In August 1984, after receiving the Distinguished Service Medal from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and after thirty years as a naturalized American, seventy-eight-year-old Arthur Rudolph “forfeited his U.S. citizenship” and left the United States under a cloud of suspicion—never to return. According to the Office of Special Investigations, his actions while working as a rocket scientist for the Nazis reportedly involved persecution and mistreatment of Jews and other prisoners. Who was this mild-mannered man who had the distinction of being “the only Paperclip scientist prosecuted by OSI”? What set him apart from other scientists who came to the United States under Operation Paperclip? Were his crimes serious enough to warrant persecution by the OSI and the Department of Justice? After all, he was not convicted by the Department of Justice or stripped of his citizenship. He voluntarily relinquished it and agreed to leave the country. If he was innocent, as he claimed, why didn’t Rudolph remain in the United States and provide evidence that would have forced the OSI to abandon its investigation into his background and his work for the Nazis?1
On 9 November 1906 Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph was born in Stepfershausen, Germany, to Gustav and Ida Rudolph, who were farmers. From a very early age Rudolph was fascinated with machinery. As a young boy, he had his share of chores on the farm, but he knew that he did not want to be a farmer because the work was so hard. Unfortunately, farm life would not remain peaceful and uneventful. World War I changed things for the Rudolph family, particularly after Gustav Rudolph died on the Eastern Front in 1915.
Rudolph began his education at the village elementary school. After completing eight years of school and receiving confirmation in the Lutheran Church, he attended a Fachschule in the town of Schmalkalden: three years of study similar to that offered at many American junior colleges. For the next three years Rudolph worked as a “practitioner in the silver-working industry” in Bremen before continuing his education at the College of Berlin in 1928.2 In 1930 he graduated with an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering.
After a brief stint as a draftsman, Rudolph began employment at Heylandt in Berlin on 1 May 1930. The company manufactured equipment used in the production, handling, and transportation of oxygen. On his second day at Heylandt, Rudolph witnessed the testing of a small rocket by two employees—Max Valier and Walter Riedel. In short order he asked to join Valier’s team and was accepted. Little did he know that this was the beginning of a path that would lead to V-2 rockets, NASA, and Saturn V rockets and that would bring notoriety but would end in accusations and a tarnished reputation, in disgrace.
A couple of weeks later an accident cost the lead scientist, Valier, his life. Rudolph was hooked, his fascination with rockets, undiminished. The German redesigned the fuel injection system, which stabilized his former colleague’s rocket design, and continued to research and design rockets, despite the company’s ban on such activity after Valier’s death. He even enlisted the help of his boss, Alfons Pietsch, who was works manager at Heylandt. In fact, Rudolph, Pietsch, and Riedel tested the new design at the plant when Dr. Heylandt was out of town. Rudolph had the rocket-space travel bug, and he was not going to let an accident and a company ban stop his work! Pietsch was equally enthusiastic. Unfortunately, he went too far, and Heylandt ultimately fired him.
Around this time the three Heylandt employees received an invitation to witness rocket tests performed by members of the German Rocket Society. Although the tests failed to result in an airborne rocket, the day had long-lasting ramifications for Rudolph. It was there that he met Wernher von Braun, the man who became one of the most famous of rocket scientists in both Germany and the United States.3 The lives and careers of these two men—Rudolph and von Braun—would become intertwined for the next several decades.
With the start of the Great Depression in 1929, the ranks of the Nazi Party swelled. Many of Rudolph’s friends joined. Although his interest was in rockets, not politics, Rudolph gave in to pressure from his friends and became a member of the party. He was also persuaded by his unfocused fear, widely shared in the “non-political” German middle and professional classes, that the Communist Party, which was also on the rise, would “become the government.” As member No. 562007, he also enlisted in the SA. The Depression had serious ramifications both in Germany and abroad. While it increased the membership of the Nazi Party, it also cost Rudolph his job. He was laid off in May 1932. Joining the ranks of the unemployed, Rudolph was required to get his card stamped periodically at the Arbeitsamt, or Unemployment Office.4 While there he encountered Pietsch, who was also unemployed. The two men agreed to continue their efforts to design and launch a rocket successfully. For Rudolph, who was responsible for the design end of things while Pietsch would seek funding, this marked an evolution from hobby to career.5
Within four weeks Rudolph had completed his rocket design. Although it took a while, Pietsch eventually got a contract from the German Ordnance Department, which had tasked Capt. Walter Dornberger with developing a “liquid-fuel rocket” that could be used as a weapon.6 Unfortunately, things did not go as smoothly as expected. After Pietsch spent about half of the money on himself and then disappeared, Rudolph had to negotiate a new contract with Dornberger. Following a successful test of his design, which was assessed by Wernher von Braun, Rudolph accepted a job offer from Dornberger. He became a civilian employee with the army. Although his real interest was putting a rocket into space, for the time being, however, Rudolph had to put that aside and focus on the needs of the Ordnance Department—the development of artillery rockets.
Rudolph’s initial posting was to Kummersdorf, where Dornberger, who would rise to the rank of major general and who was in charge of the German rocket program throughout the war, managed a small group of scientists, including Rudolph, Riedel, and von Braun. While at Kummersdorf Rudolph and the other scientists built and experimented with increasingly larger liquid-fuel rockets. In December 1934 a group from Kummersdorf, including Rudolph, tested two A-2 rockets on the island of Borkum in the North Sea. The rockets, which performed well, reached a height of one and a half miles. The scientists also conducted tests on a rocket engine that had been designed by Rudolph when he worked at Heylandt. During this time Rudolph and von Braun spent much time together—both at work and after hours. The two men shared an interest in space travel and a belief that it was possible to build a rocket capable of flying to the moon and beyond, and discussions of their ideas and designs kept them up all hours of the night.
