The biggest scavenger hunt in history
Sagittarius
06-27-2016, 12:57 PM
Occupied Germany 1945
On March 11, 1942, three months after Adolph Hitler declared war on the U.S.A., President Roosevelt issued an Executive Order creating the Office of the Alien Property Custodian. They were directed to seize all enemy-owned business enterprises, ships, trademarks, copyrights, and patents in our nation.
By 1944, the Alien Property Custodian held title to about 46,000 German patents, patent applications, and unpatented inventions. The Custodian became the largest single patent holder in the United States. It didn't stop there.
Well before the Nazi armies surrendered in May, 1945, American and British authorities organized a three-phase military/industrial "scavenger hunt" to seize all Nazi scientific and industrial technology -- physical and intellectual -- within Germany.
The hunt was seperate from the postwar reparations agreement negotiated with Russia at Yalta in February. 1945.
The first phase was a super-empowered military field force distributed among the U.S. and British armies. Known as the 6800 T Force (T for Target), they worked with "black lists" of specified sites to be isolated and protected during and after combat. The Alien Property Custodian was kept informed during this.
The second phase brought in the scavengers, civilian investigators selected from U.S. and British industries. At the start, 117 specialists were "invited" from 17 U.S. industries by the Technical Industrial Intelligence Committee (TIIC) of the Alien Property Custodian Office. President Truman expanded those to 500 teams including some 1,500 specialists, all empowered to find and seize anything they wished. To put it bluntly, we were officially looting.
(In 1947, the Director of the U.S. Commerce Department's Office of Technical Services testified before Congress that "the fundamental justification of this activity is that we won the war and the Germans did not.")
The third phase involved the Field Information Agency - Technical (FIAT), a combined military/civilian operation which coordinated and expedited the removal and shipping of the seized material to the U.S. and Britain.
Some 3,000 planned target sites were examined by the T Force, and another 2,000 were uncovered as well. T Force also had the authority to detain "scientific and industrial personalities" -- both military and civilian -- for interrogation. That's a subject for a future vignette.
The French and Russian Occupation Zones had their own scavenger hunts. Russian hunters focused on factories and machinery, but the Americans and British were especially interested in confiscating intellectual properties (i.e., blueprints, formulae, test and research results, trademarks, etc. -- and particularly patents. The military/industrial complex was positively drooling in anticipation.
The scavenger hunt uncovered thousands of revolutionary inventions and scientific advances, astonishing American and British technology experts across the board. German inventors and researchers lost out on royalties, big time. The value of these "intellectual reparations" to the U.S./British economies was estimated at almost $10 billion.
The I.G. Farben patents alone reportedly advanced the U.S. chemical industry by ten years.
Aside from the jaw-dropping weapons (jet turbine aircraft, huge multi-stage rockets, and submarines), the scavengers brought back magnetic tape recording systems, electron microscopes, infra-red rifle scopes, supersonic wind tunnels, new plastics, biological discoveries, various optical systems, and literally tons of engineering and scientific documents.
In May, 1945, President Harry Truman established the policy of publishing all these and licensing them, via the Alien Property Custodian Office, to U.S. citizens on a royalty-free, non-exclusuve basis for the life of the patent.
This was deemed the best way to ensure that the potential scientific and social benefits would be fairly exploited and distributed for the American public. Our industrial companies didn't do so bad either.
