Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America

by Annie Jacobsen

The “remarkable” story of America's secret post-WWII science programs (The Boston Globe), from the New York Times bestselling author of Area 51.

In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States.

Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War?

Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich's ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century.

In this definitive, controversial look at one of America's most strategic, and disturbing, government programs, Jacobsen shows just how dark government can get in the name of national security.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Science, World War II, Audiobook, War

813 pages, Hardcover

First published February 11, 2014

About the author

ANNIE JACOBSEN is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author. Her books include: AREA 51; OPERATION PAPERCLIP; THE PENTAGON’S BRAIN; PHENOMENA; SURPRISE, KILL VANISH; and FIRST PLATOON.

Her newest book, NUCLEAR WAR: A SCENARIO, is an international bestseller.

Jacobsen’s books have been named Best of the Year and Most Anticipated by outlets including The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, Vanity Fair, Apple, and Amazon. She has appeared on countless TV programs and media platforms—from PBS Newshour to Joe Rogan—discussing war, weapons, government secrecy, and national security.

She also writes and produces TV, including Tom Clancy’s JACK RYAN.

Jacobsen graduated from Princeton University where she was Captain of the Women’s Ice Hockey Team. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband Kevin and their two sons.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

“For Operation Paperclip, moving a scientist from military custody to immigrant status required elaborate and devious preparation, but in the end the procedure proved to be infallible. Scientists in the southwestern or western United States, accompanied by military escort, were driven in an unmarked army jeep out of the country into Mexico…With him, each scientist carried two forms from the State Department, I-55 and I-255, each bearing a signature from the chief of the visa division and a proviso from the Joint Chiefs of Staff… signifying that the visa holder was ‘a person whose admission is highly desirable in the national interest.’ The scientist also had with him a photograph of himself and a blood test warranting that he did not have any infectious diseases. After consulate approval, the scientist was then let back into the United States, no longer under military guard but as a legal U.S. immigrant in possession of a legal visa. The pathway toward citizenship had begun. If the scientist lived closer to the East Coast than the West Coast, he went through the same protocols, except that he would exit the United States into Canada instead of Mexico and reenter through the consulate at Niagara Falls.”
- Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America

One of the most striking things about the end of the Second World War is how quickly everyone moved onto the next crisis. Despite the deaths of seventy million people, despite the displacement of millions more, despite the cities reduced to rubble, no one stopped to take a deep breath. Instead, former allies became fast enemies; former enemies became indispensable allies.

Famously, of course, the Allies tried 24 of Germany’s “major” war criminals, hanging ten of them. These were the remaining big fish, those closest to Hitler who had decided not to follow der Führer’s suicidal example. Subsequent trials resulted in the conviction of 97 other defendants, including doctors, Einsatzgruppen members, and industrialists.

But then, the Cold War started to change the definition of justice. Sentences were reduced. Nazis who’d been responsible for pain, suffering, and death, ended up serving less time behind bars than some non-violent drug offenders in U.S. prisons today. Many more former Nazis were never tried at all, because of their value in the fight against communism.

In this strange new milieu, Operation Paperclip came to life, dedicated to collecting top Nazi scientists and putting them to use against the Soviets. Indeed, the U.S. started gathering these jackbooted minds even before the guns fell silent. The mission served a twofold purposes: boosting American operations while denying such access to the Soviets.

Annie Jacobsen’s Operation Paperclip tells the story of this eponymous, top-secret intelligence program, dedicated to wringing information about high-altitude performance, tabun gas, and rocketry from some very suspect sources.

It should be said that this is not really new history. Even if you’ve never heard of Operation Paperclip (it went by other names as well), you probably know in passing that the U.S. employed former Nazis during the Cold War. For instance, anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Space Race (or who has seen Dr. Strangelove) knows that Werner von Braun played a prominent role in birthing America’s ballistic missile program. And of course, before von Braun successfully passed himself off as a starry-eyed dreamer, whose only wish in life was to understand the infinite heavens, he made his bones lobbing V-2 missiles on civilian population bases, not for strategic reasons, mind you, but for the vicious hell of it.

What Jacobsen provides in Operation Paperclip are not revelations, but meat on the skeleton. She describes the process by which these learned fascists made their way to our shores, how they were kept here, and how they were protected by the military. It’s a worthy goal for a book, and I think she achieves it, after a fashion.

This is written in journalistic style, by which I mean that Jacobsen is more concerned with sharing what she has discovered, and acknowledging what she could not (much remains classified), than with providing a comprehensive history or methodically analyzing the program.

I thought that things started off at a really nice pace, with intelligence teams racing into newly-conquered territories to find important scientists before they could escape (or worse, fall into Russian hands). There were some shenanigans involved, which demonstrates how early some Americans recognized the Soviet threat.

As Operation Paperclip progresses, though, it starts to suffer from a frustrating disorganization. Jacobsen cannot seem to settle on a structure, so we get some chapters that are nicely centered on a single topic, such as Hitler’s doctors, and others that are just all over the place. Jacobsen’s stated intent is to provide “profiles” of twenty-one of the German scientists brought into Operation Paperclip. The problem, however, is that she is not able to wrangle all these personalities in a satisfying way. She has a tendency to leave fundamental questions unanswered. Chiefly, she is often unclear in stating whether or not a particular German was or was not a war criminal.

There are a lot of ways to tell a story like this. You can hone in on the scientists and doctors themselves, and tell us what they did in support of Hitler’s cause. You can provide a rundown on what services these men provided the United States, and how they did nor did not advance American military interests. Or you can describe the people running the program itself, and how they came to the conclusion that it was more important to hire than to hang. At certain times, Jacobsen attempts to do all these things, with the result that she does not do any of them with any great satisfaction. Moreover, she often dwells on the least interesting aspects of her story, relating mundane details she gained from family interviews. (Obviously, she is proud of the work it took to get these accounts, but it’s hard to put much stock in the remembrances of small children taken decades after the fact).

Despite these flaws, this is a worthwhile read. It is entertaining and informative, if a bit scattershot. My paperback edition is 445 pages of text, and I got through it quite quickly. Helpfully, there is also a list of principal characters (for some reason put at the end of the book) that aids you keep track of the many names that get thrown your way.

When I finished Operation Paperclip, I thought about the central question posed here – even if only by implication: Was it worth it? Did the intelligence gains merit the price paid in allowing war criminals to not only escape punishment, but to thrive, even prosper, on taxpayer-funded payrolls?

I don’t think it’s an easy answer, though Jacobsen writes with a slam-dunk certainty in opposition.

Beyond the philosophical dilemma posed by the operation, the thing that bothered me most was America’s seeming lack of confidence in the wake of her grand triumph at the end of World War II. It’s not just that we thought we could use these Nazi thinkers, but that we needed them. It seems like the first national reaction to the rise of the Soviet Union from the ashes of their death-struggle with Hitler was to panic.

I find that an unfortunate response. America had just successfully fought two huge wars simultaneously, each war requiring vastly different military disciplines. The United States had transformed a roughly-180,000 man army into a six-million man force by 1945. She had mobilized her industrial might to equip her allies around the globe, as well as herself. Once operating at peak efficiency, this was a nation that could churn out a ship in 24 hours, a nation that could harness the atom. Yet, despite these achievements, many U.S. decision-makers appeared to think that the only way to compete with the Soviets was to utilize Nazi scientists, rather than reinvesting in American ability and talent. The physical achievements of this ethical compromise were checkered. The moral ramifications were devastating.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a significant amount about the Second World War, to the point that I have almost completely tired of the topic. However, Annie Jacobsen breathes new life and excitement into the subject and the years that followed with this book that discusses a complex program the United States’ government worked to cobble together as the Nazi regime fell apart. Jacobsen’s painstakingly detailed discussions of Operation: Paperclip not only reveal some of the controversial decisions about science and the Third Reich, but also present the reader with both sides of the argument surrounding procuring scientists and their research from the decimated fascist regime. Jacobsen opens the book discussing some of the scientific and military feats that the Nazis had in the works at the height of the war. Hitler was working with many of his inner circle to defeat the Allies by any means possible. Throughout the narrative, Jacobsen eludes to Hitler’s determination not to bow down or permit surrender, finding suicide and keeping one’s pride as the highest honour of the Third Reich. Amidst the soldiers and German citizens who devoted themselves to the Nazis, there were many scientists whose work was highly advanced. Jacobsen argues that much of the rocket technology was at least 20 years ahead of American military prowess, which might have been one of the reasons for the coming decisions, a choice that would surely open more than one can of worms.

