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The Alsos Mission was an organized effort by a team of British and United States military, scientific, and intelligence personnel to discover enemy scientific developments during World War II. Its chief focus was on the
German nuclear energy project The Uranverein ( en, "Uranium Club") or Uranprojekt ( en, "Uranium Project") was the name given to the project in Germany to research nuclear technology, including nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, during World War II. It went through seve ...
, but it also investigated chemical and
biological weapon A biological agent (also called bio-agent, biological threat agent, biological warfare agent, biological weapon, or bioweapon) is a bacterium, virus, protozoan, parasite, fungus, or toxin that can be used purposefully as a weapon in bioterroris ...
s and the means to deliver them. The Alsos Mission was created after the September 1943
Allied invasion of Italy The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place from 3 September 1943, during the Italian campaign of World War II. The operation was undertaken by General Sir Harold Alexander's 15th Army G ...
as part of the Manhattan Project's mission to coordinate foreign intelligence related to enemy nuclear activity. The team had a twofold assignment: search for personnel, records, material, and sites to evaluate the above programs and prevent their capture by the Soviet Union. Alsos personnel followed close behind the front lines in Italy, France, and Germany, occasionally crossing into enemy-held territory to secure valuable resources before they could be destroyed or scientists escape or fall into rival hands. The Alsos Mission was commanded by
Colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge of ...
Boris Pash Boris Theodore Pash (born ''Boris Fedorovich Pashkovsky'', Russian: Борис Фёдорович Пашковский; 20 June 1900 – 11 May 1995) was a United States Army military intelligence officer. He commanded the Alsos Mission during W ...
, a former Manhattan Project security officer, with
Samuel Goudsmit Samuel Abraham Goudsmit (July 11, 1902 – December 4, 1978) was a Dutch-American physicist famous for jointly proposing the concept of electron spin with George Eugene Uhlenbeck in 1925. Life and career Goudsmit was born in The Hague, Net ...
as chief scientific advisor. It was jointly staffed by the
Office of Naval Intelligence The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) is the military intelligence agency of the United States Navy. Established in 1882 primarily to advance the Navy's modernization efforts, it is the oldest member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and serve ...
(ONI), the
Office of Scientific Research and Development The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May ...
(OSRD), the Manhattan Project, and Army Intelligence (G-2), with field assistance from
combat engineers A combat engineer (also called pioneer or sapper) is a type of soldier who performs military engineering tasks in support of land forces combat operations. Combat engineers perform a variety of military engineering, tunnel and mine warfare tas ...
assigned to specific task forces. Alsos teams were successful in locating and removing a substantial portion of the German research effort's surviving records and equipment. They also took most of the senior German research personnel into custody, including
Otto Hahn Otto Hahn (; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Hahn and Lise Meitner ...
, Max von Laue,
Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematis ...
and
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker (; 28 June 1912 – 28 April 2007) was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under W ...
.


Origin

The Manhattan Project was a research-and-development program, operated during and immediately after World War II. Led by the United States with contributions principally from the United Kingdom and Canada, it aimed to produce an atomic bomb.
Brigadier General Brigadier general or Brigade general is a military rank used in many countries. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries. The rank is usually above a colonel, and below a major general or divisional general. When appointed to ...
Leslie Groves Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves Jr. (17 August 1896 – 13 July 1970) was a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project, a top secret research project ...
of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers became its director in September 1942. The project operated under a tight blanket of security lest its discovery induce
Axis powers The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were N ...
, particularly Germany, to accelerate their own nuclear projects or to undertake covert operations against the project. The Manhattan Project intelligence staff believed that the
Japanese atomic program The Japanese program to develop nuclear weapons was conducted during World War II. Like the German nuclear weapons program, it suffered from an array of problems, and was ultimately unable to progress beyond the laboratory stage before the ato ...
was not far advanced because Japan had little access to uranium ore, the industrial effort required exceeded Japan's capacity, and, according to American physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, who knew the leading Japanese physicists personally, there were too few Japanese qualified to work in the area. Conversely, German scientists had reputations as leaders in the field, and the fear of Germany developing nuclear weapons first was one of the reasons for the establishment of the Manhattan Project. The Chancellor of Germany,
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
, frequently claimed that Germany was developing secret weapons, and it was feared that these might include nuclear weapons. Reports of German nuclear activity were taken seriously. At the instigation of the Manhattan Project, Norwegian saboteurs and Allied bombers attacked heavy-water infrastructure in German-occupied Norway in late 1942 and early 1943. Following the September 1943
Allied invasion of Italy The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place from 3 September 1943, during the Italian campaign of World War II. The operation was undertaken by General Sir Harold Alexander's 15th Army G ...
, Brigadier General Wilhelm D. Styer, Chief of Staff of
Army Service Forces The Army Service Forces was one of the three autonomous components of the United States Army during World War II, the others being the Army Air Forces and Army Ground Forces, created on 9 March 1942. By dividing the Army into three large command ...
, was concerned intelligence activities related to foreign nuclear energy programs were not being properly coordinated. He feared that important items might be overlooked unless those responsible were properly briefed, yet at the same time wished to minimize the number of personnel with access to such secret information. Having the Manhattan Project itself take over responsibility for coordinating these efforts would address both these concerns. Accordingly, he approached Groves on behalf of General George Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the Army, with that recommendation. In response, Groves created the ''Alsos Mission'', a small team jointly staffed by the
Office of Naval Intelligence The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) is the military intelligence agency of the United States Navy. Established in 1882 primarily to advance the Navy's modernization efforts, it is the oldest member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and serve ...
(ONI), the
Office of Scientific Research and Development The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May ...
(OSRD), the Manhattan Project, and Army Intelligence (G-2). Its assignment was to investigate enemy scientific developments, including nuclear weapons research. Groves was not pleased with the codename, the Greek word for " grove", but decided that changing it would only draw unwanted attention. The Chief of Army Intelligence, Major General
George V. Strong George Veazey Strong (March 14, 1880 – January 10, 1946) was a U.S. Army general with the rank of major general, who is most famous for his service as commander of the Military Intelligence Corps during World War II. Early life Strong was b ...
, appointed Lieutenant Colonel
Boris Pash Boris Theodore Pash (born ''Boris Fedorovich Pashkovsky'', Russian: Борис Фёдорович Пашковский; 20 June 1900 – 11 May 1995) was a United States Army military intelligence officer. He commanded the Alsos Mission during W ...
to command the unit. Pash had served as the head of the Counter Intelligence Branch of the
Western Defense Command Western Defense Command (WDC) was established on 17 March 1941 as the command formation of the United States Army responsible for coordinating the defense of the Pacific Coast region of the United States during World War II. A second major resp ...
, where he had investigated suspected Soviet espionage at the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. Pash's command comprised his executive officer Captain Wayne B. Stanard, four
Counter Intelligence Corps The Counter Intelligence Corps (Army CIC) was a World War II and early Cold War intelligence agency within the United States Army consisting of highly trained special agents. Its role was taken over by the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps in 1961 and ...
(CIC) agents, four interpreters, and four scientists: Dr. James B. Fisk from the
Bell Telephone Company The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company – the New Engla ...
, Dr. John R. Johnson from
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teac ...
, Commander Bruce Olds from the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Major William Allis, originally from MIT although then serving on the War Department scientific staff.


