[officer] Attention! [rhythmic music]
[Patrick]This is the true story behind Inglorious Bastards.
Jewish Americans, who are refugees of Nazi Germany,
that go back behind the lines, for vengeance.
[Fred] We were dedicated to killing Nazi's.
And doing it behind enemy lines. [ominous music]
That's what we were trained for.
And that's what we volunteered for.
[Hans] The lieutenant, he said the only thing you have to know is to have a gun in your hand,
and aim it at a German and do this.
That's all the training I'm going to give you.
[faint thud then groan]
[Fred] They kept beating me more and more,
[thwack then groan]
and knocked out all my back teeth.
[soft orchestral music]
[Patrick] This is almost like a suicide mission.
It's a situation where the truth is way stranger than fiction.
[numerous gun shots]
[music crescendo]
[music stops] [loud cannon fire]
[dramatic piano music] [numerous explosions]
[narrator] War has been raging in Europe for four years.
[whistling of bombs]US forces have been engaged for a year and a half.
[explosion then crash]
All along, America has been waging a secret war.
The OSS has been training commando's to parachute behind enemy lines.
[man screams in pain]
One of the most successful of these missions was Operation Greenup.
[Patrick O'Donnell]Operation Greenup was made up...
of several men that were refugees from Nazi Germany, that were Jewish.
[crowd cheering]They did the amazing thing of going back,
to strike back at Nazi Germany,
probably the most hostile police state in history.
The team was led by Fred Mayer.
Fred Mayer was daring, and audacious.
Willing to roll the dice on his life, to accomplish the mission.
[foreboding music]
[Fred Mayer]It felt like I had my chance to do what I set out to do...
To kill Nazi's.
That's why all the Jewish boys joined.
[Patrick] Hans Wijnberg, the radio operator,
was the life-line of the mission.
Because a team behind the lines in Nazi Germany, without a radio...
Is absolutely dead.
I was fifteen, sixteen when Munich...
And Czechoslovakia and Austria were over-run.
[dramatic music]
[Hans] When Hitler came with Germans and flooded Germany,
and came through our town, we were very much aware of it,
the evil of fascism.
[speaking German then crowd cheering]
[Fred] It started right away in 1933 when Hitler took power.
[crowds cheering] [ominous music]
[Fred] The flags were the hand writing on the wall.
All the public buildings...
Swastika's.
That was the end of democracy.
[narrator] Fred Mayer was a Jewish teenager living in Hitler's Germany.
His father was a patriot who fought in the First World War.
[Fred] My father kept insisting, "Oh, I'm a war veteran,
and nothing is going to happen to us".
My mother said, "Well...
As Jews, there'll be no preference".
And she was right.
[mellow music]
[Hans] My father was active in the anti-Nazi party,
Jews were fleeing Germany,
so my father was completely up to date and he apparently didn't trust it.
[narrator] Hans' father decided to send him to America with his twin brother.
A business associate agreed to take over guardianship of the young twins.
[Hans] My father sent thirty six hundred dollars to the United States,
probably a year's income.
Numerous amounts of money.
Whole family said to my father,
"Leo, how can you be such a nut,
to send sixteen year old's to the land of cowboys and Indians".
[mellow music]
[Hans] The whole family was against it, except my mother.
[narrator] Hans and his twin brother left behind their parents, younger brother,
and extended family in Holland.
They would never see them again.
[Hans] I will never know all the details.
I believe they were, they tried to flee, to Switzerland.
And they were either betrayed, or caught at the border.
And my...
Father was sent to...
A concentration camp in Poland, and my mother and my brother, was at time sixteen,
seventeen, were gassed in Auschwitz.
[morose music]
[narrator] Fred was one of the lucky ones.
He managed to escape to America with his immediate family.
[Fred] We were able to come to the United States, just in time.
From then on, until the war ended,
Germany was my enemy.
And I had no scruples...
Doing my utmost to destroy them.
[sounds of war]
[Fred] December 7th, 1941,
the Japanese had hit Pearl Harbor, [bombs dropping and sirens]
the next day I was in line for the recruiting station.
[military drum roll]
[Fred] I had a good combination, hatred and love.
