Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Conspiracy: Are Diamonds Really Rare?

 


Diamonds are not actually rare; their high value is largely maintained by artificial scarcity, monopolistic marketing, and controlled supply, specifically by historical De Beers practices. While high-quality, gem-grade diamonds are less common, diamonds as a mineral are plentiful, with massive deposits worldwide. The "diamond is forever" concept was a successful marketing campaign rather than a reflection of geological scarcity.


Key Aspects of the Diamond Rarity Myth:


Controlled Supply: For much of the 20th century, De Beers controlled the majority of the world’s diamond production, creating a monopoly that restricted supply to keep prices high.

Abundance vs. Quality: While industrial-grade diamonds are common, only a small percentage of mined diamonds are high-quality, gem-grade stones.

Marketing Scarcity: The idea that diamonds are rare is a result of effective marketing campaigns (e.g., "A Diamond Is Forever") that, starting in the 1940s, created emotional value and an illusion of scarcity.

Geological Availability: Diamonds are found on almost every continent and are formed deep within the Earth, with studies suggesting they are more common than previously thought.

Comparison to Other Gems: Compared to rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, diamonds are actually quite common.

Disclaimer: While natural diamonds are abundant, the market for high-clarity, colorless, or rare-colored diamonds still exists within a higher price bracket due to the rarity of those specific traits.

Georgia Guidestones

 


The Georgia Guidestones were a granite monument that stood in Elbert County, Georgia, United States, from 1980 to 2022. It was 19 feet 3 inches (5.87 m) tall and made from six granite slabs weighing a total of 237,746 pounds (107,840 kg). The structure was sometimes referred to as an "American Stonehenge". The monument's creators believed that there was going to be an upcoming social, nuclear, or economic calamity,y and they wanted the monument to serve as a guide for humanity in the worlthatch would exist after it. Controversial from its time of construction, it ultimately became the subject of conspiracy theories, which alleged that it was actually connected to Satanism, as opposed to Christianity, as its creator claimed.


On the morning of July 6, 2022, the guidestones were heavily damaged in a bombingbym a vandal, and the debris and guidestones were removed by the local government later that day. In late July, Elberton Mayor Daniel Graves announced plans to rebuild the monument. In August, the Elbert County Board of Commissioners voted to donate the remains of the monument to the Elberton Granite Association and return the 5 acres (2 ha) of land on which the monument was erected to its previous owner.


History


Construction


In June 1979, a man using the pseudonym Robert C. Christian approached the Elberton Granite Finishing Company on behalf of "a small group of loyal Americans" and commissioned the structure. Christian explained that the stones would function as a compass, calendar, and clock, and should be capable of "withstanding catastrophic events". The man reportedly used the pseudonym as a reference to the Christian religion. Christian said that he wanted to build a granite monument that would rival the British Neolithic monument Stonehenge, which he drew inspiration from after paying it a visit. However, he said that while it was impressive, Stonehenge had no message to communicate.


Joe Fendley of Elberton Granite believed that Christian was "a nut" nd attempted to discourage him by providing a price quote for the commission wh, which was several times higher than any project that the company had previously undertaken, explaining that the construction of the guidestones would require additional tools and consultants. To Fendley's surprise, Christian accepted the quote.


When arranging payment, Christian claimed that he represented a group that had been planning to construct the guidestones for 20 years and wanted to remain anonymous. Christian said he had chosen Elbert County because of its abundance of local granite, the rural nature of its landscape, its mild climate, and family ties to the region.


The total cost of the project was not revealed, but it was over US$100,000 (equivalent to $400,000 in 2024).


Christian delivered a scale model of the guidestones and ten pages of specifications. The 5-acre (2-hectare) site was purchased by Christian from a local farm owner. The owner and his children were given lifetime cattle grazing rights on the guidestones site. The monument was located off Georgia State Route 77, around 7 miles (11 km) north of the city of Elberton.


On March 22, 1980, the monument was unveiled by Congressman Doug Barnard before an audience of between 200 and 300 people. At the unveiling, the Master of Ceremonies read a message to the gathered audience:


To avoid debate, we, the sponsors of the Georgia Guidestone,s have a simple message for human beings, now and for the future. We believe our precepts are sound, and they must stand on their own merits. — Purported statement of Georgia Guidestones sponsors


Christian later transferred ownership of the land and the guidestones to Elbert County. In 1981, barbed wire fencing was erected around the monument to keep cattle out, as they had been using it for a scratching post.


A man who identified himself as Robert Christian published a book titled Common Sense Renewed (1986), which described the ideology of the guidestones. The author wrote:


I am the originator of the Georgia Guidestones and the sole author of its inscriptions. I have had the assistance of a number of other American citizens in bringing the monument into being. We have no mysterious purposes or ulterior motives. We seek common sense pathways to a peaceful world, without bias for particular creeds or philosophies. — "Robert Christian" (1986)


Fendley believed that the monument would become a regional tourist attraction. In 2022, 20,000 annual visitors were reported.


