Return to the Reich : : a Holocaust Refugee's Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis
Book - 2019 940.548 Li, Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / World War II / Lichtblau, Eric 2 On Shelf No requests on this item
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Call Number: 940.548 Li, Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / World War II / Lichtblau, Eric
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Westgate Branch
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Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout |
940.548 Li | 4-week checkout | On Shelf |
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout |
Adult Book / Nonfiction / History / World War II / Lichtblau, Eric | 4-week checkout | On Shelf |
Introduction -- Prologue -- A German boy -- Enemy alien -- The cloak-and-dagger brigade -- The third man -- The drop -- The glacier -- "Franz Weber sent me" -- The Führer's bunker -- The birth of a Frenchman -- "Take Innsbruck" -- The water treatment -- A white flag -- Epilogue: After the fall.
"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 States--they 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 country's 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 Hitler's 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"-- Provided by publisher.
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PUBLISHED
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019.
Year Published: 2019
Description: xiii, 288 pages, 8 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Language: English
Format: Book
ISBN/STANDARD NUMBER
9781328528537
1328528537
SUBJECTS
Mayer, Frederick, -- 1921-2016.
United States. -- Office of Strategic Services -- Officials and employees -- Biography.
Spies -- United States -- Biography.
Jews -- Freiburg im Breisgau -- Biography.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Secret service -- United States.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Austria.
Espionage, American -- Europe -- History -- 20th century.
Espionage, American.
Jews.
Secret service.
Underground movements, War.
Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany) -- Biography.