Hatred for the Nazi's, and love for America.
[narrator] Like Fred, Hans was ready to fight as soon as he was of legal age.
One day, before my twenty first birthday,
I became an American citizen.
And then I was in the army. [recorded archive]
[narrator] Fred and Hans quickly found out that army life wasn't what they'd expected.
[Fred] The sergeant picked me, "You, KP".
It wasn't interesting enough,
just to be another number.
That wasn't for me.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] The army identified Fred and Hans as recruits with special talents.
They had language skills,
knew the culture behind enemy lines,
and most importantly, they were motivated to take on high risk missions.
[Hans] Somebody from Washington came up to me, "I hear...
That you speak Dutch", I say yeah, "Do you want to liberate your country?"
I say yeah."Alright, if you sign here, you can go and join OSS."
[archive music]I'd never heard of the OSS.
[explosions]
[old archive] Guerrilla, saboteur, commando,
Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of these names
in the news of World War 2.
The West didn't really have, until late thirties, did not have anything...
In the way of an intelligence organization.
[ominous music] [gun shots]
[Gerald] We had a secretary of war, Henry Stimson,
who said, "Gentlemen don't read other people's mail".
And so you can imagine where the OSS started.
We're nothing!
[narrator] The OSS commandeered the Congressional Country Club to train recruits.
[Fred] This was the general penned area,
as I remembered.
That's where we did our demolition exercises.
And we blew up some of those good trees.
[faint explosions]
[dramatic music]
[Patrick] These were the dirty dozen of the day.
The motley crew of men from all walks of life.
German refugees, a Luftwaffe pilot,
a butcher. One guy said it perfectly,
"This is the craziest group of men I've ever been with".
And they also shared a common passion of striking back, at Nazi Germany.
[Hans] They took us to train us in small arms,
the lieutenant, he got us up in the morning and said,
"The only thing you have to know is this".
"And that's to have a gun in your hand,
and aim it at a German and do this,
that's all the training I'm going to give you".
[narrator] But there was more training, almost a year of it.
Covering all the basics of guerrilla warfare.
-Knife fighting... -Hand to hand combat.
-Underwater demolition. -Morse code.
-[Fred] Parachute school. -[Hans] How to use a pistol.
Working with explosives.
-Night training. -How to open locks.
Very scary movies about venereal diseases.
[lively music]
[Fred] Never anything about intelligence.
It was strictly...
Disruption of the enemy.
And we put our hearts into it.
They told us that...
Slim chance of survival, would you still be willing to do it?
None of us pulled out.
[soft music] [narrator] Fred and Hans bonded through the training sessions.
They connected, almost like family.
I felt like he was my little brother.
[Fred] I kind of felt he needed somebody to protect him, he was so young.
So young looking...
So I became his big brother.
He was almost a head taller than I was,
but still his face, if you look at him, he was just a young boy.
[Hans] Yeah, like a brother...
Yeah, he always impressed me, strong personality,
knew what he wanted,
bossy, that's why he got divorced so soon.
[chuckles]
[narrator] Dyno Lowenstein, a commanding officer in the OSS,
recalls the two men.
Harry was sort of a...
Well, I shouldn't call him a ruffian, that's not really fair, but he was...
Willing to, you know, to play the thing rough.
He would have killed somebody else if he had to, and this sort of thing.
Hans had the security...
Of soul, and he was motivated but,
he would have liked to do it with the minimum of nasty things to other people.
[big explosions]
[dramatic music] [narrator] D-Day, June 6th, 1944.
Allied forces launch the largest invasion in history,
against the Germans in Normandy.
Every available body is tapped into action.
But Fred and Hans find themselves in military limbo.
They're stationed to North Africa,
far from any action.
You have this high speed commando unit, that has been training for months,
they're going to do this specialized mission behind the lines of Nazi Germany....
And they get into North Africa, and nobody knows who they are.
Suddenly they're lost, in this bureaucratic shuffle.
[soft music] [Patrick] Because nobody knew who they were,
as the OSS was a secret organization.
[Hans] Freddy and I said, we're never going to see any action.
The war's almost over.
So then Freddy says, "We're going to take this, we're going to go to the higher officer".
