Cold Open:

Operation Greenup!

An operation carried out by a special group of men many have called the “real life Inglorious Basterds,” a reference to the 2009 Quentin Tarantino film in which a group of US Jewish soldiers plot to assassinate high-up Nazi leaders.

Operation Greenup wasn’t EXACTLY like the Hollywood blockbuster. No one was catching Nazis and carving swastikas into their foreheads., Hitler doesn’t get sub-machine gunned down in a burning theater that also gets blown up - gotta love Tarantino’s over-the-top death sequences.

There was no assassination plan.

BUT - a lot of daring, cinematic, and incredibly courageous moments did go down. There WAS a cast of characters that feel more like Hollywood creations than real people. It WAS an amazing, high risk, high stakes operation that did truly involve some Jewish men risking their lives, parachuting in behind enemy lines to quote “Kill some nazis.”

They may not have been pulling off executions in the woods, but they did help give the Allies valuable intel that saved a whole bunch of lives.

The short version of their story is this: two Jewish refugees to the United States, living in Brooklyn - Frederick Mayer, 23, and Hans Wynberg, 22, end up in the Office of Strategic Services - the OSS - forerunner to the CIA, and parachute deep behind Nazi lines into the Austrian province of Tyrol [ ti-roll] in February of 1945.

Their mission: to compile reports on German rail traffic over the Brenner Pass between Italy and Austria. And make sure the German’s don’t havea. secret Alpine Fortress. Any intel they could glean there would help shape the Allies’ plans for a final WW2 showdown with Nazi Germany.

A third man also parachuted in with them: Franz Weber, a Wehrmacht [ vair-mahkht] lieutenant who has belatedly come to his senses about the tyrannical, antisemitic, sociopathic nature of Adolf Hitler and his war.

Operation Greenup ended up bringing the Allies important information that shattered some troublesome propaganda that Germans had concentrated a large number of men and weapons in the south that could have extended WW2’s bloodshed by months, leading to possibly tens of thousands of additional deaths.

Not only that, but after being captured and tortured by Gestapo agents and refusing to give any intel, Frederick Mayer also negotiated the peaceful surrender of Innsbruck, the Tyrolean [ ti-roll ian] provincial capital, to the US 7th Army on May 3rd, 1945, saving even more lives.

He even ended up getting - after withstanding some brutal torture where he gave up zero secrets - some of his captors to surrender to him.

Dude was a gutter fighter - which will make sense by the end of this episode.

Operation Greenup was one of the OSS’s most successful intel missions of WW2.

And we’re sucking this little known but very important piece of history right here, right now, on another World War, always fun to rehash the Nazis going down, military edition, of Timesuck.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

I. Welcome!

A.Happy Monday: Happy Monday, Meatsacks!

How are you doing? Able to enjoy the summer? Or - for your Southern hemisphere Suckers - getting in any skiing or doing anything fun this Winter?

I’m Dan Cummins, the Master Sucker, Whipple Class Action Lawsuit Defense Attorney, Maybe It’s Giants with David Hatcher Childress executive producer and showrunner, better parent than Fred or Rose West, and you’re listening to Timesuck.

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Go to elixirsauce.com to get some of their first, FDA approved batch, before it’s gone.

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E.Segue to Topic: NOWWWW - show.

Now we’re diving back in to World War II and covert military operations.

Operation Greenup sounds like something out of a spy novel.

I have no doubt that certain spy novel authors have taken a great deal of inspiration from some of the real shit that went down in this operation in 1945.

It FEELS like a movie. Some spy thriller.

One of the things that makes it so cinematic is its cast of characters.

Recent US immigrants, European Jews Mayer and Wynberg has just escaped almost certain death at the hands of the Nazis years earlier.

And now they were Hell bent on destroying the regime that had persecuted them and their families.

And then there was the third musketeer - Lieutenant Weber, a German soldier on the run from a death sentence for desertion.

And there was the support staff of locals who helped these three men once they left Allied support to parachute in behind enemy lines - like Anna Niederkircher, the mother of Weber’s fiancée, 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 don’t believe in God anymore.”

The men of this operation - and everyone who helped them - were risking their lives behind enemy lines to fight the biggest evil that anyone alive had ever encountered in the 1940’s in their lifetimes - a megalomaniacal dictator who led a regime that had already executed millions of innocent men, women, and children. A regime that wanted to kill so many millions more - to wipe the Jewish population - and many other peoples - off the fucking planet.

To eradicate anyone who didn’t fit Hitler’s arbitrary definition of “Ayran.”

Fred Mayer and Hans Wynberg had already escaped Hitler’s clutches once. They’d made it out. And now they’d volunteered to go BACK into Nazi territory to help save others who hadn’t escaped.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/operation- greenup-real-inglourious-basterds

About as noble and courageous as it gets.

So much yip, yip, yaw in this one.

Hail Motherfucking Nimrod - and (Mario) here we go!

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE

II. Intro/Establish Premiss:

A. The OSS:

Another pretty straightforward narrative today.

No complicated story structure needed.

Gonna go over who the OSS was - since it was this organization that formulated Operation Greenup.

Then, in the Timeline, we’ll meet the core Operation Greenup trio, and some others integral to their mission - as we march through the the deeds they did that earned them the title of “the Real Life Inglorious Basterds.”

And that’ll be our swashbuckling show today.

So the OSS - the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA.

The organization that planned Operation Greenup and in many ways, shaped what the US military and national security system looks like today.

We’ve talked about the OSS in numerous sucks, but, it’s been a minute and due the sensory-overload, uber-connected Information Age times we live in, where we have a ton of new info thrown at our brain-meat every day, and most of our brains - mine included - don’t have the ability to retain even CLOSE to ALL of it - I think they're worth reviewing.

Formed by an FDR Presidential military order on June 13th, 1942 as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - the OSS was the forerunner to the CIA and influenced the creation of the US Army Special Forces in the early 1950s and Navy SEALs in the early 1960s.

The SEALS owe part of their legacy to OSS Maritime Group operatives.

To understand the OSS - and thus many of the modern government organizations it turned into - we have to understand how things worked before there was the OSS.

The most basic form of intelligence gathering - spying - goes back to the very beginning of America’s founding. Of course it does - basically every nation in the history of nations have used spies to gather intelligence on their enemies. The ancient Greeks had spies.

George Washington had spies during the American Revolutionary War.

The Culper Ring was a network of spies organized by Washington and Major Benjamin Tallmadge.

These spies - lead by Abraham Woodhull and Robert townsend, operating under the aliases of Samuel Culper Senior and Junior, provided Washington with all kinds of info by infiltrating British Army operations in New York City, where the British were headquartered.

Through their intel, Washington learned of surprise attacks and various raids being planned which obviously helped them defend against these attacks tremendously.

They also learned that they had a traitor amongst their ranks - Benedict Arnold.

And they gathered a lot of other intelligence.

The Culper Ring could be a Suck unto itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culper_Ring

An actual intelligence agency wasn’t formed in the United States until 1882 - the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Three years later, the army created an information office in 1885 that evolved into becoming the Military Intelligence Division in 1918.

World War I stimulated growth of both units, as well as the Cipher Bureau within the State Department on June 17th, 1917.

The need for coordination grew when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation, previously entirely involved in crime solving, to carry out counterespionage activities in Latin America.

Roosevelt also created a propaganda organization with quasi- intelligence functions, the Office of Coordination of Information, in 1941. And that agency soon evolved into a true intelligence organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), with propaganda left to the Office of War Information.

https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Intelligence-and- Counterintelligence-Evolution-of-u-s- intelligence.html#ixzz6zO8eRvB1

Before World War II, the US Government traditionally left intelligence to the principal executors of American foreign policy, the Department of State and the armed services.

Attachés and diplomats collected the bulk of America’s foreign intelligence before the OSS, mostly in the course of official business but occasionally in clandestine meetings with secret contacts.

I like thinking about how most intelligence was conducted through “official business.”

I picture some diplomat just asking some government official from a country we’re worried about going to war against questions about what they’re up to, and then just accepting their answers at face value.

(US Diplomat) “So, um, are you guys thinking about attacking us?”

(Foreign Official) “No! Noooooo! Not that I’m aware of, absolutely not.”

(US Diplomat) “Okay, good. I was worried because ee heard you guys were making lots of bombs, like, SO many bombs you wanted to drop on us.”

(Foreign Official) “No! Nooooo! Definitely not doing that.”

(US Diplomat) “Huh. Okay. Are you making SOME bombs, though?”

(Foreign Official) “Uhhhh…. nope. No bombs. Zero bombs. We don’t even really know what bombs are.”

(US Diplomat) “Alright, well… just when you said that, I saw two guys wearing your military uniforms walk behind you carrying a bomb. Was that your bomb?”

(Foreign Official) “Noooooo…. um…. we just found that bomb laying out in the woods, and we’re just trying to find out who it belongs too.”

(US Diplomat) “Ummm…. okay. Sounds good to me! Thanks for honestly answering my questions and letting me gather some intelligence. Glad to know we don’t have to bulk up our defenses. Now let’s eat and talk business!”

Before the OSS, in DC, various desk officers scrutinized their intelligence reports coming in from regional bureaus and military intelligence services.

Important and timely information went up the chain of command, perhaps even to the President, and might be shared across departmental lines, but no one short of the White House tried to collate and assess all the vital information acquired by the US government.

State and the military developed their own security and counterintelligence procedures, and the Army and Navy created separate offices to decipher and read foreign communications.

Senior diplomat Robert Murphy later reflected:

“It must be confessed that our Intelligence organization in 1940 was primitive and inadequate. It was timid, parochial, and operating strictly in the tradition of the Spanish-American War.”

But then, when a real, REAL nasty looking potential European war began to loom ahead in the not to distant future in the 1930s, fears of a fascist and communist presence in America prompted US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to look for ways that intelligence departments could work together.

He wanted to advance US intelligence capabilities dramatically and almost immediately.

On July 11th, 1941, FDR appointed a World War 1 war hero, lawyer, and diplomat who had recently worked overseas in an intelligence gathering capacity, William J. Donovan of New York, to sort the mess as the Coordinator of Information (COI), the head of a new, civilian intelligence office attached to the White House.

The office of the Coordinator of Information constituted the nation’s first peacetime, nondepartmental intelligence organization.

President Roosevelt authorized it to collect and analyze all information and data that had relevancy to national security.

This Donovan guy’s awesome.

Hero boner alert!

William “Wild Bill” Donovan as he was sometimes known, was a fucking badass.

In his mid-thirties, he’d lead the 1st battalion, 165th Infantry of the 42d Division into battle during WW1 in France.

He’d suffered a shrapnel wound in one leg and was almost be blinded by poison gas.

After performing a rescue under fire, he was offered the Cross of War by the French government - a huge military honor - but turned it down because a Jewish soldier who had taken part in the rescue had not also been awarded the same honor.

When that insult was corrected, THEN Donovan accepted the distinction. He was also awarded numerous US war medals.

He got the nickname “Wild Bill”, for a few instances when he went kind of nuts in France and killed a bunch of civilians. Couple families I guess. Pretty gory allegations involving decapitations and babies on bayonets and shit.

And now that’s bad, but, I’m not gonna judge him for that because it happened during a really tough war.

I just think, overall, if you help win a war and save thousands of innocent lives, but need to blow off some steam from time to time by killing a few families, you’re still a pretty good dude.

JK. Gosh dang! That’s not how he got that nickname.

No - he got that nickname for being fearless in battle and for having more endurance and being stronger and more aggressive in battle than the much younger men he led.

He claimed not to like it, but - love this - his wife said, “deep down hie loved it.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croix_de_Guerre

Wild Bill Donovan was an energetic civilian who shared FDR’s desire to do whatever it took to resist Nazism and the danger it posed to America. and he recruited men he called “PHDs who can win a bar fight” into his new intelligence office, also calling them “Glorious Amateurs” who learned as they went.

They were in uncharted waters.

The COI, wrote US intelligence historian Thomas F. Troy, was “a novel attempt in American history to organize research, intelligence, propaganda, subversion, and commando operations as a unified and essential feature of modern warfare; a ‘Fourth Arm’ of the military services.”

The office grew quickly in the autumn before Pearl Harbor, with Donovan cheerfully accumulating various offices and staff members.

And then with the American entry into World War II, it would be their time to shine.

America’s entry into the war in December 1941 provoked new thinking about the place and role of COI. Donovan and his new office—now with a $10 million dollar annual budget and 600 staffers —were the objects of hostility from the FBI, the G-2, and other old school war agencies who thought they were handling shit just fine.

The new kid comes along, tries something different, and ruffles some feathers! A story as old as humanity.

The newly formed Joint Chiefs of Staff initially shared this distrust. They would formally form in 1947, but had informally been created in 1942 as an Oval Office advisory body.

The regarded Donovan, a veteran but a civilian, as an interloper.

But then they came around to thinking they’d like to work with him - IF his COI could be placed under their JCS control.

And then FDR endorsed the idea of moving COI to the Joint Chiefs.

And the COI became the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on June 13th, 1942, with Donovan still running the show.

The OSS then expanded in 1942 into full-fledged operations abroad, with Donovan sending in intelligence units to every theater of war that would have them.

Major departments of OSS under Wild Bill included:

• R & A - Research & Analysis for intelligence analysis

•R & D - Research & Development for weapons and equipment development

* D & D - Dungeons and Dragons for blowing off steam and having fun in the break room.

JK.

• MO - Morale Operations or subversive, disguised, quote, unquote - ’black’ propaganda

• MU - Maritime Units for transporting agents and supplies to resistance groups and to conduct naval sabotage and reconnaissance

• X-2 for counterespionage

• SI - Secret Intelligence to put agents in the field to gather intelligence covertly

• SO - Special Operations for sabotage, subversion, fifth-column movements, and guerrilla warfare

* BBBJWF - Bare Back Blow Job With Facial for, you know, for blowing off steam and having fun in the break room.

Gosh Dang, of course, that’s not true! And kudos to you, urban dictionary, for answering some filthy acronym questions I had.

Finally, there was the real group - OG. Does not stand for Original Gangsters, but - that feels right for this group. It stands for Operational Groups. They specialized in sabotage and guerrilla warfare. OG units were composed of highly trained foreign- language-speaking commando teams.

Getting into some action movie territory here. Feels like this all could be backstory for another Expendables movie or something.

It would be from this last group, the OG, that Operation Greenup would find its members.

Donovan’s OSS sent a dozen officers to work as "vice consuls" in several North African ports, where they established networks and acquired information to guide Allied landings, called Operation TORCH, in November 1942.

At its peak in late 1944, OSS employed almost 13,000 men and women.

General Donovan employed thousands of officers and enlisted men seconded from the armed services, and he also found military slots for many of the people who came to OSS as civilians.

US Military personnel comprised over two-thirds of its strength, with civilians from all walks of life making up the rest.

About 7,500 OSS employees served overseas, and about 4,500 were women - with 900 of them serving in overseas postings. Hail Lucifina! Lot of different meatsacks in the OSS.

In 1945, the office spent $43 million, bringing its total spending over its four-year life to around $135 million.

These 13,000 employees even included famous actors and public figures, like John Ford, Marlena Dietrich, and Julia Child.

And with the big, new investment in spying came new, better gear.

OSS activities created a steady demand for devices and documents that could be used to trick, attack, or demoralize the enemy.

General Donovan - WILD BILL, yip, yip, yaw! - enthusiastically promoted an in-house capability to fabricate the tools that OSS needed for its clandestine missions.

By the end of the war, OSS engineers and technicians had formed a collection of labs, workshops, and experts that occasionally gave OSS a technological edge over their AXIS foes.

The products ranged from silenced pistols to limpet mines to something called “Aunt Jemima,” an allegedly explosive powder packaged in Chinese flour bags.

Tiny cameras and inconspicuous letter-drops were devised to assist OSS agents in enemy territory.

Disguises improved as well.

The latest German and Japanese-issued ration cards, work passes, identification cards, and even occupation currency all had to be secretly acquired, perfectly imitated, and securely passed to operatives preparing for missions that could end in sudden death if any part of their cover stories went awry.

An agent’s appearance had to be just as carefully prepared. In the words of the OSS official history:

“…each agent had to be equipped with clothing sewn exactly as it would have been sewn if it were made in the local area for which he was destined; his eyeglasses, dental work, toothbrush, razor, brief case, traveling bag, shoes, and every item of wearing apparel had to be microscopically accurate.”

Damn! How far would you be willing to go to disguise yourself for one of these missions?

What if you have great teeth, and they’re like - “Sorry, but your teeth are WAY to clean and straight to blend in. So, we’re gonna have pull of your beautiful teeth, knock pieces off a few others, and really dirty ‘em all up.

Also, gonna need to graft more hair onto your face and back and legs and, well - just everywhere.

And gonna need to connect your eyebrows. And take out one of your eyes. And remove a few fingers and sharpen your remaining fingers into claws. And then pin a tail at the base of your spine.

And make the hair on your head really splotchy and mangy.

I know it’s extreme, but if you wander into Poland looking TOO human, they’ll know you’re not local!”

C’MON!

Oh MY HECK that was fun. I’ve left Poland alone forever. Gosh Dang.

You know I love the Poles.

And they don’t even look like that. A lot of my wife’s family have all of their fingers, most of their teeth, and separate eyebrows.

Only a few have animal claws for hands.

The growing number of OSS coastal infiltration and sabotage projects eventually gave rise to an independent branch, the Maritime Unit, to develop specialized boats, equipment, and explosives.

The Unit fashioned underwater breathing gear, waterproof watches and compasses, an inflatable motorized surfboard, and a stealthy, two-man kayak that proved so promising that 275 were ordered by the British.

Some of the spy tools were pretty funny.

Project CAMPBELL, for instance, was a remote-controlled speedboat, disguised as a local fishing craft and guided by aircraft, that would detonate against an anchored Japanese ship.

The prototype sank a derelict freighter in trials, BUT the US Navy had no way of getting close enough to a Japanese harbor in real life, to launch CAMPBELL, and declined to develop the weapon.

That’s a funny spy weapon for me to think about.

I like picturing them developing it - and it’s a really cool RC speedboat. But not regular boat sized. It’s a really small one.

Just a couple feet long. But super explosive.

So awesome - BUT……. you have to be within 500 feet of it to control it. And for some reason, a pilot is controlling it. Guided by aircraft, just like Project Campbell - but the aircraft has to be SO close.

So, to pull off this stealth mission, you have to fly practically DIRECTLY ABOVE the thing you’re trying to blow up. Any stealth the RC boat provides is completely fucking destroyed by the loud plane flying next to it.

AND - since you can’t HOVER in a plane, the plane has to circle, and can only control the boat for a like 10% of the time during the circling maneuver. And then it loses control while it circles all the way around again.

The most convoluted, worthless spy weapon ever.

“Alright, JIMMY - let’s set this harbor on FIRE!”

“You got it, ACE! I have contact - and the boat is engaged.

Headed towards the target, and… fuck.

Just lost it. Need you to circle around!”

“C’mon, JIMMY! We’re sitting ducks exposed like this. You gotta get that boat bomb into the dock, son!”

“You got it, ACE! I have regained contact and the boat is… SON OF A BITCH! Lost contact again. Need you to circle around again.”

“C’mon, JIMMY! Why can’t we just drop some bombs on this harbor. They’re firing at us!”

“I don’t know, ACE! I didn’t give the orders. Okay, almost got - YES - we have contact aga - MOTHERFUCKER. We’ve lost contact. We’re taking damage. And I think a seal just grabbed the bomb boat.”

Most of the weapon concepts OSS worked on were a lot better than their RC boat controlled by plane idea. When you take a lot of swings, you’re gonna have some misses.

R&D chief Stanley Lovell felt that no idea could be overlooked: “It was my policy to consider any method whatever that might aid the war, however unorthodox or untried.”

The OSS would have a lot of successes in WW2 - Operation Greenup being one of them.

And then, following the war, the agency would transform into the CIA.

The OSS trained many of the leaders and personnel who formed the Central Intelligence Agency. Their ranks included four future Directors: Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey.

Ol’ Wild Bill would NOT lead the CIA. Why not? Fucking POLITICS.

The new leader of the US of A, President Truman, didn’t like him.

The OSS was shut down after the war, and when the CIA was formed a short time later, Donovan was out.

Truman even mocked him in his diary, perhaps fearing that Donovan’s proposed intelligence establishment might one day be used against Americans.

The mood in Congress, moreover, was running against "war agencies" like OSS. Once the victory was won, the nation and Congress wanted demobilization—fast.

Donovan, before he stepped down, gave one hell of a farewell speech. He said, talking to many OSS members on September 28th, 1945, in a converted skating rink down the hill from his headquarters at 2430 E Street, in DC:

“We have come to the end of an unusual experiment. This experiment was to determine whether a group of Americans constituting a cross section of racial origins, of abilities, temperaments and talents could meet and risk an encounter with the long-established and well- trained enemy organizations…. You can go with the assurance that you have made a beginning in showing the people of America that only by decisions of national policy based upon accurate information can we have the chance of a peace that will endure.”

And then the OSS expired on October 1st, 1945.

Its successor, the short-lived Central Intelligence Group, CIG, was formed. And then it was replaced less than two years later with the National Security Act of 1947 by the Central Intelligence Agency. https://sofrep.com/specialoperations/oss-operation-greenup-the- most-daring-successful-mission-of-wwii/ https://www.cia.gov/static/7851e16f9e100b6f9cc4ef002028ce2f/ Office-of-Strategic-Services.pdf

And the CIA, obviously - is still VERY much around.

Now that we now a little bit about the history of the CIA’s precursor, the OSS, let’s go back and meet two of its finest members, Fred Mayer and Hans Wynberg, the Real Life Inglorious Basterds - as well as several other Operation Greenup players, in today’s Timesuck Timeline….

PAUSE

… right after today’s sponsor break.

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III. Timesuck Timeline:

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/operation-greenup- real-inglourious-basterds They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines in Nazi Germany by Patrick O’Donnell

1. October 28, 1921: On October 28th, 1921, Fred Mayer is born in Freiburg [fry burg], in the former state of Baden [ bahd-n ], Germany to Jewish parents.

An old city.

9,000 people back in 1385.

About 250,000 now.

Around 90,000 when Mayer was born.

Pretty place. Lot of wineries in the area. Down in the southwest corner of Germany - it bills itself as Germany’s warmest and sunniest city.

Home of Herbert Niebling! Master lace knitting designer.

You may not know his name, but let me tell you - his designs remain VERY popular with lace knitting enthusiasts today.

Oh my HECK they fucking do.

I was just talking about Herbert with some fellow lace knitters the other day. I was like, “Gertrude, Archibald - does this lace knit design remind you of Herbert Niebling!”

And Archibald was like, “FUCK YEAH, BRO!!! That’s a SICK ASS Lace Knitting!!! Holy Hell!!!”

And then Gertrude just looked up for the briefest moment, barely mumbled as is her way - and went back to her lace knitting.

Classic Gertrude!

Freiburg [fry burg] really is the home of Herbert Niebling, real lace knitting designer - but that has nothing to do with today’s tale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburg_im_Breisgau

Fred Mayer - born there in 1921. Now we’re back on track.

His father, Heinrich Mayer, had served in the Imperial German Army during World War I, and was decorated with the Iron Cross Second Class for gallantry during the Battle of Verdun [vair dunn]

Fred’s military training started early— his father regularly told him about the horrors of the Battle of Verdun [vair dunn], where hundreds of thousands of soldiers died.

His father became a businessman after the war, trying to make a living in the chaotic post-war inflated economy of the Weimar [ vahy-mahr] Republic.

Just talked about that crazy economy in the Karl Denke suck. And we’ll be returning to Germany soon to Suck another interwar serial killer there - Vampire of Dusseldorf, Peter Kürten [curtain].

Teenage Fred was a great athlete.

He was a member of the skiing and athletic clubs in his hometown and, as a teenager, sought out an apprenticeship with the Ford Motor Company.

Ford has had a manufacturing presence in Germany going all the way back to 1925. Didn’t know that until this week.

Fred was a charismatic young man with a lot of self- confidence, which helped him even when he didn’t quite know what he was doing with the auto parts.

Everything seemed to be going well for young Fred— BUT, in the background of his childhood, the Nazis are rising to power.

By 1933, when Mayer is just twelve, Hitler and the Nazis have taken firm control over Germany’s future. That same year, the first concentration camp is opened for political prisoners.

It would still be many years until Jewish citizens are rounded up and sent to death camps, but the machinery to do that has begun to be built.

Despite Fred’s dad’s heroic service to Germany during World War I, Mayer’s family was immediately targeted by the new government whose official policy is antisemitism. Fred would later recall walking home and hearing people call him a ‘Jew bastard.’

Mayer's father hoped his distinguished military record would protect his family, but his wife insisted the family leave while they could, saying bluntly: “We are Jews, and we are leaving.”

And they would leave just in time.

After a two-year struggle with bureaucrats on both sides of the Atlantic, the Mayers finally obtained their visas, and they They emigrated to the United States in 1938, one year before World War II broke out in Europe, with just the clothes on their backs.

Also in 1938, November 9th and 10th - 7,500 Jewish shops will be destroyed and 400 synagogues burnt in what is called “The Night of Broken Glass.” A cultural turning point in Germany where mass violence towards Jews and mass destruction of Jewish property becomes completely socially acceptable. https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/ hitlers-rise-and-fall-timeline

Crazy. I’ve studied these moments so many times, and still, they are hard to process.

Also - how crazy to uproot your life in this way.

We’ve spoken about this type of situation before too.

Think about how shocking and jarring that would be - to be well into your life, doing well career-wise… you’re a fucking veteran… a war hero! You’ve raised a law abiding family… and then a new, disturbing political party grows into power, and they hate you. And then one day your government is like just agrees to open season and you and your family.

Just, “Fuck ‘em! Get out! Don’t care that you fought bravely for our nation. Leave all your shit and get out! ”

And through no fault of your own, you have to start all over again in a place you’ve never been before.

What a blessing and also, simultaneously, such a terrible thing to be a war refuge.

So happy you got out, so sad you have to rebuild your life from scratch in a place far from home.

How painful for Mayer’s dad Heinrich to accept that the country he fought for, risked his life for… truly did not want him anymore. Actually… wanted him dead.

The entire Mauer family soon found jobs.

A jack-of-all-trades, Frederick Mayer would, by his own count, end up working over twenty different jobs during his time in New York City.

Once, he switched jobs when one of his bosses made an antisemitic remark. Mayer responded by cold cocking him.

Knocked him on his ass and resigned on the spot.

LOVE that SHIT.

Hail Nimrod and Praise Bojangles!

How fun would it be to punch your boss in the face?

I’m sure Joe and Zaq and Logan everyone here would like to smack me in the face from time to time. Of course they would! I get it.

Sometimes, you just want to punch your boss.

I’ve felt that way.

I’ve had several bosses I’ve wanted to punch. But I never did.

Mayer did that.

Man - what a great feeling that must have been. To land a solid blow and actually knock them to the ground - and NOT get in any legal trouble - AND feel like it was morally justified… AND then walk out in a “FUCK this place, I quit!” moment?

Dream… come… true.

I’d never shut up about it.

(me) “Hey, remember that time I…”

(interrupting) “… the time you knocked your boss on his ass for saying something he shouldn’t? Yes dear - everyone remembers because you’ve been bringing it up almost every day for the last seventeen years.”

https://books.google.com/books? id=uCRsxNekSxcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=They+dared+ret urn: +the+true+story+of+Jewish+spies+behind+the+lines+in+Nazi +.&hl=en&ei=WrEzTI7iHoL68AbB_LD- Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result#v=onepage&q&f=false

2. November 28, 1922: Now backing up a bit to November 28th, 1922 to meet another Operation Greenup team member.

Hans Wynberg was born on November 28th, 1922 in a little town where nothing interesting has ever happened that no one ever talks about in the Netherlands… Amsterdam.

Doesn’t ring a bell.

Definitely have never done any drugs there a few times.

FOR SURE know that.

Anyway, Hans is born and raised in the Venice of the North as the canal’d city is sometimes called.

In 1939, seeing the Nazi nightmare writing on the wall - thousands of Jewish citizens are sent to concentration camps this year as a “political prisoners,” and the Nazis have taken Poland now - Hans’s father Leonard sends Wynberg and his twin brother, Louis, to the United States.

The boys stay with their father’s business partner, a diamond cutter.

The rest of the family are, tragically, trapped in Amsterdam. Nazi Germany will invade the Netherlands the following year, in 1940. https://www.grinnell.edu/news/remembering-hans-wynberg

Hans enrolls in Brooklyn Technical High School and excels in his studies, particularly chemistry.

When money gets low, he obtains a job as a research assistant at the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, where he actually assists the doctor who was one of the primary scientists involved with discovering penicillin. Hans was actually present during some purification tests for the drug.

The first use of penicillin in the United States wouldn’t occur until 1942, despite being discovered in 1928.

During the sweltering month of August 1943, Wynberg joined the U.S. Army and reported to boot camp.

At about the same time his father, mother and younger brother and sister, who stayed in the Netherlands were captured by the SS, and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Hans didn’t know it at the time— he just knew his family wasn’t replying to his letters.

Wynberg’s life changed at boot camp, and he was sent on a new path that would lead to Operation Greenup, when an officer approached him and said, ‘We understand you speak German, Dutch and English. Would you like to help your country?’

Wynberg replied, ‘Sure,’ and two days later he was on a train to Washington, D.C.

Reconnecting with Mayer now…

3. 1941: In December 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Mayer enlists in the United States Army.

Hitler’s declaration of war on the US came on the morning of December 8th, 1941. Within days, Fred Mayer tries to enlist at his local recruiting center in Brooklyn.

Mayer felt that ‘the United States [had] provided [his family] a haven. I felt a need to give something back.’

But - the morning Mayer reported to the draft board - he was dismissed for being an ‘enemy alien’ for his German heritage.

The US government was a little leery of recent German immigrants as you might expect.

Discouraged but not willing to give up, Mayer’s opportunity to serve his adopted country came unexpectedly, weeks later, when his brother was summoned before the draft board.

His brother was a college student at the time, and Mayer wanted him to finish, so he went before the draft board in his brother’s place and volunteered again.

Seeing Mayer’s determination, the board agreed.

The twenty-year-old Jewish mechanic was then shipped to Fort Rucker, Alabama, where he received several months of basic training.

Graduating boot camp, Private Mayer received orders to report to the Eighty-first Division in Tennessee.

The Wildcats.

After Tennessee, Fred’s division was shipped to Camp Horn in Gila Bend, Arizona, for desert training.

And it would be in Arizona that he would distinguish himself above the rest of his recruits and change the course of his life dramatically.

4. October 7, 1942: October 7, 1942.

Hitler speaks to the German people as well as the German armed forces, proclaiming:

‘All terror and sabotage troops of the British and their accomplices, who do not act like soldiers but like “bandits”, are to be treated as such by the German troops.

They must be slaughtered ruthlessly in combat wherever they turn up.

