Some Paperclip scientists achieved public prominence. By 1950, Walter Dornberger left military custody to become Bell Aircraft’s vice president and chief scientist. He advocated weaponizing space through classified Pentagon consultations and ambitious public speaking schedules. His 1954 memoir recast him as a science pioneer, omitting his involvement with forced labor at Nordhausen. In 1958, an FBI investigation concluded he was not a Soviet spy but noted his duplicitous nature.

Wernher von Braun became the most celebrated Paperclip scientist. He cultivated a public persona as America’s space prophet. In 1952, Collier’s magazine paid him $4,000 dollars for an eight-part space travel series. That summer, American Magazine published a ghostwritten article under his byline, Why I Chose America, earning him a patriotic writing award. Walt Disney Studios hired him for television and his 1955 appearance on Man in Space drew 42 million viewers. On April 15, 1955, von Braun and fellow German scientists became US citizens. In 1958, his team launched Explorer I, with Kurt Debus directing the launch.

In 1960, von Braun and approximately 120 Paperclip personnel transferred to NASA. He became director of the Marshall Space Flight Center and chief architect of the Saturn V rocket, with Arthur Rudolph as deputy. Von Braun actively concealed his 1937 Nazi Party membership and SS officer status until journalist Linda Hunt revealed the truth in 1985. His past was sometimes satirized, as in Tom Lehrer’s song and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

In 1963, East German author Julius Mader published The Secret of Huntsville, exposing von Braun’s Nazi past with detailed accounts of forced labor at Nordhausen. NASA officials James E. Webb, Hugh Dryden, and Robert Seamans counseled von Braun on handling allegations. When West German prosecutors opened the 1967 Essen-Dora trial. Von Braun’s testimony was sealed. After the 1969 moon landing, columnist Drew Pearson’s report on von Braun’s SS membership attracted little notice. In 1973, a pilot’s license physical revealed that von Braun had terminal cancer. White House adviser David Gergen opposed awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, citing his Nazi past. Von Braun received the National Medal of Science instead and died June 16, 1977.

Dr. Hubertus Strughold played a crucial role in the space program. On June 11, 1948, his team launched a rhesus monkey, Albert, on a V-2; the animal died during the six-minute flight. In November 1948, he and Commandant Harry Armstrong hosted the first US military panel on space biology at the School of Aviation Medicine (SAM) at Randolph Air Force Base, where Strughold oversaw approximately 34 German colleagues. In February 1949, Armstrong and Strughold opened the Department of Space Medicine. After Armstrong transferred to the Pentagon, Strughold became scientific director.

In 1949, Strughold attempted to recruit Dr. Siegfried Ruff, but journalist Drew Pearson threatened to expose their pasts and the contract collapsed. Strughold successfully recruited Dr. Konrad Schäfer, acquitted at the Nuremberg doctors’ trial. American supervisor Captain Seymour Schwartz found Schäfer incompetent and requested his termination in March 1951. Having already obtained an immigration visa, however, Schäfer refused to leave and relocated to New York.

On June 19, 1949, monkey Albert II reached 83 miles altitude before dying on impact when his parachute failed. Other SAM studies involved human test subjects. Colonel John E. Pickering, SAM’s medical research director, oversaw flashblindness studies suggested by Strughold, who had been partially blinded watching a solar eclipse as a child. Paperclip scientists Heinrich Rose and Konrad Böttner conducted initial experiments on pigs, then human volunteers during 1951-1953 nuclear tests. In 1994, President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments determined some of these studies violated the Nuremberg Code.

Strughold secured funding for a sealed space capsule simulator designed by Fritz Haber and completed in 1954. In March 1956, airman D. F. Smith spent 24 hours inside. In February 1958, pilot Donald G. Farrell, monitored by Strughold and Hans-Georg Clamann, spent seven consecutive days in the chamber. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson attended the press event with General Otis Benson and flew Strughold’s team to Washington for a congressional luncheon.

In May 1958, former war correspondent Julian Bach Jr. published a Saturday Review editorial linking Strughold to Dachau freezing experiments. The Immigration and Naturalization Service investigated but cleared him without accessing his classified security report. In October 1958, an Aero Medical Association symposium featured Strughold, Armstrong, Dornberger, and 11 other Paperclip scientists. Strughold told journalist Shirley Thomas stories of opposing Nazis, as if his close colleagues from the Nazi era—including Drs. Siegfried Ruff, Konrad Schäfer, Hermann Becker-Freyseng, and Oskar Schröder—did not exist.

On September 3, 1973, Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal wrote to Dr. Adalbert Rückerl, director of Germany’s Central Office for investigating Nazi crimes, about Strughold. Rückerl found no direct participation evidence but confirmed Strughold attended a 1942 conference where medical murder experiments were discussed. Late in 1973, the INS announced a new investigation. Writer Charles R. Allen Jr. presented evidence of Strughold’s knowledge. INS director Leonard Chapman closed the case after the Air Force reported no derogatory information. In November 1974, Ralph Blumenthal’s New York Times article described freezing experiments in detail. Two days later, Strughold claimed in an oral history interview with James C. Hasdorff that he was on Hitler’s “enemy list” (412). On January 19, 1977, the Aeromedical Library at the School of Aerospace Medicine was dedicated to Strughold.

