The Real Inglorious Basterds! | True Story of the Jewish Commandos Who Inspired Tarantino | Full Doc

this is the true story behind in glorious bastards jewish americans who are refugees of nazi germany that go back behind the lines for vengeance we were dedicated to killing nazis and doing it behind the enemy land that's what we are trained for and that's what we volunteered for a lieutenant he said the only thing you have to know is have a gun in your hand and aim it at the german and do this that's all the training i'm going to give you they kept beating me more and more you knocked out all my bad teeth this is almost like a suicide mission it's a situation where the truth is way stranger than fiction war has been raging in europe for four years u.s forces have been engaged for a year and a half all along america has been waging a secret war [Music] the oss has been training commandos to parachute behind enemy lines one of the most successful of these missions was operation greenup operation greenup was made up of several men that were refugees from nazi germany that were jewish 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 it felt like i had my chance to do what i set out to do to kel nazis that's why all the jewish boys joined hans winberg the radio operator was the lifeline of the mission because a team behind the lines in nazi germany without a radio is absolutely dead i was 15-16 when munich and george lavacia and austria were overrun when hitler came the germans fled germany came through our town we were very much aware of the evil of fascism it started right away in 1933 when hitler took power the flags were the handwriting on the wall all the public buildings swastikas that was the end of democracy fred meyer was a jewish teenager living in hitler's germany his father was a patriot who fought in the first world war my father kept insisting oh i'm a more veteran and all that nothing is going to happen to us my mother said well as youth there'll be no person and she was right but my father was active in the anti-nazi party here jews were fleeing germany so my father was completely up-to-date and he apparently didn't trust it hans's father decided to send him to america with his twin brother a business associate agreed to take over guardianship of the young twins my father sent 3 600 to the united states probably a year's income enormous amount of money whole family said to my father leo how can you be such a nut to send 16 year olds to the land of cowboys and indians the whole family was against it except my mother hans and his twin brother left behind their parents younger brother and extended family in holland they would never see them again 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 who was a type 16 17 were gassed in auswitch fred was one of the lucky ones he managed to escape to america with his immediate family 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 7th 1941 the japanese attacked pearl harbor the next day i was in line for the recruiting station i had a good combination hatred and love hatred for the nazis and love for america like fred hans was ready to fight as soon as he was of legal age one day before my 21st birthday i became an american citizen and then i was in the army fred and hans quickly found out that army life wasn't what they'd expected [Music] sawzan picked me you kp it wasn't interesting enough just to be another number that wasn't for me 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 somebody from washington came up to me i hear that you speak dutch and say yeah do you want to liberate your country i said yeah all right if you sign here you can go and join the oss i've never heard of the oss saboteur commando americans are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of these names in the news of world war ii the u.s didn't really have until late 30s did not have anything in the way of an away intelligence organization [Music] and we had the secretary of war henry simpson who said gentlemen don't read other people's mail and so you can imagine where the os has started with nothing the oss commandeered the congressional country club to train recruits [Music] this was the general tenderier as i remembered that's where we did our demolition exercises and we blew up some of those good trees these were the dirty dozen of the day the motley crew of men from all walks of life german refugees a loofah pilot a butcher one guy said it perfectly it's the craziest group of men i've ever been with and they also shared a common passion of striking back at nazi germany they took us to train us in small arms it lieutenant he got us up in the morning he said the only thing you have to know is this that is to have a gun in your hand and aim it at the german and do this that's all the training i'm going to give you 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 parachute school how to use a pistol working with explosives night training how to own lux very scary movies about venereal diseases [Music] never anything about intelligence there 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 fred and hans bonded through the training sessions they connected almost like family i felt like he was my little brother 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 ahead taller than i was but still his face if you looked at him he was just a young boy yeah like a brother yeah he always impressed me a strong personality knew what he wanted bossy that's why i got divorced so soon [Laughter] dino lowenstein a commanding officer in the oss recalls