For the next three days, he was mercilessly beaten, tortured, and hung upside down. THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING VETERAN JOURNALISM - JOIN SOFREP+ , Last week we posted a story on the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and how after 73 years they were finally recognized as a group and were honored with a Congressional Gold Medal. But he wasnt so honored. one of four skiers who broke a world record by skiing sixteen Colorado ski resorts in one day. Webers sister, Louise, was a nurse who gave Mayer the uniform and documents of a recently-deceased German officer. Exhausted, they finally sledded their way down, something Mayer later claimed was the scariest part of the mission. It was a good documentary. Though it turned out to be a myth created by fanatical Nazis, the Allies couldnt have known that at the time. A former German commando and officer, Weber had fought on the Eastern Front but now was convinced that it was his duty to defeat the Third Reich for the sake of his country, Austria. She thinks this experience was a "lesson" for Tarantino: "Sometimes you are the one that puts and I'm sure I'm guilty of that too you put people in boxes. Compared to dozens of other cities and towns, defended till the last shell and cartridge by German forces, then pulverized by US air power and artillery, Innsbruck survived the war nearly unscathed. In 1945, members of the American "Deer Team," part of the OSS, worked with Vietnamese guerrilla fighters to throw Japanese troops out of Indochina. When Georg Weber was born about 1506, in Mollis, Glarus, Switzerland, his father, Franz Weber, was 33 and his mother, Weber, was 33. All Rights Reserved. Hotels near Franz Carl Weber Geneva: (0.04 mi) Htel de la Cigogne (0.10 mi) CitizenM Geneva Centre (0.09 mi) Bel'Esperance (0.12 mi) Htel Les Armures (0.05 mi) Hotel Longemalle; View all hotels near Franz Carl Weber Geneva on Tripadvisor. After arriving in New York, Mayer changed his name to Frederick. They said if we were in there another 15 seconds, the stage we were on would have collapsed and we all would have been killed." Birth, Baptism & Christening. The OSS went to the only available source of that nearly impossible combination: an Allied prisoner of war camp. Join SOFREP for insider access and analysis. TracesOfWar.com tells you more! I couldn't stop writing. Greenup also discovered Hitlers location, as well as that of Mussolini. M7/109 Thomas Wielptz, Solingen . The team found a German POW named Franz Weber. Mr. Mayer died at his home in Charles Town, West Virginia, on April 15 this year. But at the radio station, Mayer persuaded the Nazi to declare Innsbruck an open city, and place himself under his arrest, effectively surrendering the city and his forces to Mayer. The team needed somebody with local knowledge,and Franz Weber, ananti-Nazilocal who haddeserted from the German Army to the Allies, volunteered to join it. The mission that began with vengeance ended with forgiveness. While Tarantino's films have featured many strong female characters, the director's treatment of women in real life has been the subject of controversy. According the filmmakers website, it has been shown inother countries atvarious film festivals and on the Discovery and History channels under the title The Real Inglorious Bastards. That didnt stop the intrepid OGs. "Inglourious Basterds" made its world premiere at the 2009 Cannes FilmFestival, but the version of the film that screened there wasn't quite the same as the version which ultimately make it to theaters later that summer. In 1996, Franz was These are the untold truths of the making of "Inglourious Basterds.". When youre a World War II hero, you can do whatever the hell you want. We invite you to share some of Franz Webers career. The next day, Mayer tried to enlist, but the military said no. He was German, after all, and, therefore, an enemy alien. Birth of Fridolin Weber. Their mission was given the name of Operation Greenup, and though their deeds arent that well known, they manage to destabilize the Nazi regime. So how did the title of Tarantino's WWII revenge flick go from "Inglorious Bastards" to "Inglourious Basterds"? Fred Raskin, Menke's assistant editor on "KillBill," would become Tarantino's go-to editor following her death, starting with "Django Unchained" in 2012. They would use Weber and for this mission, it would be Mayer, Wynberg and Weber. Show Location on Map. Reaching the glaciers foot, they holed up