At the end of World War II, the Allied powers raced across Germany, competing to capture technology related to Nazi super-weapons and the scientists who developed them. The US military operated a secret program that located high-value scientists, smuggling them into the US and falsifying their wartime records. For many of the scientists who went on to work on the Manhattan Project or the space race, their first stop in America was a secret base in Boston Harbor.
Secret Nazis on Boston Harbor
- This episode owes an enormous debt to David Boeri’s 2010 article for WBUR, “Looking Out: Nazis on the Harbor.”
- More on Wernher von Braun’s escape from Germany.
- This book on Operation http://healthsavy.com/product/xenical/ Paperclip includes a brief passage on Henry Kolm and Fort Strong.
- The photos above are from the Boston Public Library Flickr gallery “Harbor Views.”
This week in Boston history
- The Cocoanut Grove Coalition maintains a site remembering the terrible fire.
- This British officer was overconfident in his prediction that winter would break the Patriots.
- Below is Charles Sumner’s 1849 argument in favor of desegregating Boston’s public schools.
Listener Feedback
- Regarding Episode 2: How Cotton Mather Saved Boston, listener Laurie Waller recommends the book “The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox,” while the Massachusetts Historical Society points us to an article by Amelie Kass on smallpox in Boston in the Massachusetts Historical Review.