As the Allies crushed the Nazis and forced a German surrender in May, 1945, there was talk about what to do with many of those minds who had been fuelling Nazi successes. With the V-rocket program up and running, the Americans felt the need to capture this technology in order to turn it to the Pacific, where the Japanese were still waging a bloody battle. There were also a number of scientific experiments that were being discussed in code, things that the Americans could use if they had the know how. Jacobsen uses these arguments to posit that the idea behind getting the technology would surely be an asset worth procuring. Within the highest levels of the US bureaucracy, and among those who were developing the CIA, came the idea of bringing Nazi scientists and their research to America, where it could be utilised, as well as ensuing that it would be kept out of the hands of the Soviets. The underlying concern was that knowledge of the Nazi atrocities was widespread and trying to ‘sell’ this to the American public would be tough. At the earliest points in the discussion, even President Harry Truman was not privy to Operation: Paperclip, the name given to the mission that would see German scientists placed within American companies or working inside the military establishment. All this being said, Paperclip sought to shield these scientists from their past actions, relocating them with new names or at least keeping them away from the public eye as best as possible.

As Jacobsen continues her detailed narrative, she effectively argues that there was a need to choose wisely, as the Soviets were surely trying to do the same thing for themselves. Selecting the best and brightest, especially those whose work on pharmaceuticals and biological warfare could be invaluable, needed to be done swiftly. Amongst all this was the after effects of the war, which included the Nuremberg Trials, where some of the most heinous men were put on trial for their Nazi atrocities, which included concentration camps, experiments on humans, and gross neglect of the German people (and the prisoners captured from other countries). Jacobsen illustrates this throughout, giving the reader pause as to how well the legal matters were handled and who was chosen to stand trial, likely to face a public hanging. Deceptive in their choices, CIA and US officials chose as well as they could, granting visas to many Nazi scientists and placing them inside companies that could profit from their knowledge, at times turning a blind eye or burying any documentation that could implicate anyone involved. There were, however, some issues when certain scientists and medical professionals were discovered to have been part of the atrocities, all of which comes out in Jacobsen’s masterful narrative, particularly the chapter on the fallout of Paperclip, decades after the fact.

The blowback by the American public, when it hit the presses, was mixed, though there was certainly a strong push against Operation: Paperclip. Trying to justify offering protection to some of those who had such a disregard for human life cannot be discounted. The CIA sought to downplay this furor, citing the need to stay ahead of the Soviet threats. American bureaucrats and government officials dodged the backlash as best they could, sure that there would surely be a change of heart once the evils of communism and the Soviet shadow became clear. While there were ethical, moral, and social arguments against the entire operation, Jacobsen tries to give both perspectives in her numerous interviews and by revealing a great deal of declassified memoranda that outlined American sentiments.

As the book comes to its climactic end, Jacobsen leaves the reader to ponder what came of Operation: Paperclip and how many of the high-ranking officials felt years after actions had been taken. Some stood firm that this was the right thing to have done, while others had many concerns about opening Pandora’s Box. This provides the reader with their own chance to decide how they personally feel about the actions undertaken in this covert mission. Should America have fanned the capitalist flames by using fodder from a fascist and heinous regime that saw certain groups of people as lower than scum? Without the science, would America be as well off today as it was in those post-war years? There’s much to consider and Annie Jacobsen only adds to the discussion by presenting this sensational tome. One can hope that many will read it and join the conversation!

As I sit here, trying to cobble together a review that might get people interested, I cannot help but think back to what I just read. Annie Jacobsen’s work not only sheds some needed light onto a program that implicates the Americans as duplicitous and trying to capitalise on the backs of those they fought to save, but it also illustrates the lengths to which scientific discovery trumps ethical behaviour. In reading this tome, I am not jaded about the American military or those who chose to push Operation: Paperclip forward, but I am shocked to see that it was taking place right under the noses of those who supported the freedom for all. Jacobsen uses the pages of this book to prove a point, but does so with a massive amount of information, not simply her own gut feelings. The depth of research that went into creating this book is apparent to the attentive reader and one can only guess what did not make the final editorial cut. With thoroughly documented chapters that tell the minute details of this time in American history, readers will take much away from the story, yet most will likely want more. While there is no doubt that the Nazis committed many atrocities, their scientific explorations served America well, while also showing a complete disregard for human life. I cannot say enough about Annie Jacobsen or this book, though I should probably stop and let those curious enough to pick up this book try it for themselves. It’s not one easily or soon forgotten!

Kudos, Madam Jacobsen, for a stellar piece of work. I will be looking to some of your other work soon, trust me there.

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[KOMET · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earlier in the year, I attended a book reading by Anne Jacobsen about this subject, which was complete with a rather impressive slide presentation. What she said about Operation Paperclip that day not only induced me to buy this book later that week. But more importantly, it forever altered my previous view of Operation Paperclip, which, from the time I first became aware of it sometime in the 1980s, I had regarded as a wholly noble effort on the part of the U.S. government to locate, retrieve, and resettle in the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War a remarkable group of talented German scientists, whose managerial and technical expertise played no small part in helping the U.S. forge ahead of the Soviet Union in the space race. In this regard, Wernher von Braun came to mind. As someone with memories of the Apollo space program, I admired him greatly.

Now, having read this rather weighty book, I will never see von Braun in the same light again. Not only had he been a member of the Nazi Party, he had also joined the SS sometime before the Second World War and had risen to the rank of Sturmbannführer (Major), heading the Mittelbau-Dora Planning Office (which was instrumental in the development and building --- with the use of slave labor from the concentration camps --- of the V2 rockets that Hitler unleashed against the Allies in 1944 and 1945). These facts were not only known by the U.S. government, but had either been downplayed by it or classified so that they would never come to light during von Braun's lifetime.

What's more: Operation Paperclip also had its extensions in Germany itself through "feeder programs" such as Artichoke in places like Camp King, where captured Soviet spies were interrogated. A significant number of the scientists, engineers, doctors, and technicians who figured prominently in Operation Paperclip had engaged in wartime activities that, by the standards set at Nuremberg, were war crimes. For example, live medical experiments (whose grisly details I won't go into here) carried out at Auschwitz, Dachau, and the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück. Whenever possible, the U.S. government availed themselves of the services of these Germans, provided it (i.e. the U.S. government) could help them elude or survive any adverse publicity about their pasts that sometimes surfaced after the war. Cold War pressures and imperatives made these scientists, engineers, doctors, and technicians indispensable to U.S. security interests.

"For Operation Paperclip, moving a scientist from military custody to immigrant status required elaborate and devious preparation, but in the end the procedure proved to be infallible. Scientists in the southwestern or western United States, accompanied by military escort, were driven in an unmarked army jeep out of the country into Mexico either at Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Juárez, or Tijuana. With him, each scientist carried two forms from the State Department, I-55 and I-255, each bearing a signature from the chief of the visa division and a proviso from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Section 42.323 of Title 22, signifying that the visa holder was 'a person whose admission is highly desirable in the national interest.' The scientist also had with him a photograph of himself and a blood test warranting that he did not have any infectious diseases. After consulate approval, the scientist was then let back into the United States, no longer under military guard but as a legal U.S. immigrant in possession of a legal visa. The pathway toward citizenship had begun. If the scientist lived closer to the East Coast than the West Coast, he went through the same protocols, except that he would exit the United States into Canada instead of Mexico and reeenter through the consulate at Niagara Falls."


Reading this book wasn't easy because it demands that the reader make him/herself fully attentive to its contents. Nevertheless, it's well-worth the effort.

[Kimber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jacobsen has definitely done her research, in fact, this is so overly detailed as to be tedious reading. Never the less, what she brings to the table is immense and important in our understanding of history.

After World War 2, the world discovered the Nazi atrocities and the world was never the same. Healing has been difficult and slow. Furthermore, the American government faced a crucial decision with what to do with these highly intelligent Nazi scientists and engineers. The Russians were swooping in- if the Americans didn't recruit them, the Russians would have & this would have possibly propelled them to world dominance (and a Communist world government, ultimately.) The Americans could not let the Russians- or China- to have the upper hand. The American government was very divided about this decision and it rested with Truman who approved-but kept it classified. So these Nazis secretly immigrated to the U. S. and were given cushy jobs mainly in the government &military sector instead of prison or death sentences.

Operation Paperclip was first revealed by journalist Linda Hunt in 1985 but still needs to be more widely understood by Americans considering its impact that is still felt today. I recommend this book for that reason- and for the depth that Jacobsen gives it. It's not easy reading- reading about the Holocaust never is.

[Steven Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the conclusion of her new book, OPERATION PAPERCLIP: THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM THAT NAZI SCIENTISTS BROUGHT TO AMERICA, Annie Jacobsen discusses her battles with American military and intelligence authorities in trying to obtain documents relating to the employ of Nazi scientists by the United States Army and other government agencies following World War II. In her discussion a common theme reaches fruition in 2012 as the Department of Defense finally declassified a 1945 list of Nazi doctors who were sought for “mercy killings and medical murder cases.” On that list were seven Nazi doctors who were employed by the U.S. government even though “U.S. Army intelligence knew all along that these doctors were implicated in murder yet chose to classify the list and hire the doctors.” (437) These doctors were hired as part of Operation Paperclip a postwar program designed to use the technological and medical knowledge of Nazi scientists for the benefit of American policy as the Cold War was burgeoning. This raises a number of moral questions, the most important of which is when does a government draw the line in working with individuals who are guilty of directly or indirectly causing the death of tens of thousands of concentration camp victims, slave laborers, or innocent civilians. In the case of the United States following World War II that line was invisible no matter what evidence existed that the individuals that the government was interested in had either engaged directly or indirectly in genocide. For American officials following the war it was easy to dismiss evidence because in their eyes American national security interests trumped any documents that might interfere with their goal of using Nazi technological and medical advances to further the American agenda against the Soviet Union.