Italy

In December 1943, the Alsos Mission reached
Algiers Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques d ...
, where Pash reported to the Chief of Staff at
Allied Force Headquarters Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) was the headquarters that controlled all Allied operational forces in the Mediterranean theatre of World War II from August 1942 until the end of the war in Europe in May 1945. AFHQ was established in the Un ...
(AFHQ), Major General Walter B. Smith, and his British Chief of Intelligence,
Brigadier Brigadier is a military rank, the seniority of which depends on the country. In some countries, it is a senior rank above colonel, equivalent to a brigadier general or commodore, typically commanding a brigade of several thousand soldiers. In ...
Kenneth Strong Major-General Sir Kenneth William Dobson Strong (9 September 1900 – 11 January 1982) was a senior officer of the British Army who served in the Second World War, rising to become Director General of Intelligence. A graduate of the Royal ...
. This was awkward as Pash's instructions were not to give the British information about the Alsos Mission, but it turned out that Strong was already fully aware of it. It was arranged that Pash would deal with Strong's American deputy, Colonel Thomas E. Roderick. The Alsos Mission then moved on to Italy, where it was assigned to Major General Kenyon A. Joyce's Allied Control Commission. Pash met with
Marshal of Italy Marshal of Italy ( it, Maresciallo d'Italia) was a rank in the Royal Italian Army (''Regio Esercito''). Originally created in 1924 by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini for the purpose of honoring Generals Luigi Cadorna and Armando Diaz, the ran ...
Pietro Badoglio, the man who had negotiated Italy's surrender to the Allies, and was now head of the Italian Provisional Military Government, who gave him a letter of introduction addressed to Italian civil and military authorities. Alsos interviewed the Italian Minister for Communications, the Chief of Naval Ordnance, the staff of the Italian Naval Academy, and Italian scientists at the
University of Naples The University of Naples Federico II ( it, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) is a public university in Naples, Italy. Founded in 1224, it is the oldest public non-sectarian university in the world, and is now organized into 26 depar ...
, and examined what captured technical documents could be found. There was little information about developments in northern Italy and Germany. The Alsos Mission was attached to Colonel George Smith's S-Force. Built around a Royal Air Force ground reconnaissance squadron equipped with armored cars, this unit contained American, British, French, and Italian technical specialists of various kinds who would enter Rome on the heels of the advancing Allied forces. The expectation that Rome would soon be captured proved premature, and by March 1944 most of the Alsos Mission had returned to the United States. The Alsos Mission had gathered little of value about nuclear matters, but submitted detailed reports about German rockets and guided missiles. Rome fell on 4 June 1944. When the news came that its fall was imminent, Pash was ordered from London to Italy. He flew back to Italy and entered the city with S-Force on 5 June. Pash took key scientists into custody and arranged for sites targeted by Alsos, including the University of Rome and the ''
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche The National Research Council (Italian: ''Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, CNR'') is the largest research council in Italy. As a public organisation, its remit is to support scientific and technological research. Its headquarters are in Ro ...
'', to be secured. The Alsos Mission to Italy was reconstituted under the command of Pash's deputy, Major Richard C. Ham, and Johnson and Major Robert R. Furman were sent from the United States to join him. They reached Rome on 19 June, and over the next weeks interviewed scientists including Edoardo Amaldi,
Gian-Carlo Wick Gian Carlo Wick (15 October 1909 – 20 April 1992) was an Italian theoretical physicist who made important contributions to quantum field theory. The Wick rotation, Wick contraction, Wick's theorem, and the Wick product are named after him.
, and Francesco Giordani. The picture that the Alsos Mission built up indicated that the German effort was not far advanced.