Dark Clouds Over Elberton: The True Story of the Georgia Guidestones (2015) is a documentary film purporting to expose the true identity of Robert Christian. The makers of the documentary claimed to have investigated and interviewed a banker who was involved in the financial arrangements for the construction of the monument.

Reaction

The stones were defaced with aerosol paint and graffiti.


In 2008, the stones were defaced with aerosol paint and graffiti with slogans such as "Death to the New World Order". Wired magazine called the defacement "the first serious act of vandalism in the guidestones' history". In September 2014, an employee of the Elbert County maintenance department contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation when the stones were vandalized with graffiti, including the phrase: "I Am Isis, goddess of love." After the acts of vandalism, security cameras were installed on the site.


Kandiss Taylor, a candidate in the 2022 Georgia Republican gubernatorial primary, called the Guidestones "Satanic" in a campaign ad; her campaign platform called for the monument to be removed.

Destruction


On July 6, 2022, an explosive device was detonated at the site, destroying the Swahili/Hindi language slab and causing significant damage to the capstone. Nearby residents reportedly heard and felt explosions at around 4:00 a.m. CCTV footage recorded a vehicle leaving the scene,e and police investigated the incident. The remaining stones were dismantled by authorities for safety reasons later in the day with a backhoe, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). The Elberton Star reported that digging showed no evidence that there was ever a time capsule located beneath the Georgia Guidestones.

Aftermath


The Elbert County Sheriff's Office investigated the bombing, with assistance from the GBI. On the evening of the bombing, the GBI released a video showing both the explosion and a vehicle of interest leaving the scene shortly before. No motive has been publicly shared, and no suspectshave been publicly identified. On July 14, 2022, and again on July 25, 2022, the GBI gave an update, with no significant progress on the case being made since the bombing. Prosecutors suggested that, as the guidestones were maintained by the county, they were considered a public building, thus their destruction would carry a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.


In late July 2022, Elberton Mayor Daniel Graves said the town planned to rebuild the monument exactly as it was, adding, "We're just getting geared up and excited about rebuilding them. It's going to happen. It may take us six months to a year to do it, but we are going to do it." On August 8, 2022, the Elberton city council voted to begin legal proceedings to return the five acres of land on which the monument had been built to its previous owner, a local farm. The city council announced that the remains of the monument, which had been moved to a third-party location for safety reasons, would be given to the Elberton Granite Association. Both the Elberton Granite Association and the Elberton City Council expressed doubt that the guidestones would be rebuilt, but expressed hope that one day it could happen.

Description

Inscriptions


A message consisting of a set of ten guidelines or principles was engraved on the Georgia Guidestones in eight different languages, one language on each face of the four large upright stones. Moving clockwise around the structure from due north, these languages were English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, and Russian. The languages were chosen because they represented most of humanity, except for Hebrew, which was chosen because of its connections to Judaism and Christianity.


According to the monument's sponsors, the inscriptions are meant to guide humanity to conserve nature after a nuclear war, which the creators thought was an imminent threat. The inscriptions dealt with four main themes: "governance and the establishment of a world government, population and reproduction control, the environment and humankind's relationship to nature, and spirituality."

The inscriptions read:


Cyrillic alphabet inscriptions.


The Guidestones as they stood in 2009.


Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.


Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.


Unite humanity with a living new language.


Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.


Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.


Let all nations rule internally, resolving external disputes in a world court.


Avoid petty laws and useless officials.


Balance personal rights with social duties.


Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.


Be not a cancer on the Earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.

Explanatory tablet


A few feet to the west of the monument, an additional granite ledger had been set level with the ground. This tablet identified the structure and the languages used on it and listed various facts about the size, weight, and astronomical features of the stones, the date it was installed, and the sponsors of the project. It referred to a time capsule buried under the tablet, but blank spaces on the stone intended for filling in the dates on which the capsule was buried and was to be opened had not been inscribed, so it was uncertain if the time capsule was ever actually put in place. During the removal of the monument in July 2022, county officials dug six feet down underneath this tablet to check for a time capsule, but found nothing.


The text of the explanatory tablet was somewhat inconsistent with respect to punctuation and misspelled the word "pseudonym". The original spelling, punctuation, and line breaks in the text have been preserved in the transcription (letter case is not). At the top center of the tablet was written:


The Georgia Guidestones


Immediately below this was the outline of a square, inside which was written:


Let these be guidestones to an Age of Reason.n


Around the edges of the square were written translations to four ancient languages, one per edge. Starting from the top and proceeding clockwise, they were: Babylonian (in cuneiform script), Classical Greek, Sanskrit,t and Ancient Egyptian (in hieroglyphs).