From now on, all enemies on so-called commando missions in Europe or Africa challenged by German troops, even if they are to all appearances soldiers in uniform or demolition troops, whether armed or unarmed, in battle or in flight, are to be slaughtered to the last man.’

This speech laid the groundwork for addenda A and B of Directive 46, more widely known as the infamous ‘Commando Order’, which provided for the immediate execution of all captured enemy commandos and spies, whether they were caught in uniform or not.

How does this relate to our story?

This would now be the environment into which Operation Greenup was headed.

Certain death if they are caught and their true identities are uncovered.

5. July 1943: July, 1943. During a training exercise in Arizona, Mayer crossed the "enemy" line and "captured" several officers, including a brigadier general.

The general said, "You can't do that! You are breaking the rules!" Mayer replied, "War is not fair. The rules of war are to win."

And the general then raised his hands in the air, admitting defeat.

And before I go further, due to the last name of Mayer - I keep thinking about John Mayer.

Anyone else?

Just me? Probably.

OBVIOUSLY - they have different first names, but ever I started referring to him by just saying his last name, I’ve started wanting to toss John Mayer lyrics into his back story.

Like, the General says, You can't do that! You are breaking the rules!” and then Mayer says, “War isn’t fair, sir … especially when, you know… (Song now) it’s heartbreak warfare…. Red wine and ambien, you’re talking shit again… it’s heartbreak warfare….”

Unnecessary? Okay, I’ll move on.

Brigadier General Marcus Bell, assistant division commander of the Eighty-first, was impressed by the young Jewish corporal from Brooklyn.

Liked his MOXIE!

The next day he summoned Mayer to his command tent located at Camp Horn, Arizona.

For the past four months, Mayer had been assigned to a special reconnaissance unit within the Eighty-first Division.

As a Wildcat Ranger, he'd learned advanced infantry skills, such as infiltration, demolition, raiding, sniping, and hand-to- hand combat techniques. He excelled at the training and became the unit’s lead scout, a position reserved for only the most daring of men.

In their meeting, Bell told Mayer he was ‘wasting his time here with the Rangers’ and asked if he wanted another challenge to do ‘something more interesting’.

And Mayer was like - “Hell yeah I want to take on a challenge. I want to take on Hitler. I’ll tell you what I don’t want to do - I don't wanna keep on (sing) “Waiting… waiting on the world to change. We keep on waiting - waiting - waiting on the world to change… one day our generation, is gone rule the population…”

Sorry - that was more horrifically sung John Mayer lyrics.

Mayer ACTUALLY responds with, “Get me out of the infantry.”

Within a few weeks, a letter arrived requesting that Frederick Mayer report to the headquarters of the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C.

The OSS - it’s all connecting now!

He hops on a train and, after several days of travel, arrives in Washington DC.

Orders in hand, Mayer reports to Captain Howard Chappell, commanding officer of the German Operational Group.

A former parachute instructor at Fort Benning, Georgia, Chappell was like an all American GI Joe figure come to life— six foot two, tan, blond, and loaded with muscles. His muscles had muscles.

After brief introductions, Chappell rounded up Mayer and all the other new ‘OGs’, as they were called. A more eclectic group of desperados could not be found: former Luftwaffe [ looft-vahf-uh ] pilots aka former German Air Force pilots - Jewish escapees from German death camps, Polish deserters, some world-class athletes -even a former convict.

Sixty years later, one recruit mused, ‘The whole bunch were the craziest people I have ever met in my entire life.’

Fred felt right at home.

Chappell informed them that they had all been gathered there for one VERY important reason: to see who could hold five popsicles - no more, no less - in their butt at one time…

AND … NOT DONE - to not let ‘em fall out until they were melted down to the sticks.

They weren’t allowed to use their hands to hold them in, either. This was gonna be a man’s game.

Who could melt them the fastest?

It was the race to end all races.

It wasn’t gonna be easy.

It would require a lot of concentration, pain tolerance, the confidence to overcome a lot of cultural shame, the courage to smash through taboos much like those popsicles had smashed their sphincters, enough faith in the military to never ask WHY such a thing must ever be done, the vision to understand this was breaking new ground that could help defeat the Nazis, and the Patriotism to stick five popsicles up their asses and melt ‘em if that’s what Uncle Sam thought was the best course of action to make sure the star spangled banner would yet wave, in the land for the free, and the home for the brave.

(announcer) Let’s PLAY BALL!

Sorry - got a bit dizzy there at the end.

What was I saying?

Oh yeah - Captain Chappell informed them why they were all gathered there: to penetrate enemy lines and strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.

Yes. Yes, that’s correct.

The basic unit of organization consisted of four officers and thirty enlisted men, further segmented into two sections of sixteen men.

Each section required a variety of operatives with different functional skills: radio operators, medics, demolitionists, weapons specialists, and a team leader.

All OG operatives - regardless of specialty - had to have two things in common: ‘aggressiveness of spirit and willingness to close with the enemy.’

Chappell whipped his men into shape. Mayer was trained in demolition, infiltration, raiding, sniping, and hand-to-hand combat.

Mayer recalled that he was ‘good at it, [especially] the jujitsu’.

The men learned their fighting craft from a fifty-something, grey-haired combat instructor from Shanghai, British Major William Fairbairn [like “air”], who developed one of the deadliest systems of street fighting known to man, called ‘gutter fighting’.

Such a great name.

Would love to see some MMA fighter introduced as being a gutter fighter.

Fairbairn’s Gutter fighting style evolved from hundreds of street fights he was involved in as the assistant municipal police chief in one of the most dangerous cities on earth at the time, Shanghai, China.

Fairbairn summed it up like this: ‘There is no fair play, no fair rules except to kill or be killed.’

He added: "Get tough, get down in the gutter, win at all costs... I teach what is called 'Gutter Fighting."

Dude sounds more like someone from like, an old Clint Eastwood action movie than a real person. Some dude who throws out great cheesy tough guy lines before beating your ass or killing you, kind of like Alexander Solonik did in the Super Killer Timesuck episode.

(Clint Eastwood) “Yeah - you’re tough…. but tough don’t mean nothing if you’re fighting a man who’s GUTTER TOUGH.”

PUNCH COMBO BUTTON

(Clint Eastwood) “Hey buddy - you dropped something down there in the gutter…. your ability to defend yourself.”

PUNCH SOLO BUTTON

(Clint Eastwood) “Sorry? Did you just beg for mercy? Did you say this isn’t FAIR? Life’s not fair kid. It’s a GUTTER FIGHT.”

GUN FIRE BUTTON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E._Fairbairn

The major emphasized knife and close-combat fighting, saying - a real quote this time: ‘Gutter fighting is for fools; you should always have a pistol or a knife. However, if you are caught unarmed, the tactics shown here will greatly increase your chances of coming out alive.’

Fairbairn’s gutter-fighting tactics involved things like a karate chop called the ‘axe hand’. A single blow to the Adam’s apple with the bony edge of a hand could kill a man, he said.

Noice!

Mayer and the other OGs also learned knife fighting and the art of weapon improvisation, such as how to roll a simple newspaper into a stiletto that could pierce the soft tissue underneath an enemy sentry’s chin.

My god. That’s terrifying.

Fairbairn shaped the hand-to-hand combat fighting style for Allied soldiers in WW2 more than any other single person.

Within Mayer’s thirty-man group, a clique formed among the five Jewish refugees, including Mayer, who had all escaped the clutches of Nazi Germany: they were George Gerbner from Hungary, Alfred Rosenthal from Germany, Bernd Steinitz from Germany and Hans Wijnberg from the Netherlands.

We know Hans.

They all spoke German, and they all wanted vengeance for their families’ suffering at the hands of the Nazis. They all also shared a sense of duty to serve their adopted country.

It would be Hans Wijnberg who Fred Mayer would work with most closely. In their training, it was discovered that Hans Wijnberg was a natural-born radio operator.

He had a mathematical mind and an ear for music, which, for him, made the dashes and dots of Morse code sing.

He’d become Fred Mayer’s radio operator. His only tether to the outside world once he was behind enemy lines.

After learning hand-to-hand combat, demolitions, and other infiltration tactics, the men were sent to Fort Belvoir [bell vore], where they learned to drive tanks and other military vehicles.

Although some of the recruits looked like ‘drunken fools driving [the tanks] and accidentally drove one of the vehicles into a ditch’, Mayer was a natural. He later described his tank- driving skills: ‘I was a damn good tank driver.’

Sometimes I hate this level of confidence - it can come across as such arrogant cockiness to me. Guy talks about being good at everything.

But it doesn’t bother me in this context. This dude hated those fucking Nazis and wanted revenge so badly, he put everything he had into learning how to best take them down, and he WAS really good at what he was training to do.

And he was proud of how good he was.

And I like it.

Mayer and his unit then moved onto Fort Benning to undertake an airborne training program - AKA learning how to parachute.

The men underwent the rigorous U.S. Army parachute- qualification program, during which they learned to pack their own chutes. The training was brutal. Intentionally. It was meant to weed out any of the less dedicated recruits.

To maintain their cover as normal soldiers, the OSS issued them with regular M-42 paratrooper jumpsuits. Discipline was strict at Fort Benning and included several daily rituals, as Hans Wynberg recalled later:

“We had to wash our uniforms every night and put them on in the morning. Boots had to be polished including the soles. . . . We also had to refold our own chutes after we had jumped. The 16 risers [the ropes] were of course usually entangled because as you hit the ground and were tugged along by the partly inflated chute for a few yards, before being able to gather the chute together. This exercise (refolding the chute) has given me a lifelong expertise in untying knots!”

Punishments were frequent and for even the smallest of infractions.

One of the instructors punished Wynberg for merely looking up into the air.

He’d later explain:

“Punishment was frequent but fairly mild [twenty push-ups] for minor infractions. Since other teams were of course also training at Fort Benning, planes were overhead all the time and paratroopers were jumping out on neighboring fields.

But, there was a strict rule that we were not allowed to look at the men who were jumping.

This was done in order to prevent us from counting. Every jump consisted of a ‘stick’,* meaning twelve men who would jump, and if we did watch and count, it might occur that we counted eleven men instead of twelve, thereby realizing that one parachute had not opened!

So watching the jumps was a strict no-no.

I was caught one time watching the jumpers and my punishment was running around our training field, while having my arms out and rotating my arms while shouting: ‘I am a bad soldier.’ I watched the planes. All this doing double time.”

Holy shit! Did everyone catch what he’s really saying happened here?

Dude got in trouble for looking up at other parachutists. And the reason that was a no-no, was because apparently, back then - a fair amount of this guys died jumping out of those planes.

I couldn’t find stats directly relating to US domestic parachutist training deaths in 1943, BUT there were clearly so many that the military to forbid other soldiers from watching, so they didn’t think too much about how there was a decent chance they were going to die doing that.

Imagine that in a civilian job setting.

(angry boss) “Hey! Don’t look at that meat grinder when someone else is using it if you want to keep your damn job….What?….. Why?….. BECAUSE IT RIPS LOTS OF PEOPLE’S ARMS OFF! That’s why!

And if you keep seeing that happen, you’re gonna be a little jumpy when you use it - which makes sense, ‘cause there’s a decent chance it WILL rip your arm off. But if you think about too much, then you probably will fuck up and lose an arm. Or, you’ll quit. And then I gotta try and get some other asshole in here whose arm will also probably get ripped off. And I… don’t… feel… like…dealing with that today!”

Jumping out of the planes was a dangerous task that they had to do again and again. Equipment failure was an ominous threat, and incorrect parachute rigging meant death. During one of the parachute jumps, Mayer recalled being blown off course: ‘A crosswind caught us and we ended up in the Chattahoochee.”

Maybe a bit of an exaggeration there.

They would need to be expert parachuters because their task was to go behind enemy lines and scout the heavily fortified area of Austria's “Alpine Redoubt.” [pronounced as it looks , re - doubt]

Also called the “Alpine Fortress,” the Alpine Redoubt was a redoubt— meaning an area that a country can retreat into following a defeat in combat— planned by Heinrich Himmler in November and December 1943 for Germany’s government and armed forces.

Remember Himmler’s crazy ass from the Nazi Search for the Holy Grail Suck? And his pet, insane, occult and myth- obsessed fake-psychic, Karl Wiligut?

(Himmler) “Ve must have an Alpine Redoubt, Karl! Ve must guard it vis za Thule Giants from ze underground Aryan cities you keep saying so much about. Viz za two suns and the mole people or zum-zing. It's all so hard to keep straight. I could not do it alone - I could not hope to stay safe in an Alpine Redoubt Karl vis-out your vunderful mind.”

This plan was never fully endorsed by Hitler and no serious attempt was made to put this plan into operation…. BUT… just this PLAN existing would end up serving as an effective tool of Nazi propaganda and military deception by the Germans in the final stages of the war.

In the six months following the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944, the American and British armies advanced to the Rhine River and seemed poised to strike into the heart of Germany, while the Red Army, advancing from the east through Poland, reached the Oder [odor] River.

It seemed likely that Berlin would soon fall and Germany would be divided and crushed.

BUT - what if the Nazis could make it to their fabled Alpine Fortress?

A lot of faulty intelligence reports identified this nonexistent fortress as having enough military supplies to keep tens of thousands of German soldiers fighting for around six months.

They thought it could even be harboring weapons-producing facilities which could extend the fighting ever further.

Obviously this additional fighting would cost he Allie a lot of additional lives, and also, billions in additional military spending.

Where was this bad intelligence coming from?

The Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, set up a special unit to invent and spread rumors about the Alpine Fortress.

And everyone bought his lies.

The New York Times ran an article with the ominous headline ‘Last Fortress of the Nazis’, reporting:

"SS formations are likely to retreat swiftly southward to a region already selected as the last theatre of operations in Europe. . . . It will stretch from Lake Constance to the eastern approaches of Graz [ grahts ] and Styria [ steer-ee-uh ] with an approximate length of 280 miles and width of 100 miles, a total land area slightly greater than that of Switzerland. . . . It would be relatively easy to defend this fortress ‘for a very long time’ . . . behind the formidable barrier of a giant chain of eastern Alps. . . . The few gaps in the valleys can be sealed with more fortifications and pill-boxes dug in the rocks. . . . [There is] little doubt that the Todt Organization is already being used to the limit for that purpose. . . . We can assume that the Nazi command has started hoarding arms, munitions, oil, food, and textiles in a series of depots deep within the Alpine quadrangle.”

(Himmler) “Karl - zis is so great! Maybe ve could find some Yetis to guard za outer walls. Or - vat about a dragon? Ohhhh - an ice dragon vould be so cool, Karl! Use your vunderful mind to get us some dragons for our ice fortress!”

Goebbels sent out rumors about this mythical last stand stronghold to neutral governments over and over, keeping the Redoubt myth alive and its state of readiness unclear.

He even enlisted the assistance of the intelligence wing of Hitler’s SS to produce faked blueprints and reports on construction supplies, armament production and troop transfers to the Redoubt.

This complete and total deception of Allied military intelligence is considered to be one of the greatest WW2 feats of Nazi military intelligence.

According to US General Omar Bradly - who go on to become the first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Alpine Fortress "grew into so exaggerated a scheme that I am astonished we could have believed it as innocently as we did. But while it persisted, this legend of the Redoubt was too ominous a threat to be ignored."

This propaganda was jamming up Allied military plans for advancement.

Once the Allied armies had crossed the Rhine and advanced into Western Germany, a decision had to be made whether to advance on a narrow front towards Berlin or in a simultaneous push by all Western armies spanning from the North Sea to the Alps to keep the Germans from retreating to the mountains.

They needed to know more about this place. They needed INTEL!

Operation Greenup will soon help with this.

Let’s check back in with Mayer and Wijnberg now.

Now done with parachuting qualifications, our Inglorious Basterds are undergoing more training.

