It is a staple of popular fiction, especially in action movies and TV series, that the common bureaucrat is oftentimes worse than the enemy. At every turn, it seems, when our hero is trying to save lives and stop the bad guys, there’s the bureaucrat–tying the heroes hands with red tape and doing the enemy’s job for him. This is particularly true in America, where bureaucrats are regarded as being on about the same level as the gunk that gets stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

This cultural ignominy is, I submit to you, unfair. Fortunately, I learned this at an early age when I read The Star Beast by Robert Heinlein, where the unsung hero of the story is the lifetime bureaucrat–despite the efforts of the loud, bumbling heroes.

It’s also true that in real life, when people might least expect it, bureaucrats have been able to use their years of experience to manipulate the system, slide through loopholes–and save lives. This was particularly apparent during World War II and the years leading up to it. Thus, in the spirit of resurrecting the reputation of bureaucrats, I present to you these three civil servants who were amazing heroes:

G. F. Duckwitz

Image Credit: Yad Vashem

A businessman in the coffee game, G. F. Duckwitz joined the Nazi Party in 1932 as a minor functionary. After the invasion of Denmark in 1939, Duckwitz was assigned by the Party to be stationed in Denmark in order to handle Maritime affairs there. As he was stationed there he made a number of contacts within the Danish Social Democratic Party. In 1942, Werner Best, one of the original Gestapo agents, was assigned to control Denmark. Duckwitz quickly gained the confidence of Best as the Danish people continued to show resistance to Nazi rule.

In 1943, Hitler decided that he had had enough and ordered all of the Jews in Denmark to be deported to concentration camps. At the time, there were about 7,500 Jews living in Denmark. After receiving these orders, Best mentioned them to Duckwitz. Wasting no time, Duckwitz personally traveled to Berlin to have the deportation order reversed. Unsurprisingly, he failed.

What he did next was even more extraordinary. Using his Danish contacts, he let word go through the grapevine about the deportation order. The Danish civil service immediately turned towards the task of notifying every Jew they had a record of so they could escape. In the meantime, Duckwitz had traveled to Sweden (which was neutral in the War) and arranged sanctuary for all of Denmark’s Jews.

When the day came for the Gestapo to carry out their orders, the Germans were unable to deport Denmark’s Jews to the camps–because they were all gone. Safe and sound in Sweden. Thanks to Duckwitz.

Chiune Sugihara

Image Credit: pravmir.com

Chiune Sugihara was a brilliant student who wanted nothing more than to enter the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Fluent in both German and Russian and familiar with both governments, he was assigned by the Japanese Ministry to act as Vice-Consul for Lithuania and report on the doings of both governments to Japan.

After the Soviet conquest of Lithuania, the country was flooded with Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe who were seeking sanctuary from the Nazis. At the time, though, the Soviet Union was not interested in keeping them and would only grant exit visas to those who had visas in another country. Moved by their plight, Sugihara requested permission from Tokyo to grant Japanese transit visas to the refugees. This request was denied.

Confronted with his duty to obey orders from his government and the plight of the people in front of him, Sugihara knew he had no choice but to issue the visas anyway. As he said years later:

You want to know about my motivation, don’t you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. He cannot just help but sympathize with them. Among the refugees were the elderly and women. They were so desperate that they went so far as to kiss my shoes, Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes. Also, I felt at that time, that the Japanese government did not have any uniform opinion in Tokyo. Some Japanese military leaders were just scared because of the pressure from the Nazis; while other officials in the Home Ministry were simply ambivalent.

People in Tokyo were not united. I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply. I knew that somebody would surely complain about me in the future. But, I myself thought this would be the right thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people’s lives.

Sugihara worked day in and day out for 18-20 hours each day processing visas for Jewish refugees, which he did up until the day the Soviet government closed the consulate. Even on the last day, as his train headed out of the city, Sugihara was throwing visas off the train to throngs of refugees behind it. Because of his efforts, somewhere between 6,000 to 10,000 people’s lives were saved from the Nazis.

Irena Sendler

Image Credit: Yad Vashem

Irena Sendler was a Polish Social Worker working for the City of Warsaw when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. After the Jews in Warsaw were segregated to the Ghettoes, Sendler used her bureaucratic know-how to get in charge of inspecting the hygenic facilities in the Ghetto. With her ability to move in and out of the Ghetto, she quickly allied herself with the Jewish underground and found allies on the other side of the walls to smuggle out Jews and put them in hiding from the Nazis.

In particular, Sendler focused on smuggling Jewish children and babies out of the Ghetto. She did this by manufacturing false paperwork for them and getting them into orphanages. Once there, she was often able to place these children into loving families–who were well aware of the babies’ origins. To ensure the success of her project, she simply embezzled funds from the Nazis going into her Department.

Sendler also lived with a great deal of hope in her heart. As she was smuggling babies and children out of the Ghetto, she recorded the names of each one and buried the lists in glass jars that only she knew the location of in the hopes that these children would be reunited with their families one day. In 1943, Sendler’s operation was discovered by the Nazis. She was arrested and tortured. In particular, the Nazis tortured her for information about the identity and whereabouts of the thousands of Jewish children she had smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto. She was sentenced to death, but was rescued by the Jewish underground which bribed the guards to allow her to escape.

She spent the rest of the war a fugitive from the Nazis. After the war, though, she located the glass jars she had buried and reunited as many children as she could with her family. In an interview later in life, Sendler expressed her regret that she didn’t save more children. When she received honors from the Polish Parliament for her work, she wrote a letter which said simply, “Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.”

Conclusion

Of course, these three heroes are but a small sampling of the amazing things done against the Nazis by civil servants. Heck, you could write a book about teachers in occupied Norway alone–they were that amazing. And such heroics aren’t limited to World War II. But the fact of the matter is that many people who go into Civil Service are driven by a sense of duty to their countrymen and fellow man. They work long hours for low pay compared to their private sector counterparts. So it’s pretty sad that in the United States, their status in culture is almost on the same level as villains.