The Paperclip Conspiracy - The Battle For The Spoils And Secrets Of Nazi Germany

Tom Bower’s The Paperclip Conspiracy is about that awkward post-war moment when the victorious Allies looked at the wreckage of Nazi Germany, found scientists, files, weapons research, intelligence assets and useful technical knowledge lying around, and began behaving with the brisk moral flexibility of people who had suddenly remembered the Russians were also shopping. The war was over, the slogans had barely cooled, and already the next contest was rummaging through the cupboards.

Operation Paperclip is the centre of the tale: the American programme that brought German scientists and specialists to the West, including men whose wartime CVs were sometimes less “misunderstood technician” and more “please do not read past page two.” Rockets, aviation medicine, chemical warfare, intelligence networks, military research, forced labour, concentration-camp links, war crimes, cover-ups, cleaned files and convenient amnesia all drift through the story with the unpleasant smell of usefulness.

The title says conspiracy, and for once the word has not arrived wearing a tinfoil hat. This is the respectable kind of conspiracy, which is worse: committees, memoranda, classifications, altered records, quiet transfers, official denials, and people in good suits explaining that the future security of the free world requires everyone to stop asking exactly how free the paperwork has been. Nothing improves a moral dilemma like stamping it confidential.

Bower digs into the battle for Nazi Germany’s spoils and secrets, where intelligence officers, military planners, scientists and governments competed to seize knowledge before it crossed into Soviet hands. The Cold War did not begin with a gong and a fresh set of uniforms. It seeped in through interrogations, laboratories, captured documents, rocket facilities and the sudden transformation of yesterday’s enemy into tomorrow’s consultant. History did not pause for ethical digestion.

There is a brutal irony here. The Allies had fought a war against Nazism, uncovered its crimes, held trials, and declared moral victory over barbarism. Then strategic necessity arrived with a clipboard and began making exceptions. Rocket science was valuable. Biological and chemical knowledge was valuable. Intelligence expertise was valuable. The question was how much guilt could be laundered through usefulness before the whole victory started looking slightly damp around the edges.

For readers of post-war history, Cold War intelligence, Nazi scientists, Operation Paperclip, espionage, military technology and the dirty attic of Allied victory, this is a compelling and uncomfortable volume. It belongs to that shelf where the Second World War does not end neatly in 1945, but leaks forward into rockets, spies, classified files, space programmes and the long human habit of calling compromise necessity once enough important people have agreed to it.

Very Good copy, as sold by Crappy Old Books. A smart Paladin paperback about some extremely unsmart moral decisions, preserved in pleasing condition for anyone who enjoys their history murky, documented and faintly nauseating. No ISBN-based absolution included.

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