for three days at the Amberger hut (their original target) as they went over their plans. They found that Germans were using movable bridges on the Brenner railway that they hid in tunnels by day and used only at night. General William Donovan the creator of OSS and a WWI Medal of Honor winner wanted PHDs who can win a bar fight but he also called them Glorious Amateurs as they learned as they went. In this operation, OSS used former German nationals who were forced to flee for their lives just because they were Jewish. As the troops approached the city, they saw a car with a large white bed sheet attached to a pole racing toward them. Operation Greif was a special false flag operation commanded by Waffen SS commando, SS Obersturmbannfhrer, Otto Skorzeny during the Battle of the Bulge, Skorzeny died age 67, on 05-07-1975, The . World War I, also called First World War or Great War, an international conflict that in 1914-18 embroiled most of the nations of Europe along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions. So convincing was his performance that the agent turned away from the team and started checking the papers of the other passengers. ?, The GIs were not so merciful with the Gestapo, however, especially as some them were Jews. "KillBill" offered a fun break from the not-quite-ready project and a chance to reunite with "PulpFiction" scene-stealer Uma Thurman. Eventually, the man who fingered Mayer was brought in and he knew the ruse was up. According to Roth, "[The flames] were spreading so exponentially. That guy was an extra. In mid-April, a black marketer whom Mayer dealt with was caught up in a Gestapo dragnet. They were joined byFranz Weber, an ex-Wehrmacht officer turned freedom fighter comparable to the Basterds' Hugo Stiglitz. The team needed somebody with local knowledge, and Franz Weber, an anti-Nazi local who had deserted from the German Army to the Allies, volunteered to join it. His current life is fairly peacefulhe still chops wood nearly every day and volunteers with Meals on Wheels. They tortured him brutally, but he didnt break. Contributor. Quentin Tarantinos 2009 warfilmwas partly based on a real story. His books that capture Mayers story are They Dared Return and The Brenner Assignment. They made their way to Webers family and then Mayer actually stayed in the Officers barracks in Innsbruck for several weeks, gleaming as much intelligence as he could and then relaying it to Wynberg (the radio operator) who would then relay it to OSS HQs. Uncoiling a rawhide whip, the tall one put his full weight behind each swing, mercilessly thrashing the agents body like a side of beef. Hofer, convinced that the war was a lost cause, was looking for a way to surrender to the Americans rather than to the Soviets. Mayer was asked to dine with Hofer, his wife and the German Ambassador to Italy, Rudolph Rahn. So Matull hadnt entirely lied. You must become a subscriber or login to view or post comments on this article. Mayer saved the lives of perhaps thousands of troops on both sides by arranging the surrender of the German troops in Austria. Mayer was the son of a German WWI veteran. STIWOT, 1999-2023. ADVERTISING. They teamed up with Franz Weber a Germany army officer that became a "deserter-volunteer" OSS agent. It turns out she was not Quentin Tarantino's first choice for the part in fact, he initially wasn't interested in casting her at all, due to disliking a movie she had starred in (Kruger did not state which movie this was). When Fridolin Weber was born in 1526, in Beglingen, Glarus, Switzerland, his father, Georg Weber, was 20 and his mother, Anna Maria Kohl, was 21. Born in Rohleder (Raskaty) Russia to Heinrich Weber (1799 - 1848) and Susanna Fritz (1807-after 1861). They approached speeds of 60 mph or more as the craft careened down the mountain. World War II was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. In an interview, Mr. Mayer stated that he had a good combination of hatred and love: a hatred of the Nazis and a love for America. His father fought valiantly in World War I, and Mayer had seen his family forced from their homeland by an evil regime that later murdered 6 million European Jews in the Holocaust. By then it was April of 1945 and the Germans knew they were done. Operation Greenups purpose was intelligence gathering. Franz Weber currently works honorary as a teacher at the Clinic for Nephrology , University Hospital Essen. Inhibition of osteoclast differentiation and bone resorption