As their work continued, the Kummersdorf scientists tested rockets that were twenty-five feet long, then ones approximately twice as long that could fly two hundred miles. The latter eventually received the designation “V-2.” Despite successfully testing these rockets, both Rudolph and von Braun felt constrained by the space where they worked and sought a testing ground that would allow them to experiment with even bigger rockets—rockets capable of space travel. Consequently, taking advantage of Dornberger’s temporary absence from Kummersdorf, the two approached the Luftwaffe because they considered the group more forward thinking and because they knew of Hitler’s support of it. Their sales pitch worked, and in short order the Luftwaffe pledged five million marks and space for the creation of a rocket center. Learning of the Luftwaffe involvement, the army wanted in as well. Upon Dornberger’s return, von Braun apprised his superior of events that had occurred in his absence. Recognizing the genius behind the actions taken by von Braun and Rudolph, Dornberger took charge, cut through red tape, and moved mountains to organize a facility at Peenemünde, on Usedom, a Baltic coastal island a hundred miles north of Berlin.
In May 1937 the new rocket center at Peenemünde became operational, and Rudolph and other Kummersdorf staff moved there. By mid-August his pregnant wife, Martha, whom Rudolph married in October 1935, joined him. Three months later their daughter Marianne Erika was born. This was an exciting time for Rudolph, who, like his colleagues, worked long hours doing the work that both interested and intrigued them.
Testing on liquid-fuel rockets continued for the next several years, but it was not until 13 June 1942 that the first attempt to launch a V-2 rocket occurred. The first two tests ended in failure when the rockets exploded as they reached higher altitudes. The third time was the charm. On 3 October 1942 Rudolph and his colleagues successfully tested a V-2 rocket; following its designated trajectory, it traveled 125 miles from the launch site to its entry into the Baltic Sea. Success still did not bring the rocket program the full support of Hitler or the Nazi regime. That, however, would change within a relatively short period of time.
When Adolf Hitler first visited the rocket center at Peenemünde in March 1939, he barely reacted. Government support for the program subsequently declined. Four years later, however, after the successful testing of the V-2, that would change. In early July 1943 Dornberger and von Braun received a summons to show Hitler a film of the successful V-2 rocket launch from the previous October. Finally recognizing the “war-winning” potential of the weapon, the führer became enamored with the project and promised to authorize support for its expansion. When he learned about the V-2 program, Heinrich Himmler recognized the need for maintaining secrecy about the rocket program and its expansion and supposedly suggested that the best way to ensure security would be to utilize a workforce that consisted entirely of concentration camp internees. The plan received Hitler’s approval. From this point on the rocket center at Peenemünde did not lack funds, equipment, or manpower, and Dornberger tasked Rudolph with designing the pilot production plant for the site.7
Working under Gen. Godomar Schubert, Rudolph began the design for the new facility and, as a result, temporarily relinquished his development work. By August Rudolph had the assembly line ready for the production of V-2 rockets, but production was disrupted by British bombing raids against the buildings at Peenemünde, including employee houses. Following the raid, the women and children were evacuated to safer locales in Germany. The production facility was moved as well. Its new location would be at Mittelwerk, and Rudolph received orders to move there as well to oversee operations.
Mittelwerk was not what Rudolph expected. It consisted of a series of factories located in tunnels constructed in the mountains. When he arrived at Mittelwerk, Rudolph learned that his workforce would consist of forced laborers, many of whom had originally been housed at Buchenwald. The SS would construct a new concentration camp—Dora-Nordhausen—to house the prisoners that they would supervise. The prisoners performed two functions: additional excavation of tunnels in the underground complex and work on the V-2 assembly line next to German civilians who were also employed in the latter.
While at Mittelwerk, Rudolph reported to Albin Sawatzki, who dictated that the first lot of V-2s (50 in number) would roll off the assembly lines in three months after their arrival, despite lack of equipment and design problems. Sawatzki drove the crews hard, but they were able to manufacture only 4 V-2 rockets by late December 1943. By the end of 1944, however, the kinks had been worked out, and production figures at the facility reached 800 V-2s a month. On 8 September 1944 the first V-2s struck London, and they caused much damage over the next several months. Though the Allied ground and air campaigns in 1945, however, caused a decline in production, Mittelwerk could boast the manufacture of 5,000 V-2 rockets by the time it was captured by Allied forces. The launching of these fearsome weapons caused 1,400 bombs to land in England between September 1944 and March 1945 and resulted in over 9,200 casualties, with corresponding effects on a war-weary population.8
Life at Mittelwerk was not easy for Rudolph or any of the other workers. Divided into two shifts, production lines ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Sawatzki was a difficult taskmaster, who frequently threatened to send Rudolph and others to the concentration camp for the least transgression. The SS and the Gestapo left subtle threats, which confirmed that they were keeping close watch on scientists and workers alike! The situation became increasingly tense in early 1945, when shortages of parts and shortages of food began to affect production adversely.
