- There comes a time
where we all must choose
between the light and the darkness.
- Amazon's new series, "Hunters"
is a brutal espionage thriller about
an eclectic team of Americans
with one single goal,
killing Nazis secretly
living in the United States.
Think "Inglourious Basterds"
set in 1970s New York.
The show follows the team,
led by a mysterious
affluent Holocaust survivor,
portrayed by Al Pacino,
as they uncover a shocking conspiracy,
that these incognito Nazis
are plotting to bring about
the Fourth Reich on American soil.
The show is inspired by true events.
But inspired is somewhat
of a vague descriptor.
How close did a sleeper cell of Nazis come
to overthrowing the American government?
Are any of the "Hunters"
based on real people?
In this historical fiction,
how much is historical
and how much is fiction?
Post World War II, there were German Nazis
living in America.
But, how did they get there?
Throughout the Second World War,
Nazi Germany maintained an
impressive technological
superiority over its adversaries,
such as devastating chemical weapons
and advanced missile technology.
As the tide of the war
began to turn in favor
of the Allied forces,
the American government started to realize
just how important the Nazi's
technological advancements were.
If this technology were
to fall into the hands
of other nations, specifically
the increasingly powerful Soviet Union,
America could find itself
outclassed and obsolete.
So what did the American
government decide to do?
Bring over the Nazi's best and brightest!
Through the efforts of a newly formed
and highly secretive government
organization, the JIOA,
approximately 1,600 Nazi scientists
were brought to America
with the sole purpose of utilizing
their scientific expertise
to keep America at the forefront
of military innovation.
President Truman forbade
bringing over anyone
who was "a member of the Nazi Party,
or more than a nominal
participant in its activities",
thus rendering most of
the scientists ineligible.
But a simple executive order
wasn't gonna stop the JIOA,
so in order to circumvent the restriction,
they whitewashed the
details of the recruits
and downplayed their Nazi pasts.
As disturbing as that fact is,
the truth is some of these
Nazi turned Americans
were instrumental in the United States'
nuclear and space programs.
The most notable example of this
is with the infamous
scientist, Wernher von Braun.
During the war, Von Braun
was the aeronautics engineer
behind one of Germany's
most effective weapons,
the V-2 rocket.
Using the forced labor of
concentration camp prisoners,
Von Braun built these weapons.
Just a few years after serving as part
of the Nazi war machine,
Von Braun and his colleagues
became integral parts
of America's weapons and space programs.
Wernher von Braun would go on to become
the director of NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center,
and was the chief architect behind
the Saturn V launch vehicle,
the technology responsible for sending
America's astronauts into space,
and later to the moon.
In fact, some question whether
one of the United States'
most symbolic achievements
of the 20th century
would have been feasible
without the help of Nazis.
In "Hunters", Von Braun, and
other scientists from the JIOA,
are portrayed as the conspirators
trying to bring about a Fourth Reich,
but there is no evidence of any real life
anti-American plots, as far as we know.
While the villains of "Hunters"
are a mix of fact and fiction,
how much reality is there to our heroes,
the team of Nazi hunters?
So, there were teams of vigilantes
who did their share of Nazi fighting
but it wasn't in the 70s,
it was in the 30s before World War II.
Before the war, the
German American Federation
was a pro-Nazi community organization
with the goal of extolling
"German virtues" across the nation.
They held parades, had youth
camps, even had a rally
in Madison Square Garden
attended by 20,000 supporters.
Clearly Nazi sympathy was on the rise.
Resistance to the growing fascism
came from an unexpected
place, the Jewish Mob.
Jewish leaders of organized crime,
including infamous
crime lord Meyer Lansky,
provided funding and weapons
to groups of citizens
who would disrupt these rallies.
Armed with baseball
bats and brass knuckles,
these crews dubbed
themselves, the Minutemen,
a name originally used by
American revolutionaries
against the British.
So even though the Minutemen
weren't a highly trained crew
of mercenaries hell-bent on revenge,
they certainly got the job done.
Al Pacino plays a Holocaust
survivor motivated by vengeance.
Were there, in fact, real survivors
who dedicated their lives
to tracking down Nazis
hiding around the world and
bringing them to justice?
Absolutely!
Perhaps the most famous of
these real life "hunters"
is Simon Wiesenthal.
A survivor of the concentration camps,
Wiesenthal worked to gather
intel on Nazi fugitives,
and worked with Israeli and
American intelligence agencies
to track down these war criminals.
Wiesenthal is perhaps most
known for his contributions
to the 1960 capture of Adolf Eichmann,
the architect of Hitler's Final Solution.
Simon Wiesenthal's efforts
to bring Nazis to justice
makes for some amazing stories.
His efforts extended across the globe,
bringing him in contact with some pretty
extraordinary people, like this guy:
- I'm Myron Sugarman,
and I sold and operated gambling machines
from one end of the earth to the other.
- Myron spent a good deal of his life
working in organized crime.
But, remarkably, he's connected
to both Simon Wiesenthal
and the Minutemen of the 1930s.
- I'm inspired by several
factors of life, of course.
One of the biggest was
my father's involvement
with an organization called the Minutemen
that fought the American
Nazi Party here in Newark,
New Jersey in the 1930.
And I said to myself that
I got to do something
that my father would be proud of.
- Myron met Simon
Wiesenthal in the mid-1960s,
and the two of them
struck up a partnership.
- Now, this is 1965, '66.
What would happen is
that Nazis, old Nazis,
you know, friends or colleagues,
would get into disputes
basically over money or
whatever the issue was.
And the one would say to the
other, "You son of a b****
"I'm going to Wiesenthal,
and I'm gonna snitch on you,
"tell them what you did during the war."
So I told Simon Wiesenthal I'm prepared
to do whatever I have to do to help you
pursue Nazi war criminals.
And the first thing
that he said to me was,
"We need money."
- Unlike "Hunters", Wiesenthal
and his colleagues used the legal system
to bring Nazis to justice,
but we do know of one instance
where Wiesenthal considered
going full vigilante.
That's when he called Myron
and his friend, Joey Sodano,
to a meeting.
- He says, "There's a
guy in West Virginia,
"an Antisemite that's
sending Nazi propaganda
"all over Europe.
"I want the son of a b**** killed!"
- Myron and Joey were able
to calm Wiesenthal down,
and the plan was never carried out.
And Myron insists this
was an isolated incident
and entirely out of
character for Wiesenthal.
But clearly Wiesenthal was
willing to resort to measures
worthy of the Amazon show.
So while the hunting and Fourth
Reich conspiracy featured
in "Hunters" is purely fictional,
the influence of Nazi science
on America's technological innovation,
as well as stories of
not so average citizens
bringing Nazis to justice,
are more real than you might have thought.
Thanks for watching.
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