Operation Paperclip
Nazi Scientists in America
Published on 15. January 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
608 pages
978-1-80499-882-3 (ISBN)
Description
'Indefatigable reporting . . . it has become newly topical, too' Telegraph
In this engrossing and deeply disturbing expose from the bestselling author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen tells the gripping story of a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States.
In the chaos following the Second World War, the US government faced a critical decision: what to do with the great scientific minds of the Third Reich. Many were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder. Nevertheless, the US government secretly decided that their knowledge of rocketry and medical advances were vital to the outcome of the Cold War.
Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and dossiers discovered in archives across the world, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into one of the most startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secrets of the twentieth century.
'Chilling and riveting . . . a remarkable achievement of investigative reporting and historical writing' Boston Globe
'The most in-depth account yet of the lives of Paperclip recruits and their American counterparts' New York Times Book Review
In this engrossing and deeply disturbing expose from the bestselling author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen tells the gripping story of a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States.
In the chaos following the Second World War, the US government faced a critical decision: what to do with the great scientific minds of the Third Reich. Many were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder. Nevertheless, the US government secretly decided that their knowledge of rocketry and medical advances were vital to the outcome of the Cold War.
Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and dossiers discovered in archives across the world, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into one of the most startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secrets of the twentieth century.
'Chilling and riveting . . . a remarkable achievement of investigative reporting and historical writing' Boston Globe
'The most in-depth account yet of the lives of Paperclip recruits and their American counterparts' New York Times Book Review
Reviews / Votes
Important, superbly written. . . . Jacobsen's book allows us to explore these questions with the ultimate tool: hard evidence. She confronts us with the full extent of Paperclip's deal with the devil, and it's difficult to look away. -- Matt Damsker * USA Today * With Annie Jacobsen's Operation Paperclip for the first time the enormity of the effort has been laid bare. The result is a book that is at once chilling and riveting, and one that raises substantial and difficult questions about national honor and security. . . .This book is a remarkable achievement of investigative reporting and historical writing, but it is a moral force as well as a literary tour de force. -- David M. Shribman * Boston Globe * The most in-depth account yet of the lives of Paperclip recruits and their American counterparts. . . . Jacobsen deftly untangles the myriad German and American agencies and personnel involved. . . . More gripping and skillfully rendered are the stories of American and British officials who scoured defeated Germany for Nazi scientists and their research. -- Wendy Lower * New York Times Book Review * Darkly picaresque. . . . Jacobsen persuasively argues that the mindset of the former Nazi scientists who ended up working for the American government may have exacerbated Cold War paranoia. * The New Yorker * Jacobsen uses newly released documents, court transcripts, and family-held archives to give the fullest accounting yet of this endeavor. -- Maureen Callahan * New York Post * The moral issues it raises are disturbing and even perhaps profound. -- Howard Schneider * Wall Street Journal * Annie Jacobsen's Operation Paperclip is a superb investigation, showing how the U.S. government recruited the Nazis' best scientists to work for Uncle Sam on a stunning scale. Sobering and brilliantly researched. -- Alex Kershaw, author of The Liberator Operation Paperclip combines indefatigable reporting, breathless thrillerisms and peculiar syntax . . . newly topical -- Steven Poole * The Telegraph *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Transworld Publishers Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 194 mm
Width: 124 mm
Thickness: 47 mm
Weight
442 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80499-882-3 (9781804998823)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2025
Transworld Digital
€10.99
Available for download
Person
Annie Jacobsen is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, which was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. A 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist, her other books include Operation Paperclip, Phenomena and The Pentagon's Brain, and have been translated into 26 languages. She also writes and produces TV, including Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two sons.