[Fred] That's when I decided that's enough,
I'm going to head quarters and ask for a transfer to intelligence.
[narrator] Fred and Hans are transferred to intelligence headquarters in Bari, Italy.
The staging ground for all covert operations in Southern Europe.
Ready for action, Fred comes up with a plan.
[Dyno] Well, he explained this plan that they were, they wanted to be dropped,
with arms, on top of the Howe,
and they were going to distribute the arms to the inmates...
And they were going to start a revolution that way.
And my reaction was very negative,
he might as well drop off the window which would,
be in the long run more economical and more practical.
[narrator] Instead the team is sent into the Austrian state of Tyrol,
on a near suicidal mission,
code named, "Operation Greenup".
Operation Greenup had two key goals.
One was to monitor the rail traffic in the Brenner pass,
the main supply route from Nazi Germany into Italy.
It had been bombed relentlessly by the air Corp,
but nothing was stopping the flow of rail traffic.
[narrator] The Brenner pass runs through Tyrol,
a German stronghold governed by Franz Hofer.
Hofer, an extremist,
joined the Nazi party years before Hitler's triumphant annexation of Austria.
[Patrick] The other key goal was to identify and find out
what was going on in the Alpine Redoubt.
[narrator] It is rumored Hofer is building an impenetrable fortress in the Tyrolean Alps,
[machine gun fire]Here Nazi zealots will rally and make their last stand.
[dramatic music] [cannon shot then explosion]
[narrator] Hofer's dream threatens to prolong the war for months,
maybe even years.
[Patrick] Franz Hofer was a die-hard Nazi, a fanatic, and he's power hungry too.
Because he wants to bring the Alpine Redoubt to the area that he has power over.
He saw it as a chance to save the Third Reich.
So the team was sent in to find out what was really going on.
[narrator] This is dangerous territory to infiltrate.
Operation Greenup will need a third man,
an insider from Tyrol.
Freddy and I went to German prison camps,
to find the third man, mainly a German or Austrian, prisoner of war,
who had spent all these years in Hitler territory.
And among this list, there was a Lieutenant Weber.
[narrator] Franz Weber is a Wehrmacht officer from Tyrol,
who deserted from the German army out of conscience.
Well, I liked him right away.
He was trust worthy.
[interviewer] Why did the OSS think that you would co-operate?
Franz was a very interesting individual.
He did not like the approaches that the Germans used,
he saw what they were doing and capable of doing.
So many of the Germans...
Had no idea what was going on, well...
Franz was not that type. He knew what was going on.
Somehow we got along immediately very well.
We come from completely different backgrounds,
Franz was a ...
Fairly devout Catholic,
Freddy and I were of course, Jews.
But still, we had absolutely no trouble trusting one another completely.
Total trust.
[narrator] The plan is perilous and near impossible.
In order to enter the region undetected,
the team will fly over the Alps and parachute onto a glacier.
Then make their way to Oberperfuss,
Franz's home village.
This will be their base for forays into Innsbruck,
the capitol of Tyrol, and the major rail center in the region.
It is the seat of power for Governor Franz Hofer.
[male] I had drove them to the airport.
[interviewer] What was the mood in this vehicle as you were going out there?
[male] We had all discussed at great length the perils,
Freddy was so sure that it would all work according to plan,
and I think the other two trusted him.
I had total confidence in the team,
if they couldn't do it, nobody could do it.
There was nothing in the world that could go wrong with the team,
except through bad luck.
[narrator] Operation Greenup is deemed so dangerous,
that the Royal Air Force refuses to fly it.
A young American pilot, Lieutenant John Billings,
volunteers for the job.
The Brenner pass was heavily fortified,
the Germans had brought enemy aircraft guns, [loud shots]
to the tops of the mountains surrounding the Brenner pass.
And it was just absolute suicide to try to go that way.
[numerous shots]
We were not supposed to learn any information about the Jews.
This is the only time that I ever even laid eyes on them, let alone speak to them.
Doing the things that they were doing...
Wasn't something that I would think that I could do even.
I didn't think I could hold it together to go stealthing around in
enemy territory, in plain sight.
