Description
Book SynopsisIntriguing, 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 investigato
Trade ReviewTaking Nazi Technology details what the Americans found when they began looting Nazi Germany. At a time when the United States has become deeply insecure about its technological leadership, the story has important lessons for policymakers.
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National InterestO'Reagan's masterful study of the Allies' technology transfer in all four zones and in all of its many facets, successes, and shortcomings is a most welcome contribution to Allied occupation history and to the history of technology in general.
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Physics Today[
Taking Nazi Technology] provides a wide-ranging view of the scientific and technological exploitation carried out by all four of the powers that occupied Germany in 1945, without losing depth, nuance, or historical context. This is a story that has not been widely told before, and where it has been, its telling has generally been uneven, speculative, sensationalized, or all three. O'Reagan explains the policies and plans that underpinned these dramatic tales and fits them into the broader historical concepts to which they relate.
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ScienceO'Reagan has done an important service to move the literature beyond the narratives surrounding individual programs and toward new and bigger themes.
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Historical Studies in the Natural SciencesA very interesting new book.
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Lawyers, Guns & MoneyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1. American Exploitation Programs: High Hopes, Narrow Gains, and Long-Term Lessons
Chapter 2. British Scientific Exploitation and the Allure of German Know-How
Chapter 3. French Planning for German Science: Student Spies and Exploitation in Place
Chapter 4. Soviet Reparations and the Seizure of German Science and Technology
Chapter 5. Academic Science and the Reconstruction of Germany
Chapter 6. Documentation and Information Technology: Dealing with Information Overload
Chapter 7. Legacies of Intellectual Reparations Programs: Industrial Know-How in the Postwar World
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
