AThe specific story is fictitious, but it revolves around certain real-life events (and not just World War II).At the end of World War II, the United States Military did conduct a covert operation, codenamed "Operation Overcast" (later renamed "Operation Paperclip"), whose objective was to retrieve German scientists (and their families), some of whom might otherwise have stood trial for war crimes, and secretly bring them to the United States. This would have been in order to utilize their expertise, while also preventing the Soviet Union, who at the time were in a fierce technological competition with the US, from doing the same.The scientist character's name in the movie is Emil Brandt, which bears resemblance to a real person named Rudolf Emil H. Brandt. This real-life Brandt was part of the personal staff of the chief of German police (the "SS"), and helped oversee concentration camps and coordinate various scientific experiments, specifically those involving human experimentation. However, the similarity in the names could simply be a coincidence.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paper_Cliphttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Himmlerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Brandt_(Nazi_physician)http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/php/search.php?DI=1&FieldFlag=1&PAuthors=95