Sheds light on Wernher von Braun's contributions to launching the first US satellite and winning the 'Moon race' with the Saturn V super-booster that powered Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins, and their successors to the lunar surface. A gregarious night owl, von Braun also played the piano and cello, and was an avid reader and conversationalist.
The “remarkable” story of America's secret post-WWII science programs (The Boston Globe), from the New York Times bestselling author of Area 51. In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States. Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War? Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich's ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century. In this definitive, controversial look at one of America's most strategic, and disturbing, government programs, Jacobsen shows just how dark government can get in the name of national security. "Harrowing...How Dr. Strangelove came to America and thrived, told in graphic detail." —Kirkus Reviews
This classic on space travel was first published in 1953, when interplanetary space flight was considered science fiction by most of those who considered it at all. Here the German-born scientist Wernher von Braun detailed what he believed were the problems and possibilities inherent in a projected expedition to Mars. Today von Braun is recognized as the person most responsible for laying the groundwork for public acceptance of America's space program. When President Bush directed NASA in 1989 to prepare plans for an orbiting space station, lunar research bases, and human exploration of Mars, he was largely echoing what von Braun proposed in The Mars Project.
In 1970 a photocopied manuscript began circulating among conspiracy researchers entitled 'Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal' by William Torbitt (a pseudonym). The Torbitt Document was a damning expose of J Edgar Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, John Connally and Werner von Braun, among many others, for their role in the assassination of President John F Kennedy. This first published edition of the Torbitt Document emphasizes what the manuscript says about the link between Operation Paperclip Nazi scientists working for NASA, the Defence Industrial Security Command (DISC), the assassination of JFK, and the secret Nevada air base known as Area 51. The Torbitt Document illuminates the darker side of NASA, the Military Industrial Complex, and the connections to Mercury, Nevada, and the Area 51 complex which headquarters the 'secret space programme'.
A Newsweek Best Book of the Year: “Captivating . . . rooted in first-rate research” (The New York Times Book Review). In this New York Times bestseller, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story of the thousands of Nazis—from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich—who came to the United States after World War II and quietly settled into new lives. Many gained entry on their own as self-styled war “refugees.” But some had help from the US government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler’s minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. Now, relying on a trove of newly disclosed documents and scores of interviews, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau reveals this little-known and “disturbing” chapter of postwar history (Salon).
A searing account of a dark “chapter in U.S. Cold War history . . . to help the anti-Soviet aims of American intelligence and national security agencies” (Library Journal). Even before the final shots of World War II were fired, another war began—a cold war that pitted the United States against its former ally, the Soviet Union. As the Soviets consolidated power in Eastern Europe, the CIA scrambled to gain the upper hand against new enemies worldwide. To this end, senior officials at the CIA, National Security Council, and other elements of the emerging US national security state turned to thousands of former Nazis, Waffen Secret Service, and Nazi collaborators for propaganda, psychological warfare, and military operations. Many new recruits were clearly responsible for the deaths of countless innocents as part of Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution,” yet were whitewashed and claimed to be valuable intelligence assets. Unrepentant mass murderers were secretly accepted into the American fold, their crimes forgotten and forgiven with the willing complicity of the US government. Blowback is the first thorough, scholarly study of the US government’s extensive recruitment of Nazis and fascist collaborators right after the war. Although others have approached the topic since, Simpson’s book remains the essential starting point. The author demonstrates how this secret policy of collaboration only served to intensify the Cold War and has had lasting detrimental effects on the American government and society that endure to this day.
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.
Curator and space historian at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum delivers a brilliantly nuanced biography of controversial space pioneer Wernher von Braun. Chief rocket engineer of the Third Reich and one of the fathers of the U.S. space program, Wernher von Braun is a source of consistent fascination. Glorified as a visionary and vilified as a war criminal, he was a man of profound moral complexities, whose intelligence and charisma were coupled with an enormous and, some would say, blinding ambition. Based on new sources, Neufeld's biography delivers a meticulously researched and authoritative portrait of the creator of the V-2 rocket and his times, detailing how he was a man caught between morality and progress, between his dreams of the heavens and the earthbound realities of his life.
Reveals the most unusual space missions ever devised inside and outside of NASA during a time when nothing was too odd to be taken seriously, and the race to the moon and the threat from the Soviet Union trumped all other considerations. --Publisher.
Reveals the Nazi-Reptilian infiltration of the U.S. government, their secret space program, and their slave colonies throughout the solar system • Details “Operation Paperclip,” which enabled Nazis and their Reptilian partners to infiltrate the U.S. military-industrial complex, including NASA and the CIA • Reveals their interstellar space ports in Antarctica and on Mars, their base on the Moon, and their alien technologies, including nano-technology, antigravity propulsion, mass mind control, and hyperdimensional teleportation capabilities • Shares testimonies from American and British “supersoldiers” who participated in the “20 and Back” age-regression programs, revealing advanced human technology and our Space Armada that constitutes a counter-balance to the Nazi Dark Fleet The Nazis did not really lose World War II. They made it appear that way in order to divert attention from the alliance between the Fourth Reich and the race of aliens known as the Reptilians--an ancient galactic civilization obsessed with conquest and domination. After the German surrender in 1945, the Nazi-Reptilian alliance infiltrated the U.S. military-industrial complex. Through “Operation Paperclip,” the Nazis and Reptilians removed their political opponents, such as the Kennedys, and moved into policy-making positions in post-war America, infiltrating aerospace companies, banking, media, and the U.S. government, including NASA and the CIA. But their real target was not the United States--it was the solar system. As Len Kasten reveals in startling detail--including revelations of antigravity propulsion technology, alien techniques of mass mind control, and hyperdimensional teleportation capabilities--the Nazi-Reptilian alliance used their newfound power, wealth, and influence to launch a Secret Space Program with interstellar spaceports in Antarctica and on Mars as well as an eleven-story base of operations on the Moon. They commenced mining and manufacturing operations on Mars and Ceres, forming colonies there and elsewhere in the solar system. And, most shocking, they have used thousands of human slaves, easily transported in their spaceships, for both work and sexual exploitation. Sharing testimonies from American and British “supersoldiers” who participated in the “20 and Back” age-regression programs, Kasten reveals the various forces inside and outside government that are resisting the Nazis and thwarting Reptilian attempts to achieve total dominance of the planet and the solar system. The U.S.-led Secret Space Program has its own fleet of spaceships, the Solar Warden Space Armada, which patrols the edges of the solar system and poses a growing threat to the Nazi Dark Fleet.