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Wednesday, October 15, 2008
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Monday, March 10, 2008
Friday, February 08, 2008
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Moving On
I have recently decided that I am completely changing my blogging approach. The Archiver started as an opportunity for my to blog about whatever I wanted with no general focus. This will the last post at this sit as I move on to my new premises at the Historians Corner. My new blog will focus exclusively on posts on historical topics. Some will be posts crafted specifically because I wish to share something on a specific topic while others will be projects that I did for school. Thank you to everyone who has ever come to visit the Archiver and i hope you make it to my new home on the web.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Operation Alsos and American Technological Intelligence During World War II - Bibliography
Bibliography
Primary Sources:
Alphabetical Index of Subj. Adm. Publication, War Department HQ. Army Airforce March 15, 1943 thru, Alsos Mission European Theater of Operations – Undated; Intelligence Reference Publications (“P” File) 1940-45; War Department General and Special Staff, Record Group 165; National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
Alsos Mission Reports and Correspondence Relating to the Progress of German Scientists in Connection with Nuclear Physics, 1944-45; Office of the Director of Intelligence G-2, Subordinate Offices Foreign Liaison Branch; Records of the War Departments General and Special Staff, Record Group 165; National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
Frank, Charles. Operation Epsilon: The Farm Hall Transcripts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Nuremberg Trials Project: A Digital Document Collection Harvard Law School, July 2003 [cited 12/13/2007 2007]. Available from http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/php/docs_swi.php?DI=1&text=overview.
Samuel A. Goudsmit Papers; National Archives Gift Collection, Record Group 200; National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
Personal Accounts:
Goudsmit, Samuel Abraham. Alsos, History of Modern Physics, 1800-1950 ;. Los Angeles, CA: Tomash Publishers, 1983.
Pash, Boris T. The Alsos Mission. New York,: Award House, 1969.
Secondary Sources
Bernstein, Jeremy. Hitler's Uranium Club : The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall. Woodbury, N.Y.: AIP Press, 1996.
Beyerchen, Alan. "German Scientists and Research Institutions in Allied Occupation Policy." History of Education Quarterly 22, no. 3 (1982): 289-99.
Boyne, Walter J. The Messerschmitt Me 262 : Arrow to the Future. Washington, D.C.: Published for the National Air and Space Museum by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980.
Christensen, Charles R. A History of Technical Intelligence in the Air Force, 1917-1947: Operation Lusty. Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2002.
Cooksley, Peter G. Flying Bomb : The Story of Hitler's V-Weapons in World War Ii. New York: Scribner, 1979.
Davis, Watson. "Biological Warfare." The Science News-Letter 49, no. 2 (1946): 19-20.
Duhem, Pierre Maurice Marie. German Science : Some Reflections on German Science : German Science and German Virtues. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1991.
Ethell, Jeffrey L., and Alfred Price. The German Jets in Combat. London: Jane's Publishing Company, 1979.
Garli*nski, Józef. Hitler's Last Weapons : The Underground War against the V1 and V2. London: J. Friedmann, 1978.
Gimbel, John. Science, Technology, and Reparations : Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990.
Great Britain. Air Ministry. The Rise and Fall of the German Air Force, 1933-1945 : With a New Introduction. 1st U.S. ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983.
Guillemin, Jeanne. Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-Sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Hunt, Linda. Secret Agenda : The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990. 1st ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991.
Johnson, David. V-1, V-2 : Hitler's Vengeance on London. New York: Stein and Day, 1982.
Kennedy, Gregory P. Vengeance Weapon 2: The V-2 Guided Missile. Washington, D.C.: Published for the National Air and Space Museum by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983.
Longmate, Norman. Hitler's Rockets : The Story of the V-2s. London: Hutchinson, 1985.
Moon, John Ellis Van Courtland. "Chemical Weapons and Deterrence: The World War II Experience." International Security 8, no. 4 (1984): 3-35.
"Nazi Try at Germ Warfare." The Science News-Letter 51, no. 10 (1947).
Neufeld, Michael J. "The Guided Missile and the Third Reich: Peenemunde and Forging of a Technological Revolution." In Science, Technology and National Socialism, edited by Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker, 51-71. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Overy, R. J. "Hitler and Air Stragegy." Journal of Contemporary History 15, no. 3 (1980): 405-21.
———. "The German Pre-Production Plans: November 1936-April 1939." The English Historical Review 90, no. 357 (1975): 778-97.
Renneberg, Monika, and Mark Walker. Science, Technology, and National Socialism. Cambridge [England] ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Spielvogel, Jackson J. Hitler and Nazi Germany : A History. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.
Stackelberg, Roderick, and Sally Anne Winkle. The Nazi Germany Sourcebook : An Anthology of Texts. London ; New York: Routledge, 2002.