They’re learning how to survive once they got on the ground.

After learning parachuting at Fort Benning, the men were moved to California’ Catalina Island, located twenty miles off the Southern California shoreline, which had been a boy’s summer camp before the war.

I kick myself every time this island comes up in stories. Lived in LA for six years, never once took a trip to this bad boy. I’ve heard it’s great.

It looks so cool.

Dumped into the remote, unpopulated section of the island, they split into six-man teams, and Chappell instructed them to live off the land for five days on their own.

They slept under the stars, officers and enlisted men alike, in only their sleeping bags. During an initial training exercise, the teams were ordered to ‘capture’ an airport.

In charge of one of the teams, Mayer later recalled that his team ‘took the airport. [We] came in from the back. There were only a few guards [protecting the airport], and we took them too.”

Mayer always approached things unconventionally. Instead of mounting frontal attacks, he preferred taking the unexpected route and liked to use surprise to his advantage.

After they had successfully completed survival training at Catalina Island, Chappell felt his OGs were ready for the real deal.

During the balmy, early summer days of 1944, Fred and the other OGs finally got their call to action.

They received orders to get over to Europe, pronto!

The ship the took to cross the Atlantic was packed with regular infantrymen as well as Chappell’s group of thirty of America’s special operations troops. Everyone on board took part in a guessing game as to their final destination.

The OGs thought they were headed for England. That’s where they were supposed to meet up with OSS officers and get more mission details.

After weeks at sea playing cards, shooting craps, and generally being bored out of their minds, they arrived in Oran [oh ran], an Algerian port city.

Oran[oh ran] had been captured by the Allies in 1942 and became an improvised depot for men and supplies on their way to the Italian front. It suddenly became obvious to the OGs that ‘no one in Oran [oh ran] knew we were coming, and no one knew what to do with us’, recalled Wynberg.

Soon they learned why. They were in the wrong city. AND - no one knew what to do with them.

At this point in the war, very few people had any idea what the OSS was because it was still a secret organization whose existence was disclosed only on a need-to-know basis.

And REALLY unfortunately, OSS headquarters was equally disorganized. By the time the OGs arrived, there wasn’t an OSS office in Oran [oh ran] or instructions on what to do with the OGs.

What a shit show.

Can you imagine that?

You’re working for a secret organization that few know about, and then the few that work there, they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.

Good thing this mission isn’t super dangerous or anything.

I picture some OSS dude in London panicking. Getting that feeling you get when you realize you’ve missed an appointment, or slept through your alarm and are late for work - but way worse.

(panicked) “Oh God. What day is it? Oh FUCK! I forgot to tell anyone in Africa the OSS guys were coming. Oh this is bad. I think I was supposed to send them to London. (dawning on him) BUT - almost no one knows about them but me. If I help them I’ll get in trouble. If I pretend I never told them to come, though … I keep my job…. the more I think about - I DON’T remember asking them to come here… I’m sure they’ll be fine and figure things out"

It didn’t go down like that exactly, but the OSS did fuck up big time and they weren’t looking for Chappell and his men in Africa.

Chappell took matters into his own hands and learned of an OSS secret base in Algiers [ al-jeerz ]. He then obtained train tickets for all his recruits.

Wynberg later recalled the train ride there:

“The train trip to Algiers [ al-jeerz ] was slow since the trains stopped in at least half a dozen villages in between. When the train stopped, it was immediately surrounded by dozens of yelling and gesticulating Arabs, youngsters as well as grown- ups. We soon realized that they were aiming at buying our bedsheets [as clothing].

Without hesitation I joined my fellow comrades in arms in making money by opening the windows at the next stop and, with my bedsheets in hand, offered them to an Arab boy who was waving a pack of paper money notes.

As the train pulled away the boy grabbed the sheets and pushed the notes in my hand. As I sat down to count my money I realized that the top of the bunch of notes was indeed a low-value piece of paper money while the rest was merely blank paper.”

He got GOT! The ol’ let me pretend to buy your used bedsheets for fifty dinar [ dih-nahr ] but really I’m just paying ONE dinar [ dih-nahr ].

You just got Algier’d, Wynberg!

After a few hours’ journey, the train rolled into Algiers [ al- jeerz ] and the OGs disembarked and set up camp twenty miles outside of town.

And then they found out that even though they’d made it to Algiers [ al-jeerz ], they were still in bureaucratic limbo.

They sat at camp day after day, wondering if they were going to be used at all.

Chappell continued to push his men and made them to exercises to ward off the boredom. One such exercise, once again narrated by Hans Wynberg, went like this. Pepping it up a bit with some tone music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raq2poUU7zw PLAY AT BEGINNING

“In Algiers we had of course nothing to do, so our officers had to think of keeping us busy. Our captain, a bit of a cowboy, ordered us, Freddie, Alfred, George, Bernie, and I, together with five others, to march to the airport and back and do this without rations, only our canteens with water.

After a few hours of marching we decided that we would go into a village and into an eating place in this village. We were greeted with enthusiasm by the Algerian owner, whose daughter waited on us and served us delicious eggs and pancakes.

We left the cafe and pitched tents about two miles outside the village.

As I woke up early the next morning I saw a group of about two dozen Arabs marching towards our camp. I woke the rest of the fellows, and as the group arrived it became clear after much shouting and gesticulation that the father of our waitress had the impression that if you talked to his daughter, the way Alfred had, it meant marriage!

It took at least an hour of shouting (and some money) to convince the father that Alfred was not going to marry his daughter.”

PRESS STOP

Different cultures!

How nuts is that if it happened as he wrote? The daughter was TALKED TO by an unchaperoned man - so a marriage must follow!

How insanely patriarchal.

I picture this dad so mad.

(angry dad) “You think you can disrespect me like that!? You think you can chat up my daughter - and then just walk away…. WITHOUT MARRYING HER!?! What are you - some kind of playboy who just TALKS TO WOMEN AT RESTAURANTS LEFT AND RIGHT - TAKING THEIR PRECIOUS “Talk to strange guy vocal hymens”? What kind of demented pervert just chats women up and then leaves when they’re done eating the food they paid said woman to bring to their table!?!”

I also love they gave him some money and he backed off.

(angry dad) “Fifty BUCKS!?! …… (satisfied) Ok…. her honor has been restored!”

After being trapped in North Africa for months, the OGs were eventually on the move again, again by ship.

Captain Chappell had finally been able to contact OSS headquarters in Italy and arranged for the group to travel to Europe. Wynberg said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raq2poUU7zw PLAY WHERE IT LEFT OFF

“In complete secrecy we broke camp that morning at 5 a.m., got into our trucks, and headed for the harbor of Algiers; [we were repeatedly told] that we were [travelling] under great secrecy. . . .

We got aboard the ship, being greeted by the British soldiers and sailors, and as I wandered to find a place to sit for the trip to Italy, I noticed that the ship was tilting towards the shore where it was anchored.

I went to the railing of the ship as five hundred British soldiers and sailors were cheering and staring at a pretty French girl standing on the waterfront waving her arms and shouting, ‘George, George - Gerbner. Don’t leave me. Take me along.’”

PRESS STOP

What the Hell was going on down there? So many women so desperate to get the fuck out of Algiers, apparently.

In Italy, once again, they didn’t have a mission.

The OSS - not a running a real tight ship to kick this mission off.

Confined for weeks to playing whatever games they could think of and waiting around, Mayer eventually had enough. He decided TO GRAB AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR AND WORK ON SOME SONGS about all those women who wanted to leave Africa and how overly patriarchal things were.

He wrote:

(Sings) “Fathers be good to your daughters Daughters will love like you do Girls become lovers who turn into mothers So mothers be good to your daughters too…"

Wait. Wait that’s John Mayer again. Sorry. Back to Fred Mayer.

He and the some of the other men with him - without Chappell’s permission - decided to go to Allied Intelligence in Caserta [ kuh-zair-tuh] - located just outside of Naples - and try to get a mission assigned to them.

Wynberg later said: “We essentially mutinied.”

They made their way to LTC Howard Chapin’s office.

Before the war, Chapin was an advertising executive for General Foods; now, he sent intelligence agents into central Europe, including Austria and Germany.

From marketing Frosted Flakes to managing spy missions.

Finally the men made some progress. They found a sympathetic listener.

When the five walked into the office, Chapin nodded and asked them to take a seat. They took turns telling Chapin their unique stories as to why they were there.

Mayer spoke first and directly. As he recalled later, ‘I told him I was Jewish and that I wanted to jump behind the lines to help end the war.’

They spoke turn by turn and made it clear that they knew that getting caught likely meant a death sentence, not only because they were enemy spies but also because they were Jewish. Each of them wanted to return to Germany, specifically, to lay down their lives for the country that had taken them in.

After hearing all of them out, Chapin nodded and said plainly: ’You will hear from me.’

True to his word, the next day, he ordered that the Jewish five be sent to Bari [ bahr-ee ], an Italian seaport, from where they would soon be transported behind enemy lines.

Upon arrival in Bari [ bahr-ee ], they were escorted into the offices of Lt. Alfred C. Ulmer Jr., a sales and advertising executive before the war.

Pulled from the ranks of the U.S. Navy, the twenty-eight-year- old Floridian ran the day-to-day operations at OSS’s German- Austrian Section in Bari [ bahr-ee ]. The section’s task involved inserting agents into the heart of Hitler’s Third Reich – perhaps the most difficult of OSS’s spy missions.

So far, their mission results had been….. mixed.

Actually, prior to Mayer and Operation Greenup, nearly all the missions into the German-Austrian territory had been… doomed.

Which meant, of course, that a lot of OSS agents had died.

The first mission, Dupont, in which the team was dropped by parachute near Vienna in October of 1944 had been a disaster.

It was led by Jack Taylor, a former dentist from California who’d become an OSS agent. Their parachute drop was successful; however, their radio fell into a lake.

Shiiiiiiiiiiit. And I thought dropping my phone in a toilet was bad.

They nonetheless continued with their mission and found several safe houses from which they did their spying.

They got a lot of data, including the locations of anti-tank ditches, artillery sites, and more, as well as some good targets for Allied bombing raids.

But then the entire mission went sideways when one of Taylor’s men bought a local girl a diamond ring and proposed to her.

The big purchase aroused the interest of the Gestapo, who quickly arrested the team member and took Taylor into custody. He was tortured and sent to Mauthausen [mott hows un] concentration camp when he refused to transmit a false message back to OSS headquarters.

He was forced to carry unbelievably heavy loads of rock up steep hills that were guarded by SS guards with whips who frequently tossed prisoners too weak to work off the fucking cliffs at the top of the quarry.

So - NOT a great place to be taken to.

When Mauthausen [mott hows un] was finally liberated by the Allies in 1945, Taylor had withered away from an already REALLY lean 165 pounds to a skeletal 115 pounds.

BUT - he and his team were rescued days before they’re scheduled executions by Allied Forces.

At least they survived. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-dupont-mission- october-1944-may-1945

Also - after hearing this, I wonder - did that girl said yes?

How much MORE mad are you if you're getting tortured over some guy in your unit asking a girl to marry him who wasn’t even interested?

I picture Taylor wasting away, carrying load after load of rock up some horribly steep hill, mumbling like a mad man, “She didn’t even say YES! She didn’t LIKE him! I’m gonna die - I’m gonna fucking DIE cause corporal Dipshit doesn’t the know the difference between romantic interest and just being polite. They didn’t even go on a date! She just LOOKED AT HIM a few times from across the bier haus. AND NOW, I’m carrying rocks and getting whipped by some fucking NAZIS! Isn’t life FUNNY!?!”

Another mission recently failed OSS mission was Orchid.

Not long after being dropped behind enemy lines, the Orchid agents mysteriously disappeared.

It is strongly assumed that enemy forces wiped them out somewhere in Yugoslavia.

Another failed mission had been code-named Dillon.

Operatives were dropped in Nazi-occupied Austria in December of 1944.

The team got some useful intelligence, but then the Gestapo captured one of the teammates in February of 1945, and the teammate ratted out the rest of the group.

All the agents were executed.

Back in the office, Ulmer lays this out for Mayer and Wynberg.

It doesn’t scare them away.

Then, he enquires about the prospective agents’ backgrounds. He asked each man if he would kill: Mayer responded yes without hesitation - CLASSIC MAYER! -

Hans Wynberg allegedly said “no.”

Immediately following that “no", their old combat instructor Fairbarn dropped down from the ceiling. He’d been hanging from a rafter by only his pinkie toes, where’d he been hiding for weeks, staying alive by intimidating humidity in the air into soaking into his skin for hydration - a reverse sweat technique he’d invented.

He grabbed Wynberg by the throat and held a 16” knife to his stomach he’d made out of two gum wrappers and a sesame seed - and said, (Eastwood) “What do you mean you’re NOT gonna kill Nazis?? This isn’t a Sadie Hawkins dance, kid - it’s a GUTTER FIGHT.”

PUNCH COMBO BUTTON

And of course that didn’t happen.

Ulmer was just like, “Okay,” and they moved on.

He asked again if they really understood the risk, ‘Do you appreciate what can happen to you?”

And Mayer said, ‘This is more our war than yours.’

Fair enough.

Ulmer knew that things in Germany would not go well for the spies if they were discovered, especially because after the failed July 20, 1944, plot to kill Hitler, the Gestapo and the SS were given wider authority to roll up enemies of the state as I mentioned earlier in the timeline.

A reign of terror now enveloped the southern Alpine districts, including Tyrol [ ti-roll], the Austrian state where they’d be dropped.

Ulmer couldn’t believe that these guys wanted to go there willingly.

The five Jewish operatives were soon met by two fellow Jewish refugees, Dyno Lowenstein and Walter Haass. Both had escaped the horrors of Nazi Germany before the onset of war and were now working for the OSS.

Ulmer divided them into teams and gave each room a team in an old Italian mansion known as the Villa Suppa.

Lowenstein and Haass instructed them to create their own missions based on personal expertise and knowledge about German politics, geography, and culture.

Real Life Inglorious Basterds Fred Mayer and Hans Wynberg shared a room.

The men were given code names.

Hans Wynberg became Hugh Wynn, Frederick Mayer stayed Federick Mayer since it was German enough, and Paul Kröck was given the name George Mitchell.

They also got more lessons on how to identify German units and operate undetected behind enemy lines.

Some of their training was a little less… comprehensive than other training… like this moment described by Hans Wynberg:

“When we got up in the morning and before we sat down for breakfast [Lowenstein] made the [very small group] of OSS members stand up and take out our .45 calibre pistols. Then he would take out his pistol, removed the clip and bullets, told us to do the same and, pointing the gun at some fictitious German he would squeeze the trigger, telling us that that was the only exercise we need, pull the trigger when you see a German.”

Pretty direct and plain instructions.

Lowenstein also sent the two friends on several mock missions to hone their spy craft.

One mission involved their posing as German agents wearing Allied uniforms and infiltrating Italy’s Brindisi [ brin-duh-zee] Harbour, under British control at the time.

Given the task of purloining maps of the harbor’s defenses, the men got to work quickly. They infiltrated the harbor compound wearing no insignia on their uniforms. They found the people in charge and offered the sergeant a bottle of Scotch, which he accepted.

Then, just like that, they walked out with the maps. They were good actors.

Now knowing that they had the real deal, the only remaining question for the OSS was if Mayer’s German could cut the mustard behind enemy lines.

So they developed another test: insert Mayer into a POW cage with captured Germans for three days and see if he could pass as a German soldier.

How crazy.

Putting this guy in a cage with POWS who fought for the men who wanted Mayer and every other Jew in the world dead. Who knows how many of those POWs were strident, aggressively antisemitic Nazis - but - I have to imagine many of them.

