Weber literally switched sides to participate in sabotage. In interrogations by Allied officers, Weber declared himself ready to oppose the Wehrmacht. Transferred to the Italian front in the summer of 1944, he defected during an attack by the US troops near Viareggio. During his eighteen-month stay in Croatia, it became clear to Weber that German tyranny was unsustainable, that it would lead to a “concentration camp Europe,” as he later stated. Weber was deeply struck by the partisans’ courage and unwavering commitment as they continued attacks on the railroad network which the Wehrmacht used to transport troops between the Soviet Union, the Balkans, and Italy. Weber’s Division’s war journal delineates the massive involvement of its units in brutal counterinsurgency: burning down villages, shooting hostages, hanging civilians and destroying livelihoods. His regiment in the 187 th Reserve Division was charged to secure the railroad lines against sabotage. Still, his desire to make something of himself and to become an officer was stronger.Ĭroatian partisans undermined Weber’s aspirations and self-perception in 1943-44. In May 1941, he started to entertain doubts about the Nazi system after visiting the Warsaw Ghetto, as did thousands of other Wehrmacht soldiers, and to anticipate the extent of Jewish persecution. However, by following this path, he took part in criminal Wehrmacht warfare in Poland, the Soviet Union, and Croatia. Above all, he considered the Anschluss and an army career to be opportunities for social advancement. Although he came from a non-Nazi environment, he had welcomed the incorporation of Austria into Germany in March 1938. However, they were unable to save themselves and, together with their youngest son, all three were murdered in Auschwitz in 19.Īt the time of Hans Wijnberg’s emigration to America, Franz Weber, a pupil of a Catholic grammar school and son of a rather poor farmer, enlisted in the Wehrmacht to become an officer. They had anticipated the German attack on the Netherlands. In 1939, their parents also sent Hans and his twin brother Loek to Brooklyn. His father Leonard was an activist with the liberal antifascist and anticommunist Eenheid door Democratie (Unity through Democracy) movement. Hans Wijnberg’s parents had owned a small factory for bicycle repair equipment in Amsterdam. For ten years, he headed the Reichsbund Jüdischer Frontsoldaten in Freiburg, which aimed to emphasize the efforts of German Jews for their fatherland and to oppose anti-Semitic agitation. Fred’s father Heinrich had fought as an officer in the German Army in World War I. The Mayer family was among the longest-established Jewish tradespeople in Freiburg and the founders of the local Jewish community. In March 1938, Mayer and his entire family had fled Freiburg to Brooklyn, New York. The core Greenup team consisted of three agents in their early twenties who were parachuted into the Stubai Alps on February 26, 1945: Jewish refugees Fred Mayer from Freiburg im Breisgau and Hans Wijnberg from Overveen near Amsterdam, along with the Wehrmacht officer Franz Weber, a deserter and a devoted Catholic who had grown up in the village of Oberperfuss near Innsbruck. Refugees from across the entire Nazi dominion in Europe, antifascists in exile and local members of the resistance were involved in this collaboration to the extent it could be referred to as a transnational resistance against the Axis Powers. Altogether, the American and British forces carried out more than 21,000 airborne and parachute operations in Europe, nearly half of which supported the partisan movement in Yugoslavia. The OSS launched a series of other operations into the German Reich from Switzerland, France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands, but none achieved the success of Operation Greenup. Operation Greenup was one of some thirty intelligence operations conducted by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) division for Germany and Austria from Bari, Italy, with the target region of the southern parts of Germany, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia. The article featured the now famous Operation Greenup and its chief operator Frederick “Fred” Mayer. The New York Times’ headline “Torture Endured by Brooklynite Made Innsbruck Entry Bloodless” informed the public why US troops didn’t have to fight when on May 3, 1945, they took the Austrian city of Innsbruck, the largest city in the so-called Alpine redoubt of Nazi Germany.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |