Arthur Rudolph
The Saturn 5 rocket was developed in the 1960s to carry American astronauts to the moon. The Saturn 5 program was managed by Arthur Rudolph, who had previously worked on smaller US rockets developed for the space program and for the US Army. Prior to that he worked on V-2 rocket research for the United States in White Sands, assigned there by the US Army after being brought to the United States under the purview of Operation Paperclip.
A US background investigation in 1954 – after nine years in the United States – noted Rudolph’s fervor for the Nazi Party and its beliefs. He had the joined the party in 1930. Rudolph worked in production of the V-2 as operations director at Mittelwerk. During production Rudolph and the rest of the production team witnessed the public execution of workers accused of sabotage; Rudolph later claimed that they were forced by the SS to observe the hanging of up to 12 prisoners.
Rudolph surrendered to the US Army and after briefly working with the British was returned to US custody and with his family brought to the United States. He became a US citizen in 1954. His work on rockets for the army and later NASA was often in highly classified areas. He received numerous awards for his work from NASA from which he retired in January 1969, six months before the rocket he had played a leading role in developing launched men to the moon.
Ten years later investigators with the Department of Justice uncovered the link between Rudolph and forced labor at Mittelbau-Dora. A series of interrogations was scheduled with the Department’s Office of Special Investigations, these revealed Rudolph’s activities at the Mittelwerk facility, including his use of forced labor to speed production of the V-2. Rudolph entered into negotiations to avoid prosecution by the United States for war crimes, which included his renunciation of American citizenship (although he retained his pension and Social Security benefits), and deportation.
Upon Rudolph’s return to West Germany on a pretext he renounced his American citizenship as agreed and applied for West German citizenship. The revelation of the reasons for his actions started an international investigation, with public demands that he be tried as a war criminal. The West German government decided that since the Statute of Limitations for any crimes connected to Rudolph had expired he would not be charged and he was granted West German citizenship. Before he died in 1996 Rudolph sued to recover American citizenship, claiming he had been coerced, but the case was dismissed.