How badly he must have wanted to kill some of them.

6. January 1945: Fred Mayer starts his three day mission in the German POW cage in January of 1945.

A Jewish man dressed as a German officer.

Many of the people in the POW camp were proud and unbroken, still sure that Hitler would be victorious. Mayer had to say “Heil Hitler” to the others as a greeting to keep up his ruse.

His German was solid. No one suspected he wasn’t a fellow German soldier.

It would be in this POW camp that Fred would meet the third member of the eventual Operation Green-up - John Matrix.

John Matrix was from East Germany, a devout, loving father, who had actually retired from military life years earlier, but then ended up back in combat, doing whatever he felt he needed to do to protect his beloved daughter, Jenny.

Years after he thought he’d left his life of war behind, his former superior, General Franklin Kirby, informed him that members of his old unit had just been killed by mercenaries hired by a ruthless warlord known as President Arius.

Matrix tried to shrug the warning off but then some mercenaries loyal to Arius attacked him…

Wait. No wait.

Sorry - Fred didn’t meet John Matrix. John Matrix is Arnold Swarzenegger’s character in Commando - that 1985 action blockbuster.

I was just reading from that movie’s plot description. https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/John_Matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_(1985_film)#Cast

Fred met Franz Weber. A real German soldier.

And Franz Weber was no ordinary soldier.

Born and raised in the Austrian city of Innsbruck [ inz-brook], the twenty-four year-old veteran of the Wehrmacht’s [ vair- mahkht] Polish, Russian, and Yugoslavian campaigns was a battle-tested German officer.

BUT - not a big fan of Hitler.

Mayer figured out, while undercover, that Franz wasn’t anti- Semitic.

He didn’t think Jewish people were the evil pests the Nazi regime made them out to be.

When he’d traveled through Poland in April of 1941, he’d seen weak and starving Jewish people and felt terrible for them. Wanted to help them.

In short, this guy was in Hitler’s army because he’d been born and raised in Germany, not because he was a member of Hitler’s fan club.

And also - if he deserted and got caught - they’d execute him.

Fred Mayer made it through his three days in the POW camp without breaking his cover, and then back at Villa Suppa, he told Lowenstein about Weber, saying frankly, “I trust him.”

Lowenstein agreed that Weber was a potential asset.

Weber was brought to the villa for vetting. When Weber saw the person he’d thought was a German officer sitting in the Italian villa with the OSS, his jaw reportedly hit the floor in surprise.

Mayer asked him: “Are you willing to parachute behind enemy lines with us?”

“Yes,” Weber replied without a moment of hesitation.

They then introduced him to Hans Wynberg and Fred Mayer declared that he was willing to risk his life alongside the two of them.

AND NOW - we have the power trio of the real Inglorious Basterds.

They now begin to plan Operation Greenup.

They’ll need two major things: equipment, and a pilot.

For their pilot, they found Lieutenant John Billings, a man who’d done scores of missions behind the lines to deliver Allied agents into the Reich.

“If they’re crazy enough to jump, we’re crazy enough to fly ‘em,” said Billings.

For the equipment, Lowenstein and Haass raided the supply room to equip Operation Greenup and took the following items out of storage: fourteen boxes of rations, skis, one British-type hand generator, a Eureka homing beacon complete with gelatin batteries fully charged, and various weapons including roughly 1,000 knives thanks to the Gutter Fighter training Fairbairn had instilled in them.

All of that was true except the number of knives part.

They put their supplies in three containers, each with colored parachutes. They also took along some creature comforts: four cartons of cigarettes, a box of cigars, two pounds of tobacco, and packages of condoms.

Not kidding about the condoms. Adventure can come in many forms on a dangerous mission.

HAIL LUCIFINA !

Mayer and Weber each also carried leg bags that held their personal items, rucksacks, clothing, food supplies, and even sixty small flashlight batteries for a radio.

And they also brought a FUCKTON OF WHIPPLE!

And that brings me to one more sponsor.

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PLAY FROM BEGINNING https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=vUg39QRrFzg

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PRESS STOP

Man - Whipple has been really buying ads lately. Not sure how they make enough money to have a marketing budget, but I’ll take it.

Let’s get back to the radio the trio backed - obviously they didn’t pack any whipple.

The radio was the most important item they packed up by far - it was the lifeline of their mission - the tech that enabled them to send coded messages back about what they’d discovered. Everything would be coded, including the locations.

German and Austrian cities in the mission’s radius were given pseudonyms: Innsbruck was Brooklyn; Munich, Jersey; Garmisch, Flatbush; Obersalzberg, Bay Ridge; and Switzerland, the Bronx.

They’d transposed the area around New York City onto their map.

They were ready.

No sleep till Brooklyn.

They were to get info on the mythical Nazi Alpine Fortress if possible - was it real? And there were numerous other mission intel objectives.

The mission was planned to begin with a flight over potentially flak-filled skies deep into enemy territory.

The plane would have to dangerously fly through the canyon- like crags of the Alps and arrive exactly at a pinpoint drop zone where the men would parachute onto a fucking glacier.

This was some James Bond, Mission Impossible shit.

The slightest deviation to the left or right could have them careening over the side of a sheer cliff or getting their chutes entangled in the rocky fingers of the Alps.

They first two times they planned to do the drop - they had to back out at the last minute because of weather.

But then on February 26th, 1945, it was go-time.

Their blacked-out B-52 bomber’s supercharged, quad twelve hundred horsepower engines roared as the plane plummeted down the mountain range, rushing by snow-capped peaks.

John Billings, as he’d done many times in the past, skirted disaster as the plane blew powdery snow off the grey crags, while treacherous up-draughts from the valley floor threatened to smash the bomber against the mountains. https://sofrep.com/specialoperations/oss-operation-greenup- the-most-daring-successful-mission-of-wwii/

Using lakes and other landmarks as signposts, the plane soon approached the drop zone.

In the back of the cigar-shaped interior, the three agents of Operation Greenup - Fred Mayer, Hans Wynberg, and Franz Weber - got ready to jump through the ‘Joe hole’ and head down over ten thousand feet.

The plane slowed briefly and they jumped.

A few minutes later, their feet plunged into the deep powder, all three landing within a hundred yards of each other.

For the next few hours, they fumbled through the chest-deep snow and uncovered their equipment, minus the package in which they’d packed two pairs of skis. They lost that one.

Without the skis, they assembled a crude sled.

Wild shit.

Dropped behind enemy lines. If they get caught and their captors find out who they are - they’re dead. No Allies can save them. They’re out on their own.

This feels more like a movie to me than a real, historical event. I have a hard time processing it as real life.

Six balls of STEEL dropped from the sky into the snow that day on a German glacier.

HAIIIIIIIL NIMROD!

7. February 27, 1945: The morning of February 27th dawned cold and bright around six, with the first light creeping over the glacier.

The men resumed their journey down the glacier.

It took hours to go even a mile in the snow. After ten hours of crawling and trudging, they spotted a landmark, a stone building that had been a skiers lodge before it was abandoned.

Inside, they found blankets, beds, wood for the fire, and some dough and pickled vegetables. They nourished themselves and tried to contact the OSS base with their radio, but were unsuccessful.

They spent the next few days resting inside the lodge - probably jerking off a bit, let’s be honest - and recovering before setting out again.

Greenup’s current cover story was that the German, Weber, using the name Erich Schmitzer, had captured two American pilots and was bringing them into custody.

Finally, they got to the small German town of Gries.

Weber - such an asset - knew the area like the back of his hand and confidently brought them to the town’s mayor, a top Nazi official. Weber told him: “I am Lieutenant Erich Schmitzer, and I was accidentally detached from my Alpine Corps unit. I need your assistance to get to the bottom of the glacier.”

He introduced Mayer and Wynberg - now with a new cover story that better suited this moment - as Dutch collaborators who were also separated from the unit, and they all needed to get back as quickly as possible to Innsbruck.

The mayor was more than happy to comply and gave the team a sled. It was an even more perilous journey than walking had been - the sled often got up to sixty miles an hour and a bump in the wrong place could have led to a deadly wipeout.

Fred and Hans later said it was the scariest part of the journey, but to Franz Weber, an experienced sledder, it was routine.

“Experienced sledder.” I don’t think you run into many of them anymore.

The trio now made their way to a railroad line that would take them to Inzing. On the train, they were approached by some Gestapo - Nazi secret police - who demanded to see their papers.

Franz Weber handed them over, cool as a cucumber.

If they were identified as forgeries, it meant almost certain death.

The forgeries looked legit.

They lived. For now.

They disembarked at Inzing, one stop before Innsbruck, hoping that the smaller city wouldn’t have the same checkpoints that a larger city would.

They were right.

After about an hour on foot, they reached the little roughly 1,000 person town Oberperfuss. Found a few videos - super cute alpine town.

There they went to the former mayor’s house, who was anti- Nazi and a friend of Franz Weber’s.

And he risked his life to welcome them in.

Over the next couple of days, the team moved around, hiding in different safe houses and attempting to radio their OSS mission contacts.

8. March 7, 1945: On March 7th, Wynberg first heard from headquarters. The following day, he sent back the message: “All well. Patience until March 13. Hans.”

Using a small circle of family and friends still in Germany, Mayer built a solid set of operatives to support his team.

Luis, the mayor, a farmer’s daughter Mayer met and had the hots for named Thomas Marie, and Anni, Weber’s fiancée, were recruited as couriers, as were Weber’s two sisters, Eva and Gretel.

It’s rumored by me and no one else that Mayer wrote “Your Body is a wonderland” for Thomas Marie.

“Your body is a wonderland Your body is a wonder (I'll use my hands)”

I’ll stop.

These individuals carried messages from Mayer to Wynberg, allowing Wynberg and his radio to remain hidden.

Fred eventually grew tired of staying hidden and he assembled a German officer’s uniform from whatever pieces people would give him and got some phony documents that said he’d lost his credentials in northern Italy.

Those things allowed him to go around town day and night, hanging out with people while dressed as a German officer. Fooling everyone.

He would soon make his way into Innsbruck to go after mission objectives.

For the next three weeks, he talked to different people in Innsbruck, establishing contacts with various people who were part of the local anti-Nazi resistance.

9. March 21, 1945: March 21st, 1945. Mayer is now starting to get some real information about Hitler’s legendary Alpine Redoubt.

He made his way into a beer-hall-like room for recovering soldiers, where wounded men sat around tables, temporarily enjoying an oasis away from the horrors of war.

There, the men told stories about their experiences and, sometimes, gave valuable information about Germany’s military tactics.

One drunken Austrian engineer even told Fred Mayer Hitler’s whereabouts, the most closely guarded secret of the Third Reich.

Mayer strained to remember all the details from the conversation as he wrote them on a document dated March 21st: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irdN1XAby6I PLAY FROM 26:40

1. Fuhrer HQ is one and a half km southeast of the Zossen Lager rail station/Zossen is at RZ-91/near Berlin, located in a group of five houses parallel and facing each other, with one house length-ways in the centre of the east end; Hitler’s house is the first one on the southwest end.

The houses are built of reinforced concrete, the walls are one metre thick and the lowest floor is 13 metres underground with four ceilings, each one metre thick, above it; their roofs are steep and camouflaged green, black and white. In the centre of the house group is the air-raid warning tower.

2. Hitler is now at the Reichkanzlei, where he meets general of staff [sic] nightly at 2200 GMT.

3. Two courier trains [sic], each with 24 cars are kept constantly under steam, one at Pehbrueke (2 kms S of Drevitz, R7–63) and one with SS guards at Barhth.

4. Hitler’s alternate HQ is not at Obersalzberg (Berchtesgaden) but in Ohrdruf (VJ-15, Thuringia).

5. Hitler is tired of living. He watched the last air raid/prior to March 21/from his balcony; but only the officer’s club was hit.

PRESS STOP

Then intel wasn’t wrong. Hitler would kill himself just barely over a month later.

Mayer spent the next week gathering more gems of information from the loose lips of the convalescing Nazi officers.

10. March 22, 1945: The next day, on March 22nd, Wynberg radioed back to OSS headquarters: ‘Old Dolomite [sic] frontier of 1917 is being rebuilt and occupied by Volkssturm [vowlk struhm], already called up in south Tyrol [ ti-roll]. Source Volkssturm [vowlk struhm] leader.’

The Volkssturm [vowlk struhm] was Hitler’s Hail Mary - It was a national militia established by Nazi Germany during the last months of World War II, arming men between the ages of 16 and 60 who weren’t already in the army.

It was a last ditch attempt to stop the Allies from infiltrating Germany.

Wynberg also radios that there are doubts among local soldiers that the Alpine Fortress is real.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkssturm

11. March 25, 1945: On March 25th, Fred Mayer reported the presence of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, providing details even down to the hotel the Italian dictator was staying in.

He’d give this intel just a month before Mussolini was captured and executed.

This intel didn’t lead to Mussolini’s death, but had the war gone on longer, it could have.

Mayer soon exhausted the intelligence available from the soldiers so he moved on to another one of Greenup’s objectives: getting intelligence about the rail and road traffic moving from Germany to the Italian front.

Mayer gathered perhaps his most valuable intelligence at the end of March and beginning of April when he strode into the rail yard and watched German soldiers and railroad workers loading the trains and preparing the tracks.

Miraculously, he was lucky enough to run into Innsbruck’s yard master.

‘Oh boy, there’s a lot of trains,’ Mayer said nonchalantly to the man.

The yard master replied: “Wait til tomorrow morning. Assembled at Hall, we have over twenty-six trains, each with thirty to forty cars, loaded with ammo and tanks, that will be leaving April 3rd and going straight through the Brenner.”

Also, the rail master volunteered information about how the Nazis always managed to repair their bridges after bombings by the Allied air corps.

Jackpot!

Mayer said, “Thanks pal, can’t wait to tell my allied leaders about… I mean… Heil Hitler and stuff!”

Of course he didn’t say that. He just kept listening to this yardmaster who kept talking.

This guy told Mayer that the bridges were collapsible and were stored in tunnels scattered throughout the crags of the Alps during the day to avoid detection by the ever-present Allied fighter bombers. At night they were then rolled out to allow trains to move through the Brenner Pass.

That shit’s crazy. I tried to find more info on these Nazi collapsible bridges and could not.

Mayer then wrote what would be one of his most important messages ever detailing this information.

He then moved onto getting information about German jet production, one of the OSS’s highest priorities. This would be harder. He couldn’t just walk into the jet factory posing as a German officer.

But there was another way he could get his intel.

He could sing his way in.

So he grabbed his guitar and sat outside the jet factory - and quickly got some people’s attention singing his song… gravity.

“Whoa, gravity is working against me And gravity wants to bring me down…”

C’mon! Even if you hate the other forced John Mayer references - you have to admit - that one kind of plays.

And of course he didn’t sing his way in.

The war was coming to an end and Innsbruck was becoming a magnet for displaced foreign workers fleeing the chaos and destruction of advancing armies.

And from one of his contacts, Mayer learned that a jet factory in the mountains around Kematen - less than ten miles from Innsbruck, was looking for more workers.

In Kematen, German engineers had hollowed out the side of a mountain and built an underground factory that produced the ME-262 jet. With a top speed of well over five hundred miles per hour, at least ninety-three miles per hour faster than any Allied aircraft, the ME-262 was well ahead of its time.

In the hands of experienced Luftwaffe [ looft-vahf-uh ] pilots, the plane was deadly.

Of COURSE the OSS would like to know as much about it as possible.

Frederick Mayer now pretended to be a French electrician, complete with civilian clothes and a dark blue beret.

