10 Weirdest WWII Stories You Probably Haven't Heard
9. The Good Nazi
This is the story of Albert Goering. Come on, surely you recognise that surname! Albert, the younger brother of top Nazi Hermann Goering. Leader of the Luftwaffe and right-hand man to Hitler, Hermann was one of the most hated men in the world. Thankfully, his brother had very different views.
Albert led an unremarkable life until the Nazi Party took power in 1933. While his brother completely bought into the Nazi ideology and was one of Hitler's strongest supporters, Albert despised the Nazis with a fervour. It is reported that before the war started, he joined with a group of Jewish women being made to scrub the street by Nazi guards. When the guards demanded to see his papers, he and the women were told to stop scrubbing, fearing that arresting someone with such a revered name would lead to serious reprisals. Either from the SS or the Gestapo, with neither being preferable.
It was when he went to work at the Skoda works in Czechoslovakia that he really ramped up his anti-Nazi activities. Goering would encourage acts of sabotage and was in regular communication with the resistance. On top of this he would send trucks to concentration camps with labour requests. The trucks would then stop somewhere isolated and the prisoners would escape.
It wasn't all rosy though. He was going to get caught eventually, right? Well, he did get arrested, but he just used his brother's name once again and was freed! Albert survived relatively unscathed to the end of the war, unlike his brother.
After the war, his surname made him a pariah, and he would never receive the recognition that his deeds deserved until after his death