Alsos Mission

The Alsos Mission was a team of British and United States soldiers, scientists, and spies. They worked during World War II to find out what enemy countries were doing with science.

Their main job was to check on Germany's progress in making nuclear weapons. They wanted to take any important materials for the Manhattan Project or keep them from the Soviet Union. They also looked at German work on chemical and biological weapons and other new technologies.

The Alsos Mission started after the Allies landed in Italy in September 1943. It was part of the Manhattan Project. The team had two jobs: to find people, records, materials, and places to learn about these programs, and to stop the Soviet Union from getting them. Alsos workers went close to the fighting lines in Italy, France, and Germany. Sometimes they went into areas still held by the enemy to get important things before they could be destroyed.

The Alsos Mission was led by Colonel Boris Pash, who had worked on security for the Manhattan Project. Samuel Goudsmit was the main science advisor. The team included people from the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), the Manhattan Project, and Army Intelligence (G-2). They also had help from combat engineers.

Alsos teams found and took many German research records and equipment. They also captured many top German scientists, including Otto Hahn, Max von Laue, Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. By late 1944, they learned that Germany was not close to making an atomic bomb. The German nuclear program was still just testing, not making weapons. After Japan lost the war, an Alsos team went there to check its nuclear program too.

Origin

The Manhattan Project was the Allied nuclear weapons program during World War II, led by the United States with help from the United Kingdom and Canada. It began because scientists, many from Nazi Germany, feared Germany might build an atomic bomb.

After the Allies invaded Italy in September 1943, the Manhattan Project created the Alsos Mission. This small team included military officers, scientists, and intelligence experts. Their goal was to learn about enemy scientific work, especially Germany’s nuclear research, and to protect important discoveries.

Italy

In December 1943, the Alsos Mission went to Algiers and then to Italy. There, they met with leaders and talked to Italian scientists. They looked at papers but found little about Germany’s work. By March 1944, most of the team went back to the United States.

Rome was captured on June 4, 1944. The team returned to Italy and protected important places like the University of Rome. They talked to more scientists and found that Germany’s nuclear work was not very advanced. The mission learned useful facts about German rockets and missiles.

Western Europe

Britain

In December 1943, Groves sent Furman to Britain to talk about setting up a London office to help with the Manhattan Project. Lieutenant Commander Eric Welsh, who worked for the British government, was not very impressed with what Furman knew. Groves then chose Captain Horace K. Calvert to lead the London office. Calvert worked with Welsh and Michael Perrin from Tube Alloys. They talked to scientists who had fled their homes, looked at German science magazines, and made lists of German scientists and places where they might be doing nuclear research.

France

In August 1944, Pash and another agent looked into reports that the French scientist Frédéric Joliot-Curie was in Brittany. They found papers at the University of Rennes and later found Joliot-Curie at the Collège de France in Paris. They talked to him and looked at papers, which showed that German scientists had been to these places and used them.

Germany

As the Allied forces moved into Germany, Alsos Mission teams looked for places where nuclear research might be happening and for scientists. They found papers and equipment in cities like Strasbourg, Heidelberg, and Göttingen. In April 1945, teams found a nuclear reactor in Haigerloch and caught several important German scientists, including Werner Heisenberg. By the end of the war, the Alsos Mission learned a lot about Germany’s nuclear work and found out that Germany was not close to making an atomic bomb.

Japan

Plans for the invasion of Japan included an Alsos Mission because people were worried Japan might use fire balloon attacks with other dangerous tools. In March 1945, physicist L. Don Leet became head of the science part of the Alsos Mission to Japan. Leet's group arrived in Manila in July 1945 and later went to Japan after the surrender of Japan. They visited many research places such as Tokyo Imperial University and talked to over 300 Japanese scientists. They learned about Japan’s work on radar, rockets, and other technologies. Another group from the Manhattan Project, led by Philip Morrison, also came to Japan and found that Japan’s nuclear program did not succeed mainly because they did not have enough uranium ore.

Legacy

After visiting the German project at Haigerloch, Goudsmit saw that Germany's work on nuclear technology was smaller than expected. The facilities were simple and did not have much money compared to the efforts in the United States.

In the end, the Alsos Mission did not greatly help the Allies defeat Nazi Germany, because the German nuclear and biological weapons programs were smaller than people thought. But, the mission did help collect important scientific knowledge that affected developments after the war.