page_title: Alsos Mission
section_title: Germany
hierarchical_section_title: Alsos Mission / Western Europe / Germany
caption_attribution_description: English: Members of the ALSOS mission uncover uranium cubes hidden by German scientists in a field in Haigerloch, Germany during the end of World War II. Left to right: James A. Lane, Carl Fiebig, Marte Previti, Harold Brown, Walter A. Parish Deutsch: Mitglieder der ALSOS-Mission graben gegen Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges in einem Haigerlocher Feld Uranwürfel aus, die von deutschen Wissenschaftlern dort versteckt worden waren.
context_page_description: The Alsos Mission was an organized effort by a team of 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 project, but it also investigated both chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them.
  The Alsos Mission was created following the September 1943 Allied invasion of Italy with a twofold assignment: search for personnel, records, material, and sites to evaluate the above programs and prevent their capture by the Soviet Union. It was established as part of the Manhattan Project's mission to coordinate foreign intelligence related to enemy nuclear activity. 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.
context_section_description: When the German Operation Nordwind offensive threatened Strasbourg, Pash ordered all captured documents to be removed. Papers indicating the nature of the Alsos Mission were removed or destroyed. Although Strasbourg was not abandoned by the Allies, and ultimately did not fall, the Alsos Mission departed the city on 8 January 1945. Pash even ordered an evacuation plan to be prepared for the Alsos Mission's main headquarters in Paris. The embarrassing series of intelligence failures that had led up to the Battle of the Bulge cast doubts on the Alsos Mission's own findings. A four-man team under Eckman was sent to investigate a suspiciously devastating V-2 explosion near Antwerp, and Fred Wardenburg had to confirm that it was not a small nuclear explosion. Rumors that Germany had an atomic bomb persisted as late as March 1945.
  A new forward headquarters, Alsos Forward North (AFwdN), was opened at Aachen, and on 8 February the Alsos Mission reopened its forward headquarters in Strasbourg as Alsos Forward South (AFwdS). In March, the U.S. Twelfth Army Group launched Operation Lumberjack, an offensive to clear the Germans west of the Rhine. Pash, who was promoted to colonel on 6 March, led an Alsos Mission detachment into Cologne on 7 March, but little additional information was found.
  The interrogation of German prisoners indicated that uranium and thorium were being processed in Germany, mostly at the Auergesellschaft plant at Oranienburg, so Groves arranged for the plant to be bombed on 15 March 1945. Some 612 B-17 Flying Fortresses of the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped 1,500 tons of high explosive and 178 tons of incendiary bombs on the plant.
  On 30 March, the Alsos Mission reached Heidelberg, where important scientists were captured including Walther Bothe, Richard Kuhn, Philipp Lenard, and Wolfgang Gertner. Their interrogation revealed that Otto Hahn was at his laboratory in Tailfingen, while Werner Heisenberg and Max von Laue were at Heisenberg's laboratory in Hechingen, and the experimental natural uranium reactor that Heisenberg's team had built in Berlin had been moved to Haigerloch. Henceforth, the main focus of the Alsos Mission was on these nuclear facilities in the Württemberg area.
  As the Allied armies advanced into Germany in April 1945, Alsos Mission teams searched Stadtilm, where they found documentation concerning the German nuclear program, components of a nuclear reactor, and eight tons of uranium oxide. Scientists captured at Göttingen and Katlenburg-Lindau included Werner Osenberg, the chief of the planning board of the Reichsforschungsrat, and Fritz Houtermans, who provided information about the Soviet atomic bomb project. At Celle, the Alsos Mission uncovered an experimental centrifuge for separating uranium isotopes, the result of work undertaken at the University of Hamburg by a team under Paul Harteck.
  The problem with the targets in the Württemberg area was that they not only lay in the path of the French First Army's advance, but were also in the occupation zone allocated to France. Groves attempted to get the occupation boundaries changed, but the State Department wanted to know why first, and Groves refused to provide this information. Groves, Marshall, and Stimson then decided that the area would have to be secured by American troops that would carry off what they could and destroy everything else. Pash was sent to ask General Jacob Devers, the commander of the U.S. Sixth Army Group, if the zones of the French First Army and the U.S. Seventh Army could be swapped around. He was informed that the matter would have to be taken up with Eisenhower.
  Groves dispatched Lieutenant Colonel John Lansdale, Jr., to Europe, where he participated in a meeting with Lieutenant General Bedell Smith and Major General Harold Bull of SHAEF; Major General Elbridge Chapman, the commander of the U.S. 13th Airborne Division; Pash, Furman, and Goudsmit of Alsos; and Brigadier General Reuben E. Jenkins from the Sixth Army Group. The plan, codenamed Operation Effective, called for the 13th Airborne Division to occupy the 
caption: Members of the Alsos Mission uncover uranium cubes hidden in the field in Haigerloch. Left to right: James A. Lane, unknown, Marte Previti, Harold Brown, Walter A. Parish.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "100", "Image YResolution": "100", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.4.5", "Image DateTime": "2009:09:14 11:21:26", "Image ExifOffset": "146", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "282", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9118", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "379", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "300"}