Western Europe


Britain

In December 1943, Groves sent Furman to Britain to discuss the establishment of a London Liaison Office for the Manhattan Project with the British government, and to confer over coordinating the intelligence effort.
Lieutenant Commander Lieutenant commander (also hyphenated lieutenant-commander and abbreviated Lt Cdr, LtCdr. or LCDR) is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander. The corresponding rank ...
Eric Welsh Eric Welsh (born 1897) was a British chemist and naval intelligence officer during the Second World War. Between 1919 and 1940 he worked for the Bergen branch of the company International Paint Ltd. From 1941 he headed the Norwegian branch of Se ...
, the head of the Norwegian Section of
MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
, was unimpressed with Furman's grasp of the subject matter. Groves selected the head of the Manhattan District's security activities, Captain Horace K. Calvert, as head of the London Liaison Office, with the title of Assistant Military Attaché. Working in cooperation with Welsh and Michael Perrin from
Tube Alloys Tube Alloys was the research and development programme authorised by the United Kingdom, with participation from Canada, to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. Starting before the Manhattan Project in the United States, the Bri ...
, the London Liaison Office consisted of Calvert, Captain George B. Davis, two Women's Army Corps clerks and three CIC agents. The Liaison Office interviewed European refugee scientists and studied German physics journals. It compiled lists of German scientists of interest and possible locations of nuclear research and industrial facilities, and the mining and stockpiling of uranium and thorium ores. Little thorium was available in Germany or German-occupied Europe, and attention soon centered on the mines at Joachimsthal in
Sudetenland The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and sk, Sudety) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the b ...
(the German-annexed part of Czechoslovakia).
Aerial reconnaissance Aerial reconnaissance is reconnaissance for a military or strategic purpose that is conducted using reconnaissance aircraft. The role of reconnaissance can fulfil a variety of requirements including artillery spotting, the collection of imager ...
was carried out periodically, and production was measured by assessing the size of the piles of tailings. Groves warned General
Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
of the possibility that the Germans might disrupt the
Normandy landings The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...
with radioactive poisons, and sent Major Arthur V. Peterson to brief his chief of staff, Lieutenant General Walter B. Smith. Under the codename Operation Peppermint, special equipment was prepared and
Chemical Warfare Service The Chemical Corps is the branch of the United States Army tasked with defending against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. The Chemical Warfare Service was established on 28 June 1918, combining activities that until ...
teams were trained in its use. The British forces made similar preparations for their beaches. The precautions were unnecessary. Meanwhile, the new head of G-2, Major General Clayton L. Bissell, at the urging of Groves and Furman, decided to create a new, even larger Alsos Mission for western Europe in March 1944. Pash assumed command of the new unit upon its official creation by the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, on 4 April. The military staff for the new mission were selected by Bissell on Pash's advice. Lieutenant Colonel George R. Eckman became the deputy commander. Captain Henry A. Schade was appointed as the head of the naval contingent. Groves and
Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all wartim ...
, the head of OSRD, selected the scientific staff, and appointed
Samuel Goudsmit Samuel Abraham Goudsmit (July 11, 1902 – December 4, 1978) was a Dutch-American physicist famous for jointly proposing the concept of electron spin with George Eugene Uhlenbeck in 1925. Life and career Goudsmit was born in The Hague, Net ...
, a University of Michigan physicist with a good command of several western European languages, as its head. Goudsmit had not been working on the Manhattan Project, and therefore could not reveal any of its secrets if captured. The British considered creating their own rival mission, but in the end agreed to participate as a junior partner. Three Dutch and one Norwegian officer also served with the Alsos Mission. By the end of August it had seven officers and 33 scientists.


France

On 5 August, Pash received a secret message from Washington, D.C., reporting that the French physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie had been sighted at his holiday home at L'Arcouest in
Brittany Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period o ...
. Joliot-Curie was at the top of Alsos's wanted list, so Pash and CIC Special Agent Gerry Beatson set out to investigate in the wake of the advancing
U.S. Third Army The United States Army Central, formerly the Third United States Army, commonly referred to as the Third Army and as ARCENT, is a military formation of the United States Army which saw service in World War I and World War II, in the 1991 Gulf Wa ...
. On 11 August they reached the homes of Joliot-Curie, Francis Perrin, and Pierre Auger in the L'Arcouest area. Pash and Beatson got there the morning of 17 August with Task Force A, and they were directed to Joliot-Curie's house, which had been emptied by the Germans. They searched the University of Rennes and found some documents there on 21 August. The rest of the advance party of the Alsos Mission moved to Normandy in August 1944, where it joined T-Force, a similar formation to S-Force, at
Rambouillet Rambouillet (, , ) is a subprefecture of the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region of France. It is located beyond the outskirts of Paris, southwest of its centre. In 2018, the commune had a population of 26,933. Rambouillet li ...
, where it was preparing for the liberation of Paris. An Alsos Mission team including Pash and Calvert reached Joliot-Curie's house in the Paris suburbs on 24 August to find that he was not there, but at his laboratory at the
Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment ('' grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris ...
. The next day they reached the
Porte d'Orléans The Porte d'Orléans is one of 17 ''portes'' ( city gates of Paris) in the Thiers wall, a defensive wall constructed in the mid-nineteenth century to protect Paris. The wall was demolished after the First World War, creating an open space that wa ...
where they encountered troops of the French '' 2e Division Blindée'', who were engaged in liberating the city, and came under small arms fire from the German defenders. The Alsos Mission replied with their M1 carbines and
Thompson submachine gun The Thompson submachine gun (also known as the "Tommy Gun", "Chicago Typewriter", "Chicago Piano", “Trench Sweeper” or "Trench Broom") is a blowback-operated, air-cooled, magazine-fed selective-fire submachine gun, invented by United Sta ...
s as they made their way through the back streets to the college, where they found Joliot-Curie in his office. Goudsmit interviewed Joliot-Curie in Paris on 27 August. Accompanied by Calvert, Joliot-Curie was flown to London where Perrin and Goudsmit interviewed him about the activities of German scientists. Joliot-Curie recalled visits to the College, which had a
cyclotron A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest O. Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. Lawrence, Ernest O. ''Method and apparatus for the acceleration of ions'', filed: Jan ...
, by German scientists including
Erich Schumann Erich Schumann (5 January 1898 – 25 April 1985) was a German physicist who specialized in acoustics and explosives, and had a penchant for music. He was a general officer in the army and a professor at the University of Berlin and the Technic ...
, who had initiated the German nuclear project, and controlled it until it had been handed over to the ''
Reichsforschungsrat The Reichsforschungsrat was created in Germany in 1936 under the Education Ministry for the purpose of centralized planning of all basic and applied research, with the exception of aeronautical research. It was reorganized in 1942 and placed under t ...
'' (National Research Council) in 1942; by
Abraham Esau Robert Abraham Esau (7 June 1884 – 12 May 1955) was a German physicist. After receipt of his doctorate from the University of Berlin, Esau worked at Telefunken, where he pioneered very high frequency (VHF) waves used in radar, radio, and tele ...
, who had been in charge of nuclear physics under the ''Reichsforschungsrat''; and by
Walter Gerlach Walther Gerlach (1 August 1889 – 10 August 1979) was a German physicist who co-discovered, through laboratory experiment, spin quantization in a magnetic field, the Stern–Gerlach effect. The experiment was conceived by Otto Stern in 1921 an ...
, who had replaced him in January 1944. Other German physicists who had used the facilities included
Kurt Diebner Kurt Diebner (13 May 1905 – 13 July 1964) was a German nuclear physicist who is well known for directing and administrating the German nuclear energy project, a secretive program aiming to build nuclear weapons for Nazi Germany during World War ...
, Walther Bothe, and Erich Bagge, all of whom were known to be associated with the German nuclear project. Meanwhile, T-Force had moved into the Petit Palais. The main body of the Alsos Mission soon followed, and the Mission opened an office at the
Place de l'Opéra The Place de l'Opéra is a square in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, at the junction of the Boulevard des Italiens, Boulevard des Capucines, Avenue de l'Opéra, , , Rue de la Paix and . It was built at the same time as the Opéra Garnier (desig ...
. On 5 September, word was received that the British
21st Army Group The 21st Army Group was a British headquarters formation formed during the Second World War. It controlled two field armies and other supporting units, consisting primarily of the British Second Army and the First Canadian Army. Established in ...
was about to enter
Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
. There were two important Alsos Mission objectives in Belgium: the corporate headquarters of
Union Minière du Haut Katanga Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''U ...
, the world's largest supplier of uranium ore, in
Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,
, and its uranium processing plant in Olen. A six-man Alsos Mission team set out to secure them, led by Pash and the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, at ETOUSA, Colonel G. Bryan Conrad. On reaching Brussels, they made contact with Lieutenant Colonel David Strangeways, the commander of R Force, who provided them with an escort of Royal Air Force armored vehicles. They entered Antwerp on 7 September and found the office of Union Minière. They discovered that over 1,000 tons of refined uranium had been sent to Germany, but about 150 tons still remained at Olen. They set out for Olen, where they located 68 tons, but another 80 tons were missing, having been shipped to France in 1940 ahead of the German invasion of Belgium. The capture of Eindhoven by the
U.S. 101st Airborne Division The 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) ("Screaming Eagles") is a light infantry division of the United States Army that specializes in air assault operations. It can plan, coordinate, and execute multiple battalion-size air assault operati ...
allowed early access to another high priority target, the Philips plant there. Brigadier
Edgar Williams Brigadier Sir Edgar Trevor Williams (20 November 1912 – 26 June 1995) was a British historian and Army military intelligence officer who played a significant role in the Second Battle of El Alamein in World War II. He was one of the few of ...
, the 21st Army Group's Chief of Intelligence, facilitated the Alsos Mission's detour to Eindhoven, where it was able to interview Dutch scientists. Williams also furnished a detachment of
Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the '' Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is head ...
to transport and move the uranium from Olen. Groves had it shipped to England, and, ultimately, to the United States. The Alsos Mission now attempted to recover the shipment that had been sent to France. Documentation was discovered that said that part of it had been sent to Toulouse. An Alsos Mission team under Pash's command reached Toulouse on 1 October and inspected a French Army arsenal. They used a
Geiger counter A Geiger counter (also known as a Geiger–Müller counter) is an electronic instrument used for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation. It is widely used in applications such as radiation dosimetry, radiological protection, experimental p ...
to find barrels containing 31 tons of the uranium from Belgium. Conrad persuaded Major General Frank S. Ross to release the U.S. 3342nd Quartermaster Truck Company from the
Red Ball Express The Red Ball Express was a famed truck convoy system that supplied Allied forces moving quickly through Europe after breaking out from the D-Day beaches in Normandy in 1944. To expedite cargo shipment to the front, trucks emblazoned with red ...
to retrieve the shipment. The barrels were collected and transported to Marseille, where they were loaded on a ship bound for the United States. During the loading process a barrel fell into the water and had to be retrieved by a Navy diver. In Marseilles, the Alsos Mission detachment also met up with the detachment that had been sent to Italy, which now rejoined them. The remaining 49 tons of the original shipment to France were never found. Information gathered in Rennes, Paris, and Eindhoven pointed to Strasbourg as a place of particular interest. Physicists
Rudolf Fleischmann Rudolf Fleischmann (1 May 1903 – 3 February 2002) was a German experimental nuclear physicist from Erlangen, Bavaria. He worked for Walther Bothe at the Physics Institute of the University of Heidelberg and then at the Institute for Physic ...
and
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker (; 28 June 1912 – 28 April 2007) was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under W ...
were known to be working at the University of Strasbourg, as was , an expert on viruses whose work was of great concern to the Alsos Mission's
Biological Warfare Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi with the intent to kill, harm or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. B ...
section. The Naval section was interested in the torpedo research being carried out there, and jet engine development was being undertaken at Strasbourg's Junkers plant. On 22 November, the U.S. Sixth Army Group notified the Alsos Mission that the capture of Strasbourg was imminent, and it should join T-Force in Saarburg, where it was preparing to enter the city. The Alsos Mission joined T-Force in Strasbourg on 25 November. The German nuclear laboratory was discovered on the grounds of the Strasbourg Hospital, where the physicists attempted to pass themselves off as medics. Fleischmann was taken into custody, but Weizsäcker and Haagen had fled the city. Documents discovered in Weizsäcker's office, Fleischmann's laboratory and the Strasbourg Hospital pointed to nuclear activities taking place at Stadtilm, Haigerloch,
Hechingen Hechingen ( Swabian: ''Hächenga'') is a town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated about south of the state capital of Stuttgart and north of Lake Constance and the Swiss border. Geography The town lies at the foot of t ...
, and Tailfingen. After establishing its headquarters in Haagen's office Alsos staff uncovered documents concerning secret medical experiments at
Natzweiler Natzwiller () is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Grand Est in northeastern France. History Built in spring 1941 on the territory of the commune, Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp opened for prisoners in May 1941. It was the only N ...
concentration camp. These indicated the Germans had been unable to develop a practical process for uranium enrichment. For the first time the Alsos Mission was able to categorically report that the Germans did not have nuclear weapons, and would not have them for some time.


