franz weber ww2 franz weber ww2

: an American History (Eric Foner) Business Law: Text and Cases (Kenneth W. Clarkson; Roger LeRoy Miller; Frank B. Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting. Being an actor in a Quentin Tarantino film means you're going to be in for an intense experience. 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. Despite the agents bullish strength, the SS men brutally manhandled him, shoving him to the floor. All Rights Reserved. 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. However, Inglorious Basterds highlights the work of one group specifically: "Operation Greenup, a real American battalion in charge of a similar mission. For the next several months, Mayer and his best friend Hans Winberg went about planning Operation Greenup. Looking for reliable information or news facts about WW2? Uncoiling a rawhide whip, the tall one put his full weight behind each swing, mercilessly thrashing the agents body like a side of beef. A Nazi SS general responsible for deporting tens of thousands of Jews to death camps worked for West German intelligence after World War . ), 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 The Life of Fridolin. Webers sister, Louise, was a nurse who gave Mayer the uniform and documents of a recently-deceased German officer. As the troops approached the city, they saw a car with a large white bed sheet attached to a pole racing toward them. On July 28, 1914, one month after Franz Ferdinand's death, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, beginning a chain reaction that would lead to four years of horrific conflict with millions of . They all spoke German, and many were Jewish refugees who wanted vengeance for their families suffering. John Billings, his command pilot on the mission, described Mayer as fearless about returning to Nazi Germany. Life as a spy was not short of action. Two of them, Mayer and Wynberg, were exiled Jewish men in America who had fled their countries when hostilities began in Germany. It could be a way around the MPAA's sensitivity about profanity in movie titles. Hans Wynberg, a Dutch-born Jew whose family was sent to Auschwitz, and Franz Weber, an Austrian officer who had defected from the German army, worked with Mayer. 1526-24 January 1624 (Age 98) Beglingen, Glarus, Switzerland. Shahan Russell is one of the authors writing for WAR HISTORY ONLINE. You had to go on and on and on about your backstory. Donny Donowitz. Starring Brad Pitt, Mlanie Laurent, and Christoph Waltz, in this uchronic story, a group of soldiers manages to kill the most important characters of the Nazi party, including its leader, Adolf Hitler. Franz Weber. 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. Praesidus brings homage to the military watch tradition. Reaching the glaciers foot, they holed up for three days at the Amberger hut (their original target) as they went over their plans. Kruger went on to earn aSAG Awards nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for the performance. He, therefore, transformed himself into a French electrician. His parents and younger brotherwere all murdered in the Holocaust. Bursting through the door and into the room, a dozen Gestapo agents, armed with MP-40 machine pistols, quickly surrounded and apprehended Mayer. "KillBill" offered a fun break from the not-quite-ready project and a chance to reunite with "PulpFiction" scene-stealer Uma Thurman. Considering how the Gestapo worked, they believed him. Do you have more information about this person? This fact caught the attention of Franz Hofer, a member of the Reichsgau, a Nazi administrative subdivision based on occupied territories. THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING VETERAN JOURNALISM - JOIN SOFREP+ 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. He infiltrated it by obtaining work as an electrician, using a French translation of his own name,discovering that supply problems with parts meant that no aircraft were being completed. Quentin Tarantinos 2009 warfilmwas partly based on a real story. He radioed the exact locations and dimensions back to HQs. In 1945, members of the American "Deer Team," part of the OSS, worked with Vietnamese guerrilla fighters to throw Japanese troops out of Indochina. Eighty years ago, the Red Army managed to stop, contain, and ultimately defeat the largest German army on the Eastern Front. Do you have more information about this person? Mayers incredible story provided the basis for my book They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines in Nazi Germany. Bahnhofplatz 9. Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, The OSS in Vietnam, 1945: A War of Missed Opportunities by Dixee Bartholomew-Feis, Secret Agents, Secret Armies: The D-Day Misfit Spies, Black Volunteer Infantry Platoons in World War II, Kasserine Pass: German Offensive, American Victory, Gallantry against Great Odds: LTC George Marshall and Operation RESERVIST, Prelude to Liberation: Genesis of American Amphibious Assault in the ETO, Black Thursday October 14, 1943: The Second Schweinfurt Bombing Raid, An Exercise in Depravity: The Establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto, Unsung Witnesses of the Battle of Stalingrad, Stalingrad: Experimentation, Adaptation, Implementation. info@nationalww2museum.org His mother, however, demanded that the family flee to the U.S. Young Fitz (Mayers nickname) was captivated by cowboy stories of the American West, and so looked forward to the journey. Weber, a Catholic, had deserted, convinced . He dominated the sport of speed skiing from 1980 to 1985, winning over eighty percent of the races he entered. 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. As a result, the crew and the three OSS agentsWalter Hass, a refugee from Nazi Germany, Frederick Mayer, a German Jew whose father moved the family to the US before the war, and Franz Weber, who was born and raised in Austria, became a German officer but eventually came to disagree with Hitler's movementworked together closely for five . Nearly all the sections missions to this point had been abysmal failures, leading to the death or capture of the OSS agents, and several agents ended up in Germanys most infamous concentration camps. Channel 5 in the UK broadcast a documentary called The Nazi Killers on Friday 22 November. Birth, Baptism & Christening. Feeling he had achieved his speed skiing goals, Franz permanently retired from the sport following the 1992 Olympics. In one of the most incredible scenes from World War II, Frederick Mayer approached the American lines and informed the advancing 103rd division that the Germans had surrendered Innsbruck to him, saving potentially thousands of German and American lives in the process. Franz was the only son of this couple to survive into adulthood. Website zuerich@fcw.ch +41 44 225 78 78 Google Maps Public transport. As the war ended, the people of Vietnam looked to the United States to support their dreams of independence. Speaking German, he admitted to being an American but said he was working alone. Tom Moon, author of This Grim and Savage Game: OSS and the Beginning of U.S. Covert Operations in World War II, wrote, The Germany Army in that area had in effect surrendered to an OSS Jewish Sergeant.. The tables turned, the Gestapo man shaking, told Mayer to do with him as he would, but to please leave his family alone. Birth of Franz Weber. He is a two-time overall winner of the Tournament of Champions and four-time Rolex Legends Series Champion. She paid for her own plane ticket to Germany for the audition, which thankfully worked out for the best. 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. His website is http://www.patrickkodonnell.com/. Tags:quentin tarantino world war ii world history. Modifying the papers so that Mayers picture appeared on it, he moved into her hospital to recover.. Franz Anton von Weber (* 26. Under torture, he told them about Mayer, so they broke down the latters door on 20 April 1945. Mayer became an Army Ranger and went on to join the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) the precursor of todays CIA. They tortured him brutally, but he didnt break. It was the scariest part of the entire mission.. 3 (Fall 2010), pp. Feigning the role of a captured German POW, Fred entered a camp and networked within its gates. He penetrated a secret underground factory producing jet engines for the Third Reich. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Though it turned out to be a myth created by fanatical Nazis, the Allies couldnt have known that at the time. Franz Weber, Actor: Figaros Hochzeit. He called in air strikes, destroying dozens of them. During World War II, the OSS twice nominated Fred Mayer for the Medal of Honor. When he is not skiing, Weber's schedule is filled with promotional and personal appearances for sponsors, celebrity sports events, speaking engagements and charity events. He was arrested by the American army three days after his surrender and was kept a prisoner until 1948, when he was set free. 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. The Swiss environmentalist Franz Weber has died at the age of 91. Franz Weber. In fact, Mayer was taken to Hofers home, met Hofers wife, and ate with them. Mayer obtained a German uniform and impersonated a wounded officer. In March 1945 these three men nearly died being inserting into Nazi controlled Austria as they ended up parachuting onto a . 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. Learn More. Tarantino takes all of his characters very seriously, even the most minor ones, and expects the actors he casts to prepare for their roles with similar seriousness. 