The Alsos Mission was an organized effort by a team of British and U.S. 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. It has been described as “the most successful intelligence operation of the Second World War” and “the greatest intelligence success story of the Cold War”
About Alsos Mission in brief
The Alsos Mission was an organized effort by a team of British and U.S. 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. It was established as part of the Manhattan Project’s mission to coordinate foreign intelligence related to enemy nuclear activity. The mission was successful in locating and removing a substantial portion of the German research effort’s surviving records and equipment. It also took most of the senior German research personnel into custody, including Otto Hahn, Max von Laue, Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. The unit was commanded by Colonel Boris Pash, a former Manhattan Project security officer, with Samuel Goudsmit as chief scientific advisor. In December 1943, the Alos Mission reached Algiers, where Pash reported to the Chief of the Allied Force at Allied Headquarters, Major General Walter B. Smith, and his British Chief of Intelligence, Brigadier General Kenneth Strong. This was awkward as Pash’s instructions to the British were not to give the British information about the AlsOS Mission to the American Chief of Staff at Allied HQ, Major general George V. Strong. The team was led by Lieutenant Colonel BorisPash, who 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.
Pash was not pleased with the codename, the Greek word for “grove”, but decided that changing it would only draw unwanted attention. He was succeeded as commander of the unit by Lt. Col. Wayne B. Stan. Stan, who was also the chief of Counter Intelligence Corps at Allied headquarters in Paris, France, and served until the end of the war in Europe. The Mission was also responsible for the capture of German scientists who had fled to the United States to avoid capture by the Soviet Union. The group was also involved in the destruction of heavy-water infrastructure in German-occupied Norway in late 1942 and early 1943. It is unclear whether the mission ever reached the U.K. or U.N. headquarters in London, where it was reported to have been disbanded in December 1943. The Alsas Mission was disbanded in January 1944. It has been described as “the most successful intelligence operation of the Second World War” and “the greatest intelligence success story of the Cold War” by the American and British intelligence services. It had a mission to locate and remove German research equipment and personnel before they could be destroyed or scientists escape or fall into rival hands. It followed the 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 Soviet Union, and prevent them from being taken over by the Soviets. Its assignment was to investigate enemyscientific developments, including nuclear weapons research.
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This page is based on the article Alsos Mission published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
