Notes
INTRODUCTION
I did write: Eric Lichtblau, “Frederick Mayer, Jew Who Spied on Nazis After Fleeing Germany, Dies at 94,” New York Times, April 20, 2016.
PROLOGUE
Gorgeous, he thought: Interview with Frederick Mayer, Jewish survivor, by Esther Finder, Visual History Archive, Shoah Foundation, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1997.
1. A GERMAN BOY
The signs were subtle: Author interview with Fred Mayer, February 14, 2016, Charles Town, West Virginia.
place that had once seemed tolerant: Leslie Maitland, Crossing the Borders of Time: A True Story of War, Exile, and Love Reclaimed (New York: Other Press, 2012), 17.
playmate was gone: Interview with Gerald (Gerd) Schwab, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, oral history collection, November 18, 1997.
“I was a Frontkaempfer”: Interview with Fred Mayer, Gerald Schwab Papers, 1885–2012, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and author interview with Fred Mayer.
“a stinking Jude”: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
Friedrich Ludin: Freddy viewed Friedrich Ludin as a benign figure, despite his official Nazi ties, but Ludin’s son, Hanns Ludin, became a notorious Nazi SA leader in Slovakia who was ultimately executed for war crimes in 1947. Because of Hanns’s notoriety, his father’s school, the Rotteck Gymnasium in Freiburg, Germany, removed Friedrich Ludin’s portrait from a gallery of former school directors.
boys from a Jewish fraternity: Photo, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Group portrait of members of the KC Jewish fraternity and their girl friends on an excursion to a mountain in the Black Forest near Freiburg,” circa 1930–33, https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1157640.
It was an idyllic childhood: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
“a gentle Gentile”: Ibid.
“Other suppliers”: Letter from Mathilde Kinzle to Baden State Office for Restitution Claims, Freiburg, Germany, in support of Heinrich Mayer’s application for restitution, March 1, 1955.
At his core: Wolfram Zimmer, close friend of Fred Mayer; interview by researcher Diana Fong on behalf of author, Freiburg, Germany, May 30, 2018.
not because of any deep: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
Heinrich and Hilda reached: Ibid.
The experiment: Gerald Schwab, OSS Agents in Hitler’s Heartland: Destination Innsbruck (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), 7.
he managed to start: Ibid.
Freddy would parade: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
Tens of thousands: Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin (New York: Broadway, 2011), 84. Estimates have varied on how many Jews immediately fled Germany. Larson placed the number at fifty thousand “within weeks of Hitler’s ascension to chancellor,” while some scholars place the number lower.
His brother, Julius: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
For a Nazi: Ibid.; Zimmer interview.
the Ford auto dealer: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
177 marks: Heinrich Mayer’s application for restitution to Baden State Office for Restitution Claims, Freiburg, Germany, August 23, 1954.
“Look, we better prepare”: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
He offered to manage: Zimmer interview.
the ambassador met: Larson, In the Garden of Beasts, 232.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt: Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013), 94.
A giant swastika banner: “20,000 Nazi Friends at a Rally Here Denounce Boycott,” New York Times, May 18, 1934. Another massive pro-Nazi rally was held at Madison Square Garden five years later, in February 1939, organized by the German American Bund and also attended by an estimated twenty thousand people.
Nearly eleven thousand: Breitman and Lichtman, FDR and the Jews, 95.
just before a crush: Ibid., 102.
How they had managed: Many of the federal immigration records from this period were destroyed, and it is not clear who sponsored the Mayers’ visa applications to the United States. Fred Mayer said he was not certain. As part of the temporary easing of restrictions, the United States began allowing more distant relatives to provide affidavits of support, in addition to close relatives.
A rambling Hitler: Lois G. Schwoerer, “Lord Halifax’s Visit to Germany: November 1937,” Historian 32, no. 3 (May 1970): 363, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24440688.
“I was not blind”: The Earl of Halifax, Fullness of Days (London: Collins, 1957), 185.