He got papers smuggled in by the OSS confirming his new identity and biked eight miles to the factory. He was hired on the spot and for the next week, he worked in the machine shop responsible for maintaining the electrical insides of the assembly line. Bullshitted his way into making them think he knew what he was doing.

This guy was fucking good.

I couldn’t pull something like that off. Probably stand there like a jackass touching the same two wires together for hours and pretending I was doing serious electrical work or something.

Just getting all SORTS of intel pretending to be various people.

He now learned that there weren’t enough raw materials to complete production, so the assembly line was idle.

This is great news for the Allies!

He sent that info back to Wynberg, who reported to OSS that production in the Kematen factory had been idle for the last THREE MONTHS because of a lack of supplies.

Big intel win for the OSS that will of course affect battle strategies.

And now Mayer had bigger and better ideas than intelligence on his mind.

He suddenly wants to capture Innsbruck for the Allies.

GUTTER FIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS!

The message Wynberg sent to OSS was this: “If desired, can take Innsbruck and area ahead of airborne landings. Political prisoners would need five hundred pistols. Details await answer.”

Hoping to mount an insurrection now. KILLING IN THE NAME OF!

He had some key allies who were top officials who could liberate political prisoners and put troops under Mayer’s command.

Mayer proposed capturing key drop zones and creating roadblocks ahead of an Allied airborne assault – not a completely unrealistic proposition, considering that the Allies had the Thirteenth Airborne Division as well as other airborne units in reserve.

This PARTICULAR plan would never get off the ground— BUT - Fred Mayer would soon be instrumental in liberating Innsbruck.

12. April 14, 1945: Mayer, Wynberg, and Weber, along with Mayer’s girlfriend and top agent, Thomas Marie - that’s right, OFFICIAL GIRL FRIEND NOW - wonder if he has any condoms left by this point? - and several other confederates, making ten in all, assembled at 11:30 p.m. on April 14th to await the first attempt to deliver supplies to help mount a takeover over Innsbruck.

The drop was to consist of eight large cylindrical containers, each weighing up to 275 pounds and holding everything from a German contact’s camera, pistols, ammunition, a radio, and fifty gold pieces to ten tubes of insulin for a desperate diabetic Nazi who had agreed to work with Mayer in return for access to the life-saving serum.

But the plane never arrived.

The next night, in case the plane showed up late, Fred decided to stay at a nearby hotel.

Despite SS troops combing the area, Mayer managed to slip back into Innsbruck, where Wynberg informed him that Ulmer had rescheduled the supply drop for Monday, April 16th.

13. April 16, 1945: When April 16th came, Mayer’s crew once again arrived at the drop site with a truck.

But the plane’s second engine burst into flames and the bomber nosed downward before it could identify the drop zone. To avoid smashing into the mountainside, the pilot ordered all the cargo be immediately jettisoned.

The cargo landed on the side of a mountain miles away from the drop zone. All on board the plane survived, but Mayer didn’t get the supplies.

No one would find the supply containers, actually, until the war was over and the snow had melted.

Mayer went back to gathering intelligence now.

No insurrection.

And actually - he wouldn’t gather that much more intelligence either - the SS was closing in on him.

14. April 20, 1945: April 20th, 1045, just ten days before Hitler will die - SS agents Walter Güttner and August Schiffer were hot on Fred Mayer’s trail.

On the afternoon of April 20th, Güttner captured one of Mayer’s black market contacts and another one of his sources, and tortured some information about Mayer out of them.

Then, at 11 PM, these fuckers pounded on the door of Eva and Gretel Weber’s tiny apartment in Innsbruck, where Mayer was hiding.

Inside, Mayer heard men’s voices, shot off the couch, and threw his incriminating documents in the fire. Then, six men burst into the room with MP-40 machine pistols drawn.

“Are you Frederick Mayer?” one of them demanded.

“Oui,” Mayer said, trying to play it cool— like he was being interrogated for not showing up to work as the French electrician at the factory.

“Put on your shoes,” one of them barked.

And then, remembering Fairbairn’s training, Mayer suddenly yelled, “GUTTER FIGHT!”

And then he immediately turned some of his own eyelashes into makeshift throwing knives, and violently sent them through the air by blinking really hard. He killed both the Nazis before they knew what was happening.

PUNCH COMBO BUTTON

OR - ORRRR - he put on his shoes like they asked and was then taken outside and stuffed into the backseat of a green van and whisked to the Gestapo headquarters in Innsbruck.

Or that.

There ,he was brought into an interrogation room, where he kept pretending to be a French worker.

Eventually, they showed him the contacts they’d arrested and Mayer knew that THEY now knew…. he was an American.

Not good.

He now claimed to be an American agent who’d traveled alone to Austria from Switzerland.

They didn’t buy it.

His Nazi captors now cut off his clothes and discovered six hundred dollars in gold coins— bad news for Mayer.

They started slapping him, now believing that he was Jewish.

Mayer wasn’t breaking. “The more they hit me, the less inclined I was to talk,” he’d say later.

In Patrick Donnell’s book “They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines in Nazi Germany,” the author describes the beating Mayer took this way:

Since this real life story has a crime noir vibe, this feels like the right tone.

PLAY FROM 17:48 https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=iYOvAO1rAM0

“In the dark room, the Gestapo officers slapped and punched the spy in the face. His cover wasn't holding water, and so the tall one stripped him from head to toe. Despite the agent's bullish strength, the SS men brutally manhandled him, shoving him to the floor.

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.

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. Uncoiling a rawhide whip, the tall one put his full weight behind each swing, mercilessly thrashing the agent's body like a side of beef.

Then the Nazis asked:

Where is the radio operator!?! Where is the radio operator!?!

When the whipping didn’t work, the Gestapo men decided to water-board their prisoner. They brought out two pitchers of water, and tipping their captive’s face to the ceiling, they poured the cold liquid down his mouth and nose. Mayer felt like he was drowning.

The Nazis had it down to a science.

One man poured while the second refilled the other pitcher. The torture assembly line kept running for six hours.

In between beatings, one of the SS agents shoved a pistol into Mayer’s mouth, breaking his front and back teeth. They whipped his genitals with a cowhide whip, bloodying them.

PRESS STOP

Holy SHIT that would hurt.

I mean, based on some horrific ball-busting videos I’ve seen because, well, I work with Joe Paisley - I know that some dudes seem to enjoy that.

Not me.

You start whipping my balls bloody. I’ll probably talk. I’ll probably spill some secrets.

You know who ball whipping wouldn’t work on?

Serial killer Albert Fish.

The party would just be getting started for that son of a bitch.

“Showbiz! Put your back into it, bearcat! MEEE YOW! Take another crack. Can and WILL Cum AGAIN! That’s how they do it in Hollywood!”

Don’t worry about it if you didn’t get that if you’re new. Check out the Albert Fish episode if you must now.

Maybe listen to it alone.

Eventually, Mayer’s torturers they threw him, naked, into a cold, damp cell. The weather was freezing, which ironically helped prevent his wounds from becoming infected.

One of the guards, an old man, took pity on him and reached through the bars to loosen the rope that bound Mayer’s hands. He gave him a handkerchief to wipe off his wounds and offered half a ham sandwich, but Mayer’s teeth were broken and he couldn’t eat.

At the same time Mayer was tortured, Hermann Matull, another American-led agent, was being interrogated by the Gestapo.

15. Matull:

Matull is kind of an interesting figure in all of this.

He was from the same German POW camp where Franz Weber had been held and was ALSO tapped to be an OSS spy.

BUT - he had some baggage: he had bad kidneys and a tendency towards bragging, which raised a red flag. He also had a bad hand wound, though it didn’t impede his ability to parachute out of an airplane.

It would actually be his hand wound that would give him a good cover story.

Part of Operation Deadwood, the OSS gave him papers that said he was going to travel back to Germany for treatment for his hand.

He’d jump blind into northern Italy or Austria and carry packages from soldiers at the front addressed to their families, disguising his spy radio in his suitcase.

A couple of the packages he carried weren’t even from families— they were just sugar.

He was on a unique mission - rare for the OSS to send a single volunteer instead of a group.

Everyone wondered: could he be trusted? What were his motivations? Once he got behind enemy lines, would he become a double agent?

They also had to make sure his hand kept looking injured— so they got chrysarobin [ kris-uh-roh-bin ], an anti-parasitic and a powerful skin irritant that Matull was supposed to apply to keep his skin inflamed and scarred. But it only gave him a minor rash, so they had to look for some other chemical.

The doctor wrote down the ingredients in a file: ‘Menthol 0.5, Phenol 3.0, Salicylic Acid 1.5, Petroleum 9330: Will burn skin – poison.

Skin was all kinds of irritated now.

What strange sacrifices these spies made to do their work.

Matull parachuted and landed seven miles north of the town of Jenbach, Austria. From there he took a train to Munich, and reported that he thought he was being followed.

He ended up getting caught because he openly smoked some American cigarettes and lit them with American matches.

That was all it took. All that hand skin irritation nonsense was all for nothing.

He evaded the Gestapo for nearly a week when they started looking for him, but they finally captured him.

In an interrogation, Matull was shown the picture of Mayer’s beaten-up face and asked if he knew the man.

And Matull - former German soldier - saved the American Jewish soldier’s life by doing some quick thinking.

Mathull claimed that Mayer was a "big shot" in American command, and that if Mayer were shot, the Americans would kill everyone who’d mistreated him.

Beautiful!

It worked.

Matull even insisted that a man as senior as Mayer should only be interrogated only by the regional Nazi party leader of the Austrian state of Tyrol [ ti-roll] which Innsbruck was the capital of - Franz Hofer.

Franz Hofer… also an interesting guy to talk about.

16. Franz Hofer

Hofer was a bonafide Nazi.

An early leader of the nascent Austrian Nazi Party, and he’d formerly put his life on the line for his beliefs. In 1933, serving as the regional Nazi Party leader aka gauleiter [ gou-lahy-ter ], he was imprisoned by the Austrian government for his activities.

Four SA men dramatically broke into the prison to free the thirty-one-year-old Hofer and shot their way out. Wounded amid the gunfire, Hofer and the Nazis escaped to Germany, and from a stretcher he addressed the Nazi Party rally at Nuremburg only two weeks after the prison break.

Following the German annexation of Austria, he was again appointed Nazi Party leader of the Tyrol-[ ti-roll] region. During the war, Hofer’s power in the region grew to enormous proportions, and on September 1st, 1940, he was appointed governor of Tyrol [ ti-roll]

Following Italy’s capitulation in the summer of 1943, Hofer was chosen to be the Supreme Commissar in the Operation Zone of the Alpine foothills, which included Tyrol [ ti-roll] as well as some neighboring Italian provinces.

But now, Hofer the ardent Nazi believed that the defeat of Germany was inevitable.

To the east, the Russian Army was fighting in Berlin, while to the west, the Allies were advancing through Italy. America’s Seventh Army, including the 103rd Infantry Division, was advancing on Innsbruck from the west.

He wasn’t an idiot and now he was looking for a way to surrender to Americans rather than to the Red Army.

He ordered the Gestapo to bring Mayer to him.

17. April 22-23, 1945: Meanwhile, the Gestapo was looking for Hans Wynberg.

They brought Fred Mayer along for their raid on April 22nd.

When they reached the home of the farmer who quartered Wynberg, they found the spare parts for the radio, extra equipment, gold pieces, a chemistry book and three chemistry textbooks that Wynberg had been reading.

The Gestapo investigator then interrogated the farmer and his nineteen-year-old son, pressing them for more information.

They confessed, saying that they knew Fred, that Hans and Franz had left the night before accompanied by Mayer’s girlfriend, Thomas Marie.

The Gestapo quickly tracked down Thomas Marie and threatened her with execution on the spot, barking, ‘Lead us to the radio operator or you will be shot!’

Confronted directly by his girlfriend and top operative, Mayer looked her straight in the eye and winked. The Gestapo didn’t catch on.

She understood what to do, and bravely led the officers on a fruitless chase around the mountain for about five hours.

Frustrated, and believing Thomas Marie couldn’t find Wynberg, the Gestapo didn’t make any arrests.

Then - that evening, in full defiance of the Gestapo, the village Wynberg was hiding in did something truly extraordinary.

Some sympathetic villagers went to the local church and prayed that Frederick Mayer would be delivered from the clutches of the Gestapo.

There, in the heart of the Third Reich built around an ideology of racial hatred, Austrian villagers were praying for a Jewish spy.

Pretty cool, very little known historical moment.

Meanwhile, Franz Weber and Hans Wynberg took shelter at a nearby farmer’s house.

18. April 24, 1945: On April 24th, 1945, after three days in captivity, a man comes to Fred Mayer’s cell wearing a military uniform.

Fred is in rough shape at this point.

Bearded and bearing the visible bruises of torture, while wearing only an oversized tunic, pants without underwear, and shoes that didn’t fit, Mayer looked up at the two Nazis.

The man takes Fred to the back of a BMW convertible and tells him who he is: Dr. Max Primbs, the deputy to Franz Hofer, who again, as the gauleiter [ gou-lahy-ter ], is essentially the governor who controlled the region’s troops and defenses.

Primbs admitted quietly that he and several other Germans admired Mayer for his courage during the three days of torture Mayer had endured.

Then he told Mayer that he was about to meet Franz Hofer at his mansion.

How weird must all this feel?

Mayer was headed to a meeting that would have never happened if it hadn’t been for Matull’s brilliant lie, convincing the SS that Mayer was a powerful figure in the US military.

At the mansion, Mayer was introduced to Hofer, Hofer’s wife and the German ambassador to Benito Mussolini's government, a man named Rudolph Rahn.

Some Axis Powers big wigs.

On top of the large fine wooden table in the main dining area was a cornucopia of fine food.

Hofer offered Mayer a seat as the rest of the guests sat down for the meal. A large bowl of soup and a glass of wine were placed in front of Mayer, who was starting to think that this was another elaborate way of getting him to reveal the location of his radio operator.

While the other guests began to eat, Mayer didn’t make a move.

Even after Hofer and Primbs reassured him, he still wouldn’t eat. Finally, Hofer came over and put his spoon into the bowl of broth and ate, assuring him that it hadn’t been poisoned.

And then Mayer laughed and yelled, “GUTTER FIGHT! I poisoned my own soup with some tainted ear wax I snuck in here, you FOOL!”

And just like that, Hofer dropped dead and Mayer jumped up, punched off Hofer’s leg, and used it as a sword to decapitate the other Axis assholes.

PUNCH COMBO BUTTON

I WISH.

No - Mayer now ate some soup, and the men at the table began to discuss the war and eventually touched upon the possibility of Germany joining the Allies to fight the Russians. Brazenly, Mayer asked how Germany could be trusted after it had broken all of its prior treaties.

The table replied that the Russians were the only real enemy.

Mayer began to wonder— were they talking about Germany surrendering?

As the discussion continued, Ambassador Rahn said he was going to Bern and told Mayer, “I’m going back to Zurich, and I plan on contacting your people and letting them know you’re alive.”

These guys knew the war was almost over. And it sure was. We’re now six days from Hitler checking out.

Once again, Mayer sensed a trap, but he nodded.

He agreed to Rahn’s suggestion of contacting the OSS in Switzerland, since it was the only way to get a message to the OSS without revealing the location of his radio operator.

Eventually the conversation tapered off, and the dinner came to an end. As a parting gift, Hofer handed Mayer a sausage and a roll of bread, neither of which was much help considering the condition of his teeth. He still suspected a trap.

But it wasn’t a trap.

Rahn was true to his word and delivered the message to the OSS office in Switzerland, headed up by future CIA Director, Allen Dulles.

Dulles then cabled OSS headquarters in Caserta, [ kuh-zair- tuh] Italy: “Fred Mayer reports he is in Gestapo hands but cabled 'Don't worry about me, I'm really not bad off.’”