Germany

When the German
Operation Nordwind Operation Northwind (german: Unternehmen Nordwind) was the last major German offensive of World War II on the Western Front. Northwind was launched to support the German Ardennes offensive campaign in the Battle of the Bulge, which by Decemb ...
offensive threatened Strasbourg, Pash ordered all captured documents to be removed. Papers indicating the nature of the Alsos Mission were removed or destroyed. Although Strasbourg was not abandoned by the Allies, and ultimately did not fall, the Alsos Mission departed the city on 8 January 1945. Pash even ordered an evacuation plan to be prepared for the Alsos Mission's main headquarters in Paris. The embarrassing series of intelligence failures that had led up to the
Battle of the Bulge The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. The battle lasted from 16 December 1944 to 28 January 1945, towards the end of the war ...
cast doubts on the Alsos Mission's own findings. A four-man team under Eckman was sent to investigate a suspiciously devastating
V-2 The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was develope ...
explosion near Antwerp, and Fred Wardenburg had to confirm that it was not a small nuclear explosion. Rumors that Germany had an atomic bomb persisted as late as March 1945. A new forward headquarters, Alsos Forward North (AFwdN), was opened at
Aachen Aachen ( ; ; Aachen dialect: ''Oche'' ; French and traditional English: Aix-la-Chapelle; or ''Aquisgranum''; nl, Aken ; Polish: Akwizgran) is, with around 249,000 inhabitants, the 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the 28th- ...
, and on 8 February the Alsos Mission reopened its forward headquarters in Strasbourg as Alsos Forward South (AFwdS). In March, the U.S. Twelfth Army Group launched Operation Lumberjack, an offensive to clear the Germans west of the Rhine. Pash, who was promoted to
colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge of ...
on 6 March, led an Alsos Mission detachment into Cologne on 7 March, but little additional information was found. The interrogation of German prisoners indicated that uranium and thorium were being processed in Germany, mostly at the ''
Auergesellschaft The industrial firm ''Auergesellschaft'' was founded in 1892 with headquarters in Berlin. Up to the end of World War II, ''Auergesellschaft'' had manufacturing and research activities in the areas of gas mantles, luminescence, rare earths, radioac ...
'' plant at Oranienburg, so Groves arranged for the plant to be bombed on 15 March 1945. Some 612
B-17 Flying Fortress The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Relatively fast and high-flying for a bomber of its era, the B-17 was used primarily in the European Thea ...
es of the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped 1,500 tons of high explosive and 178 tons of incendiary bombs on the plant. On 30 March, the Alsos Mission reached Heidelberg, where important scientists were captured including Walther Bothe,
Richard Kuhn Richard Johann Kuhn (; 3 December 1900 – 1 August 1967) was an Austrian-German biochemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1938 "for his work on carotenoids and vitamins". Biography Early life Kuhn was born in Vienna, Austr ...
, Philipp Lenard, and Wolfgang Gertner. Their interrogation revealed that
Otto Hahn Otto Hahn (; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Hahn and Lise Meitner ...
was at his laboratory in Tailfingen, while
Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematis ...
and Max von Laue were at Heisenberg's laboratory in Hechingen, and the experimental natural uranium reactor that Heisenberg's team had built in Berlin had been moved to Haigerloch. Henceforth, the main focus of the Alsos Mission was on these nuclear facilities in the
Württemberg Württemberg ( ; ) is a historical German territory roughly corresponding to the cultural and linguistic region of Swabia. The main town of the region is Stuttgart. Together with Baden and Hohenzollern, two other historical territories, Württ ...
area. As the Allied armies advanced into Germany in April 1945, Alsos Mission teams searched Stadtilm, where they found documentation concerning the German nuclear program, components of a nuclear reactor, and eight tons of uranium oxide. Scientists captured at Göttingen and
Katlenburg-Lindau Katlenburg-Lindau ( Eastphalian: ''Katelnborg-Lindau'') is a municipality in the Landkreis (district) of Northeim in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approximately 10 km southeast of Northeim, and 20 km northeast of Göttingen. Kat ...
included Werner Osenberg, the chief of the planning board of the ''Reichsforschungsrat'', and
Fritz Houtermans Friedrich Georg "Fritz" Houtermans (January 22, 1903 – March 1, 1966) was a Dutch-Austrian- German atomic and nuclear physicist and Communist born in Zoppot near Danzig, West Prussia to a Dutch father, who was a wealthy banker. He was brought u ...
, who provided information about the Soviet atomic bomb project. At
Celle Celle () is a town and capital of the district of Celle, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The town is situated on the banks of the river Aller, a tributary of the Weser, and has a population of about 71,000. Celle is the southern gateway to the Lüne ...
, the Alsos Mission uncovered an experimental
centrifuge A centrifuge is a device that uses centrifugal force to separate various components of a fluid. This is achieved by spinning the fluid at high speed within a container, thereby separating fluids of different densities (e.g. cream from milk) or l ...
for separating uranium isotopes, the result of work undertaken at the University of Hamburg by a team under
Paul Harteck Paul Karl Maria Harteck (20 July 190222 January 1985) was an Austrian physical chemist. In 1945 under Operation Epsilon in "the big sweep" throughout Germany, Harteck was arrested by the allied British and American Armed Forces for suspicion o ...
. The problem with the targets in the Württemberg area was that they not only lay in the path of the French First Army's advance, but were also in the occupation zone allocated to France. Groves attempted to get the occupation boundaries changed, but the State Department wanted to know why first, and Groves refused to provide this information. Groves, Marshall, and Stimson then decided that the area would have to be secured by American troops that would carry off what they could and destroy everything else. Pash was sent to ask General
Jacob Devers Jacob Loucks Devers (; 8 September 1887 – 15 October 1979) was a general in the United States Army who commanded the 6th Army Group in the European Theater during World War II. He was involved in the development and adoption of numerous ...
, the commander of the U.S. Sixth Army Group, if the zones of the French First Army and the