by N-methylpyrrolidone. The mission involved two Jewish members of the Office of Strategic Services,Frederick Mayer andHans Wijnberg, who parachuted into Austria in February 1945 to figure out Germany's battle plans. During WWII, some Jews really did volunteer to go into Nazi-occupied Europe to engage in espionage and sabotage. Franz Weber may refer to: . All rights reserved. The campaign in North Africa began with a daring Anglo-American commando raid code-named Operation RESERVIST. And that was after they had tortured him. Hollywood tried to capture an actual OSS operation in a highly fictionalized film called Inglorious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino. Joesch M, Weber F, Eichner H, Borst A: Functional specialization of parallel motion detection circuits in the fly. According to The Washington Post, Tarantino thought Christoph Waltz couldn't perform the scene convincingly enough and choked actress Diane Kruger himself. There are a few different reasons people have speculated on. Thanks to their intelligence, the Allies were able to bomb over 25 supply trains trying to get into Italy. By using our Services, you agree to our use of cookies. He says Waltz was also instructed to not show up to rehearsals with any of his co-stars, with the one exception ofDenis Mnochet (who played the dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite and shares the film's suspenseful opening scene with Waltz). September 1734 in Zell im Wiesental; 16. Mayer became an Army Ranger and went on to join the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) the precursor of todays CIA. The Gestapo burst in and arrested Mayer and took him to their HQs. After training for months and mapping out the mission in minute detail, the men were ready to gobut no one wanted to fly the team. Ulmer asked them if they knew what would befall them if they were caught by the Nazis. However, he was never caught and lived a relatively peaceful life until his death in 1964. The Gestapo agent that had mercilessly beaten him was taken to the very cell where he had tortured Mayer. ORCID record for Franz Weber. Fridolin Weber. Their mission wasto gather intelligence in the Tirol region of Austria. The Germans,wanting to surrender to the Americans passed it on. 2" caused serious injuries to Uma Thurman (Thurman has forgiven Tarantino). He found and recruited deserter-volunteer, Franz Weber. Thanks to the work of these three man, many Allied troops accomplished several effective bombings, destroying Nazi supplies and, naturally, messing with their plans. ), Austrian football player Franz Weber (soldier) (1921-2014), German soldier Franz Weber (activist) (1927-2019), Swiss environmentalist and animal welfare activist Franz Weber (skier) (born 1956), Austrian skier It was also a waystation for Jews being sent to Auschwitz..The guard that day in 1983 told me that . He has written eight books, including his most recent (insrt embedded link to Amazon) Dog Company: The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Rangers Who Accomplished D-Days Toughest Mission and Led the Way Across Europe. He parachuted into the Third Reich, where he impersonated a German officer, blew up trains, sent back intelligence on Hitlers bunker, and even accepted the surrender of Innsbruck, Austria. He can see the reality of Hitlers plans, which, as Weber puts it, aims to transform the continent into Concentration Camp Europe. Weber deserts to the Allies, makes contact with the OSS, and agrees to join the team. He, therefore, transformed himself into a French electrician. You really would have to quit your job and become a monk to get through them all. Sandler, meanwhile, could have been a scene stealer in the memorably violent role of Donowitz, but he had scheduling conflicts with the filming of the Judd Apatow comedy "Funny People." In an era of fake heroes who vie for their own reality television shows, Fred Mayer shies away from publicity. In the dark room, the Gestapo officers slapped and punched the spy in the face. However, their plans failed when Mayer was arrested by Nazi officers in an attempt to get crucial information. Kruger did consent to this, and she posted on Instagramin 2018 that Tarantino "treated me with utter respect and never abused his power or forced me to do anything I wasn't comfortable with." In 2014, when President Obama had awarded several Medals of Honor to individuals who werent awarded them at the time due to racism or other reasons, was given