Meanwhile, Mayer was whisked back off to jail.

He’s not QUITE out of the woods. 19. April 27, 1945: On April 27th, a bellowing voice awakened Mayer in his jail cell. It was Güttner’s— the SS agent who had found Mayer and participated in torturing him.

Dropping a bag of cookies into Mayer’s lap, Güttner remorsefully explained, ‘I did not mean to torture you. I was just doing my job.”

What an interesting moment.

War can be so strange.

Why do I find it funny that he gave him a bag of cookies?

Wonder if he thought there was a chance of all being forgiven thanks to that?

Like Mayer, after the Allies free him, will be like, “I want to hate you - you whipped my balls bloody and broke out so many of my teeth I can’t even eat a fucking sausage… BUT… you ALSO give me a bag of cookies, and I DO really like cookies… so…. yeah…. we’re cool.”

Güttner then explained that the entire jail in Innsbruck was being evacuated and the inmates were bing moved to another location. Surrounded by armed guards, Mayer was marched out to the courtyard where he was whisked away by car to Reichenau [rie kuh now] concentration camp.

Holy shit. The war is ending, but now, there is a real good chance Mayer is gonna die.

Before departing, Mayer gave the bag of cookies to the old guard who had treated him so kindly.

It’s not like he could enjoy them…. with no TEETH!

Reichenau [rie kuh now] was a concentration camp established in 1941 that held Jews from northern Italy and members of the Austrian resistance.

Like many concentration camps, it was the scene of daily atrocities.

For fun, some SS guards here once forced Jewish women to walk in a circle with sand cupped in their hands. If any of them dropped a grain of sand, they’d open fire with their machine guns.

Evil shit.

Mayer found himself in the exact type of place his family had fled Germany to avoid ending up in.

Thankfully, he wouldn’t be there long.

Hours after his initial internment, ol’ Dr. Max Primbs boldly walked through the iron and barbed-wire-laced stockade that surrounded the camp, found Mayer, and when questioned by SS guards, curtly replied, “He is in my custody now.”

Primbs took Mayer back to his office, which was next to Hofer’s office.

For the first time since he was picked up by the Gestapo, Mayer was left alone while Primbs dashed out of the office to take care of pressing business.

He could have escaped, but Mayer reasoned that he was better off in Primbs’s hands than on his own.

When he returned, Primbs explained to Mayer that Hofer was about to make a radio speech to the population of Innsbruck and the thousands of SS soldiers defending the area.

Hofer was preparing to bolster the defenses as well as implement plans for the ‘Werewolf movement’, an underground insurgency to be led by fanatical SS men and Hitler Youth who would continue the struggle in occupied Germany and Austria.

He was going to exhort the population and the troops to make a last-ditch stand for Germany.

Primbs thought this was madness.

“Go talk some sense into him. Make him declare Innsbruck an open city,” he told Mayer. Mayer went into Hofer’s office, who was busy writing his speech.

Mayer told Hofer that if the Germans decided to make a last stand, American air power and artillery would flatten Innsbruck.

Did Hofer not have any regard for the lives of Innsbruck’s civilians?

Mayer continued, ‘Once armored troops break through the mountain passes, Innsbruck will be destroyed. It is insane to order a last-ditch effort. If you love Innsbruck and its people, why destroy it? You haven’t got a chance.”

Hofer looked conflicted. “I need fair treatment,” he said, referring to the conditions of his surrender. Mayer jumped on the opening.

“I will make you and your staff my prisoners and guarantee your lives,” Mayer told him.

“You’re right,” Hofer sheepishly responded.

Mayer did it.

He bluffed this Nazi governor, essentially, into standing down.

“I had no authority to take anyone prisoner or guarantee their safety, I just thought it was a good idea,” Mayer recalled sixty- three years later.

With Mayer in the room, the Gauleiter [ gou-lahy-ter ] got on the radio and made the announcement that Innsbruck was an open city and that forces around it should lay down their weapons and surrender.

Thousands of SS and regular army troops garrisoned in Innsbruck could have slowed the Allied advance and caused hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths on both sides had he not relayed this order.

The dream of a last stand at the Alpine Redoubt had now officially died.

And Mayer’s plan to take over Innsbruck was becoming a reality.

Once the message had been made, Fred Mayer went to find Wynberg, who would be critical to get the message back to the Allies that the city of Innsbruck was ready to surrender and that there would be no last stand, Alpine Fortress.

Hail Nimrod!

He found Wynberg at the farmhouse and in the BMW, they drove back to Hofer’s mansion.

After they made their way through the foyer, Wynberg was now treated to dinner with the Hofers.

How very strange.

Hofer will later be sentenced to death for war crimes. Dude was a tried and true Nazi, cool with the eradication of the Jewish race, and now he’s having a nice meal with two Jews as WW2 winds down to an end.

At dinner, Dr. Primbs discussed allowing Mayer to fly his aeroplane, which sat in a hangar at a nearby airfield. Mayer wisely said no considering the heavy presence of Allied fighters.

Wynberg later recalled the scene: “There was high tension. I had trouble putting the spoon up to my lips without shaking. I was twenty-one years old, in front of some of the most powerful Nazis of the Third Reich.”

Also present at the dinner table was Major Alfred von Frauenfeld, former Gauleiter [ gou-lahy-ter ] of Vienna.

He discussed his postwar plans to write a historical treatise about the fall of the Nazis. All at the table agreed that Mayer somehow needed to get through to the American lines to relay Hofer’s message of the pending surrender of Innsbruck.

Hofer was the first to retire, while the rest of the party stayed up until dawn debating and arguing the course of the war.

“Why did America have to mix herself up in a completely European affair?” the Germans asked them.

The Americans’ answer was that the word of Hitler meant nothing and that no country was safe from Nazi aggression.

I imagine the Germans then saying something along the lines of, “Yeah - okay. Fair. That’s tracks.”

That night, the Nazis had also hinted at the coming of the Cold War, citing numerous examples of ‘friction between the Russians and Western Powers’. “They kept on warning us of the menace of Russian domination of Europe,” recalled Wynberg later.

Early afternoon, the next day, April 28th, two days before Hitler’s death, Hofer approached the two Jewish spies and said bluntly that he was surrendering unconditionally.

With Hofer having fulfilled his end of the bargain, Mayer assumed command, placing Wynberg in charge of the fifteen- man police guard and the other Nazis, including Hofer, under house arrest.

My how the tables have turned!

Three dudes - two of them young American Jews - parachute in behind enemy lines and a couple months later - they have high ranking Nazis taking their commands.

That had to feel pretty damn good.

Mayer now set out toward the American lines to relay news of the surrender officially.

20. April 28, 1945: Still injured from his days of torture but victorious, Fred Mayer felt the wind hit his face as he drove down the roads toward the American lines to the west.

After about twenty minutes, he noticed an American outpost and an MP standing guard.

An officer arrived and used a field phone to call the 103rd Division headquarters. Major Bland West from Norman, Oklahoma, arrived on the scene and accompanied Fred Mayer back to Hofer’s office.

There, they had talks with Hofer, who officially surrendered and was promised fair treatment.

Meanwhile, Hofer had a long talk with Fred and Hans, who convinced him to make an additional radio speech telling the people and the SS and army garrisons surrounding Innsbruck that the war was absolutely lost, not to participate in Werewolf activities, and to cooperate with the Americans.

Oh, and Hitler now dies. That happened. More on that in a second.

21. May 4, 1945: By May 4th, the 103rd was occupying Innsbruck, and Mayer and Wynberg are congratulated.

Franz Weber also now came out of hiding - the Greenup power trio team is reunited!

Meanwhile, Hofer is placed under arrest, which disappointed Mayer, who had promised him that he’d be treated fairly.

He demanded and received from Maj. Bland West a letter promising Hofer he would be treated fairly. But then, while under arrest, Hofer pulled off a remarkable escape.

He managed to flee to Germany, where he continued his former trade as a salesman. Unrecognized and using his true name, he died in 1975.

He was tried in absentia for war crimes by the People's Court in Innsbruck in 1949 and given a death sentence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Hofer

22. May 7, 1945: Shortly after midnight on May 7th, 1945, the Nazis surrender.

With both fronts collapsing and defeat inevitable, Hitler had committed suicide in his bunker deep below the Reich Chancellery on April 30th, 1945. His successor was Admiral Karl Doenitz [don itz], but he saw the writing on the wall and surrendered.

https://www.history.com/news/world-war-ii-end-events

As the news of Germany’s surrender reached the rest of the world, joyous crowds gathered to celebrate in the streets, clutching newspapers that declared Victory in Europe - V-E Day.

With Germany’s official surrender, life slowly began to return to normal in Innsbruck.

The local paper returned to press, businesses gradually reopened, and Hans and Fred attempted to get their first good night of sleep in months.

American troops were now busy quickly hunting down the area’s Nazi officials, including Walter Güttner - the SS agent who’d given Mayer the cookies after busting his teeth out and whipping his balls bloody.

They apprehended him and asked Fred Mayer if he wanted to see him.

Mayer briskly walked through the very halls of the Gestapo jail that had once housed him. He made his way through the dank corridors to the cell that held his nemesis.

Trembling, Güttner stammered to Mayer, “Do anything you want with me, but don’t hurt my family.”

Mayer looked Güttner directly in the eye and responded, ‘Who do you think we are?….. Nazis?”

And THEN, when Güttner let his guard down, he yelled, “GUTTER FIGHT!” and pulled out a bag of stale, rock-hard cookies, and beat him to death with them.

Of course not. He turned his back on Walter Güttner for the last time.

Not sure what happened to Walter when it came to war crimes punishment. Not a big enough Nazi to rank much being written about him, I guess.

23. May 17, 1945: On May 17th, Hans and Fred say goodbye to their friends in Innsbruck and prepared to head out.

Fred embraced Thomas Marie one last time - she’s staying and he’s heading back to America.

Mayer and Wynberg shook hands with Franz Weber.

A few days later, Weber and his fiancée travelled back to the glacier and located the white silk from Operation Greenup’s parachute canopies, which she used to make her wedding dress.

I fucking LOVE that. Hail Lucifina! That’s so great.

Before departing Innsbruck, Hans tapped out a final Morse code message: “Gadsen to base; close my circuit net, taking over this morning. Many thanks for three months cooperation. Best Regards from Fred and Hans.”

The duo they traveled to Salzburg, Austria, where the OSS had established a new headquarters, and where they reunited with the other Jewish OSS recruits.

Meanwhile, as American troops were liberating concentration camps, the men learned of their own families fates. Wynberg learns that his mother, father, sister, and little brother were killed at Auschwitz.

So damn tragic.

After his epic victory. After saving so many lives - the worst possible news.

The war now over - the men now head back to America to live the lives of ordinary civilians. They’d been sworn to secrecy, which meant that they didn’t receive any recognition upon returning home.

So what happened to them and some of the other characters involved in Operation Greenup?

Thomas Marie was happily married after the war and awarded the Austrian Liberation Medal for her heroic sacrifice during the war.

Dyno Lowenstein became the owner of a small graphics business and wrote several books on graphing techniques.

Hermann Matull got his last payment for his duties and was never heard from again after 1945.

After retiring from the military as a captain, John Billings became a commercial pilot. At age 96 in 2019, he STILL piloted a Cessna Cutlass. Most of the time he flied “angel flights” transporting people in need of medical attention.

An article just came out on him a month ago. He’s alive and well in Falls Church, Virginia.

He just wrote a book called “Special Duties Pilot: The Man who Flew the Real 'Inglorious Bastards' Behind Enemy Lines.”

You can preorder it - it comes out on August 31st.

I LOVE IT. https://www.kcentv.com/amp/article/life/heartwarming/ pilot-96-still-in-love-with-flying-serving-his-country/ 287-0dcf28c6-e692-4f59-9419-6356acc32f4b https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/flying-97- autobiography-recounts-wwii-pilots-life-77919973

Dr. Max Primbs spent several months behind bars following the end of the war before returning to his successful plastic surgery practice.

After the war, Mayer became friends with Primbs and visited him several times while working in Europe.

Hans Wynberg built himself a distinguished career; he received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, taught at the University of Minnesota and Tulane University, and eventually returned to the Netherlands, to chair the chemistry department at the University of Groningen [ grow-ning-uhn;.

He authored hundreds of papers and supervised a group of Ph.D. students who became leaders in their fields.

Wynberg also started Syncom, a company specializing in organic synthesis.

He returned to the Netherlands in his later years, and died in May 25, 2011, at the age of 88. https://www.grinnell.edu/news/remembering-hans-wynberg

Fred Mayer was discharged from the OSS in 1945 and received the Purple Heart and Legion of Merit. After the war, he worked at General Motors and later worked for Voice of America as a supervisor where he travelled the world.

In 1990, the Austrian government awarded him the Tyrolean [ ti-roll ian] Order of the Eagle in Gold.

He died on April 15th, 2014, in Charles Town, West Virginia.

He was 94.

He’d volunteered for Meals on Wheels in Charles Town for more than three decades, and he was delivering meals in the area until just a few weeks before his death.

He was survived two daughters and a long time partner, Virginia Nash.

In an interview at his home two months before his death, he said he had never really liked being called a hero.

But he sure was, wasn’t he?

His former OSS pilot, Billings, interviewed shortly after his death said “I was in awe of him. He was born without the fear gene. He feared nothing, and he was able to be whatever he needed to be.”

Or course he feared nothing - he was a motherfucking GUTTER FIGHTER OF THE FIRST DEGREE!

Hail Nimrod you real Inglorious Basterd. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/world/europe/frederick- mayer-jew-who-spied-on-nazis-after-fleeing-germany-dies- at-94.html https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2016/04/15/ inglorious-bastard-frederick-mayer-has-died/

Let’s get out of this timeline.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE OUTRO

IV. Recap

Operation Greenup!

Such a crazy story.

I hope you liked it as much I did.

It all began when Fred Mayer, an immigrant who had initially been denied entry to the US Army, enlisted AGAIN and was finally let in.

Then - based on how well he did in training, his supervisors determined that he’d be a good candidate to join the OSS, the forerunner to the CIA.

Shortly thereafter, he met Hans Wynberg, who would become Operation Greenup’s Radio operator, and then the duo was joined by Franz Weber in Italy, a former Nazi and current POW who decided to become a double agent and help them.

And the real life Inglorious Basterds were born.

After months of training and waiting around, including learning how to parachute from airplanes, they finally got their mission: to investigate the area known as the Alpine Redoubt, the place where it was thought that Hitler would try to lead the Third Reich from when Berlin fell.

Germany’s propaganda campaign about the Alpine Redoubt had been so effective that no one really knew what was going on there, impeding the Allies’ ability to successfully launch the final military campaigns to close out World War 2.

Operation Greenup would get that info— and more - and eventually even liberate the city of Innsbruck. But not before Fred Mayer pretended to be a French electrician, was discovered by the Gestapo, subjected to some horrific torture, and even briefly placed in an Austrian concentration camp.

A combination of bravery and extreme luck saved him: another OSS operative, Hermann Matull, told the Gestapo that Fred Mayer was a high-ranking American official and they there would be serious consequences for his captors if he was killed.

So much bravery and quick-thinking in this story.

Fred Mayer, especially - what a legendary dude.

And Fred, Hans, Franz wouldn’t have been able to do what they did without the cooperation of so many people living in Nazi Occupied Territory who were also NOT fans of Hitler.

These people risked being labeled traitors and being executed or sent to concentration camps for helping the OSS agents.

Some of them, like Thomas Marie, directly assisted OSS operations.

Others, at great risk to themselves, housed the spies.

