Published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1979, Another Part of the War is a Second World War account of men who opposed military service on religious grounds. They were given the alternative, by law, of performing work of "national importance" in the civilian sector. Under the Civilian Public Service, they served an indefinite "sentence" without pay, in camps that isolated them from the rest of society.  Another Part of the War is one participant's account of one such service.

"Gordon C. Zahn was one of approximately 12,000 men who, over a six-year period, were classified as conscientious objectors and assigned to duty in the 150 or so camps and special units of the Civilian Public Service. His book contends that CPS was punitive in practice and intent, an experiment in "democratic" suppression of a dissident religious minority in time of war.

"Beginning in late October 1942, seventy-five conscientious objectors were assigned to a forestry camp located near Warner, New Hampshire. Its name was Camp Simon, and it had the distinction of being the only such camp operated under Catholic auspices. Putting forth the startling view that this experiment in the New Hampshire woods was the first corporate Catholic initiative against war, and that its vocal residents were historical forerunners of the "Great Catholic Peace Conspiracy" of the Vietnam years, Another Part of the War: The Camp Simon Story is both reminiscence and telling social history. The author focuses on the special problems the Civilian Public Service program raised regarding conscientious objection in a wartime democracy, and on the relationship of Catholic conscientious objection to the position of the Catholic church itself in the secular world."

"A solid historical document, and an important one. The essential material has not been presented elsewhere. Gordon Zahn's was the direct personal involvement in an episode of national and international importance." - Milton Mayer

"Gordon C. Zahn was a Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and a prominent Catholic pacifist. A former Fulbright Senior Research Fellow, he wrote German Catholics and Hitler's War, The Military Chaplaincy, and War, Conscience, and Dissent."

BIOGRAPHY

Gordon C. Zahn (August 7, 1918 – December 9, 2007) was an American sociologist and peace activist. During World War II, he was a conscientious objector, and served in the only Civilian Public Service camp for Catholics, Camp Simon, in New Hampshire, established by the Catholic Worker Movement.

Gordon Zahn helped form the intellectual basis for the statements of the Roman Catholic on conscientious objection, both in "Schema 13," the peace chapter of the Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, and in the 1983 pastoral letter, War and Peace: the Challenge of God's Promise and Our Response.

He extensively studied the German Catholics during World War II. His publications became major sources for Catholic Peace activists and the Austrian national reminiscence on the loss of conscience during the period when Nazis were in power.

Zahn is also the author of In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jagerstatter, about Franz Jagerstatter, a German conscientious objector who was beheaded for refusing to fight in Hitler's army.

Zahn came across Jagerstatter's story while researching his book German Catholics and Hitler's Wars: A Study in Social Control. Jagerstatter was beatified by the Catholic Church on October 26, 2007.

He was one of the founders of Pax Christi USA, the US branch of the international Catholic peace group.

A victim of Alzheimer's disease, Zahn died December 9, 2007, in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

Education and Career

1952: Ph.D. Catholic University
1953-1967: Professor of Sociology, Loyola University of Chicago
1967-1980: University of Massachusetts at Boston
1968: President, American Catholic Sociological Society

Books

- Zahn, Gordon. German Catholics and Hitler's Wars: A Study in Social Control; 1964; ISBN 9780268010171.

- Zahn, Gordon. In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jagerstatter; 1964; ISBN 087243141X.

- Zahn, Gordon. Another Part of the War: The Camp Simon Story; University of Massachusetts Press; 1979; ISBN 0870232592.

Operation Paperclip

Operation Paperclip (also Project Paperclip) was the code name for the American O.S.S. Military rescue of scientists from Nazi Germany during and after World War II. In 1945, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency was established with direct responsibility for effecting Operation Paperclip.

Osenberg List: Following the failure of the German invasion of the Soviet Union (codenamed Operation Barbarossa), the strategic position of Germany was at a disadvantage because German military industries were unprepared for a long war. As a result, Germany began efforts in spring 1943 to recall scientists and technical personnel from combat units for use in research and development.

Overnight, German Ph.D.s were liberated from KP duty, masters of science were recalled from orderly service, mathematicians were hauled out of bakeries, and precision mechanics ceased to be truck drivers.

The recalling first required identifying the men, then tracking them down, and then ascertaining their political correctness and reliability. They were then assigned to the Osenberg List, headed by Werner Osenberg, a University of Hannover engineer-scientist, head of the Wehrforschungsgemeinschaft (Military Research Association).

In March, 1945, a Polish laboratory technician found paper pieces of the Osenberg List in an improperly flushed toilet. Major Robert B. Staver, U.S.A., Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the U.S. Army Ordnance, London, used the Osenberg List to compile his "Black List" of scientists to be interrogated by Wernher von Braun.

Major Staver sent Col. Joel Holmes's cable to the Pentagon, on 22 May 1945, about the urgency of evacuating the German scientists and their families as "important for [the] Pacific war." Most of the scientists were at the Army Research Center in Peenemunde, developing the V-2 rocket.

An equally strong reason for these scientific rescues was to deny German expertise to the Soviets. Eighty-six aeronautical engineers were transferred to Wright-Patterson Field, which had acquired Nazi aircraft and equipment.

Key Scientists Who Came to the USA

Rudi Beichel

Magnus von Braun

Wernher von Braun

Walter Dornberger

Werner Dahm

Konrad Dannenberg

Kurt H. Debus

Ernst R. G. Eckert

Krafft Arnold Ehricke

Otto Hirschler

Hermann H. Kurzweg

Fritz Mueller

Gerhard Reisig

Georg Rickhey

Arthur Rudolph

Ernst Stuhlinger

Werner Rosinski

Eberhard Rees

Bernhard Tessmann

Alexander Martin Lippisch

Hans von Ohain

Hans Multhopp

Kurt Tank

Willy Messerschmidt

Kurt Blome

Hubertus Strughold

Hans Antmann

Hans Ziegler

Kurt Lehovec

Hans Hollmann

Johannes Plendl

Reinhard Gehlen.