The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Hunt for the Nazi Scientists
Bower's (Pledge Betrayed) book is an impressively documented exposure of the frantic rush at the close of World War II by U.S., Britain and Russia to "hunt down" for their own purposes the Germans who developed the V-2 rocket, the Panzer tank and other remarkable weapons that gave Hitler his early triumphs. There was competition between the U.S. and Britain on one hand, and between the two rivals teamed together against the Soviets: each nation wanted to seize the scientists for itselfand, as Bower makes clear, expectations that the scientists would supply advanced technology outweighed possibilities that they might have been (and in many cases were) war criminals. The material presented here of what, in effect, was a tacit conspiracy by State Department and military officials to bypass U.S. laws by virtually smuggling top German scientists into the countryWerner von Braun is only one of scores treated hereis riveting reading. The book's title derives from a secret filing system that identified doctored dossiers of Nazis the military sought: ordinary paperclips were used instead of category names. Bower's revelations are individually shocking and cumulatively devastating. That hundreds of Nazis were whitewashed and worked on U.S. bases will appall readers.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.