[dramatic music]
We would try to stay as low as physically possible,
and in between mountains,
as much as we could,
so that radar wouldn't see us.
[dramatic music continues]
We got into trouble, we got into a down draft,
so severe in the Alps, it took us down six thousand feet in twenty seconds.
Forced down by high winds.
You were going down faster than you would have gone if you'd just jumped out of the airplane.
And then...
Near the bottom of the gully,
probably because the wind beams were leveling out at the bottom,
we stopped descent.
[Fred] Franz had never jumped out of an airplane before,
I told him, especially on the glacier, there was no problem.
I was just thinking a little deeper, that's all.
[dramatic music] [men talking to each other]
[Fred] We landed at ten thousand feet, so you can imagine how high we were,
and how cold it is up there in the middle of the winter.
[Hans] We found one another immediately, we didn't jump far apart,
and then we realized when we got together,
we had no skis.
[Fred] I couldn't see the canister that held the skis,
they must have gone on the other side,
of the mountain peak.
The snow was deep and we kept sinking in.
It was then...
We had to stop in between to take a breath.
At one time, Hans was ready to...
Stack out, but we had to keep on going.
Then it becomes a matter of life or death.
You either go, or you freeze.
[narrator] Eventually the team arrives at a mountain side hamlet,
they claim to be an Alpine ski unit that's gotten lost.
One of the villagers loans them a sled.
[suspenseful music]
[Patrick] Picture going off a sheer cliff,
that's all ice, with no brakes,
on a sled, and then hoping that you make it,
and that's exactly what that was like.
[suspenseful music continues]
[Fred] The mountain was so scary and steep,
my ski poles, the tips turned red, from trying to slow the thing down.
It was the scariest ride of my life, but we made it.
[Patrick] The team had dropped in blindly, there was no reception party,
but Franz knew the lay of the land. He knew the people there.
He had the family members, he had the safe houses,
which was critical,
to the success of the mission.
[narrator] When they arrive in Oberperfuss,
Franz makes contact with his fiancée, Ani,
Her immediate reaction is terror,
his desertion has become public knowledge,
and she is afraid for his life.
Ani can think of only one person who can help the team...
Her mother, Mamanita Kershaw.
[Fred] She was, if not the leader of the community,
the hidden leader of the community,
and she was very anti-Nazi.
She immediately hugged me and welcomed me.
She was just...
So happy to see that somebody else was fighting Nazi's.
[narrator] Mamanita Kershaw takes Hans to the attic of a sympathetic farmer.
Hans taps out his first transmission to the OSS headquarters in Bari, Italy.
[dots and dashes of Morse code]
[Hans] It worked...
The signal that we sent, it bounced around over the Alps,
to Bari, Italy.
Unbelievable!
[narrator] Mamanita Kershaw takes a great risk in welcoming the team.
The threat of being caught is only too real. [unsettling music]
The Germans had inserted their own agents, that claimed that they were allied parachutists,
and they went around and they wanted to see who would provide them aid.
And then those people were rounded up, in some cases never seen again.
So it was an extremely dangerous and hazardous environment that the Greenup team had gone into.
Only at night was I allowed to go to the bathroom.
Tricky...
We were so scared, deadly scared,
that we would be discovered.
[narrator] Mamanita Kershaw assumes responsibility for Franz's safety.
She hides him in a room at a hotel she owns.
[narrator] Franz has three sisters who share his anti Nazi views,
they will each play a key role in Operation Greenup.
They live in Innsbruck, and are keenly aware of the risks they will take.
The city is tightly controlled by Hofer, and the Gestapo.
One of the sisters, Louisa, creates the perfect cover for Fred.
She is a nurse at a hospital, and manages to steal a uniform from a dead officer.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] Fred is now a convalescing German officer,
in Innsbruck, on leave from the front.
[Fred] I was able to check in the local barracks,
and officer's quarters,
so I can come and go freely.
[narrator] Fred's story is that he is wounded in action,
and he presents out-patient documents forged by Louisa to support his claim.
They issued me a paid card so I could draw rations and money.
I had to live some way.
[forties style music]
[Fred] I had confidence that I could handle it.
They never questioned what unit I came from,
all they knew is that I was a wounded officer, and that was enough.