2023 The SOFREP Media Group. The campaign in North Africa began with a daring Anglo-American commando raid code-named Operation RESERVIST. Mayer was then ordered to investigate a nearby underground factory that was building Me 262 jet fighters. They didn't end up killing Hitler, but they were able to negotiate the surrender of the German Army in Austria. Join SOFREP for insider access and analysis. Wijnberg and Weber had to flee, whilst Mayer was tortured by the Gestapo. With a man on each side of the rifle, they lifted his naked, rolled-up body and suspended the human ball between two tables, like a piece of meat on a skewer. 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. Meyer is on record of saying he just "wanted to kill Nazis," an attitude paralleling that of the Basterds. See Photos. They were the parents of at least 5 sons and 1 daughter. Thanks to their intelligence, the Allies were able to bomb over 25 supply trains trying to get into Italy. The OSS went to the only available source of that nearly impossible combination: an Allied prisoner of war camp. On May 7, an invitation-only screening of the film will open the GI Film Festival with a Congressional Reception at the U.S. Capitol Building to honor the veterans of the mission, including Mayer. Joesch M, Weber F, Eichner H, Borst A: Functional specialization of parallel motion detection circuits in the fly. Edit your search or learn more. U.S. Military. STIWOT, 1999-2023. The next day, Mayer tried to enlist, but the military said no. He was German, after all, and, therefore, an enemy alien. But he wasnt so honored. Franz did Research in the Field of Nephrology and Hypertension. He died in Switzerland. His family owned a hardware store that was boycotted because they were Jewish once Hitler became chancellor in 1933. He dominated the sport of speed skiing from 1980 to 1985, winning over eighty percent of the races he entered. And what a cast of characters: emigr Jews like Mayer and Wijnberg, bent on destroying the regime that had persecuted them and their families and, in Wijnbergs case, had even killed his parents; Lieutenant Weber, a German soldier currently on the run from a death sentence for desertion, then being handed out in the thousands by Nazi officials; not to mention Anna Niederkircher, the mother of Webers fiance. 504-528-1944. With a good categorising system, you will easily find whatever you are looking for, as well as much you were not. The story of Operational Greenup deserves greater attention than it has received. Matull insisted that only someone as important as Franz Hofer (the local administrator) could get away with interrogating Mayer. Franz Weber (30 November 1921 - 28 July 2014 in Mnchen) was a German Obergefreiter in the Wehrmacht during World War II. Hofer was later judged in absentia and sentenced to death in Austria in 1949. Cuffing his hands in front of him and pulling his arms over his bent knees, they forced him into a constricting fetal position, then shoved the barrel of a long rifle into the tiny gap behind his knees and his cuffed hands. However, things took a turn for the worse when a member of Mayers spy network betrayed him. A long-time resident of Lake Tahoe, Weber and his wife, Janet, founded Franz Weber Inc., a Reno-based sports management and consulting company, in 1984.Today, the company represents world-class . See Photos. He put his unusual skills and experience to work, selling surplus Army towels and other gear to Bedouins. It was hard to find a pilot to volunteer to fly in the difficult winter conditions over the glacier, but eventually, Billings stepped up, saying,If they are crazy enough to jump there, I will be crazy enough to take them there.. Speaking in an interview(via Screenrant) with fellow filmmaker Robert Rodriguez for an episode of "Director's Chair" on El Rey Network, Tarantino said, "People thought I was going through writer's block, you know, I was going through the opposite. An Olympian, six-time consecutive World Speed Skiing Champion - Franz Weber is also a former world record-holder and still holds the North American record, at 129.303 mph/208.092 kph which he set in 1983 in Silverton, Colorado. Log In. Franz Weber. Data gleaned from these reports helped US intelligence officers explode the myth that the Germans were concentrating men and weapons in the south for the Alpine redoubt. Despite being captured by the Gestapo and nearly tortured to death, Mayer was able to make contact with a number of local officials, including Franz Hofer, the Nazi Gauleiter(district leader) of Tyrol. 