files of German agents, scientists and war criminals. In 1998 President Clinton signed the Nazi War Crimes disclosure Act, which pushed through the declassification of American’s intelligence records, including F.B. At the time Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Rabbi Steven Wise publically opposed the program. There was a race between the United States and the U.S.S.

More than 1600 German scientist were secretly recruited to work for the United States. In 1945, Operation Overcast (renamed Operation Paperclip for the paperclips attached to the dossiers of the scientist) began. 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. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War?ĭrawing 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 20th century. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the US Space Program. Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States.

These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. In the chaos following World War II, the US government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. The “remarkable” story of America's secret post-WWII science programs ( The Boston Globe), from the New York Times best-selling author of Area 51.

Operation paperclip book annie jacobsen