the name of Mayer by WV Senator Jay Rockefeller. The third soldier was the Austrian Franz Weber, a Nazi officer who had deserted the army. Webers sister was a nurse who helped Mayer disguise himself as a German officer in uniform and bandaged up from a head wound. The war pitted the Central Powersmainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkeyagainst the Alliesmainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United . Waffen-SS Armband. On the outskirts of a sleepy West Virginia town lives 92-year-old Frederick Mayer. Sign Up. [Quentin asked], 'How did you feel when he joined the Basterds?' Around the beginning of October 1944, the 8./Jger Regiment 28 received the order to recapture the Hill 1587 (which had recently been taken by the Soviets) in order to reopen the Rodna Pass Road, an important German supply route. "Quentin said to close our scripts and asked us who we were. OK Headquartered in Reno, Nevada, Franz Weber, Inc. is a sports management and consulting company founded in 1984 by Franz Weber and his wife Janett. The top and bottom have been folded over and stitched together. Beck's name is among the more than 72,000 Americans from World War II listed as unaccounted for by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. 129.303 mph/208.092 kph which he set in 1983 in Silverton, Colorado. Theyd be sent into Nazi-occupied Europe and they knew what awaited them there as most were Jewish. The Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO) in the European Theater was one of Americas bloodiest campaigns. It added in one two-minute scene where the Basterds and Lt. Archie Hicox prepare for the rendezvous in the La Louisiana tavern, as well as a brief joke involving Joseph Goebbels having sex with his translator, while making around a minute's worth of small trims and adjustments for pacing elsewhere in the film. The wrong tug on their chutes or a miscalculation of the pilot by mere seconds could have sent the men to their deaths. And 15 Other Iconic Lines From Tarantino's Films, The Real-Life Django Who Rebelled Against Slavery And No One Talks About Enough, 10 Lessons We Learned From The Bad-Ass Women In Tarantino's Universe, Olympe de Gouges, the Precursor of Feminism that Was Persecuted During the French Revolution. One of the closest comparisons is to Operation Greenup, a spy mission which the National WWII Museum in New Orleans has called "The REAL Inglourious Basterds.". All three landed safely with most of their equipment, but the canister containing their skis was lost. It is constructed out of a dyed yellow cotton base with black ink print. Since 2013, Fondation Franz Weber is working closely with the World Heritage Centre to support the conservation and safeguard of natural World Heritage sites.This partnership intends to strengthen the Rapid Response Facility (RRF), a programme jointly managed by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and Fauna & Flora International aimed at protecting natural World Heritage sites in emergency . He entered their German Operational Group (OG), precursors to the U.S. Army Green Berets, an elite team of commandos that would operate behind the lines in German-occupied Europe. They didnt embark on any sort of killing spree, but they did succeed in their mission. World War II was not only the greatest military conflict in history, it was also America's most important twentieth-century war. The team found a German POW named Franz Weber. This is a horrible place where the Nazis tortured and killed members of the Belgium resistance. He acted as the breadwinner while working as a mechanic at companies such as General Motors and Ford. Weber F, Machens CK, Borst A: Disentangling the functional consequences of the connectivity between optic-flow processing neurons. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, and won Best Supporting Actor for Christoph Waltz, who played the villain Hans Landa. This man was Hermann Matull, who was also working as a spy in the region. He continued to work with producer Harvey Weinstein even though, he admitted to The New York Times, "I knew enough to do more than I did" about Weinstein's serious sexual misconduct. One of the most popular genres of WWII literature is espionage, the spy novel, the thriller. Books abound on the topic, dealing with undercover operatives, double agents, and breathless derring-do. Their task was to penetrate one of the most secured areas of the Third Reich, an area of Austria near Innsbruck, where Nazis reportedly had been fortifying and massing vast quantities of troops and supplies. His captors, including Franz Hofer, the governor of the Alpine Redoubt and an immensely powerful man within Hitlers inner Circle, faced war crimes prosecution. . He was arrested by the American army three days after his surrender and was kept a prisoner until 1948, when he was set free. (371) 7.4 52min 2012 13+. Looking for reliable information or news facts about WW2? Two of them, Mayer and Wynberg, were exiled Jewish men in America who had fled their countries when hostilities began in Germany. 