In mid-March 1945 all production at Mittelwerk ceased. Rudolph and others, like their counterparts at Peenemünde, received orders to relocate to Oberammergau in Bavaria. Wanting to avoid traveling with the SS, Rudolph joined Dornberger’s group, and they headed south. Taking advantage of the confusion in and around Oberammergau, they parted company and moved around the area until they were captured by the Americans in late April. Rudolph found himself reunited with von Braun and Dornberger in Garmisch, where they and others underwent interrogation by the Americans, who were identifying scientists who could potentially be useful in furthering the development of missiles for the war effort.9
As soon as the war in Europe ended, the British instituted Operation Backfire to accomplish three goals. First, they undertook a thorough assessment of the V-2 assembly. Second, they interrogated German scientists who had expertise in all aspects of the program. Third, they conducted tests by firing missiles across the North Sea. Once the tests were completed, the British War Office released a five-volume report. Recognizing the importance of the project, the Americans approved the temporary transfer of Rudolph to the British. He participated in Backfire from July to October 1945, at which time Rudolph’s transfer back to the Americans was affected.10
For the sake of facilitating the transfer of German scientists to the United States, Operation Paperclip (see chapter 8) targeted those who had experience with the development of guided missiles and aerodynamics, several of whom had participated in Backfire for the British. Arriving in the United States in December 1945, Rudolph was one of the first to travel under the auspices of Operation Paperclip, after he was vetted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Unfortunately, INS did not have the full story when it approved Rudolph. In addition, INS (at the time a division of the Department of Justice) was under pressure from the number two man at the Department of Justice to approve Rudolph’s participation in Paperclip and transfer to the United States. Citing information provided by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Department of the Army, this official concluded that the country’s national interests would be compromised if Rudolph’s application was denied.11 INS, accepting its superior’s recommendation, chose not to delve more deeply into Rudolph’s work on the V-2 project and provided the desired approval.
After undergoing interrogation in Boston, Rudolph and other members of the team traveled to the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico in January 1946 and continued their work on the V-2 project. A year later Rudolph received a new posting—the Ordnance Research and Development Division at Fort Bliss, Texas. A few months later his family finally arrived. For the next two years, while working at Fort Bliss, he also traveled back and forth to San Diego, California, where he served as a liaison to the Solar Aircraft Company.
Like other Paperclip scientists, Rudolph had come to the United States without a visa, a situation that eventually had to be rectified. Because he had to enter on a legitimate visa before applying for citizenship, Rudolph, like many of his colleagues, traveled to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Obtaining a visa, he officially immigrated to the United States on 14 April 1949, even though he could not enter the country under the Displaced Persons Act or the Refugee Relief Act.12 Ironically, however, under the terms of the Department of State’s visa regulations, the entry of an alien “who has been guilty of, or has advocated or acquiesced in, activities or conduct contrary to civilization and human decency on behalf of the Axis countries” was prohibited.13 That regulation would eventually come back to haunt Rudolph.14
In early 1949, prior to his trip to Mexico, the FBI conducted an investigation of Rudolph, who completed a questionnaire in which he explained his reasons for joining the Nazi Party: “Until 1930 I sympathized with the social-democratic party, voted for it and was a member of a social democratic union (Bund Techn. Agst. U. Beamt.). After 1930 the economical situation became so serious that it appeared to me to be headed for catastrophe. (I really became unemployed in 1932.) The great amount of unemployment caused the expansion of nationalsoc. and communistic parties. Frightened that the latter one would become the government I joined the NSDAP ([Nazi Party] a legally reg. society) to help, I believed in the preservation of the western culture.”15 The FBI inquiry, including interrogations of Rudolph’s American associates, suggested that Rudolph had not been active in the Nazi Party. During its investigation, the FBI also consulted the Office of the Military Government of the United States. According to the FBI report, “The OMGUS report concluded that on the basis of available records RUDOLPH was not considered a war criminal, an ardent Nazi, nor in the opinion of the Military Governor likely to become a security threat to the United States.”16 The FBI concurred in that assessment.
Although Rudolph successfully immigrated to the United States in April 1949, the FBI periodically investigated him, particularly when he applied for citizenship. In mid-June 1950 the Fort Bliss group, including Rudolph, was transferred to a new facility—Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. In addition to a new location and new facilities, the group had a new name—the Ordnance Guided Missile Center. While at Redstone Arsenal for the next decade, Rudolph’s life underwent some changes.
In 1951, according to an FBI report dated 22 September, Rudolph applied for U.S. citizenship. At the time he was married, had one child, and was in the process of purchasing a house. Three years later, on 11 November 1954, Rudolph traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, took the appropriate oath, and became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. Life was good! Rudolph’s life was full of positives—at home and at work.
A rising star, Rudolph received a new appointment in 1956. Not only did he become the technical director of the Redstone Project, but he also became the project manager for the Pershing missile project. Once fully developed, the Pershing missile was a “mobile, medium range, surface-to-surface missile.” In 1961 control of the missile project shifted to Army Ordnance Missile Command. While he supervised the project, Rudolph was the recipient of other honors. In 1959 Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, awarded him an honorary PhD in science, and he also received one of the highest civilian honors awarded by the army—the Exceptional Civilian Service Award. Although he was receiving accolades, Rudolph was hiding a secret—a secret that would tarnish his awards, his career, his life—but for the time being, his secret was safe. By the time the missile project became the Missile Command’s baby, Rudolph was ready for something bigger and better—NASA!17
In 1961 Rudolph joined the staff at NASA, where he was reunited with his old friend, Wernher von Braun, who became his boss. Building up his reputation and making a real name for himself in rocket development, Rudolph remained employed at NASA until his retirement in 1969. Within the first year he received an influential appointment as assistant director of Systems Engineering. As assistant director, he liaised between vehicle development at Redstone Arsenal’s Marshall Space Flight Center and Houston’s Manned Spacecraft Center.
At NASA Rudolph was finally at the point at which he could begin to fulfill his dream—a dream that began over thirty years earlier, when he witnessed Max Valier and Walter Riedel testing a small rocket on the grounds of Heylandt, where they all worked. Although his path had been long and he had been diverted at times, at NASA he was part of a program that considered space travel possible. It was no longer the stuff of movies and comic books. Rudolph was living the dream! He was where he belonged, and he was working on the development of spacecrafts, including manned spacecrafts. In fact, for five years—from August 1963 to May 1968—he was the Saturn V rocket program project director. Anything was possible!