After years of letting: Letter from Heinrich Mayer to Baden State Office for Restitution Claims, Freiburg, Germany, August 23, 1954, seeking restitution for the financial damages caused when the Nazis forced him to flee the country and abandon his home and business. Heinrich Mayer wrote to the restitution office: “Money alone can never compensate for my suffering. Instead of being a good-standing citizen, I am an unemployed nobody and that is something that cannot be changed anymore. However, money can help me in old age and help prolong my life, money that is due to me and due to losses I suffered under a previous German regime, in which Jews were deprived of all their rights. Even though money and property had not been directly seized, the former NS [Nazi] regime had created impossible circumstances in which a Jew had to pay the price of giving up ownership of all assets for the sake of basic survival.” The state restitution office, after demanding documentation of Heinrich’s business losses in Germany, agreed to pay a total of $1,103.39—with the first payment coming before he died, in 1955, and the second payment a year later to his widow, Hilda. The payments were a small fraction of the money Heinrich said he had lost to the Nazis. The government also agreed to pay part of the widow’s pension that Hilda said she was due because of Heinrich’s service in the war.
Cobbling together money: Letter from Heinrich Mayer to Baden State Office for Restitution Claims.
had allowed them to leave: John V. H. Dippel, Bound Upon a Wheel of Fire (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 160, 174–75.
bid farewell: Peter Pirker, Codename Brooklyn: Jüdische Agenten im Feindesland. Die Operation Greenup 1945 (Innsbruck: Tyrolia Verlagsanstalt, 2019), 50.
making sure: Mayer interview, Schwab Papers; and Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
2. ENEMY ALIEN
“Stupid son-of-a-bitch”: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
“fateful year”:“1938—‘The Fateful Year,’” Yad Vashem, World Holocaust Remembrance Center, https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/nazi-germany-1933-39/1938.html.
let out a sigh: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
all designated: Ship manifest, SS Manhattan, March 10, 1938, Le Havre, France, to New York City.
rumors flowed back: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
“saved many lives”: Guido Enderis, wireless, “Hitler in Defense: He Tells Reichstag That His Action in Austria Saved Many Lives,” New York Times, March 19, 1938.
he would trudge: Schwab, OSS Agents in Hitler’s Heartland, 10.
he considered himself: Letter from Heinrich Mayer to Baden State Office for Restitution Claims, Freiburg, Germany, August 23, 1954.
The Nazis had robbed: Ibid.
just as his teachers: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
When he told them: Ibid.
“the perfect American”: Ibid.
If on a Friday: Ibid.
a terror unlike anything: Dippel, Bound Upon a Wheel of Fire, xix; and author interview with Richard Breitman.
authorities had begun: Maitland, Crossing the Borders of Time, 400.
Undetected in the bedlam: Ibid., 401.
“It’ll make a hell”: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
“Here’s the next world war”: Ibid.
had published a series: Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002), 144–45.
“distinguished foreigner
s”: Ibid., 284.
“the Jewish groups”: Lindbergh speech in Des Moines, Iowa, September 11, 1941, Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lindbergh-accuses-jews-of-pushing-u-s-to-war.
“unworthy words”: Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, 304.
“ruthless dictator”: “Ickes Hits Takers of Hitler’s Medals,” New York Times, December 19, 1938; and Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, 289.
he wanted to run: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
“fight the Japs”:“Volunteers Rush to Enlist Lets Up,” New York Times, December 13, 1941.
“enemy alien”: Speech by Fred Mayer, OSS Society Dinner, Washington, DC, October 27, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=ykzxwrFk3tQ&app=desktop.
not only prohibited: Robert Whitney, “Only 2,971 Enemy Allies Are Held,” New York Times, January 4, 1942.
Julius could get: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation. Julius would later enlist as well and serve in the Philippines.
“You, you, and you”: Ibid.
pay a dime: Ibid.
his restlessness got: Schwab, OSS Agents in Hitler’s Heartland, 11.
He seemed to fail: Mayer interview, Schwab Papers; and author interview with Fred Mayer.
“a natural leader”: Alfred Ulmer Jr., “Greenup Project,” February 10, 1945, OSS Declassified Files, 1945, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.
Camp Horn:Sands of War, season 21, episode 7, aired November 11, 2015, PBS, https://www.pbs.org/video/kvie-viewfinder-sands-war/.
