"We Want with the West" .

'We Want with the West"

What had become of the technical brains of Nazi Germany, the scientists who tooled the Third Reich's production machine, fashioned the Luftwaffe's wings and designed V-1 and V2? This week the U.S. Army gave an answer. A few of them had been whisked off to the U.S.S.R., presumably to work in laboratory and shop as privileged guests. But many of them were in the U.S. They were guests, too, and at work.

Long before the invasion of Germany, the Army had learned which German scientists were important, and where most might be found. With each wave of U.S. troops, and sometimes ahead of advance units, went skilled scientists-hunters. The Army told who some of these scientists were, and where they were working: Fort Bliss, Tex. and Dayton, Ohio.

Exit from Peenemuende. Greatest technical triumph of Nazi Germany was the V-2 rocket, prototype of the guided missiles which may dominate future wars. The V-2 project (code name "E.W.," for Elektromechanische Werke) was pushed with all the secrecy and urgency which surrounded the U.S. "Manhattan District." The rockets were developed and tested at Peenemuende on the Baltic, and manufactured in a vast underground factory at Nordhausen, east of Kassel.

When the Russians were storming Stettin, 50 miles southeast of Peenemuende, blond, husky Dr. Werner von Braun, research director of E.W., had on his desk "five orders from the High Command telling me to stay at Peenemuende, and five orders, also from the High Command, telling me to move." He consulted his staff, decided to "go with the West," i.e., toward the British and American armies.

With Russian artillery thundering behind them, the rocket men packed up everything they could move, and fled through the chaos of collapsing Germany. A few had gone south (on Hitler's orders) toward the "Alpine Stronghold"; the rest fought their way over bomb-battered highways and railroads to a small town near Nordhausen.

Soon the Americans swept into Nordhausen. Colonel Holger N. Toftoy, of Army Ordnance, grabbed the rocket men, took them to the U.S. zone, got permission to send most of them to the U.S. Meanwhile, another Ordnance team commanded by tall, cheery Major James P. Hamill, 27, was vacuum-cleaning the V-2 factory. They got all the V-2s they wanted.

Lucky Rocketeers. Last week 120 V-2 men were living in former hospital buildings at Fort Bliss. According to Major Hamill, who commands them, their group is almost as complete as it was at Peenemuende. With the Germans came stacks of documents: plans, blueprints, sheets of experimental data.

First job of the rocket men at Fort Bliss was to pass on to qualified Americans everything they knew about rockets. This took millions of words of interrogation: hundreds of U.S. officers and civilian experts passed through their camp, absorbing what the Germans could teach them, which was plenty. By Ordnance Department calculation, they saved the U.S. ten years of research, millions of dollars.

Some of the Germans, in relays, were sent to White Sands Proving Grounds, 70 miles north of Fort Bliss, where they taught Americans to fire the V-2s assembled from Nordhausen parts. Last week they were still at work there. White Sands had grown to a great laboratory, staffed with Ordnance, Air Forces, Navy and civilian (General Electric Co.) personnel.

Dessau to Dayton. There were other prizes. When the Red Army crunched toward Berlin in April 1945, Dr. Anselm Franz, handsome, Austrian-born and 46, was head of research and development at the great Junkers plant which produced the 0-4 jet engine at Dessau in what is now the Russian zone. Like Braun, he called his top men together. Their unanimous decision: "We want with the West."

For two frantic weeks Dr. Franz collected plans and blueprints, experimental engine models. Just before the Russians arrived, ten big U.S. trucks swept into Dessau, gathered up the scientists, made two jampacked trips to the west.

Dr. Franz and 87 other German air scientists are now living in a former National Youth Administration camp near Wright Field at Dayton, brain center of U.S. Army air power. Some of their names were still secret, but among them are men like 1) thin, nervous Dr. Alexander Lippisch, butterfly collector, landscape painter, lute player, and designer of the Messerschmitt 163 rocket plane, 2) blond, ruddy Dr. Hans Heinrich, inventor of the ribbon parachute, 3) Russian-born Dr. Eugen Ryschkewitsch, world authority on heat-resisting ceramics. Other new workers at Wright Field: German aerodynamicists, wind-tunnel men, instrument men and experts on all the complexities of modern aviation.

Temporary Duty. The German scientists are listed as "civilian employes of the U.S. War Department, European Theater, On temporary duty in the U.S." They earn a small daily wage ($2-$11), which is paid to their dependents in Germany. In addition, they get the regular $6 per diem allowance for detached duty.

Seventy-five percent of the Germans' families live in a group of apartment houses at Landshut, Bavaria, where they are fed twice as well as the Germans outside. Chief complaint of the German scientists is the slowness of their mail (six weeks from Germany) and the absence of their families. As soon as possible, the Army promises, families will be brought over. The first batch sailed last week. The Germans see a new hope in that fact. Some day, they have been told, they may have a chance to become U.S. citizens. The fact that the U.S. is bringing their families to them seems to be a kind of guarantee that that is a promise.

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