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. Kruger went on to earn aSAG Awards nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for the performance. 1526-24 January 1624 (Age 98) Beglingen, Glarus, Switzerland. In the summer of 1944 after extensive training, the OGs received the call to duty. 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. Deutsches Kreuz in Gold . The Germans,wanting to surrender to the Americans passed it on. Sally Menke edited every one of QuentinTarantino's movies from "Reservoir Dogs" in 1992 all the way up until "Inglourious Basterds" in 2009. His cover wasnt holding water, and so the tall one stripped him from head to toe. 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. Genealogy for Franz Weber (1616 - 1698) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. All Rights Reserved. A native Austrian, Weber fought on the Eastern Front but was convinced that Austria needed to be free of Hitler and the Nazis. Between "Jackie Brown" in 1997 and "KillBill Vol. In the dark room, the Gestapo officers slapped and punched the spy in the face. 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. Mayer was then ordered to investigate a nearby underground factory that was building Me 262 jet fighters. Ian Harvey is one of the authors writing for WAR HISTORY ONLINE. The true story reads better than the fictional one, although I admit a fondness for Tarantino films however. He called in air strikes, destroying dozens of them. 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. are western hognose snakes legal in the uk risk assessment for cleaning pigeon droppings Mayer then pushed into Innsbruck, determining the schedules for troop and munitions trains bound through the Brenner to Italy. The German officer in charge was one Franz Hofer. Rising to power in an unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed treaties . He found and recruited deserter-volunteer, Franz Weber. There they were helped by his family. Mayer was put in command of Operation Greenup, with Wijnberg as his radio operator. He acted as the breadwinner while working as a mechanic at companies such as General Motors and Ford. (The original radio transcripts are preserved at The National Archives in College Park, Maryland.). Disguised as a French electrician, Mayer tried to infiltrate one of the Luftwaffe factories. For the next several months, Mayer and his best friend Hans Winberg went about planning Operation Greenup. The Nazi governor wined and dined his Jewish captive, then explained that he wanted to surrender but not to the Soviets. info@nationalww2museum.org 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. Jason Dawsey, PhD, is a Research Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. 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. They had to walk down the glacier, sometimes waist deep in snow. His two interrogators discounted the possibility that he might be Jewish, because their anti-Semitism meant that they refused to believe that a Jew could be brave enough to withstand their tortures. 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. In zweiter Ehe war er mit Genovefa Brenner verheiratet; aus dieser . Mayer was allowed to send a message to the OSS. Franz Anton von Weber (* 26. Both men joined the US Army, and were then approached to join the OSS, the US intelligence service,because of their language skills. Exhausted, they finally sledded their way down, something Mayer later claimed was the scariest part of the mission. Do you want to create your own battlefield tour to sights of wars from the past? Theyd be sent into Nazi-occupied Europe and they knew what awaited them there as most were Jewish. A blooper reel included on the "Inglourious Basterds" DVD and Blu-ray releases showcases one of the ways Tarantino and his actors made sure to keep their hard-working editor in high spirits: whenever they knew a shot had to be cut, someone would interrupt it to say "Hello, Sally!" It was the scariest part of the entire mission.. There is a nice WC on the ground floor with baby changing facilities. By wars end, OSS had 13,000 personnel in their ranks, nearly a third were women and included were some Hollywood types like John Ford, Sterling Hayden, Marlene Dietrich, Julia Child and others. 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. 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. This is a horrible place where the Nazis tortured and killed members of the Belgium resistance. The OGs were the Special Forces of WWII, theyd support resistance groups and train for guerrilla warfare. Do you want to create your own battlefield tour to sights of wars from the past? 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. 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. 504-528-1944. On the outskirts of a sleepy West Virginia town lives 92-year-old Frederick Mayer. Former Director of CIA William Casey called Operation Greenup the most successful operation of World War II. 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 . You had to go on and on and on about your backstory. 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. People named Franz Weber. But he wasnt so honored. I couldn't stop writing. He dominated the sport of speed skiing from 1980 to 1985, winning over eighty percent of the races he entered. Weber bluffed his way past a team of agents that had been searching the train. Though it turned out to be a myth created by fanatical Nazis, the Allies couldnt have known that at the time. DiCaprio would certainly have had fun playing the film's villain, if his performance as Calvin Candie in Tarantino's follow-up film, "Django Unchained," is anything to go by. It was difficult to find a suitable drop point, as the obvious places were all occupied by the enemy. There was one person who didn't know, and he wasn't there the next day. Franz did Research in the Field of Nephrology and Hypertension. Mayer was born in Freiburg, Germany, on Oct. 28, 1921. 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. Franz Weller (5 December 1901 - 14 August 1994) was a highly decorated Oberst in the Wehrmacht during World War II. They didnt embark on any sort of killing spree, but they did succeed in their mission. STIWOT, 1999-2023. Out jumped a bruised and battered Mayer, who offered the formal surrender of the entire regions German Army. Learn More. 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. STIWOT, 1999-2023. In an era of fake heroes who vie for their own reality television shows, Fred Mayer shies away from publicity. It's aged well, winning IndieWire's critics' poll for the best Tarantino movie a decade after its release. When expanded it provides a list of search options that will switch the search inputs to match the current selection. They were the parents of at least 5 sons and 1 daughter. It was April 1945, and Germany was finished. Enter Hermann Matull. For three days and nights, Mayer was savagely beaten, but he kept up his cover speaking only in French. I was really training for it.". 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. See Photos. In the nomination was written, In constant danger of his life, he exhibited almost unbelievable courage, resourcefulness and enterprise. Mayer received the Legion of Merit and the purple heart, among a number of other awards. 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. Hofer, convinced that the war was a lost cause, was looking for a way to surrender to the Americans rather than to the Soviets. Sign Up. With a military background, he thought his former service would protect his family from persecution. 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. As the Germans surrendered, the Gestapo officer who had savagely beaten Mayer was taken to the very cell where he tortured him. Inform us! He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. In an article about the film in The Guardian, Tarantino is quoted as refusing to explain the "u" in "Inglourious" but does explain the "e" in "Basterds": "That's just the way you say it: basterds.". 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). Mr. Mayer died at his home in Charles Town, West Virginia, on April 15 this year. In this operation, OSS used former German nationals who were forced to flee for their lives just because they were Jewish. Their mission: to compile reports on German rail traffic over the Brenner Pass between Italy and Austria. So Matull hadnt entirely lied. 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. 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. Eventually, they transferred to Italy and once again continued to sit out the war. View Franz Weber results including current phone number, address, relatives, background check report, and property record with Whitepages. Mayer was motivated by a powerful combination of hate and lovehate toward the Nazis and love for America. Despite the agents bullish strength, the SS men brutally manhandled him, shoving him to the floor.