Although the federal government provided funding for the space program, there were still questions about whether or not NASA could successfully launch a rocket. Dare they dream even bigger! Could they put a man on the moon? There was the added pressure of competition with the Soviets. The United States and the Soviet Union were in a race to put the first man in space, to have a rocket circle the moon, to land a man on the moon. The pressure was on. How would the Saturn V perform? As the testing date neared, tension increased. Rudolph and others on his team checked and rechecked the design and the prototype, but there was only so much that could be done in the lab. At some point they needed to take a leap of faith, reach for the stars, and launch a rocket.
The date for the first Saturn V launch was finally set. The launch site was the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On 9 November 1967 Rudolph received the best birthday present ever imagined. The Saturn V rocket’s flight was flawless! Less than two years later, in July 1969, a Saturn V rocket helped to put the first man on the moon! His work on the project earned Rudolph the title “Father of the Saturn V rocket.” Even before astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, however, Rudolph received a promotion at NASA. In May 1968 he became the Marshall Space Flight Center director’s special assistant, a position that he held until his retirement at the end of 1969. With the moon landing Rudolph had achieved his wildest dream, and at sixty-three he decided that he had reached the pinnacle of success, that he could not top his work on the Saturn V rocket, and that the time had come to retire while he was at the top of his game. He had already received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, and with retirement came NASA’s highest honor—the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.18 It was time to rest on his laurels.
Life was good, or it was supposed to be. After he retired, Rudolph and his wife, wanting to be near their daughter, moved to San Jose, California. Unfortunately, shortly after they moved, Rudolph suffered a heart attack and had to have triple bypass surgery. Once he recovered, however, life got better, and for the next decade or so he had nothing to worry about, except to enjoy retirement, time with his daughter, and sunny California. That would all change in 1979, when Rudolph came onto the OSI radar. Rudolph’s world was about to turn upside down!
The German had been investigated before, but, unlike the earlier investigations, the OSI inquiry would come to a different conclusion. What had been swept under the rug in 1945 would condemn him approximately four decades later. The powers that be turned a blind eye because, to them anyway, the bigger picture was much more important at the time. The long term goal—employing Nazi scientists to help beat the Soviets in the missile and rocket race—took precedence over questionable wartime activities. The decision to do so would be challenged by the OSI when it began to investigate alleged Nazi criminals, some of whom were peacefully residing in the United States, in 1979.
The OSI would soon set its sights on Arthur Rudolph, distinguished NASA retiree. But who was he really? After all, he had been investigated before—beyond the interrogations at Garmisch in 1945. In June 1947 the U.S. Army conducted an interrogation of Rudolph at the Office of Ordnance Research and Development Service Suboffice (Rocket) at Fort Bliss, Texas. Questioned extensively about his work during the years 1938 to 1945, Rudolph provided succinct, matter-of-fact responses. The focus of the questions was the Mittelwerk factory. When asked if any of the factory workers were foreigners or forced labor, Rudolph said that they were “Haeftlinge, that is, men in arrest” and that, while initially he thought they were all Germans, many were, in fact, “Russians, French, Polish, [and] Czech.” He did admit that he supervised some of the Haeftlinge, although the number varied each day, but denied any of them worked in his office. He also answered specific questions about the Haeftlinge—where they slept (particularly those who slept in the tunnels); when, where, and what they ate; what their work hours were; what clothing they wore; what their working conditions were and if they were sanitary; how they were made to work harder; how they were punished—and about the differences between them and German civilian workers.19
Rudolph’s interrogators also inquired about the changes in conditions and for the workers that had (or had not) occurred when Dr. Greg Rickkey became general director of the Mittelwerk factory. Based on the line of questioning, it appeared that in 1947 Rickkey was a “person of interest.” They were more focused on Rickkey than on the foreign or “forced” workers. In addition, the interrogators were interested in how Rickkey handled workers who refused to work.20 In addition to presenting himself in the best light possible, Rudolph claimed a fair amount of ignorance. His responses apparently did not have an impact on his transfer to the United States under Operation Paperclip or his work for NASA. Perhaps they should have. In any event, forced labor by Haeftlinge, whether prisoners of war or concentration camp internees, would be an important feature in the OSI investigation of Rudolph.
Shortly after he began working for NASA, the FBI looked into Rudolph’s background and into his employment history, particularly his work in the United States. The FBI’s conclusions about Rudolph were ultimately and inevitably based on incomplete information. Following a request by the Civil Service Commission, which was obeying provisions of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, the FBI ordered an investigation of the scientist in a memorandum dated 6 April 1962. The director’s inquiry request was sent to several field offices, including those in Birmingham, El Paso, San Diego, Tampa, and Baltimore.
