Author Eric Lichtblau https://ericlichtblau.com published the book “Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee’s Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis” in 2019. Mr. Lichtblau has published three books.

I received an ARC of this book through https://www.netgalley.com in return for a fair and honest review. I categorize this book as ‘PG’. The target of this biography is Freddy ‘Fritz’ Mayer.

Mayer and his family were among the lucky few German Jews who were able to flee from Germany before the war. Mayer was a teen when they arrived in the US in March of 1938. He tried to enlist after Perl Harbor but was denied because of his German heritage. He was eventually drafted in late 1942.

The extensive training the Army subjected him to was not to Mayer’s liking. He wanted to contribute more to the war effort. He was a leader, but tended to treat rules as suggestions. He was offered the opportunity to join the OSS in late 1943.

Mayer partnered with Dutch Jewish refuge Hans Wynberg. Eventually, a third man, German POW Franz Weber, joined their group. They all parachuted into occupied Austria in February of 1945.

They were able to gather important intelligence and transmit it back to the Allies. Mayer used his fluency in both German and French to his advantage. He audaciously posed as a German officer and a French factory worker. His luck ran out in late April. The Gestapo arrested him. While he was tortured and questioned for days, he gave up nothing. With the end of the war looming ahead, he persuaded the Nazi commander of the Tyrol area to surrender.

I enjoyed the 6+ hours I spent reading this 318-page WWII history. This true story reads more like fiction than history. It is very readable. While the book is over 300 pages, the story is contained in the first 60%. The rest is all references. The selected cover art is an interesting choice. I give this book a 4.3 (rounded down to a 4) out of 5.

You can access more of my book reviews on my Blog ( https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/).

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

Eric Lichtblau’s Return to the Reich is the true story of German Jew Fred Mayer and his struggle against the Nazis. It’s a proper adventure story, almost in the you-couldn’t-make-it-up category.

Fred’s family fled Germany in 1938 when he was sixteen and had seen enough of the Nazi’s actions against the Jews to instil a bitter hatred and a determination to fight Hitler’s regime with all the resources at his disposal. Turned down when he tried to enlist because of his German citizenship, he was selected by the US secret services and sent out to Austria, from where he sent back regular reports.

It’s an adventure story packed with twists and turns. Fred’s character and enormous qualities come through and it was almost a real page-turner. I say “almost” because I found the writing a little slow and repetitive at times, although the story itself was enough to carry the book. I thoroughly enjoyed it, both as a story and as a historical record.

Thanks to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

It's one thing to have a great story, but it's a whole next level to tell the story well. Eric Lichtblau tells the unbelievably great story of Fred Mayer in a compelling, highly readable, and well-told narrative. Fred Mayer's story has been told before but perhaps not as thoroughly and engagingly as Lichtblau's Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee's Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis.

After fleeing Germany to the US with his Jewish family, Mayer tried to sign up to fight against the Nazis. Once he told the military recruiter he was born in Germany, they sent him home to Brooklyn. After the US entered the war, the military was a bit more desperate for recruits and Mayer joined the Navy. He native German tongue and familiarity with his home country got him a look by a new group, the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA. After a lot of training and waiting around, Mayer returned to Europe, parachuting behind enemy lines on a mission to infiltrate the Nazi's stronghold in Austria.

Mayer's heroism was matched by his unflappable nature. He was willing to pose as a German prisoner in a POW camp, impersonate a Nazi officer in Nazi territory, and endure torturous interrogation without breaking. Return to the Reich is a great reminder that while mass troop movements and massive efforts like D-Day were obviously crucial, small moves by small groups of people like Mayer and his team also had the capacity to turn the course of the war.

It's also a reminder of how personal World War 2 was for many. Mayer disavowed Germany as a result of the treatment he and his family and Jews throughout the Reich received. About Mayer's return, Lichtblau writes, "He could still remember the pain in his father's face that day aboard the SS Manhattan seven years earlier, as they were fleeing Germany, when they learned that Hitler had taken over Austria. Now here he was, dropping into that very place to try to help free it from the Nazis." This is a great read about a great hero.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee’s Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis by Eric Lichtblau tells the true story of Fred Mayer, a Jew born in Germany and returns as an American agent behind enemy lines. Mr. Lichtblau is a Pulitzer Prize winning author.

This book is a compilation of excellent research and first hand interviews, which met the author a few month before his death. The outcome is the fascinating Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee’s Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis by Eric Lichtblau tells the true story of Fred Mayer, a book which brings history to life.

This was a very exciting book, following Mr. Mayer from his childhood in Germany, to his training in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), an onto his missions behind enemy lines. The writing is simple, but exciting, it’s a difficult book to put down.

The first part of the book talks about the lives before World War II. Jewish refugees fleeing to America. The next part tells of the difficult training and how Mr. Mayer and his friend found their way to the OSS and how they handled difficulties. These two parts made the personalities real, which made me feel as if I had a stake in their success and survival.

Mr. Mayer must have had balls of steel, he seem to have never inherited the protective gene of fear. Whether it is to fly a B24 without training, or jump out of it over the Austrian Alps – for the first time. It is difficult to believe that all these adventures actually happened, and to one person at that.

