franz weber ww2 franz weber ww2

Tarantino's movies, "Inglourious Basterds" included, generally have such excellent casting that it's often weird to read about who almost played their iconic characters instead. 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. When he realised for certain that his prisoner was an American officer, he had Mayer cleaned up, dressed, and fed. Trembling, he stammered, Do anything you want to me, but dont hurt my family.. Mayer then pushed into Innsbruck, determining the schedules for troop and munitions trains bound through the Brenner to Italy. Mayers incredible story provided the basis for my book They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines in Nazi Germany. Tarantino worked on the script for years, made tough decisions in casting the film, and took time to get the final cut just right. The third soldier was the Austrian Franz Weber, a Nazi officer who had deserted the army. They were sent to enemy lines to sabotage Nazi activities. And although he was circumcised, the Gestapo thought nothing of it since many non-Jews also practiced circumcision. The Real Inglorious Bastards. Channel 5 in the UK broadcast a documentary called The Nazi Killers on Friday 22 November. 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. At the Arcadia Conference, held in Washington, DC, from December 24, 1941 to January 14, 1942, the Western Allies agreed to a Germany First policy to govern global strategy, but the question where to engage Germany, and when, remained unsettled. 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. Fred Mayer and his five Jewish cohorts, who had become best friends during the training, had had enough. The scene was filmed on a controlled "fire stage" set, but the flames ended up burning far hotter than anyone anticipated. The Gestapo agent that had mercilessly beaten him was taken to the very cell where he had tortured Mayer. Considering how the Gestapo worked, they believed him. Hans Landa chokes Bridget Von Hammersmark to death. Matull then said that a person as high ranking as Mayer should be interrogated by a person of equal importance, namely the Gauleiter of Tyrol and Vorarlberg, Franz Hofer. All results for Franz Weber. "Literally, the only reason he auditioned me is because there was no one left to audition," said Kruger. View Franz Weber results including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. The story of Operational Greenup deserves greater attention than it has received. But America desperately needed to beef up its military, so they let him join the 81st Infantry Division the following year. Later, West learned that Mayer was a sergeant. In scene straight from Inglourious Basterds, Mayer sat at the bar with a bandage on his head, swilled beer, and listened to the stories of other recovering German officers. The initial casting plans for "Inglourious Basterds" almost included two big name stars whose presence would have certainly resulted in a very different experience: Leonardo DiCaprio was in talks for the role of Hans Landa, and Adam Sandler was almost going to play "The Bear Jew," Sgt. They traveled by ship to North Africa. Franz was the only son of this couple to survive into adulthood. His family owned a hardware store that was boycotted because they were Jewish once Hitler became chancellor in 1933. 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. This is a horrible place where the Nazis tortured and killed members of the Belgium resistance. During World War II, the OSS twice nominated Fred Mayer for the Medal of Honor. A native Austrian, Weber fought on the Eastern Front but was convinced that Austria needed to be free of Hitler and the Nazis. Frederick Mayer (28 October 1921, Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden, Germany - 15 April 2016, Charles Town, Jefferson County, West Virginia) was a German-born Jew who became an American spy as an OSS agent for the United States during World War II.He negotiated the surrender of the German Army in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1945 after he was captured in "Operation Greenup". Franz Weber. By now, those of you have seen Tarantinos film should be thinking Inglourious Basterds. Mayer, Wijnberg, and Weber are the real thing, the actual basterds, and indeed, Mayer himself is once supposed to have said that the three of them just wanted to kill Nazis.. 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 . Feigning the role of a captured German POW, Fred entered a camp and networked within its gates. This was worn by civilians in the employment of the Waffen SS. Do you want to create your own battlefield tour to sights of wars from the past? All rights reserved. They were the parents of at least 5 sons and 1 daughter. At one point, the writer-director feared it would be too long for a movie and that the epic story would be better suited for a TV miniseries. Mollis,Glarus,,Switzerland . 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. Mollis, Glarus, Canton of Glarus, Switzerland. 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. They had to walk down the glacier, sometimes waist deep in snow. In 1998, he won the National SG Masters Championships, and his Masters record includes winning all but two of the more than WORLD WAR II; Nov 27, 2015 Shahan Russell, Guest Author. 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. 