Messner provided the first information about the mass murder of Jews from his Semperit plant near Auschwitz - a message the enormity of which amazed the Americans in Zurich. However, the Maier-Messner-Caldonazzi resistance group's plan to bring an American transmitter of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) from Liechtenstein to Austria failed. The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) was in contact with the Austrian resistance group through its colleague G. E. R. Gedye in 1943, but was not convinced of the reliability of the contact person (Franz Josef Riediger, a Messner employee) and did not cooperate due to security concerns.