Origins
The Initiative program seems to be established during or before the 1940s, when it employed Angel's talents to liberate a sunken captured German submarine during World War II. It was originally known as the "Demon Research Initiative." The Angel episode "Why We Fight" explained that the Third Reich had a similar program and investigated the possible use of vampires in the war effort with three vampire captives – Spike, Nostroyev and the so-called Prince of Lies. The Nazis had lured the trio to a supposed virgin-blood party in Madrid. This revelation seems to cast the Initiative in the same light as other WWII era projects, such as the nuclear weapons of the Manhattan Project.
Read more about this topic: Initiative (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)
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—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)