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 to investigate the progress that Nazi 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 (such as the V-2 rocket program).
Alsos Mission
late 1943 – 15 October 1945
15 October 1945
United States
United Kingdom
Netherlands
Norway
Origin[edit]
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.[1] Brigadier General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers became its director in September 1942.[2] 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.[3]
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.[4] The Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, frequently claimed that Germany was developing secret weapons, and it was feared that these might include nuclear weapons.[5] 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.[6]
Following the September 1943 Allied invasion of Italy, Brigadier General Wilhelm D. Styer, Chief of Staff of Army Service Forces,[7] 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.[8] Having the Manhattan Project itself take over responsibility for coordinating these efforts would address both these concerns.[9] 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,[10] a small team jointly staffed by the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), the Manhattan Project, and Army Intelligence (G-2). Its assignment was to investigate enemy scientific developments, including nuclear weapons research. Groves was not pleased with the codename (derived from ἄλσος, the Greek word for "grove"), but decided that changing it would only draw unwanted attention.[11]
The Chief of Army Intelligence, Major General George V. Strong, appointed Lieutenant Colonel Boris Pash to command the unit.[12] 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.[13] Pash's command comprised his executive officer Captain Wayne B. Stanard, four Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) 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 (ONI) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Major William Allis, originally from MIT although then serving on the War Department scientific staff.[14][15]
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.[16]
Italy[edit]
In December 1943, the Alsos Mission reached Algiers, where Pash reported to the Chief of Staff at Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ), 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.[17][18]
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.[19] There was little information about developments in northern Italy and Germany.[12] 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.[20] 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.[21] The Alsos Mission had gathered little of value about nuclear matters, but submitted detailed reports about German rockets and guided missiles.[22]
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. [23] 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.[24] The picture that the Alsos Mission built up indicated that the German effort was not far advanced.[25]
Western Europe[edit]
Britain[edit]
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.[26] Lieutenant Commander Eric Welsh, the head of the Norwegian Section of MI6,[27] was unimpressed with Furman's grasp of the subject matter.[28] 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.[29][30]
Japan[edit]
Plans for the invasion of Japan incorporated an Alsos Mission. Japanese fire balloon attacks on the United States had aroused fears that the technique might be used in combination with biological agents, which the Japanese Unit 731 was known to be experimenting with. In March 1945, the physicist and seismologist L. Don Leet was appointed as head of the scientific section of the Alsos Mission to Japan.[101] Leet had previously worked with the Manhattan Project on the Trinity nuclear test.[102] Plans were drawn up to prepare and equip a T-Force along the lines of the one in Europe, but made up of personnel already in the Pacific. The mission differed from its European counterpart in that it was solely American and consisted of only one intelligence agency. Responsibility for nuclear matters was subsequently handled by a separate Manhattan Project Intelligence Group organized by Groves.[103]
Leet's group reached Manila in July 1945, where they met with the intelligence staff of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur's Army Forces, Pacific. Following the surrender of Japan the mission traveled to Japan and visited various research establishments including Tokyo Imperial University, Waseda University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, the Institute for Materials Research, Tokyo Shibaura Denki (Toshiba), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the National Research Council, and the Board of Technology. The mission, which included Karl Compton, interviewed over 300 Japanese scientists and produced reports on Japanese research into radar, rockets, and other developments, including chemical and biological warfare.[104][105] The Manhattan Project Intelligence Group, under the command of Philip Morrison, arrived in Japan in September 1945 and examined Japan's wartime nuclear weapons program. The group concluded that lack of uranium ore and low priority had doomed the Japanese effort. They reported that, contrary to American belief, Japan's nuclear physicists were competent.[106]