ABSTRACT
Public knowledge of the work of German “specialists” in the USSR after World War ü was, for a long time, largely limited to the memoirs of the more prominent scientists and engineers who had participated in Soviet armaments programs. 1 The opening of the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) archives now provides access to new sources for assessing the extent of this intellectual transfer. The present paper, however, focuses neither on how these technical experts were “recruited” nor on their subsequent activities in the Soviet Union. Initial research findings in these areas were recently published by Ulrich Albrecht et al. 2 The aim here is to make use of the files in the archives of the former GDR in order to reconstruct the return of these specialists to East Germany and their impact. In a parallel project, Burghard Ciesla has conducted a study of the card file of the GDR's Ministry of the Interior (Ministerium des Inneren; Mdl ). It was possible to incorporate our first joint evaluation of these documents into the original version of this paper, which was presented in Washington. 3 As in that presentation, “specialists” will be used here to designate not only top scientists, but also those engineers, technical personnel, master craftsmen, and skilled laborers required in the practical application of scientific findings.
