Walter Midener, an attendee, was awarded the Silver Star. Paul Fairbrook: I was proud to be in the American Army and we were able to do what we had to do. He was shot right away and killed. Associate producer, Jennifer Dozor. 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Victor Brombert: I remember being up on a cliff the first night over Omaha beach. Victor Brombert: Yes, I realized that I was afraid. Im a military history writer and Id never heard of them.. Its not just a story about Jewish emigres, Frey says, its also a story of what I would call marginal soldiers and their defense of this country.. Not just any Nazi party member. Jon Wertheim: So this is you on the job. Jon Wertheim: Is that when you first realize I'm I'm in a war here? And they were impressed with that. 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. Jon Wertheim: This was really a broad range of intelligence activities. Longtime Yale and Princeton professor Victor Brombert helped enact the official Allied policy of removing Nazi influence from german public life known as denazification. But at wars end, almost none found what they were really looking fortheir families. Victor Brombert: We were supposed to arrest important Nazi officials. After the war, Guy Stern and the other Ritchie Boys were celebrated for their achievements. Director, Communications Max Lerner: It was my war. What could be more appropriate than to honor them with an award bearing the name of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.. G. Guy Ritchie's The Covenant is an intense action movie, full of gunfire and explosions that make you feel caught in the midst of danger. The knowledge that his adopted country would not let him fight their common enemy was bitterly frustrating. This particular edition is in a Hardcover format. They did counterintelligence training. Immigrants like Guy Stern. Jon Wertheim: That's what you called yourself? Look, I got a book here and it tells me that you were here and you went there and your boss was this." The largest set of graduates were 2,000 German-born Jews. Guy Stern: No because I knew that the contact with Germans might not be very nice. It was here that over 19,000 Ritchie Boys, many of them German-Jewish immigrants from Europe Ritchie Boys Image by Sons and Soldiers. Max Lerner: It gave me a great deal of satisfaction. They knew the psychology and the Martha Cesaro, a military spouse, shares what inspired her to start giving back to the military community through the USO. We hope you find the data, stories, and images here of interest. I can't recommend this book enough! David Frey: A lot of what was learned and the methods used are important to keep secret. They took their name from the place they trained - Camp Ritchie, Maryland a secret American military intelligence center during the war. Another unusual sight: towering over recruits, Frank Leavitt, a World War I veteran and pro wrestling star at the time, was among the instructors. Two Ritchie Boys were identified as German-language interrogators working for the Americans after they were captured in a Nazi counterattack; revealed to be Jewish, the men were summarily executed. David Frey: All in service of winning the war. I thought, "I'm never going to do that," but I was shown how to do it. / CBS News. They chose their eldest son. And I said "Well, huh, in slang, there ain't nothing special about you, but if you were saved, you got to show that you were worthy of it. The Ritchie Boys connected with prisoners on subjects as varied as food and soccer rivalries but they weren't above using deception on difficult targets. Jon Wertheim: What is it like when you get together and reflect on this experience going on 80 years ago? Victor Brombert, now 98 years old, is a former professor of romance languages and literature at Yale and then Princeton. 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. Now in their late 90s, these humble warriors still keep in touch, swapping stories about a chapter in American history now finally being told. Max Lerner: Or they had an effort to erase it. He added that the military chose intelligent people because they had to process a tremendous amount of information." It was the viewing of that film that converted Dan into a Ritchie Boy Wannabe and launched him on a quest to help publicize this heroic group. First published on January 2, 2022 / 6:52 PM. It was published by Stackpole Books and has a total of 432 pages in the book. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Jon Wertheim: How effective were they at gathering intelligence? There were Ritchie Boys who were in virtually every battle that you can think of and some actually suffered the worst fate. He was born in Berlin to a Russian Jewish family. It was his service in the military during World War II. He is among the last surviving Ritchie Boys - a group of young men many of them German Jews who played an outsized role in helping the Allies win World War II. The Ritchie Boys exhibit at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Mich., July 24, 2011. Divisions that liberated concentration camps included hundreds of Ritchie Boys, who interviewed survivors. Victor Brombert: Yes, well with a stick. One of these was. It took dedicationthe course at Camp Ritchie required polishing the English needed to communicate with their own side, combat training and intensive study of the German armyas well as courage and the thick skins they had already developed. The Allies liberated Paris in August and drove Nazi troops out of France. Jon Wertheim: What do you suspect might have happened? 