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. Hoffer, who had already anticipated the fall of Nazi Germany, met Mayer to discuss the possibility of a German rendition, and naturally, his own protection. He joined the OGs (Operational Groups), specifically Operational Group Germany. When Georg Weber was born about 1506, in Mollis, Glarus, Switzerland, his father, Franz Weber, was 33 and his mother, Weber, was 33. September 1734 in Zell im Wiesental; 16. In 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of the United States Army trained three soldiers: Frederick Mayer, Hans Wynberg, and Franz Webe. They eventually made contact with Webers family. Hes already seen the movie. The third soldier was the Austrian Franz Weber, a Nazi officer who had deserted the army. This small town in the Alps was a key spot during WWII thanks to its strategic location between the Italian and Austrian frontiers. A rare piece! Born in Rohleder (Raskaty) Russia to Heinrich Weber (1799 - 1848) and Susanna Fritz (1807-after 1861). When youre a World War II hero, you can do whatever the hell you want. Ittrained them for operations behind enemy lines. This is a horrible place where the Nazis tortured and killed members of the Belgium resistance. On February 25, 1945, Mayer flew from his base in Italy and arrived in the Austrian mountains by parachuting with his team in the dead of night onto the ridge of a glacier. After unexpectedly arriving at the OSS post, the men sat and languished for months, waiting for a mission. This button displays the currently selected search type. The revelations about Weinstein and Thurman's car accident placed an extra dark light on one anecdote about filming the scene in "Inglourious Basterds" where Hans Landa chokes Bridget Von Hammersmark to death. 84-88 Wijnberg was sent by his parents, along with his twin brother, from the Netherlands in 1939to live with his fathers business partner in the USA in 1939. The war pitted the Central Powersmainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkeyagainst the Alliesmainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United . A movie that climaxes with a group of Jewish soldiers shooting Hitler in the face isn't particularly concerned with historical accuracy, but "Inglourious Basterds" still draws some inspiration from real history. He was finally arrested when a black marketeer was caught by Nazi authorities and fingered Mayer as a spy. At the start of 1945, Mayer was a highly trained agent for the Secret Intelligence division of the OSS and became the leader of the Operation Greenup. That didnt stop the intrepid OGs. He was imprisoned and tortured. 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. Barrett is the world leader in long-range, large-caliber, precision rifle design and manufacturing. Fred Mayer and his five Jewish cohorts, who had become best friends during the training, had had enough. Once in place, Mayer posed as a German . Working alongside Mr Mayer were Hans Wynberg, a Dutch-born Jew whose family had been deported to Auschwitz, and Franz Weber, an Austrian officer whose patriotism had led him to defect from the . Stealing a Jeep (now they sound like SF), they drive to OSS HQs and went to see the head of the SI (Special Intelligence) Section to volunteer. One of the mainsprings of the group spoke eight different languages, had fought and escaped from the French Legion, and had previously worked as a matre d at the Copacabana nightclub. See Photos. Their little band soon adds a third member: Franz Weber, a Wehrmacht lieutenant who has belatedly come to his senses about the murderous nature of Adolf Hitler's war. Despite being intensely tortured, Mayer never mentioned this to his partners. The head of SI was a LT. Alfred Ulmer. She was only 56 years old when she passed away. Most of SIs missions had been failures with the operatives either killed or shipped off to concentration camps. Consider an Allied espionage operation code-named GREENUP, which in some ways is even more improbable than a Hollywood pot-boiler. The Real Inglorious Bastards. It could be a way to distinguish the film from Enzo G. Castellari's 1979 film "The Inglorious Bastards," which Tarantino's film is loosely inspired by but is decidedly not a remake of. Mayer said to him, What do you think we areNazis?. In fact, it deserves nothing less than a movie. They approached speeds of 60 mph or more as the craft careened down the mountain. The Americans will slaughter everyone who did this!. 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. 