The guidestones' "Astronomic featu.res"


Undated instructions for the site's time capsule


On the left side of the tablet was a column of text (metric conversion added):


Astronomic features

1. Channel through stone

indicates the celestial pole

2. Horizontal slot indicates

annual travel of the sun

3. Sunbeam through capstone

marks noontime throughout

the year


Author: R.C. Christian

(a pseudonyn) [sic]


Sponsors: A small group

of Americans who seek

The Age of Reason


Time Capsule

Placed six feet [1.83 m] below this spot

On

To be opened on


The words appeared as shown under the time capsule heading; no dates were engraved.

Physical data


On the right side of the tablet was a column of text (metric conversions added):


PHYSICAL DATA


1. OVERALL HEIGHT – 19 FEET 3 INCHES [5.87 m].

2. TOTAL WEIGHT – 237,746 POUNDS [107,840 kg].

3. FOUR MAJOR STONES ARE 16 FEET,

FOUR INCHES [4.98 m] HIGH, EACH WEIGHING

AN AVERAGE OF 42,437 POUNDS [19,249 kg].

4. CENTER STONE IS 16 FEET, FOUR-

INCHES [4.98 m] HIGH, WEIGHS 20,957

POUNDS [9,506 kg].

5. CAPSTONE IS 9-FEET, 8-INCHES [2.95 m]

LONG, 6-FEET, 6-INCHES [1.98 m] WIDE;

1-FOOT, 7-INCHES [0.48 m] THICK. WEIGHS

24,832 POUNDS [11,264 kg].

6. SUPPORT STONES (BASES) 7-FEET,

4 INCHES [2.24 m] LONG 2-FEET [0.61 m] WIDE.

1 FOOT, 4-INCHES [0.41 m] THICK, EACH

WEIGHING AN AVERAGE OF 4,875

POUNDS [2,211 kg].

7. SUPPORT STONE (BASE) 4-FEET,

2½ INCHES [1.28 m] LONG, 2-FEET, 2-INCHES [0.66 m]

WIDE, 1-FOOT, 7-INCHES [0.48 m] THICK.

WEIGHT 2,707 POUNDS [1,228 kg].

8. 951 CUBIC FEET [26.9 m³] GRANITE.

9. GRANITE QUARRIED FROM PYRAMID

QUARRIES LOCATED 3 MILES [5 km] WEST

OF ELBERTON, GEORGIA.


Guidestone languages


Two columns of text were written the caption "GUIDESTONE LANGUAGES", with a diagram of the granite slab layout beneath it. The names of eight modern languages were inscribed along the long edges of the projecting rectangles, one per edge. Starting from due north and moving clockwise around so that the upper edge of the northeast rectangle was listed first, they were English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. At the bottom center of the tablet was the text:


Additional information available at the Elberton Granite Museum & Exhibit

College Avenue

Elberton, Georgia


Astronomical features


The four outer stones were oriented to mark the limits of the 18.6-year lunar declination cycle. The center column featured a hole drilled at an angle from one side to the other, through which the North Star could be seen. The same pillar had a slot carved through it, which was aligned with the Sun's solstices and equinoxes. A 7⁄8-in (22 mm) aperture in the capstone allowed a ray of sun to pass through at noon each day, shining a beam on the center stone,e indicating the day of the year. University of Georgia Astronomer Loris Magnani referred to these features as "mediocre at best" and sees them as "an abacus compared to Stonehenge’s computer".


Interpretations


When commissioning the guidestones, Christian described them as a guide for future generations to manage limited resources, potentially in the face of nuclear war. Yoko Ono said the inscribed messages were "a stirring call to rational thinking". However, the guidestones' inscriptions have also been accused of promoting eugenics and genocide.


Conspiracy theories


The guidestones became a subject of interest for conspiracy theorists. Wired stated that unspecified opponents have labeled them the "Ten Commandments of the Antichrist". Some conservative Christians have called the monument Satanic.


Right-wing activist Mark Dice demanded that the guidestones should "be smashed into a million pieces, and then the rubble should be used for a construction project", claiming that the guidestones are of "a deep Satanic origin,n d that R. C. Christian belongs to "a Luciferian secret society" related to the New World Order. At the unveiling of the monument, a local minister proclaimed that he believed that the monument was "for sun worshipers, for cult worship and for devil worship".


Conspiracy theorist Jay Weidner has said that the pseudonym of the man who commissioned the stones – "R. C. Christian" – resembles Rose Cross Christian, or Christian Rosenkreuz, the founder of the Rosicrucian Order. Others who agree with Weidner point to theRosicrucians's first manifesto, written in 1614, which states “The word R.C. should be their seal, mark and character”. They also see similarities between the writing on the capston, and the title of (Rosicrucian) Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

Operation: Paperclip

 

Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the US for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959; several were confirmed to be former members of the Nazi Party, including the SS or the SA.


