Thanks to countless movies, video games, and rambling Facebook posts from distant family members, general knowledge of World War II has been condensed to a few key moments: Dunkirk, D-Day, the Bulge, maybe Jude Law's famous victory at Stalingrad.
But the thing about getting the entire world involved in a war is that some very weird stories unfold at the fringes ...
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A Fake Diplomat Gave Out Very Real Papers To Refugees
We've told you about diplomats like Chiune Sugihara, who gave life-saving visas to Jews despite explicit instructions not to. But to perform heroic acts of diplomacy, you would have to be, well, a diplomat, right? Not exactly.
Giorgio Perlasca was a staunch Italian fascist until Mussolini passed anti-Semitic racial laws and aligned himself with Hitler, because there's fascism and then there's, like, fascism, you know? Perlasca, disillusioned by the treatment of his Jewish friends, spent the war acquiring supplies for Italy's eastern front, and in 1943 he was working in Budapest when Italy surrendered and broke with the Axis. While many of his colleagues chose to return to the sad little puppet state Hitler gave Mussolini, Perlasca swore fealty to the Italian throne, prompting Nazi-aligned Hungary to throw him in jail.
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