As a young civil servant, Julia Draper was the only civilian and the only woman attached to T-Force, where she would help to track down German scientists. Now aged 86, she recalls at her home in London that Bios investigators were as much concerned with capturing the intellectual property of British industry's German rivals as they were with learning more about the Nazis' military secrets.
"Many of the requests came from the War Office, but there were also requests from businesses like ICI and the other major industrial firms," she says. "Some of these scientists were remarkably important people in their field, and there was a lot we could learn from them."
She recalls scientists being detained and sent to Britain against their will. "There were things of that nature. T-Force was a very, very strange organisation to be in."
Some of the Germans would undoubtedly have volunteered to help, but others were clearly compelled. The files show some were imprisoned in an Anglo-American internment camp near Frankfurt, while many were taken to internment camps in Britain. After interrogation, which could last months, they were either returned to Germany or put to work with government ministries or British firms.
It is unclear exactly how many men fell prey to this programme. In July 1946 military government officials told the Foreign Office they estimated there were 1,500 scientists who should forcibly be evacuated, 500 of them in the British zone. "The proposed long-term policy is ... to remove as soon as possible from Germany, whether they are willing to go or not." Minutes of a Bios meeting three months later quote one official as saying the organisation could not deal with more than 600. The civil servant who complained of the "kidnappings" and "Gestapo methods" wrote that he knew of seven scientists from one IG Farben chemical plant who had been abducted in the previous two months.
Those who were put to work in Britain were paid, with Bios agreeing that each scientist would receive 15 shillings a week to cover expenses. Initially, however, no provision was made for wives and children left behind.
In May 1946 the British military government urged Bios to make payments to dependants, as "cases of extreme hardship have previously occurred through Germans being removed to the UK for interrogation". Fiat was also concerned about this, but wanted the government to provide the funds. "Several familes ... are completely destitute," Fiat warned, adding that "this is likely to have very unfavourable effect on cooperation of other German scientists and technicians".
By October of that year some US army officers were refusing to allow T-Force to remove scientists from the American zone unless they provided payments in advance. The following month came the British response: each wife and child would be provided with "heavy workers' rations", and each family would receive 250kg of coal a month.
Scientists were not the sole targets. The papers disclose brief details about Operation Bottleneck, which aimed to extract business information. In January 1947 Erich Klabunde, head of the German journalists' union, complained about how this was being achieved. A British official in Hamburg reported to headquarters that Klabunde told a public meeting: "An English manufacturer would name his German counterpart and competitor and 'invite' him to England (whether the man comes voluntarily or not is questionable). They then discuss business and the German is gently persuaded to reveal secrets of his trade. When he refuses, he is kept in polite internment until he gets so tired of not being allowed to return to his family that he tells the Englishman what he wants to know. Thus for about £6 a day the English businessman gains the deepest secrets of Germany's economic life."
The rationale for this had been set out by Herbert Morrison, lord president of the council, who told the prime minister, Clement Attlee: "It is most important at this formative stage to start shaping the German economy in the way which will best assist our own economic plans and will run the least risk of it developing into an unnecessarily awkward competitor."
The British were not alone in trying to secure commercial advantage from Germany's scientists: countless numbers had also been snatched by the Russians. The French used a different approach, luring skilled workers with lucrative contracts, and the Americans offered US citizenship to those they wanted most, including Wernher von Braun, who had headed the V2 rocket programme and went on to be chief architect of the Saturn V rocket which propelled the US to the moon.
While the Foreign Office warned against bringing scientists with "politically undesirable" backgrounds to the UK, the papers show little evidence of industry being concerned about the employment of Nazis.
By early 1947 the Foreign Office, exasperated at the way in which the looting of German industry, by all four occupying powers, was impeding the country's reconstruction, secured an agreement that it would cease. Accordingly, the British were expected to stop abducting scientists, and the military government sent a telegram to T-Force ordering that all "industrial and technical investigations will be terminated by 30 June 1947".
There was no intention of allowing these scientists to do as they pleased, however, as some may have chosen to work for the Soviets. In April the Ministry of Defence drew up a list of 290 scientists to be traced urgently. This formed the basis of a so-called denial list "against whom denial measures should be taken as a matter of urgency".
Allowing German arms experts to settle elsewhere in Europe would be equally inadvisable, a Foreign Office discussion paper noted. "It has hitherto been an objective of British policy to encourage the smaller powers, particularly in Europe, to equip their forces with aircraft and weapons of British design. If these countries were to obtain technical reinforcement by recruitment of German research workers and designers they would be less likely ... to rely upon armaments of British design."
From now on, however, German scientists were to be given employment contracts - which included a clause forbidding them ever to talk about their experiences - and strongly encouraged, rather than coerced, into travelling to Britain. By the end of the summer, hundreds were employed across Britain.
While many British industries, particularly aerospace and armaments, wished to employ them, others were not sufficiently well organised to do so and there were too many scientists and too few jobs. The government sent a few to Canada and Australia, and then appears to have concluded that they should go anywhere - except Russia or Europe. It must have been in some desperation that Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary, suggested to the cabinet defence committee: "Would it not, for example, be possible to carry out some fundamental research in Kenya?"
Beneficiaries
British industrialists were eager to learn as much as they could from Germany, from the mining of coal to the making of perfume. According to the National Archives, companies that employed German scientists and technicians immediately after the second world war included:
· ICI, the chemicals giant
· Courtaulds, the manufacturer of fabric, clothing, and artificial fibres
· Pears, the soap and cosmetics company
· Yardley, the maker of fragrances and toiletries
· Coal Oil Development, a company based in Swansea
· BSA Tools, the Birmingham machine toolmaker
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