num_pages: 304
description: The remarkable story of Fred Mayer a German-born Jew who escaped Nazi Germany only to return as an American commando on a secret mission behind enemy lines. Growing up in Germany Freddy Mayer witnessed the Nazis' rise to power. When he was sixteen his family made the decision to flee to the United Statesthey were among the last German Jews to escape in 1938. In America Freddy tried enlisting the day after Pearl Harbor only to be rejected as an enemy alien because he was German. He was soon recruited to the OSS the countrys first spy outfit before the CIA. Freddy joined by Dutch Jewish refugee Hans Wynberg and Nazi defector Franz Weber parachuted into Austria as the leader of Operation Greenup meant to deter Hitlers last stand. He posed as a Nazi officer and a French POW for months dispatching reports to the OSS via Hans holed up with a radio in a nearby attic. The reports contained a goldmine of information provided key intelligence about the Battle of the Bulge and allowed the Allies to bomb twenty Nazi trains. On the verge of the Allied victory Freddy was captured by the Gestapo and tortured and waterboarded for days. Remarkably he persuaded the Nazi commander for the region to surrender completing one of the most successful OSS missions of the war.Based on years of research and interviews with Mayer himself whom the author was able to meet only months before his death at the age of ninety-four Return to the Reich is an eye-opening unforgettable narrative of World War II heroism.
language: English
title: Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee’s Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis
publisher: Mariner Books