Includes bibliographical references (pages 537-560) and index.

The war and the weapons -- Destruction -- The hunters and the hunted -- Liberation -- The captured and their interrogators -- Harnessing the chariot of destruction -- Hitler's doctors -- Black, white and gray -- Hitler's chemists -- Hired or hanged -- The ticking clock -- Total war of apocalyptic proportions -- Science at any price -- Strange judgment -- Chemical menace -- Headless monster -- Hall of mirrors -- Downfall -- Truth serum -- In the dark shadows -- Limelight -- Legacy -- What lasts?.

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.