U.S. Seventh Army The Seventh Army was a United States army created during World War II that evolved into the United States Army Europe (USAREUR) during the 1950s and 1960s. It served in North Africa and Italy in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations and Fra ...
could be swapped around. He was informed that the matter would have to be taken up with Eisenhower. Groves dispatched Lieutenant Colonel John Lansdale, Jr., to Europe, where he participated in a meeting with Lieutenant General Bedell Smith and Major General Harold Bull of SHAEF; Major General Elbridge Chapman, the commander of the U.S. 13th Airborne Division; Pash, Furman, and Goudsmit of Alsos; and Brigadier General Reuben E. Jenkins from the Sixth Army Group. The plan, codenamed Operation Effective, called for the 13th Airborne Division to occupy the area to prevent its capture by the French, and seize an airfield that could be used to fly in an Alsos Mission team, and later to fly it out, along with captured German scientists. Operation Effective was scheduled for 22 April. Meanwhile, Devers took steps to delay the French advance. The Alsos Mission had learned that the uranium ores that had been taken from Belgium in 1944 had been shipped to the '' Wirtschaftliche Forschungsgesellschaft'' (WiFO) plant in
Staßfurt Staßfurt (Stassfurt) () is a town in the Salzlandkreis district, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is situated on both sides of the river Bode, approximately northeast of Aschersleben, and south of Magdeburg. Pop. (2005) 23,538. It was one of th ...
. The 83rd Infantry Division captured this on 15 April. As it was in the occupation zone allocated to the Soviet Union at the
Yalta Conference The Yalta Conference (codenamed Argonaut), also known as the Crimea Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union to discuss the pos ...
, the Alsos Mission, led by Pash and accompanied by Lansdale, Perrin and Air Commodore Sir Charles Hambro, arrived on 17 April to remove anything of interest. Over the following ten days, 260 truckloads of uranium ore, sodium uranate and ferrouranium weighing about 1,000 tons, were taken away by an African-American truck company. The uranium was taken to Hildesheim and most of it was flown to the United Kingdom by the Royal Air Force; the rest had to be moved to Antwerp by train and loaded onto a ship to England. On 20 April, the French First Army captured an intact bridge over the Neckar River at
Horb Horb am Neckar is a town in the southwest of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river, between Offenburg to the west (about away) and Tübingen to the east (about away). It has around 25,000 inhabitants, of wh ...
and established a bridgehead. It was decided to send in a force on the ground instead of Operation Effective, which was cancelled on 19 April. This time, instead of following or accompanying the front-line troops, the Alsos Mission would operate behind enemy lines. The Alsos Mission had taken delivery of two armored cars, four jeeps with machine gun mounts, and two
.50 caliber machine gun The M2 machine gun or Browning .50 caliber machine gun (informally, "Ma Deuce") is a heavy machine gun that was designed towards the end of World War I by John Browning. Its design is similar to Browning's earlier M1919 Browning machine gun, w ...
s. The other two jeeps would carry captured German machine guns. They would be accompanied by three unarmed jeeps. For the operation, codenamed
Operation Big Operation Big was an operation of the Alsos Mission, the Allied seizure of facilities, materiel, and personnel related to the German nuclear weapon project during World War II. It was tasked with sweeping several targeted towns in the area of sout ...
, Pash would command a special force called Task Force A, built around his Alsos Mission team and the U.S. 1269th Engineer Combat Battalion commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Wilbur White, less its Company B. Sir Charles Hambro decided to accompany the Alsos Mission with a British group that included Michael Perrin, David Gattiker, Eric Welsh, and Rupert Cecil. Lansdale accompanied Task Force A as Groves' representative, and Brigadier General Eugene L. Harrison, the G-2 from the Sixth Army Group, as Devers' representative. The Alsos Mission set out on 20 April and rendezvoused with the 1269th Engineer Combat Battalion at
Freudenstadt Freudenstadt ( Swabian: ''Fraidestadt'') is a town in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. It is capital of the district Freudenstadt. The closest population centres are Offenburg to the west (approx. 36 km away) and Tübingen to the e ...
. The intact bridge over the Neckar River at Horb was crossed and Haigerloch was occupied without opposition on 22 April. The main body of Task Force A arrived on 23 April. In a laboratory in a cellar they found a German experimental nuclear reactor shaped like a cylinder and made of graphite blocks, but the uranium and heavy water were missing. The scientists immediately began dismantling it. Pash left Hambro in charge, while he led troops of Task Force A to
Bisingen Bisingen is a municipality in the Zollernalbkreis district of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. History Bisingen is one of the oldest settlements of the area, verified by several findings of the Neolithic Age, the Bronze Age, the early Iron Age and ...
, and then on to Hechingen, where 25 scientists were captured, including Weizsäcker, Laue, Karl Wirtz, Horst Korsching and Erich Bagge. At Tailfingen they took Otto Hahn and nine members of his staff into custody. At Haigerloch, a sealed drum of documents was retrieved from a cesspool, and three drums of heavy water and 1.5 tons of uranium ingots were found buried in a field. The uranium and heavy water were loaded onto trucks. The apertures in the cellar were blown up with minor explosions to prevent their capture by the French. Werner Heisenberg, "Germany's Oppenheimer" according to Gregg Herken, remained at large, having left Hechingen on 19 April. On 1 May, Pash set out in pursuit of Heisenberg with ten men in the two armored cars and two jeeps. They teamed up with the 36th Reconnaissance Troop of the
U.S. 36th Infantry Division The 36th Infantry Division ("Arrowhead"), also known as the "Panther Division", "Lone Star Division",Urfeld on 2 May, where Pash found Heisenberg at his home. The Americans became involved in firefights with German troops attempting to enter the town, and the 36th Reconnaissance Troop had to head off on another mission, leaving Pash with just seven men. Fortunately, the German force, which numbered about 700, offered to surrender. Pash returned on 3 May with the 3rd Battalion, 142nd Infantry, which took them prisoner, while Pash and his Alsos Mission team took Heisenberg into custody. By VE day, the Alsos Mission had a strength of 114 men and women. It was officially disbanded on 15 October 1945.