In 1963, the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial began. It was Germany’s first large-scale Holocaust prosecution by its own judges. The trial originated from a letter by survivor Rögner which revealed the whereabouts of Wilhelm Boger, the so-called Tiger of Auschwitz. After verification, Boger was arrested. The 22 defendants included commandant Richard Baer (living as Karl Neumann), adjunct Robert Mulka, medical orderly Josef Klehr, guard Oswald Kaduk, and SS pharmacist Dr. Victor Capesius. With the exception of Baer, they had all been leading normal lives using their real names.

Rögner’s complaint also named Dr. Otto Ambros. German prosecutors declined to charge him again, but summoned him to testify in December 1963. Now a wealthy businessman sitting on boards of five government-owned companies and major corporations, Ambros gave testimony contradicting his Nuremberg statements, calling Auschwitz conditions “cozy” (416). Israeli journalists investigating his lucrative positions discovered West German taxpayers funded his exorbitant consulting fees.

Israeli journalist Deutschkron confronted Finance Minister Ludger Westrick, who happened to be Ambros’s colleague and friend. Westrick warned Ambros, who submitted an apologia from attorney Mr. Duvall claiming victimhood. In an April 1964 letter, Ambros reminded Westrick of help securing board positions after being released from prison. Westrick defended Ambros to boards. As journalists persisted, Ambros left AEG and at least two government-funded positions.

In letters to Westrick and Deputy Finance Minister Dr. Dollinger, Ambros revealed consulting work for W. R. Grace in New York and unnamed Israeli firms run by “well-respected persons in public positions” (418). Decades later, his consulting for the US Department of Energy was revealed, triggering scandal. President Ronald Reagan was briefed, but the Department of Energy claimed it lost the paperwork. When a reporter asked Ambros about his conviction, he dismissed it: “It involved Jews. We do not think about it anymore” (419).

In February 1962, physicians in East Germany sent an open letter denouncing Dr. Kurt Blome to Dortmund doctors. In a radio interview, Blome blamed Walter Schreiber and cited his Nuremberg acquittal. An investigation uncovered a 1942 letter between Blome and Reich Governor Arthur Karl Greiser discussing “special treatment” (421) of 35,000 tubercular Poles, a Nazi euphemism for extermination. Blome argued that intent was not criminal and again blamed Schreiber. The investigation was suspended in May 1962 and never reopened. Blome died three years later, estranged from those around him.

Albert Speer served his complete 20-year Spandau sentence despite High Commissioner McCloy’s efforts for early release. He secretly wrote memoirs on toilet paper and scraps, smuggled out to his friend Rudolf Wolters. Upon release, the publication of various books and memoirs made Speer a rich man. Von Braun wrote Speer noting their divergent lives. Paperclip scientist Siegfried Knemeyer visited after his release. Knemeyer enjoyed a successful US Air Force career, receiving the Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1977 and dying in 1979. Interrogator John Dolibois maintained Speer lied about Holocaust knowledge and should have been hanged. Speer died in a London hotel room in 1981, telling James P. O’Donnell that people seldom recognize when “the Devil puts his hand on your shoulder” (423).

Congressional hearings and NBC’s 1978 miniseries Holocaust shifted American perception on the atrocities of World War II. In 1980, Harvard law student Eli Rosenbaum discovered Jean Michel’s book Dora (1975) and Frederick I. Ordway III and Mitchell R. Sharpe’s The Rocket Team (1979) in a Cambridge bookstore. Troubled by Arthur Rudolph’s callous anecdote about missing a party while enslaved laborers worked, Rosenbaum convinced his boss at the OSI branch in the Department of Justice, Neal M. Sher, to investigate.

In September 1982, OSI contacted Rudolph’s daughter, Marianne Rudolph, who worked for NASA. On October 13, OSI director Allan A. Ryan Jr., Sher, and Rosenbaum interviewed Rudolph in San Jose for five hours. They confronted him with sealed 1947 Dora-Nordhausen trial testimony and a drawing showing the hanging crane’s path passed directly by his office. They presented evidence of daily prisoner death reports. After a second meeting in February 1983, the Justice Department offered Rudolph a choice: Face trial or renounce citizenship and leave. On March 27, 1984, Rudolph departed America. Seven months later, the story became public. Supporters called it a witch hunt, but historian Michael J. Neufeld found Rudolph deeply implicated.

The case prompted journalist Linda Hunt to investigate Paperclip for CNN and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Filing numerous Freedom of Information Act requests, she faced significant resistance but eventually accessed thousands of documents. Her early 1990s book challenged the myth that Paperclip involved only benign scientists.

