Hunting for the Nazis
Like The Man in the High Castle, Hunters is an alternative historical TV show. While the former focuses on how the World would have turned out if the Axis would have won the Second World War, Amazon Studio turned its attention towards Operation Paperclip.
At the end of the Second World War, while the world had not even recovered from the bloodiest war in human history, nations were once again going to be involved in a new conflict: The Cold War.
It is a secret for no one that the U.S and the Soviet Union were different from one another. But they at least agree on being prepared to use every method to dominate the other, even though it meant to use Nazis.
In 1945, 1,600 Germans were secretly recruited by the U.S. to develop weapons at ‘at a feverish and paranoid pace that came to define the Cold War.” Among them had been Nazi Party members, SS officers and war criminals, responsible for the development of destructive weapons like the V-2 rockets that bombarded cities like London and Antwerp. Despite that, the U.S. government found them useful for the national security of the country.
This is the Operation Paperclip and though, it is natural to call into question the ethicality of the politics, the fact remains that no bad consequences came from it.
But it is actually these bad consequences that Hunters exploits. The TV created by David Well takes place in the U.S. of the 70s where the Operation would have backfired and opened the doors to Nazis eager to take power and create a Fourth Reich.
To prevent it from happening, a group of hunters led by Meyer Offerman (played by Al Pacino) aimed to neutralize them by using every possibility, that is, to kill them mainly. This last aspect considerably make them look alike a group of vigilantes ready to transgress laws to accomplish their targets (an aspect which drives them away a bit more from the real Nazi hunters)
In the middle of all that is the character Jonah Heidelbaum (played by Logan Lerman). Jewish, Jonah is a character who would not cease to evolve throughout this first season. Originally worried at the idea of killing people, he’ll gradually accept the fact that — for fighting evil — one has to become evil himself.
Because Hunters is largely here to question us on whether — considering their actions — some people deserve to die or not. Though it exists plenty of bad people; the one who is certainly the most despicable is the character of Travis Leich (played by Greg Austin). American Neo-Nazi, the latter does not hesitate to kill while adopting a sociopath personality.
This question is certainly put into perspective through the dualism between Meyer Offerman and the character of Millie Morris. While the former tend to hold an ‘end-justify-the-means’ stance, the latter, member of FBI, seems to keep faith in the institution, despite seeing horrors as the TV shows go on.
Given its closeness with Nazi Germany, Hunters often comes back to depict the concentration camp universe. This aspect had not actually been appreciated by several Holocaust, including Auschwitz Memorial Museum, because the Amazon Drama gave ‘a fantasized version of the Concentration Camp’. Though true in some aspects (the scene of the ‘chess’ is a case in point), I feel that Hunters has no real intention to hurt anyone and this is the reason for which I’m inviting to watch the TV show on Amazon Prime because the platform tends to display appealing information about the TV show in itself and real historical events.
Recently renewed for a second season, Hunters ended on a controversial and disturbing note whose I am personally looking forward to seeing the repercussions.
