Frederick “Freddy” Mayer is a slight, white-haired gentleman of 86—not exactly someone you would imagine to be a former spy. However, his youthful exploits behind German lines during World War II are the stuff of books and movies. As a matter of fact, his story has been told in a History Channel movie, in serious volumes on World War II history, and even in Blue Book Magazine, a 1940s pulp adventure magazine.

Mayer was born into a Jewish family in 1921 in Freiberg, Germany, where his father owned a hardware store. As a child he loved tinkering with mechanical things. He had never wanted to be anything except an auto mechanic, and as a teenager he entered an apprenticeship program for diesel-automobile mechanics.

Following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, conditions grew increasingly difficult for Jews, so in 1938 the family decided to leave the country. Mayer noted that it was difficult to get visas to enter the United States. Fortunately the family had relatives here who were able to put up a bond for their entry. Although Mayer was just 17, his apprenticeship served him well. He was quickly able to get work as a mechanic and soon found a good job with General Motors in New York.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Mayer was eager to join the fighting and tried to enlist in the military. But because he was not yet a citizen, he was rejected. “They told me to wait to hear from the draft board,” he recalled.

In 1942 he was drafted into the 81st Infantry Division and sent to Camp Rucker, Ala. He tried to get assigned to mechanical duties, with no luck. He volunteered for training as a ranger and was sent to Tennessee in 1943, then to Arizona.

By this time Mayer was a squad leader. In one of their many war games, Mayer’s unit “captured” the commanding general, Brig. Gen. Marcus Bell, and his staff, bringing Mayer to the attention of the general. The general called him in and asked him if he wanted to do “something more interesting.”

Mayer’s fluency in German, French, and Spanish made him a natural for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor to the CIA. He was put into the First Operational Group, which later became the Green Berets, and sent to North Africa, then to Italy. Bored and longing for action, Mayer went to OSS headquarters, pled his case to a colonel, and was deemed suited for intelligence work.

He received intelligence training in Italy. Although German was Mayer’s native language, he had been living in the United States for several years and was out of touch with the latest German slang. To catch him up on it, he was placed, in the guise of a German, into a stockade with German prisoners of war. The deception went undetected. Mayer would soon become part of a three-man team that would be sent to spy behind German lines.

During his training Mayer was quartered with Franz Weber, a deserter from the Austrian army who had enlisted on the American side. Soon becoming convinced that Weber was truly anti-Nazi, Mayer advised his unit that, “He was a good man to work for us.” The third member of their team was their radio operator, Hans Wynberg, a young Dutch national living in the United States, who had also been drafted.

In the dead of winter, in February 1944, the three men parachuted into Nazi-occupied Austria at night, landing in the mountains in hip-deep snow. They made their way to a village and eventually to Innsbruck, where Weber had family connections that could provide safe houses.

With help from a sympathizer in an Innsbruck hospital, Mayer obtained a German uniform and hospitalization paperwork. He passed himself off as a German officer recovering from wounds, with all of his other papers lost in battle. He later boldly entered the German officers’ club and took a room there, and his identity was never questioned. “I drew rations,” he laughed, “and I even had my own orderly.”

Mayer spent his days wandering around the area, watching and listening. He spent his evenings eating and drinking at the officers’ club, often picking up useful information from German officers whose tongues were loosened by drink.

“I reported troop movements, train movements and political happenings, like when Mussolini visited a village. But the main reason we were there was to find out how arms were entering Italy from Germany, said Mayer.”

Aerial photos had shown that bridges were out, but Mayer learned that German engineers had built portable bridges hidden in tunnels to let trains pass at night.

In one of his most important pieces of information, Mayer learned from a train master that 26 complete trains containing arms were going to Italy. He was able to relay that information, and the Air Force blew up the trains. This one incident is believed to have shortened the war by six months.

Mayer’s bosses wanted to know the status of the Germans’ jet production, so Mayer took on another identity. Many foreign workers were being used in arms factories. Mayer passed himself off as a French electrician and went to work maintaining equipment in a Messerschmitt factory hidden underground in the mountains. As it turned out he discovered that there were only five jet fighters completed in the Innsbruck factory. Production was actually shut down in the factory because there was no material to work with.

