Operation Surgeon was a British post-
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
programme to exploit German
aeronautics
Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...
and deny German technical skills to the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
.
A list of 1,500 German scientists and technicians was created, with the goal of forcibly removing them from Germany ("whether they like it or not") to lessen the risk of their falling into enemy hands. It was feared that if they remained in Germany, they could enable the Soviet Union to "achieve a long range bomber force superior to any other in the world".
"UK 'fears' over German scientists"
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...
UK 31 March 2006
At the operation's inception, many of the scientists had already offered their services to British Commonwealth countries, Sweden, Switzerland, Brazil and South America, and regarded working for the Soviet Union as a last resort, should they be prevented from working in Germany and unable to find employment elsewhere in the west.
Of the scientists relocated from 1946-1947, 100 chose to work for the UK.
British records of the operation were made public in 2006.
See also
* T-Force
T-Force was the operational arm of a joint US Army–British Army mission to secure German scientific and industrial technology before it could be destroyed by retreating German forces or looters during the final stages of the Second World War an ...
* Similar (but separate) attempts to remove German technical information and personnel after the war were:
** Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World Wa ...
- US removal of German rocketry experts and materials.
** TICOM
TICOM (Target Intelligence Committee) was a secret Allied project formed in World War II to find and seize German intelligence assets, particularly in the field of cryptology and signals intelligence.
It operated alongside other Western Allied ...
(cryptography)
** Operation Alsos
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 on the German nuclear energy pr ...
(nuclear weapons)
** Operation Osoaviakhim
Operation Osoaviakhim ()
was a secret Soviet operation under which more than 2,500 former Nazi German specialists
(; i.e. scientists, engineers and technicians who worked in specialist areas)
from companies and institutions relevant to military a ...
Notes and references
;Notes
;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
* Matthias Judt; Burghard Ciesla, ''Technology Transfer Out of Germany After 1945'' Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996.
* John Gimbel
U.S. Policy and German Scientists: The Early Cold War
', Political Science Quarterly
''Political Science Quarterly'' is an American double blind peer-reviewed academic journal covering government, politics, and policy, published since 1886 by the Academy of Political Science. Its editor-in-chief is Robert Y. Shapiro (Columbia Uni ...
, 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.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Surgeon, Operation
Surgeon
In modern medicine, a surgeon is a medical professional who performs surgery. Although there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon usually is also a licensed physician or received the same medical training as ...
Surgeon
In modern medicine, a surgeon is a medical professional who performs surgery. Although there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon usually is also a licensed physician or received the same medical training as ...
Soviet Union–United Kingdom relations