In the closing days of World War II, the Soviet Union and the U.S. sought to enhance their knowledge of missile technology with the help of German engineers. In what would be called Operation Paperclip, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services brought Dr. Wernher von Braun, and over 1,500 German scientists and engineers, to the U.S. in the final weeks of the war. The operation deprived the Soviet Union of Germany's most prominent rocket engineers and provided the nascent beginnings of the civilian space program in the U.S.