Nazi nuclear reactor prototype being disassembled in April, 1945
![[Image: t1-595829-april_1945_near_stuttgart.jpg]](http://static.uglyhedgehog.com/upload/2016/6/26/t1-595829-april_1945_near_stuttgart.jpg)
Höchst Works of I.G. Farben, a source of chemical secrets in 1945
![[Image: t1-600677-hst_i.g._farben_works_1948.jpg]](http://static.uglyhedgehog.com/upload/2016/6/26/t1-600677-hst_i.g._farben_works_1948.jpg)
Diesel engine shop of M.A.N. in Augsburg stripped to the bare walls by 1946
![[Image: 609134-_m.a.n._stripped_bare_1946.jpg]](http://static.uglyhedgehog.com/upload/2016/6/26/609134-_m.a.n._stripped_bare_1946.jpg)
On March 11, 1942, three months after Adolph Hitler declared war on the U.S.A., President Roosevelt issued an Executive Order creating the Office of the Alien Property Custodian. They were directed to seize all enemy-owned business enterprises, ships, trademarks, copyrights, and patents in our nation.
By 1944, the Alien Property Custodian held title to about 46,000 German patents, patent applications, and unpatented inventions. The Custodian became the largest single patent holder in the United States. It didn't stop there.
Well before the Nazi armies surrendered in May, 1945, American and British authorities organized a three-phase military/industrial "scavenger hunt" to seize all Nazi scientific and industrial technology -- physical and intellectual -- within Germany.
The hunt was seperate from the postwar reparations agreement negotiated with Russia at Yalta in February. 1945.
The first phase was a super-empowered military field force distributed among the U.S. and British armies. Known as the 6800 T Force (T for Target), they worked with "black lists" of specified sites to be isolated and protected during and after combat. The Alien Property Custodian was kept informed during this.
The second phase brought in the scavengers, civilian investigators selected from U.S. and British industries. At the start, 117 specialists were "invited" from 17 U.S. industries by the Technical Industrial Intelligence Committee (TIIC) of the Alien Property Custodian Office. President Truman expanded those to 500 teams including some 1,500 specialists, all empowered to find and seize anything they wished. To put it bluntly, we were officially looting.
(In 1947, the Director of the U.S. Commerce Department's Office of Technical Services testified before Congress that "the fundamental justification of this activity is that we won the war and the Germans did not.")
The third phase involved the Field Information Agency - Technical (FIAT), a combined military/civilian operation which coordinated and expedited the removal and shipping of the seized material to the U.S. and Britain.
Some 3,000 planned target sites were examined by the T Force, and another 2,000 were uncovered as well. T Force also had the authority to detain "scientific and industrial personalities" -- both military and civilian -- for interrogation. That's a subject for a future vignette.
The French and Russian Occupation Zones had their own scavenger hunts. Russian hunters focused on factories and machinery, but the Americans and British were especially interested in confiscating intellectual properties (i.e., blueprints, formulae, test and research results, trademarks, etc. -- and particularly patents. The military/industrial complex was positively drooling in anticipation.
The scavenger hunt uncovered thousands of revolutionary inventions and scientific advances, astonishing American and British technology experts across the board. German inventors and researchers lost out on royalties, big time. The value of these "intellectual reparations" to the U.S./British economies was estimated at almost $10 billion.
The I.G. Farben patents alone reportedly advanced the U.S. chemical industry by ten years.
Aside from the jaw-dropping weapons (jet turbine aircraft, huge multi-stage rockets, and submarines), the scavengers brought back magnetic tape recording systems, electron microscopes, infra-red rifle scopes, supersonic wind tunnels, new plastics, biological discoveries, various optical systems, and literally tons of engineering and scientific documents.
In May, 1945, President Harry Truman established the policy of publishing all these and licensing them, via the Alien Property Custodian Office, to U.S. citizens on a royalty-free, non-exclusuve basis for the life of the patent.
This was deemed the best way to ensure that the potential scientific and social benefits would be fairly exploited and distributed for the American public. Our industrial companies didn't do so bad either.
Nazi nuclear reactor prototype being disassembled in April, 1945
Höchst Works of I.G. Farben, a source of chemical secrets in 1945
Diesel engine shop of M.A.N. in Augsburg stripped to the bare walls by 1946
"You can be young without money but you can't be old without money"
Maggie the Cat from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." by Tennessee Williams
Maggie the Cat from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." by Tennessee Williams
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