World War II/Awesome: Difference between revisions

* A troper's friend relate this story (Note: some cool details were left out, in case they're incorrect): The friend's great uncle was a Catholic priest that lived in northern Germany during the war. The town was small, "Where everybody knows your name," etc. and the church, was well-nigh ancient. The priest was decidedly anti-Nazi. He would gather up everyone who needed to disappear before they "disappeared" by force by the Nazis: Jews, Gypsies, etc. They would all attend the Sunday Mass at church, scattered across his congregation. At Communion, everyone lines up to receive Communion. The priest gives Communion to each person, but when he got to someone that needed his disappearing services, he'll claim to run out of the Communion wafers. The priest, alter boys, and assistants would go around behind the altar, where he would pretend to get more wafers. There was a door leading down to hidden catacombs underneath the church. Now this town is very close to the Belgian border and the catacombs lead far enough to the outskirts of town to get people almost to Belgium. It wasn't exactly safe there, either, but it's certainly safer than Germany itself. So the priest would send the person through the catacombs to relative safety then come back with more Communion wafers. Until, of course, another person needing assistance got to the front of the line, at which he ran out of Communion wafers again. The Nazis eventually found out and very impolitely instructed him to cease, and plus, they'll be watching. To enforce this injunction, the Nazi sent "observers" to his church to make sure he enforces the party line. At the first Mass were the priest sees the observers, he decides to do his "Hitler is actually the Anti-Christ" sermon. Needless to say, it didn't go over well. One of the observers was so incensed that he stood up mid-serman and shot the priest squarely in the chest. Hold on...Wait for the happy ending. Back in the day (and sometimes today, the troper relating the tale presumes [Being not Catholic), Catholic priests wore large crosses on their chests, usually made of gold. The bullet hit the priest square on the cross right below his heart, warping the cross, and almost folding it upon itself. The blow knocked the priest backwards over the altar, and right to the entrance to the catacombs. Seizing the opportunity, he escaped through those same tunnels that he helped others leave through and eventually made it to relative safety. Incidentally, the damaged cross is now a family heirloom. The "relative", his cousin was also a priest and was selected as the successor to the first priest. This priest was a non-fan of the Nazis, continued his cousin's practice of aiding innocent people escaping horrible deaths. Once more the Nazis figured it out. This time, they didn't bother with "observers." They sent goons to just shoot him in the head. The goons arrived, grabbed the priest, threw him down on the altar, and in a moment of [[Moral Event Horizon]]/"Holy Blasphemy, Batman! They decided to kill him on the altar. At that moment, the Allies decided to drop a few bombs on that dinky town, including the ancient church. One of the bombs crashed through the roof without detonating, but it collapse the roof in the process, and provided enough distraction for the priest. Following the footsteps of his cousin, he dove behind the altar, entered the catacombs, and found relative safety. The rest is history.

** Another brave clergyman was Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, a prominent official at the Vatican. During the Nazi occupation of Rome, O'Flaherty was one of the heads of a huge underground movement dedicated to helping Allied POWs, Jewish refugees, and so forth evade capture by the Gestapo, usually hiding them in convents, seminaries, their own houses, and in some cases, the Vatican itself. Everything that O'Flaherty did had a sort of daredevil flare to it. - For example, when one man was hiding developed appendictis, the Monsignor smuggled him into a hospital, and with some help of the nuns tricked a German military surgeon into operating. The man recovered on a ward full of German officers before O'Flaherty smuggled him out quietly again. Eventually, Colonel Herbert Kappler, the leader of the Gestapo in Rome, discovered O'Flaherty's role in the organization and became obsessed with trying to stop him. Unfortunately for him, he can't arrest O'Flaherty, since the Monsignor was inside the Vatican which gave him diplomatically immunity, and when he was out of the Vatican, he was always able to outwit his pursuers. After the war, O'Flaherty visited Kappler in prison every month (By some accounts, he's his only visitor), and eventually converted his former nemesis to Catholicism. It's impossible to do a full story any justice here, but it's not an exaggeration to say that Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty's life was just a one long, Crowning Moment of Awesome from start to finish.

** While we're talking about the Catholic Clergy, what about the biggest one of the lot: Pope Pius XII? He hid hundreds of Jews (Including Rome's chief Rabbi) in the Vatican and Castle Gandolfo, as well as ordering the Convents and Monasteries throughout Europe to open their doors to refugees, and even distributing thousands of fake visas to help the Jews to escape (Some of the stunts include dressing Jews up as priests and teaching them Latin chants). Under his watch the Church helped save more Jews and other refugees than all of the other relief organizations '''combined'''. He has a history of refusing to play ball with the Naizs: When he was first elected, the Nazis sent an ambassador to try and get him on their side. The Pope let him ramble on about the inevitability of the triumph of the Third Reich, opened a ledger, calmly listed the known Nazi atrocities to date, and terminated the audience. The Nazis hated him so much that he had a standing order for the Cardinals to assume him dead and elect a new Pope, just in case he ever got arrested (Which Hitler talked about doing several times).

*** Bonus points for outfitting the Swiss Guards with machine guns just in case. That's right; he was willing to pit the ''Swiss Guards'' against the Nazi war machine if Hitler tried to stop him. The Pope's not playing around.