Anne Jacobsen has written a detailed and deeply researched study that raises numerous moral and philosophical questions as she explores the origin, implementation, and eventual downfall of Operation Paperclip. She leaves no stone unturned as she ferrets out the stories and experiences relating to Wernher von Braun, the director of the German Army’s V2 rocket program and headed the Mittelbau-Dora Planning Office that oversaw experiments that resulted in the death of 30,000 out of 60,000 slave laborers he “hired” from the SS. Other subjects include, Dr. Walter Schreiber, the Surgeon General of the Third Reich who carried out medical experiments on concentration camp victims for gas and bacterial warfare; Georg Rickhey, the General manager of the Mittlewerk slave labor facility; Otto Ambros, chemist and co discoverer of sarin gas and manager of IG Farben’s slave labor factory at Auschwitz; Dr. Kurt Blome, Deputy Surgeon General of the Reich; Major General Walter Dornberger who was in charge of V-weapons development and the technical officer in the Nordhausen slave labor tunnels; and Dr. Hubertus Strughold the wartime director for aviation research for the Reich. These are just a few of the individuals that Jacobsen’s narrative exposes. All are war criminals, and all participated in Operation Paperclip and developed important programs that the US military came to rely on during the Cold War, for example, Kurt Debus, an ardent Nazi and V-weapons flight test director who later became the first director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Jacobsen follows Operation Paperclip from its inception in 1945 as American authorities had to decide what to do with Hitler’s former scientists and engineers. Proponents of Operation Paperclip decided to use Nazi scientists to assist in the war against Japan. However, once the Japanese threat ended in August, 1945 and relations with the Soviet Union began to deteriorate the race to acquire as many scientists and technological experts before the Soviet Union could capture them gained momentum. Jacobsen does an excellent job describing certain Nazi scientists and why their particular specialty was so important to the United States. US policy for hiring German scientists was supposed to be based on the condition that “provided they were not known or alleged war criminals,” however this caveat was easily overlooked. I found the mini-biographies that Jacobsen provides to be fascinating. The author discusses many individuals that people with knowledge of World War II will easily recognize, i.e.; Hermann Goering, Albert Speer, and Heinrich Himmler, but the character studies of those not easily recognizable are the most fascinating. Dr. Leopold Alexander, a Boston psychiatrist and German Jew left Germany in 1933 for a fellowship in China and never returned to his homeland. He ended up working in a mental hospital outside Boston in 1934 and returned to Germany after the war to try and determine which of his former colleagues and students were guilty. Alexander was shocked by the deviance of Nazi science and noted they did not practice science, but a “really depraved pseudoscientific criminality.” Dr. Alexander also investigated crimes committed in the name of neuropsychiatry and neuropathology and in this capacity he came face to face with the odious Nazi belief of “untermenschen” that was the core of Hitler’s ideological framework and those individuals who implemented the murder thousands under the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring carried out by Dr. Karl Kleist, a former neurology professor of Alexander. We also meet Americans such as John J. McCloy who was in charge of setting up war crimes programs, but also coordinated policy regarding the transfer of Nazi scientists to the United States which he supported at the end of the war and later when he became High Commissioner for the American occupation zone replacing General Lucius Clay in 1949. Not all Americans that Jacobsen integrates into the narrative were guilty of facilitating Operation Paperclip. There were people like John Dolibois, a G2 Army intelligence officer who was sent to Dachau after its liberation to interrogate Nazi suspects and to investigate whether any important Nazis were hiding among the general prison population. Dolibois was shocked by the reaction of the men he interrogated as they could not believe they were being prosecuted and they used the excuse that they “were only following orders.” To their credit many State Department functionaries argued repeatedly to keep Nazi scientists who were proven criminals out of the United States, but the military establishment was difficult to defeat.

Jacobsen’s discussion of IG Farben and their development of sarin and tabun gases are eye opening especially when the same scientists are the ones who helped develop it for the United States. Farben’s research reflects the depravity of the Nazi scientists, the same men whose expertise the US would use, rather than having these men face the prosecution and punishment they deserved. It was not just chemists the US was interested in. When the Washington Post uncovered “freezing experiments” conducted at Dachau were by men would be tortured, then frozen for a period of time, then Nazi doctors would try and revive them. The fact that the Nazi biologists involved were already working for the US was kept from the public. Throughout Operation Paperclip officials had to work just as hard recruiting scientists as they did keeping information away from Congress and the American public. This led to covert programs to smuggle scientists into the United States or the American zone in what became West Germany on many occasions.

Perhaps the most interesting and disturbing chapter was entitled, “Science at Any Price,” which explained how the military was able to maneuver the State Department out of the business of approving visa for the Nazi scientists that they opposed admitting to the United States. From that point on the Joint Intelligence Objective Agency (JIOA) that had been created by the War Department was in charge of Operation Paperclip and the policy became; any scientist the Russians were interested in would be of interest to the US. By October, 1946 there were 233 German scientists in US military custody. At the same time the New York Times made the public aware of Operation Paperclip, the army had to go on a charm offensive by bringing out the most “wholesome looking German scientists they had working for them.” (250)

Jacobsen artfully describes army cover-up tactics when one of their “new” employees had their Nazi past catch up to them, i.e., Georg Rickhey who oversaw production and the hanging of prisoners at Nordhausen, a rocket factory housed in a salt mine. When Rickhey was arrested he was acquitted in the Dora-Nordhausen trial as the judges were military and the future of the American missile program took precedence. Jacobsen weaves her narrative nicely with the use of trial transcripts and documents to support her thesis and reflects American angst that the Soviet Union was ahead in the “chemical warfare race.” In fact Karl Krauck, IG Farben’s head chemist and Goering’s main advisor on chemicals was being recruited by the US at the same time he was on trial. America’s rational was simple, “when working with ardent Nazis American handlers appear to have developed the ability to look the other way. Others…..looked straight at the man and saw only the scientist, not the Nazi.” (300)

The Berlin Crisis that began on June 24, 1948 gave Operation Paperclip further momentum as the newly created CIA joined forces with the JIOA and led to the employ of Major General Reinhard Gehlen, the former head of Nazi intelligence operations against the Soviet Union. The US made a deal with the devil and put Gehlen’s organization at the forefront of the Cold War and made the Major General head of the entire American anti-communist intelligence operation. Jacobsen also zeroes in on the cases of Otto Ambros, Dr. Walter Schreiber, and Dr. Kurt Blome exploring their Nazi past, their involvement in war crimes, and how they came to work for the United States. Jacobsen follows that discussion with that of John J. McCloy’s commutation of Ambros’ and others sentences when he became High Commissioner, in part because of pressure from West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and the outbreak of the Korean War. A new shift in US policy evolved as it was now more important to be anti-communist as opposed to anti-Nazi.

The saga of Dr. Walter Schreiber as described by Jacobsen is emblematic of the American governments experience with former Nazi scientists after the war. Schreiber was involved with medical experiments at Ravensbruck among his other crimes, but yet he was never prosecuted at Nuremberg. In fact he became a Russian witness against his former colleagues at the trial. His journey to the United States and his final eviction in 1952 is a twisted voyage that brings to the surface the role of the Air Force, CIA and other agencies that did everything they could bureaucratically to allow him to remain in the United States so that we could employ his knowledge of Nazi and Soviet chemical experiments. In 1952 when his presence in Texas reached the Boston press and went national, the fear of scandal that could reach the highest levels of the Truman administration finally saw the government force him to emigrate to Argentina with his family. What is evident is that being an anti-communist trumped being a Nazi war criminal. If you could assist in the Cold War battle any past crimes could be glossed over and explained away in the name of national security.

Jacobsen completes her study by discussing the case of Arthur Rudolph, a man who oversaw slave labor at the Dora-Nordhausen complex where he was involved in working prisoners to death and a number of public hangings. Rudolph had worked for the US military and NASA for thirty-eight years when he was finally expelled, but even as his role in the Third Reich became known in 1983 there were elements in NASA who claimed the Justice Department was engaged in a witch hunt. Jacobsen’s magnificent study concludes by asking “What does last? The desire to seek the truth? Or, in the words of Jean Michel, the ability to take a stand against the monstrous distortion of history when it gives birth to false, foul and suspect myths?” This for me is the epitaph of Operation Paperclip, one of the most disturbing policies that the United States government has ever pursued.

