The American high command was well aware of how important their catch was: von Braun had been at the top of the "Black List", the code name for the list of German scientists and engineers targeted for immediate interrogation by U.S. military experts. On 9 June 1945, two days before the originally scheduled handover of the Nordhausen and Bleicherode area in Thuringia to the Soviets, U.S. Army Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in London, and Lt Col R. L. Williams took von Braun and his department chiefs by Jeep from Garmisch to Munich, from where they were flown to Nordhausen. On the following days, a larger group of rocket engineers, among them Helmut Gröttrup, was evacuated from Bleicherode southwest to Witzenhausen, a small town in the American Zone. The Red Army eventually took over Thuringia as part of the Soviet occupation zone after 1 July 1945, as agreed by the Yalta Conference.