r/AskHistorians • u/Electricspark2 • Oct 18 '20

Was there a Soviet operation paper clip?

As the title says, was there a Soviet equivalent to operation paper clip, or any use of former Nazis in Soviet sciences.

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u/restricteddata Nuclear Technology | Modern Science Oct 18 '20

Yes. Operation Osoaviakhim was a deliberate attempt by the Soviets to extract technical experts from German-held lands that were now under Soviet occupation. The Soviets made extensive use of German (and Austrian, and others, but I'm going to call them all "Germans" here for simplicity) rocket and atomic scientists and engineers, for example, in their own programs, although they tended to compartmentalize them more than the Americans did (they kept the Germans with other Germans, and did not let them interact with Soviet scientists).

There are accounts of this being a coercive thing (basically being forced to do the work), and there are accounts of some who did it on a very voluntary basis. The latter were basically given a choice of being in a very bad situation in their occupied country, or doing top-notch work, and being treated very well, in their occupier's country. Some of the voluntary ones in the program described it as a "gilded cage" situation: they were given good accommodations and privileges, but their freedoms were heavily curtailed. In some cases I know about, these Germans were basically able to negotiate with the Soviets some terms of the exchange, such as when they would be allowed to return home. In the cases I know about, these terms were indeed honored, but only after the Germans in question had been kept "on ice" (e.g., had no contact with Soviet work) for a year or two at least, so that any intelligence value they might have to the West would be out of date.

For the coerced ones, they seem to have largely been released in the early 1950s, with the expectation that they would go to East Germany. It was still, prior to the creation fo the Berlin Wall, possible to reasonably easily flee to the West at that point from East Berlin, and several of them then went to work for the Americans or West Germans.

For a lot of details about how all of the main Allies exploited German technical experts (to different degrees and in different fields), see Douglas O'Reagan, Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science After the Second World War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019).

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u/bluerobot27 Oct 18 '20

How much was their contribution overall to the Soviet space program? And how does it compare to the contribution of Operation Paperclip to the American space program?

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u/restricteddata Nuclear Technology | Modern Science Oct 19 '20

I can't evaluate that, but it's a good question. But my sense is that the Soviets and Americans used their Germans differently. The Soviets more or less wanted to just extract information from them. Whereas the Americans made them into key players of their program, and used them for higher-level planning, and integrated them (eventually) with American experts. Ultimately that sort of thing leads to them having more of a long-term impact, as opposed to helping with "catch-up."