Operation Paperclip

After World War II, the U.S. government has to decide what to do with the scientists who built the Third Reich's war machine. Its answer is Operation Paperclip, a covert programme that runs for decades and brings Hitler's scientists and their families to America.

Many of the men were accused of war crimes. Others had stood trial at Nuremberg, and one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They also drove real advances in rocketry and medical treatment, and in the U.S. space program.

This is narrative non-fiction built on research. Annie Jacobsen interviewed dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues and interrogators. She also drew on German archival papers, including documents never seen before that descendants of the Third Reich's ranking members made available.

She adds files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and dossiers found in government archives and at Harvard University. With these she follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives.

The book turns on a dispute over the programme: it is either a moral outrage or a move that helped America win the Cold War. Its account of a guarded government secret is controversial and disturbing.