It's at this point in 20th-century history that the movie The Rocket Post comes in, with its tale of a German rocket scientist in the unlikely setting of the Outer Hebrides island of Taransay.
The movie is at least loosely based on fact.
The rocket scientist in question was Gerhard Zucker, who set out to establish a postal delivery system between Britain's isles using rockets, having failed to get much traction for his schemes in his native Germany.
Zucker landed in Scotland's Western Isles in 1934 with the intention of firing a rocket across the water between Harris and Scarp.
There was even talk of a one-minute cross-channel postal service.
The film plays out a love interest between Zucker and a local schoolteacher, played by Shauna Macdonald, in her first big starring role.
Macdonald has more recently been seen in horror flick The Descent.
Zucker found some initial success, but the politics of the time were against him and the Nazis were understandably reluctant to part with the solid rocket fuel he needed.
In the end, Zucker returned to Germany and the British were forced to rely on more conventional means for their postal deliveries.
On the film's release The Scotsman reported that the film appeared to have set the record for the longest time taken for a major production to go from the last shout of "cut" to cinema release.
It had been five years since shooting ended, and two years since the director, Stephen Whittaker, died of cancer.
During the long search for a distributor, producer Mark Shorrock quit the film business to promote wind farms.
The cast includes Ulrich Thomsen, who has previously played a Bond villain, as Zucker, Eddie Marsan, more recently seen in Happy-Go-Lucky and Grow Your Own, as his German sidekick, Trainspotting star Kevin McKidd and Gary Lewis who played the father in Billy Elliot.
Despite its distribution difficulties, the film won a major prize at the Stony Brook Film Festival in New York State in 2002.
It has been speculated that the film's change in fortune is largely down to the fact that audiences are getting older and may be more receptive to old-fashioned dramas.
Certainly, part of the charm of The Rocket Post is that it could have been made at any time in the past 50 years.
The film's pace suits the picture postcard backdrops of the remote northern locations.
Shorrock has been quoted as saying he never had any doubts the film would come out.
"It's too strong to have just withered on the vine," he told The Scotsman.
