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What's most extraordinary about this group: many of them were German-born Jews who fled their homeland, came to America, and then joined the U.S. Army. Dozens of Ritchie Boys worked at the Nuremberg Trials as prosecutors, interrogators and translators. The Ritchie Boys were one of World War IIs greatest secret weapons for U.S. Army intelligence, said Stuart E. Eizenstat, shortly before becoming chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2022, when the museum bestowed the Ritchie Boys with the Elie Wiesel Award, its highest honor. How German-Jewish refugees who fled the Nazis gathered military intelligence in Europe for the U.S. By Brian Bethune Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. stories from a Nazi interrogator, now a Mill Some of them were very involved with the collection of information that became the basis of the trials at Nuremberg and subsequent war crimes trials, Frey said. You sort of swing it around the neck from behind and then pull. He was shot right away and killed. The Ritchie Boys, as they were known, trained in espionage and frontline interrogation. Ritchie Boys Amid the chaos of war, Guy Stern and the other Ritchie Boys had a job to do. Longtime Yale and Princeton professor Victor Brombert helped enact the official Allied policy of removing Nazi influence from german public life known as denazification. Max Lerner: They were all justifying themselves. It is a story of a remarkable synergy between a diverse group of well trained and motivated individuals. He grew up in a close-knit family in the town of Hildesheim, Germany. That information is of critical importance because it tells you where certain units are, and if you know where certain units are, you know where the weak spots are. After the war, a number served as translators and interrogatorsespecially during the Nuremberg Trials. Jon Wertheim: You have a smile on your face when you think back. Web34K views 1 year ago. He responded with just the information I needed. You really know an awful lot of the subtleties when you're having a conversation with another German and we were able to find out things in their answers that enabled us to ask more questions. But joy turned to horror as Allied soldiers and the world learned the full scale of the Nazi mass extermination. The Ritchie Boys And there's nothing that forges unity better than having a common enemy.This is Guy Stern 80 years ago. Singer. The evidence was before us. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), The Ritchie Boys train at Camp Ritchie, Maryland during World War II. All had experienced harrowing escapes from Europe and dangerous but productive returns. Dr. The Ritchie Boys and Questions of Death and Spies Eight Week Classes - Dates & Graduation Numbers. The so-called Ritchie Boys were among roughly 15,000 graduates of training programs at Camp Ritchie, a former National Guard Camp in Maryland named for the late Maryland Governor, Albert C. Ritchie. Victor Brombert: We were supposed to arrest important Nazi officials. It was an impact on war crimes. Sometimes entire German towns were forced to pay respects to the dead. Jon Wertheim: Do you consider yourself a hero? Jon Wertheim: What were you trained to do? One or more of Hendersons Ritchie Boys was present at every major moment of the American war in Europe: landing on Omaha Beach, speeding with Pattons tanks, liberating concentration camps. David Frey: Some became ambassadors. Nina Wolff Feld told her fathers story in Someday You Will Understand: My Fathers Private World War 2. But within a few months the government realized these so-called enemy aliens could be a valuable resource in the war. Please enter valid email address to continue. What what did that entail? Many of the 15,200 selected were Jewish soldiers who fled Nazi-controlled Germany, which was systematically killing Jews. They spoke the same German as the Wehrmacht soldiers they were up against, they shared experiences, education and culture with them, explains Henderson. Victor Brombert: My parents were pacifists so the idea of my going to war was for them calamitous, however they realized that it was a necessary war, especially for us. We now know that this perception needs to be broadened. As members of the Ritchie Boys, German and Austrian refugees offered language skills and knowledge that proved vital to American military intelligence. They certainly saved lives. David Frey: If we take Camp Ritchie in microcosm, it was almost the ideal of an American melting pot. They crossed into Germany with the Allied armies and witnessed the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. As part of denazification, photos of Nazi atrocities were posted in German shop windows and Ritchie Boys led the country's citizens on tours of the concentration camps to educate the local population about the evil Hitler had perpetrated. He project detailed every aspect of the German army's operations during the war, including how they were structured, how they mobilized and how they used intelligence. David Frey: Techniques where you want to get people to talk to you. ahollinger@ushmm.org. Guy Stern: I was called to the company office and told you're shipping out. The unit consisted mostly of young Germans, some of them of Jews, that had found a new homeland in America after their flight from the Nazis. It was his service in the military during World War II. Jon Wertheim: I see a tent in the background of that photo right in front of you. Guy Stern: And some we didn't break but 80% were so darned scared of the Russians and what they would do. Your average commander in the field might not. Background. So little was known about the Ritchie Boys until the excellent documentary film The Ritchie Boys came upon the scene in 2004. Dabringhaus went on to write a book about the experience called Klaus Barbie: The Shocking Story of How the U.S. Used this Nazi War Criminal as an Intelligence Agent.. Our country owes them an enormous debt of gratitude for their courage and sacrifices. Most of the guys in basic training were Southerners who hated the Jewish boys from New York and busted our chops most of the time, George Sakheim, who had fled to the United States by way of Palestine, told POLITICO Magazine. Jon Wertheim: As a way to honor your family that perished. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Stern, by then a college student, raced to enlist. That was the biggest weakness that the Army recognized that it had, which was battlefield intelligence and the interrogation needed to talk to sometimes civilians, most of the time prisoners of war, in order to glean information from them. Captain Harvey J. Cook served as the Intelligence Officer for the Second Ranger Battalion and was among those who scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc at Omaha Beach on D-Day. 98-year-old Paul Fairbrook helped set up the German military documents section at Camp Ritchie a vast catalog of more than 20,000 captured German documents. Essentially they were intellectuals. The Jewish Refugees Who Fled Nazi GermanyThen Returned to That was the mantra. Some of these books, Frey says, were nearly 500 pages long by the end of the war. Victor Brombert: I remember being up on a cliff the first night over Omaha beach. Guy Stern: None of my family survived. I think that's quantifiable. The soldiers were sent for training to Victor Brombert: We improvised according to the situation. Of the approximately 19,000 Ritchie Boys who served during the war, about 200 are still living, ranging 95 107 years old. So was Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt. Starting in 1942, more than 11,000 soldiers went through the rigorous training at what was the army's first centralized school for intelligence and psychological warfare. They significantly helped the war effort and saved lives. Victor Brombert, now 98 years old, is a former professor of romance languages and literature at Yale and then Princeton. Guy Ritchie's The Covenant and why Hollywood is afraid of the We were crusaders.. In 2011, the Holocaust Memorial Center, in Farmington Hills, Michigan, hosted an exhibit of the Ritchie Boys' exploits. Sons and Soldiers concentrates on six of them, two deadincluding Selling, who passed away at 86 in 2004but who left detailed memoirs, and four still flourishing in their 90s. And it was not until a few years ago that the son of Italian-Jewish Ritchie Boy Alessandro Sabbadini told the story of his fathers motivation and bravery in the book Unavoidable Hope. Personal, of course, but also this country - I was really treated well. Never. Many were foreign-born or had lived abroad for significant amounts of time. Some of them were trained as spies and some of them went on to careers as spies. It has been edited for USO.org. The soldiers were sent for training to Camp Ritchie, Md., beginning June 19, 1942, where they trained at the Military Intelligence Training Center thus their nickname, the Ritchie Boys. Stern also said that its important for people everywhere to remember those who perished and those who survived the Holocaust and, in a world increasingly faced with sectarian strife and intolerance, to set forth the lessons of the Holocaust as a model for teaching ethical conduct and responsible decision-making. Wehrmacht Captain Curt Bruns, convicted by a military tribunal of ordering the murder of those two Ritchie Boys, was executed by a firing squad in June, 1945. The Allies liberated Paris in August and drove Nazi troops out of France. Investment banker David Rockefeller and civil rights activistWilliam Sloane Coffin were among the Ritchie Boys, who were assigned to every Army and Marines unitand to the Office of Strategic Services and the Counter Intelligence Corps. After Hitler's defeat, many of them took on a challenging new assignment using their language and interrogation skills to find and arrest top Nazi war criminals. Recruits were chosen based on their knowledge of European language and culture, as well as their high IQs. Guy Stern: I went to my father one day and I said, "classes are becoming a torture chamber". Book Summary: The title of this book is Ritchie Boy Secrets and it was written by Eddy, Beverley Driver. That is the key to being a good interrogator. The U.S. Army leased the post for $5 a year and established The Military Intelligence Training Center. Already available are biographies and memoirs by and about individual Ritchie Boys as well as the book by the NYT best-selling author Bruce Henderson and books about Austrian-born Ritchie Boys by Robert Lackner and Florian Traussnig. First published on January 2, 2022 / 6:52 PM. This group became known as The Ritchie Boys, who were the basis of a documentary film of the same name. The USO relies on your support to help service members and their families. We hope you find the data, stories, and images here of interest. Jon Wertheim: All in service of winning the war? WebTheir Unique History and Demographics. Of the nearly 20,000 Ritchie Boys who served in WWII, around 140 were killed in action, including at the costly Guy Stern: No because I knew that the contact with Germans might not be very nice. Training was designed to be as realistic as possible. Sixty-plus percent of the actionable intelligence gathered on the battlefield was gathered by Ritchie Boys. The Ritchie Boys: Americas Secret Weapon Against the Nazis | by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Memory & Action | Medium 500 Apologies, but something went wrong on our end. Enter. You're in Belgium? In exchange for their knowledge of German language, culture and topography, which proved critical in extracting information vital to the war effort, the Army offered citizenship. 2022 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. Many were German- and Austrian-born Jews who had fled Adolf Hitlers genocidal Nazi regimemaking them most determined enemies of the Third Reich. 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