The Ritchie Boys, part of the U.S. Military Intelligence Service (MIS) at the War Department, were an organization of soldiers in World War II with sizable numbers of German-Austrian recruits who were used primarily for interrogation of prisoners on the front lines and counter-intelligence in Europe. Trained at secret Camp Ritchie in Washington County, Maryland, many of the total 22,000 service men and women were German-speaking immigrants to the United States, often Jews, who fled Nazi persecution. [1] [2] In addition to interrogation and counter-intelligence they were also trained in psychological warfare in order to study and demoralize the enemy, and served as prosecutors and translators in the Nuremberg trials. [3]
The parent organization of the Ritchie Boys, the MIS, was commanded in Washington by Brigadier General Hayes Adlai Kroner for most of the war. [4]
The Ritchie Boys consisted of approximately 20,000 servicemen, and 2,000 Women's Army Corps members, who were trained for U.S. Army Intelligence during WWII at the secret Camp Ritchie training facility. Most of the men sent to Camp Ritchie for training were assigned there because of fluency in German, French, Italian, Polish, or other languages needed by the US Army during WWII. They had been drafted into or volunteered to join the United States Army and when their ability to speak the language of an enemy was discovered were sent to Camp Ritchie on secret orders.[ citation needed ] Some of the Jewish refugees who were part of this program had originally arrived in the US as children, many without their parents, and were also among the One Thousand Children.
They were trained at the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie in Maryland, later officially known as Fort Ritchie (which was closed in 1998 under the 1995 Base Realignment and Closure Commission). [5] They were specially trained in methods of intelligence, counterintelligence, interrogation, investigation and psychological warfare. [6] Nine hundred of these men also attended special training at Camp Sharpe, Pennsylvania. The Jewish refugees were qualified for these tasks because they knew the German language and understood the German mentality and behavior better than most American-born soldiers. [7] The role of these soldiers was therefore to work in the front lines, at strategic corps and army levels, at interrogation, analyzing German forces and plans, and also to study and demoralize the enemy. The majority of them went on to work as members of the US Counter Intelligence Corps. [8]
During the Battle of the Bulge, two Ritchie Boys were recognized due to their accents, after which German officer Curt Bruns ordered them both to be summarily executed, saying "The Jews have no right to live in Germany." He was captured on February 15, 1945, put on trial for these murders, and sentenced to death by firing squad. Bruns was executed on June 15, 1945, the first WWII war criminal to be executed by the US Army. [9]
After the German declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941, the Ritchie Boys became an important weapon for the Allies. Many of them entered Europe on D-Day, 6 June 1944. [10] Others followed over time. Shortly after reaching land, they left their units and pursued their special tasks. They were able to feed the Allies valuable information. Gen. Oscar Koch (Gen. Patton's G-2) acknowledged that the advance warning of the German Bulge offensive was made possible by information gathered by their MIS units. Moreover, the Ritchie Boys helped break German resistance by demoralizing them in both open and covert operations. They interrogated POWs and defectors to obtain information about German force levels, troop movements, and the physical and psychological state of the Germans. A common interrogation tactic was to use the Germans' fear of transfer into Soviet custody. [11] [12] By means of targeted disinformation via newspaper announcements, flyers, radio broadcasts, and sound trucks, the German population and military were encouraged to cease their resistance to the Allied invasion.
Camp Ritchie also trained over five hundred Japanese Nisei for the PACMIRS program (Pacific Military Intelligence Research Service) to translate documents the U.S. Navy captured in Saipan in July 1944. Fifteen crates of documents were sent to Camp Ritchie for training purposes and were not considered to have any military intelligence. One Nisei, Kazuo Yamane, dug into a crate, retrieving what he believed to be a textbook, but soon discovered it to be meeting minutes from a gathering of all of Japan's armories. The notes contained locations of the armories, the number of weapons held by Imperial Japan, spare parts held, and indicated that Japan had half the number of weapons available to it in 1944 as it did in 1943. Yamane immediately contacted his superior, who contacted the War Department, which translated the text into English. The U.S. then located and destroyed the armories. Yamane called this act his "Proof of Loyalty" because he claimed he could have easily not reported the document to his superiors. A 2017 film, Proof of Loyalty: Kazuo Yamane and the Nisei Soldiers of Hawaii, detailed his time in the service and at Ritchie.
A classified postwar report by the U.S. Army found that nearly 60 percent of the credible intelligence gathered in Europe came from the Ritchie Boys. [1]
After the war, many of the Ritchie Boys served as translators and interrogators, some during the Nuremberg Trials. Many of them went on to successful political, scientific, or business careers.
The first-ever reunion of the Ritchie Boys took place from 23–25 July 2011 at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan. [13] Another reunion was held in June 2012 in Washington, D.C., and at Fort Ritchie, which by then had closed. [14]
In August 2021 the Ritchie Boys were honored in a congressional resolution. [15] [16]
Following the sale of Fort Ritchie in April 2021, a museum and educational center was opened on June 9th, 2023 to continue commemorating the story of the Ritchie Boys in the location where they originally trained. [17] On April 25, 2022, Maryland State Senator Paul Corderman officially announced $400,000 of state funding for the creation of a museum at Camp Ritchie to honor the legacy of the Ritchie Boys and the history of the Army Post. [18] [ better source needed ] Then museum director, Landon Grove, presented a number of talks and interviews, including several NPR discussions in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to spread the story of the soldiers.
The Ritchie Boys were honored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with the Elie Wiesel Award, the museum's highest honor to recognize "the unique role they played serving the United States and advancing our victory over Germany". Ritchie Boys Arno Mayer and Gideon Kantor were present to accept the award while a keynote speech was given by Mark Milley. [19] [ failed verification ]
On October 31, 2022, a press conference was held at Fort Ritchie and Congressman David Trone announced he expected to introduce in Congress a bill to award the Ritchie Boys the Congressional Gold Medal. [20]
This section needs additional citations for verification .(December 2021) |
Anyone who attended Camp Ritchie is considered a Ritchie Boy for this list, whether or not they went on to serve in Europe.
Instructors at Camp Ritchie included Rex Applegate [44] and professional wrestler Man Mountain Dean. [45]
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was an intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.
Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959; several were former members of the Nazi Party.
The European theatre of World War II was one of the two main theatres of combat during World War II, taking place from September 1939 to May 1945. The Allied powers fought the Axis powers on both sides of the continent in the Western and Eastern fronts. There was also conflict in the Scandinavian, Mediterranean and Balkan regions. It was an intense conflict that led to at least 39 million deaths and a dramatic change in the balance of power in the continent.
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The Counter Intelligence Corps was a World War II and early Cold War intelligence agency within the United States Army consisting of highly trained special agents. Its role was taken over by the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps in 1961 and, in 1967, by the United States Army Intelligence Agency. Its functions are now performed by its modern-day descendant organization, United States Army Counterintelligence. The National Counter Intelligence Corps Association (NCICA), a veterans' association, was established in the years immediately following World War II by former military intelligence agents.
Camp King is a site on the outskirts of Oberursel, Taunus, with a long history. It began as a school for agriculture under the auspices of the University of Frankfurt. During World War II, the lower fields became an interrogation center for the German Air Force. After World War II, the United States Army also used it as an interrogation center and intelligence post. The United States CIA used the site to test drugs including LSD on prisoners as part of Project BLUEBIRD, the predecessor to MKUltra. In 1968, it became the command and control center for the United States Army Movements Control Agency - Europe (USAMCAEUR). Today it has been rebuilt as a German housing area.
The Military Intelligence Corps is the intelligence branch of the United States Army. The primary mission of military intelligence in the U.S. Army is to provide timely, relevant, accurate, and synchronized intelligence and electronic warfare support to tactical, operational and strategic-level commanders. The Army's intelligence components produce intelligence both for Army use and for sharing across the national intelligence community.
P.O. Box 1142 was a secret American military intelligence facility that operated during World War II. The American Military Intelligence Service had two special wings, known as MIS-X and MIS-Y.
The Military Intelligence Service was a World War II U.S. military unit consisting of two branches, the Japanese American unit and the German-Austrian unit based at Camp Ritchie, best known as the "Ritchie Boys". The unit described here was primarily composed of Nisei who were trained as linguists. Graduates of the MIS language school (MISLS) were attached to other military units to provide translation, interpretation, and interrogation services.