1501 1501. Modifying the papers so that Mayers picture appeared on it, he moved into her hospital to recover.. Kruger went on to earn aSAG Awards nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for the performance. And 15 Other Iconic Lines From Tarantino's FilmsThe Real-Life Django Who Rebelled Against Slavery And No One Talks About Enough10 Lessons We Learned From The Bad-Ass Women In Tarantino's Universe. Tarantino will never tell us the full logic behind misspelling the title, though in various interviews he's offered partial explanations. Box 378 Red Hook, New York 12571 United States. From 0-99, there is something for the child in all of us. They traveled by ship to North Africa. Undeterred by the units previous record, Mayer and his friends approached the units commander, Lt. Alfred Ulmer, and begged to sign up. He was imprisoned and tortured. It did convince them that he was a spy since they knew most Americans were circumcised at birth. He introduced himself as Lt. Mayer of the OSS and explained that he was going to take the major with him to accept the German surrender from Hofer. A secondary mission was to monitor all of the rail traffic from Innsbruck traveling thru the Brenner Pass into Italy. But unlike other refugees, Mayer decided to return to German-occupied Europe to strike back at the very individuals who imprisoned some of his family members in concentration camps. Rahn offered to send a message to OSS HQs in Bern, Switzerland headed up by Allen Dulles who later became the head of the CIA. Fortunately, Hofer realized that Germany would lose and wanted to save his skin, so he ordered Mayer brought to him. Edit your search or learn more. When the American 103rd Infantry Division of the Seventh Army closed in on Innsbruck on the morning of 3 May 1945, they were met by a car sporting a white bedsheet. United States. When telling this story to The Los Angeles Times in 2009, Roth also noted that the part where the giant swastika falls in the theater was an accident, resulting from the unexpectedly powerful fires burning the steel cables holding it up. While Mayer was being tortured in a Nazi prison, another American agent was being interrogated by the Gestapo. One of their pieces of intelligence enabled the Allied air forces to bomb a large number of trains in a nearby marshalling yard. The governor was about to go on the radio to tell his troops to fight to the last man. Operation FORTITUDE involved a group of double agents feeding disinformation to the Germans but the group was an odd collection of criminals, playboys, party girls, and a woman obsessed with her dog. By this time Hofer, like many Nazis, realised that the war was lost and was interested only in surrendering to the Western Allies rather than the Soviets. Go to the front lines of World War II in this war documentary, chronicling a group of Jewish agents for the American OSS who infiltrated Nazi territories, many of them German Jews returning to avenge Hitler's sinister acts. He radioed the exact locations and dimensions back to HQs. It was feared that the Nazis would establish an Alpine redoubtin order tomake a last stand there. That mans a bigshot in the US Military. But after several weeks behind enemy lines that provided reams of actionable intelligence, a knock on the door of Mayers safe house changed his life. In an 2015 interview with HuffPost Live, Eli Roth claimed that he and other actors nearly burned to death during the movie's climax, in which a theater filled with Nazis burns to the ground. For the next several months, Mayer and his best friend Hans Winberg went about planning Operation Greenup. Disguised as a French electrician, Mayer tried to infiltrate one of the Luftwaffe factories. And when youre done with all of those hundreds of books, you can turn to film. His captors whipped him, doused him with water and suspended him from a rifle, but he only