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. Webers sister, a fervent anti-Nazi, managed to steal a German uniform that Weber himself wore on several occasions to attend informal events with some of the Nazi officers appointed in the region. Mr. Mayer died at his home in Charles Town, West Virginia, on April 15 this year. Each of them spoke at least two European languages, with Mayer speaking German, French, and Spanish. High winds buffeted the plane making them lose 6000 feet of altitude in just 18 seconds. Mayer saved the lives of perhaps thousands of troops on both sides by arranging the surrender of the German troops in Austria. Ittrained them for operations behind enemy lines. What hotels are near Franz Carl Weber Geneva? Cowering in the corner, the agent was terrified to see his former captive. Webers sister was a nurse who helped Mayer disguise himself as a German officer in uniform and bandaged up from a head wound. ADVERTISING. When Georg Weber was born about 1506, in Mollis, Glarus, Switzerland, his father, Franz Weber, was 33 and his mother, Weber, was 33. However, using his own guile, wit, and a fortunate set of circumstances, Mayer turned the tables on his captors. His work was to get as much information as possible from the Germans, from plans for troop displacement, to attacks, and where they stored supplies, so him and his partners could sabotage them. 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 . Speaking German, he admitted to being an American but said he was working alone. Mayer gave what perhaps was the best answer of all, This is more our war than yours.. 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. 1" in 2003, there were seven long years without a single new Quentin Tarantino film. You had to go on and on and on about your backstory. It was a good documentary. After reaching a small town outside Innsbruck, the Greenup team set up camp. one of four skiers who broke a world record by skiing sixteen Colorado ski resorts in one day. 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. It featured a few re-enactments, but most of the story was told by the two Jewish refugees, Hans Wijnbergand Fred Mayer, with the widow and son of Franz Weber, the Wehrmacht officer, also contributing. A native Austrian, Weber fought on the Eastern Front but was convinced that Austria needed to be free of Hitler and the Nazis. He was born in Germany and forced to flee as the Holocaust was beginning. 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. They therefore had to walk in deep snowto Oberperfuss, Webers home village. On November 26, 2007, Franz was the recipient of the prestigious Schneekristall award (providing him with lifelong free skiing privileges in Austria). 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. Sign Up. Early on May 3, 1945, the American 103rd Infantry Division of the Seventh Army was ordered to take Innsbruck. Wijnberg and Weber had to flee, whilst Mayer was tortured by the Gestapo. The leader of the mission was Fred "Freddy" Mayer, who settled in Brooklyn in 1938 after escaping Nazi Germany with his family, having to leave the love of his life Hannah behind, who was . The "Inglourious Basterds" screenplay was a particular challenge both to write and to edit down into a workable feature. This man was Hermann Matull, who was also working as a spy in the region. The two men are Brooklyn to the core, and they even overlay a map of their New York borough onto that of Tyrol, to have a whole set of code names for various Tyrolean locales that would utterly baffle the Nazis. 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." Waffen-SS Armband. By then it was April of 1945 and the Germans knew they were done. Part of the reason Tarantino decided to make "Kill Bill" first was due to the fact the story for his epic was growing so large in scale that he was having trouble cutting it down. I was really training for it.". Anna was a Tyrolean hotelier who gave the team shelter, support, and protection from the Nazis at the risk of her own life, and who once cried out, both in despair and defiance, If Hitler wins the war, then I dont believe in God anymore. A film on Greenup would have it all: a righteous cause, victims fighting back, nail-biting chase scenesit couldnt help but score big at the box office. Diane Kruger was not the only "Inglourious Basterds" cast member to face potentially dangerous scenarios during the film shoot. It was the scariest part of the entire mission.. The team found a German POW named Franz Weber. 3 (Fall 2010), pp. 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. He enjoys giving his stories several layers of meanings through historical and popular references, and Operation Greenup is just one of the real-life cases where he found inspiration. They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines by Patrick K. ODonnell. Then they boarded a Gestapo-infested train bound for Innsbruck (a major rail hub) where they were asked for their papers. A sense of calm came over Mayer, and he looked directly into the eyes of the Gestapo agent. Franz Weber currently works honorary as a teacher at the Clinic for Nephrology , University Hospital Essen. Franz Weber (actor) (1888-1962), German actor Franz Weber (footballer) (1888-? He, therefore, transformed himself into a French electrician. It was April 1945, and Germany was finished. Consider an Allied espionage operation code-named GREENUP, which in some ways is even more improbable than a Hollywood