In the last years, while studying and being involved in various projects about the Cold War, I got familiar with the fact that scientists and intellectuals with a tainted far-right past were willingly integrated into the Western intelligence aparatus for the sake of countering the Soviets. It doesn't mean that the other part of the 'War' was not doing the same, while accusing the 'capitalist world' of using former Nazis and their local variants from Central and Eastern Europe for ideological purposes.
A clear case in this respect was East Germany which made a big ideological line of accusing the West Germany for re-cycling various Nazis, based on documents generously offered by the Soviets and their affiliate spies. After the Cold War was over and Germany reunified, the wonder was that the 'Nazi-clean' East was in fact as infestated as the West.
The recently open Spy Museum in Berlin is documenting extensively the intelligence continuity between the old and new Germany(s), with long interviews with experts in security studies about who and how the transfer was done, a what extent and how the public opinion was, at least for a while, kept in jeopardy about the process. The thing is - and the post-dictatorship transitions in countries like Iraq, for instance, is another proof in this respect - that it is almost impossible to create new, democratic institutions from scratch, without using the institutional knowledge of some of the elites previously involved in the previous political processes. The question is at what extent and how you can avoid the ideological continuity.
Our Germans. Project Paperclip and National Security State is extensively documenting aspects not very well known academically, about top Nazi scientists, some of them with a clear role into the extermination policies that were smoothly brought to the USA for being part of the military planning during the Cold War. One of the most famous names is aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun who used to play an important scientific role at the Peenemünde complex in Germany, where slave labour was used intensively, and willingly lent further his knowledge to the Americans for setting up the basis for the aeronautical industry and the space race. The research by Brian E. Crim is based on newly declasified documents from the Department of Defense, FBI and the State Department.
'American military officers and employers were all too willing to excuse, minimize, and eventually fabricate the Paperclippers' backgrounds to expedite their travel and ensure long-term exploitation within the US'. If once in a while there were news in the last decade about former Nazi guardians and people involved in killing 6 million Jews, is because those people were let to enter the USA and eventually received the American citizenship, in a time when the Jews that just escaped Auschwitz and other concentration camps were kept at bay because of the infamous quotas. According to the book, around 15,000 scientists and technicians - plus their families - benefited from this project and its successor programs.
At a great extent, those scientists contributed to the configuration of a certain anti-Soviet position, in line with the Nazi ideology and further shaped policies during the Cold War in this respect. Not few of them were offered their services to Moscow too, which used them for a while, but let them go after. The role of biographies is very important in this research and it should be an important element of tracing various policies and personalities from this period of time. When their missions were accomplished, some ex-Nazis - at least institutionally - were lent to other part of the world affected by the policies of the game of influences: in Argentina, by the Americans, or in Syria or other Arab countries, by the Soviets - if they were not already there from the end of the war.
This book enables without offering an answer, to the relationship between science and politics, starting with the way in which willingly or for 'amoral opportunism' brilliant minds served policies of muss-murder. 'Nazi science enables the worst attrocities committed by the Third Reich. Scientists and engineers, even those with few party affiliations or minimal ideological commitment, willingly lent their talents to the regime in exchange for professional advancement and the opportunity to continue their research with limitless funding or institutional support'.
The competition to acquire German scientiests was apparntly not only an American and Soviet priority, but French and British intelligence agents also kidnapped once in a while some of them, keen to cover the scientific gap and use their knowledge for the sake of the 'new world'.
Our Germans...is an outstanding research that hopefully will be followed by other similar academic inquiries. The Cold War is over and right now it doesn't matter that much who gonna win. Investigating, based on documents and testimonies, its policies and directions, from an academic perspective will create a new level of accountability but also can offer some lessons learned about how far you can/must get for ideological purposes. It is about time that more academics are getting involved in such serious recent history researches.
Rating: 5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
