The Rocket Men, Part II: Arthur Rudolph | 3

Paperclip: America's Nazi Scientists

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.

But Rudolph’s past under the Third Reich came back to haunt him when, in 1982, a special unit within the Department of Justice investigated his involvement with concentration camp labor. What happened next was an international firestorm -- but nowhere did the controversy hit harder than in the rocket team’s adopted “hometown” of Huntsville, Alabama.

In this episode of PAPERCLIP, comedian Michael Ian Black and historian Monique Laney -- together with attorney Neal Sher, who ran the Rudolph investigation -- discuss how exposing one Paperclipper’s dark past brought many harsh truths to light.

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