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. Top. Robert Citino, PhD, is the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian in the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. They didnt embark on any sort of killing spree, but they did succeed in their mission. (The original radio transcripts are preserved at The National Archives in College Park, Maryland.). Sign Up. The top and bottom have been folded over and stitched together. Sent to Italy, he was teamed up with Hans Wijnberg another Jewish-American whose family was thrown intoAuschwitz. I couldn't stop writing. Bingeing spy movies, let us say from Orson Welless The Third Man(1949) through Quentin Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds(2009), would be a lifetime occupation. Heinrich Weber (1799-1848) married Susanna Fritz (1807-aft 1861) a. Franz Weber (this Franz Weber) b. Anna Maria Miller c. Elizabeth Herrman Provided by Trecil. Will King Charles IIIs Reign See the End of the Commonwealth. By Tom Linder West Hawaii Today tlinder@westhawaiitoday.com | Wednesday, May 6, 2020, 12:05 a.m. Franz Weber, a longtime Kona resident, started Paying it Forward, which serves as a bridge between . As if offended, Weber haughtily replied, Weve already been checked!. 1526 1526. After arriving in New York, Mayer changed his name to Frederick. Then he posed as a French electrician to infiltrate a Messerschmitt factory. They recommended him for the Office of Strategic Services, which later became the CIA. The scene was filmed on a controlled "fire stage" set, but the flames ended up burning far hotter than anyone anticipated. ADVERTISING. I was really training for it.". He was born in Germany and forced to flee as the Holocaust was beginning. It is constructed out of a dyed yellow cotton base with black ink print. The other objective was to identify rail traffic travelling from Innsbruck to Italy through the Brenner Pass. The members of Operation Greenup ended up helping the Allies get their victory and were later on decorated for their heroic services during the war. Mayer died in 2016, aged 94. Operation Greenup brought the Allies real material benefits, transmitting dozens of radio messages with detailed accounts of Brenner traffic to the OSS listening station in the city of Bari in the heel of Italy. Pernass, Manfred Franz Joachim, born on 03-08-1920 in Gollnow, the son of Willli Hermann Pernass and Charlotte Anna Elisabeth Ulrich, was a soldier in the German Army and set up in Operation Greif. Jason Dawsey, PhD, is a Research Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. Cowering in the corner, the agent was terrified to see his former captive. You really would have to quit your job and become a monk to get through them all. World War II was not only the greatest military conflict in history, it was also America's most important twentieth-century war. They purloined a Jeep, mutinied from the OGs and arrived at OSSs Secret Intelligence (SI) section, which had been dropping agents deep inside Nazi Germany. Contributor. Thanks to the work of these three man, many Allied troops accomplished several effective bombings, destroying Nazi supplies and, naturally, messing with their plans. Inform us! They were joined by Franz Weber, an ex-Wehrmacht officer turned freedom fighter comparable to the Basterds' Hugo Stiglitz. Allies suspected the Germans were plotting to make their final stand in the war there. He described these men: A more eclectic group of desperados could not be found: former Luftwaffe pilots, Jewish escapees from German death camps, Polish deserters, world-class athletes, and even a former convict. One recruit referred to the group as the craziest people he ever met. His books that capture Mayers story are They Dared Return and The Brenner Assignment. In the dark room, the Gestapo officers slapped and punched the spy in the face. Their mission wasto gather intelligence in the Tirol region of Austria. It was a good documentary. The 'Good War' Myth of World War Two. Download the TracesOfWar app directly on, Australia (1901-present, Federal Monarchy), Belgium (1830-present, Constitutional Monarchy), Canada (1931-present, Constitutional Monarchy), Soviet Union (1922-1991, People's Republic), Privacy statement, cookies, disclaimer and copyright, - Die Ordenstrger der Deutschen Wehrmacht. On the outskirts of a sleepy West Virginia town lives 92-year-old Frederick Mayer. Operation Greenups purpose was intelligence gathering. An overwhelming majority of them were women and children. The interrogation was watched by a third man, who eventually took Mayer to the house of Franz Hofer, the local Gauleiter [Nazi Party boss]. In a scene that could have been ripped from the movie Where Eagles Dare, the team, clad in white ski parkas, parachuted onto the side of a 9,000-foot glacier. The German Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe (Swallow) was the first operational jet fighter and appeared in air combat towards the end of World War Two.The Me 262 has always been one of my favourite World War Two era aircraft.It wasn't the best jet to ever grace the skies but I have always liked its shark like, leading edge design! Their mission was given the name of "Operation Greenup," and though their deeds aren't that well known, they manage to destabilize the Nazi regime. And in one of the craziest turn of events, the German Army in Austria surrendered to a Jewish sergeant without firing a shot.