The effort began in earnest in 1945, as the Allies advanced into Germany and discovered a wealth of scientific talent and advanced research that had contributed to Germany's wartime technological advancements. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff officially established Operation Overcast (operations "Overcast" and "Paperclip" were related, and the terms are often used interchangeably) on July 20, 1945, with the dual aims of leveraging German expertise for the ongoing war effort against Japan and to bolster US postwar military research. The operation, conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), was largely conducted by special agents of the US Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC). Many selected scientists were involved in the Nazi rocket program, aviation, or chemical/biological warfare. The Soviet Union, in the following year,r conducted a similar program, called Operation Osoaviakhim, that emphasized many of the same fields of research.


The operation, characterized by the recruitment of German specialists and their families, relocated more than 1500 experts to the US. It has been valued at US$10 billion in patents and industrial processes. Recruits included such notable figures as Wernher von Braun, a leading rocket-technology scientist. Those recruited were instrumental in the development of the US space program and military technology during the Cold War. Despite its contributions to American scientific advances, Operation Paperclip has been controversial because of the Nazi affiliations of many recruits and the ethics of assimilating individuals associated with war crimes into American society.


The operation was not solely focused on rocketry; efforts were directed toward synthetic fuels, medicine, and other fields of research. Notable advances in aeronautics fostered rocket and space-flight technologies pivotal in the Space Race. The operation played a crucial role in the establishment of NASA and the success of the Apollo missions to the Moon.


Operation Paperclip was part of a broader strategy by the US to harness German scientific talent in the face of emerging Cold War tensions and ensure this expertise did not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union or other nations. The operation's legacy has remained controversial in subsequent decades.


Background and Operation Overcast


In February 1945, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) set up T-Force, or Special Sections Subdivision, which grew to over 2,000 personnel by June. T-Force examined 5,000 German targets, seeking expertise in synthetic rubber and oil catalysts, new designs in armored equipment, V-2 (rocket) weapons, jet and rocket-propelled aircraft, naval equipment, field radios, secret writing chemicals, aero medicine research, gliders, and "scientific and industrial personalities".


When large numbers of German scientists were discovered by the advancing Allied forces in late April 1945, the Special Sections Subdivision set up the Enemy Personnel Exploitation Section to manage and interrogate them. The Enemy Personnel Exploitation Section established a detention center, Camp Dustbin, first near Paris and later in Kransberg Castle outside Frankfurt. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) established the first secret recruitment program, called Operation Overcast, on July 20, 1945, initially "to assist in shortening the Japanese war and to aid our postwar military research". The term "Overcast" was the name first given by the German scientists' family members for the housing camp where they were held in Bavaria. In late summer 1945, the JCS established the JIOA, a subcommittee of the Joint Intelligence Community, to directly oversee Operation Overcast and later Operation Paperclip. The JIOA representatives included the army's director of intelligence, the chief of naval intelligence, the assistant chief of Air Staff-2 (air force intelligence), and a representative from the State Department. In November 1945, Operation Overcast was renamed Operation Paperclip by Ordnance Corps officers, who would attach a paperclip to the folders of those rocket experts whom they wished to employ in the United States.


The project was not initially targeted against the Soviet Union; rather, the concern was that German scientists might emigrate and continue their research in countries that remained neutral during the war. Much US effort was focused on Saxony and Thuringia, which on July 1, 1945, became part of the Soviet occupation zone. Many German research facilities and personnel had been evacuated to these states before the end of the war, particularly from the Berlin area. The USSR then relocated more than 2,200 German specialists and their families—more than 6,000 people—with Operation Osoaviakhim during one night on October 22, 1946.


In a secret directive circulated on September 3, 1946, President Truman officially approved Operation Paperclip and expanded it to include 1,000 German scientists under "temporary, limited military custody". News media revealed the program as early as December 1946.


On April 26, 1946, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued directive JCS 1067/14 to General Eisenhower instructing that he "preserve from destruction and take under your control records, plans, books, documents, papers, files and scientific, industrial and other information and data belonging to ... German organizations engaged in military research"; and that, excepting war-criminals, German scientists be detained for intelligence purposes as required.


Osenberg List


In the later part of World War II, Germany was at a logistical disadvantage, having failed to conquer the USSR with Operation Barbarossa (June–December 1941), and its drive for the Caucasus (June 1942 – February 1943). The failed conquest had depleted German resources, and its military–industrial complex was unprepared to defend the Greater Germanic Reich against the Red Army's westward counterattack. By early 1943, the German government began recalling from combatseveralf scientists, engineers, and technicians to work in research and development to bolster German defense for a protracted war with the USSR. The recall from frontline combat included 4,000 rocketeers returned to Peenemünde, in northeast coastal Germany.