The initial response from El Paso basically provided no information, but a report from the Tampa Field Office dated 17 April 1962 did corroborate a few facts, in addition to verifying his date and place of birth. According to Tampa, Rudolph had received an honorary degree from Rollins College, and he had given a talk—“Looks of the Mars Ship”—for the college after von Braun had recommended him. The report also briefly confirmed some of Rudolph’s employment history: “Kummersdorf Proofing Ground, 1934; Peenemuende South, 1937; Niedersachswerfen, 1943; Cuxhaven (with British), 1945; Fort Bliss, Texas, 1946; Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, 1950.” This wasn’t much because there were no real details, but it was a start.21
The FBI discovered, however, that it was difficult to confirm certain aspects of Rudolph’s employment history in the United States—which did not necessarily mean that he was not being truthful or that it cast suspicion on him. The Albuquerque Field Office reported that it could not confirm Rudolph’s employment at White Sands Missile Range (1946–47) because the facility’s personnel office destroyed records after a decade, but further investigation revealed that Rudolph did not have an arrest record in Las Cruces, New Mexico, with the Provost Marshal’s or the Sheriff’s Office, nor was there a file on him with the Credit Bureau. The San Diego Field Office noted that there was no criminal or credit record on file for either Rudolph or his daughter. Although admitting that the Solar Aircraft Company had no records to confirm his employment with them, San Diego proceeded to recommend Rudolph, saying that he was “a man of excellent character, associates and reputation” and that an acquaintance “had no reason at all to question the loyalty of the applicant [Rudolph] and would highly recommend him for a position of trust.”22
Acknowledging that Rudolph was “executing SF-86, entitled ‘Security Investigation Data for Sensitive Position,’” the Birmingham Field Office provided a six-page assessment of the applicant, which was more extensive than what had been provided by the other field offices.23 Noting that he had admitted membership in the Nazi Party, the report evaluated Rudolph’s justification for associating with the group and accepted his explanation that the economic situation prompted what many considered to be questionable action. Unnamed witnesses were questioned and testified that Rudolph had not been actively involved with any fascist organizations. In fact, Rudolph received glowing accolades from all those questioned. There were no red flags. As far as Birmingham was concerned, there was much to recommend that Rudolph receive the requested security clearance for his job with NASA.
In a second communication the El Paso Field Office, after further investigation and assessments from the El Paso Police Department, Sheriff’s Office, and Credit Bureau, concurred with Birmingham’s conclusions. An IC report dated 5 May 1962, issued by the Baltimore FBI Office, affirmed that Rudolph’s background had been thoroughly investigated in 1949 and 1953–54 and that they had three sworn statements from Rudolph dated 20 December 1947, 5 August 1952, and 29 October 1954. In addition to noting that it had also relied on pertinent information from the army, Baltimore found Rudolph’s assertions about his Nazi membership credible.
In an effort to be thorough, the FBI also consulted CIA files but found no pertinent information about Rudolph or his family. In addition, the FBI ascertained that the House Committee on Un-American Activities did not have a file on the scientist.24 The FBI concluded its investigation, which had been prompted by a request from the Civil Service Commission and Rudolph’s efforts to work on sensitive NASA projects, and ultimately recommended that Rudolph be granted clearance. Rudolph appeared to be an upstanding citizen, whose membership in the Nazi Party and work in the Nazi rocket program could be logically explained by the Depression and the climate that existed in Germany at the time, particularly when the use of forced labor was more the norm than the exception. But was he? Was Rudolph any different from other nonpolitical middle-class and professional Germans who found themselves working for the Nazi regime during wartime?
Enter a new player—Eli Rosenbaum. In the summer of 1979, Rosenbaum was a summer intern at OSI. After the internship ended he happened to read two newly published books, which brought the name Arthur Rudolph to his attention. Although somewhat different, both of these books had one thing in common—rocket science. The first book was Dora: The Nazi Concentration Camp Where Modern Space Technology Was Born and 30,000 Prisoners Died by Jean Michel. As the dramatic title suggests, Michel examined the connection between the Dora concentration camp and the Nazi’s rocket program.
The second book that Rosenbaum read, however, brought the rocket program home. It was Frederick I. Ordway’s The Rocket Team from the V-2 to the Saturn Moon Rocket: The Inside Story of How a Small Group of Engineers Changed World History. What could be in these books, particularly the latter, that could pique Rosenbaum’s interest in Rudolph? There were two things related to the same event that raised red flags for him. First, Rosenbaum read an account of a complaint by Rudolph who lamented the fact that he had to leave a New Year’s Eve party because he had to supervise the movement of some rocket parts. The picture that accompanied the vignette revealed who was relegated to moving the rocket parts; Rudolph had to leave the party to supervise prisoners of war, who, in violation of the Geneva Convention, were handling rocket parts, which constituted munitions.
Based on Ordway’s account of the event, Rosenbaum concluded that Rudolph was more concerned about missing a party than about prisoners of war being used for labor that was outlawed by the Geneva Convention. As a result, he became determined to investigate the German scientist at the first possible moment. What was his problem? What kind of person was he? Was there more to the story than that illuminated by Ordway? Was Rudolph connected to the Dora-Nordhausen camp in any way? Rosenbaum was so appalled by what he read in Ordway’s book that, when he went to work for OSI a year later, he made every effort to persuade his boss to approve an investigation of Rudolph.25
Initial investigation revealed a couple of interesting facts. First, in 1947 a U.S. military court in Dachau, Germany, tried nineteen people who had worked at the Dora-Nordhausen complex. The National Archives and Records Administration housed not only the transcript from the trial but also related pretrial documents. Included in the material was a 1947 interview of Rudolph, who was listed as a potential witness. The interview revealed some interesting facts, many of which revolved around the execution of Dora internees. Of twelve inmates accused of sabotage, six were sentenced to hanging. Not only did Rudolph attend the hanging, but he also ordered laborers, whom he supervised, to witness the event as well. In addition to the interview, the file also contained a diagram of the underground rocket factory. The dotted line on the diagram represented the “Path of Overhead Crane Trolly [sic] On Which Men Were Hung.” An examination of the diagram revealed the line’s proximity to Rudolph’s office. In addition, an examination of the trial transcript disclosed that Rudolph had more intimate knowledge of the prisoners than he revealed in his interview. According to trial transcripts, “Rudolph received daily prisoner strength reports which showed the number of prisoners available for work, the number of ‘new arrivals,’ and the number of people lost through sickness or death.”26
The OSI now had the ammunition that it needed to confront Rudolph. OSI conducted two interviews of Rudolph. At the first, conducted in October 1982, the big guns were present: Allan A. Ryan Jr., director; Neal M. Sher, deputy director; and Eli M. Rosenbaum, trial lawyer. Sher and Rosenbaum conducted the second interrogation of Rudolph in February 1983. During these interviews Rudolph admitted a number of things that the OSI ultimately found problematic. He acknowledged that, while he was at Mittelwerk, he had been aware “disease, overwork, mistreatment, and malnutrition” had resulted in prisoners’ deaths. These deaths caused a reduction in the available workforce for the production of V-2 rockets. Consequently, Rudolph “had requested labor replenishments from the SS, and knew that these replacements came ‘probably from Buchenwald or somewhere else.’” Furthermore, Rudolph acknowledged that he had the authority to assign laborers to specific tasks within the Mittelwerk facility. Not only damning, these admissions also suggested that Rudolph had perhaps not been completely forthcoming when he was vetted for Paperclip and when he applied for citizenship.27
For the OSI the question then became what the next step should be. In determining that next step, the OSI had to answer the following questions: Did Rudolph’s actions constitute persecution? Were they as bad as those perpetrated by the Nazis who ran the concentration camps or as bad as those committed by people such as Klaus Barbie or Josef Mengele? How much weight should be given to these revelations that Rudolph was more directly involved with prison labor than previous records had demonstrated? What, if any, consequences should result from the conferring of citizenship under what now seemed to be questionable circumstances?
