28 lines
2.1 KiB
Markdown
28 lines
2.1 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
aliases:
|
|
- Samuel Goudsmit
|
|
category: "Scientists & Researchers"
|
|
tags:
|
|
- WorldWarII
|
|
- Person
|
|
- WW2
|
|
- Nazi
|
|
summary: "Samuel Goudsmit was a Dutch-American nuclear physicist who served as the scientific head of Operation Alsos, an elite U.S."
|
|
born: 1902-07-11
|
|
died: 1978-12-04
|
|
location: "The Hague, Netherlands"
|
|
updated: 2026-10-14
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
Samuel Goudsmit was a Dutch-American nuclear physicist who served as the scientific head of [[Operation Alsos]], an elite U.S. scientific intelligence effort during [[World War II]]. The mission of Operation Alsos was to investigate the German nuclear energy project and to prevent German scientific and technological knowledge from falling into Soviet hands[^1].
|
|
|
|
In July 1945, after the defeat of [[Nazi Germany]], Goudsmit and his team sought to gain access to the former headquarters of [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s [[Das Ahnenerbe|Ahnenerbe Institute]] at 16 Pücklerstrasse in Dahlem, Berlin. Goudsmit was only vaguely familiar with the Ahnenerbe's research, which included human experiments conducted through a division called Applied War Research[^1]. He described finding "remnants of weird Teutonic symbols and rites" and "strange dummies which at first looked like bodies of victims" in the basement of the villa[^1].
|
|
|
|
Goudsmit emphasized the critical importance of preventing the Ahnenerbe's supernatural secrets from becoming part of the [[Cold War]] arms race. He ensured that the Ahnenerbe relics were crated up and sent to U.S. Army headquarters in Frankfurt[^1].
|
|
|
|
Goudsmit wrote that when [[Boris Pash]] and a general entered the Hechingen office of [[Werner Heisenberg]], the first thing they saw was a photograph of Heisenberg and Goudsmit standing side by side, taken when Heisenberg was Goudsmit's guest, and that Pash later took six men to Urfeld, south of Munich, to take Heisenberg.[^2]
|
|
|
|
### Footnotes
|
|
|
|
[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
|
|
[^2]: Goudsmit, Samuel A. *Alsos*. Woodbury, N.Y.: American Institute of Physics Press, 1996 (first published New York: Henry Schuman, 1947), pp. 99 and 111.
|