Within just a few years after the end of World War II, the U.S. went from fighting the Nazi party to inviting some of its scientists and their families to live and work in America.
In 1946 and 1947, as part of a program called Operation Paperclip, a contingent of leading Nazi scientists and their families relocated to El Paso, Texas, to work on missile development during the height of the Cold War with the U.S.S.R. Three years later, they moved to Huntsville, Alabama, to help build out the American space program. By 1955, almost all of them had received American citizenship. The leader of the group, former Nazi missile developer Wernher Von Braun, would become the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket that got the U.S. to the Moon.