Months after Rudolph’s expulsion, Texas declared a Dr. Hubertus Strughold Day, and Ohio State added his portrait to a medical heroes mural. The World Jewish Congress then released information placing Strughold on the 1945 CROWCASS war criminals list. The portrait was removed. In 1995, Air Force Chief of Staff General Ronald R. Fogleman ordered Strughold’s name be removed. Strughold died the following year while the Justice Department prepared a case against him.

The 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act created an Interagency Working Group to review 8 million pages of government records. Its 2005 report concluded that employing Nazis was unjustified and that far more than a few “bad apples” (431) were involved.

In 2008, England’s Thalidomide Trust linked Otto Ambros and IG Farben’s nerve gas research to the thalidomide tragedy. Ambros chaired the advisory committee for Chemie Grünenthal, which marketed thalidomide to pregnant women. The company was a haven for ex-Nazis including Dr. Ernst-Günther Schenck and Dr. Heinz Baumkötter. Over 10,000 children were born with devastating deformities. The Trust suggests thalidomide originated from nerve gas research at Dyhernfurth or Auschwitz-Monowitz. They also link Paperclip scientist Richard Kuhn, whose nerve gas research used Antergan, possibly a sister drug to Contergan (thalidomide’s brand name). In 2005, the Society of German Chemists stopped awarding the Richard Kuhn Medal after learning he requested brains from execution victims for his research.

A 2012 Freedom of Information Act request for Otto Ambros’s State Department files was denied despite 1971 news reports about visa waivers granted Ambros for US visits in 1967 and 1969, sponsored by Dow Chemical. In 2010, documents discovered in an Oświęcim, Poland attic provided new information on Nazi doctors at Auschwitz, according to museum historian Adam Cyra. Ambros lived until 1990.

As of 2013, the American Space Medicine Association continues awarding its Hubertus Strughold Award. In December 2012, the Wall Street Journal published historian Prof. Hans-Walter Schmuhl’s discovery that Strughold authorized potentially lethal high-altitude experiments on epileptic children. Germany’s space medicine society eliminated its Strughold Award, but American association former president Dr. Mark Campbell blames the Internet for maligning Strughold’s character.

The National Space Club Florida Committee gives the Dr. Kurt H. Debus Award, honoring Paperclip’s Kurt Debus, an SS member who turned a colleague over to the Gestapo.

Jacobsen discovered a restricted file labeled “List of Personnel Involved in Medical Research and Mercy Killings” (437) in Colonel Robert J. Benford’s papers at Harvard Medical Library. After a FOIA request declassified it, the list revealed seven Paperclip doctors: Theodor Benzinger, Kurt Blome, Konrad Schäfer, Walter Schreiber, Hermann Becker-Freyseng, Siegfried Ruff, and Oskar Schröder. US Army intelligence knew these doctors were implicated in murder, yet classified the list and hired them anyway. Benzinger, who died in 1999, wrote an equation which refined thermodynamics’ second law, that “nothing lasts” (438).

The book concludes with Auschwitz survivor Gerhard Maschkowski’s words. When asked what matters and lasts, he revealed his blue-ink tattoo: “This lasts. But it is also a record of the truth” (438).

On March 4, 2014, Jochen Haber, son of Paperclip scientist Fritz Haber, called Jacobsen weeks after the book’s publication. With his Jewish wife listening, Jochen challenged the subtitle’s characterization of all German scientists as Nazis. Jacobsen suggested beginning research at the National Archives. Jochen invited her to attend both his and his wife Carrie’s book clubs in Los Angeles. Carrie’s club comprised 12 accomplished women including judges, authors, and officials. Jochen’s all-male group included professionals from medicine, finance, law, and computer science. All were Jewish except Jochen, who had kept his father’s background secret from them. One member’s father had been a Berlin judge jailed by the Nazis. Jacobsen noted Jochen’s openness.

Jacobsen lists the correspondence she received after publishing the book which filled in historical details. A German-born woman described growing up in Nordhausen where her stepfather worked on V-2s before relocating to Damascus, Syria, in 1950. Bob Haynie shared that his father, Robert F. Haynie Sr., age 96, was part of Special Mission V-2 and recalled the tunnels. Cynthia Burchell Patterson provided letters from her father, Howard Burchell, expressing doubts about hired Nazi doctors’ innocence. Retired Colonel George Mauser shared photographs of his father working with Theodor Benzinger at the Naval Medical Research Institute. His brother John recalled Benzinger conducting ice-immersion experiments on himself in the lab’s bathtub, the same freezing experiments that sent Benzinger’s colleagues to Nuremberg.

Paul G. Schreiber, 80-year-old son of Major General Dr. Walter P. Schreiber, contacted Jacobsen claiming declassified documents were KGB fabrications. Jacobsen contrasts this with Dr. Götz Blome’s openness. During research, Jacobsen traveled deep into Germany’s Black Forest to interview Dr. Götz Blome, son of Dr. Kurt Blome, who had never spoken to journalists. When asked why he agreed after decades of silence, Dr. Götz Blome replied, “perhaps I’ve been waiting for you my whole life” (445).