Editing Raoul Wallenberg (section)

== World War II ==
{{see also|Hungary in World War II}}
Beginning in 1938, the [[Kingdom of Hungary]], under the regency of [[Miklós Horthy]], passed a series of [[Racial antisemitism|anti-Jewish]] measures modeled on the so-called [[Nuremberg Race Laws]] enacted in Germany by the Nazis in 1935. Like their German counterparts, the Hungarian laws focused heavily on restricting Jews from certain professions, reducing the number of Jews in government and public service jobs, and prohibiting [[Interracial marriage|intermarriage]]. Because of this, Wallenberg's business associate, Kálmán Lauer, found it increasingly difficult to travel to his native Hungary, which was moving still deeper into the German orbit. Hungary became a member of the [[Axis powers]] in November 1940 and later joined the Nazi-led [[Operation Barbarossa|invasion of the Soviet Union]] in June 1941. Out of necessity, Wallenberg became Lauer's personal representative. He traveled to Hungary to conduct business on Lauer's behalf and to look in on members of Lauer's extended family who remained in Budapest. He soon learned to speak [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]] and, from 1941, made increasingly frequent travels to [[Budapest]].<ref name=NYT03301980>{{cite news |last1=Lester |first1=Elenore |last2=Werbell |first2=Frederick E. |title=The Last Hero of Holocaust. The Search for Sweden's Raoul Wallenberg |newspaper=[[The New York Times Magazine]] |date=30 March 1980 }}</ref> Within a year, Wallenberg was a joint owner and the International Director of the company.<ref name=JVL /> In this capacity, Wallenberg also made several business trips to [[Nazi Germany|Germany]] and [[Vichy France|German-occupied France]] during the early years of [[World War II]]. It was during these trips that Wallenberg was able to closely observe the Nazis' bureaucratic and administrative methods—knowledge which proved valuable to him later.<ref name= JVL />

Meanwhile, the situation in Hungary had begun to deteriorate as the tide of the war began to turn decisively against Germany and its allies. Following the catastrophic Axis defeat at the [[Battle of Stalingrad]] (in which Hungarian troops fighting alongside German forces suffered a staggering 84% casualty rate), the Horthy regime began secretly pursuing peace talks with the United States and the United Kingdom. Upon learning of Horthy's duplicity, Adolf Hitler ordered the [[Operation Margarethe|occupation of Hungary]] by German troops in March 1944. The [[Wehrmacht]] quickly took control of the country and placed Horthy under [[house arrest]]. A pro-German [[puppet government]] was installed in Budapest; actual power rested with the German military governor, [[Brigadeführer|SS-Brigadeführer]] [[Edmund Veesenmayer]]. With the Nazis now in control, the relative security from [[the Holocaust]] enjoyed by the Jews of Hungary came to an end. In April and May 1944, the Nazi regime and its accomplices began the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to [[extermination camp]]s in [[Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany|German-occupied Poland]]. Under the personal leadership of [[Obersturmbannführer|SS-Obersturmbannführer]] [[Adolf Eichmann]], who was later tried and hanged in Israel for his role in the implementation of the Nazis' [[Final Solution]], deportations took place at a rate of 12,000 people per day.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/StaticPages/526.html |title= PROLOGUE: Roots of the Holocaust |page=526 |website= The Holocaust Chronicle |access-date=30 March 2016}}</ref>

=== ''"Pimpernel" Smith'' screening ===
Wallenberg was directly inspired by ''[["Pimpernel" Smith]]'', a 1941 British anti-Nazi propaganda thriller.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/search/index_search.html |title=Yad Vashem database |access-date=12 February 2007 |publisher = [[Yad Vashem]]|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070207032351/http://www1.yadvashem.org/search/index_search.html |archive-date = 7 February 2007}}</ref> The film had been banned in Sweden, but Wallenberg and his sister, Nina, were invited to a private screening at the [[Embassy of the United Kingdom, Stockholm|British Embassy in Stockholm]]. Enthralled by Professor Smith (played by [[Leslie Howard]]), who saved twenty-eight Jews from the Nazis, Nina stated, "We thought the film was amazing. When we got up from our seats, Raoul said, ‘that is the kind of thing I would like to do’".<ref>Furlong, Ray. [http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/press/wallenberg-family-mark-centenary-with-plea-for-truth/ "Wallenberg family mark centenary with plea for truth."]. ''BBC News'', 8 August 2012. Retrieved: 31 January 2021.</ref>

