Intriguing, real-life espionage stories bring to life a comparative
history of the Allies' efforts to seize, control, and exploit
German science and technology after the Second World War. During
the Second World War, German science and technology posed a
terrifying threat to the Allied nations. These advanced weapons,
which included rockets, V-2 missiles, tanks, submarines, and jet
airplanes, gave troubling credence to Nazi propaganda about
forthcoming "wonder-weapons" that would turn the war decisively in
favor of the Axis. After the war ended, the Allied powers raced to
seize "intellectual reparations" from almost every field of
industrial technology and academic science in occupied Germany. It
was likely the largest-scale technology transfer in history. In
Taking Nazi Technology, Douglas M. O'Reagan describes how the
Western Allies gathered teams of experts to scour defeated Germany,
seeking industrial secrets and the technical personnel who could
explain them. Swarms of investigators invaded Germany's factories
and research institutions, seizing or copying all kinds of
documents, from patent applications to factory production data to
science journals. They questioned, hired, and sometimes even
kidnapped hundreds of scientists, engineers, and other technical
personnel. They studied technologies from aeronautics to
audiotapes, toy making to machine tools, chemicals to carpentry
equipment. They took over academic libraries, jealously competed
over chemists, and schemed to deny the fruits of German invention
to any other land-including that of other Allied nations. Drawing
on declassified records, O'Reagan looks at which techniques worked
for these very different nations, as well as which failed-and why.
Most importantly, he shows why securing this technology, how the
Allies did it, and when still matters today. He also argues that
these programs did far more than spread German industrial science:
they forced businessmen and policymakers around the world to
rethink how science and technology fit into diplomacy, business,
and society itself.
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