Science, Technology, and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany

297 Pages·1990·35.14 MB·English

by  John Gimbel

Science, Technology, and
Reparations
EXPLOITATION AND PLUNDER
IN POSTWAR GERMANY
John Gimbel
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
1990
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 1990 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States of America
CIP data appear at the end of the book
Contents
Preface vii
Part I: From Wartime Military Intelligence to
Postwar Commercial Exploitation
ONE Wartime Scientific and Technical Intelligence 3
TWO From Wartime Intelligence to Postwar
Exploitation 21
Part II: The Postwar Programs
THREE Project Paperclip 37
FOUR The Documents Program 60
FIVE Consultants and Missions 75
SIX Transferring the Technical Know-How 94
Part III: Terminating FIAT and Evaluating the Take
SEVEN Governors Versus Exploiters 115
EIGHT Evaluating the Take 134
NINE The Germans Assess Their Losses 153
Part IV: Conclusion
TEN Observations and Reflections
Appendix
Notes
Bibliographical Notes
Index

Preface
IN Do 1 NG TH E research for this book I discovered that most
reasonably informed people know something about Werner van
Braun and the team of German rocket scientists and engineers
whom the Americans brought to the United States under Project
Paperclip after the Second World War. Most of them also know
about the race for German scientists that occurred at the time, a
competition that perhaps explains the widespread currency of a
quip, following the successful Russian launch of Sputnik in Oc
tober 1957, that their Germans were better than our Germans.
What virtually no one seems to know, however, is that Project
Paperclip was but one aspect of a much more comprehensive and
systematic "intellectual reparations" program to exploit German
scientific and technical know-how, not only for military pur
poses but also for the benefit of American science and industry.
That broader program, and the way in which Project Paperclip
dovetailed into it, is the subject of this book.
I am myself unsure when I became aware of the broader pro
gram, but I do know that it did not happen during my immediate
postwar service as translator and interpreter for the military gov
ernment detachment in Friedberg, Hessen. Neither did it occur
during my research in the 195o's on the impact of the American
occupation on the town and county of Marburg. Gradually, but
only gradually, during the 196o's and 197o's-when I continued
my research on the American occupation of Germany and on
the German problem and the origins of the Marshall Plan-did I
come to realize that there was a story here, and that it was worth
telling. Perhaps my nagging curiosity about the basis of Russian
and East German charges that the Western Allies had taken bil
lions of dollars in reparations influenced me, even though I was
viii Preface
initially inclined to accept-without much thought-the official
American line that the amounts mentioned were simply "fantas
tic," that the charges were designed to distract attention from the
Soviet Union's own extensive reparations removals and could
therefore be dismissed as little more than propaganda. In any
event, documents and other materials referring to the existence
and work of the Field Information Agency, Technical (FIAT),
that I discovered occasionally in both the American and German
records I was privileged to use in the 196o's and 197o's inspired
me to investigate the story in detail.
Four such discoveries stand out in my mind as having been
particularly compelling. First, there were two similar messages
from General Lucius D. Clay, the American Military Governor
in Germany, to the War Department in Washington. In them
Clay said that the United States, through FIAT, was taking all
the information it could "with respect to trade processes and ad
vanced scientific thought," that "we are taking the thought of
German scientists and fashioning it to our own purpose," and
that once the war with Japan had ended, the United States en
tered "squarely into the commercial field." In so doing, Clay
concluded, "we are perhaps doing the same thing that Russia is
doing in taking current production . . . and that France is doing
in removing capital equipment from Germany." 1
Second, there were two letters from Edward M. Groth, the
American Consul General in Hamburg, to the Secretary of State.
In them Groth reported on a speech and a newspaper article by
a Socialist member of the Hamburg city council (Biirgerschaft),
in which the latter talked about "creeping reparations" of great
value that were being removed from Germany by private indus
trialists and capitalists from abroad. They come to Germany, he
reportedly said, in order to rifle secret files of their competi
tors and take them back to their own countries to enhance their
own economic progress at the expense of their German competi
tors. "The foreign capitalist," Groth quoted the council member
as having written in the Hamburger Echo, the Social Democratic
party's newspaper in the city, receives his German competitors'
