Friedrich Mayer was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, in a Jewish family whose father was decorated in the First World War at the service of the Imperial German Army. But the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933 and the growing anti-Semitism in German society made the family decide to emigrate to the United States in 1938.
There he changed his name to Frederick, and three years later he enlisted in the Army, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His superiors quickly realized that his command of German, French and Spanish could be very useful in intelligence work, and so he ended up serving in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA.
In early 1945 Mayer was in Bari, as part of the American occupation contingent in Italy. The Americans suspected that Hitler might use the Austrian Alps as a refuge for the Reich, a place to reorganize and launch a counterattack. So they launched Operation Greenup to gather information on the ground.
On February 26, 1945 Mayer, along with Hans Wijnberg and former Wehrmacht officer Franz Weber (who had gone over to the Allies) were parachuted near Innsbruck onto a glacier at an altitude of 3,000 metres. In the jump they lost the ski container and had to walk down the side of the glacier for hours. They finally arrived at Weber's house, where with the help of his family he disguised himself posing as a German army officer . So he spent several months in and out of the Innsbruck officers' barracks, unbelievably without arousing suspicion, while Wijnberg radioed all the information he gathered.
But within three months the Gestapo arrested an Austrian with whom Mayer used to deal on the black market, who gave his name as an allied spy. Captured and tortured by the Gestapo , he finally confessed that he was American. He was brought into the presence of the commander of the Tyrolean Reichsgau (one of the administrative subdivisions of the areas annexed by Nazi Germany), Franz Hofer. This one, who saw that the German defeat was inevitable, saw the opportunity to surrender to the Americans instead of the Soviets, who were getting closer.
He took Mayer to his house where, in addition to his wife, the German ambassador to Mussolini's government, Rudolph Rahn, was staying. He offered to travel to Bern to meet with the head of the OSS in Switzerland, Allen Welsh Dulles, which Mayer accepted because it was the only way to let his superiors know Hofer's intentions.
On the morning of May 3, 1945 the US 103rd Infantry Division was ordered to take Innsbruck . As they approached the city they saw a car leave carrying a white flag made from a sheet. On board was Frederick Mayer, who asked the major in command of the division to accompany him so he could receive the German surrender.
This is how the entire German army in Innsbruck surrendered to an American sergeant and Jewish spy born in Germany. Frederick Mayer lived the rest of his life in West Virginia and died on April 15, 2016. Years earlier, in 2012, his feat was captured in the movie The Real Inglorious Bastards.