Globalizing Spaceflight History in Huntsville, Alabama

When the U.S. Government initially agreed to bring German rocket engineers and technicians to the United States under the secret military operation “Project Paperclip” as part of “intellectual reparations” after World War Two, it did not plan on offering these men long-term contracts and their families, American citizenship. However, as the Cold War intensified, the decision was made to keep the men and their families in the country permanently, albeit voluntarily, mainly in order to deny their expertise to the Soviet Union. Initially living in Ft. Bliss, Texas, without official immigrant status, the group had to cross the border to Mexico at El Paso in order to return from Juarez as legal immigrants in the late 1940s. Some members of the group even like to refer to themselves as the first “illegal immigrants.” After moving to Huntsville, Alabama, in 1950, following Wernher von Braun and the U.S. Army’s rocket development program, most of the German team members and their dependents became naturalized American citizens by 1955.

The dissertation on which the proposed presentation is based interrogates these German rocket engineers and technicians as some of the first immigrants to the United States, who were invited explicitly because of their expertise in science and technology. It views them as a case study for the beginnings of international competition over scientists and engineers so commonplace in today’s global marketplace.

The proposed paper discusses the ramifications of making decisions about immigration based primarily on national scientific, technical, engineering, and security concerns while ignoring the cultural impact on host communities. Based on oral histories with Huntsville residents, archival material, and newspaper/magazine articles, the presentation explores how the histories of these immigrants from Nazi Germany affect the community of Huntsville, Alabama, that is, how German history complicates American history in the “Rocket City.”