Show Notes
It’s 1945. Hitler is defeated. America is looking to outsmart a new enemy, the Soviet Union. To advance in rocketry, aviation, and chemical weapons, America recruits scientists and engineers who fueled the war machine of another nation...Nazi Germany. Inspired by the true story behind the Emmy-eligible Amazon Studios series Hunters, PAPERCLIP explores how Operation Paperclip – the recruitment of Nazi Germany’s most brilliant and, in many cases, most villainous scientists to the United States after World War II – impacted some of America’s most vital, monumental, and controversial endeavors in military technology, medical research, and the space program. As our two hosts, history professor Monique Laney and actor-comedian Michael Ian Black, tackle Operation Paperclip from multiple angles – from its “pragmatic” Cold War motivations to its wide range of applications – listeners will come to understand this little-known, but very troubling, moment in American history.
This is a paid podcast funded Amazon Studios. The Los Angeles Times newsroom was not involved in the production of this podcast. The views expressed on this podcast are not necessarily the views of Amazon Studios or the Los Angeles Times.
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On this special Bonus Episode of PAPERCLIP, host Michael Ian Black talks with David Weil and Nikki Toscano, the showrunners and executive producers of Amazon Studios’ Emmy©-eligible original drama series, HUNTERS.
Operation Paperclip began as a temporary program -- but before long, its German recruits were given a path to American citizenship, and men who worked for the Nazi regime suddenly became men who lived next door.
For students of history and consumers of pop culture, the ‘Nazi doctor’ is a familiar figure -- the ultimate embodiment of pure evil. In fact, several of the fictionalized Nazi villians in the Amazon original drama series HUNTERS are doctors.
Rocket engineer Arthur Rudolph accompanied Wernher von Braun to the United States through Operation Paperclip after World War II. In Nazi Germany, Rudolph was the production manager for the V-2 missile program; in America, he became NASA’s project manager for the Saturn V, the rocket that put men on the Moon.