[speaking in German then laughter]
[Patrick] The officers club was a sort of watering hole,
and people talked.
They talked about secrets, some of the great secrets of the war.
Right in front of...
This Jewish guy from Brooklyn, in a German officer's uniform.
[narrator] To get these secrets to Hans and the OSS,
Fred works with Hans's younger sister, Ebba.
They create a secure courier system of young women,
who travel back and forth between Innsbruck and Oberperfuss.
[Hans] I'd never met them,
they gave them to the farmer and the farmer sort of safely passed it onto me.
That system, they work it out within a few days, it was excellent.
[dramatic music]
[narrator] The messages begin to flow, filled with critical intelligence.
Border activity, training exercises, troop movement,
train schedules, arm shipments, bomb construction.
The desire for information is insatiable.
And Fred has a special talent, for getting people to talk.
[Fred] That's how I got the information on Hitler's bunker.
[tuneful music]
I didn't...
Force him to talk to me, they just...
Talked!
[speaking in German]
[Fred] One of the officers had just returned from Berlin,
and he was an engineering officer and he explained the bunker,
where Hitler was located.
In five seconds, fractured it with the walls, so and so thick and...
The location of it.
And I sent that in.
[tuneful orchestral music]
[dramatic music]
[narrator] Headquarters assigns Fred a side mission.
With their advanced engineering, new German Messerschmitt jets,
would dominate the skies.
The question is...
Can they produce enough machines.
This is a James Bond movie, with a secret hideout,
buried underground in the side of a mountain.
It's a Messerschmitt factory, creating German jets,
262's. They have these massive metal steel doors.
Somehow, Fred Mayer has to infiltrate this top secret facility.
[soft French style music]
He comes up with this perfect plan,
he finds out what they need,
which is they need skilled labor.
So he works through his contacts,
and gets the proper papers,
to be Frédéric Mayer, this French electrician.
[Fred] It wasn't hard, they changed clothes,
and I pronounced my name a little different, but that's it.
Instead of Frederick Mayer...
I became Frédéric Mayer. [slight French accent]
Very simple.
[suspenseful music] [narrator] Fred infiltrates the factory,
and reports production has ground to a halt.
The allies have managed to cut off the supply route.
By now, Fred has established an extensive network of informants and contacts.
His ambitions grow larger.
He wants to organize and arm the local partisans,
to take Innsbruck from Hofer and the Nazi's.
[Fred] I figured, why not?
I had some free time, and I could put it to good use.
He wanted to take Tyrol, you know, yeah.
He wanted to establish some sort of resistance army,
and grand ideas of liberating Tyrol.
No, I was just...
Intelligence, sending things,
and he wanted me to run an army.
Yeah, actually he should have been a general.
[Gerald] Headquarters turned him down, and basically said your job is...
Not the start of the third front, or something like that.
Your job is to gather intelligence.
[narrator] While Fred works his contacts in Innsbruck,
Franz stays hidden in Oberperfuss.
He becomes increasingly anxious for the safety of his sisters,
who are active accomplices in his mission.
His main source of support during this time,
is his fiancée. Ani.
[gentle music]
My father died ten years ago, and when he died she was very sad.
When we were children, my father didn't talk about the Greenup mission.
And I think he was a brave man.
Didn't feel doing this, it was dangerous.
[slightly dramatic music]
[Fred] I ran down to the rail yards,
kind of looked around and the yard master started talking to me.
I was in German uniform, so he didn't suspect anything.
I asked him, "What are all these trains doing here?"
"These twenty six trains here,
are going to go out in two days".
So I sent that message,
and that's how we destroyed twenty six trains.
[whistling of bombs dropping]
[loud explosions]
[Fred] Complete with ammunition and new armor,
saved it from the Italian front.
[loud explosions] [dramatic music]
[narrator] April 20, 1945.
As the war is coming to an end,
the allies are streaming through Germany and the west,
while the Soviets are on the outskirts of Berlin.
The Reich is collapsing,
but in Innsbruck, the Nazi's under Hofer's command, are holding out.
The Gestapo execute last minute security sweeps.
Fred, using the cover of a French laborer,
is now living with Franz' sisters, Gretel and Ebba.
