MAULWURF. The German equivalent of a mole, a Maulwurf is a high-
level enemy agent concealed within an intelligence organization or
government structure. These agents are expected to procure excep-
tionally valuable information, as was the case with Gabrielle Gast,
Klaus Kuron, and Alfred Spuhler during the Cold War.
MAYER, HANS FERDINAND (1895–1980). The anonymous author
of the Oslo Report conveyed to British intelligence, Hans Ferdinand
Mayer was born in Pforzheim on 23 October 1895. In 1922, after
studying mathematics, physics, and astronomy at Karlsruhe and Hei-
delberg, he joined the Berlin laboratory of the Siemens and Halske
electronics firm and, in 1936, headed its communications research
department. In 1939, during a business trip to Oslo, Mayer composed
two letters in his hotel room describing the weapons systems being
developed in Germany. Accompanied by a prototype proximity fuse
used in bombs and artillery shells, they were mailed on separate
days—November 1 and 2—to the British naval attaché in Oslo, who
forwarded them to the Secret Intelligence Service in London. These
seven pages of information—dubbed the Oslo Report—aroused
some initial skepticism but were verified in large part by R. V. Jones,
the newly appointed scientific advisor. While a few of its estimates
(such as the production levels of the Junkers SS light bomber) proved
to be overstated, other data gave the British invaluable knowledge on
a variety of topics, especially radar technology, and thus the ability
to develop effective countermeasures.
Arrested in August 1943 for listening to the British Broadcast-
ing Company, Mayer spent the remainder of the war in a series of
concentration camps. Following his liberation from Buchenwald, he
worked at a U.S. Air Force base in Ohio before accepting a profes-
sorship at Cornell University. Although the first public mention of
the Oslo Report was made by Jones in 1947, its author preferred to
remain unacknowledged until after his death. Mayer returned to di-
rect the research department of Siemens and Halske in 1950 and died
in Munich on 18 October 1980. Jones revealed Mayer’s name nine
years later in his autobiography.
MAYER, RUDOLF. An Austro-Hungarian naval officer who oversaw
extensive sabotage operations in Italy during World War I, Rudolf
MAYER, RUDOLF • 291