Operation Surgeon

Operation Surgeon was a British post-Second World War programme to exploit German aeronautics and deny German technical skills to the Soviet Union.

A list of 1,500 German scientists and technicians was drawn up. Policy was to forcibly remove "whether they liked it or not" the scientists from Germany to lessen the risk of them falling into enemy hands.^[1]

It was feared that if they were allowed to remain in Germany they might enable the Soviet Union to "achieve a long range bomber force superior to any other in the world".^[2]

Of the removed scientists in the years 1946-1947, 100 chose to work for the UK.

Many of the listed scientists had already at the inception of the operation offered their services to British Commonwealth countries, Sweden, Switzerland, Brazil and South America, and regarded working for the Soviet Union as a last resort if stopped from working in Germany and unable to find employment elsewhere in the west.

British records of the operation were made public in 2006.

See also

• T-Force
• Similar (but separate) attempts to remove German technical information and personnel after the war were:
  • Operation Paperclip - US removal of German rocketry experts and materials.
  • TICOM (cryptography)
  • Operation Alsos (nuclear weapons)
  • Operation Osoaviakhim

Notes and references

Notes

1. Description of AVIA 54/1403 by National Archives
2. "UK 'fears' over German scientists" BBC NewsUK 31 March 2006

Bibliography

Further reading

• Matthew Uttley "Operation 'Surgeon' and Britain's post-war exploitation of Nazi German aeronautics", Intelligence and National Security, Volume 17, Number 2, June 2002, pp. 1-26(26) Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group
• John Gimbel, Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany Stanford University Press, 1990 ISBN 0-8047-1761-3
• Matthias Judt; Burghard Ciesla, Technology Transfer Out of Germany After 1945 Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996. ISBN 3-7186-5822-4
• John Gimbel U.S. Policy and German Scientists: The Early Cold War, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 101, No. 3 (1986), pp. 433-451

External links

• Employment of German scientists and technicians: denial policy UK National archives releases March 2006.
• Dark side of the Moon BBC article.