SYMHC Classics: Four Paperclippers

Summary

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Stuff You Missed in History Class – Classics: Four Paperclippers

Podcast: Stuff You Missed in History Class
Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Frey
Air Date: June 27, 2026 (originally released May 26, 2021)
Episode Theme:
A focused exploration of "Operation Paperclip," by detailing the lives, legacies, and controversies of four German specialists brought to the U.S. after WWII. The episode interrogates the ethical nuances and lasting consequences of recruiting scientists—some with documented Nazi involvement or complicity in war crimes—for American technological advancement.

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Episode Overview

Following an earlier episode outlining Operation Paperclip, this installment profiles four notable “paperclippers”: Wernher von Braun, Arthur Rudolph, Georg Rickhey, and Hubertus Strughold. The hosts examine individual backgrounds, roles during Nazi Germany, contributions in the U.S., controversies about their pasts, and their complex legacies—spotlighting the moral dilemmas underpinning America’s choice to give these men citizenship and prestigious positions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Operation Paperclip: Brief Recap (03:14)

• Operation Paperclip was a U.S. initiative to recruit German scientists and engineers post-WWII, bringing about 1,600 specialists (most under 40) to the U.S, where over 90% became citizens.
• Many had Nazi Party ties, but the program often downplayed or concealed deeper involvement—especially for candidates deemed vital.
  • Tracy:
    "When this program was established, it was taken as a given that most of these people had at least some involvement with the Nazi Party…" (04:09)

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1. Wernher von Braun – The Face of Paperclip (05:49–15:28)

Background & Nazi Connection

• Von Braun's early interest lay in rocket technology for space, but he advanced his work using military funding.
• Joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and later the SS, ultimately becoming a major.
  • Holly:
    "By 1937, the German army had outgrown the Kummersdorf facility... That same year, he also accepted an invitation to join the Nazi Party." (06:41)

Connection to War Crimes

• Developed the V-2 rocket using forced labor from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp.
• At least 60,000 were forced to work on the V-2; a minimum of 20,000 died from captivity and abuse.
  • Tracy:
    “…more people died building V2 rockets than were actually killed through their use as a weapon.” (08:07)

U.S. Career & Legacy

• Surrendered to American forces in May 1945.
• Became instrumental in U.S. rocket and space programs, leading the design of the Redstone and Saturn V rockets for NASA, and publicizing space travel on Disney specials.
  • Holly:
    “Von Braun became a public face for space exploration… [He] wrote multiple books and he was on the cover of Time magazine in 1958.” (12:43)

Controversy

• Debates persist on whether von Braun was a pragmatic opportunist or a complicit war criminal.
• Tracy:
  “Historians and biographers have argued that von Braun was everything from an opportunist… to an ardent war criminal who never faced justice.” (14:38)
• Notable cultural moment: Tom Lehrer's satirical song, “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Werner von Braun.” (13:42)

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2. Arthur Rudolph – Ambition, War Crimes, and Exile (21:27–28:25)

Pre-Paperclip Profile

• Early Nazi Party member (joined 1931); worked with von Braun at Peenemünde and later led operations at Mittelwerk, directly overseeing V-2 production with slave labor.

U.S. Vetting Process

• Initially assessed as “100% NAZI. Dangerous type. Security threat. Suggest internment.” But later cleared as “not an ardent Nazi” for Paperclip.
  • Holly:
    “His interrogator made this notation: ‘100% Nazi. That’s in all caps. Dangerous type security threat. Exclamation points suggest internment.’”(22:44)

American Contributions and Aftermath

• Achieved U.S. citizenship; became a key engineer for Saturn V. Received NASA’s Distinguished Service Award.
• In the 1980s, after new investigations connected his work to slave labor and deaths at Mittelwerk, relinquished U.S. citizenship and was deported to Germany to avoid trial.

Legacy and Notorious Document

• Never tried for murder in Germany due to insufficient evidence.
• Canadian court:
  "[Rudolph] had, ‘called for, made use of, and directed the enslaved laborers at Mittelwerk.’" (27:43)

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3. Georg Rickhey – Engineering and Atrocity (28:25–32:50)

Professional Role

• Designed and managed underground arms facilities, notably Mittelwerk, and directly coordinated with the SS for forced labor.
• Brought to the U.S. through Paperclip despite being, by definition, an "ardent Nazi"—party member from 1931.

Controversies in the U.S.

• Involved in a black market scandal and made a disturbing joke alluding to Nazi atrocities.
• Accused of orchestrating mass hangings at Mittelwerk.