"secrets and enriches himself by them, but he does not reim
burse his country . . . with the result that the foreign taxpayer
is the primary sufferer who in the guise of occupational costs is
actually subsidizing his own capitalist." 2
Preface ix
Third, there was the so-called "Harmssen Report," a study on
reparations removals from Germany, prepared by Senator Gus
tav W. Harmssen, the Economics Minister of Bremen. In it he
estimated the total value of the patents, industrial secrets, and
similar assets removed from Germany by the occupation forces
to be about $5 billion.3
Finally, there were the circumstances and the many unan
swered questions surrounding the decision by the two bizonal
Military Governors-clearly made on the insistence of General
Clay, however-to remove Johannes Semler as Director of Eco
nomics of the Bizonal Economics Administration early in 1948.4
Semler's office had been collecting information on the value of
what he called "creeping reparations" (Clay referred to them as
"hidden reparations"), which included the scientific and tech
nical know-how removed from Germany by the FIAT investi
gators.5 Semler was annoyed by the widespread conception
expressed and implied by Germans and Americans alike-that
postwar Germany was some sort of international welfare case
living off the occupation powers and their taxpayers, and he
was frustrated by the failure of the bizonal Minister-Presidents
to take a hard line during their meeting in Wiesbaden in Octo
ber 1947, to protest the newly released list of German industrial
enterprises to be dismantled for reparations. At a local political
party gathering in Erlangen on 4 January 1948 Semler exploded.
Speaking without a prepared text, he argued that, were it not for
Allied occupation policies and practices-which he illustrated
and commented on at considerable length-Germany would be
able to pay for its food imports in cash rather than with the
demeaning "thank yous" that German politicians and public fig
ures had been using. Injudiciously, as it turned out, he enlivened
his remarks and entertained his audience with harsh sarcasm
and with quips, such as the one about the Americans sending
"Hiihnerfutter" (literally, "chicken feed," but used here to refer
to com, which German consumers found to be a poor substitute
for wheat in their rationed bread) for which the Germans were
expected to pay in dollars.
American military government officials who later analyzed a
stenographic record of the speech for General Clay concluded
that, except for its "false and misleading statements," particu
larly the one about chicken feed and another about U.S. pressure
x Preface
on German farmers to increase their deliveries as a means to
save American taxpayers' money, the speech was ably done and,
furthermore, deserved careful consideration.6* Semler got the ax
instead, and when the Bavarian Landtag-in testing whether
Germany's postwar democracy was in fact a "puppet-democ
racy," according to one speaker-elected him as a delegate to
the newly reorganized Bizonal Economic Council in Frankfurt in
February 1948, the Americans intervened. While General Clay's
staff drafted documents for the eventual dissolution of the Ba
varian Landtag, Clay sent a special plane to Munich to bring
Minister-President Hans Ehard and Murray van Wagoner, the
American Land Director for Military Government for Bavaria, to
him in Berlin. Precisely what happened when they got to Berlin
is, of course, not a matter of record, but Murray van Wagoner
recorded later that "the General told me I was apt to wind up
a Land Director with no government if I did not get things
straightened out." In any event, while American officials spent
a very busy weekend in Munich investigating Semler's back
ground (they searched his home and office and took some files,
and they also went to Vienna for some reason), the Bavarians.re
considered, capitulated, and subsequently elected a replacement
for Semler, who returned to private life.7
I sketch this story here not to pass judgment on Semler or
the Americans involved but to illustrate how the incident helped
to influence my decision to undertake a study of science, tech
nology, and reparations in postwar Germany. Semler was clearly
moving toward some sort of confrontation with the Americans
and the British on reparations, and he was prepared to bring up
not only the program to dismantle factories-which had been a
matter of widespread public discussion since the Military Gov
ernors had released a list of factories to be dismantled in Octo
ber 1947-but also the highly sensitive matter of "creeping" or
"hidden" reparations, which included the scientific and techni
cal know-how removed from Germany after the war. The pub-
*According to one American analyst, Semler's criticisms and references to
General Clay personally were regrettable, but "we must concede that, gener
ally speaking, his statements on the basic economic problems and especially on
specific procedures and transactions mentioned were substantially true." BICO,
Commerce and Industry Group (U.S.), to BICO, subj: speech by Dr. Semler, 20
Jan. 1948, RG 260, box 405-1/3, WNRC.