Alsos Mission
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 to investigate the progress that Germany was making in the area of nuclear technology, and to seize any German nuclear resources that would either be of use to the Manhattan Project or worth denying to the Soviet Union. It also investigated German chemical and biological weapon development and the means to deliver them, and any other advanced Axis technology it was able to get information about in the course of the other investigations.
The Alsos Mission was created after the September 1943 Allied invasion of Italy 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 Boris Pash, a former Manhattan Project security officer, with Samuel Goudsmit as chief scientific advisor. It was jointly staffed by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the Manhattan Project, and Army Intelligence, with field assistance from combat engineers 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, Max von Laue, Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. By November-December 1944, they had concluded that there was no threat of a German atomic bomb, and that the German nuclear program had only reached an experimental phase, not a production phase. After the defeat of Japan, an Alsos mission was sent in to evaluate its nuclear program as well.
Origin
The Manhattan Project was the Allied nuclear weapons 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. Brigadier General Leslie Groves 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, particularly Germany, to accelerate their own nuclear projects or to undertake covert operations against the project.Allied work on nuclear fission had been motivated by scientists, many of whom were refugees from Nazi Germany, who feared a German atomic bomb program was underway. The discovery of fission had taken place largely in Otto Hahn's Berlin laboratory, and many scientists in the United States held the work of German scientists, especially Werner Heisenberg, in high regard. Fear that they were in a "race" for the atomic bomb was one of the main reasons for the establishment of the Manhattan Project and acceleration of the Allied effort. The Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, 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, Brigadier General Wilhelm D. Styer, Chief of Staff of Army Service Forces, was concerned that 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 Scientific Research and Development, the Manhattan Project, and Army Intelligence. Its assignment was to investigate enemy scientific developments, including nuclear weapons research. Groves was not pleased with the codename, but decided that changing it would only draw unwanted attention.
The Chief of Army Intelligence, Major General George V. Strong, appointed Lieutenant Colonel Boris Pash to command the unit. Pash had served as the head of the Counter Intelligence Branch of the Western Defense Command, 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 agents, four interpreters, and four scientists: Dr. James B. Fisk from the Bell Telephone Company, Dr. John R. Johnson from Cornell University, Commander Bruce Old from the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Major William Allis, originally from MIT although then serving on the War Department scientific staff.
The Manhattan Project intelligence staff believed that the Japanese atomic program 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.
Italy
In December 1943, the Alsos Mission reached Algiers, where Pash reported to the Chief of Staff at Allied Force Headquarters, Major General Walter B. Smith, and his British Chief of Intelligence, Brigadier Kenneth Strong. 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 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, 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, 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, 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 Eric Welsh, the head of the Norwegian Section of MI6, 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, 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. Aerial reconnaissance was carried out periodically, and production was measured by assessing the size of the piles of tailings.
Groves warned General Dwight D. Eisenhower of the possibility that the Germans might disrupt the Normandy landings 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 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, the head of OSRD, selected the scientific staff, and appointed Samuel Goudsmit, 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.