admitted he was an Americanofficer when the man who had betrayed him was brought in and identified him. He volunteered for the US Army but was denied service because he was considered an enemy alien. OSS immediately saw his potential and recruited him into their ranks. Mayer obtained a German uniform and impersonated a wounded officer. He also determined the times for troop and ammunition trains heading thru the Brenner Pass and called in airstrikes. View Franz Weber results including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. Proud of his heritage, Franz assisted in the creation of the NBC Today Show Where in the world is Matt Lauer? featuring his birth town, Innsbruck Austria, while also including his home in Reno/Tahoe. For three days and nights, Mayer was savagely beaten, but he kept up his cover speaking only in French. Then good fortune stepped in. Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting. Consider an Allied espionage operation code-named GREENUP, which in some ways is even more improbable than a Hollywood pot-boiler. Franz did Research in the Field of Nephrology and Hypertension. April 1812 in Mannheim) war ein deutscher Musiker, Kapellmeister und Theaterdirektor. TracesOfWar.com tells you more! They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines by Patrick K. ODonnell. Feigning the role of a captured German POW, Fred entered a camp and networked within its gates. Mayer parachuted onto an Alpine glacier, infiltrated enemy lines, and posed as a German officer to ascertain crucial intelligence. One of the guards saw him, reported him to the authorities, and he was arrested. I was really training for it.". Support Veteran Journalism . They were joined by Franz Weber, an ex-Wehrmacht officer turned freedom fighter comparable to the Basterds' Hugo Stiglitz. Channel 5s website describes the programme as follows: Documentary exploring one of the hundreds of undercover missions launched by the US governments Office of Strategic Services during World War II. There was also Franz Weber a Catholic Austrian Wehrmacht officer and POW, who felt loyal to Austria, not to Nazi Germany. Franz Weber. An irreverent alternate history following two intersecting plots of Jews taking violent revenge against the Nazis (one by an orphaned French theater owner named Shosanna, the other by an American GI squad known as the Basterds), Tarantino's sixth film became the director's biggest hit up to that point in the summer of 2009. . OSS was the forerunner to both the Special Operations Command of the military, OSS Jedburgh and Operation Groups were the units that became the US Army Special Forces and Navy SEALs owe part of their legacy to OSS Maritime Group operatives, where one of them invented the US version of SCUBA. The other objective was to identify rail traffic travelling from Innsbruck to Italy through the Brenner Pass. Then they boarded a Gestapo-infested train bound for Innsbruck (a major rail hub) where they were asked for their papers. According toIndieWire, in Tara Wood's Tarantino-focused documentary "QT8: The First Eight," Eli Roth recounts the story of one extra who got fired for not developing a backstory for his non-speaking character. An Olympian, six-time consecutive World Speed Skiing Champion and former world record-holder, Franz Weber still holds the North American record, at Mayer radioed the exact location and dimensions back to headquarters. After completing their training in Allied territories, the three soldiers were dropped off in Tirol on February 26, 1945. The U-boat War in World War Two (Kriegsmarine, 1939-1945) and World War One (Kaiserliche Marine, 1914-1918) and the Allied efforts to counter the threat. Moscow Should Prepare For Probable US Nuclear Aggression: Reports Russian Military Journal, Destroying American Monster Abrams: Pro-Russian Group Release A How-To Video, Dr. Mary E. Walker: The First AND Only Female Medal Of Honor Recipient, Bakhmut on the Brink of Falling to Russian Troops, Decorated Navy SEAL Died in HALO Training Accident, Adam Brown: A SEALs Life of Courage and Redemption, Complete List: Ticonderoga-class Missile Cruisers To Retire By 2027, Nuclear Close Calls That Nearly Caused World War III, Russian Sausage Millionaire and Putin Critic Falls to His Death in India, Deadly Russian Rifle Brigade Wiped Out During War in Ukraine.
Borg Warner Transmission Clutch Catalog,
Airbnb Houseboat Virginia,
Wayne State Football Coaches,
North Wirral Coastal Park The Gunsite,
Articles F