Overnight, Ph. D.s were liberated from KP duty,master'ss of science were recalled from orderly service, mathematicians were hauled out of bakeries, and precision mechanics ceased to be truck drivers. — Dieter K. Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral


The Nazi government's recall of its now-useful intellectuals for scientific work first required identifying and locating the scientists, engineers, and technicians, then ascertaining their political and ideological reliability. Werner Osenberg, the engineer-scientist heading the Wehrforschungsgemeinschaft (Defense Research Association), recorded the names of the politically cleared men on the Osenberg List, thus reinstating them to scientific work.


In March 1945, at Bonn University, a Polish laboratory technician found pieces of the Osenberg List stuffed in a toilet; the list subsequently reached MI6, who transmitted it to US intelligence. Then, US Army Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the United States Army Ordnance Corps, used the Osenberg List to compile his list of German scientists to be captured and interrogated; Wernher von Braun, Germany's best rocket scientist, headed Major Staver's list.


Identification


In Operation Overcast, Major Staver's original intent was only to interview the scientists, but what he learned changed the operation's purpose. On May 22, 1945, he transmitted to the US Department of War Colonel Joel Holmes' telegram urging the evacuation to America of 100 of the 400 German scientists in his custody, as most "important for [the] Pacific war" effort. Most of the Osenberg List engineers worked at the Baltic coast German Army Research Center Peenemünde, developing the V-2 rocket. After capturing them, the Allies initially housed them and their families in Landshut, Bavaria, in southern Germany.


Beginning on July 19, 1945, the US Joint Chiefs managed the captured ARC rocketeers under Operation Overcast. However, when the "Camp Overcast" name of the scientists' quarters became locally known, the program was renamed Operation Paperclip in November 1945. Despite these attempts at secrecy, the press interviewed several of the scientists later that year.


Capture and detention


Early on, the United States created the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS). This provided the information on targets for the T-Forces that went in and targeted scientific, military, and industrial installations (and their employees) for their know-how. Initial priorities were advanced technology, such as infrared, that could be used in the war against Japan; finding out what technology had been passed on to Japan; and finally, to halt research elsewhere.


Von Braun and more than a thousand of his colleagues decided to surrender tothe  Americans in 1945. One of the engineers later recalled their options: "We despise the French, we are mortally afraid of the Soviets, we do not believe the British can afford us. So that leaves the Americans." On June 20, 1945, they moved from the east closer to the American forces to avoid the advancing Soviet army.


A project to halt the research was codenamed "Project Safehaven"; it was not initially targeted against the Soviet Union but addressed the concern that German scientists might emigrate and continue their research in countries that had remained neutral during the war. To avoid the complications involved with the emigration of German scientists, the CIOS was responsible for scouting and kidnapping high-profile individuals to block technological advancements in nations hostile to the US.


Much US effort was focused on Saxony and Thuringia, which on July 1, 1945, would become part of the Soviet Occupation zone. Many German research facilities and personnel had been evacuated to these states, particularly from the Berlin area. Fearing that the Soviet takeover would limit Uthe S ability to exploit German scientific and technical expertise, and not wanting the Soviet Union to benefit from it, the United States instigated an "evacuation operation" of scientific personnel from Saxony and Thuringia, issuing orders such as:


On orders of the Military Government, you are to report with your family and baggage as much as you can carry tomorrowat noon at 1300 hours (Friday, 22 June 1945) at the town square in Bitterfeld. There is no need to bring winter clothing. Easily carried possessions, such as family documents, jewelry, and the like, should be taken along. You will be transported by motor vehicle to the nearest railway station. From there,e you will travel on to the West. Please tell the bearer of this letter how large your family is.


By 1947, this evacuation operation had netted an estimated 1,800 technicians and scientists and 3,700 family members. Those with special skills or knowledge were taken to detention and interrogation centers, such as one code-named "Dustbin" (located first at Chesnay, near Versailles, and then moved to Kransberg Castle outside Frankfurt) to be held and interrogated, in some cases for months.


A few of the scientists were gathered as a part of Operation Overcast, but most were transported to villages in the countryside where there were neither research facilities nor work; they were provided with a stipend and required to report twice weekly to police headquarters to prevent them from leaving. The Joint Chiefs of Staff directive on research and teaching stated that technicians and scientists should be released "only after all interested agencies were satisfied that all desired intelligence information had been obtained from them".


On November 5, 1947, the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS), which had jurisdiction over the western part of occupied Germany, held a conference to consider the status of the evacuees, the monetary claims that the evacuees had filed against the United States, and the "possible violation by the US of laws of war or Rules of Land Warfare". The OMGUS director of Intelligence, Robert L. Wals, had initiated a program to resettle the evacuees in the Third World, which the Germans referred to as General Walsh's Urwald-Programm ("jungle program"); but the program was not carried out. In 1948, the evacuees received settlements of 69.5 million Reichsmarks from the US, a settlement that soon became severely devalued during the currency reform that introduced the Deutsche Mark as the official currency of Western Germany.