[11811 (Eleven) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was mind blowing. I'll think of something to comment on later. I'm kinda anxious to start one of her other books.

Fans of post-WWII history: You want to read this.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a fun book to read, as a matter fact it was one of those that I had to be in the right mind frame, mood, proper weather… to read.

Very detailed and meticulously researched. Full of conspiracy, coverups, secret bases, lies, and and the worst part is all of it is true. It raises concerns about our government and the scientific community. The overriding principle was that the ends justify the means, but what if the means are an integral part of the ends? How can we claim moral superiority in World War II if we profit from the evil people and the evil science and fail to deliver true justice in the end? So many thoughts…

Recent events in our nation’s history have shown that we still have a Nazi problem. At the time I was shocked and surprised to hear about the amount of white supremacist in our country, but given the fact that a mere 75 years ago we brought in hundreds and even thousands of Nazis under the guise of science and keeping them out of the hands of the Russians, is it any surprise?

Lots to think about here.

[Phillip Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read and now revisit the story of how the US government used former Nazi rocket scientists with war criminal records of using slave labor to build the Space Program. You can't fault the powers that be for doing this since the Soviet Union also did this with other Nazi scientists. The US government knew more people died building the V2 rocket than anyone killed by it but felt that national security was more important. We can judge the actions of US policy makers all we want but what would you do if faced with a formidable enemy like the USSR.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the 1955 Disneyland TV series “Man in Space”, mentioned in this book, best shows the American attitude towards using German science (Nazi science) to assist the country in furthering the ability to make war. This benign looking series, with lots of cartoons, some of them racist, talks about the captured V-2 rocket as the start of the U.S. missile/space program. Not mentioned in the “Man in Space” first show, is that the V-2 rocket was built by slaves for the Nazis. This fact is ignored and “Disney-ized”. Not mentioned in the second Disney program on YouTube, where the effects of space on man are talked about, was the Nazi medical experiments on unwilling prisoners who were killed in order to test the effects of high altitude. It was ironic to be listening to accented German scientists in 1955 discussing rockets and space travel on this Disney show while reading this book. And yes, while hearing the Disney theme, “When You Wish Upon a Star”.

Ignoring and hiding what imported Nazi scientists did in WWII is what this book is all about. Annie Jacobsen wrote a very good book about this post-WWII and cold war episode. It was thought provoking and uncomfortable to read about the U.S. continuing what the Germans started, especially the production of tons of weapons of mass chemical and biological destruction.

Links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9H...

This is the short, scathing Tom Lehrer song called “Wernher von Braun” (“Once they go up, who cares where they go down? That’s not my department says Werhner von Braun”). Tom Lehrer captured the essence of the man, and Operation Paperclip, in a few sentences.

Disney “Man in Space” series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWJrv...

Even after reading about how the V-2 rockets of Wernher von Braun were built by 60,000 concentration camp slaves, of which 30,000 died, it was fascinating watching him talk about the space program before there really was a space program. You can see that in 1955, he had the basic plan thought out for the Space Shuttle. That our space program was built on the backs of worked to death slaves is not something we’ve generally thought about all these years though.

Ingrid, a friend of mine from the Netherlands, reminded me of this song, which also captures the essence of the German scientists from Operation Paperclip.

“The I Was Not a Nazi Polka”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3fP1...

[David Quijano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometime before quarantine, I was listening to Joe Rogan's podcast and he mentioned Operation Paperclip multiple times (I think it was the Alex Jones episode). I decided to see what Mr. Rogan was going on about and read a book on the subject. In my search for a book on the subject, this was the first one to pop up and it had good reviews so I decided to go with it. What I didn't realize was that it was all downhill from that point on.

I vaguely knew that the US brought Nazi scientists to America after the war. I am not sure I realized the extent and frivolousness of the program. The author makes the point that many of these Nazis scientists had few redeemable skills, were purely opportunists, and some were possibly Russian assets. She also hammers home the point that many of these scientists weren't just nonpolitical scientists who happened to be alive in Nazi Germany, but in fact, ideologues who knowingly participated in Germany's war crimes.

The first quarter of the book was okay, but as it progressed the story became disjointed and difficult to follow. I think this book would be a great resource for a college student writing on this subject. As a casual read, this was kind of painful. If you simply find this subject interesting, you are better off reading a series of Wikipedia articles on the various people and subjects involved.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Annie Jacobsen’s Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America serves as an exposé of the United States government following the conclusion of World War II, exposing the hypocrisy and baffling bureaucratic decisions made by top officials to bring wanted Nazi war criminals into the country.

The hypocrisy clearly lies in the fact that these particular scientists were not always “just scientists.” As in, they didn’t simply joined the Nazi Party, as many in Germany did at that time, as a means of survival. In a wartime economy where many struggled to make ends meet and put food on the table for their families (as many people are aware) joining the Nazi Party was a requirement if one ever expected to advance in one’s respective field of work.

Many of these men, brought here in unmarked planes/Jeeps/vehicles by our government, installed onto military bases, often with their families being brought over soon after, even being provided comfortable accommodations and all the personal comforts one needs, weren’t simple bystanders. Some, sure. But many were very clearly ideologues wanted for crimes against humanity.

It was very likely that the men of medicine not convicted and executed at Nuremberg would either have been spirited out by the US government, or at least, the US attempted to get them out (it wasn’t always successful when the particular “former” Nazi was very high-profile, and caused too much public controversy).

It poses fundamental questions of morality and philosophy: is the knowledge and skill to be gained from these scientists worth pardoning them for all of the devastation and blood on their hands?

The reasoning went something like this: at the end of WWII came the advent of the Cold War. From the moment the Allied forces began liberating concentration camps and putting top Nazi officials on trial, the US and the former USSR also began eyeing one another with suspicion: the US would claim that if they didn’t grab a certain scientist, they not only risked losing the opportunity to exploit that scientist’s knowledge to their advantage, but they risked the former USSR using this scientist instead, as a possible weapon against us.

As others have said, it’s pretty sad that our government doubted its own military and academics to the extent that we weren’t simply curious and wanting to know about the other side’s capabilities to build bio and chemical weapons, but we genuinely felt we needed these scientists (even if many turned out to not be anywhere near as intelligent and capable as they’d claimed). We’d just emerged as the world’s most capable superpower, and yet we were still plagued by enough self-doubt that we resorted to such desperate tactics.

It’s a good read, insofar as much of the information and declassified documents are available for public scrutiny. As I’ve seen mentioned by other reviewers, however, the major problem with this well-researched account is that it’s not very well organized. It doesn’t appear at any point that Jacobsen has an overarching, cohesive narrative. Certain aspects of the story are very interesting for some time, but then she’ll quickly switch to another theme/character/account, never seeming to know exactly how she wants this all to go.

If it had been better structured, I would have rated it higher. As I said, the research is extensive and solid. It just lacks a clearly defined objective. I’d still recommend, but really only if it’s something you think will hold your interest long enough to get you through it fast enough. It’s not a book I would recommend spending a lot of time on, I’ll say that much.

[Jeffrey Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are three major questions that this book raises:

1. The legal question: Was justice served? Despite the Nuremburg trials, given the immensity of the war crimes far too many people served token imprisonment and many of them were released early as a result of West German complaints that these were political prisoners punished by the victors.

2. The pragmatic question: Were these scientists needed to win the cold war? I think the answer is yes. They say a picture is worth 1,000 words and the picture of a V2 being lunched at our White Sands proving ground at the close of the war in front of an old shack and a decrepit military vehicle provided the answer. I suspect but do not know, that had we not done what we did, when it came to the Cuban Missile Crisis our navy would have had to just wave and smile as the Russian fleet steamed past us on the way to Cuba.

3. The moral question: Did we act any better? We subjected our own researchers to medical experiments without informed consent, subjected troops to radiation exposure and engaged in enhanced interrogation techniques all of which were documented in this book. Granted the damage we did in the name of national defense was not on the scale of Nazi Germany but our legal system regularly applies the death sentence for a single murder so it would seem guilty is guilty. How then can we blame the German scientists for what they did in the name of national defense of their county?

[Ailith Twinning · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won't call it what I think it is, because Annie may just be a shit writer. But here's a few bullet points

Editing this 2019 reviwe in 2025: She's a fascist propagandist. BTW. She didn't deserve the credit of assuming she might just be bad at what she does back then but it's irresponsible now to pretend she is anything other than a fascist propagandist.


* Neither a journalist, nor a historian, EVER provides the official explanation of a government of, or for, its actions without comment. Never. You do it, and you have neither credibility nor integrity. One example being the "Long Telegram" where an emotional overview of the document is provided, and, that's it. No further comment. Annie feels the need to speculate on the personal strife between any two scientists or other of their personal motives and testimony, but the state gets a free pass to say whatever it wants, thru her.

