LARRY ROMANOFF -- The Greatest Intellectual Property Theft in History: Operation Paperclip

The Greatest Intellectual Property Theft in History: Operation Paperclip

The plunder of Germany's scientific and industrial knowledge after World War Two.

By Larry Romanoff

Global Research, November 16, 2019

The initial purpose of what began as Operation Overcast was to plunder Germany of all its scientific and industrial knowledge after World War Two. The plan was to steal documents and working samples, but the depth and breadth of German industrial knowledge proved much too complex to be usefully understood from a simple examination of documents. In spite of the immense trove of scientific, technical, and industrial knowledge confiscated from Germany, the US failed to benefit due to a lack of know-how. It became quickly apparent that the process would require an extensive debriefing of German scientists and technicians to obtain adequate working knowledge of German industrial and scientific theory and processes.

This realisation led to the immediate creation of vast internment camps containing all the scientists and technicians the Americans could take into custody where these people could be debriefed over time. When it became apparent that both plundering and debriefing would be insufficient, Operation Overcast became Operation Paperclip which involved the forcible transfer of countless thousands of these same individuals to the US.

Operation Overcast has been described as being “as massive a logistical enterprise as that of any major war campaign, involving enormous pre-planning and coordination that included literally dozens of government agencies and departments, ancillary groups like the Library of Congress, hundreds of US corporations and countless thousands of individuals.” It has been downplayed as a simple post-war immigration of German scientists and military personnel to the US, but it extended far beyond this. As in virtually every other area, American history has been revised, deleted, sanitised and Photoshopped to prevent the truth from escaping into the world at large.

Germany had been thoroughly looted after the WWI, including the confiscation of nearly all foreign assets belonging to German companies, (1) and plans were well under way to repeat the process long before the Second War ended. This time, instead of simply seizing German assets and stealing their patents throughout the world, the Americans concocted a grand plan with an almost savage determination to plunder the entire nation of Germany itself, to the maximum extent possible. This was Operation Overcast, the planning for which was completed at least two years before the war ended.