John Gimbel concludes that the United States held some of Germany's best minds for three years, therefore depriving the German recovery of their expertise.


Arrivals


In May 1945, the US Navy "received in custody" Herbert A. Wagner, the inventor of the Hs 293 missile; for two years, he first worked at the Special Devices Center, at Castle Gould, and at Hempstead House, Long Island, New York; in 1947, he moved to the Naval Air Station Point Mugu.


In August 1945, Colonel Holger Toftoy, head of the Rocket Branch of the Research and Development Division of the US Army's Ordnance Corps, offered initial one-year contracts to the rocket scientists; 127 of them accepted. In September 1945, the first group of seven rocket scientists (aerospace engineers) arrived at Fort Strong on Long Island in Boston harbor: Wernher von Braun, Erich W. Neubert, Theodor A. Poppel, William August Schulze, Eberhard Rees, Wilhelm Jungert, and Walter Schwidetzky.


Beginning in late 1945, three rocket-scientist groups arrived in the United States for duty at Fort Bliss, Texas, and at White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico, as "War Department Special Employees".


In 1946, the United States Bureau of Mines employed seven German synthetic fuel scientists at a Fischer–Tropsch chemical plant in Louisiana, Missouri.


On June 1, 1949, the Chief of Ordnance of the United States Army designated Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, as the Ordnance Rocket Center, its facility for rocket research and development. On April 1, 1950, the Fort Bliss missile development operation, including von Braun and his team of over 130 Paperclip members, was transferred to Redstone Arsenal.


In early 1950, legal US residency for some of the Project Paperclip specialists was effected through the US consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico; thus, German scientists legally entered the United States from Latin America.


Between 1945 and 1952, the United States Air Force sponsored the largest number of Paperclip scientists, importing 260 men, of whom 36 returned to Germany, and one, Walter Schreiber, emigrated to Argentina.


The United States Army Signal Corps employed 24 specialists—including the physicists Georg Goubau, Gunter Guttwein, Georg Hass, Horst Kedesdy, and Kurt Lehovec; the physical chemists Rudolf Brill, Ernst Baars [de], and Eberhard Both; the geophysicist Helmut Weickmann; the optician Gerhard Schwesinger; and the engineers Eduard Gerber, Richard Guenther, and Hans Ziegler.


In 1959, 94 Operation Paperclip men went to the United States, including Friedwardt Winterberg and Friedrich Wigand.


Overall, through its operations to 1990, Operation Paperclip imported 1,600 men as part of the intellectual reparations owed to the US and the UK, valued at US$10 billion in patents and industrial processes.


Major awards (in the United States)


The NASA Distinguished Service Medal is the highest award that may be bestowed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). After more than two decades of service and leadership in NASA, four Operation Paperclip members were awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1969: Kurt Debus, Eberhard Rees, Arthur Rudolph, and Wernher von Braun. Ernst Geissler was awarded the medal in 1973.


The Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award is the highest civilian award given by the United States Department of Defense. After two decades of service, Siegfried Knemeyer was awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1966.


The Goddard Astronautics Award is the highest honor bestowed for notable achievements in the field of astronautics by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).[34] For their service, three Operation Paperclip members were awarded the Goddard Astronautics Award: Wernher von Braun (1961), Hans von Ohain (1966), and Krafft Arnold Ehricke (1984).


The US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, owns and operates the US Space Camp. Several Operation Paperclip members are members of the Space Camp Hall of Fame (which began in 2007): Wernher von Braun (2007), Georg von Tiesenhausen (2007), and Oscar Holderer (2008).


The New Mexico Museum of Space History includes the International Space Hall of Fame. Two Operation Paperclip members are members of the International Space Hall of Fame: Wernher von Braun (1976) and Ernst Steinhoff (1979). Hubertus Strughold was inducted in 1978 but removed as a member in 2006. Other closely related members include Willy Ley (1976), a German-American science writer, and Hermann Oberth (1976), a German scientist who advised von Braun's rocket team in the US from 1955 to 1958; neither Ley nor Oberth moved to the US via Operation Paperclip.


Two lunar craters are named after Paperclip scientists: Debus after Kurt Debus, the first director of NASA's Kennedy Space Center, and von Braun.


Advancements in aeronautics


Significant migrants


Adolf Busemann


Dr. Adolf Busemann was born in Lübeck, Germany, in 1902. He graduated from the Carolo Wilhelmina Technical University in Braunschweig and received a Ph.D. in engineering in 1924. In 1925, the Max-Planck Institute invited him to become an official aeronautical research scientist, and in 1930, he became a professor at Georgia Augusta University in Göttingen.