Trischler, Helmuth. "Self-Mobilization or Resistance? Aeronautical Research and National Socialism." In Science, Technology and National Socialism, edited by Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker, 72-87. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Walker, Mark. German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939-1949. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Operation Alsos and American Technological Intelligence During World War II Part 4
Guided Missiles
Of all the technological advancements associated with Nazi Germany, guided missile research is one of the greatest. Technically, guided missiles comes under aeronautical research, but the program in Germany grew to be so large and so significant that it was made its own separate category for Alsos to investigate. Through the end of World War II Germany managed to maintain complete supremacy in this field, which led to intensive competition between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union over the capture and exploitation of Germany’s guided missile assets.The origins of this achievement can be traced back to 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles. According to the settlement Germany was limited in many ways and forbidden to develop certain technologies. At no point in the treaty though, was there anything pertaining to the development of rockets. Because of this, rocket research in Germany continued after World War I in the private sector. In 1929 the Reichswehr began to investigate the possibility of using this new techno-fad as a weapon. Initially the Army considered using these weapons as artillery for chemical warfare.
Over time both the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe worked independently on their own weapons programs. The Luftwaffe began work on a pulse-jet powered unmanned aircraft they deemed the Fi 103. The army in turn eventually developed a series of rockets that culminated in the A4. Latter these would become better known by their popular designations of V-1 (Fi 103) and V-2 (A4). Each of these had their own advantages and disadvantages. The V-1 was simple and relatively inexpensive to produce and could run on regular low-grade fuel oil. Its disadvantage was that it required large fixed ramps to launch and flew at a slower speed in a straight line, making it possible to shoot it down. In contrast the V-2 required special fuel and was much more expensive to produce. Where the V-2 excelled was in its ability to launch from mobile field sites and travel at supersonic speeds to strike without warning, immune to all known countermeasures.
On June 13, 1944, the first attack on Great Britain by the V-1 occurred, which was followed shortly by the first V-2 attack on September 8. With these attacks Hitler began to use Germany’s technical superiority in guided missiles to launch a vengeance campaign to punish the British public. In the end this accomplished little in military terms and only managed to kill civilians. A perfect example of this occurred in November of 1944 when a V-2 hit a Woolworth’s Department Store crowded with Christmas shoppers, killing 168 people. Statistics for the weapons show that the V-1 killed an average of 2.2 people per bomb while the V-2 killed 5.3 people per bomb. By this time in the war Britain was completely out of danger from invasion or traditional bombing but these vengeance weapons were a frightful and continual reminder that Germany could still reach out hurt the already war-weary citizenship.
Due to the high profile that Germany’s missiles had to the world, several intelligence agencies were pursuing information on them. Alsos was limited to surveying the research facilities used for development in the program. This included looking for and evaluating all information related to wind tunnels, proving grounds, control systems and laboratories for fuel research. By October of 1945 Alsos had submitted over twenty technical reports related to guided missile research and development which represented a wealth of captured information. Included in this information were five extensive reports on the “Facilities in Germany for Development of Guided Missiles”.
Rocket booty-collecting was rampant and was seen quite clearly by the way that the Americans not only took information and material but actually immigrated 100 top German scientists back to the United States. The Soviet Union was little different, and when they took position of the main production facility at Peenemunde they stripped it bare, sending everything back to the Soviet Union where they began to build and launch their own V-2 rockets.
By 1945, Germany was technologically ahead of the Allies in every way possible in rocket research. Rocket design, fuel, construction techniques, and guidance systems were all areas that the scientists in American were by no means close to duplicating. Alsos for its part was able supply information on these areas giving details on not only research but also on tests and production issues. The work of Alsos became very important in the post-war period when that information was used to help the work of American scientists as well as the German specialists who had joined the U.S. program.
Conclusion:
With the increased preoccupation on nuclear technologies and weapons since the end of World War II, it is not surprising that most historical attention directed at Alsos would be directed toward this field. This focus is undoubtedly reinforced by the two books written by leaders of the Alsos team which state that the uranium bomb was the real reason for the mission. Both Pash and Goudsmit then ignore the team’s other accomplishments. In hindsight though, what was really accomplished by the bomb discoveries? Effectively what Alsos found was that German atomic research was behind and would play no part in the war whatsoever. During the post-war period nothing discovered by the team contributed to nuclear science. While most accounts are exclusively preoccupied by the atomic question, the efforts by the Alsos team in this field contributed nothing but peace of mind to the Allied war effort.
Alsos’s, enduring legacy after 1945 was in its aid to United States scientific research efforts. This legacy comes not from the popular “uranium problem” but from Alsos’s little-known work in other scientific fields. This is especially seen in the examples of its findings on biological weapons, aeronautics, and guided missiles. In all three fields American science and industry was able to learn from and in some ways advance by German knowledge and research. Each of those three areas were fields that would soon become exceedingly important in the coming Cold War. When one looks back they can clearly see how much Alsos learned from the Germans in these areas and how it essentially discovered absolutely nothing that advanced atomic research. In light of this realization, it is time researchers reevaluate the historical record on Alsos, and give credit to the portions of the mission that truly accomplished great things for the United States.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Operation Alsos and American Technological Intelligence During World War II Part 3
Aeronautical Research
It is ironic that airpower played such a large and key role in World War II when one considers how the concept of a national air force was less then 50 years old. Germany jumped to the lead in realizing the importance of an air arm for the military and demonstrated this very clearly in their support of aeronautical research from the moment Hitler took power. It was inevitable then that work done in this field by the Nazis would be of significant interest to the Alsos mission. In its efforts in this field, Alsos searched for, found, interrogated and examined massive amounts of men and material related to aeronautical research. The results of this were of enormous benefit to U.S. scientific research efforts in the same field. By the war’s end U.S. researchers knew exactly what projects and problems the Germans had been working on, what had worked, what had not worked, and most importantly what they had learned.Germany’s road to usefulness had been a long one indeed. Twenty years earlier on one would have ever expected the dread the Luftwaffe would bring in the early 1940s. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles had left Germany stripped of her air force and had forbidden the construction of another. As humiliating as this was to the nation and its pilots, it was even more devastating for the teams of aeronautical engineers who would be needed if the German military was ever to take to the skies again.
