Operation Schlange

Operation Schlag emblem

> "*They gave many names for the program, but the most notorious and most common name they had for this thing was Operation Schlange...German for Serpent.*"
> ― A British prisoner and Schlange test subject who escaped and went public with his experiences
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> "*This Serpent program's very existence is a crime against humanity! It must be destroyed! To protect our soldiers and our citizens, I have asked our generals to authorize shoot-on-sight mandates for any Operation Schlange associates and the destruction of all Schalnge-related facilities by any means necessary.*"
> ― United States President Harry Truman in a public statement regarding Operation Schlange
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**Operation Schlange** (Eng: Serpent) was a German super-soldier-experiment that focused on creating super-soldier-assassins to help sabotage the war effort against the Allied Powers during the Second World War.

## History

### Conception

The idea behind Operation Schlange was born out of a desire to augment the Wehrmacht with super-soldier-assassins that would make the Nazi war machine unstoppable. It was the brainchild of German scientists Hans Gore and Herman Balder, who experimented on prisoners of war using psychedelic drugs, waterboarding, electroshock therapy, and a serum that was designed to enhance the subjects mental and physical capabilities in order to make them "post-human warriors". Though initially thought of as a madman, Nazi German general Hans Biedermann saw some potential in Gore and recruited him into the Nazi German Army, using his methods to create super-soldier-assassins. Over the years, Gore developed a regimen with a mix of physical abuse and psychedelic drug dosages that would erase all memories of somebody's past and leave them susceptible to mind control. Once the subject was broken mentally and physically, Gore would inject the patients with a serum that would cause rapid mutations within the subjects, granting them enhanced physical abilities, as well as mental. The subjects could think five times as fast as a normal human and also became telepathic; they could read the minds of anyone within close vicinity. This allowed the spies to be virtually unstoppable when it came to exposing allied espionage plans.

### Exposure and termination

In 1944, the project was exposed to the public after escaped prisoners and victims of the program went public regarding what they saw and what they were subjected to while in captivity. Their vivid testimonies shocked, horrified, and disgusted the Allies, which immediately took action to shut down the program by any means necessary. On the USA's side, US President Harry Truman authorized a "search-and-destroy" campaign, ordering soldiers to destroy any Operation Schlange research and experimentation facility on sight and repatriate any prisoners that were seen. The Canadians, British, and French ordered similar measures for their own soldiers. However, the Soviet Union had other ideas.

By the war's end, Operation Schlange had become public knowledge and was regarded as one of the biggest war crimes in military history (second only to the Holocaust itself), and it was at the forefront during the Nuremberg Trials. Operation Schlange itself was formally terminated, with all its victims being put in a special "witness protection program" to protect them from vigilante gangs as they testified before the military tribunals.

### Reverse engineering

*Main article*: Operation Iron Wolf

At the war's end, most of the Allied Powers condemned Operation Schlange as a horrific crime against humanity. However, the Soviet Union secretly recruited Nazi defectors to reverse engineer the program into a program of its own: a Soviet supersoldier program known as *Iron Wolf*.

## Assets

### Training

Test subjects were commonly subjected to a brutal regimen regarding physical abuse designed to break them, followed by drugs to wear down the mind of the subjects to force their compliance. Once their mind was broken, the subjects were taught a variety of languages, martial arts, marksmanship, and a plethora of other useful combat and field agent skills to carry out their missions successfully. Thanks to the drugs, the test subjects would be "activated" via hypnotic triggers (usually a song). The subjects were also transformed into superhuman warriors through a serum that would would cause rapid mutations within the subjects, granting them enhanced physical abilities, as well as mental. Known as the "Serpent Serum", subjects with the serum injected into their bodies were instantly transformed into what both Gore and Balder termed "post-human warriors"; soldiers could think ten times faster than normal humans, perform acts of superhuman feats far beyond that of a normal human, and also read minds. This it nearly impossible for Allied spies to maintain their cover, as they would always be exposed by Schlange agents within seconds of meeting them.

### Deployment

After the subject was fully brainwashed and loyal, the subject would be released into the world with a cover story, meant to conceal the truth behind what had happened to them. To make them seem delusional and crazy, handlers would force the subjects to admit to crimes they didn't do (the main one being desertion). This made it difficult for the truth to come out. However, as the brainwashing was temporary, it became quite common for subjects to snap and go public about their experiences once they were among Allied soldiers once again.

## Notable members

### Known Test Subjects

* John Davis
* Alexis Darmouth
* Amy Leeland
* Vasili Koslov
* Bill Taylor
* Dimitri Volkov
* Damien Crowe
* John Edwards
* Irina Kamova
* Julien Lambert
* Annie Brodeur