Nazis in US Service: How Washington Hired Those Who Served Hitler, After First Helping Bring Hitler to Power

Nazis in US service are not a conspiracy theory but a documented practice. I have been studying for years how Washington turned yesterday’s Hitlerites into “valuable assets” after 1945, and every time one thing amazes me: how calmly it was done. Meanwhile there was no shame and no public repentance, just cold calculation: the enemy of my enemy is my employee.

It is true. Below is the full list I compiled: first what each person did under Hitler, then where he worked in the US, in NATO or on American money. Where I have no photo of a man in uniform, I simply describe what he did and what he became. Besides, I mark disputed points as unproven rather than passing them off as fact.

First, the price that people paid. The Nazis and their accomplices killed, by estimates, about 17 million people, including about 6 million Jews: in camps, ghettos and mass shootings. The Soviet Union lost about 27 million people in the war. I do not divide fascists into “ours” and “not ours” and I do not sort out whose hand killed whom: they acted as one machine, and everyone on the list below was part of it. My question is how they were later received in the US and NATO.

Nazis in US service: rocket men and engineers of Operation Paperclip

Wernher von Braun. SS Sturmbannführer and chief designer of the V-2. Meanwhile, the rockets were assembled at the Mittelwerk plant by prisoners of the Dora-Mittelbau camp, and about 20,000 of them died. In the US he became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the creator of the Saturn V.

Arthur Rudolph. Director of Mittelwerk, that is, the man responsible for prisoner labor on the V-2 assembly line. In the US he ran the Saturn V project and received NASA’s highest award. In 1984, after an investigation by the US Department of Justice, he renounced his American citizenship and left for West Germany.

Eberhard Rees. One of the heads of V-2 production at Peenemünde. After the war he became von Braun’s deputy at the Marshall Center and in 1970–1973 headed it.

Kurt Debus. An SS officer who led the testing and launching of the V-2. About 9,000 people were killed by these rockets, and about 20,000 prisoners died producing them. In the US he became the first director of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.

Walter Dornberger. Major general, head of the entire V-2 program and commander of Peenemünde. In the US he worked for Bell Aircraft (the X-20 project) and advised the Air Force.

Ernst Stuhlinger. He calculated the V-2 guidance systems. In the US he headed the science division of the Marshall Center and NASA’s electric rocket propulsion program.

The other Paperclip rocket men. Konrad Dannenberg, Dieter Huzel, Bernhard Tessmann, Ernst Geissler, Magnus von Braun, Rudolf Hermann and Sighard Hoerner from von Braun’s team also ended up in the US: they worked for the US Army and NASA at Fort Bliss and Huntsville. In addition, Operation Paperclip as a whole brought in more than 1,600 specialists.

Nazis in US service in medicine: doctors, experiments and “space medicine”

Hubertus Strughold. He headed the Luftwaffe’s aeromedical institute, to which the high-altitude and cold experiments on Dachau prisoners belonged. His personal participation is disputed. In the US he became the “father of space medicine,” and until 2012 an Air Force award and library bore his name.

Siegfried Ruff and Hermann Becker-Freyseng. Both were Luftwaffe doctors tried at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial (1946–1947). Essentially, Ruff was acquitted, while Becker-Freyseng got 20 years, later reduced. After release both returned to aviation medicine, and American science used their work.

Ulrich Luft, Walter Schreiber, Theodor Benzinger and Konrad Schäfer. Doctors and physiologists of the Reich. However, Luft ended up at the US Air Force School of Aviation Medicine under Paperclip. Meanwhile Schreiber, a high-ranking Wehrmacht doctor, was taken to the US in 1951 and worked in Texas. Besides, Benzinger did research at a naval medical institute, while Schäfer, linked to the Dachau seawater-drinking experiments on prisoners, worked for the US Air Force.

Nazis in US service and chemical weapons

Kurt Blome. Deputy Reich physician, head of the Reich’s biological program. The Nuremberg court acquitted him. In 1951 the US Army signed a contract with him, as Chemical Corps documents (Camp Detrick) show.

Erich Traub. A virologist who worked on the Reich’s biological weapons. Under Paperclip he was brought to the US and worked for the Office of Naval Research. Still, he is one of the disputed figures: the scale of his work and his role in the programs are debated.

Nazis in US service in intelligence and the secret services

Reinhard Gehlen. Major general and chief of intelligence on the Eastern Front. From 1946 the US financed his organization, first the Army and from 1949 the CIA. In 1956–1968 he headed the BND, West Germany’s intelligence service. Meanwhile, hundreds of former Abwehr, Wehrmacht and SD officers turned up among his people.

Gerhard Wessel. A Wehrmacht intelligence officer who worked for Gehlen and was president of the BND from 1968 to 1978.