* If the government declassifies something expressly for your book, THIS government, the one that tortures and murders and imprisons every whistle blower, and none of the war criminals and/or corrupt officials (or bankers, for that matter) exposed thereby get so much as a slap on the wrist? If this government declassified something expressly for you, you either sold yourself to it, or, worse, you didn't have to.

* Outrage porn is unbecoming at best, and manipulative whataboutism at worst.

* What is done to win a war can be both necessary to that end, and also indefensibly evil. A war itself can be indefensibly evil.

*If you don't already know the broad strokes of this story, at least, I do recommend reading it -- as they say "If you wanna know about Moscow, read the Times. If you wanna know about DC, read Pravda." It has historical information of note about Germany. It has nearly none about the US, and the way what is there is presented is only useful for knowing what the Party Line is meant to be. Which is, in fact, useful. . . just frustrating and ugly.

What's disturbing is that, even in this, as another reviewer called it, "Leave it to Beaver" version of this history, America is still clearly evil. America's BEST face, the one the Pentagon okayed the print of, is world-conquering, genocidal madman. That's. . . . that's dark.

NOTE: I base the assumption it was run thru basic censorship on the fact she said something was "declassified for this book", as opposed to acquired thru a FOIA request or leak. Maybe she meant FOIA, maybe, just maybe, it was declassified without any real thought jsut 'cause "who cares?", but the reasonable assumption is one of "access", you only get it if you're playing nice.

[Paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

You really get to know each one of the individual perpetrators in this book. Sometimes it can feel a bit repetitive and overwhelming, but overall there is a wealth of information that really sticks with you. In war films, I sometimes hear these names and remember reading about them in Operation Paperclip. It was enlightening to read.

[Alexandru · Rating 5 out of 5]

Operation Paperclip is the third Annie Jacobsen book and by far the best one. It is an in depth and well researched book about the US programme called Operation Paperclip which brought Nazi Scientists to the USA after World War II and kick-started the post-war tech boom.

It is mind blowing how far ahead of the world Germany was in technology. The Germans were pioneers in everything from rockets and jet planes to vaccines and disease research. If they would have put this technology and know how to use for the good of the world it's likely that humanity would have benefited greatly. Instead, they put this knowledge to work in killing people and war. They performed gruesome experiments on humans and used slave labour.

After the war many of the scientists, airmen and innovators from Germany were sought out by both the US and the Soviet Union. Both sides searched for these men in order to use them in their own research programme. Not as much is known about the scientists working for the USSR but thanks to the lots of research and freedom of information requests there is quite a lot know about the ones that worked for the US. Even though not all of this information has yet been classified.

The author begins the book with the launch of a V2 rocket from the Nazi launch facility at Peenemunde while a party was happening in the castle next to the facility to celebrate the launch and attended by many high ranking Nazi officials. The book then follows the story of many of the scientists participating at the party and many others including rocket scientists, chemical scientists, engineers, pilots, architects etc.

Most of these men were hardened Nazis and had used slave labour and participated in experiments which led to the death of human subjects (high pressure experiments, freezing experiments, disease experiments, surgical experiments). After the war some of them were tried for war crimes, others were hired in the USSR and East Germany and others were hired by the USA. A small number of these scientists were tried and executed. But many of the hardened Nazis eventually enjoyed a good life as respected scientists, became wealthy and famous. Some worked in the US for many years but later on were forced to leave the country when the public found out about their Nazi past.

Werner von Braun is the best known of these scientists, he was an SS officer and helped develop the V2 rocket which was used to bomb Allied cities and then later became a US space pioneer and was one of the principal architects of the US moon landing. He became a celebrity and featured in a number of films and television series including one created by Walt Disney.

The work done by the former Nazi scientists contributed to the US space programme, the building of anti-atomic bunkers, the development of chemical and bacteriological weapons (for example sarin gas), the development of vaccines and even the development of LSD. Arguably, many of the things we have today in the world exist thanks to the research done by these scientists.

The ending of the book is very powerful as it deals with the moral dilemma of whether the end justifies the means. The rationale for hiring these arguably evil people was the fight against Communism however many moral objections were raised. The victims of these scientists that survived were left to deal with lifelong trauma while many of their torturers enjoyed long and fruitful lives. Did the technological benefits of hiring these geniuses outweigh the moral wrong?

[Jarrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you ever thought the US Space program was created and developed under innocent themes, you may want to read this book. Thoroughly researched and documented, Annie Jacobsen lays out the backstory around the use of Nazi scientists to develop the US space program. She lays out the foundations of what the scientist did to aid the Nazi regime and their involvement in the war machine and their role in the Holocaust.

An eye-opening account of the horrors that were overlooked by the US Army and space programs in order to develop the rocketry and science to have us compete with the Soviets and compete in the cold war. With several first-hand accounts we see that many of these scientist had a key role and yet downplayed their involvement with the Third Reich. Even later in life when they could come clean and admit their wrong-doing they chose to try to save-face instead of showing remorse.

It's amazing to look back and see what we overlooked to create a space program and what was involved. It's also a bit dis-heartening to know how far behind we were scientifically and that instead of taking their knowledge and learning from it to recreate the science, we used them instead. We recovered thousands of documents and couldn't replicate the science, so we had to use the Nazi perpetrators to develop our space program. This is an important telling of the story behind the launch of the US Space program.

[David Elkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched and it tells a dark tale. I am convinced that this introduced a poison into the American political stream that allowed some very bad people to gain power in certain institutions. Eisenhower warned us in 60, and JFK paid a price in 63. The end did not justify the means used to "combat" the USSR in the cold War. It is a story worth studying and how hubris allowed the US to go down this dismal path.

[Melindam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that needed to be written. It equally upset and fascinated me.

Deserves a full review, will try and write it.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1945, Operation Overcast (renamed Operation Paperclip for the paperclips attached to the dossiers of the scientist) began. More than 1600 German scientist were secretly recruited to work for the United States. There was a race between the United States and the U.S.S. R. to obtain these scientists. At the time Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Rabbi Steven Wise publically opposed the program.

In 1998 President Clinton signed the Nazi War Crimes disclosure Act, which pushed through the declassification of American’s intelligence records, including F.B. I., Army Intelligence and C.I.A. files of German agents, scientists and war criminals. Jacobsen accessed these documents, along with her research in various special collections, interviews with former intelligence personnel and relatives of the scientists. This makes Jacobsen’s account the most in-depth to date. The author tracked 21 of these Nazi scientists. Eight of her subjects worked directly with the upper echelon of the Nazi government. Some of these are Werner Von Braun, Hubertus Strughold, Walter Dornberger, and Arthur Rudolph, Fritz Hoffman. The author described in detail the hunt for the Nazi secret chemical and biological warfare sites and the hunt for the scientist.

Jacobsen focuses mostly on biologists, chemists and physicians. She said the rocket scientist had already been widely written about. The author painstakingly covers the various scientist works for the Nazis; I wish she would have equally covered their work in American. We know the benefit of the work by the rocket scientist in developing the Saturn rocket. German Chemist Fritz Hoffman was assigned by the U.S. to research toxic agents for military use. He is credited with the development of Agent Orange. It was used to defoliate trees in Vietnam. Hoffman died in 1967. Other German scientist worked in the area of aeronautical medicine, research into diabetes, neurological disease and also developing equipment. I believe one of them developed the ear thermometer. The book is an achievement of investigative reporting and historical writing. I would have preferred Jacobsen provide us with enough information about the works preformed in America to help us answer the question ----was our deal with the devil worth it? I read this as an audio book downloaded from Audible. The author narrated the book.

[Nick Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

well-written, well-researched, generous and precise citations (except one odd line, where Mrs. Jacobsen writes "he resigned at least two of his five public, taxpayer-funded positions" -- didn't want to leg that one out, i guess), and definitely authoritative (the author is the first to publish on several documents declassified for this book). a good companion to Goudsmit's Alsos documents for the immediate postwar science rush through occupied germany and Von Braun, Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, my preferred biography of ol' Wernher Magnus Maximilian.

i didn't love the indignant tone regarding these engineers--i don't see how putting useful people in prison benefits anyone, but my theories of justice are unorthodox ones. that their presence greatly accelerated certain postwar american technologies cannot be disputed; i only wish that Paperclip had facilitated rapid rehabilitation of general commercial technologists, as opposed to purely military ones. millions of tons of sarin developed at great expense, for instance, only to be destroyed. couldn't we have enticed over some electric engineers?

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this book and found it interesting but I don’t think it was a great choice as an audiobook. There is a lot of detail that I think I would have absorbed better by reading and the narration was monotonous.

It is appalling that our government allowed Nazi scientists to not only come to the US to work but that some were able to gain US citizenship and prosper handsomely (eg Werner von Braun). I understand that our military did not want these scientists to fall into the hands of the Soviets; but many of them received red carpet treatment when just a few years before they were using slave labor to build V2 rockets that terrorized Britain, our closest ally.