The goal was to capture: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
“You can’t do that!”: Patrick K. O’Donnell, They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies Behind the Lines in Nazi Germany (Boston: Da Capo, 2009), 4.
“Would you like to do”: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
“another body”: Ibid.
3. THE CLOAK-AND-DAGGER BRIGADE
“We will do better”: David Kahn, The Reader of Gentlemen’s Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 98.
The closest the United States came: Joseph E. Persico, Piercing the Reich: The Penetration of Nazi Germany by American Secret Agents During World War II (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979), 5.
Donovan made two: US War Department, Strategic Services Unit History Project [Kermit Roosevelt], War Report of the OSS (New York: Walker, 1976), 5.
“driving the Jewish moneylenders”: Richard Dunlop, Donovan: America’s Master Spy (New York: Skyhorse, 2014), 15.
remarkable call to arms: William J. Donovan, “What Are We Up Against? There Is a Moral Force in Wars,” speech from “1941 Documents Relating to World War II,” March 26, 1941, http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1941/Documents_relating_to_World_War_II.html.
“Says Nazis Seek”: “Says Nazis Seek to Rule the World,” Montana Standard, March 27, 1941.
“play a bush-league game”: Dunlop, Donovan: America’s Master Spy, 275.
for the colorful public: Douglas Waller, Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage (New York: Free Press, 2011), 75.
“I have greater enemies”: Ibid., 113.
a scaled-back version: [Roosevelt,] War Report of the OSS, 7–9.
“It’s a good thing”: Dunlop, Donovan: America’s Master Spy, 334.
“We might have had”: Henry Clausen and Bruce Lee, Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement (Boston: Da Capo, 2001), 47.
“one of the greatest”: Walter Laqueur, A World of Secrets: The Uses and Limits of Intelligence (New York: Twentieth Century Fund/Basic, 1985), 16.
One favorite mantra: Central Intelligence Agency, “A Look Back . . . Gen. William J. Donovan Heads Office of Strategic Services,” December 31, 2009, CIA.gov.
veneer was fading: Anne Reilly Dolan, Congressional Country Club: 1924–1984 (Baltimore, MD: Wolk, 1984), 26.
“compass runs”: Roger Hall, You’re Stepping On My Cloak and Dagger (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003), 29.
secret weapons: Ibid., 25.
sci-fi ideas: Louis Menand, “Wild Thing: Did the OSS Help Win the War Against Hitler?” New Yorker, March 14, 2011.
Donovan would stop: Dolan, Congressional Country Club: 1924–1984, 29.
“to make young Americans”: Ibid., 28.
A brand-new, pristine: Author telephone interview with former OSS agent Henry Sonagere, March 2, 2018.
baby-faced innocence: Dyno Lowenstein audio interview, Joseph E. Persico Papers (1943–1980), Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University.
“Young and requires direction”: Alfred Ulmer Jr., “Theater Service Record of Hans Wynberg,” January 21, 1946, National Archives, Interagency Working Group (IWG), Records of the Office of Strategic Services 1940–1946 (RG 226), https://www.archives.gov/iwg/declassified-records/rg-226-oss.
A prodigy: Author telephone interview with Jeffrey Wijnberg, August 6, 2018; and author telephone interview with Audrey Wijnberg, December 4, 2018.
“the greatest time”: Author interview with Jeffrey Wijnberg.
“Hark, hark!”: Wynberg emails, from Hans Wynberg to Marjorie Bingham, May 4, 2005.
he came to adore: Wynberg emails, from Hans Wynberg to Marjorie Bingham, February 24, 2009.
“more American”: Interview with Hans Wynberg, Schwab Papers; and Hans Wynberg interview, Een Leven Lang, radio show, Netherlands, May 25, 1998. Translated from Dutch.
found a restaurant: Wynberg emails, from Hans Wynberg to Marjorie Bingham, February 24, 2009.
The sergeant: Wynberg emails, from Hans Wynberg to Marjorie Bingham, March 9, 2009. He and Elly, engaged during the war and wed a week after Hans’s return to the United States, were married for sixty-five years.
