History Geekery for Steve Rogers

I feel like a lot of the timeline stuff around Zola and Bucky gets pretty confused, partly because it's really confused in the movie. I have been assuming that Zola did initial work on Bucky before he was captured, but Bucky was in someone else's hands (possibly another Hydra cell's) for at least a few years, maybe a decade, after the war. That doesn't mesh with the implication that Zola personally handled the amputation, but it was a traumatic flashback as part of mangled memories... (Alternatively, Zola talked his way out of Allied custody in the chaos around the end of the war, and got the Winter Soldier project started between then and when he was brought into Paperclip.) Of course most of my Operation Paperclip background is via XF fandom. :P