Another notable Swede is Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who issued Swedish passports and sheltered thousands of Jews in Budapest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Wallenberg . He disappeared and died in Russian captivity.

(Random lighthearted fact: because his exact date of death is disputed, Google's AI summary in the search results tells me his age is 113.)

On another scale, Carl Gustaf von Rosen was a Swedish count who defended Biafra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustaf_von_Rosen

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mamonster 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The craziest one to me is still that Fridtjof Nansen's main sidekick in helping Armenian refugees was .... Vidkun Quisling.

	▲	vintermann 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not so surprising. Nansen was conservative-ish politically. Seeing the effects of the famine in Ukraine radicalized Quisling as a fanatical anti-socialist. He also married a Ukrainian woman (bigamously, but that's another story). As a fanatical anti-socialist in the 20s-30s he fell in with the wrong crowd. Who knows if Nansen too would have, if he had lived to see the rise of Hitler. Probably not, as he was usually fairly ambivalent about politics, but it wouldn't have been terribly surprising either.

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Podrod 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have the AI summary stuff disabled but the regular Google infobox tells me he died in 1947 aged 34. Kinda amusing how the AI disagrees.

von Rosen and the Biafran Air Force is quite fascinating.

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GardenLetter27 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Crazy how awful the Russians were - same with Josef Bryks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Bryks

And yet a lot of young people somehow think they were good guys.

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CaptainOfCoit 15 hours ago | parent [-]

> And yet a lot of young people somehow think they were good guys.

Reality is really context dependent, and with lots of nuance. Obviously being anti-fascist and helped out taking down the Nazis makes you more of a "good guy" than "bad guy" for that specific moment, but obviously that doesn't mean the USSR or Russia is exclusively the "good guys" always, which goes the same for every country out there.

Where are you finding these young people praising the USSR though? It always seems like a talking point from conservatives on the internet, as I'm never able to find these elusive USSR-praisers in real-life. There is a ton of people ironically saying they love USSR, but surely these are not the people you're talking about?

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victorbjorklund 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Russians were allies with nazi Germany at the start of the war. They did not have any problem with nazi Germany when they invaded Poland together. Only later did they hate Germany because the Germans betrayed them. To this day Russians don't have a problem with facism (Russia is facist). They only have a problem with the nazis because they betrayed Russia.

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Amezarak 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The USSR was one of the most authoritarian regimes in world history. They killed millions of people. They invaded Poland together with the Nazis, which was the start of WWII.

I have no idea what was bad about the fascists that wasn't equally true of the Soviets - the underlying systems of thought and actions were essentially the same. There is no sense in which I can see the Soviets were the "good guys." They were simply allies of convenience, and the net result of the war was that half of Europe was handed over to them and lived under this horrific regime.

	▲	hagbard_c 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'd like to hear from the individuals who downvoted this post why they did so as it seems to be factually correct.
	▲	Hikikomori 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>The USSR was one of the most authoritarian regimes in world history. They killed millions of people. They invaded Poland together with the Nazis, which was the start of WWII. Trumps America soon: hold my beer

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stefantalpalaru 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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bjourne 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe my perspective is slanted, but it seems that nobility was way more badass back then. Nowadays they just hide out in Saint-Tropez, Monaco, or chill on their yachts and don't care much about the world.

	▲	krapp 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think your perspective is slanted. 99% of nobility were materialistic, detached (and probably inbred) sociopaths, just like 99% of billionaires and heads of state today.