Busemann spent many years working for the German government, most notably directing research at the Braunschweig Laboratory. He gave a speech in 1935 at the Volta Congress, an international meeting on the problems of high-speed aeronautics. At this conference, he presented his first theory of how the angle of sweep of a plane wing reduces drag at supersonic speed. After the war, he traveled to the United States to assist them with the war tensions with Russia, where he continued his work on his theory of wing sweep.


Wernher von Braun


Wernher von Braun is known for developing rocket and space-flight technology, including the V-2 missile. In late 1932, he worked for the German army to develop new liquid propulsion-based missiles. He received a doctorate in physics in 1934 from the Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Berlin. He and his team then surrendered to the Allies at the end of World War II, shortly after Hitler's suicide in 1945. They were brought to America through Operation Paperclip and assimilated into NASA's space program, where they worked on missile technology at Fort Bliss before transferring to Huntsville, Alabama. He became the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in 1960.


Von Braun is also a controversial figure for his involvement with the Nazi party and the slave labor involved in developing the V-2 rocket in Germany before it began to be developed in the United States. He became a member of the Nazi party in 1937 and was made a junior SS officer in 1940.


Marshall Space Flight Center

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In July 1960, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) established the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, after taking control of the Development Operations Division from the Army's Redstone Arsenal. The Redstone Arsenal was led by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. Wernher von Braun became the first director of the MSFC. The MSFC's development team was formed by American engineers from the Redstone Arsenal and 118 German migrants who came from Peenemünde through Operation Paperclip. Von Braun worked with Operation Paperclip to get scientists from his team to the United States. They began work at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, in September 1945, and most of the team had arrived by 1946. Von Braun and his team worked as consultants for the military until 1950, when they began transferring to Huntsville.


Originally, the center focused on weaponry and further development of the V-2 rocket line,e but later became one of NASA's main development centers for space flight projects. The team also worked on missions that related to Moon landing missions, such as the Lunar Roving Vehicle. However, the main projects from the Marshall Space Flight Center were the V-2 rocket and the Apollo missions.


V-2 rocket


The V-2 rocket was developed in Germany at the Peenemünde military research center. Wernher von Braun was the director of Peenemünde and worked with a team of engineers, physicists, and chemists. The Nazis used the V-2 missile during World War II to attack Paris, the port of Antwerp, and Great Britain, among many other targets. An estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel died in these attacks. The location of V-2 production moved to Mittelwerk in Nordhausen after a British raid on Peenemünde on August 17, 1943. Mittelwerk was supplemented with slave labor from Dora, a nearby concentration camp.


Production of the V-2 missile moved to the United States after Wernher von Braun surrendered to the Allies (Hall 2022). In March 1946, a V-2 was test-fired in New Mexico, followed by the first launch of a captured V-2 in April of the same year. After months of adaptation, a V-2 missile was fired in White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, which broke a record with an altitude of 116 miles (187 km). Known as V-2 sounding rockets, they were used to test the effects of cosmic rays on fruit flies and seeds. They also took the first pictures of Earth from 100 miles (160 km) in the air (high enough to show the curvature of the planet), and tested g-force on various monkeys.


Apollo missions


The Marshall Space Flight Center was one of three institutions at NASA involved in the Apollo program. The center was equipped to become a part of Apollo because it had the facilities to study rocketry: Aero-Astrodynamics, Astrionics, Space Sciences, Propulsion and Vehicle Engineering, Computation, Manufacturing, Test, and Quality. Each of these laboratories handled a different aspect of creating and testing rockets that suited the shift from military weapons to space travel. The weaponry from WWII, including rockets andmissilese in the United States, set the precedent for the kinds of technology used to create the Saturn rocket line. The Marshall engineers' experience in rocket development led to what Dieter Grau, head of the Quality lab, described as a "rigid inspection program" focused on craftsmanship. This meant to create prototypes that had a higher success rate instead of prototypes that required more tests.


The American and German Marshall engineers created the launch vehicles and designed some launching facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida, during the Apollo program. They also created the Saturn rocket line, which was the kind of rocket that sent American astronauts to the Moon. The Saturn rocket line drew on previous military engineering, such as the liquid propulsion system developed from von Braun's V-2 rocket and navigation systems derived from the U.S. Army's Redstone and Jupiter rockets.


Controversy and investigations


Before his official approval of the program, President Truman was indecisive about it for sixteen months. Years later, in 1963, Truman recalled that he was not in the least reluctant to approve Paperclip; that because of relations with the Soviet Union, "this had to be done and was done". Several of the Paperclip scientists were later investigated because of their links with the Nazi Party during the war. Only one Paperclip scientist, Georg Rickhey, was formally tried for any crime, and no Paperclip scientist was found guilty of any crime, in the United States or Germany. Rickhey was returned to Germany in 1947 to stand at the Dora Trial, where he was acquitted.


In 1951, weeks after his US arrival, The Boston Globe accused Walter Schreiber of being a party to human experiments conducted by Kurt Blome at Ravensbrück; he emigrated to Argentina with the aid of the US military.