This is a story worth telling, a fascinating tale which is difficult to believe. Even though this is a short book, it is a good story and a real page turner.

When reading a biography like this there is always the fear that it will be boring. Not this one. This moves at a quick pace and you really get a fly by overview of an unknown American hero. I love reading stories of people who put the good of mankind over their well being, and Freddy in this story runs headlong into the fray. His story is inspiring and very informative for a part of WWII that not many people know about.

This book was fast paced. Hard to put down. It flowed well and it was very well written. It caught hold of me and had me hooked from the start . I was literally on the edge of my seat reading this book.

"Return to the Reich” by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Eric Lichtblau is a thrilling and racy account of the extraordinary exploits in subterfuge pulled off by three indomitable men right behind enemy lines. Private First Class Fred Mayer, Sergeant Hans Wynberg and the Wehrmacht deserter Franz Weber, were tasked by the Office of Strategic Services (“OSS”), a wartime intelligence agency of the United States during World War II, and a predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) , to penetrate German lines in the Tyrolean capital of Innsbruck in Austria. The motive: to garner as much intelligence as possible on the despotic Adolf Hitler’s proposed last and violent stand in the Alps against rapidly advancing Allied Forces. If this resistance, rumoured to be known as the Festung or the ‘fortress’ was to be left unchecked, then there was the unenviable and unsavoury prospect of the World War being prolonged for a few more months, if not weeks.

As Mr. Lichtblau regales us in fascinating detail, Freddy Mayer was one astounding individual. The son of Heinrich Mayer, a decorated German war veteran, and also the recipient of an Iron Cross medal, Freddy’s life is turned upside down with the ascendancy to power of the Nazi Party. The otherwise tolerant and accommodating town of Freiburg becomes a bastion of the Third Reich philosophy. The Mayer family, forced to desert their family home and business, clamber aboard the SS Manhattan and in March 1938 find themselves at New York. The calamitous strike on Pearl Harbour, that sucked America into World War II provided the most appropriate opportunity for Mayer to do his bit in fighting the very forces of evil that had led to his family getting uprooted from their own home. However, Mayer’s application papers get rejected solely on account of the fact that he was a Jew of German descent. A paranoia of “Fifth Column” incursions cast aspersions on both the motive and loyalty of 1.1 million Americans of German, Italian and Japanese descent. However, a paucity of both physical bodies and intellectual information, ensured that Mayer was drafted into the OSS, a brainchild of celebrated World War I hero William Donovan. As Mr. Lichtblau informs his readers, the ambitions of the OSS stretched from training bats to drop bombs and injecting Hitler with female hormones to make him less aggressive.

Hans Wynberg, Mayer’s radio operator and perpetrator-in-crime also had his justified grouse against Hitler and his forces. Hans and his twin brother Luke were dispatched to the United States by his astute father who feared the worst for the Dutch in the event of the country being run over by the Germans. His worse prophesies come true as the Germans not only occupy Netherlands but arrest Han’s parents and his little brother Robbie before putting the trio away at the infamous concentration camp as Auschwitz, where the family perishes.

Franz Weber, a twenty-three-year-old Prisoner Of War (“POW”) inside Camp 209 in Naples was a man nursing a wounded conscience. Although fighting for Hitler, his beliefs were in direct contradiction to that of the brutal Nazis. He was also inextricably bound by Gewissen – his conscience as a Catholic, which prevented him from engaging in unspeakable atrocities, which for his fellow soldiers constituted pleasure and purpose. Hence when Dyno Lowenstein, Mayer’s boss approaches Franz with a proposal to not merely defect but work for the OSS, he agrees immediately.

On the 25th of February, 1945, Mayer, Hans and Franz are para-dropped from a B-24 Liberator piloted by the irascible twenty-one-year-old John Billings, to land near the Sultztaler Glacier at an elevation of 10,500 feet. From here begins the unbelievable story of Operation Greenup or Operation Gulliver that has now attained immortality in the lore of espionage. Franz Weber, now calling himself Leutnant Erich Schmitzer, and armed with a Nazi Soldbuch identification, proceeds to Innsbruck. Mayer and Hans are his supposed deferential collaborators. The primary objective of their mission is to glean invaluable information about the German activities surrounding The Brenner Pass. A Pass dividing southern Austria and northern Italy for some sixty miles, The Brenner Pass acted as a veritable lifeline for the Nazis, transporting weapons and troops to the frontline. Any disruption to this line would create havoc for the Nazis sending their supply schedules into a tailspin.

Banking on an incredibly intricate system of covert networking, Mayer seeks out Nazi resisters and disgruntled populace who are more than just eager to see the decimation of the Nazis. Popularly known as “cut outs”, they included Alois Abenthung, a former Burgermeister in Oberperfuss, and Franz’s own fiancé Annie. Hans strings up a communication platform and works from the attic of an allied sympathizer and the trio begin transmitting some extraordinarily delicate & confidential information back to OSS Head Quarters. For example, Mayer, obtaining Nazi uniform and papers surreptitiously, walks in an audacious manner into a barracks for the Nazis and even manages to get an assistant who irons his uniform and shines his boots! Disguised as a Nazi soldier on recuperation, strikes a conversation with a more than just boisterous Nazi officer. Fueled by both pride and copious quantities of wine, the officer, by now garrulous, boasts about the fortification of Fuhrerhauptquartier – Hitler’s underground bunker. The spectacular quality of details divulged include even the precise location of the bunker.

