T-Force

T-Force was the operational arm of a joint US Army–British Army mission to secure German scientific and industrial technology before it could be destroyed by retreating German forces or looters during the final stages of the Second World War and its aftermath. Key personnel were also to be seized and targets of opportunity exploited when encountered. The effort was a business and technology-oriented parallel of sorts to the Monuments Men pursuit of art and financial treasure.

The program was designed to loot German intellectual assets and impede its ability to compete in the postwar political and economic spheres while giving a boost to the nations conducting it.^[1] Though unacknowledged at the time, the T-Force mission also included preventing advanced Nazi technology from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union—destroying whatever could not be seized and spirited away before Red Army troops arrived. T-Force activities can be seen as foreshadowing the beginning of the Cold War. Operations in Germany were often heavy-handed and sometimes amounted to kidnapping.^[1] Publicly available information on the unit's activities remains scarce.

Comprising some 3,000 "investigators" plus thousands more in attached battalions of infantry and combat engineers, T-Force activities were among the largest Allied "exploitation operations".^[2][3][4] T-Force was also to prevent damage to infrastructure such as telephone exchanges that would be useful to occupying forces and in the rebuilding of Germany.