George Vujnovich’s parents were from Serbia, and that cultural heritage would prove lifesaving for around 500 Allied airmen.

In 1944, Vujnovich was an Army officer serving in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency. He led a mission to rescue around 500 Allied airmen who were being hidden by civilians in Yugoslavia’s Serbian region. Most had parachuted into unfriendly territory after their aircrafts were hit while on bombing missions targeting oil refineries that supplied the Germans.

The solution Vujnovich orchestrated was Operation Halyard. Vujnovich taught three men to dress and act like Serbian locals, and this small team headed into Serbia, where they passed as locals and helped villagers and stranded airmen to carve a landing strip for rescue planes in the mountains. A series of daring night flights — and even more terrifying night landings — led to the successful evacuation of 512 Allied airmen without casualty.

According to the New York Times, the rescue mission was classified for years, and Vujnovich’s war efforts remained secret. But the people he rescued never forgot, and B-24 navigator Tony Orsini, who was among the 512 saved, said years later, “He was a genius in the way he put the plan together. He was a hero.” Vujnovich died in 2012, aged 96.

In 1942, the Norsk Hydro plant in Norway had been making heavy water for the agricultural industry for about eight years, and the Allies knew that the plant had been taken over by Nazis planning to make use of the heavy water in Germany’s atomic weapons program.

A British commando team had been lost on a mission to sabotage the plant, but Norwegian volunteers were prepared to help. After training, a team of 10 Norwegians led by 23-year-old Joachim Ronneberg (left) parachuted into the area. They were delayed by blizzards but skied at night, rested during the day, and reached the plant on February 27, 1943. According to the New York Times, Ronneberg later admitted, “There was no plan. We were just hoping for the best.”

Luck was on their side. They crossed an ice bridge over a river to get to the plant, snuck in, set explosives, and activated a 30-second timer. They then made a mad dash away from the exploding plant before embarking on a 280-mile journey to the safety of the Swedish border, all with 2,800 German soldiers hot on their trail.

The plant was destroyed, and it took the Germans four months to rebuild and repair the damage, only for Allied bombers to finish the job completely soon after. Hitler attempted to move the entire operation to Germany, but another attack by resistance fighters ended the possibility of a Nazi atomic bomb once and for all. Ronneberg went on to lead a number of other sabotage missions, was highly decorated for his service, and died in 2018 at the age of 99.

It would be hard to document the actions of Lt. Col. Matt Urban in full without writing a book or perhaps making a Netflix series. According to the Los Angeles Times, he has been called the most combat-decorated soldier in American history. His list of honors include seven Purple Hearts, the Medal of Honor, the Croix de Guerre from France, and 29 medals for bravery.

There’s a ton to unpack here, so we’ll start with the fact that the Buffalo, New York, native joined up in 1941, and went on to serve in seven campaigns during World War II. War History Online says that he was wounded for much of the time, because he was absolutely the sort of commander who led his men up hills and directly charged German soldiers who were dug in and firing all kinds of weapons. That’s exactly how he got shot in the throat in Belgium. Even after that incident, he stayed on the front lines until the Allies secured a crossing at the Meuse River, and only then left the fight.

Due to some misfiled paperwork, he didn’t receive the Medal of Honor until 1979, but when he did, there was no question it was completely deserved. Urban died in 1995, after suffering a collapsed lung.

In 1940, the war came to Britain. The BBC explains that the Blitz started on September 7, 1940, and that London was subjected to a stretch of bombings that hit every night for 57 days. But in addition to the bombs, the capital city had another massive problem: the River Thames.

The Thames runs right through the center of London, and there has long been a whole series of flood defenses in force to avoid its waters disrupting the city. Luftwaffe bombs damaged those defenses, threatening the already-ailing city with devastating flooding. Fortunately, Londoners had Sir Thomas Peirson Frank on their side.

Frank was a civil engineer who oversaw the river’s flood defenses and the organization of four rapid-response teams positioned at outposts along the river. Outposts were manned 24/7, and at any place there was an attack on the walls along the Thames, teams were dispatched to fix it. According to Thames Discovery, the river wall sustained bombing damage in 121 separate incidents between 1940 and 1945, and in each case, Frank’s teams were able to reinforce the wall before the river could burst through and flood the city. 

The Tidal Thames reports that the repairs were considered top secret work for a few reasons. Not only did the government not want Londoners to know how dangerous — and likely — potential floods were, but they also didn’t want to draw the Luftwaffe’s attention to these potential weak spots.