the two men fatty 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 uh he would have killed somebody else if he had to and this sort of thing hans had this purity of soul and he was motivated but he would have liked to do it with a minimum of nasty things to other people d-day june 6 1944 allied forces launched 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 it's suddenly they're lost in this bureaucratic shuffle because nobody knew who they were it was the oss it was a secret organization freddie and i said we're never going to see any action war is almost over so then freddie says well we're gonna take this we're gonna go to the higher officer that's when i decided that's enough i'm going to headquarters and ask for a transfer to intelligence fred and hans are transferred to intelligence headquarters in barrie italy the staging ground for all covert operations in southern europe ready for action fred comes up with a plan well he explained this plan that they were they wanted to be dropped with arms on top of the hull and they were going to distribute the arms to the inmates and they were going to start a revolution that way and uh my reaction was very negative he might as well drop out the window which would be in the long run more economical and more practical 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 corps but nothing was stopping the flow of rail traffic 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 the other key goal is to identify and find out what was going on in the alpine or town it is rumored hofer is building an impenetrable fortress in the tyrolean alps here nazi zealots will rally and make their last stand gopher's dream threatens to prolong the war for months maybe even years franz hofer is 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 this is dangerous territory to infiltrate operation greenup will need a third man an insider from tyrone freddy and i went to german prison camps to find the third man mainly a german or austrian prisoner of war who would spend all these years in in hitler territory and among this list there was a lieutenant weber franz waybury is a weremacked officer from tyrol who deserted from the german army out of conscience well i liked him right away he was trustworthy why did the oss [Music] [Music] france was a very interesting individual he did not like the approaches 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 france was not the type he knew what was going on [Music] somehow we got along immediately very well we come from a completely different backgrounds france was a fairly devout catholic trey and i were of course jews and still we had absolutely no trouble trusting one another completely total trust 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 over purpose franz's home village this will be their base for forays into winsbrook the capital of tyrol and a major rail center in the region it is the seat of power for governor franz hofer i drove them to the airport what was the mood in this vehicle as you were going out there uh we had all discussed at great lengths the perils freddie 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 nobody could do it there was nothing in the world that could go wrong with the team except through bad luck 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 brenna pass was was heavily fortified the the germans had brought anti-aircraft guns to the tops of the mountains surrounding the brenner path and it was just absolute suicide to try to go that way we were not supposed to learn any information about the jewels 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 i could do even i didn't think i could hold it together to go stealthing around in enemy territory in plain sight we would try to stay as low as as as physically possible and in between mountains as much as we could so that radar wouldn't see us we got into trouble we got into a downdraft so severe in the alps it took us down six thousand feet in 20 seconds forced down by high winds you were going down faster than you would have gone if you just jumped out of the airplane and then near the bottom of the gully probably because the wind veins were leveling out at the ball we stopped descent [Music] once had never jumped out of a plane before i told them that especially on the glacier there's no problem they were just thinking a little deeper go go we landed at 10 000 feet so you can imagine how high we were and how cold it is up there in the middle of the winter we found one another immediately we didn't jump far apart and then we realized when we got together we had no skis i couldn't see the canister that held this piece they must have gone on the other side of the mountain peak the snow was steep and we kept thinking in the air was thin you had to stop in between to take your breath at one time hans was ready to suck out and we had to keep on going there becomes the matter of life of death you either go or you freeze [Music] eventually the team arrives at a mountainside hamlet they claim to be an alpine ski unit that's gotten lost one of the villagers loans them a sled picture going off a sheer cliff that's all ice with no brakes on a sled and then hoping you make it and that's exactly what that was like 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 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 when they arrive in oberperfuss franz makes contact with his fiancee 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 kirscher she was if not the leader of the community the hidden leader of the community and she was very anti-healthy she immediately hugged me and welcomed me she was just so happy to see that somebody else will fight the nazis mamanita kirscher takes hans to the attic of a sympathetic farmer hans taps out his first transmission to the oss headquarters in barrie italy [Music] it worked the signal that we sent it bounced around over the alps to barry italy [Music] unbelievable mamanita kirscher takes a great risk in welcoming the team the threat to being caught is only too real 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 grain of team had gone into only at night was i allowed to go to the bathroom it's tricky they were so scared deadly scared that they would be discovered mamanita kirscher assumes responsibility for franz's safety she hides him in a room at the hotel she [Music] owns [Music] 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 fred is now a convalescing german officer in innsbruck on leave from the front i was able to check in the local barracks and the offices quarters so i can come and go freely fred's story is that he's wounded in action and he presents outpatient documents forged by louisa to support his claim so he issued me a pay card so i could draw rations and money i have to live somewhere [Music] i had confidence that i could handle it i never questioned what unit i came from all i knew is that i was a wounded officer and that was enough the officers club was this 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 to get these secrets to hans in the oss fred works with franz's youngest sister eva they create a secure courier system of young women who travel back and forth between innsbruck and ober perfus i've never met them they gave him to the farmer and the farmer saw that as safe he passed it on to me that system they worked that out within a few days was excellent 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 that's how i got the information on hitler's bunker i didn't force him to talk to me he just talked [Music] one of the officers had just returned from berlin and he was an engineering officer and he explained the bunker where hitler was located house i constructed it with the walls sown so thick and location of it and i send that in headquarters assigns fred a side mission with their advanced engineering new german messerschmitt jets could dominate the skies the question is can they produce enough machines this is a james bond movie with a secret hideout buried underground on the side of a mountain it's a measure schmidt factory creating german jets 262s they have these massive metal steel doors somehow fred mayer has to infiltrate this top secret facility [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 frederik mayer this french electrician that wasn't hard they changed close and i pronounced my name a little different but that's it instead of frederick meyer i became afraid they leaked my air very simple 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 nazis i figured well not i had some free time and i could put into good use you he wanted to take the role you know yeah he wanted to establish some sort of a resistance army 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 headquarters turned them down basically he said your job is not the start of the third front or something like that your job is to gather intelligence while fred works his contacts in innsbruck frond stays hidden in ober perfus 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 fiancee annie [Music] babies [Music] [Laughter] [Music] yeah it failed to explode the fronts my smile comes from my falls this i'll help this question question where lived my father died 10 years ago and when he died she was very sad when we were children my father didn't talk about the green up mission and he was i think he was a brave man he didn't feel doing this it was dangerous simpler i went down to the railroads and kind of looked around and the yacht master started talking to me i was immune in german uniform so he didn't just suspect anything i asked him about all those trains down here these 26 trains here are going to go night in two days so i sent that message and that's how we destroyed 26 trains complete with ammunition and new armor slated for the italian front 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 nazis 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 fran's sisters gretel and eva [Music] eva went to the door i knew something was wrong there was no escape there was no second door [Music] she kept them at the door long enough for me to throw all the papers in a fire [Music] you don't argue with six submission guns eva gets word to louisa who makes her way to over perfus where she finds franz and warns him that fred has been captured fonz came to me i said we better get out freddy has been caught and he knew of course that neighborhood thoroughly it was middle of the night as far as i recall we tramped through the woods that night till about three or four in the morning and then we sheltered at a friend of his a farmer and a large farmhouse and he put us in a hay loft in innsbruck fred is taken to the gestapo prison his interrogation begins first i started hitting me in a face where's your radio operator [Music] i have the cyanide film which i tried to bite on but they fell out when they hit me so i couldn't kill myself they kept beating me more and more i stuck a pistol in my mouth gave me a haymaker and knocked out all my bad teeth and i spit my teeth i spit blood i still didn't know what they were talking about that night mamanita