5 stars for shining a light on this disgusting part of US history, 3 stars for the writing and narration.

[Post Scriptum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Operazione Paperclip.
Una graffetta, e l’anima torna a risplendere. Ma è davvero così? Non si saranno lordate invece anche quelle di chi ricostruì il passato agli scienziati nazisti?
Si possono depennare gli orrori dai verbali, nascondere documenti, sostituire fascicoli compromettenti con altri “immacolati”, ma la verità rimane. Orrenda e indelebile. Non c’è scoperta né grande invenzione che possa cancellare i crimini atroci contro l’umanità. Nemmeno la straordinaria missione spaziale che portò l’uomo sulla Luna nel ’69 grazie a Wernher von Braun, direttore del Marshall Space Flight Center e capo progetto del veicolo di lancio del Saturn V.
Una graffetta sul suo fascicolo e in un baleno si annulla il passato. L’America lo proclamerà il più grande scienziato della tecnica missilistica e aerospaziale della storia. Ma Wernher von Braun era e rimane quell’ufficiale nazista capo dell’ufficio progettazione di Mittelbau-Dora, direttore tecnico dello sviluppo delle armi V per l’esercito tedesco. Mittelbau-Dora. Dora, il campo di concentramento col nome di donna che tolse la vita a circa 20mila anime innocenti.
Von Braun è solo uno dei tanti nazisti “insignito” della cittadinanza americana, solo uno dei i tanti pagato e protetto in nome degli interessi politici e militari.

Cito anche
- Dottor Hubertus Strughold. definito il “padre della medicina aerospaziale” è una delle figure più controverse nella storia dell’operazione Paperclip. Direttore dell’istituto di ricerca in medicina aeronautica al ministero dell’Aria di Berlino per dieci dei dodici anni in cui Hitler rimase al potere. Nonostante comparisse sul Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects, fu reclutato da Harry Armstrong per dirigere un programma di ricerca top secret nella Germania postbellica. Con l’operazione Paperclip lavorò per il centro aeromedico dell’aviazione americana a Heidelberg e alla scuola di medicina aeronautica in Texas.
- Herbert Wagner, capo degli ingegneri progettisti di armi alla Henschel e inventore del missile HS-239. Fu il primo scienziato nazista ad arrivare in America con l’operazione Paperclip e lavorò per l’intelligence tecnica della marina statunitense.
- Theodor Benzinger, capo dipartimento della stazione sperimentale del centro di ricerche della Luftwaffe di Reichlin e capo del lavoro medico nel dipartimento di ricerca della divisione tecnica del ministero dell’Aria del Reich. Fu assunto al centro aeromedico dell’aviazione americana di Heidelberg. Arrestato e imprigionato a Norimberga, fu tra gli imputati del processo ai dottori. Inspiegabilmente rilasciato, grazie all’operazione Paperclip lavorò per il Naval Medical Research Institute di Bethesda, Maryland.
- Richard Kuhn, chimico organico (premio Nobel 1938) che sviluppò l’agente nervino Soman per il Reich. Protetto dall’operazione Paperclip lavorò per il centro aeromedico dell’aviazione americana, a Heidelberg, e privatamente per il gruppo di lavoro del generale Loucks sulla produzione del Sarin.
- Dottor Konrad Schäfer, autore degli esperimenti assassini avvenuti a Dachau per mettere a punto il processo per la desalinizzazione dell’acqua in caso di emergenze in mare dei piloti. Con l’operazione Paperclip lavorò per il centro aeromedico dell’aviazione militare americana di Heidelberg. Imputato e poi prosciolto al processo ai dottori di Norimberga. Lavorò in seguito alla scuola di medicina aeronautica dell’aviazione americana in Texas.
- Otto Ambros, chimico della IG Farben, uno degli scopritori del gas Sarin e della gomma sintetica Buna, ricevette un milione di Reichsmark da Hitler come ricompensa per i suoi risultati scientifici. Servì il Reich in qualità di capo della Commissione-C per la guerra chimica, direttore della fabbrica della IG Farben che usava lavoro schiavo ad Auschwitz e direttore dell’impianto per la produzione di gas velenosi a Dyhernfurth. Fu processato e condannato a Norimberga, e dopo un rilascio anticipato lavorò per l’azienda chimica americana W.R. Grace, il dipartimento dell’Energia statunitense e in altri settori privati e pubblici in Europa.

E così l’America risparmiò processi, salvò la vita ad almeno 2mila scienziati nazisti in cambio della loro collaborazione a progetti militari, scientifici e industriali.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you believe people ever truly change? The United States government seemed to think so after the fall of Nazi Germany. Unbeknownst to me prior to reading this book, SEVERAL members of the Nazi party, (doctors, scientists, engineers, technicians, etc) were welcomed to the United States for citizenship as well as commercial/government employment.

The justification at the time was that, German science was so far advanced compared to other nations, that if we didn’t welcome these people to the US, then they would more than likely take their expertise to Russia.

This book gave me a glimpse of just how much history there is that I simply do not know. It was thoroughly shocking to read, and brought up some deep questions that I still don’t quite have answers to. At the time, several of these Nazi scientists when on trial never took ownership of being part of the atrocities, they would claim they were merely following orders/ practicing their craft. At the end of the war, several wanted to take the United States up on their offer to come to America, and the US pardoning them for their trials at Nuremberg /crimes against humanity.

This begs the question that if these people could so easily shift loyalties among nations and parties, should they even be trusted? And can one ever receive forgiveness for being involved in the death of innocent humans being worked to death or experimented on without consent? Should second chances be given to these scientists or doctors when they claim regret for being affiliated with the Nazi reign? Did any of them actually have a change of heart post WW2 atrocities or were they only trying to get out of the jail time/ punishment they deserved? Were Nazi Scientists & medical professionals purely practicing their craft, or if they affiliated to the party, is it now impossible to separate them from who they once were?


“Dispite a man’s contribution to a nation, or a people, how do we interpret a fundamental wrong”
“Is the American government at fault equally for fostering myths about its paperclip scientists for encouraging them to whitewash their past so that their scientific acumen could be exploited for US weapons related work”
“When, for a nation, should the end justify the means?”

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who is a history buff, this is one of the best books telling the story of the closing days of WWII. Annie Jacobsen's research is phenomenal. Her book tells the story of the end of the war.... Germany knows it is going to lose......she doesn't even know who the final conqueror will be...Russia or the United States...the US is coming from the West and Russia is barreling towards Germany from the East. To me it is the most detailed story of the war from midway in 1944 to past the their final surrender in April of '45 and beyond !!
Although I was aware that certain top German scientists were shepherded to the United States to continue their research, I had no idea that the total numbered was in the thousands !! It didn't seem to matter to certain US authorities that some of these men (plus a few women) were heinous criminals and deserved to be executed. All these 'patriots' knew was that they must bring this science to the United States.
Considering that the end of WWII occurred almost 70 years ago, it is truly amazing the story that Anne Jacobsen has put together for all of us. If one has any doubt about the truth that she unveils, a few minutes reading of citations and data from archives and from subsequent generations of these men will remove any doubt from your mind. The special program that let these men continue their research included the promise of future citizenship !! was called " Operation Paperclip". And even the name given to the operation has some meaning. The book is long , but once 'hooked' you will find it difficult to put down.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Annie Jacobsen's take on Operation Paperclip is the Leave It To Beaver version of events. Almost feels good and wholesome reading about Nazis.

This is one of the most detailed histories that goes nowhere.

Georg Rickhey upsets a fellow scientist, Hermann Nehlsen, late one night at Wright Field. Nehlsen writes a disgruntled letter to a friend about the incident that gets intercepted, investigated, and BOOM! Georg Rickhey is sent back to Europe to be tried in Nuremberg Trials.

This is an interesting story, but really a side note, one would think. No. Not a side note. This story is worth 10 pages to the author. Ten Pages.

There's no real, compelling description of what the Nazi scientists are accomplishing in the US until page 288. And then it spends a good amount of time talking about tabun nerve agent and LSD.

The MKUltra program contributes to why there are serial killers, school shootings, and insane politicians. It makes the inexplicable evil in our society a little more explicable. Annie Jacobsen mentions it three times with ~no~ detail and ~no~ definition.

If you're looking to scratch more than a barely-visible-surface-level of information, get a different book. The amount of superfluous chronological detail the author is able to pack into this book is quite the feat. But, it doesn't do justice to the reality of the topic.

[Samantha Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do I begin to write a review on this book?

Operation Paperclip is the book that kickstarted my fascination with World War II. What we were taught in school is a blurry glimpse of the true realities of the most deadly and evil war that has ever happened on this planet. Since starting this book, I can’t stop talking about this to every single person I know. I can not grip my mind around these things that I’m reading. As I flip through each page, I’m writing and annotating so much that I ran out of tabs to stick on and ink in my pen to write. This book has sealed what will be a life-long fascination with the subject, it’s societal, economic, and social impacts to the world.

Operation Paperclip is the secret military operation that brought over 1,600 German scientists into the United States after WWII knowing fully of the associations with the Nazi party and crimes against humanity they contributed to.

The experimentations done on the Jewish population by Nazi scientists were by far the most horrible thing I have ever, ever read. Some of the “OH MY GOD” moments reading this book were [I’m about to get very graphic here, fair warning]
• Jewish slave labor was used to create German V2 rockets in underground facilities, where workers would be murdered, hung from ropes, for the workers below to feel motivated to not make mistakes in the mechanics of putting the rockets together. Past the work floor, there were tunnels with hundreds of bodies lining the floors, wasting away.
• They would regularly take prisoners from concentration camps for human experiments, referring to the humans as “hogs” to help dehumanize the process. They’d hold a person down in a tub of ice water and record their body temperature drop as they die.
• They put prisoners in low pressure tanks to test when their bodies explode from pressure.
• Scientists would infect prisoners with infectious diseases to measure how the disease effects the body and spreads, intentionally spreading disease to other prisoner test subjects. This included the plague and even STDs, which were passed by forcing the prisoners to r-word each other
• If Germany had initiated chemical warfare sooner, the war would have turned out totally differently and likely would have been lost
• The work that these scientists did contributed to programs like MKUltra in the US because they were developing “truth serum” experiments through different drugs like LSD.
• The scientists that developed nerve gases that were being used for mass killings in concentration camp gas chambers, also created other gasses that were published and sold to pregnant women well-after the war was over, marketed by the same scientists, using the same research done on slaves
• The scientists that completed these experiments were strategically sought out by all the Allies, but specifically the US. We gave them new homes, lots of money, and reacclimated them to our society. Only after the Freedom of Information Act did so much of this TRULY come to light in an undeniable way, even though there were trial records from Nuremburg for many of these guys. Many didn’t even change their names! These were not random members of the Nazi party! They were extremely high ranking officials that were close to Hitler and extremely influential in the decisions that were made!
• Nazis are known to be particularly not remorseful about their actions. There’s something so heavy about this idea. Arthur Rudolph was responsible for the death of thousands of slave laborers in the Mittlewerk factories (see bullet 1), but is totally callous in referencing it. As if those slave laborers were not human. It’s….just…evil…

This book made me realize – solemnly – that in the name of national security, anything can be justified. We should all live our lives knowing that reality and approach how we live our lives accordingly. (Naturally, I’m falling into my next rabbit hole of Edward Snowden haha)

To beg the argument that is impossible to deny – during this time in Germany, all German scientists were forced to change their research towards something to produce for the war effort. In this regard, they were all Nazis because they aided the Nazi party’s wishes. However, to go against those orders and not develop this science in the name of the war effort would be treason and a scientist could face jail or going into a concentration camp. It really forces us to think about what we really classify as evil. Could you imagine being in the courtroom in Nuremberg to hear how these arguments were put together? Absolutely fascinating stuff for so many reasons.

Since reading this book, I chose to write my final paper for a class on FDR’s leadership and how transformative it was during this time. I’ve read other books about WWII and different historical fiction exploring how things could have gone differently. I’ve watched countless videos on YouTube and TV shows and movies on the war in the Pacific, the effects of the atomic bomb, all sorts of stuff. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this book was so fascinating that it made me become passionate about learning history all over again in a way that feels so entertaining. I never thought I would be so interested in history like this, but this book forces you to open your eyes to a lot of things that you can’t just leave on the page! Perhaps that’s a little positive takeaway about staying curious about the world around you and the events that have led up to where we are today.

I highly recommend reading this book, and reading it slowly. Or invite me over and I’ll gab on for hours!!!!! Annie Jacobson is an incredible journalist and I am so happy that she put so much passion into all of this. Phenomenal work!!

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

US liberals today love to discuss the similarities between Trump’s America and Hitler’s Germany, so it good to remind Americans that after WWII the US happily hired “more than sixteen hundred of Hitler’s technologists” to work on behalf of the US. German rocket engineers (like Werner von Braun) dealing in death and destruction were soon bound for the US instead of jail.

Albert Speer’s massive buildings “required vast amounts of stone, which was quarried by concentration camp laborers from Mauthausen and Flossenburg.” Slave labor assured secrecy, as it did with the V-2 classified weapons project. It neatly kept the Allies from learning what was happening. In addition, slaves dug 1.5 million square feet of underground tunnels around Berlin.
Hitler’s bunker had a roof sixteen feet thick; one of his SS honor guards said it was “like being stranded in a cement submarine.” At the time, IG Farben was the fourth largest corporation in the world, and it owned the patent on Zyklon B. By the beginning of 1945, Germany had manufactured 46.1 million gas masks. Their reliability was tested on concentration camp prisoners by shoving them in glass rooms and then spraying them with nerve agents.

Churchill wanted Nazi leaders to be lined up and shot w/o trial while Stalin demanded there be “no executions without trial.” FDR wanted a war crimes trial. All three agreed that post-war Germany would be broken up into zones of interest. B4 war’s end, Nazis hanged up to 57 prisoners each day lifting a dozen by crane at a time w/ pieces of wood shoved in their mouths to prevent screaming. “Laborers were forced to watch their fellow prisoners suffer an agonizingly slow death.” To escape death himself, Von Braun told the Americans where he hid crates of classified V2 documents and brought General Dornberger up to speed.

At the end of the war 85% of Berlin was destroyed, and until the war’s last moments, Hitler blamed everything on the Jews and the Slavs. Soviet capture of Berlin took 2,500,000 Red Army soldiers – imagine US media ever telling you that. The Reich’s weapon facilities had been moved underground and was impervious to Allied bombers. On a lighter side, a detachment of fighting Hitler Youth got caught in a forest fire and most were burned alive. Justice is served. The US Army liberates Dachau six days after Speer’s final meeting with Hitler. Dachau doctors froze prisoners in ice water to see if they could be brought back to life. Lots of Nazi doctors were secretly sent to the US to continue their experimenting here in the “Land of Freedom and Liberty.” While the world wanted justice for ex-Nazis, the State Department was secretly offering them not just a safe haven, but employment. Pause to salute the US flag.

So, US found left-over German rocket parts, but in order to kill civilians and rule the world in the future, it said it now needed the German scientists (it was couched as in order to defeat Japan, and that the US was 25 years behind Germany in rocket building). Zionists want us to believe that ONLY Jews were treated by Nazis as animals, subhumans, or Untermenschen, but Nazis also included in that category all Gypsies (Roma), homosexuals, Poles, Slavs, Russian prisoners of war, the handicapped, the mentally ill, and others. Himmler called them all, “partial human beings”. German scientists created Preparation 9/91 (later called tabun gas) which became the hottest thing since they invented mustard gas to hurt humans with. On a sadistic roll they then then created Soman and Sarin gas. Sarin was stronger than Tabun. IG Farben made Zyklon B. Goering loved that these gases terrified people “driving them crazy with fear.”

IG Farben created a synthetic rubber (Buna) when its ability to procure natural rubber diminished. In the 30’s, there were actual German postcards that said, “Greetings from Auschwitz”. Auschwitz became a maker for Buna because it had flat land, water, railways, and you could work the workers to death. Yum… Himmler said that experimenting on humans was necessary in the war effort and that refusing was “the equivalent of treason.” Nazis noted that Napoleon’s campaign in Russia failed because of an “infection of his horses with Glanders.” Von Ribbentrop was a former champagne salesman. Julius Streicher was a former schoolteacher. Walter Funk had gold knocked out of prisoner’s mouths while they were still alive, but then realized that it was simply less bother to do it AFTER they were dead.

Operation Paperclip was first called Operation Overcast. It switched to Paperclip when the name Overcast became compromised (p.227). This book says that my grandpa Henry Wallace (Truman’s Secretary of Commerce) wanted the German scientist who built the autobahn (Dr. O Graff) to be allowed in the US to help our road system, so the author says (p.202) that grandpa gave Operation Overcast a moral sheen it would not have had had it been only about bringing Nazi death-dealing scientists to the US. Unwittingly, he helped sell the more immoral aspects.

Fun Facts: Scientists found when you get too high above the Earth, nitrogen bubbles form under the skin and high enough you can die. In fact, “body fluids boil at sixty-three thousand feet.” During WWII pilots flying over water “knew that drinking ocean water destroyed the kidneys and brought death faster than suffering indomitable thirst.