Interestingly, Mayer used his own name when posing as both a German and a Frenchman. He explained that both his first and last names are very common in several countries, and that simply changing the way they are pronounced made his name French. He said that this was useful because if he was caught off guard, awakened from sleep for example, and interrogated, he would not have to stop and think about what name he was using.

Mayer continued to make contacts among the resistance and wanted to take a more active role. He advised his superiors that he and political prisoners in labor camps outside Innsbruck could take the city if he could get arms for them. A plane with arms was dispatched but had mechanical problems and did not get through.

At one time he had about 3,000 people working for him, Mayer said, including a battalion of German engineers, and they mined bridges going into Austria. But before they could blow the bridges, Mayer said, “My people said they needed the bridges and don’t blow them. So I had them remove the explosives.”

Shortly before the war ended, Mayer was captured by the Gestapo. One of his confidants had been picked up by the Germans for black market activities. The man immediately assumed that he had been arrested for his involvement with the resistance and gave up Mayer’s identity.

Six Gestapo agents with automatic weapons showed up at the home of a female friend where Mayer was staying. She stalled them at the door as long as possible while Mayer burned the papers that he was supposed to send to an agent at the Swiss frontier. He managed to hide his American uniform under a couch and they did not find it.

Mayer was taken into custody, interrogated, beaten, and tortured for several days. He described how a pistol was shoved into his mouth and his teeth were knocked out. “I never told them about the radio operator or the other men. They never broke me,” he declared.

One of the leaders of the Nazi storm troopers told the governor of Innsbruck about Mayer, and the governor decided he wanted to see him. The war was in its last throes, and Germany clearly was losing.

“I convinced him that the war was lost,” Mayer recalled, “and that he should surrender or his city would be destroyed: ‘It would be a shame for such a lovely city.’ He agreed and said there would be no more torture.”

An official was able to get Mayer out of the concentration camp where he had been transferred, and he was taken to headquarters in the same building as the governor. The governor was about to give a radio address, and Mayer convinced him that it was time to give up.

By now Hitler was dead and American forces were just outside Innsbruck. Mayer was given a car and driver and headed toward the American lines waving a white flag. He told an intelligence staff officer of the 103rd Infantry Division that he had taken the governor prisoner and requested that someone come with him and accept the formal surrender. On May 3, 1945, Innsbruck and Tyrol were taken without a single shot being fired.

In August 1945 Mayer was awarded the Legion of Merit, and in 1946 he was discharged as a second lieutenant. He was not interested in staying in the military, although he did join the intelligence reserves, where he later became a first lieutenant. “When I was 70, they sent me a letter telling me to report for duty,” he laughed.

Mayer returned to his old job at General Motors in Long Island, working on diesel engines. In 1949 he received a call from his old commander, who had since become director of Voice of America. He informed Mayer that his power plant engineer in the Philippines had quit because communists were bombing the radio station, and he offered Mayer the job. Mayer accepted.

“I’d just gotten married, so my new bride and I went to the Philippines,” Mayer said. “We arrived at 6:00 am and I was at work at 8:00 am.” His two daughters were born in the Philippines.

Mayer continued working for Voice of America as a power plant engineering supervisor until he retired. His work took him around the world, with postings in Morocco, Germany, Liberia, and Thailand. “I made electricity for the radio station,” he said.

He decided to look for retirement property near enough to an airport to allow him to do some work as a consultant. One of his daughters was attending Georgetown University, so he investigated the surrounding areas. He liked West Virginia and its lower property taxes, and he found a home site in then newly-subdivided Avon Bend in 1972. “There was a flood in 1972, and I saw how high the water came,” he recalled. “I picked this place because it was out of the floodplain.”
After his retirement Mayer continued to work as a consultant for power plant construction, but he is now truly retired. He keeps busy working around his four acres and enjoys playing bridge. “I have a female companion and I take care of her place, too,” he added.

Mayer kept in touch with his OSS teammates over the years. Franz Weber, who became an Austrian senator, died just last year. Hans Wynberg is still alive, serving as dean of chemistry at the University of Groningen in Holland.

You can read more about Freddy Mayer’s exploits in OSS Agents in Hitler’s Heartland by Gerald Schwab, and Piercing the Reich by Joseph Persico, available through booksellers and in the Shepherdstown and Shepherd University libraries.