“Operation Paperclip” by Annie Jacobsen – The Brilliant Minds of the Enemy

No matter how much hatred one holds for the Nazis, there is no denying that they were at the peak of the mountain in terms of technological research. That is to say, they had some of the most brilliant scientific minds the world had ever seen working for the Third Reich.

After the Second World War came to an end the winning countries had to decide what to do with those people, and that's when the United States put in motion the operation that would secretly bring over those Nazi scientists, putting them to work on American soil, for American interests. Annie Jacobsen has written an entire book about the whole thing, titled Operation Paperclip.

The book is written in a rather lively narrative style, and it begins with the end of the war, at Kransberg Castle, just north of Frankfurt. There were gathered sixty of those great scientific minds, sixty of the world's deadliest butchers.

Their fates were then decided by American military intelligence officers, with the options being either going to trial, or secretly sending them to American military laboratories, eventually commuting their sentences to complete forgiveness.

Jacobsen focuses on twelve of these individuals (the most prominent ones) and traces the fates that befell them, whether they were tried and sent to the gallows or became the secret masterminds behind various American technologies.

First of all, the author did an incredible amount of research to bring us one of the 20th century's biggest stories. Operation Paperclip was shrouded in secrecy for many years, being one of the government's most closely guarded secrets, and for good reason.

We get all the details we could ever wish for about those scientists: for instance, Jacobsen explains how Arthur Rudolph, a war criminal and key rocket scientist in the development of the V-2 missile, ultimately became the project director of the Saturn V program and left his imprint all over American aeronautics.

Or there was the case of Otto Ambros, a chemist found guilty at Nuremberg, had his sentence commuted, and eventually conducted sarin toxin tests on American soldiers, sanctioned by the Defense Department.

Arthur Rudolph

Otto Ambros

All the little details Jacobsen showers us with come from declassified files, interviews with family members and colleagues of those brought in by Operation Paperclip, archived government dossiers, and even some files obtained with the help of the Freedom of Information Act.

She spares you nothing in terms of little details, making sure the reader feels the heft of America's actions, choosing to forgive unforgivable past sins and spitting in the face of justice, ethics and morality for their own military gains.

The book tells a powerful story, the kinds that will stick with you for a long time, being rather hard to believe and digest at times, really making you think about the value of something abstract like morality in the face of something concrete, like technological progress.

To conclude, Jacobsen writes a powerful and dramatic account of a part of American history that has been swept under the rug.

The book is incredibly-well researched and anyone who likes World War II biographies or non-fiction scientific narratives will have a field day here.

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Annie Jacobsen Personal site Annie Jacobsen is an American journalist, author and editor to the Los Angeles Times Magazine and is best-known for her 2011 book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base. Her 2014 book, Operation Paperclip was named one of the Best Books of 2014 by the Boston Globe and Apple iBooks.