After assessing the information contained in the file from the National Archives and Records Administration, including Rudolph’s statement and his 1982 and 1983 interviews, the answer seemed simple for the OSI, which concluded that a mistake had been made in allowing Rudolph both to enter the United States formally and to obtain citizenship. Consequently, OSI advised that denaturalization action should be filed and cited the following as justification for its recommendation. Rudolph, as supervisor, “was directly responsible for exploiting slave laborers.” On that premise the OSI concluded that Rudolph’s actions “violated the State Department’s regulation barring entry to persons who participated, advocated, or acquiesced in activities or conduct contrary to civilization and human decency.” Furthermore, forcing inmates to witness the hangings of other laborers constituted a “form of ‘terror’” that contributed to their persecution. As such, Rudolph’s “persecutory” activities in themselves were heinous and indicated that he lacked the “good moral character” required for citizenship. Consequently, as far as the OSI was concerned, Rudolph should forfeit his right to be a citizen of the United States!28
As further justification for its position, the OSI argued that, although the INS was aware that Rudolph had worked at Mittelwerk, it did not know the full extent of his activities there. Consequently, its decision to recommend his admission to the United States under Paperclip was based on incomplete information, and it was only the OSI investigation, including its two interviews with Rudolph, that brought the additional information to light. Furthermore, the OSI, unlike the INS, had uncovered a “clearer picture of his true accountability.” Recognizing that its recommendation might meet with resistance because of Rudolph’s contribution to the space program, the OSI provided a counterargument that “failure to bring charges would present more serious concerns.” Part of the OSI’s contention concerned the credibility of its office. The OSI feared that choosing not to pursue a case against Rudolph “would give credence to the criticism that the office discriminated against non-Germans (i.e., Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Latvian camp guards) who occupied low-level collaborationist positions during the war, never belonged to the Nazi party, and lived quiet lives in the U.S.” Rudolph, on the other hand, belonged to the Nazi Party (even if he did not actively participate in party meetings), worked on the V-2 rocket program for the Nazis, and, by the OSI definition, persecuted prisoners of war and concentration camp laborers. If low-level non-German collaborationists were prosecuted, Rudolph, whose crimes could conceivably be considered more heinous, should be as well.29
Just because the OSI recommended that denaturalization papers be filed against Rudolph did not mean, however, that the Department of Justice would accept the proposal, even though the OSI felt that sufficient cause existed for such action. Apparently, the OSI was persuasive because the Department of Justice sanctioned the filing of the case, and the OSI received the task of notifying Rudolph. Informed that prosecution was imminent, Rudolph took an unexpected step. He instructed his attorney to negotiate a written agreement with the federal government. Under the terms of the agreement, the government would agree not to prosecute Rudolph in exchange for two concessions from the German, who would not only leave the United States but also renounce his U.S. citizenship. In exchange for the government’s willingness to wait until he left before making any announcement about the situation, Rudolph consented not to dispute the government’s contention that he had persecuted unarmed civilians during his time at Mittelwerk.
Three men signed the agreement in San Jose on 28 November 1983: OSI director Neal M. Sher, Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph, and George H. Main, Esq., the attorney for Rudolph. In the signed agreement Rudolph admitted that during the time he served as “Operations Director” of the Mittelwerk “underground rocket fabrication plant” “forced laborers, including concentration camp inmates,” worked there. As a result, he illegally obtained U.S. citizenship, was subject to denaturalization, and could be deported if he were not a citizen. In the signed statement Rudolph noted, “I agree permanently to depart the United States by March 29, 1984, at my own expense.” He then stated that he would obtain the documents necessary for his departure and that “on or before June 1, 1984,” he would renounce his citizenship at a U.S. embassy or consulate, at which time he would turn over his passport or have it stamped “canceled.” He would take the steps designated by the Department of Justice to confirm that he had complied with both departure and the renunciation of citizenship, and he “agree[d] not to reapply for United States citizenship under any circumstances.” All of this was predicated, however, on Rudolph’s health, and the agreement spelled out the procedure that Rudolph would have to follow if health issues delayed his departure from the United States and the renunciation of his citizenship by the stipulated dates. In addition, Rudolph acknowledged what the penalty for noncompliance would be. Finally, he stated that he had entered into the agreement of his own free will, after consulting with his attorney, and that he had not been coerced or pressured into signing it.30
Just as Rudolph made concessions, the U.S. government articulated its part in the agreement, which was signed and executed by a representative of the Justice Department. As long as Rudolph upheld his end of the bargain, the federal government would not institute denaturalization or deportation proceedings against him, nor would it limit his access to his “federal retirement, health care and/or Social Security benefits.” In addition to providing him with formal documentation verifying that he was no longer a U.S. citizen, the government agreed not to take steps to revoke the citizenship of Rudolph’s relatives who obtained it because of his naturalization. In other words, Rudolph’s wife and daughter could, if they chose, remain U.S. citizens. Furthermore, the government agreed not to announce the results of Rudolph’s case until 1 June 1984, the day on which he formally relinquished his citizenship. Finally, both Rudolph and the federal government agreed that “this Agreement completely disposes of all the issues in this case.”31
The OSI admitted, however, a hope that the resolution of the Rudolph case would send a message and that it would have an impact on other pending cases. As the office articulated, “when other OSI subjects and defendants see that the department is prepared to go after someone of Rudolph’s stature and importance (and presumed official ‘connections’), the depth of the Government’s commitment to the Nazi prosecution program will become ever more apparent to them. The fact that a man of Rudolph’s obvious sophistication and intelligence was willing to surrender without a fight cannot fail to make a powerful impression upon them and to increase significantly the likelihood of securing similar settlements in other cases.”32 Because of his stature, the Justice Department hoped that the resolution of the Rudolph case would lend credibility to its efforts to bring other Nazi criminals to justice.
