Win or lose, both the Axis and Allied armies produced many men in World war 2 that went
above and beyond the call of duty for their respective countries. Some of these were the
men that put their bodies on the line time and time again in a nationalistic fervour that won
them infamy amongst the opposing armies and others were the men who used their immense
skill to simply terrorise enemies from afar. With that being said, in today’s Front video,
we’ll be staying true to the channel name and taking a look at 7 different Men from 7 different
countries who greatly impacted the battlefields they fought on. Regardless of how they did this,
the men chosen all had an impact on their enemies in one way or another,
usually through sheer skill and force of will in combat as well as propaganda in some cases.
Although we all know that such a complex and massive war can’t be distilled down to the
individual, this video intends to highlight the men who were on the front lines and aims
to simplify their actions in the context of only a battlefield. Please keep in mind that
this is Part 2 of this mini-series and I’ll link part 1 if you missed it after this video. Also,
although this is likely where the series ends, I am willing to make a part 3 if I
get enough suggestions in the comments from countries I haven’t already done. Anyway,
without further adieu, let’s get into the video!
If we’re speaking technicalities here, Paddy Finucane was technically a soldier
of the British army as Ireland remained neutral in World War 2. In saying that,
I’ve decided to add Ireland as its seperate country in the video since there were tens of
thousands of Irish citizens who ultimately left their country to fight against Nazi Germany. One
of these men was Dublin born Paddy Finucane. His parents, admittedly, did end up moving to England
3 years before the war started, however, they nonetheless still retained a proud Irish heritage.
In 1939, as the world braced for impact as Germany tore through Poland’s defences,
Finucane did his part by applying to become a Royal Air Force pilot. At first his marks were
dead on average, and he was not considered spectacular in any regard by his superiors.
Despite these less than promising signs, Finucane carried on practising his actual flying skills,
and in 1940, when France fell and the Battle of Britain was underway,
he was given his first shot as an active fighter pilot.
Finucane quickly found his feet here and ended up with 4 kills and 1 damaged,
a respectable effort which thus saw him promoted to acting flight Lieutenant. The truly remarkable
part of his career however came in the Circus offensive, we he managed to destroy 20 German
aircraft in the span of 8 months over an enemy controlled France and against seasoned Luftwaffe
veterans. He was subsequently promoted, and became the RAF’s youngest wing commander in history,
before his Spitfire was tragically damaged by flak and he tried to cross the English
channel unsuccessfully, disappearing with the Ocean. Finucane was survived
by his brother Raymond Finucane, who was also a pilot, and survived the war.
The subject of the famous Sabaton song, inmate 4859, Witold Pilecki has to be one of the bravest
and honourable men of the entire war. This Polish patriot started his career in the Polish Army in
1920, where in the Polish-Soviet war where he earned his stripes for his bravery and skill in
combat. In 1939, when Germany, Pilecki continued his dedication to country and served as a cavalry
officer against the invading force. Although his platoon was almost completely destroyed
after a vicious encounter with German Forces, Pilecki managed to retreat and link up with the
remnants of the Polish army, where he and his men managed to destroy 7 tanks and shot down an
aircraft. Following Poland’s surrender in September of 1939, he and many of his men
continued fighting as partisans wreaking havoc on Germany’s supply lines. Eventually though,
his division was disbanded and it was every man for himself. Pilecki, not wanting to go down so
easily, co-founded the Secret Polish army as one of the first underground organisations of the war.
Now arguably, comes one of Pilecki’s most famous feats of the war. He volunteered himself
to infiltrate the Auschwitz death camp. Yes, that meant willingly becoming a prisoner in one of the
most atrocious camps of the war. Although Pilecki had to falsify some records to enter the camp,
he didn’t have to do much, as what Nazi expects someone crazy enough to willingly
enter their one of their death camps for the sole reason of gathering information? W`ell
that’s exactly what Pilecki did, and through his connections with the Polish Home army,
he managed to smuggle items both inside and outside the camp, including proof of atrocities in
case he didn’t make it out to testify. In April of 1943 however, Pilecki decided he had seen enough,
and escaped the camp. Although the allies at the time treated his claims of Auschwitz with little
regard as they were the first ever reports of the atrocities peermitted by Nazi Germany,
as the war drew on, they began to figure it out for themselves. As for Pilecki after this,
well linked back up with the Home army and became a legendary figure in the
anti-communist resistancee after the war, where in 1947 he eventually paid for this with his
life and was arrested and sentenced to death by communist scum. A sad ending to such a great man.
Italy, it is known, has a less than stellar reputation when it comes to fighting in World
War 2. The Italian army was largely unorganised, demoralised and lazy. Most of them simply didn’t
care about the war and worried more about food than about guns and killing. There
were of course some exceptions, and these exceptions are personified by Junio Valerio
Borghese nicknamed the Black Prince, who was an Italian Naval Commander during the war.
Borghese was a dedicated fascist, as hardline as they came, and subsequently was a very dedicated
combatant, managing to launch extremely daring raids against British Battleships
in his Submarine, with his most famous being the heavy damaging of the HMS Valiant and HMS Queen
Elizabeth, for which he was awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour. As an unsure Italy
fluctuated politically however, Borghese stayed resolute in his facist convictions,
and continued to volunteer with the Wehrmacht after the Italian surrender. After the war he
was imprisoned for a discounted term of 4 years by the Italian Government,
and after his release was still dedicated to Facism and continued to politically pursue it,
even attempting a coup d’etat in 1970. He eventually died in 1974 at the ripe old age of 68.
