Operation Osoaviakhim
The codename Osoaviakhim is the acronym of the then large Soviet organization OSOAVIAKhIM (Russian: Осоавиахим), which recruited civilians for the Red Army during World War II[1] (and later reconstituted as DOSAAF) which was mistakenly used as "Aktion Ossawakim" for the first time on October 23, 1946, by the broadcaster Deutsche Nachrichtenagentur [de] (DENA) of the US occupying power and adapted by the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), a predecessor of the CIA, as Operation Ossavakim.
[5]: 82 The Osoaviakhim campaign served to secure the transfer of know-how and is described in Russia as "Foreign Specialists in the USSR" (Иностранные специалисты в СССР).
At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union had been devastated by Nazi Germany, with 27 million people killed, 1,700 cities destroyed and agriculture production reduced to famine proportions.
Expertise in gyroscopic instrumentation for inertial guidance and modern advances in airplane construction, such as turbojet-engines or swept wings were also sought.
Other fields of remarkable interest were, including but not limited to, miscellaneous electronic devices, color film products, chemical weapons and optics.
Immediately following the German Instrument of Surrender, skilled workers, documents, laboratories and material were shipped abroad in the western zones of occupation.
By May 1946 the Soviets founded the Zentralwerke to include both institutes as well as manufacturing and test sites from the earlier Mittelwerk underground factory in the Nordhausen, Thuringia area with more than 6,000 German employees.
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs commissioned Ivan Serov, Head of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany with the secret preparations.
In detail, for example, it was presented as follows: Days beforehand, Kurt Magnus noticed unusual bustle of the Soviet military and the arrival of freight trains at the station in Bleicherode.
October 1946, soviet officers accompanied by a translator as well as an armed soldier stopped by the homes of German specialists, ordering them to pack their belongings.
A discussion of the Allied Control Council about this deportation was adjourned by its coordination committee on October 29 because of "strong differences about the voluntary or involuntary character of the transports" between the Soviet and the American and British representatives.
Inside the Soviet occupation zone of Germany and East Berlin all protests were silenced quickly following a short uproar of the Free German Trade Union Federation.
According to credible estimates, around 20,000 Germans – fitters, foremen, technicians, engineers, designers and scientists, women and children – were picked up, loaded and transported in that one night.
The scientists, technicians and skilled workers were assigned to individual projects and working groups, primarily in the areas of Aeronautics and rocket technology, nuclear research, Chemistry and Optics.
In the following years, equipment from numerous high-tech companies, including those from Carl Zeiss (Jena), Junkers (Dessau) and the Siebel works (Halle), were dismantled and shipped to the Soviet Union.
For strategic reasons, they also did not want to leave military research and development in the SBZ, especially since the Potsdam Agreement provided for the demilitarization of Germany.
Historian Daniel Bohse describes it as follows: The Soviets were only interested in skimming off the specialist knowledge of the technicians and engineers in order to be able to develop their own missile program on this basis.
Some specialists received chairs in GDR universities (e.g., Werner Albring, Waldemar Wolff), became an East German party official like Erich Apel.
Rocket designer Sergei Korolev was a technical adviser on the part of the Soviet Union with the rank of colonel, which had been seconded to the Zentralwerke in Bleicherode and involved in this campaign.
This in turn meant that Jena was no longer able to pay the reparations demanded by the Soviet side with the remaining means of production, which led to differences between the SMA of the SBZ and Moscow.
'As the Foreign Office reports, a certain number of German technicians from the English occupation zone in Germany have been called to Great Britain by the official government.