===Recruitment by the War Refugee Board===
On 21 June, 1944, [[George Mantello]] received and immediately publicized two important reports given to him by Romanian diplomat [[Florian Manilou]], who had returned from a fact-finding trip to Romania and Budapest at Mantello's request. Manilou received material from [[Miklos "Moshe" Krausz]] in Budapest, who worked with [[Carl Lutz]] to rescue Jews. One of the reports was probably [[Rabbi]] [[Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl]]'s abridged version of the 33-page [[Auschwitz Protocols]] (i.e., the [[Vrba–Wetzler report|Vrba-Wetzler]] and Rosin-Mordowicz reports). The reports described in detail the operations of the [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz-Birkenau]] extermination camp.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/saviors/diplomats/list/george-mandel-mantello-485/|title=George Mandel-Mantello| website= raoulwallenberg.net |publisher= The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation}}</ref> The second was a six-page Hungarian report that detailed the ghettoization and deportation of 435,000 Hungarian Jews, as updated to 19 June 1944, by towns, to Auschwitz.<ref name= "Kranzler2000p87">{{cite book| first= David |last= Kranzler |title=The Man Who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz: George Mantello, El Salvador, and Switzerland's Finest Hour |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=s4Cx3yenDCQC |year=2000 |publisher=Syracuse University Press |isbn=978-0-8156-2873-6 |page=87}}</ref>

Mantello publicized the reports' findings immediately upon receipt. This resulted in large-scale grassroots protest in [[Switzerland]] against the unprecedented barbarism against Jews and led to Horthy being threatened by US President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and UK Prime Minister [[Winston Churchill]]. In a letter, Churchill wrote, "There is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world...."<ref>{{cite book| author-link= Winston Churchill| first= Winston |last= Churchill| chapter= Letter to Foreign Secretary |date= 11 July 1944| quote= There is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world....| url= http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/wais/cgi-bin/index.php?p=6855 | title= Winston Churchill's The Second World War and the Holocaust's Uniqueness| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070726035533/http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/wais/cgi-bin/index.php?p=6855 |archive-date= 26 July 2007 | editor-first= Istvan| editor-last= Simon| publisher= Stanford University}}</ref>

Following the report's publication, the Roosevelt administration turned to the newly created [[War Refugee Board]] (WRB) in search of a solution to the genocide against Jews. [[United States Department of the Treasury|US Treasury Department]] official [[Iver C. Olsen]] was dispatched to Stockholm as a representative of the WRB and tasked with putting together a plan to rescue the Jews of Hungary. In addition to his duties with the WRB, Olsen was also secretly employed as the chief of "[[Economic warfare|Currency Operations]]" for the Stockholm station of the [[Office of Strategic Services]] (OSS), the United States' wartime espionage service.<ref name="angel spy" />

In search of someone willing and able to go to Budapest to organize a rescue program for the nation's Jews, Olsen established contact with a relief committee composed of many prominent [[History of the Jews in Sweden|Swedish Jews]] led by the Swedish Chief Rabbi [[Mordecai Ehrenpreis|Marcus Ehrenpreis]] to locate an appropriate person to travel to Budapest under diplomatic cover and lead the rescue operation.<ref name= JVL /> One member of the committee was Wallenberg's business associate [[Kálmán Lauer]].

The committee's first choice to lead the mission was Count [[Folke Bernadotte]], the vice-chairman of the Swedish [[Red Cross]] and a member of the [[Swedish Royal Family]]. When Bernadotte's proposed appointment was rejected by the Hungarians, Lauer suggested Wallenberg as a potential replacement.<ref name= JVL /> Olsen was introduced to Wallenberg by Lauer in June 1944 and came away from the meeting impressed and, shortly thereafter, appointed Wallenberg to lead the mission.<ref name= TWS/> Olsen's selection of Wallenberg met with objections from some US officials who doubted his reliability, in light of existing commercial relationships between businesses owned by the Wallenberg family and the German government. These differences were eventually overcome and the [[Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Sweden)|Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs]] agreed to the American request to assign Wallenberg to its [[legation]] in Budapest as part of an arrangement in which Wallenberg's appointment was granted in exchange for a lessening of American diplomatic pressure on neutral Sweden to curtail the nation's [[free-trade]] policies toward Germany.<ref name="angel spy" />