Two months after WWII began, German mathematician and scientist Hans Ferdinand Mayer checked into the Hotel Bristol in Oslo, Norway. Dr. Mayer was an anti-Nazi German, and he purposely planned a trip to Scandinavia to leak information about the Nazis’ weapons systems and latest technological development projects.
Mayer was employed by Siemens & Halske AG, an electrical engineering company specializing in communications engineering and headquartered in Berlin, Germany. He directed the communications research laboratory.
Dr. Mayer borrowed a typewriter from the Hotel Bristol and typed a seven-page report, detailing German military secrets for the purpose of bringing down the Nazi regime. He sent a letter to the British Embassy in Oslo on November 1. Mayer asked the British military attaché to request that the BBC World Service use a coded phrase at the beginning of its German-language program if the attaché wanted the report. The code was given in the broadcast, so Mayer mailed the report.
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Because of its origins, the British entitled the communication the Oslo Report. Considering it was sent anonymously and included detailed facts about many types of German weapons, the report appeared “to good to be true,” and British intelligence was very skeptical. They assumed the report was planted by the Abwehr, the German military intelligence, to distract or mislead the Allies.
It was providential that a young British scientist, Dr. R. B. Jones, recently placed in charge of scientific intelligence, believed the report and forwarded it to MI6 in London. Mayer’s account detailed information about German methods of attacking fortifications, newly developed air-raid warning equipment, and the location of the Luftwaffe’s laboratories and development centers. Mayer also shared about the development and location of Germany’s first aircraft carrier and the ongoing development of remote-controlled long-range rockets.
Dr. Mayer described two types of new torpedoes – acoustic and magnetic – and how to counteract them. Only a few weeks earlier, the Germans had torpedoed and sunk the HMS Royal Oak battleship when it was anchored in British home waters at Scapa Flow, and 835 men were killed. Dr. Mayer instructed the Allies on how to protect themselves from this type of attack. Because many of the weapons were still in development, some of the information was incomplete and some later proved to be inaccurate; however, the Oslo report allowed the British to develop countermeasures and contributed to their victory in the Battle of Britain the following year.
After delivering his report, Dr. Mayer returned to Germany. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for listening to the British Broadcasting Network (BBC), which was strictly forbidden, and for criticizing the Nazi regime. He spent the remaining years of the war in five concentration camps until the Allies freed him. The Nazis never learned about the existence of the Oslo Report, and Mayer’s authorship wasn’t revealed until after he and his wife had died, as stipulated in his will. Mayer lived to be eighty-four years of age and died in 1980.
Sources:
“One Hundred Years of History.” Hotel Bristol.
“The Oslo Report: How a German Scientist Gave Away Nazi Military Secrets And Why Britain Almost ignored Him.” War History Online.
“The Oslo Report 1939—Nazi Secret Weapons Forfeited.” V-2 Rocket.com
“Hans Ferdinand Mayer.” Wikipedia.