Aeronautical research and development began to develop respect and support as an official institutional science starting at the beginning of the twentieth century. In Germany this corresponded with the creation of three important research organizations:
1. Experimental Model Institute of the Society for the Study of Motor Airships (1907)
2. German Experimental Centre for Aviation (1912)
3. Scientific Society for Aviation (1912)
Interest and more importantly funding for these institutions and the research they represented was favorably endorsed and supported through the end of World War I.
When Germany lost the war and was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles they were forced to surrender all aeronautical material to the Allied governments, and was forbidden to build or import military aircraft of any kind. This proved to be not only highly unpopular but also caused industry to stop supporting research. Science in this field managed to limp along through government support until economic depression in 1928 caused the civil government to cut all funding. When Adolf Hitler took power in 1933 government support and funding suddenly returned; scientists who once could get no support found that no request for funds was too high. Tens of millions of Reichsmarks soon began to flow into research and development for aeronautical programs. By the time war started in 1939, German scientists were on the cutting edge of aeronautical research and unsurprisingly became one of the major targets for Alsos.
The field of aeronautics is one that was far too vast for Alsos to have been able to cover alone. Fortunately there were many other intelligence organizations that were also interested and Alsos was able to share the responsibilities in this. As a result most of the work and research done by the team was in the areas of airplane frames and airplane engines.
Hitler himself defined the importance of technology to National Socialism when he said, “Decisive for the winning of any war remains, however, that one is always in possession of the “technically superior weapons’”. This techno-doctrine became even more important when the war began to go badly for Germany and the only hope of defeating the vastly superior enemy was with a clear and distinct edge over them in weapons. When it came to the field of aeronautics the effects of this doctrine were displayed quite obviously in Germany’s jet aircraft. In the early 30s German aircraft engineers realized they were quickly approaching the absolute limits of speed for propeller-driven craft. The result of this realization was design programs by all the major aircraft engine designers. By 1944 Germany was beginning to deploy the infamous Messerschmitt 262, and plans were begun to equip most of the bomber force with Arado Ar 234s, the first jet bomber. Germany had arrived at this achievement first; and while it was too late to truly benefit from that victory, they maintained this lead in Jet engine and airframe design even into the beginning of the post-war period.
German aircraft designers did not place all their eggs in one basket, however, and work continued on several different projects. One such program was the “People’s Fighter.” In the latter part of the war German engineers worked tirelessly to develop a small, easy-to-pilot, and cheap fighter. The concept was that these small craft would be cheap enough to produce in mass and that adolescent boys could be taught how to fly them. In this way it was surmised that the Luftwaffe would be able to afford to send up large formations against Allied bomber fleets. These projects and others were continued with inadequate material and equipment right up to the end of the war.
From March 1945 on, Operation Alsos found that it was in far more danger of drowning in the overflowing sea of aeronautical research then of running dry. Between March and July, Alsos visited and wrote reports on twenty-two different facilities related to this type of research. Dr. Goudsmit in his report stated that “German aeronautical research was on such a large scale and so extensive that it was impossible to restrict the investigation to a few important targets only.” Alsos was the first to go through the important research facilities at Gottingen, Braunschweig, and Kochel. In addition to this Alsos also bore the responsibility for interrogating important aeronautical research scientists. By September of 1945, just a few months after Germany’s surrender, Alsos had already provided the Allies with a very detailed picture as to what the Germans had been pursuing in aeronautics. Not only did it provide detailed information on specific research related to jet propulsion, wing theory, and weapons; but it also provided information on the entire organization of German Aeronautical research.
The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics expressed its appreciation for the work Alsos had done when they wrote on June 29, 1945:
The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics wishes to express its appreciation for the valuable assistance rendered it by the Scientific Intelligence (Alsos) Mission… It is a pleasure to indicate the benefit that has accrued to this Committee in the prosecution of its research program for the Army and Naval Arms, through participation in the Alsos Mission, and to convey to you the compliments of the Committee on the effective operation of your Mission.
According to the letter Alsos was instrumental in giving the committee a clear understanding on German research, its accomplishments, its equipment, and even its future. On the subject of aeronautics the mission was a stunning success, accomplishing its goals quickly and allowing both researchers and industry in the United States to benefit and learn from the complete experience of their German counterparts.
... to be continued
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