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Christopher Simpson
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Blowback: The First Full Account of America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Disastrous Effect on The cold war, Our Domestic and Foreign Policy. Paperback – January 1, 1989

by Christopher Simpson (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 192 ratings
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Blowback is the fullest, most authoritative account ever written of the USA's collaboration with Nazis after WWII, & of the long-range effect this has had on the nation's domestic & foreign policy. Drawing on extensive 1sthand research & a wealth of documents previously classified or never before made public, Christopher Simpson has written a major & often startling work about the extensive connection between high-ranking US officials & ex-Nazis & collaborators, & about the effect this relationship has had on American society & the cold war.
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  1. Book 4 of 27
    Forbidden Bookshelf
  2. Print length
    398 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Collier Books - Macmillan
  5. Publication date
    January 1, 1989
  6. ISBN-10
    002044995X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0020449959
  8. See all details
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4.4 out of 5 stars
192 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book thought-provoking and informative. They appreciate its historical accuracy and depth, finding it helpful in understanding today's political climate. The book is described as well-researched, comprehensive, and detailed. However, opinions differ on the writing quality - some find it well-written and well-presented, while others consider it poorly written and biased.

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ReadabilityHistorical accuracyDepthWord quality
16 customers mention "Readability"16 positive0 negative

Customers find the book informative and thought-provoking. They describe it as a valuable read that provides an eye-opening account of a disturbing period in American history.

"...Blowback is a sober and sobering account of how a clandestine national security policy often embarked on for limited pragmatic ends, has resulted..." Read more

"...There are many lessons worth learning from this valuable book: how easy and how routine it was for the OSS and its successors to subvert the laws..." Read more

"...as comprehensively documented by author Christopher Simpson in his excellent work, "Blowback"...." Read more

"I gound this book to be very enlightening and interesting. Well written, well presented ..very helpful in understanding today's political climate...." Read more

6 customers mention "Historical accuracy"6 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's historical accuracy. They find it a fascinating look at the early Cold War and helpful for understanding today's political climate.

"Blowback investigates a hushed up but vitally important chapter in American history...." Read more

""Blowback" provides an excellent historical and geopolitical analysis of why Western intelligence agencies are so dysfunctional...." Read more

"...Well written, well presented ..very helpful in understanding today's political climate...." Read more

"Great book. Important history." Read more

5 customers mention "Depth"5 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's depth. They find it meticulously researched, comprehensive, and detailed, with thorough documentation and footnotes.

"Christopher Simpson's Blowback is a scrupulously researched work about how the United States government, contrary to its stated policies,..." Read more

"...This book was meticulously researched. No doubt. But this book was often dreadfully dull...." Read more

"...Thoroughly comprehensive and documented, the central thesis seems to be we allowed war criminal to perform various intelligence and resistance..." Read more

"Great read. Very interesting and detailed." Read more

5 customers mention "Word quality"2 positive3 negative

Customers have different views on the book's writing quality. Some find it well-written and helpful in understanding today's world. Others feel it's biased, poorly written, and wordy with too much author's opinion. The read is somewhat difficult, though the footnotes are comprehensive.

"...The style of writing is not designed to be mass marketed. The read is somewhat difficult. The footnotes are comprehensive...." Read more

"I gound this book to be very enlightening and interesting. Well written, well presented ..very helpful in understanding today's political climate...." Read more

"Wordy. Too much author's opinion, and not a whole lot of fact." Read more

"Solid Account of Cold War Ugliness..." Read more

The Fourth Reich in the USA?
5 out of 5 stars
The Fourth Reich in the USA?
This is not a book for those who believe the American Myth: the shining beacon on the hill, liberty and justice for all, where government officials uphold their oath to protect the Constitution. This is a book about the cancer that our government brought into this country at the end of World War 2, when paranoia ruled. Now thoroughly entrenched, these Nazis and their sympathizers have shaped this country in ways our Founders would find tragic and immoral. Along with another book, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party: Domestic fascist networks and their effect on U.S. cold war politics, the courageous reader will find many facts from reputable journalists in this award-winning volume. Further afield, an internet search for this term -- nazigop -- will yield even more material.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Vickie Rubinson
    5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating but troubling account of the U.S. Government recuriting Nazi scientists after WWII.
    Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    Blowback investigates a hushed up but vitally important chapter in American history. It explores US recruitment of Nazis and Nazi collaborators in Europe through programs such as the Gehlen Organization, Klaus Barbie's network and the Labor Service Battalions. Perhaps more significantly, Blowback reveals the government-approved (though usually extralegal) immigration of ex Nazis and colloborators into the United States itself and the significant impact this has had on American society.

    Among the wealth of new material in this book, Blowback brings to light for the first time how senior members of the State Department and the CIA, including noted diplomat George F Kennan, helped organize clandestine programs that brought high ranking Nazis and Axis government officials to America--and how the State Department has covered up the evidence ever since how the Pentagon falsified its own files to bring former Nazi scientists some of them 55 officers such as Wernher von Braun into the countr, y how in 1948, Nazis on the US intelligence payroll seriously misrepresented the nature and extent of the Soviet threat, thereby heightening the cold war, how the Pentagon trained and equipped former Nazi collaborators for use as anti communist guerrilles in the event of a nuclear confrontation, how the CIA has spent MILLIONS to bankroll anti Semitic emigre political groups inside the United States and has consistently hidden the part played by leaders of these groups during the Holocaust.

    Blowback is a sober and sobering account of how a clandestine national security policy often embarked on for limited pragmatic ends, has resulted in a disastrous blowback effect that escaped the control of its instigators, unseated those who had participated in is inception and contributed to the hysteria of the cold war and the McCarthy era. Authoritative, shocking, controversial, Blowback opens for public scrutiny a chapter of our recent history that remains essential to the understanding of our world but that many would prefer to keep shut. LOL.
    32 people found this helpful
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  • Susan A. Wuchinich
    5.0 out of 5 stars Shooting Ourselves in the Foot
    Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    During WWII, my father served as an intelligence officer overseas in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) where he gathered information to provide the US and our allies to disrupt the movement of enemy troops and supplies throughout Europe. At the conclusion of the war, the OSS wanted him to stay on but as he did not like the direction that this agency was taking, he declined. This book explains why. I always knew that we had used Nazis in our scientific research but I had no idea of our extensive use of Nazi fascists and fascist collaborators, who had committed horrible crimes against humanity, in our domestic and foreign cold war fight against communism.

    As the author says," the negative blowback from US operations employing Nazis and collaborators may be generally grouped into 6 categories. The first of these, chronologically speaking, stems from the intense West – East competition over recruitment of German scientists and secret agents. The fight over these intelligence assets played a surprisingly large role in the rapid erosion of trust between the super powers, especially in the first months after the defeat of Hitler Germany.

    The mistrust engendered during this race proved to be an important factor in determining the possibility of super power peace as early as the Potsdam conference of July 1945. Both sides at Potsdam read the clandestine campaigns of the other as the "true" policy behind avails of diplomacy. Yet both also insisted that their own diplomatic initiatives be taken at face value. One practical result of this semi ionic clash was an acceleration of the upward spiral of suspicion, hostility, and fear.

    The second major type of damaging blowback has been the destructive effect that Western covert operations and political war warfare – particularly programs employing Nazi collaborators – has had on provoking the Cold War and later crisis in East-West relations. These affairs were not only products of the Cold War but also catalysts that escalated the conflict. They offer graphic proof that the United States' struggle against the USSR began considerably earlier and was carried out with far more violence than the western public was led to believe.

    The U.S. "national security state," as it has since come to be termed, established itself very quickly in the wake of the showdown at Potsdam. Before 3 years had passed , the emerging intelligence community had begun undertaking small and medium scale campaigns using former Nazis an access collaborators as operatives in the attempted coup d'etat in Romania, the subversion of elections in Greece and Italy, and attempts to manipulate favored political parties throughout the Soviet occupied zone of Eastern Europe. One can well imagine what the USSR's interpretation of these US initiatives was, at the time, considering the Marxist-Leninist dictum that the United States is inherently imperialist in character."

    X X X

    "In the final analysis, the Cold War became the means for tens of thousands of Nazi criminals to avoid responsibility for the murders they had committed, the breakdown of east-west cooperation in the personal prosecution of war criminals – motivated, again, in part by the short-term interests of the intelligence agencies of both sides in protecting their clandestine operations assets – provided both the means for criminals to escape to the west and the alibis for them to use once they arrived here Nazi criminals as Simon Wiesenthal has commented, "the principal beneficiaries of the Cold War."'

    Under Reagan, the Nazi techniques of disruption, torture and interrogation, were used in South America and elsewhere. We have so disgraced ourselves and any democratic principles that we supposedly stand for. This book should be read in our high schools and beyond to educate the next generation.
    60 people found this helpful
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  • Esme
    5.0 out of 5 stars Eye opener!
    Reviewed in Canada on September 26, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    Prepare for a paradigm shift with this one. I was stunned at what was said in this book but everything is so thoroughly documented and you just have to open your eyes and observe to see the results. Great read.
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  • Heimo Coco S.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Der Einfluss eingewanderter Nazi-Wissenschaftler nach 1945 auf die US-Politik
    Reviewed in Germany on July 15, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Das Buch offenbart einige Antworten:
    1. Warum ist die Unterstützung der US-Politik für christlich-soziale Parteien nach WK II so groß und so liegen die Wurzeln?
    2. Woher kommt der amerikanische Hass und die Angst vor Russland, resp. vor der Sowjet-Union und wodurch wurde diese Angst geschürt?
    3. Sind die Geheimdienst-Methoden der CIA (Folter etc.) wie ihre Gründung 1947 mit oder ohne Prägung ehemaliger SS und SA Mitglieder entstanden ?
    4. Welchem Zweck diente der Prozess der Entnazifizierung ?
    5. Inwieweit hat dt. Waffentechnologie (V2 Rakete etc.) amerikanische Waffenentwicklungen beeinflusst ?
    6. Medizinische Forschung an lebenden Menschen in Konzentrationslagern und ihre Nutzbarmachung nach 1945 in der US-Wissenschaft

    7 - 99: Ursachen, Methoden, Entstehungsgeschichte und der Zweck des kalten Krieges sowie sein Einfluss auf die amerikanische Politik (Stichwort Gehlen-Organisation)
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  • Music Pro
    5.0 out of 5 stars Full of references, and jaw dropping.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 20, 2011
    Verified Purchase
    This book is well written and full of references. It documents how hundreds of Nazis were basically "let off the hook" essentially after World War Two. Many Nazis were transferred to America under Operation Paperclip etc. Former Nazis ended working high up in the likes of Nasa and US arms manufacturers, as well as spies for the CIA. The book also details how the CIA realized it could affect the political direction in various nations like Italy or Greece, and these type of operations can still be seen today. Well worth reading.
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  • mikel
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 25, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    wow is this where all the Nazis come from today ?
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  • ogilvie
    4.0 out of 5 stars insightful study of recruitment of Nazi intelligence agents
    Reviewed in Canada on July 8, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    As is the case with Simpson's other book on related topics (the strangely and inaccurately titled "The Splendid Blond Beast"), this book contains superb research and much fine analysis, but also frequently loses sight of the forest for the trees. In other words, Simpson presents so much of his extensive research that the narrative line often bogs down in trivial detail. (A definitive account of the CIA still has not been written, seemingly.) Here, the trivialities read rather like a spy novel; in "Beast," the trivialities read like a dry report on international finance -- which is all the more inappropriate when surrounded by details of the more serious matters of the Holocaust and the Nuremberg trials. Still, Simpson's two books contain some of the best research and analysis on these issues. Unfortunately, "Blowback" contains little about the later lives and work of recruited Nazi scientists.
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