Operation paperclip
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.
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2017–2024years
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What Hacker News says
- Read this, this year: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333289-operation-paper... which is all about Operation Paperclip.
I think it's a decent book. If you end up reading / liking this book, I'd also recommend her book "Nuclear War: A Scenario" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/182733784-nuclear-war. Both are well researched, the second one (Nuclear War) was a more entertaining read, in a morbid kind of way.
- Anyone interested in this should learn about Operation Paperclip:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
The US recruited Nazi leadership into science and intelligence positions directly leading to human experimentation like MKULTRA.
This is considered the definitive book on the subject:
https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Paperclip-Intelligence-Prog...
- Some of the losers were whisked away to American military bases, and subsequently smuggled back into Germany to stand trial.
See Operation Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen.
- Man. Von Braun? That’s not someone to name anything after.
Please read Operation Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen.
What Von Braun did was beyond horrible so much so to make the death camps look less bad in comparison, which is really saying something.
They plowed through people making them death march then dig huge underground missile factories with their bare hands, then had them make missiles to kill their families and to help their enemies try to win the war, with the majority of them dying in the process.
- Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America - Really interesting to hear about the atrocities of the Nazis and the need of the Americans that they would actively recruit war criminals to keep up with the Russians.
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America - I read this a few years after Hurricane Katrina. It provides some historical context to the problems of Katrina, especially the levee system
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - This is the current book to read on Lincoln
The Island at the Center of the World - If you're interested in NYC history this is one of the books to read.
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation This is a must-read if you're interested in religion in the US
EDIT: formatting and switched out the Triumph of William McKinley with American Gospel
- See also: Operation Paperclip https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Paperclip-Intelligence-Prog... although that mainly focuses on German military research and production of missles.
