Project Paperclip - Air Force Magazine

On September 20, 1945, German rocket engineers, including Werner von Braun, arrived in the United States. An excerpt from the article:

"The pressing need to secure the cream of enemy assets was obvious, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on July 20, 1945 codified many different intelligence efforts into Project Overcast.

This provided the initial guidelines for seizing, holding, using, and returning enemy nationals. After the surrender of Japan, however, protests broke out over the use of former enemy personnel for national military purposes. This forced a name change, and, in March 1946, the effort to gather top-secret Nazi technology became known as Project Paperclip.

The term “Paperclip” stemmed from the fact that dossiers of the most highly valued scientists were flagged with paperclips.

The initial driving factors behind Overcast-Paperclip were complex. The armed services wanted to use German capabilities in the war against Japan. The State Department’s primary concern was preventing a resurgence of German might, as had occurred after World War I. Underlying this was a pervasive desire to exploit the intellectual capital of the former enemy for the future.

The program was controversial; nearly all the sought-after scientists and engineers had connections to the Nazi party, the German war effort, or even, in some instances, to war crimes. Despite a universal reluctance to deal with anyone connected to the Nazi regime, necessity forced the military authorities to skirt the rules prohibiting their use."