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]
Camp Ritchie
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]
Europe
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.
Pacific
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.
Post-war
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]
In 2004, the documentary movie The Ritchie Boys by Christian Bauer featured ten of the Ritchie Boys.[47][25]
In 2015, the book "Immigrant Soldier: The Story of a Ritchie Boy" by K. Lang-Slattery was published. It is a fictionalized historical account based on the experiences of her uncle, Herman Lang, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who escaped to America via England, was trained at Camp Ritchie, returned to Germany as a US soldier specializing in prisoner interrogation and translation, and served under General Patton. [36]
On May 9, 2021, the story of the Ritchie Boys was presented in a forty-minute segment of the CBS news show 60 Minutes. Victor Brombert, 97, Paul Fairbrook, 98, and Guy Stern, 99, gave personal testimony.[41][40] On January 2, 2022, an expanded one hour version called "60 Minutes Presents" was shown.[48] The program re-aired on July 3, 2022, due to its popularity.
^"Fort Ritchie at Cascade". 5 July 2008. Archived from the original on 5 July 2008. Retrieved 12 May 2021. Fort Ritchie is a new mixed-use development on a 591-acre former Army post in Cascade, Maryland. Corporate Office Properties Trust
^Fine, Sabrina (17 April 2020). "Holocaust refugee turned American Soldier never forgot the horrors he witnessed". 502nd Air Base Wing, Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston. United States Air Force. Retrieved 12 May 2021. 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.
^Spracher, William C.; Kramar, Mark (2013). "Just-in-Time Intelligence Training in World War II: The Legacy of the "Ritchie Boys" Seven Decades Later (Part I)". American Intelligence Journal. 31 (2). National Military Intelligence Foundation: 139–142. JSTOR26202086.
^Bies, Brandon; Santucci, Vincent (15 February 2008). "Interview with Paul Fairbrook"(PDF). P.O. Box 1142, Fort Hunt Oral History Project. Stockton, California: National Park Service. Archived from the original(PDF) on 3 April 2021. Retrieved 12 May 2021. 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.
^Creamer, Maggie (11 July 2012). "WWII veteran Paul Fairbrook recounts decoding German documents". Lodi News-Sentinel. Lodi, California: Central Valley News-Sentinel Inc. Archived from the original on 16 November 2015. Retrieved 13 May 2021. 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.
^Thomsen, Paul A.; Spivak, Joshua (April 2002). "Through an Interrogator's Eyes". Military History. 19 (1): 58. Archived from the original on 18 January 2015. Retrieved 6 April 2015.
Lubran, Bernard (10 May 2020). "On the Ritchie Boys". National Museum of American Jewish Military History. YouTube. Archived from the original on 14 December 2021.