Operation Epsilon

German scientists that had been captured by the Alsos Mission were held in several camps, separate from other prisoners of war. After VE Day, SHAEF decided to concentrate them in an internment camp at
Kransberg Castle Kransberg Castle is situated on a steep rock near Kransberg (incorporated into Usingen in 1971), a village with about 800 inhabitants in the Taunus mountains in the German state of Hesse. The medieval building, which acquired its current appeara ...
, codenamed "Dustbin", as part of Operation Epsilon. At Welsh's instigation, ten of the nuclear physicists, Bagge, Diebner, Gerlach, Hahn, Harteck, Heisenberg, Korsching, von Laue, von Weizsäcker and Wirtz, were brought to England. They were accommodated between 3 July 1945 and 3 January 1946 at Farm Hall, a house in Godmanchester, near
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge becam ...
, that had been used by MI6 and SOE agents preparing to be flown into occupied Europe from nearby RAF Tempsford. The premises were thoroughly bugged to determine how close the German nuclear project had been to constructing an atomic bomb by listening in to their conversations., and transcripts of their conversations were sent to Groves. The most interesting conversations occurred after they received the news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when they struggled to comprehend how the Allies had done what they could not.


Japan

Plans for the invasion of Japan incorporated an Alsos Mission. Japanese
fire balloon An incendiary balloon (or balloon bomb) is a balloon inflated with a lighter-than-air gas such as hot air, hydrogen, or helium, that has a bomb, incendiary device, or Molotov cocktail attached. The balloon is carried by the prevailing winds to ...
attacks on the United States had aroused fears that the technique might be used in combination with biological agents, which the Japanese Unit 731 was known to be experimenting with. In March 1945, the physicist and seismologist L. Don Leet was appointed as head of the scientific section of the Alsos Mission to Japan. Leet had previously worked with the Manhattan Project on the
Trinity nuclear test Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert abo ...
. Plans were drawn up to prepare and equip a T-Force along the lines of the one in Europe, but made up of personnel already in the Pacific. The mission differed from its European counterpart in that it was solely American and consisted of only one intelligence agency. Responsibility for nuclear matters was subsequently handled by a separate Manhattan Project Intelligence Group organized by Groves. Leet's group reached Manila in July 1945, where they met with the intelligence staff of General of the Army
Douglas MacArthur Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American military leader who served as General of the Army for the United States, as well as a field marshal to the Philippine Army. He had served with distinction in World War I, was ...
's Army Forces, Pacific. Following the surrender of Japan the mission traveled to Japan and visited various research establishments including Tokyo Imperial University,
Waseda University , mottoeng = Independence of scholarship , established = 21 October 1882 , type = Private , endowment = , president = Aiji Tanaka , city = Shinjuku , state = Tokyo , country = Japan , students = 47,959 , undergrad = 39,382 , postgrad ...
, Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, the Institute for Materials Research, Tokyo Shibaura Denki ( Toshiba), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the National Research Council, and the Board of Technology. The mission, which included
Karl Compton Karl Taylor Compton (September 14, 1887 – June 22, 1954) was a prominent American physicist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1930 to 1948. The early years (1887–1912) Karl Taylor Compton was born in ...
, interviewed over 300 Japanese scientists and produced reports on Japanese research into radar, rockets, and other developments, including chemical and biological warfare. The Manhattan Project Intelligence Group, under the command of
Philip Morrison Philip Morrison (November 7, 1915 – April 22, 2005) was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, and for his later work in quantum phys ...
, arrived in Japan in September 1945 and examined Japan's wartime nuclear weapons program. The group concluded that lack of uranium ore and low priority had doomed the Japanese effort. They reported that, contrary to American belief, Japan's nuclear physicists were competent.


Legacy

After seeing the German project at Haigerloch, Goudsmit wrote that: In the end, the Alsos Mission contributed little to the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany, because the German nuclear and biological weapons programs that it had been formed to investigate turned out to be smaller and less threatening than had been feared. In the field of nuclear weapons development at least, the underfunded and disorganized German program lagged far behind the Allies' own efforts. In its appropriation of the accomplishments of European science, the Alsos Mission played a small part in the wartime and subsequent scientific and technological developments that characterized and transformed the postwar world.


See also

* Norwegian heavy water sabotage *
Operation Paperclip Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World Wa ...
*
Russian Alsos The Soviet Alsos or Russian Alsos is the western codename for an operation that took place during 19451946 in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, in order to exploit German atomic related facilities, intellectual materials, material resourc ...


Notes


References

* * * * * * * * * * * * * {{Portal bar, Germany, Nuclear technology, World War II Battles and operations of World War II involving Norway Espionage projects Intelligence of World War II Intelligence operations History of the Manhattan Project Nuclear program of Nazi Germany Office of Naval Intelligence World War II operations and battles of Europe