well as an adviser to the US Army Chemical Corps and to Dow Chemical and WR Grace.
The general public learned about this after the Frankfurt Trials of 1963–1968.
By this time, Ambros was an extremely wealthy and successful businessman. In West Germany, he moved among industrial magnates and professional elites. He was a board member of many large German corporations, including AEG, Germany's General Electric, the mining company Hibernia, and the chemical company SKW.
Ambros worked as an economic consultant to German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and industrial magnate Friedrich Flick, the richest man in Germany during the Cold War. In the late 1950s, Ambros was also elected chairman of the advisory committee of the German company Chemie Grünenthal and served on the board of directors. In the late 1950s, very few people knew that Grünenthal was a refuge for many Nazis, including Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenk, an SS food inspector.
"VICTIMS OF THE REICH"
When the post-war generation in Germany was outraged that a Hitler collaborator was being paid from the taxes of West German citizens, Ambros responded: "I and my colleagues are victims of the Third Reich. The former government exploited the success of synthetic rubber, which they used for profit. If there had been anything against me, the American military would never have released me."
High Commissioner McCloy pardoned Ambros under intense political pressure from his superiors, a fact that was used by Ambros to suggest that he had been unfairly convicted at Nuremberg.
Like the other 1,600 scientists, technicians and engineers of the Third Reich “imported” by the United States as part of Operation Paperclip, Ambros received a lifelong indulgence from the American authorities.
And so it will be with every murderer whose brains America deems useful and necessary for the creation of advanced weapons and enrichment.
This is just the way this country is - as if it was created to make other people's bastards its own and convert other people's evil into its own benefit.
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Posted by badanov 2025-03-20 00:00||
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