1. Students watch the film, create the ID, and answer the questions below
2. Students learn about one of the most significant effects of the Cold War while improving their ID & Communication skills

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ID FILM: Operation Paperclip

ID & 2 Paragraphs

INSTRUCTIONS:

• Using the films & information provided below, create an ID on Operation Paperclip & compose two paragraphs

STEP #1: GATHER INFORMATION FROM THE INFORMATION & VIDEO PROVIDED HERE.

• Acquire information for the ID using the video source offered below

STEP #2: Make an ID on the Operation Paperclip here on CANVAS

• Using the information make an ID formatted as it is outlined below.

• (Remember, an ID (Identification) asks the following questions:

(1) WHO:_____________

(2) WHAT:_____________

(3) WHEN:_____________

(4) WHERE:___________

(5) WHY:_____________

(6) HOW:_____________

(7) HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE (Minimum 3 answers): (1) ________, (2),________, (3) __________

STEP #3: COMPOSE TWO PARAGRAPHS SHARING YOUR THOUGHTS (Paragraph = minimum of five sentences).

1. One paragraph answering – “In your opinion, WHAT ASPECTS should students be made more aware of and WHY?
   • ANSWER MUST INCLUDE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES FROM FILM
   • IE – State two aspects you believe students should be made more aware of and why? (Try to avoid using the answer “Because its interesting” or “Because I didn’t know that before,”
     • –
2. One paragraph answering – “In your opinion, WHAT are the strengths and weaknesses of the film & WHY?”
   • ANSWER MUST INCLUDE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES FROM FILM
   • TO BE CLEAR: I am asking about your opinions on the film. As students you must see a variety of videos. I am curious as to your opinions on the film’s strengths and weaknesses. IE – How well did it “hold your attention,” WHAT did you think of “the pace of the film?” WHAT score would you give it on a scale of 1-10 & WHY? etc.

GRADING:

• Rubric is used to help identify strengths and weaknesses of submissions as well as the score.
• This assignment falls under the ID category when it comes to FINAL Grade calculation.
• This assignment is worth 30 points.

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PART ONE VIDEOS

Film #1 (14 min 58 seconds) Operation Paperclip – COLD WAR SPECIAL

Film #2 (26 minutes) Check out this 1982 “60 minutes” report.

PART TWO INFO:

INFORMATION

Project Paperclip, also called Operation Paperclip, U.S. government program that sponsored the post-World War II immigration of German and Austrian scientists and technicians to the United States in order to exploit their knowledge for military and industrial purposes. Project Paperclip itself lasted less than two years, but similar programs continued until 1962. Ultimately, approximately 1,500 German and Austrian professionals and their families were relocated to the United States, the majority of them going on to become U.S. citizens. All of these German and Austrian scientists and technicians, regardless of the program into which they were recruited, are commonly said to have been part of Project Paperclip.

Postwar competition for German and Austrian scientists

Project Paperclip was one of many ways in which Allied forces extracted intellectual reparations after the conquest of Germany. Gaining control of the human sources of advanced technical knowledge was a logical Allied priority in the final year of the war, as it became clear that the defeat of Germany was imminent and would predate the defeat of Japan. With this situation in mind, the team of German and Austrian scientists and engineers who had developed the highly advanced V-2 rocket system abandoned their chief research complex and deliberately put themselves in the path of approaching western Allied forces. After being captured on May 2, 1945, the entire team was transported to the United States as part of Project Overcast and given facilities to continue their research, which was considered vital to the U.S. national interest because it had the potential to accelerate the defeat of Japan. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff created a special subcommittee to oversee the further acquisition of German information and personnel, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA). Because the name of the project had become publicly known and even discussed in the press, all future immigration of German and Austrian scientists and technicians to the United States occurred as part of a newly named operation, “Project Paperclip,” so-named for the paperclips that held together the many pages of information about the scientists possessing more problematic pasts during the Nazi era.

Japans defeat did not alter the opinion of American military and industrial decision makers that contracting German and Austrian scientists and technicians and bringing them to the United States was in the national interest. On the contrary, something of a competition developed between the U.S. and other Allied powers. The British, French, and Soviets were all known to be actively recruiting such experts who they believed would be able to advance their interests in a variety of ways, both militarily and industrially. German and Austrian professionals, facing the prospect of uncertain employment in a devastated postwar economy, were generally eager to accept such offers. American personnel on the ground reported that, short of putting such experts under guard to keep them in Germany (which actually did happen on occasion), they had no way to prevent other countries from exploiting the experts knowledge.

The creation and conduct of Project Paperclip

Responding to this competitive pressure, the U.S. State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC), in coordination with the JIOA, developed Project Paperclip. The final version of the project appeared in directive SWNCC 257/22 and was approved by Pres. Harry S. Truman on September 3, 1946. It allowed U.S. military departments to sponsor the immigration of chosen, rare minds.

Project Paperclip was not given carte blanche. Experts selected by the program had to be screened by the JIOA, and, according to official policy, anyone who had been more than a nominal member of the Nazi Party was to be excluded. The ethical and moral concerns of the project were immediately obvious to many within the U.S. government. Some considered these experts to be a national security risk, given their change in loyalty. Nevertheless, U.S. policy at the time called for pressure to be put on other countriesparticularly those in the Americasto repatriate Germans who had fled their country. At the same time, denazification policies in the U.S.-occupied sector of Germany set a notably higher bar than Paperclip. Indeed, Samuel Klaus, the U.S. State Department representative in the JIOA, demanded background checks on Paperclip candidates so thorough that he was widely believed to be deliberately delaying the implementation of the program.

When news of the project was released, there were protests from prominent public figures in the United States, including Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt. Nonetheless, the increasingly urgent sense of competition ultimately led the State Department to back down and issue visas to designees of Project Paperclip.

As the Cold War developed, it was increasingly used as the core justification for Project Paperclip. In 1946 the Soviet Union had carried out its own version of the project, called Operation Osoaviakhim, and it continued to contract experts in the Soviet-occupied portion of Germany. In 1948 Sen. Harry F. Byrd of Virginia wrote an article in which he publicly defended Project Paperclip in utilitarian terms, arguing that giving up invaluable knowledge to the Soviet Union because of moral qualms related to the holders of that knowledge would be foolish.

Many of those who came to the U.S. through Project Paperclip and related projects achieved great success. The most famous is likely Wernher von Braunthe scientist who had led the development of the V-2 rocket for the Wehrmacht and who later played a prominent role in the U.S. space program. After completing the government contracts that had brought them to the U.S., many other scientists and engineers who had come to the U.S. through Paperclip-related programs went on to have profitable careers in the private sector.

PART THREE: ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

FOR MORE on Operation Paperclip, watch this lecture (with Q & A) by Annie Jacobsen author of Operation Paperclip.

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Annie Jacobsen is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and investigative journalist whose work revolves around government secrets. She has published books on a range of topics, including what really goes on inside Area 51; Operation Paperclip, which brought Nazi scientists to America; and government-funded research projects on extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis.

Click below to watch the 57 minute video

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