How Britain put Nazis' top men to work

How Britain put Nazis' top men to work

www.telegraph.co.uk

An elite British Army unit captured hundreds of Germans in possession of Nazi scientific and technical know-how and transported them across the Channel to work in government ministries and private companies.

Others were forced to travel to Britain, where they were interviewed by commercial rivals and detained if they did not reveal trade secrets.

The unit, known as T-Force, was lightly armed and highly mobile.

(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 30-8-2007 by UM_Gazz]

It is amazing that there were enough Nazis to go around between this an Operation Paperclip.

I'm guessing the unit involved was attached to the Queen's Own Fourth Hussar under Major Ramsey (but I'd have to check that) they were active in Europe longer than any other unit I believe and got up to some pretty naughty stuff by Geneva standards in the immediate post-war period.

Should make for interesting reading...the documents that have been released in the past few years have been history changing and it is only the tip of the ice-berg.


www.telegraph.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

mod edit, fixed link

[edit on 3-9-2007 by DontTreadOnMe]

www.guardian.co.uk...

A more detailed article from the Guardian, who evidently found the documents concerned.

According to the documents found, T-Force were initially involved in collecting documents before they could be destroyed by the advancing Soviets or the retreating Nazis but that is only part of the story. While all the Aliies saw the need to capture any important intelligence we Brits also had a few things that we didn't want out Allies to know. The British were very keen to get hold of any documentation before either the Soviets or the US so that it could be checked and, if necessary weeded.

The US were particularly good at recording everything that passed through their hands and it is through this that we know that a number of documents captured by the US when passed to the British disappeared never to be seen again.

www.guardian.co.uk...

I think its great - the USA put a man on the moon after Project Paperclip and we got ??? Oh Beagle - the dog that didnt bark

reply to post by Silk




There is mention in the article of an elderly perfumier being threatened to the point of collapse for the recipe for her best selling brand by Max Factor I think. ICI too got involved so we also gained a fine range of paint products and other miscellaneous pollutants. Post-war is certainly the fuzzy-end of our lolly-pop.

I think even without these documents being released it was logical to assume that the UK had a similar interest to the US/Soviet Union in captured Nazi scientific know-how. The fact that British troops captured German personnel and documentation before the Americans/Soviets isn't a great surprise. I suppose it might be more of a surprise regarding trying to beat the US to these people/documents, but when it turned out that the US wasn't going to play ball over the Manhattan Project (despite considerable British know-how and equipment being used) then it was perhaps essential in the government's eyes that Britain got hold of this kind of stuff for its own use... the pieces of the Cold War were moving into place, and Britain didn't want to lose its status as a great power.

Originally posted by Ste2652
I think even without these documents being released it was logical to assume that the UK had a similar interest to the US/Soviet Union in captured Nazi scientific know-how.

Certainly, but it should be noted that the British 'forced' the Germans to work for us - there were no incentives offered, in fact very little choice at all.

The personnel that we chose were also forced to co-operate with commercial concerns and did not just go to work on Government projects. This is very interesting. Especially when you add to the equation that some companies like IG Farben had negotiated "neutrality" from British Bombings and that at the beginning of the war with Germany we had accepted private funding to expand our intelligence services.

Most prominent of these was Chester Beatty, an American entreprenuer, who in exchange for "technical assistance" to help him protect his interests in a Serbian mineral mine, 'donated' the monies to set up a new branch of SIS - Section D. The mine, Trepca, it was later discovered was providing minerals for the manufacture of weapons, their sole customer was Germany.

It seems feasible to me that the appropriation of the German industrial and scientific community had more to do with our economic recovery and development than it had to do with our preparation for the Cold War. I definately believe that our motivations were quite different to those of the US, who were ostensibly building a body to fight Communism.

We fell out over the Manhattan Project but this was a six of one and half a dozen of the other situation. At the beginning the US were trying to maintain some semblance of neutrality and were pretty much taking their time, while we were desperate for results. This created more than a few tensions that would manifest later. Although in private business the US were pro-Nazi this did not extend to the Adminstration who were on the whole anglo-phile and perfectly willing to support Churchill.

Britain spent most of the war keeping secrets from the US, for reasons we may never know, but partially due to the pro-nazi stance of some US industrialists. It was essential to Churchill and in his mind, Britain that the US join the war. He therefore attempted to prevent the US from knowing of the peace overtures repeatedly made by the Nazis as he was concerned that the US would see these offers as favourable. Which, in theory, they were.

A considerable amount of time and man-power was spent mopping up any documentation that related to these talks. We also arrested a number of prominent Nazis and had them immediately transported to Kensington Cells for interrogation, thus ensuring that the US/Soviets could not get to them if indeed they knew anything. Others who we knew could incriminate us, like Himmler, were 'disposed' of as soon as they fell into our hands.

All this has come out in the last decade, and it is really only the tip of the iceberg. If you take the Hess files for example, not only were 70% of all records destroyed in a 'fire', but some files remain classified until 2014, 2017 and 2020. I suspect that those dates may actually be extended further as the information contained may still be considered too volatile to be made public.