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The Alsos Mission was an organized effort by a team of United States military, scientific, and intelligence personnel to discover enemy scientific developments during World War II. Its chief focus was on the German nuclear energy project, but it also investigated both chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them. The Alsos Mission was created following the September 1943 Allied invasion of Italy with a twofold assignment: search for personnel, records, material, and sites to evaluate the above programs and prevent their capture by the Soviet Union. It was established as part of the Manhattan Project's mission to coordinate foreign intelligence related to enemy nuclear activity. Alsos personnel followed close behind the front lines in Italy, France, and Germany, occasionally crossing into enemy held territory to secure valuable resources before they could be destroyed or scientists escape or fall into rival hands. The Alsos Mission was commanded by Colonel Boris Pash, a former Manhattan Project security officer, with Samuel Goudsmit as chief scientific advisor. 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), with field assistance from combat engineers assigned to specific task forces.〔Beck, Alfred M, et al, ''United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services – The Corps of Engineers: The War Against Germany'', 1985 (Chapter 24, ''Into the Heart of Germany'' )〕 Alsos teams were successful in locating and removing a substantial portion of the German research effort's surviving records and equipment. They also took most of the senior German research personnel into custody, including Otto Hahn, Max von Laue, Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ==Origin== The Manhattan Project was a research-and-development program, operated during and immediately after World War II. Led by the United States with contributions principally from the United Kingdom and Canada, it aimed to produce an atomic bomb. Brigadier General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers became its director in September 1942. The project operated under a tight blanket of security lest its discovery induce Axis powers, particularly Germany, to accelerate their own nuclear projects or to undertake covert operations against the project. The Manhattan Project intelligence staff believed that the Japanese atomic program was not far advanced because Japan had little access to uranium ore, the industrial effort required exceeded Japan's capacity, and, according to American physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, who knew the leading Japanese physicists personally, there were too few Japanese qualified to work in the area. Oppositely, German scientists had reputations as leaders in the field, and the fear of Germany developing nuclear weapons first was one of the reasons for the establishment of the Manhattan Project. The Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, frequently claimed that Germany was developing secret weapons, and it was feared that these might include nuclear weapons. Reports of German nuclear activity were taken very seriously. At the instigation of the Manhattan Project, Norwegian saboteurs and Allied bombers attacked heavy-water infrastructure in German-occupied Norway in late 1942 and early 1943. Following the September 1943 Allied invasion of Italy, Brigadier General Wilhelm D. Styer, Chief of Staff of Army Service Forces, was concerned intelligence activities related to foreign nuclear energy programs were not being properly coordinated. He feared that important items might be overlooked unless those responsible were properly briefed, yet at the same time wished to minimize the number of personnel with access to such secret information. Having the Manhattan Project itself take over responsibility for coordinating these efforts would address both these concerns. Accordingly, he approached Groves on behalf of General George Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the Army, with that recommendation. In response, Groves created the ''Alsos Mission'', a small team 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). Its assignment was to investigate enemy scientific developments, including nuclear weapons research. Groves was not pleased with the codename, the Greek word for "grove", but decided that changing it would only draw unwanted attention. The Chief of Army Intelligence, Major General George V. Strong, appointed Lieutenant Colonel Boris Pash to command the unit. Pash had served as the head of the Counter Intelligence Branch of the Western Defense Command, where he had investigated suspected Soviet espionage at the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. Pash's command comprised his executive officer Captain Wayne B. Stanard, four Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) agents, four interpreters, and four scientists: Dr. James B. Fisk from the Bell Telephone Company, Dr. John R. Johnson from Cornell University, Commander Bruce Olds from the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Major William Allis, originally from MIT although then serving on the War Department scientific staff. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alsos Mission」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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