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Fair in Love and War
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14199 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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7 / 1988 |
3,004 Words |
| Author
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Kurt Stehling
Kurt Stehling is chief scientist emeritus for the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). |
THE PAPERCLIP CONSPIRACY
The Hunt for the Nazi Scientists
Tom Bower
Boston: Little, Brown, 1988
309 pp., $17.95
All's fair in love and war. That old cliché, while it may encompass fairly harmless, but sometimes painful, mischief in love, certainly describes assorted horrors and obscenities in mankind's endless wars. One may brood about the supposed disappearance of chivalry in armed conflict, as in WWII with the Nazi and Russian and Japanese atrocities, and the British and U.S. carpet bombing of glorious European cities, which missed many industries and killed over a million civilians. Chivalrous conduct during WWII was certainly not the norm. But a limited form of traditional postwar chivalry was applied to certain defeated German foes--if they had something to offer their erstwhile enemies.
In medieval times chivalry (that is, generous treatment of a foe) was usually reserved for those noble warriors who could pay a suitable ransom for release. The consideration was seldom extended to the common mass of soldiers or peasants caught in the battle. In 1945 the "noble" or "titled" lords of the field were senior technicians, scientists, and engineers who, (if the thesis of Bower's "conspiracy" polemic is to be believed) had supported the Nazi war machine with too much enthusiasm.
It must be remembered that the stunning Nazi successes of the first three years of WWII were in no small measure due to superior technology--in armor, armorpiercing projectiles, aeronautical engineering, submarines, aerospace medicine, materials, and other areas. Fortunately, the nerve gases and other noxious and deadly chemical weapons that were developed were never used--although this was briefly considered by Hitler as a final desperation measure.
This revealing, although sometimes labored, book discloses some interesting--and probably to the general public, unknown--facts about the transfer of German technology and its human practitioners to the United States. A major, and recurrent, theme throughout the book is the revelation that many of the German scientists--especially the rocket/aerospace and aeromedicine crowd upon which the author concentrates--were not apolitical scientists and innocent engineers dedicated to the truth and only too glad to work for the United States, Britain, France--but even the
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