TheRitchie Boys, part of the U.S.Military Intelligence Service (MIS) at the War Department, were an organization of soldiers inWorld War II with sizable numbers ofGerman andAustrian recruits who were used primarily forinterrogation of prisoners on the front lines andcounter-intelligence in Europe. Trained at secretCamp Ritchie inWashington County, Maryland, many of the total 22,000 men and women in service wereGerman-speaking immigrants to the United States, oftenJews, who fledNazi persecution.[1][2] After the war, many former Ritchie Boys rose to important positions in the military and in the intelligence community.[3] In addition to interrogation and counter-intelligence, they were trained inpsychological warfare to study and demoralize the enemy, and they later served as prosecutors and translators in theNuremberg trials.[4]
The parent organization of the Ritchie Boys, the MIS, was commanded in Washington by Brigadier GeneralHayes Adlai Kroner for most of the war.[5]
The Ritchie Boys consisted of approximately 20,000 servicemen and 2,000Women's Army Corps members, who were trained for U.S. Army Intelligence duringWorld War II at the secretCamp Ritchie training facility. Most of the men sent to Camp Ritchie for training were assigned there because of fluency inGerman,French,Italian,Polish, or other languages that were needed by the US Army during the war. Members had beendrafted into or volunteered to join theUnited States Army and, after their ability to speak an enemy language had been discovered,were sent to Camp Ritchie on secret orders.[citation needed] Some of theJewish refugees who were part of this program had originally arrived in the US as children, many without their parents, and were also among theOne Thousand Children.
They were trained at the Military Intelligence Training Center atCamp Ritchie inMaryland, later officially known asFort Ritchie (it was closed in 1998 under the1995 Base Realignment and Closure Commission).[6] They were specially trained in methods of intelligence,counterintelligence, interrogation, investigation andpsychological warfare.[7] Nine hundred of these men also attended special training atCamp 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.[8] The role of the soldiers was, therefore, to work in the front lines, at strategic corps and army levels, at interrogation, analyzing German forces and plans, and to study and demoralize the enemy. The majority of them went on to work as members of the USCounter Intelligence Corps.[9]
During theBattle of the Bulge, two Ritchie Boys were recognized by their accents, and the German officerCurt Bruns then ordered them both to be summarily executed; he said, "The Jews have no right to live in Germany." He was captured on February 15, 1945, put on trial for the murders, and sentenced to death by firing squad. Bruns was executed on June 15, 1945, the first World War II criminal to be executed by the US Army.[10]
After theGerman declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941, the Ritchie Boys became an important weapon for theAllies. Many of them entered Europe onD-Day (6 June 1944).[11] Others followed over time. Shortly after reaching land, they left their units and pursued their special tasks. They fed the Allies valuable information. GeneralOscar Koch (GeneralPatton's G-2) acknowledged that the advance warning of theGerman Bulge offensive occurred because of information gathered by their MIS units. Moreover, the Ritchie Boys helped break German resistance by demoralizing them in both open and covert operations. They interrogatedprisoners-of-war anddefectors to obtain information about the Germans' force levels, troop movements, and physical and psychological states. A common interrogation tactic was to use the Germans' fear of transfer intoSoviet custody.[12][13] By means of targeteddisinformation by 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 500Nisei (second-generationJapanese-Americans) for PACMIRS (Pacific Military Intelligence Research Service), a program to translate documents the U.S. Navy captured inSaipan 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, digging into a crate, retrieved 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 byImperial Japan, and spare parts held and indicated that Japan had half as many of weapons available to it in 1944 as it had in 1943. Yamane immediately contacted his superior, who contacted the War Department, which translated the text into English. The Americans then located and destroyed the armories. Yamane called this act his "Proof of Loyalty" because he claimed that he could easily have 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 had come from the Ritchie Boys.[1]
After the war, many of the Ritchie Boys served as translators and interrogators such as during theNuremberg 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 theHolocaust Memorial Center, inFarmington Hills, Michigan.[14] Another reunion was held in June 2012 inWashington, D.C., and atFort Ritchie, which had then closed.[15]
In August 2021, the Ritchie Boys were honored in a congressional resolution.[16][17]
Following the sale of Fort Ritchie in April 2021, a museum and educational center was opened on June 9, 2023 to continue commemorating the story of the Ritchie Boys in the location that they had originally trained.[18] 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.[19][better source needed]Then museum director, Landon Grove, presented a number of talks and interviews, including severalNPR discussions inTulsa, Oklahoma, to spread the story of the soldiers.
The Ritchie Boys were honored by theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum with theElie Wiesel Award, the museum's highest honor to recognize "the unique role they played serving the United States and advancing our victory over Germany." The Ritchie Boys Arno Mayer and Gideon Kantor were present to accept the award, and a keynote speech was given byMark Milley.[20][failed verification]
On October 31, 2022, a press conference was held at Fort Ritchie and RepresentativeDavid Trone announced he expected to introduce in Congress a bill to award the Ritchie Boys theCongressional Gold Medal.[21]
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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 includedRex Applegate[49] and professional wrestlerMan Mountain Dean.[50]
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.
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.
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 theNew 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.
{{cite web}}: 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).