Gino Bartali arguably was one of the best cyclists in history. Sure, he won the Giro d’Italia twice, in 1936 and 1937, and the Tour de France in 1938. But it’s what came next that many are interested in the most. He was sitting on top of the world of cycling when WWII broke out and his career was diverted into conscripted service as a messenger for the Italian fascist dictatorship.

After the 1943 arrest of the Chief Rabbi of Florence, (Nathan Cassuto, sent to Auschwitz and murdered 1945), Bartali began secret work with the Archbishop of Florence, Elia Dalla Costa. They pivoted on his cycling fame to enact anti-fascist heroism. Franciscan friars in the city of Assisi (110 miles from Florence) generated fake documents, which Bartali would then pickup and deliver for the Archbishop.

The BBC tells the story of how the cyclist would say “I’m training” for a simple transit authorization hack to save hundreds of Jewish lives.

Donning his race jersey with his name printed across the back and leaving home with only emergency tools for the bike, he rode thousands of miles from Florence to Genoa and Assisi carrying [identity papers for Jews trying to escape].

Based on this act alone, he is credited for saving the lives of more than 500 people.

For Bartali, his status as a champion cyclist was the ultimate disguise. Whenever he was stopped enroute, he would simply say “I am training”, and no one questioned him further.

[…]

Other than being a courier, Bartali’s champion status allowed him to work with partisans to create a paparazzi scenario that distracted soldiers and guards away from the train carriages so refugees could board and hide until the train reached the free south.

Yet, he kept this life a secret for most of his life after the war. Bartali believed that by talking up his good deeds, he betrayed the people he had helped as it became an act of self-promotion rather than genuine intentions.

Facing punishment of torture and execution, Bartali smuggled documents inside his bike’s hollow frame to defeat fascism.

When Bartali was stopped and searched, he specifically asked that his bicycle not be touched since the different parts were very carefully calibrated to achieve maximum speed.

He also hid a Jewish family in his cellar until Allied forces liberated Italy. He didn’t just convince fascists he was training hard by riding far and fast, he even hauled “weight” trailers behind his bike and right under their noses with people hidden inside.

“Some medals are pinned to your soul, not your jacket,” he said.

After WWII ended, Bartali won the Giro d’Italia again in 1946, and the Tour de France again in 1948, which everyone can see plainly. But he kept his most important rides secret and only recently has been recognized for those victories.

A documentary called “Messenger of Peace” gives even more detail to his amazing story.

Tesla is named after the wrong guy. Its CEO clearly sounds just like the infamous Morrell.

About a year after opening up shop, federal investigators came banging on Morrell’s door in February 1908 to arrest him for using the U.S. mail to defraud; after being tipped off by disgruntled investors, investigators determined Morrell was running a massive airship racket. As he was hauled off to jail, Morrell shouted to a San Francisco Examiner reporter he was going to “revolutionize the methods of transportation of the universe.”

The inside of a courtroom became a familiar place for Morrell as he was hit again and again with fraud charges. But each time, he wriggled out of them and returned to his beloved airship.

Doesn’t “revolutionize the methods of transportation of the universe” sound familiar?

In spite of his massive failure, Morrell was undeterred. “I still believe that I had solved the problem of aerial navigation,” he said.

He hadn’t.

Ouch. So familiar.

And what about those fools now dumping money into a Cybertruck fiasco?

Morrell’s fiance rushed to his defense. Only identified as Miss A. Kern from San Francisco, the Tribune said she blamed “disobedience to the orders of Morrell” for the crash. According to National Airship Company employees, the woman had been quietly bankrolling Morrell’s folly for the past two years. In fact, she’d blown through $70,000 of her inheritance on his passion project and fell in love with the charismatic inventor along the way.

They demand obedience to charisma, even after catastrophic failure.

True Germans in East Berlin absolutely hate Putin. Their Soviet-built WWII memorials and museums, commemorating veterans, even spell it out by prominently displaying Ukrainian flags and some even describing Putin as a modern-day Hitler.

Since 24 February 2022, only the Ukrainian flag has been raised in front of the museum, not the Belarusian, German, Russian and Ukrainian flags as before. This is a sign that the museum’s employees continue to condemn the Russian Federation’s war of aggression against Ukraine in the strongest possible terms. […] The Russian government is currently misusing the history of the Second World War for its war propaganda. The museum is strictly opposed to such instrumentalisation.

It should come as no surprise then that German courts are not having it when the modern Nazi party in Germany (AfD) is illegally bringing Putin’s henchmen into their government.

AfD employee obtained German passport fraudulently a court has confirmed: The former employee of an AfD member of the Bundestag has lost his German citizenship. According to SPIEGEL information, he is said to have fraudulently deceived the authorities during his naturalization process.

On a related note, Putin’s Dresden-based job in the KGB during the 1980s was to grow AfD-like political factions (even masked as football athletic clubs), to destabilize political systems in the West.

…investigation led to the arrest and indictment of five former Stasi counterterrorism officers for conspiring with the group to bomb a major U.S. army base in Ramstein in southwest Germany in 1981 and attempting to kill a U.S. general. …they would hand Putin and his colleagues a list. Somehow, this list would later end up with an agent in the West, and the requested weapons would be dropped in a secret location….

Perhaps also interesting is Putin’s other work at this time 1) sowing anti-Israel sentiment in Arab communities 2) training and growing Palestinian terror groups.