Legal Proceedings

• Returned to Germany for the U.S.-led Dora-Nordhausen war crimes trial; was the only Mittelwerk official tried (others were camp commandants).
• Testimony against him conflicted; acquitted and trial records were classified.

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4. Hubertus Strughold – The "Father of Space Medicine," Shadows of Dachau (38:42–47:46)

Scientific Achievements

• Coined "space medicine" and "astrobiology"; designed ground-breaking astronaut equipment.
• Directed the world’s first department of space medicine at the U.S. Air Force School of Aviation Medicine.

Ambiguous Nazi Era Ties

• Led the Aviation Medical Research Institute under the Reich Air Ministry, incorporated into the Luftwaffe.
• Never joined the Nazi Party, and some evidence suggests political neutrality or opposition. Was, however, on the Allies’ war criminal registry (CROWE list).

Human Experimentation Allegations

• While director, Luftwaffe’s gruesome human experiments on hypothermia, hypoxia, and seawater exposure occurred—mainly at Dachau.
• Attended conferences where such results were presented and commented, but denied orchestrating or specifically authorizing non-consensual work at his institute.
  • Holly:
    “Strughold definitely knew about at least some of this research, particularly the freezing experiments. He attended a conference in 1942 where the researchers talked about their results and he commented on their work after that presentation.” (42:45)

Investigations and Legacy

• Multiple probes (Paperclip investigation, 1958, 1973, 1983) failed to conclusively tie him to atrocities; most honors and memorials have since been withdrawn.
• Tracy:
  “Regardless of what his true level of involvement was… these allegations and the investigations really affected Strughold's reputation. Most of the honors and awards... have since been renamed or retired.” (46:37)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Wernher von Braun on moral scruples:
  "We felt no moral scruples about the possible future use of our brainchild. We were interested solely in exploring space. It was simply a question with us of how the golden cow could be milked most successfully." (06:11, attributed by Tracy)

• Stalin’s Fury Over Paperclip:
  “This is absolutely intolerable. We defeated the Nazi armies, we occupied Berlin and Peenemünde, but the Americans got the rocket engineers.” (11:13)

• On the paradox of denazification (Tracy):
  "…after World War II, there was this whole effort to just denazify Germany…but then there was this whole effort in the United States that was like, well, we'll take them though and give them US Citizenship. Which is a little weird…” (48:53)

• Hosts’ reflective surprise:
  Holly:
  “I'm always surprised when I have those of like, huh, that person was still alive the year I got married. Like, yeah, it places it so deeply in my own lifetime…” (47:46)

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Significant Timestamps

• Operation Paperclip Recap: 03:14–05:49
• Wernher von Braun Profile: 05:49–15:28
• Arthur Rudolph Profile: 21:27–28:25
• Georg Rickhey Profile: 28:25–32:50
• Hubertus Strughold Profile: 38:42–47:46
• Final Reflections & Ethical Dilemma: 47:46–48:53

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Tone & Delivery

The hosts maintain a scholarly yet conversational tone: clear, factual, and measured, but not without emotional resonance—especially when discussing the brutality of forced labor and the dissonance between scientific achievement and moral compromise.

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Final Thoughts

This episode provides a nuanced, detailed look at the toll and legacy of Operation Paperclip, balancing the transformative impact on American science and technology against the often-overlooked complicity in Nazi atrocities. The story of these four paperclippers serves as both an example and a warning: technological progress and ethical responsibility are not always aligned, and historical memory depends on confronting uncomfortable truths.

References repeatedly cited:

• Annie Jacobson's Operation Paperclip

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Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

The old gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Vive Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill and Jesse strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience, so tune in to Silver Linings with the old gays on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Holly Fry]

Happy Saturday. Last Saturday we re released our episode on Operation Paperclip. Today's classic is our follow up to that episode which covered four people who

[Martine Hackett]

were brought to the US under this program.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This originally came out May 26, 2021.

[Holly Fry]

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartradio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Last time we talked about Operation Paperclip, also known as Project Paperclip, which was the effort to bring German scientists, engineers and other specialists to the United States after World War II. And this built on an earlier program that was called Operation Overcast and that had given the same types of specialists short term contracts to either work in Germany or to work in the United States under military supervision. But under Operation Paperclip, most of those specialists that were brought to the US actually got the opportunity to become US citizens. About 1,600 total specialists entered the US through this program, and more than 90% of the ones who arrived between 1945 and 1952 went on to become US citizens. For the most part, they were recruiting relatively young folks. They were mostly under the age of 40 when they left Germany, and although most of them started out working for a branch of the military, about 10% were initially hired at the Department of Commerce. So as we talked about last time, but for a super quick recap in case folks have skipped that episode, when this program was established, it was taken as a given that most of these people had at least some involvement with the Nazi Party. In the words of a Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency report, quote, such membership was due to exigencies which influenced the lives of every citizen of Germany at that time. But especially in the early years of the program, there were also a whole lot of assurances that the people who were being targeted for this were the, quote, good Germans, and that they would all be pre screened to confirm that they were not ardent Nazis. So it's possible that many, or maybe even most of the people who came to the US through the program really did meet these criteria, but others definitely did not. And this was not just a matter of Nazis and war criminals managing to evade detection. The people and agencies who were involved with running this program intentionally obscured the most damning details from candidates backgrounds, especially if their knowledge and expertise seemed particularly valuable. So my intent had been to talk about this program and then talk about some of the more well known people who were part of it. It turned out that Just talking about the program was a whole episode by itself. So today we are going to talk about a few of the most famous and infamous paperclippers, some of whom were connected to some truly horrific war crimes.

[Holly Fry]

So probably the most famous of all of the Operation Paperclip specialists was Wernher von Braun. His thesis for his PhD in physics had involved rocket thrust engines, which came out of work that he did at Kummersdorf army proving grounds under another future paper clipper officer, Walter R. Dornberger. This work had been funded by the German Army.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Although von Braun's rockets had potential as a weapon, his real interest was space. And in a lot of ways, he used the military promise of his work as a means to an end. At one point he was quoted as saying, quote, we felt no moral scruples about the possible future use of our brainchild. We were interested solely in exploring space. It was simply a question with us of how the golden cow could be milked most successfully.

[Holly Fry]

By 1937, the German army had outgrown the Kummersdorf facility and needed a more remote location to conduct rocket tests. So the team moved to Peenemunde on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Von Braun became the technical director at Peenemunde at the age of just 25. That same year, he also accepted an invitation to join the Nazi Party. Later, he also joined the Schutzstaffel or ss, where he ultimately became a Sternbandfuhrer or Major.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Von Braun and the team at Peenemunde developed the weapon that would become known as the V2, translated from German as the Vengeance Weapon 2, which was the first long range ballistic missile. In 1943, the Allies bombed this facility, so all the weapons development and production operation there were moved underground, using an old mine to house a facility that became known as Mittelwerk.

[Holly Fry]

People who were being imprisoned at the Mittlebau Dora concentration camp complex were forced to work in truly horrifying conditions, including digging out the tunnels by hand. With nowhere to sleep and no hygiene facilities, most of the people being held at Mbao Dora were political prisoners from multiple countries, especially the Soviet Union, Poland and France. Jewish and Romani prisoners began to be deported to the camp after the spring and fall of 1944.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The use of enslaved labor at Middlewark continued after the facility was finished, with the prisoners building the weapons that were being produced there. According to Brian E. Crim, author of Our Germans Project Paperclip and the National Security State, more people died building V2 rockets than were actually killed through their use as a weapon. Between August of 1943 and April of 1945, at least 60,000 people were forced to work on these weapons, and at least 20,000 of them died of things like starvation, illness, executions, suicides, and just being worked to death.

[Holly Fry]

Officials at the facility also carried out at least two mass hangings. One in particular was carried out in a very gruesome way, with the other prisoners forced to witness it. Some of the rockets had exploded on the launch pad, raising suspicions that someone was sabotaging them and that mass hanging was meant to deter future sabotage.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Although many of the staff that had worked at Peenemunde were transferred to Middelwerk and worked on site there, Wernher von Braun actually worked elsewhere. But he did tour this facility at least once, and he knew about the terrible conditions and the use of enslaved labor there. At one point, he testified at the trial of three SS members who had worked at the mittlebaldora concentration camp complex. And he acknowledged the appalling conditions and the use of enslaved labor in that testimony.

[Holly Fry]

In 1944, the Gestapo arrested von Braun and held him for about two weeks. Sources differ about exactly what prompted this arrest. In some accounts, he was being really disparaging about Germany's chances to win the war, and he was only released after Dornberger convinced the Gestapo that he was critical to missile production. This arrest sometimes comes up as evidence that von Braun wasn't a, quote, real Nazi and had only been involved in the Nazi Party in the SS out of self preservation or even opportunistic motives, or because he had perhaps been coerced.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In the spring of 1945, as Germany was rapidly losing ground in the war, the Soviet Red army was advancing toward von Braun's location. He and Doernberger both believed that the United States would see them as assets and that surrendering to the Americans would be really preferable to being captured by the Soviets. So they and many of their colleagues fled and went into hiding. Even though Hitler had ordered the destruction of anything that could be useful to the Allies, von Braun hid his research work and he later went back and retrieved it.

[Holly Fry]

On May 2, 1945, von Braun, Dornberger and 126 principal engineers from Mittlewerk surrendered to an American GI. They had sent von Braun's younger brother Magnus to make contact with the Americans, both because he was the most familiar with the English language and because he knew how critical it was to keep the details of what was happening at Middlewark secret.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Joseph Stalin was not pleased with this at all. He reportedly said, quote, this is Absolutely intolerable. We defeated the Nazi armies, we occupied Berlin and Peenemunde, but the Americans got the rocket engineers. What could be more revolting and more inexcusable? How and why was this allowed to happen?

[Holly Fry]

Once von Braun got to the US he worked at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, where he helped American forces learn about and learn to use the V2 rockets that he had developed. In 1947, when he was 35, he returned to Germany to marry Maria Luis von Kuisdrop, who was his 18 year old second cousin. After his return, he went on to become director of the US Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, where he helped develop the Redstone rocket, which was based on the V2. The Redstone was a ballistic missile that could carry a nuclear payload.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Von Braun started formally proposing plans for space exploration around 1954, but the army really wanted him to keep focusing on weapons development. He eventually got his wish, though. After NASA was established, he became director of the George C. Marshall Space Flight center in Huntsville, Alabama. When Ellen Shepard Jr. Became the first American in space in 1961, the launch vehicle was a modified Redstone rocket which von Braun had helped to develop. He also led the team that developed the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo project.

[Holly Fry]

In addition to being such a major part of the space program, Von Braun became a public face for space exploration. In 1955, he appeared on the Magical World of Disney episodes, man in Space, man and the Moon and Mars and Beyond. He appeared in multiple other documentaries in the 1950s and 60s and was also a technical advisor for Disney. He wrote multiple books and he was on the COVID of time magazine in 1958.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

One of the reasons that there are still some question marks about von Braun's motivations and decisions before and during World War II is that he died in 1977. At that point, most of the documents related to Operation Paperclip were still classified. That was also before the Office of Special Investigations opened its investigation into von Braun's colleague Arthur Rudolph, which we mentioned in the previous episode. He'll come up again later. The OSI actually hadn't even been established yet when von Braun died.

[Holly Fry]

While there had definitely been vocal critics of Project Paperclip for most of its existence in 1977, there was still a general belief that ardent Nazis and war criminals had been kept out of the program. And von Braun himself had critics as well. As one example, Tom Lehrer's satirical song Werner von Braun included such lyrics as Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Verna von Braun. But in general, after his death, von Braun was widely eulogized. President Jimmy Carter called him a man of bold vision and said, quote, to millions of Americans, Werner von Braun's name was inextricably linked to, to our exploration of space and to the creative application of technology. Not just the people of our nation, but all the people of the world have profited from his work. We will continue to profit from his example today.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Historians and biographers have argued that von Braun was everything from an opportunist who joined the Nazis out of sheer necessity to an ardent war criminal who never faced justice. What's clearest is that he was definitely a member of the Nazi party and of the ss, that he knew about the use of slave labor and the terrible conditions at Middlewark, and that consequently, he was, at just a minimum, complicit in all of that. He was also present for at least one meeting in which Middlewark's general director, George Rickey, planned out the acquisition of French prisoners of war to use as forced labor. He also developed a weapon that Germany deployed against allies of the United States, killing at least 5,000 people. But then he became a US citizen in 1955.

[Holly Fry]

We just mentioned Arthur Rudolph, and since we only covered him briefly in the earlier episode, he is where we are going to pick up. But first we are going to pause for a little sponsor break.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Arthur Rudolph was born in Germany on November 9, 1906 and he and Wernher von Braun later became colleagues at Peenemunde. After the Allies bombed Peenemunde, Rudolph became the Operations Director and the Deputy Production Manager at the underground Middlewark facility.

[Holly Fry]

In the prior episode on Operation Paperclip, we talked about the criteria for determining who was a so called ardent Nazi because ardent Nazis were supposed to be kept out of the program. An ardent Nazi was generally defined as someone who had joined the Nazi Party before Hitler had declared himself Fuhrer, who was a leader in the party or in one of its affiliated organizations like the SS or the sa, who had been convicted in a post war de Nazification court or who had been accused or convicted of war crimes.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So Rudolph joined the Nazi Party Also known as the National Socialist German Workers Party and then abbreviated in German as NSDAP in 1931. That was six years before Wernher von Braun joined and three years before Hitler declared himself Fuhrer. In the early 1930s, he had also been in the SA Reserve and in other Nazi connected organizations.