In October 1984 Rudolph traveled to Germany, where he formally gave up his citizenship. Because of his stature and his position at NASA, Rudolph’s actions could not escape the media’s notice. When pressed by the media, Rudolph asserted that he had done nothing wrong and claimed the opposite—that he had endeavored to “help the poor forced laborers to have their conditions improved.”33 The media’s response, naturally, was to question why Rudolph had left the United States and given up his citizenship. Rudolph’s justification was perhaps a bit unlikely, or perhaps it was just a compromise. According to Rudolph, in an effort to avoid both sensationalism and the cost of litigation, he had renounced his citizenship. His age and his health persuaded Rudolph to take that step. Many Americans were outraged by Rudolph’s alleged activities, and they felt that losing his citizenship and the right to live in the United States was not enough. NASA received a request to revoke the Distinguished Service Medal that it had awarded Rudolph. Recognizing Rudolph’s contribution to the space program and the development of the Saturn V rocket, NASA refused.
A bright spot! Rudolph could retain his NASA medal and find comfort in the fact that his work in the space program gave him some validation. Although NASA’s position in some respects vindicated him, Rudolph would soon discover that his decision to move back to his homeland would bring a new set of trials and tribulations. The road would not be an easy one, and for the next decade Rudolph would struggle to clear his name and to suggest that he was not the Nazi criminal that the United States implied.
Although he returned home to Germany, Rudolph was not initially welcomed with open arms. What the West Germans objected to was the fact that the OSI did not notify them of the circumstances before Rudolph arrived in the country. Faced with a done deal, however, the West German government initiated an investigation of its own to ascertain whether sufficient evidence existed to prosecute Rudolph for murder, because they did not have a statute of limitations for that particular criminal offense. During the course of their investigation, the West Germans sought information from the OSI.
As the director of OSI, Sher drafted a letter to Elfriede G. Krueger at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany on 26 April 1985 in response to a request for information about Rudolph that had been initiated by a Dr. Streim of the Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen. Requesting that the documents being forwarded to aid the investigation remain confidential, Sher asked that his office be consulted before anything contained in them was released to the public. Sher also included a list of witnesses who agreed to communicate with the West German government. He then reminded the West Germans that the nature of the OSI investigation—denaturalization and deportation—was different from the criminal inquiry they would conduct. Included with Sher’s letter were almost thirty documents and interview transcripts—the fruits of the OSI scrutiny into Rudolph’s activities at Mittelwerk. Some of the materials were German in origin, and the period covered by the documents and transcripts spanned four decades, from 1943 to 1983.
After conducting a thorough investigation of their own, the West German government chose not to file murder charges against Rudolph and, after considering the matter carefully, chose to reinstate the German citizenship that Rudolph had given up in 1954 when he became a U.S. citizen. With the furor dying down, Rudolph’s life had the potential of being quiet again—finally! Unfortunately, he did not leave well enough alone.
In 1989 Rudolph did what any German who wanted to travel to the United States did. He went to the U.S. consulate in Hamburg and submitted a visa application. Not surprisingly, the U.S. consulate rejected Rudolph’s application. What Rudolph did, however, was unwittingly place himself on the Department of Justice’s radar, and it set out to determine what the German had up his sleeve. When, a year later, the Justice Department gained information indicating that Rudolph planned to fly to Canada, the OSI contacted the Canadian government, briefed it regarding Rudolph’s character and background, and notified it of Rudolph’s plan to travel there. When Rudolph stepped off the plane, he was met by Canadian officials, who detained him until the decision was made to release him on bond until his deportation back to Germany.
Unfortunately for Rudolph, his problems in Canada did not remain a secret. In fact, not only was it reported in Canada, but American media got a hold of the story as well. It received extensive publicity in the United States, particularly because his supporters, including Ohio representative James Traficant, were vocal in their support of Rudolph. The media attention would have unintended consequences that adversely affected Rudolph and his case.