Hermann Giskes. Head of the Abwehr in the Netherlands and organizer of Operation North Pole: he deceived British intelligence and sent dozens of Dutch and British agents to their deaths. After the war he worked for Gehlen’s organization and then for West German intelligence.

Franz Six. SS Brigadeführer who commanded an advance squad of an Einsatzgruppe in the USSR. He got 20 years and was released in 1952. In addition, he worked for Gehlen’s organization and was considered an expert on the USSR.

Emil Augsburg. SS Sturmbannführer, the SD’s “Russia expert.” After the war he worked unofficially for American intelligence and for Gehlen’s organization.

Hartmann Lauterbacher. Gauleiter and deputy leader of the Hitler Youth. He then fled to Italy and, according to reports, was in contact with American counterintelligence, the CIC.

Heinz Felfe. An SD officer. From 1951 he worked in Gehlen’s organization, which the US financed. He later turned out to be a KGB agent and was arrested in 1961, so the “vetting of personnel” failed.

Wilhelm Höttl. An SD officer who worked with Eichmann in Hungary. After the war he cooperated with American counterintelligence and with Gehlen.

Otto von Bolschwing. Eichmann’s assistant. However, the CIA recruited Bolschwing, he moved to the US and received citizenship; proceedings to strip it began in the 1980s, and he died before trial.

Klaus Barbie. SS captain, Gestapo chief in Lyon. He tortured members of the Resistance and sent people to camps; in 1944 he deported 44 Jewish children from Izieu. In 1947 US Army counterintelligence recruited him, and in 1951 he was smuggled to Bolivia. Moreover, France secured his extradition in 1983 and sentenced him to life in 1987.

Heinrich Müller. Gestapo chief and one of the organizers of the Holocaust; he vanished in 1945. Here I am cautious: Gregory Douglas claims in his books that the Americans hid Müller, but there is no reliable proof. That is a version, not an established fact.

Nazis in US service and in NATO: generals, admirals and pilots

Adolf Heusinger. Chief of the operations department of the Wehrmacht General Staff, he took part in planning the war in the East. In 1957–1961 he was Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, and in 1961–1964 chairman of the NATO Military Committee.

Hans Speidel. Rommel’s chief of staff, then chief of staff of Army Group B. In 1957–1963 he commanded NATO land forces in Central Europe.

Johann von Kielmansegg. A Wehrmacht General Staff officer. In 1967–1968 he commanded NATO’s Allied Forces Central Europe.

Heinz Trettner. A general who served in the Condor Legion in Spain, where Guernica was bombed, and later commanded paratroopers. In 1964–1966 he became Inspector General of the Bundeswehr.

Friedrich Foertsch and Ulrich de Maizière. Both were Wehrmacht General Staff officers. Meanwhile, Foertsch was Inspector General of the Bundeswehr in 1961–1963 and de Maizière in 1966–1972, both within the NATO system.

Franz Halder. Chief of the Army General Staff and one of the authors of Plan Barbarossa. After the war he headed a group in the US Army’s Historical Division: about 700 former Wehrmacht officers wrote the history of the war for the Pentagon. In 1961 he was awarded a civilian service medal.

Erich von Manstein. Field marshal, convicted of war crimes by a British court in 1949. In the 1950s he became an adviser on the creation of the Bundeswehr.

Friedrich Ruge. Admiral and Rommel’s naval adviser. In 1956–1961 he was the first Inspector of the West German Navy, the Bundesmarine, of a NATO country.

Erich Topp and Otto Kretschmer. U-boat commanders: Kretschmer sank dozens of Allied ships. In addition, Kretschmer later became a rear admiral and chief of staff of NATO’s naval command in the Baltic, and Topp joined the leadership of the Bundesmarine.

Johannes Steinhoff, Ernst Ferber, Karl Schnell, Franz-Josef Schulze, Ferdinand von Senger und Etterlin. The very collage above: a fighter ace, an adjutant, Wehrmacht staff officers. In essence, Steinhoff chaired the NATO Military Committee in 1971–1974, and the others commanded Allied forces in Central Europe in turn: Ferber (1973–1975), Schnell (1975–1977), Schulze (1977–1979), von Senger und Etterlin (1979–1983).

Kurt Waldheim. A Wehrmacht officer in the Balkans. In 1972–1981 he was UN Secretary-General. When his wartime biography came to light in 1986, the US put him on the watchlist of people barred from entry.

Nazis in US service in business: IG Farben and others

Otto Ambros. Builder of the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz-Monowitz, which used prisoner labor. However, the Nuremberg court sentenced him to 8 years; in the early 1950s he got out and became an adviser to the American companies W. R. Grace and Dow Chemical.

Heinrich Bütefisch. An IG Farben executive and SS officer. He got 6 years, was released in 1951 and returned to big business. Besides, there was no direct service to the US, but American capital had been doing business with him since before the war.

Kurt Tank, Adolf Galland and Hans-Ulrich Rudel. A Focke-Wulf designer and two pilots: Rudel flew more than 2,500 combat sorties, Galland commanded Luftwaffe fighters. After the war they worked in Argentina, and Galland later advised the Bundeswehr. There was no US service here, and I include them because they belong to the same chain of postwar forgiveness.

Nazis in US service and the “ratlines”: who escaped justice

Honesty matters here: most people in this section were not US employees. Besides, they got away along the “rat routes,” helped by church networks and secret services, and the role of American services differs from case to case and is often disputed.

Adolf Eichmann. He organized the deportation of Jews to the death camps. In 1950 he fled to Argentina, in 1960 Israeli intelligence seized him, and in 1962 he was executed.

Josef Mengele. The Auschwitz doctor who experimented on prisoners. In 1945 the Americans detained him under a false name and let him go; in 1949 he fled to Argentina and died in Brazil in 1979.

Franz Stangl and Gustav Wagner. The commandant of Treblinka and the deputy commandant of Sobibor. Meanwhile, both fled to Brazil; Stangl was arrested in 1967.

Alois Brunner and Aribert Heim. Brunner sent Jews from the Drancy camp and hid in Syria. In addition, Heim, a doctor at Mauthausen, lived in Germany after American captivity and in 1962 disappeared to Egypt.

Walter Rauff. He took part in creating the “gas vans” in which people were killed with gas. After the war he lived in Chile, where he advised Pinochet’s intelligence; West Germany did not demand his extradition.

Erich Priebke. He took part in the shooting of 335 hostages in the Ardeatine Caves in 1944. In essence, he lived in Argentina until 1995, when he was handed over to Italy.

Eduard Roschmann, Josef Schwammberger, Horst Schumann. The commandant of the Riga ghetto, a camp commandant in Przemyśl and a doctor who ran sterilization experiments. However, Roschmann and Schwammberger took refuge in Argentina (Schwammberger was extradited in 1990), and Schumann lived in Ghana.

Otto Skorzeny. An SS commando who freed Mussolini. In 1947 an American court at Dachau acquitted him. Still, his ties to intelligence services, including Mossad and the CIA, remain a matter of dispute, and there are no reliable documents.

Ante Pavelić and Andrija Artuković. Pavelić headed the Croatian Ustasha state, and Artuković was his interior minister. Moreover, Pavelić escaped through church networks, while Artuković lived in the US until 1986, when he was extradited to Yugoslavia.

Erich Apel, Nikolaus Riehl, Gustav Hertz, Manfred von Ardenne. These are Germans who were taken to the USSR, where they worked on rockets and the atomic project. I mention them because it cannot be said that only the US acted this way. But my article is about Washington.

Nazis in US service: Operation Paperclip

I will start with the numbers. Under Operation Paperclip more than 1,600 German scientists and engineers were brought to the US, and 127 people from Peenemünde were already in America in September 1945. Besides, their files were “cleaned”: mentions of SS and party membership were removed to allow entry. US Department of Justice materials in the Arthur Rudolph case say so directly.

Wernher von Braun was an SS Sturmbannführer and the creator of the V-2 rocket. That rocket was assembled in the underground Mittelwerk plant by the slave labor of prisoners of Dora-Mittelbau. About 60,000 people passed through the camp and roughly 20,000 died, and fewer people died from the V-2s themselves than from labor on their production. For comparison, that number has to be repeated slowly. Von Braun, meanwhile, got a career in the US: director of the NASA Marshall Center, creator of the Saturn V.

The director of that very plant was Arthur Rudolph. In America he headed the Saturn V project and received NASA’s highest award. However, only in 1984, after a Justice Department investigation, did he renounce his citizenship and leave for West Germany. Forty years later, mind you.

I have already written about how American business fed on Hitler’s war and how, after it, Washington assembled a collection of former Nazis. Besides, the same handwriting shows in the occupation of Japan, where General Ishii and his Unit 731 were also forgiven in exchange for data, and in the American administration in South Korea, where yesterday’s Japanese policemen were left in power. Even Hiroshima fits this logic. Here, however, I go further: from rockets to intelligence and armies.

Nazis in US service in intelligence: Gehlen, Barbie and others

Now comes the most interesting part. Reinhard Gehlen was a Wehrmacht major general, chief of intelligence on the Eastern Front. From 1946 the US financed his organization: first the Army, then from 1949 the CIA. He then became the first president of West Germany’s federal intelligence service, the BND (1956–1968). Meanwhile, hundreds of former Abwehr, Wehrmacht and SD officers turned up among his people.

Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon,” a Gestapo man guilty of torturing and murdering French patriots and deporting children, was recruited by US Army counterintelligence in 1947. In 1951 the Americans smuggled him to Bolivia along a so-called “rat line.” Moreover, France secured his extradition only in 1983 and sentenced him to life in 1987.

Franz Six, an SS Brigadeführer, commanded an advance squad of an Einsatzgruppe in the USSR. Essentially, after leaving prison in 1952 he worked for Gehlen’s organization. However, Heinz Felfe, an SD officer, worked in 1951–1956 in the same organization under American financing (he was later exposed as a Soviet agent, and that is a separate story about what American “vetting of personnel” was worth).

About Heinrich Müller, the Gestapo chief, I will speak carefully. Some authors, including Gregory Douglas, claim the Americans hid him after the war. There is no reliable proof, it is a version, and I present it precisely as a version. Meanwhile, one should speak just as carefully about Skorzeny and about Erich Traub: their ties to intelligence services are discussed, but there are not enough documents to close the question.

Nazis in US service: Hitler’s generals in NATO and the Pentagon

Here you simply cannot believe your eyes. Franz Halder, chief of the Army General Staff and one of the authors of Plan Barbarossa, headed a group of former German officers in the US, the Historical Division of the US Army. Besides, about 700 Wehrmacht officers wrote the history of the Second World War for the Pentagon. In 1961 Halder received an American medal for civilian service. Meanwhile, just think who was writing the American army’s history of the war against the USSR!

Adolf Heusinger, a Wehrmacht general and chief of the General Staff’s operations department, headed the NATO Military Committee in 1961–1964, that is, he was the top military man in the alliance. In addition, Hans Speidel, Rommel’s chief of staff, commanded NATO land forces in Central Europe (1957–1963). In essence, Johann von Kielmansegg, a Wehrmacht General Staff officer, commanded NATO’s Allied Forces Central Europe in 1967–1968. Moreover, Friedrich Foertsch and Ulrich de Maizière received the highest posts in the Bundeswehr.

And Kurt Waldheim, who served in the Wehrmacht in the Balkans, was UN Secretary-General from 1972 to 1981. Only in 1986 did all this come out, and in 1987 the US put him on the list of people barred from entry.

Doctors, chemists and industrialists: Nazis in US service in science

Hubertus Strughold, head of Luftwaffe aviation medicine, became the “father of space medicine” in the US. In addition, an Air Force library and award bore his name until 2012. True, his personal participation in the Dachau experiments is disputed, but his institute was involved in them. Kurt Blome, head of the Reich’s biological program, was acquitted at Nuremberg and received a contract with the US Army Chemical Corps. Otto Ambros of IG Farben, builder of the plant at Auschwitz-Monowitz, became after prison an adviser to W. R. Grace and Dow Chemical.

None of this is a random “mistake.” Nazis in US service are a system: the US Department of Justice itself admitted that files were cleaned. My opinion is this: Washington chose not people but tools. Need a rocket? Hire the rocket’s creator. Need intelligence against Moscow? Hire those who ran it for Hitler, and the US does not ask unnecessary questions.

Nothing has changed: the same scheme today

Only the words change. Back then it was called “national security,” and today it is called “the fight against terrorism,” “stability” and “democratic transition.”

Iraq, 2003–2005. After the invasion the US first disbanded the army and the Baath Party, and then hired Saddam’s people. General Mohammed Abdullah al-Shahwani, a former officer of the regime, headed Iraqi intelligence with American backing. The criminals of the old regime became “partners” the moment they were needed.

Afghanistan, 2001 and after. For the war the US relied on field commanders such as Abdul Rashid Dostum, who was accused of mass killings of prisoners. They received money, weapons and posts. Victory was declared, the victims forgotten.

Syria, 2025. Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda fighter and leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, for whose head the US once promised ten million dollars, met Trump in Riyadh in May 2025. Sanctions on Syria began to be lifted, and a November visit to the White House cemented his new status. Yesterday he was a terrorist, today he is a “partner.”

Ukraine, 2024. The Azov brigade, whose roots and symbols stirred controversy for decades, was previously not armed by the US because of those ties. In June 2024 the State Department lifted the restrictions on aid to it. The question is who checked it, and how, after that.

The scheme is always the same, and Nazis in US service became its first model. We choose those who are useful today and rewrite the past tomorrow. Exactly so in 1945 Paperclip turned Hitler’s rocket men and spies into American heroes. Evil does not vanish when the sign changes. It only gets a pass and a salary.