kirscher organizes a prayer vigil for fred's safety 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 back inside the prison fred is subjected to merciless torture led by gestapo head walter goodner he was a little rat i could have killed him with one hand if i was free but he was determined to break me i just kept trying to get me to talk as long as they 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 upside down there's a rifle bell between my legs and raised me between two desks and they beat me getting whipped getting bloody and bloody also kept saying where's your radio operator over and over with him the same answer i don't know a high-ranking nazi party official dr prims has been silently observing fred's torture at the critical point he steps in dr prima says my wife there's no question about it until vietnam cuts me down because i'm unconscious you know i wasn't but that's what he told him it was his own view i think that i could be useful and they put me in a prison cell fred is held in the cell for several days during that time another prisoner suspected of being a resistance fighter is tortured to death by goodner finally dr prims came into the room he told me get cleaned up and we're gonna take a little ride it was a very impressive house like a mansion they were assembled about six men with food in front of them and drinks all kinds of delicacies it looked good very common i heard the voice have some food and relax nothing is going to happen here it was over [Music] alpha's wife greeted me a beautiful woman blonde perfect picture of a nazi woman i mean i can just would imagine he was ready must have looked like a real mess hofer of course had hoped that he would be the big shot in the alpine we doubt 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 fred takes this opportunity to offer hofer a way out i told them 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 where he would stay alive i suggested that he declare innsbruck in open city he come to hampton hall well you know it's my duty but it started overthinking 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 [Music] the radio hookup was up there i told him again before he went on the air to do the right thing for the people and declare innsbruck and open city which he did then fred once beaten and imprisoned by the nazis now puts hofer under arrest [Music] it's very reminiscent of the scene in the glorious 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 i drove through the van i met the first american officer i said major west i'm quite mad off the oss i want you to accept the surrender of tyrone that's what happened the americans march into innsbruck now [Applause] [Music] foreign time blew it for both yeah yeah operation greenup success saved on toll lives shortened the war on the italian front and spared historic innsbruck from being destroyed perhaps i can say as 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 i can't really say i hope i would do right 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 you do yeah i can see the top part of your face [Laughter] can you see me yeah nice you have all your hair still i do too look all my hair [Laughter] so how are you 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 any other time sure i'm in good shape oh that's very nice well no they will give me a medal yeah that's right well i'll pin it on my pajamas at least i consider the whole thing just a lucky break [Music] and i've considered that's sort of an image of my life i think even though my parents were killed by the nazis i still think i've been a very lucky fellow all the other guys were fighting and i was sitting in a comfortable room very little bravery on our part except for fred and for franz fons 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 for take prisoner or anything like this in the case of fred we know how he reacted kitten was picked up by the cic and he was in prison there she 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 the corner and he started saying to me look please do anything you want with me but please don't hurt my family i tell them what do you think we are nazis [Music] i walked out now i find you looking well and healthy stay that way for another 10 years at least okay well i i don't want to hang around that long but will you take your hands same to you fred try to be honest get healthy same to you bye bye the movie joy what wonderful gadgets i have nowadays huh he looks terrific a little bit older but still the same boy face [Music] [Music] [Music] my [Music] i did my job but it was my war i hated the nazis and i left america it was the same place my wall it was a good feeling that we weren't we beat them [Music] and the fact that hans was [Music] where i could find them in france was where i could find them and it was a good feeling [Music] [Music] ending [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] you

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Keywords: the real inglourious basterds, inglourious basterds, jewish commandos, quentin tarantinos inglourious basterds, jewish commandos that inspired inglourious basterds, jewish commandos that inspired tarantino, quentin tarantino, real inglourious basterds doc, real inglourious basterds full documentary, danger, dangertv, danger tv, Danger, DangerTV, Danger TV, dangertv special forces, jewish commandos wwII, WWII, jewish world war 2 commandos, special forces, special forces commandos, jew

Id: 8ou4PtFa3HM

Length: 51min 33sec (3093 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020