Some were their friends and cared for them, even prayed for them.

Interesting to me that even senior Nazi officials who had conversations with Fred and Hans to facilitate Innsbruck’s surrender treated them with respect and dignity and clearly liked them.

They were clearly some very special meat sacks.

Let’s look at their amazing story a few times, in today’s top 5 takeaways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS INTRO V. Top Five Takeaways:

1. Number one! Fred Mayer, Hans Wynberg, and Franz Hofer went behind enemy lines by parachuting into Nazi-occupied Austria and traveling on foot for days before reaching the town of Innsbruck, where Fred would sneak into a factory, talk with rail yard officials, and enter a German soldiers’ clubhouse to get important information for the OSS.

2. Number two! Operation Greenup was just one of the OSS’s missions, the wartime intelligence agency that was the forerunner to the CIA.

3. Number three! Fred Mayer was tortured for days— his genitals whipped, his teeth broken, and even waterboarded. Then he was left in a freezing cell.

And none of that broke him.

And then when he had a chance to get some revenge on the Nazi that tortured him, he didn’t stoop to his level.

Honorable man.

4. Number four! Also called the “Alpine Fortress,” the Alpine Redoubt was a redoubt— meaning an area that a country can retreat into following a defeat in combat— planned by Heinrich Himmler in November and December 1943 for Germany’s government and armed forces.

And it was also a big lie - that Operation Greenup uncovered. The Nazis would make no heavily fortified, well-armed, last stand.

5. Number five! New info! We mentioned some of the other people who were involved in OSS operations, some of them Hollywood actors. Like Marlena Dietrich.

In 1920s Berlin, Marlena had won fame for her acting in German silent movies. Her performance as Lola-Lola in the 1930 movie The Blue Angel brought her international acclaim and a contract with Paramount Pictures and she appeared in dozens of movies.

But she was also a spy and vehemently opposed to Hitler.

In 1937, Dietrich – who was then a German citizen – was approached by Nazi representatives and asked to star in propaganda films for the Third Reich.

Adolf Hitler himself allegedly personally requested that she support the cause.

Dietrich, who was staunchly anti-Nazi, refused Two years later, she renounced her German citizenship and applied for U.S. citizenship – and the Nazis branded her as a traitor.

In British wartime radio broadcasts sent over German airwaves, Dietrich spoke directly to her former countrymen, saying: “Hitler is an idiot.”

Hail Marlena!

Dietrich also worked with the OSS to record a series of anti-Nazi albums, using propaganda to weaken the morale of Nazi troops. The broadcasts of these songs and interviews were meant to create tension between the Axis Powers.

And it worked.

The US Strategic Bombing Survey “discovered that the programs were just as devastating to German morale as an air raid.” As these broadcasts continued, more and more Germans and Italians began to doubt Nazi and fascist propaganda.

Pretty cool how you can make a big difference during a war without ever picking up a weapon.

If she did that kind of social activism today, how many fans would be bitching about how she should just stick to singing songs and making movies?

I’m sure many people back then said the same thing. But she didn’t listened and helped the Allies defeat her home country.

She was a lot more than an internationally famous sex symbol.

https://www.uso.org/stories/2414-marlene-dietrich-most- patriotic-women-in-world-war-ii

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

VI. Final Announcements

A.Episode has been sucked!:

Operation Greenup - SUCKED!

Hope you enjoyed that Gutter Fight. God I love saying that.

B.Thank you to Timesuck Team:

Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions Team for all the help in making Timesuck! Queen of Bad Magic Lynze Cummins, Reverend Doctor Joe Paisley, Sophie “Fact Sorceress” Evans for running point on this week’s research, Bit Elixir for continuously refining the Timesuck app, and Logan “Art Warlock” Keith running BadMagicMerch.com and working on our socials along with Liz Hernandez, and being the visual artist for all things Bad Magic!

Thanks to all of those who’ve joined the new Cult of the Curious private Facebook group - Cult of the Curious 2 - or one of the many online subgroups out there. Yip yip yaw!

Thanks Liz Hernandez and her All Seeing Eyes running our Cult of the Curious Facebook page.

Thanks also to Beefsteak and the “Mod Squad” running Discord!

You can link to the Timesuck Discord group through the Timesuck app.

C.Next Episode Preview: Next week on Timesuck, we go full

CULT! CULT! CULT! with Dwight York and the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors.

Once a simple suburban kid from New Jersey, Dwight York, AKA Malachai York, AKA Doctor Love, AKA pretty much any bullshit name you could think of, would rise to power as a cult leader, adding more chaos to an already chaotic time and place: New York City in the 1970s.

York led a group in Brooklyn in the 1970s called the Ansaru Allah Community, or the AAC, and that’s where he got his first taste of what it felt like to be a cult leader.

He would then change locations and names, eventually settling on the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors.

Called by the Southern Poverty Center a “Black supremacist cult,” the Nuwaubians under Dwight York taught that Adam and Eve (or Hawwah) were Nubian. And that white people were devils, which according to Dwight York was evident in the word Caucasian, which he said came from "Carcass-Asian" meaning "Degenerated Asian.”

Interesting when people read shit like that into language.

Dude taught so much crazy shit.

Whenever he needed something new to keep his followers in line, he gave the cult something new and crazy to focus on - like when they became Egyptian UFO-believers.

Finally, in the early 2000s, the law caught up to him. When it did, York was living on a massive Egyptian theme-park-like compound called Tama-Re in Georgia with a couple hundred followers.

And among those followers were children.

Children Dwight York was abusing basically all of them. Of course he was. He’d eventually be charged with hundreds of counts of child abuse— so many that the prosecution had to knock some off because they thought the jury would find it unbelievable that one person could do all that.

But Dwight York did.

So much crazy coming next week here on Timesuck.

D.Segue to Timesucker Updates:

And now, time for this week’s Timesucker Updates!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO

VII.Timesucker Updates

1. Let’s start with some comedy.

Our first Update this week comes from Cummins Law victim and funny Sack, Paul Albano. Paul writes:

Hey Peckerhead, permission to swear?

250 some-odd episodes and Cummins Law finally, and epically, rammed me hard.

A fair amount of setup here; (did I use that correctly? I never know when to use the semicolon...) my son's daycare is near my office so I picked him up to bring him to his Pediatrician's office for an appointment.

My wife met me there.

I pulled in, shut off the truck, and started to get out when she waved me down walking from her Jeep. Pandemic and all they are still not allowing people to stay in the waiting room, so, you have to wait in our vehicle and they call you.

She decided to come sit in my truck since the baby was in there.

She got in and I started the truck back up to get the AC blowing. In what can only be considered divine intervention the bluetooth kicked on and started playing the HP Lovecraft suck at the exact moment the Pediatrician's office called her phone to tell us to come in.

She answered her phone on speaker just as you said "You gotta be careful what you jerk off to". It is hard to define the roller coaster of emotions in that moment as I tried to decipher the pregnant pause on the other end of the phone and the simultaneous look of utter embarrassment, shock, and awe from my wife.

You know, on one hand...well done, Cummy boy, well done. But, on the other hand, now I have to navigate explaining to my wife what exactly I was listening to AND make eye contact with the poor front desk attendant in this Pediatrician's office...all-in-all 3 out of 5 stars, would get Cummins Lawed again.

Keep up the good work. -Paul.

2. And now a quick and funny pronunciation update coming in from FURIOUS SUCKER Nathan Fessler. Nathan writes:

Dear Suck Masterflex,

I am not good a pronouncing things so I am sympathetic to your mush mouth, buttt this one is out of hand. I’ve heard you mess it up every time it comes up and idk how it hasn’t been pointed out. Any town that ends in -shire in the UK or US is NOT pronounced Shy-er like the motherfucking hobbits. I know it’s spelled the same, but it’s pronounced SHURE you know like the fucking state New HampSHIRE. Anyways that was bothering me. I just never will understand why ppl in the US think the syllable changes when you go to the UK.

Your Loyal timesucker, Nate

Thank you, Nate! I don’t understand either. Fucking English. It really is complicated. Didn’t even realize I was doing that. New Hampshire is a great point of comparison. And the Hobbit reference killed me.

3. Now another update coming from the UK. From Sweet Sucker Mark Burrows. Mark writes:

SIR Dan Dan the Suck Master man, Lord of all who sucketh!!

Greetings from Worcester, England, not too far from the West's city of Gloucester. Sorry in advance for the long message.

I'd like to start by saying how great this week's suck was. You did us brits proud apart from one reoccurring pronunciation, shire (we say it as sheer). I found out so much more than I had previously known.

* interesting it can be sure and sheer.

I've been listening to Timesuck for almost a year now and LOVE it!!

I've been working my way through the episodes. Being a postman means I can get my headphones on and get at least 1 and a half episodes a day in my lugholes!!

This week has been an earbashing like no other.

This week so far I've listened to The toybox killer, Pennhurst Hospital, Albert Fish (Showbiz), the 100 drunk as f**k special and this week's fantastic British installment which left me a bit red faced......

Whilst listening to the episode, a group of elderly ladies were out for their weekly walk. We always stop for a quick chat so I paused the episode. Suddenly, mid sentence, an advert for Whipple starts blasting out of my phone. As I frantically try to unlock my phone to hit pause the ladies stand straight faced. The ad ends and I manage to hit pause. Whilst most of the women look gobsmacked, one little old lady says, "they won't sell many of them with all that swearing"

I could have told them it was a podcast but explaining what a podcast is would take too long!! So thank you, you beautiful Bastard!

On the episode in which you sucked yourself you gave no top 5 takeaways. I'd like to add some if you don't mind.....

1. We were all little shits when we were young, but take those experiences and make yourself better. 2. If you want something enough, work hard, believe in yourself and reach your goals. 3. Humour is Fantastic, if you don't have any GET SOME meatsacks! 4. Stay inquisitive, keep asking questions and use your knowledge for good! 5. Keep fucking sucking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could go on all day but I'll cut it short...

One last thing, my kids love the piney song (I have the original as my ringtone). They're not sure what a butt baby is but they don't ask luckily. They even made up a version for when our Lhasa Apso pup, Joy, eats our leftover curry and has an orange beard!!

Could you please give a shout out to my wife Amy who I always update with recent episodes (she was nearly sick when I told her about Jupiter's twist in the Spanish inquisition ep), and my kids Lewis, Ruby and little Timmy and please give them a special Piney hoedown?!!

Take care to all you Timesuck listeners and thank you to you Dan, your family and the whole team for a great Podcast

Hail Nimrod, praise Bojangles, Triple M and curse you Lucifina, sometimes!!

Kindest regards,

Mark Burrows

Thank you, Mark! What a thoughtful message. That was very kind. Glad I got most of my UK pronunciations correct.

And Lewis, Ruby and little Timmy - (Piney melody) Lookee hear now, you gotta good dad, goodest dad that you ever did had - be glad he’s not Fred West……

Yikes!

Thanks again, Mark.

4. Now an entertaining message related to the PT Barnum Suck from funny sucker Ashley Rahls. Ashley writs:

Hey Dan and the Team,

I was listening to the PT Barnum suck this morning where you talk about tellers of tall tales and I thought you might like to hear my experience with the banquet chef at the venue I work at.

On the surface, he seems like a normal guy but wouldn't ya know it: he was in the CIA AND the FBI. He's constantly running out to "luncheons" to meet with them because they so desperately want him back on duty.

Apparently, he left to be with his true love, Sports Illustrated model, Christy Brinkley but he HAD TO break off their engagement because she was demanding a foursome with her quote "sexy model lady friends" to which he was morally opposed to. Heartbreaking. Don't you hate it when that happens?

Mind you, this guy is around 60 years old, lives with his parents, and has the biggest beer belly in Wisconsin.

But that hasn't stopped him from being a red belt in Brazilian jiu- jitsu (it's nearly impossible to accomplish, check the wiki page) AND was the PERSONAL BODYGUARD to none other than heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson, to whom he is a great personal friend and is his "In Case Of Emergency" contact.

Incredible.

I hope you got a little laugh out of that. Thanks for all that you do. I recommend you to everyone. Keep on sucking and keep your tales tall, but believable.

-- Ashley Rahl

Lucky you, Ashley! To get to work with such a natural born storyteller. He would be so bored by today’s story - Mayer and Wijnberg didn’t date one supermodel in that story. Or have a single foursome they spoke of.

You should start saying, “Weird - me too!” to whatever claims he makes. You also dated Christie Brinkley. You’re also being recruited by the CIA and FBI to re-enlist.

5. Now for more comedy. Another Cummins Law Victim, poor Sucker Thomas Larsen, writes:

You son of lucifina!

You got me with a Cummins law moment!

I thought I was immune to that but it turns out where there is WHIPPLE! there is a way. I recently moved to a different state and even got the chance to meet you in person at the suck dungeon.

I was the big ass ed kemper looking dude that probably smelled like road trip swamp ass (sorry about that) and at my new job they are pretty relaxed about using earbuds to listen to music.

Well I was listening to your H.P. Lovecraft suck and heard my "battery low" warning, but was busy with my hands, thinking it would just pause the episode. It did, but NIMROD HAD OTHER PLANS! My phone must have turned the screen on and i pocket played the episode just in time to hear from my pocket "STOP SUCKING YOUR MAMAS DICK YOU BASEMENT DWELLING MOUTH BREATHER!" at FULL VOLUME! Needless to say I got some odd looks from my new co-workers. Luckily after a quick explanation we all laughed it off.

Love the podcast, I listen to them all, making me a Bad Magician! Keep up the suck, 3 outa 5 stars wouldn't change a thing.

Thanks, Thomas! I do not remember you smelling - all good. Glad you work with some cool co-workers to handle that one.

They could’ve easily NOT enjoyed your explanation.

Hope you’re well!

6. And finally, an advice request from turning shit around Whipple Drinker Nickolas Archdeki. Nickolas writes:

Hello Master Sucker and bad magic crew. I write to you today seeking the guidance of our glorious Lord Nimrod. I've suffered from very strong depression and cut myself off from most everyone.

I've taken solace in food and all things fatty BUT NO MORE!!

Listening to your podcasts and your openness about mental issues I decided it's time to kick this in the butt. So I'd like to ask for your wisdom, what's the best way to shed these pounds and attempt to rebuild relationships with not only others but with myself?

And thank you for all you have done you've kept me from some awful things and guided me back from a very dark place and for that I'm forever in your debt. From a very grateful Space lizard Keep on sucking.

What a nice message, Nickolas! So happy you’re making some positive changes.

I’m not counselor, or trainer, but I think a big key with both rebuilding relationships and your body, is patience.

Don’t look for immediate results. Focus on small victories. Understand not every relationship is meant to be rebuilt and not every body is gonna look like it should be on the cover of Muscle and Fitness.

And that’s okay.

Pick a healthy eating plan and activity that’s right for you. Talk to an expert about which one that would be, and find one that resonates with you - there is no ONE way.

And maybe throw away the scale. Focus instead on how you feel and how your clothes fit.

Celebrate small victories. You could only speed walk for two minutes, but now you can do five? Feel good about that.

And know that everyone has setbacks on their journeys, it’s part of the process. Some days you’ll move backwards - and that’s okay. Play the long game. And lean in to enjoying small victories.

I hope that somewhat generic advice helps.

Reasonable goals. I’m all about reasonable goals. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you don’t have to transform you’re whole fucking life in one either.

Oh - and love yourself.

Hail Nimrod you beautiful bastard.

B.THANK YOU for messages

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES OUTRO

VIII.Goodbye!

A.Goodbye!:

1. Thanks for listening to another Bad Magic Productions Podcast, Meatsacks.

Please try not to get into any gutter fights this week - they’re always dangerous. And keep on sucking.

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