In 1984, Arthur Rudolph, under perceived threat of prosecution relating to his connection as operations director for V-2 missile production to the use of forced labor from Mittelbau-Dora at the Mittelwerk, renounced his US citizenship and moved to West Germany, which granted him citizenship. Von Braun was investigated in 1961 for his involvement in the Nazi Party as an SS member. The FBI concluded that he had joined the Nazi Party solely to advance his academic career and to avoid imprisonment.


For 50 years, from 1963 to 2013, the Strughold Award – named after Hubertus Strughold, "the father of space medicine", for his central role in developing innovations like the space suit and space life support systems – was the most prestigious award from the Space Medicine Association, a member organization of the Aerospace Medical Association. On October 1, 2013, in the aftermath of a Wall Street Journal article published on December 1, 2012, which highlighted his connection to human experiments during WWII, the Space Medicine Association's executive committee announced that the Space Medicine Association Strughold Award had been retired.


Similar operations


Operation APPLEPIE: Project to capture and interrogate key Wehrmacht, RSHA AMT VI, and General Staff officers knowledgeable of the industry and economy of the USSR.

Operation Bloodstone: Project to recruit and utilize personnel in Eastern Europe to foster anti-Communism.

Operation Claw: a joint Swedish–American operation, with Norwegian support, to utilize thirty-five German signals intelligence specialists who had an archive and extensive knowledge about Soviet affairs.

Camp Dustbin (counterpart of Camp Ashcan): An Anglo-American military interrogation camp for German scientists and industry specialists.

ECLIPSE (1944): An unimplemented Air Disarmament Wing plan for post-war operations in Europe for destroying V-1 and V-2 missiles.

Safehaven: US project within ECLIPSE meant to prevent the escape of Nazi scientists from Allied-occupied Germany.

Field Information Agency, Technical (FIAT): US Army agency for securing the "major, and perhaps only, material reward of victory, namely, the advancement of science and the improvement of production and standards of living in the United Nations, by proper exploitation of German methods in these fields"; FIAT ended in 1947, when Operation Paperclip began functioning.

National Interest/Project 63: Job placement assistance for Nazi engineers at Lockheed, Martin Marietta, North American Aviation, and other aeroplane companies, whilst American aerospace engineers were being laid off work.

Alsos Mission, Operation Big, Operation Epsilon, Russian Alsos: American, British,h and Soviet efforts to capture German nuclear secrets, equipment, and personnel.

Operation Backfire: A British effort at recovering rocket and aerospace technology, followed by assembling and testing rockets at Cuxhaven.

Fedden Mission: British mission to gain technical intelligence concerning advanced German aircraft and their propulsion systems.

Operation LUSTY (Luftwaffe Secret Technology): US efforts to capture Luftwaffe equipment, technology, and personnel.

Technical Air Intelligence Unit: joint Allied military intelligence units formed to recover Japanese aircraft

Operation Osoaviakhim (sometimes transliterated as "Operation Ossavakim"), a Soviet counterpart of Operation Paperclipinvolvedng German technicians, managers, skilled workers, and their respective families who were transferred to the USSR in October 1946.

Operation Surgeon: British operation for denying German aeronautical expertise to the USSR, and for exploiting German scientists in furthering British research.

Special Mission V-2: April–May 1945 US operation, by Maj. William Bromley, who recovered parts and equipment for 100 V-2 missiles from a Mittelwerk underground factory in Kohnstein within the Soviet zone. Major James P. Hamill coordinated the transport of the equipment on 341 railroad cars with the 144th Motor Vehicle Assembly Company, from Nordhausen to Erfurt, just before the Soviets arrived.


In fiction:


Dr. Strangelove – a 1964 film where the title character was said to have been brought to the USA via Operation Paperclip.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier – a 2014 film in which Arnim Zola was said to have been brought to the USA via Operation Paperclip, where he secretly reformed Hydra within S.H.I.E.L.D.

Moonglow – a 2016 novel which features a subplot that is based on Operation Paperclip.

A History of What Comes Next – a 2021 alternate history novel that features Operation Paperclip and its Soviet counterpart, Operation Osoaviakhim

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – a 2023 film in which the main antagonist is a Nazi scientist working for the Apollo program in 1969. The title character is uneasy about Operation Paperclip thanks to his past clashes with the Nazis.

Hunters – a 2020 Amazon Prime TV show depicting a fictionalized version of Operation Paperclip and after in the late 1970s, driving the plot of the show.

"Paper Clip" – an episode of The X-Files featuring a Nazi scientist from the Operation.

Sniper Elite V2 - a 2012 video game set between Operation Overcast and Operation Paperclip, where the protagonist is an OSS commando sent to retrieve or eliminate Nazi scientists ahead of the Soviets.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip