And we return to Our American Stories.

CPR stands for cardiopulmonary resurrection,

and I might surprise you that it was only invented in 1960. Here to tell the story of the

man who invented it, Peter Saffer, is Kevin Hazard, author of American Sirens. Take it away, Kevin.

Peter Saffer was born in 1920s, Vienna, to two physicians.

They met while they were dissecting bodies in medical school.

He grew up with this very bohemian existence.

And then in March of 1938, he and his father are in the Vienna Opera House.

They come out afterward, you know. He's young. He's a

teenager. He's feeling very excited about the world. And what he finds when he steps out of the

opera house, this complete madness are people waving swastika flags in the street and chanting

Jews out. That's where he learns that the Nazis have swept across the Austrian border.

Within a couple days, it occupied Vienna, completely changing his life.

Because Saffer was a child of physicians, he's protected from conscription into the German army

by a group of doctors, a group of friendly doctors

who routinely fake medical ailments for Sappher.

Kids in Austria growing up at that time

are all going to be sent to the Eastern Front,

which is one of history's great meat grinders.

About 80% of the kids both above, below, and in his high school class, were all killed in the Eastern Front. So had he

been conscripted into the Army and sent East to fight Russia, chances are he would have been killed.

And his family, friends knew this.

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