pot-boiler. Once the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Mayer enlisted in the U.S. Army. Inhibition of osteoclast differentiation and bone resorption by N-methylpyrrolidone. Franz E. Weber N, N-Dimethylacetamide is an FDA approved solvent widely used in pharmaceutical industry to facilitate the solubility of lipophilic, high molecular weight drugs with poor water . Now, though Hofer had the connections and supplies to resist an invasion by the Allies, its known that it was thanks to his conversations with Mayer that he decided to surrender. Like many other Germans by the end of the war, Hofer was looking for a safeguard with the Allies to secure his own freedom. The three were to be dropped by parachuted near Innsbruck in February 1945. Do you want to create your own battlefield tour to sights of wars from the past? 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. Despite the agents bullish strength, the SS men brutally manhandled him, shoving him to the floor. 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. His cover wasnt holding water, and so the tall one stripped him from head to toe. IndieWire reported that Tarantino wanted the movie edited on a much tighter schedule that his previous productions, both as a reaction to spending too much time "overfiddling" with "Death Proof" and so the film would be ready to screen at Cannes. One of the guards saw him, reported him to the authorities, and he was arrested. During these discussions, it was agreed that the Germans under Hofer should surrender to Mayer, as the representative of the US military. The trio got off at the town of Oberperfuss near Innsbruck and split up. Mayer then turned his back on the agent and the war, refusing to speak about it for decades. Fortunately, Hofer realized that Germany would lose and wanted to save his skin, so he ordered Mayer brought to him. Mayer was given command of Operation Greenup charged with finding out how weapons were making it into Italy, then an Axis power. Once in place, Mayer posed as a German . Two of them, Mayer and Wynberg, were exiled Jewish men in America who had fled their countries when hostilities began in Germany. Hofer, convinced that the war was a lost cause, was looking for a way to surrender to the Americans rather than to the Soviets. He penetrated a secret underground factory producing jet engines for the Third Reich. (371) 7.4 52min 2012 13+. Mayer, who is Jewish, and his family fled Germany at the onset of the war, barely escaping the holocaust. They approached speeds of 60 mph or more as the craft careened down the mountain. 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. 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. So convincing was his performance that the agent turned away from the team and started checking the papers of the other passengers. Mayer was the son of a German WWI veteran. He was arrested by the American army three days after his surrender and was kept a prisoner until 1948, when he was set free. In 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of the United States Army trained three soldiers: Frederick Mayer, Hans Wynberg, and Franz Webe. Sadly, "Inglourious Basterds" was to be Menke's last film with Tarantino (the last film she edited was"Peacock" in 2010, directed by Michael Lander) because she died while hiking in the heat on September 27, 2010 (via The Los Angeles Times). He acted as the breadwinner while working as a mechanic at companies such as General Motors and Ford. The Life Summary of Georg. view all Franz Weber's Timeline. Mr. Mayer was recommended for a medal of honor in 1945 by a superior officer. Birth of Fridolin Weber. Weber, Franz; Weber, Franz. The governor was about to go on the radio to tell his troops to fight to the last man. They didnt embark on any sort of killing spree, but they did succeed in their mission. There was also the issue of competition: other great directors were also doing World War II epics in the late '90s, notably Steven Spielberg with "Saving Private Ryan" and Terrence Malick with "The Thin Red Line." Eastern Prussian Provinces, Germany [Poland], Selected Civil Vitals, 1874-1945. 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. In 1997, he won the Legends Downhill Championship in Vail, Colorado and placed first overall in the Masters Division of the MCI World Downhill Championships. World War II was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. But this ninety-somethings life hasnt always been so simple. An Olympian, six-time consecutive World Speed Skiing Champion and former world record-holder, Franz Weber still holds the North American record, at 129.303 mph/208.092 kph which he set in 1983 in Silverton, Colorado. The tables turned, the Gestapo man shaking, told Mayer to do with him as he would, but to please leave his family alone. The Nazi governor wined and dined his Jewish captive, then explained that he wanted to surrender but not to the Soviets. Mayer originally volunteered for the U.S. Army, but they rejected him as an enemy alien. However, the OSS, the forerunner to the CIA, saw Mayers potential and recruited him to join its ranks. In fact, I think I have an idea for a film. Tarantino is also dyslexic, and Scott Meyers of the screenwriting website The Black List speculated that the unique spelling of the title is a tribute to Tarantino's general way of writing. Out jumped a bruised and battered Mayer, who offered the formal surrender of the entire regions German Army. With a good categorising system, you will easily find whatever you are looking for, as well as much you were not. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. STIWOT, 1999-2023. He called in air strikes, destroying dozens of them. . Franz Weber. Air Force Special Operations Commandos owe part of their heritage to OSS pilots who flew many dangerous missions during the war. 1526-24 January 1624 (Age 98) Beglingen, Glarus, Switzerland. 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." 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. 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. The Swiss environmentalist Franz Weber has died at the age of 91. Claiming to be on the run from the advancing Soviets, he got a job at the facility. Operation Greenups purpose was intelligence gathering. The OGs were the Special Forces of WWII, theyd support resistance groups and train for guerrilla warfare. Hiseyes grew wide, Youre all as good as dead! he gasped, shaking his head in disbelief. Find your friends on Facebook. The Allied victory against the Axis was a long journeyone that actually took much longer than the war itself. Deutsches Kreuz in Gold . You must become a subscriber or login to view or post comments on this article. Then he posed as a French electrician to infiltrate a Messerschmitt factory. 504-528-1944. 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. 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. Friedrich Fred Mayers father was a decorated war veteran for his distinguished service to the German Empire in WWI. A masterpiece like "Inglourious Basterds" takes a lot of work to get right. 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. THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING VETERAN JOURNALISM - JOIN SOFREP+ The documentary ended with Fred Mayer talking to Hans Wijnberg via Skype. 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. However, their plans failed when Mayer was arrested by Nazi officers in an attempt to get crucial information. Quentin Tarantinos Inglorious Basterds tells the story of a special battalion posted in France in charge of sabotaging German military activities and, most importantly, killing Nazis. He and his familyescaped to the USA in 1938. 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. 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 . He was replaced with director Eli Roth. Mayer, Wijnberg, and Weber were parachuted with their supplies into Austria on 26 February 1945 in total darkness which was why they ended up on the crest of the Sulztaler glacier some 9,000 feet up a mountain. In the summer of 1944 after extensive training, the OGs received the call to duty. There are a few different reasons people have speculated on. Franz Weber. . The true story reads better than the fictional one, although I admit a fondness for Tarantino films however. Weber stayed with his family, his fiances mother took Mayer in, and Wijnberg stayed at a neighbors house. As the Germans surrendered, the Gestapo officer who had savagely beaten Mayer was taken to the very cell where he tortured him. 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. Or are you interested in war medals and their recipients? The head of SI was a LT. Alfred Ulmer. 3, No. In 1945, members of the American "Deer Team," part of the OSS, worked with Vietnamese guerrilla fighters to throw Japanese troops out of Indochina. The two men needed a third teammate who spoke German and knew the areaand was willing to risk certain death if captured. All three landed safely with most of their equipment, but the canister containing their skis was lost. Fridolin Weber. A couple of excellent books on the subject are : This Grim And Savage Game: The Oss And U.s. Covert Operations In World War II by Tom Moon and. His books that capture Mayers story are They Dared Return and The Brenner Assignment. Top Image:L-R Franz Weber, Hans Wijnberg, and Fred Mayer courtesy of theUS National Archives. Thanks to his Intel, the Allies knew the schedules of troop and munition trains and bombarded them accordingly. That guy was an extra. 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. fifty races he entered. 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. All Rights Reserved. The OSS went to the only available source of that nearly impossible combination: an Allied prisoner of war camp. By Mark Weber. World War II was not only the greatest military conflict in history, it was also America's most important twentieth-century war. Representing a variety of world class athletes, the company specializes in client hospitality and luxury adventure travel notably . 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. It was the nightmare he dreaded. Mayer donned Webers old uniform and took on the cover story of a recovering German officer at the local hospital where Webers sister was a nurse. During the movie's production, however, there were also serious risks and conflicts that could have (and probably should have) been avoided. Rising to power in an unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed treaties . They didn't end up killing Hitler, but they were able to negotiate the . STIWOT, 1999-2023. For the next three days, he was mercilessly beaten, tortured, and hung upside down. Undeterred by the units previous record, Mayer and his friends approached the units commander, Lt. Alfred Ulmer, and begged to sign up.