Frederick Mayer (spy)

Frederick Mayer (28 October 1921, Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden, Germany – 15 April 2016, Charles Town, Jefferson County, West Virginia)[1] was a German-born Jew who became an American spy as an OSS agent for the United States during World War II.

[2] His father 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.

[3] After finishing high school, Frederick Mayer worked as a diesel mechanic with the Ford Motor Company.

During a training exercise in Arizona, he crossed the "enemy" line and "captured" several officers, including a brigadier general.

His knowledge of several European languages (German, French, Spanish) made him a good candidate for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a wartime precursor to Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) and CIA.

The boys stayed with their father's business partner and continued their education in Brooklyn Technical High School.

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

It wasn't an easy place to fly to, especially in the winter conditions, but finally a pilot named John Billings volunteered.

[12][13] After three months Mayer decided to pose as a French electrician, who supposedly was fleeing from the advancing Soviet forces.

He was tortured to force him to talk: In the dark room, the Gestapo officers slapped and punched the spy in the face.

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.

Matull even insisted that a man as senior as Mayer could be interrogated only by the Gauleiter of Tyrol and Vorarlberg, Franz Hofer.

Mayer was introduced to Hofer's wife and the German ambassador to Benito Mussolini's government, Rudolph Rahn.

Mayer initially believed that it was just a new way to make him reveal where his radio operator Hans Wijnberg was located, but he later understood that the Germans were really there to discuss their surrender.

[13] Rahn said he was going to Bern, and promised to deliver Mayer's message to Allen Welsh Dulles, the OSS man there.

Director Ernst Gossner acquired the life rights from Frederick Mayer and is currently working on a TV Mini-Series as well as a movie on Operation Greenup.

In April 2013, Senator Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia wrote a letter to President Obama asking him to consider further recognizing Mayer's service to the United States.

[25][26] On March 18, 2014, West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant called on President Obama to award Fred Mayer the Medal of Honor.