Two indigenous tribes, the Puelches and Poyas, originally populated Bariloche’s lands—before being latterly absorbed by the larger Mapuche tribe. The 17th century saw the arrival of Spanish conquistadors and sword-bearing Jesuit priests, both of whom established one ill-fated mission after another until the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish America by European empires in 1767.

The modern city took its form in the last quarter of the 19th century, as a result of military action and immigration. The president at the time was Julio Argentino Roca, an army general known for the Conquista del Desierto, a military campaign comparable to the conquest of the American West.

The costs of Roca’s campaign were brutal: blood spilled, families torn apart, and large chunks of aboriginal culture crushed in order to expand the country’s borders and absorb the increasing mass of Europeans coming off the boats. By 1881, Chile formally gave up on its territory claims, and German-speaking immigrants—including Swiss and Austrians — began to settle.

Before the arrival of tourism, Bariloche easily fit the image of a frontier post, offering the kind of seclusion that fresh starters, pioneers, and shady characters often sought. The town asked few questions of its new arrivals, and hundreds of central European immigrants found hope in this remote stretch of Patagonian rainforest.

By the mid-1940s, Bariloche already looked like it had been transplanted from the Alps, with its mountains, forests, lakes, copycat architecture, chocolate factories, and typical Indo-European foods. The frontier post began to rise as a tourist destination for Argentines — and also, more prominently, as a perfect hideout for Nazis on the run after the end of the Second World War.

But one coincidence—a Nazi fugitive’s choice of one hideout over another — triggered unimaginable consequences for the emergent ski resort. Unintentionally, the events that followed cleared the path for the creation of the first company in Latin America capable of building spacecraft.

INVAP Headquarters in Bariloche. Image credit: INVAP

The biggest arms race in the history of mankind began right after the end of WWII. The United States and the Soviet Union quickly went from allies to rivals, positioning themselves as the two modern superpowers for the decades to come.

At the time, Argentina was a significant economic power, though high levels of inequality plagued its economy. In 1946, Juan Perón took office as the country’s president. In an effort to place Argentina among the developed nations and to achieve higher levels of social justice, Perón established a welfare state model of authoritarian populism that would later be known as “Peronism.”

In Perón’s view, industrial development (including military industrial development) was the only way to accomplish his objectives. With a bold sense of opportunity, Argentina performed its own version of Operation Paperclip, during which former Nazi engineers and scientists were secretly recruited to work on the country’s R&D programs. Among those recruited was Kurt Tank.

A World War I veteran, Tank was the kind of engineer Perón wanted: a skilled technical prospect who was eager to work on advanced military-industrial projects. Tank had obtained an engineering degree in Berlin before working for Rohrbach Metall-Flugzeugbau, a short-lived airplane maker. Afterwards, he worked for another failed aircraft manufacturer called Albatros, though this time luck fell on his side. Instead of sinking into oblivion, Albatros was absorbed by the more successful Focke-Wulf. One of Tank’s designs proved deadly and entered mass production—with over 20,000 units made, his Focke-Wulf Fw 190 became part of the Luftwaffe’s backbone. However, Germany would end up losing the war, and in 1947, after negotiations with the United Kingdom, China, and the Soviet Union failed, Kurt Tank took off to Buenos Aires.

An extract from Time, published on October 23, 1950, recalls:

A single-seat jet fighter mounting four 20-millimeter cannon was undergoing new tests in Argentina last week, after whistling through a first trial flight clocked at a speed of 646 miles per hour. The swept-wing I.Ae. 33 Pulqui II, powered by a Rolls-Royce turbojet engine, is the second jet plane to be designed and built in Argentina. The designer: Professor Kurt Tank, former technical director of Germany’s Focke-Wulf concern and designer of the formidable FW 190.

Argentina’s quest for air superiority moved fast thanks to Tank, and Perón wanted to take things to the next level. He asked Tank for a physicist who could help develop new sources of nuclear power, and the engineer dropped the name of the previously unknown Ronald Richter.

Once he had safely arrived in Argentina, traveling under the pseudonym of Pedro Matthies, Richter pulled out a proposal for his new employers: controlled thermonuclear fusion. Somehow, Richter managed to convince the president of his bold, if scientifically dubious, ideas. And — as if things couldn’t get bizarre enough — Perón awarded the man a medal, appointing him to lead the country’s most secretive project, Project Huemul. There are two things that bear the name “Huemul” in Argentina: The first is an elusive species of Patagonian deer; the second refers to a small lake island, located at the heart of Argentina’s oldest national park, close to Bariloche.