My latest nonfiction investigation, Operation Paperclip, is now live on Amazon Kindle.

At the end of the Second World War, the United States and Soviet Union began competing for one of Nazi Germany’s most valuable remaining assets: its scientists.

German specialists possessed advanced knowledge of rockets, aviation, weapons, medicine and engineering. Washington understood immediately that allowing this expertise to fall into Soviet hands could alter the emerging balance of power.

But there was a problem.

Some of the scientists America wanted carried deeply uncomfortable histories.

They had worked for the Nazi regime. Some had been Nazi Party members. Others were connected with programmes involving forced labour, concentration-camp prisoners or institutions linked to war crimes.

Before these men could be brought into the United States, investigators had to establish exactly who they were.

The Investigation Behind Paperclip

US Army Counterintelligence Corps officers examined backgrounds, interrogated witnesses and studied conflicting accounts of wartime activity.

What they discovered was not always what senior officials wanted to hear.

Scientists denied knowledge of atrocities.

Witnesses contradicted one another.

Personnel records revealed political affiliations.

Investigators attempted to separate opportunists from committed Nazis and determine whether individuals had participated in criminal activity.

At the same time, pressure was growing from above.

The Soviet Union was acquiring German scientists of its own.

The Cold War was beginning.

America wanted expertise — quickly.

The result was an extraordinary collision between intelligence investigation, political necessity and morality.

When Yesterday’s Enemy Becomes Tomorrow’s Asset

By 1946, American strategic priorities were changing rapidly.

Defeating Nazi Germany was already yesterday’s war.

The Soviet Union was becoming tomorrow’s adversary.

German scientists who only months earlier had worked for Hitler’s military machine suddenly possessed knowledge considered essential to American national security.

And when background investigations produced inconvenient information, the pressure to find a way around that information increased.

Files could be reconsidered.

Assessments could be altered.

Past affiliations could be minimised.

Men once considered unsuitable could become valuable government employees.

Some would eventually play significant roles in America’s missile and space programmes.

More Than a Story About Rockets

Operation Paperclip is often reduced to the story of Wernher von Braun and the German scientists who helped America reach the Moon.

That achievement is part of the story.

But it is not the whole story.

The deeper story is about intelligence officers attempting to establish facts while political leaders were already deciding what outcome they wanted.

It asks a question that appears repeatedly throughout modern intelligence history:

What happens when national interest and uncomfortable evidence point in opposite directions?

My new book explores that conflict through the investigations, documents, personalities and decisions that shaped Operation Paperclip during the crucial period immediately after the Second World War.

Operation Paperclip — The Extraction of Nazi Scientists by the United States is now available on Amazon Kindle.

Another investigation into the decisions made behind closed doors — and the history that followed them.

Bill Stewart.

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