El Salvador

Allegiance

Role in WW2

José Castellanos Contreras was a Salvadoran army colonel and diplomat who, while working as El Salvador's Consul General for Geneva during World War II, and in conjunction with a Jewish-Hungarianbusinessman named György Mandl, helped save up to 40,000 Jews and Central Europeans from Nazipersecution by providing them with false papers of Salvadoran nationality. From 1931 to 1944, El Salvadorwas ruled by Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini. Nonetheless, the dictator declared war on both Japan (8 December 1941) and Germany (12 December 1941) shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, due to El Salvador's strong economic ties with the United States. Hernández removed Germans from the government and interned Japanese, German, and Italian nationals. The Second World War made Salvadorans weary of their dictatorship, and a general national strike in 1944 forced Hernández to resign and flee to Guatemala, he was later killed in Honduras by a vengeful Salvadoran citizen.[37]