[knocking on door]
[knocks again]
[Fred] Ebba went to the door, I knew something was wrong.
[slightly menacing music]
[Fred] There was no escape, there was no second door.
She kept them at the door long enough for me to throw all the papers in a fire.
They came with sub machine guns, six men,
[calling out in German]
There were arguably six sub machine guns.
[suspenseful music]
[narrator] Ebba gets word to Louisa, who makes her way to Oberperfuss,
where she finds Franz and warns him that Fred has been captured.
Franz came to me, I said we'd better get out,
Freddie has been caught.
And he knew of course that neighborhood thoroughly,
and in the middle of the night, as far as I recall.
We tramped through the woods,
that night, until about three or four in the morning,
and then we sheltered at a friend of his, a farmer on a large farm,
and he put us in a hay loft.
[narrator] In Innsbruck, Fred is taken to the Gestapo prison.
His interrogation begins.
[Fred] First they started hitting me,
in the face.
[thwack]
"Where is your radio operator?"
[talking in German] [thwack]
I had a...
Cyanide pill which I tried to bite on, but it fell out, when they hit me.
So I couldn't kill myself.
They kept beating me more and more,
they stuck a pistol in my mouth.
Gave me a haymaker,
and knocked out all my back teeth.
And I spit my teeth,
I also spit blood.
I still didn't know what they were talking about.
[soft music]
[narrator] That night, Mamanita Kershaw, organizes a prayer vigil, for Fred's safety.
[religious singing]
[Patrick]This is an extraordinary moment in the mission itself,
a sense of humanity that's unparalleled.
Where you have this village that's...
Arguably very pro-Nazi, they're Catholics,
and then they're praying for a Jew.
And they're effectively collaborators.
They're all collectively collaborators in that church that night.
[gentle music]
[narrator] Back inside the prison, Fred is subjected to merciless torture,
led by Gestapo head, Walter Güttner.
[Fred] He was a little rat.
I could have killed him with one hand if I was free.
[foreboding music]
But...
He was determined to break me.
[thwack and thud]He just kept trying to...
Get me to talk.
[thwack then groan]
As long as I don't break,
they'll keep me alive.
And I'm not going to break because I'm not going to give anybody away.
One of them said...
"Maybe it's you",
but the other said, "No,
you couldn't take it like that".
They stripped me,
and hung me upside down,
there's a rifle belt between my legs,
and raised me between two desks.
And they beat me.
[speaking in German]
Getting whipped,
getting bloodier and bloodier.
All they kept saying, "Where's your radio operator?"
Over and over, I'd give them the same answer,
"Je ne sais pas".
I don't know.
[crack of whip]
[narrator] A high ranking Nazi Party official, Dr. Primbs,
has been silently observing Fred's torture.
At a critical point he steps in.
[Fred] Dr. Primbs saved my life, there's no question about it.
And so Gũttner cut me down because I'm unconscious.
He knew I wasn't, but that's what he told him.
It was his own view I think,
that I could be useful.
And so they put me in a prison cell.
[foreboding music]
[narrator] Fred is held in a cell for several days.
During that time, another prisoner,
suspected of being a resistance fighter, is tortured to death by Gũttner.
[Fred] Finally Dr. Primbs came into the room...
He told me, "Get cleaned up,
and we're going to take a little ride".
[mellow music]
[Fred] It was a very impressive house, like a mansion.
And there were assembled...
About six men, with food in front of them, and drinks.
All kind of delicacies.
It looked good.
I heard a voice...
"Have some food, and relax, nothing is going to happen here".
It was Hofer.
[gentle piano music]
[Fred] Hofer's wife greeted me, beautiful woman.
Blonde, perfect picture of a Nazi woman.
I can just well imagine, here was Freddy, must have looked like a real mess.
Hofer of course had hope,
that he would be...
The big shot in the Alpine Redoubt.
Well, by that time,
he could see that there wasn't much of a chance.
And so he decided that he might as well use Fred.
[narrator] Fred takes this opportunity to offer Hofer a way out.
[Fred] I told him, you'll surrender to our troops,
and we'll treat you as prisoners of war.