Truman’s State Department’s take on Paperclip was: “If we don’t get them, the Russians will.” Paperclip became a “denial program” – when in doubt, bring on board anyone you might think the Soviets will want. “By January 1946, 160 Nazi scientists had been secreted into America.” Of this group, 115 were rocket scientists under Wernher von Braun stationed in Texas. Interesting Fact: The Soviets didn’t get their nuclear knowledge from the Germans but got it from stealing info from Los Alamos. George Kennan and Clark Clifford really helped ruin relations with the Soviets. Kennan said we can never co-exist with the Soviet (which comically we then did for decades) and Clifford said the path of Soviet leaders was “designed to lead to eventual world domination”. Meanwhile after WWII, the US dominated the world, so Clifford just didn’t want competition. The Joint Intelligence Committee also said the Soviets sought world domination. These propaganda idiots remind me of Hitler who said Jews were out to dominate the world when it was Hitler who wanted to rule the world. Anyway, this blatant fear mongering helped Operation Paperclip because its proselytizers needed Nazi know how in order to defeat demonized Russia. Paperclip then had 2,273 Nazis working on germ warfare and bubonic plague, “in an effort to determine which bugs were the most effective carriers of certain diseases.” The land that created COVID-19, back in the 40’s was actively trying to create future pestilence. Our tax dollars at work.

Fun Fact: An SS physician murdered perfectly healthy people to create a “skeleton collection of the Untermenschen.” We all know that Goering died by wallowing cyanide, but this book tells you how Goering kept the vial from guards by hiding it in his ass and under folds of his flabby stomach. Brings new meaning to the term “ass to mouth”. Funny how after WWII, some Nazis were hanged, while others “now had lucrative new jobs.” The moral I guess is, “If you are going to be an asshole, be an indispensable asshole.” Einstein objected to all these scientists being hired by the US and called them “potentially dangerous”.

If the US falls apart or is attacked, our elites will flock to Raven Rock (an underground command center - buy the book by that name) built under a mountain with that name in Pennsylvania – and comically built in emulation of Hitler’s bunker complex which was considered by Americans as an architectural tour de force. Half of the Nazi 1,000 scientists who came to the US arrived but did not have a visa. Fun Fact: “In the last five months of war in Japan, American bombers conducted a massive incendiary bombing campaign against sixty-seven Japanese cities that killed nearly a million citizens, most of whom burned to death.” As Curtis LeMay famously lamented, “If we had lost this war, we would all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” Yep…

The author says, “the Soviets were masters of disinformation.” Like the CIA isn’t? The Nazis weren’t? What is advertising, PR, Hasbara, and all propaganda but misinformation? On the very next page (p.320) the author says the Gehlen Organization ‘s operatives were “professional double-crossers and liars”, yet the author one page earlier ONLY called the Soviets “masters of disinformation”? Which is it?

There were 169,282 denazification trials, even though US occupation authorities determined “that 3.6 million Nazis in the American zone alone were ‘indictable’ for political or war crimes.” Of these trials “one-third of the inmates tried at Nuremberg were freed.” As Eleanor Roosevelt put it in her newspaper column, “Why are we freeing so many Nazis?” Cuz we need them to work for us. What’s funny is that the MOST important justification for not getting hired by Paperclip was NOT being sadistic, having murdered a child, or being a raving white supremacist, but was ever having been a member of the Communist Party. Hiring the V2 scientists in the end led to the development of the ICBM – throwing a nuclear device into the nose cone of a missile in order to kill your fellow man in lieu of peaceful diplomacy and negotiation.

The US was so thrilled by the prospect of biological warfare that it created “thousands of pounds of sarin nerve agent each year.” The Rocky Mountain Arsenal appeared at this time – it was the largest poured concrete structure in the US and no one w/o clearance had a clue what it was there for. Perhaps as a monument to Hitler’s bunker? Truth was, inside Rocky Flats “sarin was fitted into artillery shells, aerial bombs, rockets, and warheads for missiles.” Making Jesus proud. Luckily for the sadists at the Defense Department, scientists developed a gas MORE lethal than sarin. Achievement unlocked! It was called VX, and was 3x stronger when inhaled, and 1,000x stronger if it touched your skin. Sarin dissipated in only 15 minutes, VX could stick around for a full 21 days. Longer than a mother-in-law visit.

Sidney Gottlieb was the guy who poisoned/murdered Frank Olsen. Hired to kill Lumumba (for the crime of helping the people of the Congo more than US corporations), Gottlieb went with a poison you’d find in the Congo (botulinum toxin). Sadly for Sid, Lumumba was killed instead by being beaten to death so no sadistic treat for Mr. Gottlieb.

German Paperclip scientist Fritz Hoffman was watching the Vietnam War on TV and said to his daughter (p.387) “Wouldn’t it be easier to defoliate the trees so you could see the enemies (a.k.a. villagers not wishing US domination)?” This led to Agent Orange where “more than 11.4 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed over approximately 24% of South Vietnam, destroying 5 million acres and forests and 500,000 acres of food crops.” Winning hearts and minds re-defined. To make Americans even more hated, the US dropped 8 million gallons of Agent White, Blue, Purple, Pink, and Green as well. Fritz Hoffman was an expert in dioxin. Agent Orange caused great harm in children. Hoffman’s daughter later said “He was a gentle man. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Delusional.

Hoffman’s herbicide work at Fort Derrick was one part of three divisions: killing plants for profit & power, killing humans for power & profit, and killing animals for power & profit. “Anti-animal weapons were aimed at killing entire animal populations, with the goal of starving the people who relied on those animals for food.” The head of that division was Kraut Dr. Erich Traub. How wonderful to see Germans move on from genociding Romas and Jews, to genociding animals, to today openly supporting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Hey, genociders need to stick together.

Liberals love to rag on Nixon, but he was the US President who finally ordered in 1969 the destruction of US made biological weaponry. But “as it turned out, the sarin and VX bombs were not made to ever be dismantled” and it took 34 years to destroy the US biological weapons that could be destroyed. Cold War manufactured paranoia led to the creation of all this weaponry and the cost of just destroying it according to the US army (p.392) was $30 billion in 2013. Your taxpayer dollars at work. Paperclip’s biggest celebrity was Wernher von Braun, once proud member of the Nazi Party, and he was totally into developing a rocket that would reach outer space, and wanted space satellites that would carry atomic bombs. Fun Fact: the Karman line is the point at which outer space begins.

Journalist Linda Hunt was the first person to seek and study the true story of Operation Paperclip – she blew apart the myth that Paperclip was just about benign Nazis helping US science. One of these Nazi scientists, Otto Ambros is later connected to the nasty drug thalidomide which gave human fetuses flippers. Ten months before thalidomide’s commercial release a woman using it gave birth to a child without ears. 10,000 mothers then gave birth to babies with horrible deformities. Paperclip’s Kurt Debus wore an SS uniform to work during WWII and turned in a colleague for not giving him the Nazi salute. Comically this guy Debus becomes the first director of the Kennedy Space Center.

Anyway, this was a great book, about a topic few Americans would dream learning about – gotta keep one’s focus on how only ONE US political party sucks and not critically looking at what BOTH political parties do that is both wrong and WELL to the right of the American people’s wishes. Highly recommended, and as you can see, I learned a lot and you will too.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Annie Jacobsen packs the facts in there without sacrificing an exciting narrative. Really hard-hitting & relevant stuff being explored in this book and crazy research. I mean you already know a lot of this was classified before her putting in FOIA requests. Definitely a book to get you thinking 🤔🧐 💭. In conclusion: Annie Jacobsen you are that girl. Everyone cool needs to read this book; it is a book for cool people.

[Shaie F · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If you enjoy mass murder, but also treasure your skin, be a scientist, son. It’s the only way, nowadays, of getting away with murder.”
—Joachim Joesten, in response to Operation Paperclip

Jacobsen delivers a straightforward account of the US Government’s scandalous clandestine project, Operation Paperclip. In the immediate years following WWII, government officials recruited known war criminals guilty of human experimentation and mass slavery in order to use their knowledge against the rising Communist threat.
Jacobsen writes with a journalist’s precision, presenting facts in their lurid detail without becoming overly emotional or riddling the narrative with personal outrage—which is what I feel compelled to do!
How could a government’s moral compass flip so decidedly in the aftermath of war? How could they go from prosecuting these terrible men in the Nuremberg Trials one day to acquitting and hiring them the next? How could they justify such a project while knowing that if its existence became public knowledge the American people would be outraged!
This is an important piece of forgotten history—a study of how the US space and aviation programs were built on Nazi science and how doublespeak and hypocrisy became the standard of the Cold War.

[Vheissu · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very readable book about a very ugly story. The general facts are well-known and Jacobsen provides riveting details, not new revelations.

The book is nevertheless a journalistic treatment, not a scholarly one. Like her other book, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base, Operation Paperclip needs some better editing. For instance, on page 330, Jacobsen writes that in 1947 a group of Nazi war criminals travelled from Yalta to Moscow "by private jet." A jet, in 1947? A private jet in the Soviet Union? And when writing about postwar U.S. foreign policy, the least the reader can expect is that the author spells the name of George F. Kennan correctly (it's "Kennan," not "Keenan," p. 228). Such errors do little to boost the writer's credibility.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and recommend it to my friends who enjoy spy yarns with no discernible good guys.