Sandbar Lecture: How the Nazis Made NASA

Brett Riggs discusses Operation Paperclip — the code name under which U.S. intelligence and military services extricated scientists from Germany during and after the final stages of World War II.

As World War II wound down, American and British teams scoured occupied Germany for as much military, scientific, and technological development research as they could uncover. Covert groups began confiscating war-related documents and materials and interrogating scientists. Finally, a list of scientists and engineers that had been put to work for the Third Reich was discovered. Roughly 1,600 German scientists and their families were brought to the United States to work on America’s behalf during the Cold War. The goal was to harness German intellectual resources to help develop superior American technology and weapons against the Soviet Union.

Brett Riggs is a native of Southeastern North Carolina, lives in Shallotte. He has a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in library science. His historical specialty is the Colonial era and  the early American republic.