[Holly Fry]

When Rudolph was first screened for potential inclusion in Operation Paperclip, his interrogator made this notation. Quote, 100% Nazi. That's in all caps. Dangerous type security threat. Exclamation points suggest internment. But in spite of that rather vehement initial assessment, when the Office of Military Government United States filed its report on Rudolph, it concluded that he was not an ardent Nazi.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

When Rudolph was interrogated as part of this process, he gave his reasons for joining the Nazi Party this way. Quote, Until 1930, I sympathized with the Social Democratic Party and voted for it and was a member of a Social Democratic Union. After 1930, the economical situation became so serious that it appeared to me to be headed for a catastrophe. I really became unemployed in 1932. The great amount of unemployment caused the expansion of the National Socialist and Communistic parties. Frightened that the latter would become the government, I joined the nsdap, a legally regulated society, to help. I believed in the preservation of the Western culture.

[Holly Fry]

The US army okayed a slightly edited version of this statement to release to the public, which ended, quote, during the last few years, political developments became more and more serious, but I could not foresee this result when I entered the party.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Rudolph was one of the first German specialists to enter the US under Operation Paperclip. He arrived in 1945 and his wife and his daughter followed him. Later, like Wernher von Braun, he started out working for the Ordinance Department of the Research and Development Division under the Department of the Army. At various points, the FBI investigated him as part of his applications for security clearance and his application to work at NASA. In the reports from these investigations, he's generally described as an excellent production engineer, personally liked by his colleagues, conscientious, honest, trustworthy and not a potential threat to national security.

[Holly Fry]

However, during an investigation in 1953, someone reported that he had been a loyal member of the NSDAP and was, quote, the type of person who would not stop at anything if it might further his ambitions. He had a reputation of being a person who, in his enthusiasm for the Nazi regime, could be dangerous to a fellow employee who did not guard his language. That person that gave that statement, whose name is redacted from the FBI file that's available on The Web later walked that statement back and said that they didn't mean to imply that Rudolph was an ardent Nazi, but that he was ambitious and would do whatever it took to achieve his goals.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So Rudolph became a U.S. citizen on November 11, 1954. His work at NASA included being one of the primary architects of the Saturn V rocket. He retired from NASA in 1969, and from there he became a consultant. He had received NASA's Distinguished Service Award, which is the agency's highest honor, as well as other awards.

[Holly Fry]

As we discussed in the previous episode, the Office of Special Investigation started an investigation into Rudolph after Eli Rosenbaum found references to him in a couple of books he picked up at a bookstore in 1980. This investigation found that officials in both the US and West Germany had described Rudolph as a war criminal. Rudolph was also questioned in 1947 as officials were preparing to try 19 people who were suspected of war crimes at the Dora Nordhausen complex. During that questioning, Rudolph said he had attended the public mass hanging that we described earlier. As operations director at Mittlewerk, he had also personally received reports about how many prisoners were available to work, how many had recently arrived, and how many had died or were too ill to work. His office was also right next to where the public hanging took place.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Rudolph maintained his innocence in all of this, but at the same time, according to transcripts of OSI interviews, he confirmed that he knew that prisoners were dying at the same time facility. There was also a clear paper trail connecting him to the use of enslaved labor and prisoner abuses at Middle Ver. He ultimately agreed to renounce his U.S. citizenship and return to Germany rather than face a trial for all of this. At the time, he was 77.

[Holly Fry]

The West German government wasn't really pleased about this, since US Officials took this step without informing them ahead of time. West German authorities started their own investigation, but by that point, the only thing that was still within the statute of limitations was murder, and there wasn't enough evidence to try Rudolph on that specific charge.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Rudolph spent most of the rest of his life trying to clear his name and to return to North America, even though he had agreed to leave. After U.S. officials denied his request to have his citizenship restored, he tried to enter Canada, but was denied there as well. During his hearing with Canadian authorities, Canadian lawyers produced a memo that he had written describing the use of slave labor at another facility in an admiring way and requesting such a setup for his own project. A Canadian court ruled that he had, quote, called for, made use of, and directed the enslaved laborers at Middleburg. Rudolph never returned to North America and He died in 1996.

[Holly Fry]

Some of the documentation and statements related to Arthur Rudolph's work in Nazi Germany came to light as part of an investigation into one of his and von Braun's colleagues, Georg Riche, Director General at Mittlewerk. Rich Hai's background was a lot like Rudolph's. He had joined the Nazi party in 1931 and went to work for the Reich Ministry for Armament and Munitions.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Rickey had become an expert in underground construction. He helped Design the underground V2 factory at Middlewark and Hitler's underground bunker as well as other facilities. To be very clear though, that underground Middlewark facility had virtually no ventilation and no plumbing. People used oil barrels as toilets and for most of the facility's operation the prisoners were sleeping on the ground. So we're not saying that this design was good or humane, but underground construction like this had become his specialty.

[Holly Fry]

He specialized in being horrible. While Rudolph had been aware of how much forced labor was available for use at the facility and had received reports on how many people had died, Rick High was the person who directly oversaw that labor. He coordinated with the SS to essentially rent people from camps at Middlewark. The rate the SS charged was 2 to 3 Reichsmarks per person per day.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But as was the case with von Braun and Rudolph, Rickey's work on the V2 program made him an attractive candidate for Operation Paperclip even though by his party membership status alone he fit the definition of an ardent Nazi. Like. Like Rudolph, he had joined the party way before Hitler had come to power. He arrived in the U. S in 1945 though and started working for the U S Strategic Bombing Survey and the U S. Army Air Forces.

[Holly Fry]

However, in the summer of 1946, Rick Hai and paperclipper Albert Patton started a black market operation at Wright field where about 140 of the 200 plus paper clippers in the US were then working. Aircraft engineer Hermann Nelson seems to have gotten into a personal dispute with them. One night when Rickey and Patton were playing a late night poker game in their housing facility which was known as Hilltop, Nelson got frustrated with their noisiness and told them to keep it down. Patton and Rick High refused and Rick High made an offensive joke that alluded to Nazi atrocities against Jewish people.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In response, Nelson filed a complaint with Colonel Donald L. Putt saying that Patton was an ardent Nazi and an essay member and that Rickeye had orchestrated the mass hanging at Middle Verk that was meant to deter sabotage. Putt doesn't seem to have taken any action on this. But Nelson also vented his frustrations in a letter to a friend in New York. And that caught the eye of the censors who were reading the paper clippers mail.

[Holly Fry]

This sparked an investigation during which it became clear that many paperclippers were willing to cover up one another's involvement in Nazi activities and war crimes. At around the same time, investigators in Germany found Rick Hai's name on an employee contact list at Middlewark. An investigator in Germany also spotted Rick Hai's name in an article about his application for US Citizenship.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So all of this came together and Rick Eye was indicted and returned to Germany to stand trial at the U. S led war crimes trials that were held at the site of the Dachau concentration camp. These were separate from the international trials that were held at Nuremberg. When Rickey was indicted, he had just signed a new five year contract to work with the army.

[Holly Fry]

Rick High became one of 19 defendants in the Dora Nordhausen trial that was held at dachau. Of those 19, Rick Hai was the only one who had worked at the Middlewark facility rather than at the concentration camps themselves. But the evidence that was presented at his trial was contradictory. Although some witnesses connected him to war crimes at the facility, there were other researchers, including Wernher von Braun, who submitted affidavits in his defense. There wasn't clear written documentation to connect Rick Hai to war crimes carried out at the facility. Rick High was one of four people who were acquitted and the army then classified the records from the trial.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We will talk about one more paper clipper after another quick sponsor break.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Work can be a little weird. One minute you're in a meeting that could have been an email, the next you're trying to decode corporate jargon that somehow means nothing. And don't even get me started. Quick sync that turns into a 45 minute deep dive. I know I have had these and many more frustrations. The truth is, figuring out your career isn't always straightforward. Whether you're trying to grow, pivot, or just stay relevant, it can feel like you're navigating it all on your own. That's where LinkedIn comes in. LinkedIn can help you grow your career, helping you confidently navigate your path with insights, ideas and inspiration from your professional community. You can stay up to date with the latest trends in your field, connect with people who get it, and discover opportunities tailored to your goals, your experience, and what actually matters to you. Whether you're looking for something new or just trying to grow where you are, LinkedIn gives you the tools and connections to move forward with confidence. Because LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Visit LinkedIn.com class to learn more.

[Martine Hackett]

Unlike the people we normally talk about on the show, we are living in a time when Internet connectivity is a standard part of life for most people, and there is literally no way we could research and prepare our podcast without the Internet. If connectivity goes down for me, it can be really hard to make up that lost time. And for businesses, Internet connectivity is even more of a necessity. Spectrum Business keeps businesses of all sizes connected seamlessly with fast and reliable Internet, advanced Wi, Fi, phone, TV and mobile services. Spectrum business offers 100% US based customer support and they do it 24 7. That means you can always stay up and running no matter what hours your business keeps. Spectrum Business also will tailor connectivity solutions just for you. They will put a package together that is built for your business budget. Millions of business owners rely on Spectrum Business to keep them connected. So visit spectrum.combusiness to learn more. Restrictions apply.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

So far, everyone we've talked about in this episode was connected to the Middlewark Weapons factory. They had kind of interconnected careers with one another in Germany, and while there were a lot of rocket scientists and engineers from that facility who became part of Operation Paperclip, there were also specialists from lots and lots of other fields, including medicine, chemistry, chemical and biological warfare, aircraft design, architecture, and electronics. So we're going to end this episode with one of those.

[Holly Fry]

Huberta Strughold has been nicknamed the father of space medicine. He actually coined the terms space medicine and astrobiology after World War II struggle started out working for the US in Germany, and then he moved to Texas as part of Operation Paperclip. He became a US citizen in 1956

[Tracy V. Wilson]

after joining NASA, Strughold developed a space cabin simulator as well as the spacesuits that the first astronauts wore. He was the first professor of space medicine at the world's first department of space medicine, which was established at the Air Force School of Aviation Medicine. Strughold was a true trailblazer in his field. And for a time there were also a lot of awards and honors and buildings and things like that named after him because of his just truly enormous contributions to this in terms of his

[Holly Fry]

work in Nazi Germany. For 10 of the 12 years that Hitler was in power. He was the director of the Aviation Medical Research Institute for the Reich Air Ministry. This was one of several research institutes in Germany that were working at the intersection of medicine and flight. After the start of World War II, these institutes became part of the Luftwaffe. And at that point Strughold became an officer.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Struggled was one of the very few Paperclippers who never joined the Nazi Party. And there is some evidence that he was anti Nazi or politically neutral. However, by the end of the war he was also on the Central registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects, or the Crocus List. We mentioned that list in the previous episode. This was a giant compilation of suspected war criminals. It was a multi volume list containing the names of about 60,000 people. Some were known to have committed war crimes, some were suspected, some weren't really suspected. They were wanted for questioning or as witnesses. And as we discussed last time, this list could be all over the place in terms of whose name was on it and how that name got there and how much substantiation there was for whatever had led them to be included.

[Holly Fry]

While Strughold was director of the Aviation Medical Research Institute, Luftwaffe doctors and members of the SS were carrying out experiments on human beings. And some of these experiments were related to Strughold's field of work. Many German pilots who had been shot down over the English Channel during the Battle of Britain in 1940 had survived the initial crash but died of hypothermia before they could be pulled from the water. So the Luftwaffe wanted to figure out the body's limits and whether it was possible to resuscitate people who had died of exposure to cold. They did this by plunging both animals and people into icy water until they died and then trying to revive them.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Other experiments that Luftwaffe doctors conducted on human subjects included using hypoxia chambers to simulate exposure to extreme altitude and forcing people to ingest seawater. Most of these experiments were carried out at the Dachau concentration camp. Some of them were fatal experiments also, and many of the people who had carried these experiments out had either been killed or died by suicide by the end of the war. But a lot of those who were still living ultimately faced trial at Nuremberg, struggled, actually submitted affidavits in some of these trials, and his name came up in questioning at various points, but he was not put on trial himself.

[Holly Fry]

Struggle definitely knew about at least some of this research, particularly the freezing experiments. He attended a conference in 1942 where the researchers talked about their results and he commented on their work after that presentation. When asked about it later, he stressed that the experiments had been done on criminals, but also said that he generally didn't approve of work that was conducted on non consenting human subjects. He said he didn't allow such experiments at the institute, although by that point the institute was part of the Luftwaffe and the Luftwaffe was carrying out such experiments.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

However, there are a lot of unanswered questions about exactly how much Strughold knew about this research, when he knew about it, whether it was in his power to stop it, and whether he helped cover up its existence or the involvement of his colleagues. In some early interrogations. He and other researchers generally pinned all these human experiments on Dr. Sigmund Rascher, who had been involved in the hypoxia and hypothermia experiments. Rascher and his wife had both been executed by order of heinrich Himmler in 1945. Struggle described Rascher as, quote, fringe. And he and others described these experiments sort of as the work of one deranged, clearly unethical man.

[Holly Fry]

But it became clear that Rascher didn't do this work alone and that many other Luftwaffe doctors had been directly involved. Many of the experiments had been approved by Heinrich Himmler or by high ranking Luftwaffe officers, and they had been supervised by Luftwaffe doctors and by people who worked at other German research institutes, including the Institute for Aviation Medicine in Munich. Some of the people who ran these experiments had also been close working colleagues with Huberta Strughold, including co authoring papers with him.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But at the same time that's pretty circumstantial enough. People connected to Strughold knew about or were directly involved in these experiments that it. It seems like he should have known the details of what was going on beyond just hearing other researchers talk about it at that one Conference in 1942. But we don't know Whether he actually did, or whether he took any action based on that knowledge.

[Holly Fry]

Struggled was investigated in connection to this several times. The first was under Operation Paperclip, but at this point it's obviously hard to trust that the reports created for Operation Paperclip were thorough or complete. The second was in 1958 after a magazine article alleged that Strughold had done research on human subjects. That investigation was dropped after the Air Force released a statement that he had already been investigated.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1973, the INS opened an investigation into 35 suspected war criminals and Strughold was one of them. But the INS eventually closed that case due to a lack of evidence after this struggle maintained that he had already been cleared of all suspicion before entering the United states. Then the OSI opened another investigation in 1983, but Strughold died in 1986. So at that point that investigation was closed.

[Holly Fry]

One experiment that Strughold was more clearly connected to involved exposing children with epilepsy to simulated high altitudes to see if it was possible to induce seizures in susceptible people. That experiment took place in 1943 at the Institute that Strughold was running. It doesn't seem like any of the children were seriously harmed, but the experiment also didn't conform to the institute's ethical guidelines. This came to Light in 1993.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So years after Strughold's death, regardless of what his true level of involvement was in Nazi experiments onto human beings, these allegations and the investigations really affected Strughold's reputation. Most of the honors and awards that used to be named after him have since been renamed or retired. Portraits of him at academic and medical institutions have mostly been removed or covered up. Even though his influence on space medicine was really comparable to Wernher von Braun's influence on SpaceX exploration, the amount of public information and laudatory write ups on the two men just do not compare. You can go look for stuff on Vernor von Brown, read about it all day. It's a lot harder to find information on Hubert's Strug hold. He still has his staunch defenders though, who point out that there's just no solid evidence directly connecting him to some of these experiments. They point out various flaws and people who have tried to make those connections, some of which have like conflated two different German research institutes into one thing when they really weren't.

[Holly Fry]

So that is where we're going to wrap up today. But to be clear, this episode is of course not remotely comprehensive. As we noted at the top, There were about 1600 specialists brought into the US under Operation Paperclip. Annie Jacobson's book Operation Paperclip, which was one of the sources for these two episodes, focuses on just 21 of them. So even though that is much more comprehensive, it's still just a tiny portion of the total. And like this episode, it's not really focused on researchers who may have really fit the descriptions that Operation Paperclip was using to describe the specialists it was recruiting. I I Every time we look at these and really any, you know, Post World War II discussions of, of the people who had been part of that conflict and involved with things like this, I'm always surprised when I have those of like, huh, that person was still alive the year I got married. Like, I yeah, it places it so deeply in my own lifetime that I I have to remind myself that, like, this was not as long ago as we think of often.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Right, Right.

[Martine Hackett]

Well.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And then in addition to that, one of the things that, like, just kept continually striking me as I was working on this and the earlier episodes is that after World War II, there was this whole effort to just denazify Germany and to remove Nazis from positions of power and to try to place people into positions of power who didn't have Nazi sympathies or connections to the Nazi party. But then there was this whole effort in the United States that was like, well, we'll take them though and give them US Citizenship. Which is a little weird considering the work that the United States was doing in Germany. We also said in the previous episode that the United States was not the only person that was exploiting the the knowledge and talents of all these German specialists. But for the most part, other countries were doing that on a more short term basis, often actually in Germany, not bringing people into their own countries and then allowing them to become citizens. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note or email address is history [e-mail] and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Martine Hackett]

Living with a rare autoimmune condition brings uncertainty, but it can also create community. In season six of Untold Life with a severe autoimmune condition, they go beyond MG and cidp as host Martine Hackett welcomes stories from other conditions like myositis and IgAN into the conversation. Untold Stories is produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenics. Listen to Untold Life with a Severe Autoimmune condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Holly Fry]

I bid you peace.

[Martine Hackett]

The Rise and Fall of the Frugal Gourmet is an independent documentary available at ibidyoupeace.com history use code history for 20% off I don't know if you remember the Frugal gourmet from the 80s and 90s on PBS, but it was very popular at my house. Imagine my surprise to discover that there is a very complicated history underneath all of that pleasantness. Watch it as a documentary, feature film or go deep with the full five episode series exclusively direct from the filmmaker at ibidyou peace.com history code history for

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We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ionic 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamar.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Want the full story? Take a listen.

[Karen and Georgia]

She starts dating Howard Hughes and in fact she helps him design a faster plane. So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane and that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking innovators like Hedy and Lamarr and Billie Jean King.

[Jenny Garth]

Presented by the Hyundai Ioniq 5.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Goodbye.

[George Severis]

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You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast, available on June 1st on the iHeartRadio app. And everywhere podcasts are heard.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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