Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Benford, Robert Joseph, 1905-1990
- Abstract:
- Reports, biographical data, clippings, and photographs relating to post-war American collection and analysis of German medical research during World War II, and to German war crimes.
- Extent:
- 1 manuscript box, 1 oversize box (1.7 Linear Feet)
- Language:
- English
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Robert Joseph Benford papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The papers of Robert Joseph Benford consist of reports, biographical data, clippings, and photographs chronicling the operation of the Army Air Forces Aero Medical Center and life in Germany in the immediate years following World War II.
Benford's "Report from Heidelberg: The Story of the Army Air Forces Aero Medical Center in Germany, 1945–1947" is a bound fifty-two-page mimeographed document illustrated with dozens of high-quality photographs pasted into the text. Given its mimeographed format and pasted-in photographs, the "Report from Heidelberg" was probably issued in no more than a dozen copies, for Colonel Benford and several of his colleagues and superiors. The quality of the paper is poor, a reflection of the postwar shortages of this commodity. Nonetheless, the quality of the printing and the placing of illustrations is high. The hand-marbled cover illustrated with a woodcut of Heidelberg, as well as the precise fastening of the pages, speaks well of the binder's craft.
Besides the report, the collection includes a scrapbook album of press clippings on the war-crime trials of leading Nazis, brochures, and a twenty-six-page "List of Personnel Involved in Medical Research and Mercy Killings" issued (probably in 1946) by the Office of US Chief of Counsel. The list includes the names of at least two of the German researchers hired by the center. Misspellings and lack of first names make possible identification of any others difficult.
Hoover's Benford collection does not represent the colonel's whole surviving archival legacy. Shortly before his death, he donated several boxes of his medical papers to Harvard Medical Library and his collection of jazz literature and records to the Library of Congress.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Colonel, United States Air Force; commanding officer, Army Air Forces Aero Medical Center, Heidelberg, Germany, 1945-1947.
Robert Joseph Benford, a native of Omaha, worked his way through school as a newspaper reporter and a jazz musician, graduating from the medical school of the University of Nebraska in 1934. Soon after that he joined the US Army Air Forces. As a research associate in physiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, he helped develop and test aviators' oxygen masks. During World War II, he was the senior staff medical officer of the XX Bomber Command, the first B-29 Superfortress unit to strike the Japanese mainland from bases in India and China. When World War II ended in 1945, United States Army Air Forces (AAF) set up a research center in Heidelberg, Germany. The AAF Aero Medical Center, as it was called, had as its mission "to bring back from Germany everything of aero medical interest and all information of importance to medical science in general." Benford commanded the facility and was able to bring together several dozen top German aero medical researchers and technicians and make it possible for them to continue some of their research projects. At the same time he oversaw a massive translation project from German into English of some two thousand medical research documents, mostly highly classified reports in support of the Luftwaffe.
- Acquisition information:
- Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Library Archives in 2017.
- Physical location:
- Hoover Institution Library & Archives
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
- Terms of access:
-
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Robert Joseph Benford papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
- Location of this collection:
-
Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford UniversityStanford, CA 94305-6003, US
- Contact:
- (650) 723-3563