I had no right to do that but...
I thought that was a good deal.
That way he would stay alive.
I suggested that he declare Innsbruck an open city.
He kind of hmm'd and ahh'd,"Well you know,
it's my duty".
But it started Hofer thinking.
[foreboding music]
[narrator] Fred learns that Hofer has had a change of heart.
Instead of surrendering, Hofer wants to fight to the bitter end.
As governor of Tyrol, he is about to deliver a call to arms.
[Fred] The radio hook up was there,
I told him again, before he went on the air,
to do the right thing for the people...
And declare Innsbruck an open city.
Which he did then.
[soft music]
[narrator] Fred, once imprisoned and beaten by the Nazi's,
now outs Hofer under arrest.
[talking in German]
[Patrick] It's very reminiscent of the scene in "Inglorious Bastards".
Franz Hofer wanted immunity from war crimes.
Fred Mayer had no authority to grant that immunity,
but in one of the great bluffs of the war,
said that he would protect Hofer, in exchange for surrendering Innsbruck.
[foreboding music]
[Fred] I drove through the lines...
I met the first American officer.
I said, "Major West, I am Fred Mayer of the OSS,
I want you to accept the surrender of Tyrol".
That's what happened.
[narrator] The Americans march into Innsbruck,
now an open city.
[crowd cheering]
[narrator] Operation Greenup's success saved untold lives,
shortened the war on the Italian front,
and spared historic Innsbruck from being destroyed.
[Manfred] Perhaps I can say is, I'm a little bit proud of my father of course.
And I think...
My father can be an example for me.
I often think what would I do if I...
Would live in such a time.
Can't really say. I hope I would...
Do right.
[internet phone ringing]
[rings again]
Hello...
Yes Freddy, where are you? I'm supposed to see your picture but I don't see it yet.
I don't see you yet either.
But at least I recognize your voice.
Yeah, I see you.
-[Fred] You do? -Yeah, I can see the top part of your face.
[laughs]
[Hans] Can you see me?
-Yeah, now I see you-- -[Hans] I see you too.
You have all your hair still, I do too.
Look, all my hair.
[both laugh]
[Hans] So how are you yourself? You're very well?
I have no complaints, I wish you were feeling as well as I was.
Yeah well, I've been out of the hospital now for a week,
and I feel better today than at any other time.
-[Hans] So I'm in good shape. -That's very nice.
Well, now they will give me a medal...
That's right.
I'll pin it on my pajamas.
[Fred] At least. [Hans laughs]
[gentle piano music]
[Hans] I consider the whole thing just a lucky break.
And I've considered this...
Sort of an image of my life, I think, even though my parents were killed by the Nazi's
I still think I've been a very lucky fellow.
All the other guys were fighting, I was sitting in a comfortable room.
Very little bravery on our parts, except for Fred.
And for Franz. Franz of course was immediately...
In danger because he was a deserter.
We all wonder how we would...
React to torture. It's one of the things that one...
Thinks about, if you're taken prisoner or anything like this.
In the case of Fred, we know how he reacted.
[soft groans]
[Fred] Gũttner was picked up by the CIC,
and he was imprisoned there...
They asked me if I wanted to see him, of course I did, I wanted to beat him up.
I went there, and there he was in a corner and he started saying to me,
"Look, please do anything you want with me but,
please don't hurt my family".
I tell him, "What do you think we are, Nazi's?"
I walked out.
I find you looking well and healthy.
Stay that way for another ten years at least okay?
Well, I don't want to hang around that long, but...
[Hans laughs] You take care Hans.
-[Hans] Same to you Fred-- -And above all, get healthy.
-Same to you. Bye bye. -[Fred] Bye bye.
[gentle music]
What wonderful gadgets I have nowadays huh?
He looks terrific.
A little bit older, but still the same boy face.
[gentle music continues]
[soft piano music]
[Fred] I did my job.
But it was my war.
I hated the Nazi's and I loved America, it was as simple as that.
My war!
It was a good feeling that we won.
We beat them.
And the fact that Hans was...
Where I could find him,
and Franz was where I could find him,
it was a good feeling.
Happy ending.
[military style music]
[music stops]
[mellow music]