Fort Ritchie in Cascade, Maryland was a military installation southwest of Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania and southeast of Waynesboro in the area of South Mountain. Following the 1995 Base Realignment and Closure Commission, it closed in 1998.
Bruce Henderson is an American journalist and author of more than 30 nonfiction books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller, And the Sea Will Tell. His most recent New York Times bestseller is Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler. Henderson's books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian and Czech. Henderson won the Tenth Annual Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize and a $50,000 award bestowed in recognition of "the best English language book published in 2022 in the field of American military history" for Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II (Knopf). A member of the Authors Guild, Henderson has taught reporting and writing courses at USC School of Journalism and Stanford University.
Alexander Paterson Scotland, (1882–1965) was a British Army officer and intelligence officer.
John Ernest Dolibois was a United States Ambassador to Luxembourg and college administrator.
Günther "Guy" Stern was a German-American decorated member of the secret Ritchie Boys World War II military intelligence interrogation team. As the only person from his Jewish family to flee Nazi Germany, he came to the United States and later served in the US Army conducting frontline interrogations.
The Corps of Intelligence Police (CIP), an intelligence agency within the United States Army, and the War Department, operated from 1917 to 1941. It was the predecessor of today's United States Army Counterintelligence.
Helen Fry is a British historian, lecturer and biographer, with especial reference to the Second World War.
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A neutral state, the United States entered the war on the Allied side in December 1941. The American government first became aware of the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe in 1942 and 1943. Following a report on the failure to assist the Jewish people by the Department of State, the War Refugee Board was created in 1944 to assist refugees from the Nazis. As one of the most powerful Allied states, the United States played a major role in the military defeat of Nazi Germany and the subsequent Nuremberg trials. The Holocaust saw increased awareness in the 1970s that instilled its prominence in the collective memory of the American people continuing to the present day. The United States has been criticized for taking insufficient action in response to the Jewish refugee crisis in the 1930s and the Holocaust during World War II.
Maximilian Lerner was an Austrian-born American, known for his work in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II. His training at Camp Ritchie during WWII classifies him as one of the Ritchie Boys.
Fort Ritchie is a new mixed-use development on a 591-acre former Army post in Cascade, Maryland. Corporate Office Properties Trust
My friend and comrade Fred Howard found that the German soldiers were afraid beyond everything else of landing in Russian captivity," Stern said. "We played on that fear by telling the enemy soldiers that we had orders to turn them over to the Russians if they did not cooperate. We got vital info for our Air Force that way. I disguised myself as a Soviet commissar and liaison officer. I donned a Russian uniform for that purpose; Fred played a soft-hearted American.
I met a number of interesting men at Camp Ritchie who would intersect with my life later on: Phillip Johnson, then a junior architect who had already been involved with the Museum of Modern Art; John Kluge, who was born in Germany and later would found Metromedia; John Oakes, who later edited the New York Times editorial page; and Fred Henderson, part Apache Indian and a regular Army officer who made a career with the CIA after the War.
Camp Ritchie had been the Maryland National Guard Camp for years....There was a prince of Bourbon-Parma
I was assigned to write the Red Book, the 'Order of Battle Book of the German Army'
Paul Fairbrook...And it took a year and a half before it was finished. And, when it was finished, some of us – I mean, here's the order of battle book and I have it – and when it was finished I believe that – I mean it was dated 1st of March, 1945.
They had about 30 classes at Camp Richie, and Fairbrook was in the fourth class before the barracks were even built....He was then transferred to a secret camp called P.O. Box 1142, between Alexandria and Mount Vernon, Va....He worked on a book titled "The German Army Order of Battle 1942," writing the first chapter describing the various German army units.....He also prepared a study called "Political Introduction and Morale-Building in the German Army." ...He served as dean of the Culinary Institute of America. He also spent 20 years as the Director of Auxiliary Services at University of the Pacific, overseeing housing and food services.
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)(Transcript) Produced by Katherine Davis. Associate producer, Jennifer Dozor. Broadcast associate, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Stephanie Palewski Brumbach and Robert Zimet.
During WWII he was in military intelligence (Field Interrogation Unit).