The ocean is a terrifying place, but Charles Jackson French took one look at the wide expanse of the Pacific and decided it wasn’t going to take his life or the lives of his fellow soldiers.

According to the International Swimming Hall of Fame, on September 5, 1942, the USS Gregory was attacked and sunk in the Pacific. French, a mess attendant from Arkansas, made it to a life raft with a number of others, but with Japanese forces still nearby, they knew it was just a matter of time before the life raft was sunk or they were taken prisoner.

French was having none of that. He tied a rope around his waist and dove into the shark-infested water. For the next eight hours, he swam, and swam, and swam some more, pulling the raft until they were finally picked up by a friendly landing craft. 

But there was no happy ending for French. When he was interviewed much later, his testimony dissolved into tears. While he was featured on a War Gum trading card and traveled the country promoting War Bonds, he ended up succumbing to alcoholism to handle the horrible things he’d seen. The Miami Herald reports that he died in 1956, aged just 37. In 2021, veterans groups began lobbying for him to get the recognition and honors he deserved for saving 15 men. 

Even if you don’t know many old-timey performers, you might be familiar with Marcel Marceau (left). The famous French entertainer is best known for his mime skills. During World War II, Marceau and his cousin Georges Loinger (right) were responsible for keeping hundreds of Jewish children safe, and Marceau used his mime skills to help turn it into a game for the littlest ones.

The Washington Post explains that Loinger was a Jewish teacher who oversaw a network of French country homes where Jewish children were sent in the hopes of keeping them safe. As Loinger oversaw their continued education, he put a focus on exercise and used other techniques to help prepare the children for a flight across the countryside and into Sweden.

With the help of his cousin, Loinger prepped even the smallest children through play and mime. According to History, Loinger said, “The kids had to appear like they were simply going on vacation to a home near the Swiss border, and Marcel really put them at ease.” It’s not clear how many children Loinger saved, but it’s thought to be well into the hundreds.  Marceau also forged identity documents to make Jews look younger so they’d be allowed to flee Nazi deportation.

Marceau died in 2007, aged 84, and Loinger was 108 when he died in 2018.

Guy Stern was one of about 1,400 children who were rescued from Nazi Germany by the Children’s Aid Project. The Jerusalem Post reports that he wrote, “I feel unending gratitude to a largely unrecognized group of American Jewish women who saw to it that Gunther Stern took a boat to a harbor in New Jersey rather than a cattle car to Auschwitz.”

Safe in the U.S., he wanted to do his part. Stern became one of the Ritchie Boys, a group made up largely of immigrants who were fluent in the languages spoken by the Axis powers that interrogated captured enemy troops and conducted covert operations. The Ritchie Boys were trained at Maryland’s Camp Ritchie, where they were taught all about the art of interrogation.

According to HistoryNet, Stern’s first interrogation experience was at the front lines in Normandy, where he uncovered a wealth of information including details of the diseases spreading through the German army, how well defenses had been repaired, and whether or not the Germans had chemical weapons waiting in the wings.

He was also one of the lead interrogators for Dr. Gustav Wilhelm Schuebbe, who, Time reports, personally murdered 21,000 people. Stern helped uncover the story of how Schuebbe headed up the Nazi Annihilation Institute, where he oversaw the execution of as many as 140,000 people in just nine months. In 2021, the 99-year-old Stern appeared on “60 Minutes” to talk about his work during the war.

After the Allies turned down Juan Pujol Garcia’s offer to spy for them, he went to the Nazis, offered to spy for them, and turned into a double agent who the Allies didn’t even know was working for them.

According to History, Spanish veteran Pujol started feeding Nazi Germany a ton of fake news, and NPR says that he managed to convince the Germans that he was in London spying for them when he was really in Lisbon and didn’t even speak English. He was so good that even the British were sent into a panic about the mole they thought they had in London. Pujol built up some serious credibility with Germany, and once the Allies realized how good he was at making stuff up, they brought him on board as Agent Garbo.

Garbo’s biggest score came with the creation of a massive British army called FUSAG. He told Germany that FUSAG was the real deal and that they were going to be hitting the Nazis hard. Normandy was just a decoy, he claimed, and the real thing was going to go down at Calais. The Nazis believed him.

After the war, Pujol decided the safest thing for him to do was to fake his own death. It wasn’t until the 1980s that historians realized that he had been alive the whole time. He actually died in 1988. Or so the story goes, at least.