But as Mr. Lichtblau admirably reveals, the most wonderful and material missive of Messrs Mayer, Hans and Franz involved leaking information about a massive caravan of military supplies heading for the front line in Italy. Upon receiving this information, the 15th Air Force sends a reconnaissance mission which corroborates Mayer’s stupendous information. B-17 fighter planes swooping down upon 26 trains of 30 to 40 cars each – and stuffed with ammunition, tractors, anti-aircraft guns, gasoline and light equipment – bomb them with the utmost ferocity before reducing the caravan to a smouldering spectacle of ruin and rubble.

However, Mayer’s egregious attitude and an eagerness that even extended to insubordination brings him right at the door step of death, as after weeks of sabotage, surreptitiousness and secrecy, the truth and the Gestapo finally catch up with him. Mayer is sold out by a mercenary and turncoat, Karl Neiderwanger, a man who had earlier informed Freddy that he could produce five hundred resistance fighters for him, and Hermann Matull a Nazi Radio Operator who defected to the OSS before agreeing to work for the Germans as a double agent. Matull was derisively termed, ‘a real gutter snipe” by his OSS trainer Walter Haass. Walter Guttner, an Obersturmfuhrer, in charge of Mayer’s interrogation employs the most extreme measures to squeeze out information from Mayer. Slapping and punching Mayer, rupturing his right eardrum, knocking out 6 of his teeth, whipping him until his back had deep cuts and waterboarding him were some of the techniques resorted to by Guttner, during Mayer’s seven days of Gestapo custody.

As suddenly as he was arrested, Mayer is released and is escorted to the house of the most powerful Nazi in Tyrol: Gauletier Franz Hofer. In a jaw dropping spectacle of self-professed diplomacy, Mayer convinces Hofer to not exhort his soldiers to fight but to lay down their arms as further encounters would only be futile. Incredulously, Hofer heeds Mayer’s pleas and surrenders to the Allied forces. Innsbruck is thus liberated without a single drop of blood being shed.

As Mr. Lichtblau concludes, the Gulliver mission will go down in the annals of military history as one of the most successful espionage operations engaged in by the Americans. The “Das Verwegene Trio” or the “Three Swashbuckling guys”, not only secured intelligence to bomb Nazi supply trains, but also tracked German troop movements, pinpointed Hitler’s bunker and in a feat of insurmountable stupefaction, arranged the surrender of Innsbruck!

But the core and crux of Mr. Lichtblau’s wonderful book – a monumental testimony to the preservation of humanity – is contained in one of its concluding passages. Mayer’s meets with Guttner, who is now imprisoned, at the end of the war “Do anything you want with me,” Guttner begs, “but don’t hurt my family.”

“Who do you think we are?” Mayer replies. “Nazis?”

Although Freddy Mayer for his show of exemplary and singularly undaunted courage was honoured with the Legion of Merit, the Congressional Medal of Honour was denied to him. One of the banal excuses proffered for this travesty was that, Freddy’s daring acts, did not demonstrate “actual conflict or direct physical contact with an armed enemy.”

But as Mr. Lichtblau beautifully chronicles in this absolute masterpiece, may honours be damned! The honourable will live forever!

This is such an utterly fascinating account of spy work and the WWII world that it is hard for me to find the right words to review it properly and give it the justice it deserves. First of all, as a book recounting historical events, this is anything but boring. There is something on every page that makes you eager to reads the next one, and before you know it, the book is finished. I was sorry to see it go.

The account of events in that this man and his fellow OSS members lived through is terrifying, exciting and at times, reminded me of a good spy thriller, except it was somehow better knowing the events were true. What courage and desire it must have taken for all the participants involved to operate as they did, knowing that at any moment they could have been (and in at least one case, were) discovered.

If you have not taken the time to reads this book yet, I recommend that you do so. It is an amazingly well-written book, that gives the reader deeper insight into some of the most crucial tactics the US deployed during the war. Prior to reading this, I had no idea how much difference the Gulliver team made to the outcome of the war. It is a thoughtful and enticing account of historical events, brought back to life by a talented author. Definitely a keeper.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

This is an amazing true story that I foumd hard to put down. It is the story of a hero during WWII. It is better than any fiction. I highly recommend it.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

I always appreciate journalists and authors who hold the treasured memories of war heroes, and this book does not disappoint. In an age of self-focus and a seeming lack of heroes in day-to-day living, Freddy Mayer stands forth as an incredible WWII survivor and hero. (I can easily see a movie being made of this man's incredible life) For those who like books like "Beneath a Scarlet Sky," you'll very much enjoy the true story of "Return to the Reich."