Hans revered him:The Real Inglorious Bastards, directed by Min Sook Lee (New York and Washington, DC, XiveTV, 2015), DVD.
“a windbag”: Security Officer Lester Y. Baylis, “Investigation Report MAYER, Frederick (Pvt. U.S.A.),” February 1944, OSS Records.
Many of the agents: The three other future CIA directors from OSS were William Casey, Allen Dulles, and Richard Helms.
Oh-So-Social: Menand, “Wild Thing.”
the dreadedFifth Column: [Roosevelt,] War Report of the OSS, 5, 6. Donovan cowrote a series of articles distributed nationally in 1940 on the Fifth Column threat.
“skilled in methods”: Ibid., 223.
wasn’t an army grunt: Wynberg emails, from Hans Wynberg to Marjorie Bingham, May 9, 2005.
the whole notion: Wynberg interview, Een Leven Lang.
He often thought: Ibid.
The lanky kid: Wynberg interview, Schwab Papers; and Wynberg emails, from Hans Wynberg to Marjorie Bingham, May 9, 2005.
“do you want to liberate”: Wynberg interview, Schwab Papers.
Gek, they called him: Wynberg interviews, Schwab Papers and Een Leven Lang.
“a maniac”: Wynberg interview, Een Leven Lang.
he went door-to-door: Ibid.
He mortgaged: Marien Abrahamse, “Hollander die in Amerikaanse geheime dienst verzetsgroepen steunde: ‘Bijna Himmler nog te pakken gehad,’ ” Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, May 4, 1985, translated from Dutch; Wynberg interviews, Schwab Papers and Een Leven Lang.
Leo would be taking: Author interview with Luke Wijnberg, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, January 4, 2019. The family name was spelled “Wijnberg” in the Netherlands. In America, Hans changed it to “Wynberg,” while his brother and others maintained the original spelling.
Leo chronicled: 1939 family film provided to author by Audrey Wijnberg.
Hans unfolded a giant map: Ibid.
“the people who can”: Wynberg emails, from Hans Wynberg to Marjorie Bingham, August 15, 2009.
Leo assured the twins: Abrahamse, “Hollander die in Amerikaanse geheime dienst verzetsgroepen steunde.”
dutifully updating them: Letter from Leo Wijnberg to Hans and Luke Wijnberg, October 18, 1939
.
“the most important defense”: Ibid.
“Kisses and all”: Ibid.
“But the Dutch”: Letter from Leo Wijnberg to Hans and Luke Wijnberg, November 16, 1941.
the chess players”: Ibid.
“Thankfully I’m still”: Ibid.
everyone was healthy: Letter from Leo Wijnberg to Hans and Luke Wijnberg, February 17, 1942.
It was too painful: Abrahamse, “Hollander die in Amerikaanse geheime dienst verzetsgroepen steunde.”
“believed to be living”: “Investigation Report WYNBERG, HANS (Pvt.),” December 30, 1943, OSS Records.
Hans hoped that: Wynberg emails, from Hans Wynberg to Marjorie Bingham, July 30, 2009.
difficult to believe: Wynberg emails, from Hans Wynberg to Marjorie Bingham, May 4, 2009. Hans wrote that “I more or less completely turned away from the Jewish religion when I arrived in the USA.” He explained that as a scientist, it became difficult to debate religion with people because “a belief is not swayed by facts.”
wireless radio-transmission: William Casey, The Secret War Against Hitler (London: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 186–87.
He broke into: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
posed shirtless: Ibid.
“piss poor”: Mayer interview, Schwab Papers.
“wasting our time”: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
“another body”: Ibid.
His spy agency: [Roosevelt,] War Report of the OSS, 114.
was unclear: Wynberg interview, Schwab Papers.
4. THE THIRD MAN
“It’s still ‘Heil Hitler!’ ”: Mayer interview, Shoah Foundation.
had become disillusioned: Interview with Franz Weber, Schwab Papers.
some of his Spam: Mayer interview, Schwab Papers.
“son of a bitch”: Mayer audio interview, Persico Papers.
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