During his hearing in Canada, Rudolph presented a different account of events than he had given during his 1947, 1982, and 1983 interviews—an account that contradicted the agreement that he signed with the U.S. government in 1984. In the Canadian court Rudolph testified that “he had been shocked to learn that concentration inmates would be used as a source of labor at Mittelwerk.” Ironically, the day after Rudolph’s testimony, the OSI received evidence that challenged it. A Smithsonian Institution historian, who worked at the National Air and Space Museum, contacted the OSI in reference to two documents related to Rudolph that he had found in Germany. These documents indicated that Rudolph had indeed employed slave laborers from the Dora concentration camp, but they provided even more damning information. According to the documents, Rudolph “had in fact worked to institute that program.” Was Rudolph even more culpable that the OSI had originally thought?34
What was this new evidence against the German scientist? Was it credible? What should the OSI do with it? The first document was a report dated April 1943 and signed by Rudolph. According to the report, Rudolph had just toured a factory that employed concentration camp “forced laborers” who were guarded by SS troops. He apparently saw merit in utilizing forced laborers. Ultimately, Rudolph concluded the rocket program would benefit from a similar labor system. The April 1943 report indicated that he was more intimately involved with the use of “forced laborers” at Mittelwerk than he had previously admitted. The second document—June 1943 meeting minutes—demonstrated that Rudolph’s recommendation was about to bear fruit. At the meeting he received orders to coordinate with the commandant of the camp and to organize a forced laborer program at the underground facility. These documents painted a vastly different picture than the one of a scientist who had been given no choice but to work with the labor force that he was given.35
After acquiring copies of the documents, the OSI provided them to Canadian authorities, and they were entered into the record at Rudolph’s hearing. As might be expected, this new evidence challenged Rudolph’s testimony and affected the outcome of the hearing. In May 1992 the Canadian Federal Court of Appeals rendered a decision in Rudolph v. Minister of Employment and Immigration. According to the court, Rudolph “‘called for, made use of and directed’ slave laborers who suffered ‘indescribably brutal’ conditions.”36 The court ordered that he be deported back to Germany.
At this point, things got really interesting. Instead of returning to Germany quietly and letting the furor surrounding him die down, Rudolph added fuel to the fire by filing a lawsuit that named the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. attorney general, the U.S. secretary of state, and four OSI attorneys, who had participated in the case against him, as defendants. In his lawsuit he hoped to accomplish two goals. First, he wanted the 1983 agreement between him and the U.S. government canceled. Second, he wanted to be allowed to return to the United States. Even though he knew that the OSI had recently acquired damning documents, a fact that he failed to address, Rudolph argued that he had been misled by the government. The government had suggested that they had enough evidence to get a denaturalization ruling in court, when in fact government officials had deposed a key witness who exonerated him. In 1993 he learned that Rudolph v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, et al., no. C 92-20116 JW, would not move forward. The judge threw out the lawsuit because it was “barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity.”37
Acting the part of the wrongfully accused, Rudolph refused to let the matter rest. He filed a second lawsuit—Rudolph v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, et al., no. C 94-20411 JW. Despite evidence to the contrary, he asserted that the denials in 1989 of a visa to enter the United States and in 1990 of his “right to enter Canada” were wrong and that those instances did not constitute the first time that his rights had been violated. It was his contention that his civil rights had been abused when he was interviewed by the OSI. According to the lawsuit, some of the questions posed by the OSI “had been ‘incriminatory, impermissibly suggestive and argumentative.’” In addition, he maintained that prior to the second OSI interview he was unaware that he had a right to an attorney or that he actually needed one. Rudolph again met failure! The court dismissed his case—different parts of it for different reasons—in 1995. The court justified its decision because, in some instances, the law provided no basis for the lawsuit and, in others, as was the case in his first lawsuit, because of sovereign immunity.38
When the court rendered a decision in Rudolph’s second lawsuit, he ultimately had no other recourse. He did not initiate further legal action against the U.S. government. In fact, Rudolph did not survive the setbacks. In 1996 he passed away. Rudolph will go down in history as the only scientist who came to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip who was investigated and prosecuted by the OSI. In many respects his case demonstrated that he was unable to escape his past. Interestingly, some Americans, including the former deputy director of the CIA Ray Cline, thought that his work for NASA allowed Rudolph to pay his “debt to society” and that, as a result, he should have been allowed to remain in the United States. The OSI disagreed and argued that it would have been far worse had they chosen a different path with regard to Rudolph.39 According to the OSI, “Deciding to refrain from seeking Rudolph’s denaturalization simply because of the work he performed for our government would, it can be argued, amount to a desecration of the memories of Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, and other leading scientists who made at least equally substantial contributions to our nation—but who did so either after being forced by the Nazis to leave Germany or after voluntarily risking their lives to flee the introduction of Hitler’s racial policies in Europe.”40 The OSI contended that, his contributions to NASA aside, Rudolph did participate in a brutal system that victimized concentration camp inmates.
Questions about Rudolph remain but, in all likelihood, will never be answered to everyone’s satisfaction. If he had not done anything wrong, why did Rudolph agree to renounce his citizenship and leave the United States for good? If, as he later claimed, the OSI had testimony from a key witness that exonerated him, why didn’t he stay and fight? At the time he cited both his health and the cost as reasons for his decision, but a decade later, when he was in his late eighties, he filed lawsuits against the U.S. government in an effort to rescind the agreement that he had signed in 1983. Perhaps his apparently overwhelming desire to return to the United States caused him to throw caution to the wind. After all, how could he know that a Smithsonian Institution historian would find documents that suggested that he was more culpable than the OSI had thought a decade earlier? The evidence does support the fact that, even though he joined the Nazi Party and the SA, he did not actively participate in either group. Equally, recently revealed evidence does suggest that Rudolph recommended that concentration camp labor be utilized in the underground rocket factory at Mittelwerk.
Rudolph was either a complex individual with a complicated past or a simple, unreflective type in well over his head and going with the system. Should his past at Mittelwerk be ignored because he contributed greatly to NASA and to the development of the Saturn V rocket, or should he be held accountable for recommending and then overseeing a forced laborer program despite his contributions to the U.S. space program? In other words, was Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph a NASA hero or a Nazi criminal, or was he both?