After World War II, the United States launched a covert initiative known as Operation Paperclip, designed to recruit German scientists and engineers — many of whom had worked on advanced weapons for the Axis regime. Over 1,600 experts were secretly brought to America, with their wartime records often sanitized to bypass restrictions that would have barred former Axis collaborators. These men included Wernher von Braun, a rocket engineer who had developed the German V-2 missile. Once in the U.S.,