How long does it take to read Operation Paperclip?
Operation Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen takes about 11 hours 15 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 11 hours 15 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2014. 614 pages, about 168,850 words.
23 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 18 hours 46 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 11 hours 15 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 7 hours 2 minutes |
The page count is the median across 9 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States. Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War? Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich's ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century. In this definitive, controversial look at one of America's most strategic, and disturbing, government programs, Jacobsen shows just how dark government can get in the name of national security.
Subjects: Physicians, German Americans, Brain drain, Recruiting, Intelligence service, Military research
