Our Germans

Project Paperclip and the National Security State
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4214-3818-4
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 264 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 227 mm, Gewicht: 388 g

A gripping history of one of the United States' most controversial Cold War intelligence operations.

Project Paperclip brought hundreds of German scientists and engineers, including aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun, to the United States in the first decade after World War II. More than the freighters full of equipment or the documents recovered from caves and hastily abandoned warehouses, the German brains who designed and built the V-2 rocket and other "wonder weapons" for the Third Reich proved invaluable to America's emerging military-industrial complex. Whether they remained under military employment, transitioned to civilian agencies like NASA, or sought more lucrative careers with corporations flush with government contracts, German specialists recruited into the Paperclip program assumed enormously influential positions within the labyrinthine national security state.

Drawing on recently declassified documents from intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the State Department, Brian E. Crim's Our Germans examines the process of integrating German scientists into a national security state dominated by the armed services and defense industries. Crim explains how the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency enticed targeted scientists, whitewashed the records of Nazis and war criminals, and deceived government agencies about the content of security investigations. Exploring the vicious bureaucratic rivalries that erupted over the wisdom, efficacy, and morality of pursuing Paperclip, Our Germans reveals how some Paperclip proponents and scientists influenced the perception of the rival Soviet threat by volunteering inflated estimates of Russian intentions and technical capabilities.

As it describes the project's embattled legacy, Our Germans reflects on the myriad ways that Paperclip has been remembered in culture and national memory. As this engaging book demonstrates, whether characterized as an expedient Cold War program born from military necessity or a dishonorable episode, the project ultimately reflects American ambivalence about the military-industrial complex and the viability of an "ends justifies the means" solution to external threats.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Crim, Brian E

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Studien zu einzelnen Ländern und Gebieten
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Ost-West Beziehungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Besondere Kriege und Kampagnen
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Nachrichtendienste, Geheimdienste
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Aristocracy of Evil
2. Implements of Progress
3. Conscientious Objectors
4. Their Germans
5. Paperclip Vindicated
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Crim, Brian E
Brian E. Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. He is the author of Antisemitism in the German Military Community and the Jewish Response, 1914–1938 and the editor of Class of '31: A German-Jewish Émigré's Journey across Defeated Germany.