Title:
Operation Paperclip : the secret intelligence program that brought Nazi scientists to America
Author:
Edition:
First Back Bay paperback edition.
Publication Date:
2015
Publication Information:
New York : Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Company, 2015.
Physical Description:
xiv, 581 pages, 10 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
ISBN:
9780316221030
Abstract:
In the chaos following World War II, some of the greatest spoils of Germany's resources were the Third Reich's scientific minds. The U.S. government secretly decided that the value of these former Nazis' knowledge outweighed their crimes and began a covert operation, code-named Paperclip, to allow them to work in the United States without the public's full knowledge. Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including papers made newly available by direct descendants of the Third Reich's ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and lost dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into one of the most complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secrets of the 20th century.
General Note:
Includes reading group guide (10 pages at end).
Contents:
The war and the weapons -- Destruction -- The hunters and the hunted -- Liberation -- The captured and their interrogators -- Harnessing the chariot of destruction -- Hitler's doctors -- Black, white, and gray -- Hitler's chemists -- Hired or hanged -- The ticking clock -- Total war of apocalyptic proportions -- Science at any price -- Strange judgment -- Chemical menace -- Headless monster -- Hall of mirrors -- Downfall -- Truth serum -- In the dark shadows -- Limelight -- Legacy -- What lasts?
Subject Term:
Language:
English
