Choosing Humanity in War (True Stories of Kindness Across Enemy Lines from World War II to Iraq)

Extraordinary acts of mercy and moral courage in the darkest theaters of war.

Even during the bloodiest conflicts of the modern era, individuals have still been able to champion humanity and hope by choosing to see an enemy as a person deserving of compassion.

In Iraq, an Army surgeon defied military policy to operate on wounded Iraqi boys, placing his oath to heal above the rules of engagement. During World War II, Iranian diplomat Abdol-Hosein Sardari forged passports to spirit Jews out of Nazi-occupied Paris, while German officer Karl Plagge used a labor camp as a shield to protect more than a thousand Jewish workers. In Warsaw, Irena Sendler smuggled 2,500 children out of the ghetto in toolboxes and coffins. Over the skies of Germany, Luftwaffe pilot Franz Stigler escorted a crippled American bomber to safety rather than claim an easy kill—and decades later, he and Hap Halloran, the pilot he spared, became brothers.

The book also honors others who showed humanity in the face of the terror of war. A Mexican American soldier who spoke fluent Japanese convinced hundreds of Japanese soldiers and civilians to surrender rather than fight to the death on Saipan. A soldier in the German army in World War II made a promise to God that he would not kill—and was able, miraculously, to keep that promise. A US Navy sailor during the Cold War accidentally honored a Soviet vessel—and they returned the honor. A Green Beret medic in Iraq recounts the story of a US soldier saved by an Iraqi village. 

And the history of two institutional examples of humanity across enemy lines is recounted: The Marshall Plan (and its Japanese counterpart, the Dodge Plan), and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent.

These are not tales of saints. They are stories of flawed human beings who, at a crossroads between conscience and compliance, chose humanity.