Rabbit Holes and Operation Paperclip

I have been absent from this website, and blogging because my life - work, travel, volunteering - has been pretty intense. Despite that, I have not given up on my dream of becoming a published author, and I will have some news on that front very soon.

Part of this blog is about “rabbit holes” and I often find myself falling down a rabbit hole of historical knowledge. One day in 2014, I found an old news story about the first Nazi criminal extradited from the United States in the early 1970s. That particular rabbit hole lead to my novel and lots of interesting research and learning about the aftermath of World War II. Surprisingly, after the war, former Nazis were on the U.S. Government payroll. “Operation Paperclip” was an effort the United States took up immediately after the war to identify and recruit Nazi scientists and intelligence people. One of the most notable and celebrated Nazi scientists was Werner von Braun. He worked with NASA as an aerospace engineer and was instrumental in space exploration and the moon landing.

Unlike von Braun, there were other former Nazis on the government payroll who were much more obscure, some worked as scientists, others as intelligence assets. However, some Nazis came to the United States were not part of “Operation Paperclip” and they slipped into the country with other war refugees and sometimes with new identities. Some came as spouses of American citizens. They took up ordinary jobs and blended into American society. For many years, these people remained under the radar. Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi hunter, outed a few of them. One of the Nazis that he identified formed the basis for my historical fiction novel. It is based on a shocking true story.