As low-key as the Canadians are, the fact of the matter is, in World War 2 they were some
of the best soldiers the commonwealth had to offer. None displays the skill,
cunning and ferocity quite like Leo Major, who mind you, only joined the Canadian army
to prove to his father he wasn’t an unemployed failure. His first taste of combat came on the
beaches of Normandy, where he was part of the front lines on Juno, which was, like Omaha,
an extremely well defended beach. Major wasted no time getting to work, and single-handedly took
down an armoured car full of Germans as well as 4 SS men on a separate occasion. During the fighting
on the Western Front, major was wounded by a grenade and lost his eye, earning him the nickname
pirate. He argued that having one eye actually improved his aim though, and in early 1945,
acting as a sniper and a scout, he pulled off his most immense feat yet with only one eye. He
managed to single-handedly capture 93 German prisoners through the element of surprise
and by capturing their commanding officer first, marching them back to allied lines.
The craziness doesn’t stop here however, and when Major later suffered a broken back,
he escaped the hospital he was in the rejoin the fight, and was sent to a Dutch town on a
scouting mission where he managed to convince an entire SS garrison they were surrounded by
firing a machine gun randomly and chucking grenades randomly, and then capturing the
patrols of SS that were sent out to investigate the noise. This SS garrison fled the town,
and the rest of the Canadian force entered to liberate the town the next day without a shot
being fired, all thanks to Leo Major. Major was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal,
and won another one during the Korean war, and eventually after his years of fighting,
retired in Montreal, dying in the quiet suburbs in 2008 at the ripe old age of 87.
Well, if you watched part 1 of this video, you heard the story of Jack Churchill, an English
native with a love for Scottish culture and who went crazy in battle. Well he wasn’t the only
kilted killer of the British Army, and if we’re talking ethnically Scottish soldiers gone mad,
then Tommy Macpherson is your man. Originally sent to North Africa as a reconnaissance man
for allied landings, Macpherson was and his men were captured by the Germans after a mission
gone wrong, though not after they walked over 100 miles just in their shorts without food,
water or a map to try and escape. After 2 years in German confinement, the Scot grew restless
and managed to escape to get right back into the thick of things, this time as a British officer in
coordination with the French resistance. Just like mad Jack, Tommy was an extremely brazen fighter,
and would drive around in a car emblazoned with a union Jack and French resistance flag
deep in enemy territory. He killed so many enemy infantrymen, and destroyed so much infrastructure
that thee German put a bounty over his head with the nickname “the kilted killer”. Quite a legacy.
Receiving every combat award for valour available from the US army as well as French and Belgium
awards for heroism, Audie Murphy is undoubtedly the pride of the US military. Forging his way
into the US military at the age of 16 in 1941, after the devastating attacks at Pearl Harbour,
the short man from Texas quickly took up the task of proving his worth, and that’s exactly
what he did. To simplify Murphy’s immense actions for the sake of video length, he essentially,
at the age of 19, single-handedly held off an entire company of German soldiers using every
resource he had available, constantly ducking between vehicles and using their guns while
completely exposed the the enemy, telling his men to get to cover. Once he saw his
men were out of the danger zone, he called an artillery strike on his position and kept
fighting the Germans by himself for over an hour. By the time he repelled the attack,
a wounded Murphy refused to be evacuated and rallied his men for a counter attack that drove
the Germans back to the woods, thus successfully defending the crucial Colmar Pocket for the
allies. A truly remarkable man that I simply don’t have enough time to cover in this video.
Norwegian Commando Jaan Baalsrud and his men had their work cut out for them and their plan
completely fleshed out, until by freak chance, they went to a man with the same name as a trusted
resistance contact they were looking for, who betrayed them and their mission to sabotage the
German war effort. The morning after, their small fishing boat was hunted down and destroyed by the
Germans, and the only Norwegian to escape was Baalsrud, swimming away in ice-cold arctic water
to a snow gully, where he shot and killed a pursuing Gestapo officer with his pistol.
Now a wanted man, the Germans issued a nationwide manhunt for the man, and Baalsrud embarked on one
of the most testing escapes of the war. Trying to escape to a neutral or allied country,
Baalsrud only had Norwegian patriots to rely on and suffered from frostbite and snow blindness on
his initial period of escape. His feet were frozen solid, he wandered in a snowstorm for 3 days,
was buried to his neck in an avalanche, entombed for four days and abandoned
under open skies without so much as a map, nor food or water. As the week went by,
he finally managed to link up with some Norwegian Patriots, and was forced to operate on his leg
to draw out poisoned blood as well as amputate 9 of his toes to stop the spread of gangrene. From
there on out he was passed to Norwegian peasant to Norwegian peasant on a stretcher and near death,
until finally, after 2 months of hell and with the help of random Norwegians, he made it to
Northern Finland for immediate medical attention and then was quickly transported to Sweden,
where he spent months in hospital. He eventually re learnt how to walk, and was sent back to
England to train more Norwegian resistance member commandos in their fight against the Germans. His
symbolic escape is still the subject of Norwegian pride today and rightfully so.