Alsos Mission

The Alsos Mission was part of the Manhattan Project, the effort during World War II by the Allies, principally Britain and the United States, to create an atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project was also charged with coordinating foreign intelligence related to enemy nuclear activity, and the Alsos Mission was created following the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943, to investigate the German nuclear energy project. Alsos Mission personnel followed close behind the front lines, and occasionally behind enemy lines, first in Italy, and later in France and Germany. They searched for personnel, records, material, and sites to evaluate the German nuclear project, further American research, and prevent their capture by the Soviet Union.

The Alsos Mission was commanded by Colonel Boris Pash, a former Manhattan Project security officer. Samuel Goudsmit was its scientific leader. It was jointly staffed by the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), the Manhattan Project, and Army Intelligence (G-2), to investigate enemy scientific developments. It was not restricted to those involving nuclear weapons, but also investigated chemical and biological weapons, and the means to deliver them.

Alsos personnel managed to find and remove many of the German research effort's personnel, along with a substantial portion of the surviving records and equipment. The Alsos Mission took most of the senior German research personnel into custody, including Otto Hahn, Max von Laue, Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker.