In addition to interviews and oral history recordings, the foundations of this book are from military and civilian archives in the United States and Germany. Countless individuals were helpful, the following notably so: Lynn O. Gamma of the Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base; Michael Jenack, INSCOM Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Office; Richard L. Baker and Clifton P. Hyatt, U.S. Army Military History Institute; Werner Renz, Fritz Bauer Institute; Leon Kieres, Instytut Pamieci Narodowej, Poland; Dorothee Becker, Wollheim Commission, Goethe University; Joerg Kulbe and Regine Heubaum, Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial; Peter Gohle, Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg; Dr. Matthias R?schner, Deutsches Museum Archive; Christina Wooten, U.S. Air Force; Lanessa Hill, United States Army Garrison, Fort Detrick; Michael Fauser, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; Bert Ulrich and Allard Beutel, NASA.
At the National Archives and Records Administration, I would like to thank David Fort and Amy Schmidt. At Harvard Medical School, at the Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Jessica B. Murphy graciously helped me to petition the Harvard Medical School privacy board, which in turn petitioned the Department of Defense to declassify files under the Freedom of Information Act—with success. Many thanks, Jessica. At the Historical and Special Collections at the Harvard Law School Library, I thank Lesley Schoenfeld for her help with The Alexander Papers; Margaret Peachy and David Ackerman for copying historical film footage of Dr. Leopold Alexander and Telford Taylor at the Nuremberg doctors’ trial; Adonna Thompson, Duke University Medical Center Archives; David K. Frasier, The Lilly Library Manuscript Collection, Indiana University; Lynda Corey Claassen, Mandeville Special Collections Library, UC–San Diego; John Armstrong, Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University Libraries; Carol A. Leadenham; Hoover Institution Archives; Loma Karklins, the Caltech Archives; Anne Coleman, Archives and Special Collections, M. Louis Salmon Library, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Dr. Martin Johnson, The Thalidomide Trust, England; Jen Stepp at Stars and Stripes; Brett Exton, Island Farm; Nick Greene, the Village Voice; author Danny Parker, who helped me locate documents at the National Archives and also a very obscure document at the Landeskirchliches Archiv in Stuttgart; Julia Kiefaber, who translated many German trial transcripts and wartime Nazi Party documents; Larry Valero, with the Intelligence and National Security Studies Program at the University of Texas at El Paso; John Greenewald, founder and curator of the Black Vault.
In Germany, Manfred Kopp graciously drove me around Oberursel, taking me to the old Camp King facilities and safe houses that were once used for classified programs, including Operations Bluebird, Artichoke, and MKUltra. Together with Maria Shipley, we journeyed to Schloss Kransberg, formerly the Dustbin Interrogation Center. Jens Hermann was most helpful in showing us around the castle and its grounds. The journalist and author Egmont Koch generously shared his findings on Camp King and the CIA’s Artichoke program with me. Thanks to John Dimel for lending me a rare unpublished copy of The History of Camp King, and to investigative journalist Eric Longabardi for sharing his reporting on U.S. Army chemical weapons tests with me. I thank Michael Neufeld for answering questions about Wernher von Braun, Walter Dornberger, and Arthur Rudolph. Neufeld is curator of the Department of Space History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the author of several books and papers on German rocket scientists, including monographs for NASA, all of which helped me tremendously.
I thank Albert Knoll, director of the archive and library at the Dachau concentration camp, for making the documents and photographs of medical murder experiments that were carried out at Dachau during the war available for my review, and also for showing me blueprints and maps of Experimental Cell Block Five. Riot police commissioner Mathias Korn and police historian Anna Naab took me around the expansive former SS training area grounds, which are adjacent to the Dachau concentration camp, including areas not open to the public. Thanks to them, I was able to go into the buildings used by the U.S. military to prosecute the Dachau war crimes trials, and to see where Georg Rickhey was tried and acquitted. Dr. Harald Eichinger, the warden of Landsberg Prison, gave me a comprehensive tour of that famous facility (still in use today), where Hitler wrote Mein Kampf and where the convicted Nuremberg war criminals were briefly imprisoned—until they were either hanged or granted clemency by U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy.
An author is nothing without a team. Thank you, John Parsley, Jim Hornfischer, Steve Younger, Nicole Dewey, Liz Garriga, Heather Fain, Amanda Brown, Malin von Euler-Hogan, Janet Byrne, Mike Noon, Ben Wiseman, and Eric Rayman. Thank you, Alice and Tom Soininen, Kathleen and Geoffrey Silver, Rio and Frank Morse, and Marion Wroldsen. And my fellow writers from group: Kirston Mann, Sabrina Weill, Michelle Fiordaliso, Nicole Lucas Haimes, and Annette Murphy.
The interviews I did with Gerhard Maschkowski I shall never forget. Thank you, Gerhard.
The only thing that makes me happier than finishing a book is the daily joy I get from Kevin, Finley, and Jett. You guys are my best friends.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Annie Jacobsen was a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine and is the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51. A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.