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. The boys were members of a military intelligence unit; strongly discouraged from talking about their war, they didnt hold their first reunion until 60 years after it ended. Some didn't even go over to to Europe. We strive for accuracy and fairness. David Frey: They made a massive contribution to essentially every battle that the Americans fought - the entire sets of battles on the Western Front. Jon Wertheim: You work 6 days a week, you swim every morning, you lecture, any signs of slowing down? Photo credit DoD/Holocaust Memorial Center, It was an emotional reunion, definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Why do so few Americans know about this? The appearance of DoD visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement. I wanted, desperately, to do something. Ritchie Boys were a military intelligence unit made up of mostly German, Austrian and Czech refugees and immigrants, many of whom were Jewish. Now 98, Fairbrook is the former dean of the Culinary Institute of America. Guy Stern: Yes and it's theatrics in a way yes. You want to give them that feeling that you know who they are, they know who you are. Guy Stern: I had my whole uniform with medals, Russian medals. What Henderson found when he looked into their history was that about 100 were still alive, half of them willing and able to talknot everyone has reliable 70-year-old memoriesabout an extraordinary corner of the Second World War. We were all on the same wavelength. Nina Wolff Feld told her fathers story in Someday You Will Understand: My Fathers Private World War 2. And we all were scared. Their subjects ranged from low-level German soldiers to high-ranking Nazi officers including Hans Goebbels, brother of Hitler's chief propogandist, Joseph Goebbels. Many had fled Nazi Germany but returned as American soldiers, deploying their knowledge of German language and culture to great advantage. There were Ritchie Boys who were in virtually every battle that you can think of and some actually suffered the worst fate. We worked harder than anyone could have driven us. We had to-- we got a lot of German prisoners who were willing to help us catalog all those documents. Elie Wiesel, the Museums founding chairman, was the first recipient of the award, which was subsequently named in his honor. Victor Brombert: And at great effort we found people, we arrested them, we were proud of doing that. Jon Wertheim: This was one of the leaflets that was dropped out--. 4.39. Now is it because they were afraid that the Nazis might come back, that it's not over? He is among the last surviving Ritchie Boys - a group of young men many of them German Jews who played an outsized role in helping the Allies win World War II. Max Lerner: Because I remembered my parents. Jon Wertheim: And you're saying that some of that originated at Camp Ritchie? 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. Of late, the Ritchie Boys have been the subject of growing media attention including, in May, on the television news program 60 Minutes. When the war was over, their German accents and unusual Jon Wertheim: So there's all sorts of impact years and years and years after the war from this this camp in Maryland? It was Sunday, May 13, 1945, Henderson marvels. We worked harder than anyone could have driven us. Jon Wertheim: How do you think we should be recalling the Ritchie Boys? For 99-year-old Guy Stern, a German Jew whose entire family was killed by the Nazis, the Allies' victory over Hitler was the culmination of a public crusade and a private one as well. Jon Wertheim: 60% of the actionable intelligence? G. Guy Ritchie's The Covenant is an intense action movie, full of gunfire and explosions that make you feel caught in the midst of danger. The Ritchie Boys were members of a secret American intelligence group whose mastery of the German language and culture proved critical to the Allies' victory over Hitler. Max Lerner recalls being put in charge of one prominent captured German prisoner at a jail in Weisbaden, Germany: that was Julius Streicher the founder and editor of the Nazi paper "Der Stuermer" and one of the country's leading antisemites. Jon Wertheim: And you think because it had that signature, somehow that certified it. On a cold November morning in 1938, Herman watches in horror as his After the war, Guy Stern, Victor Brombert, Paul Fairbrook and Max Lerner came home, married, and went to Ivy League schools on the G.I. Jon Wertheim: All in service of winning the war? And only in the early 2000's did we begin to see reunions of the Ritchie Boys. David S. Frey,a history professor and director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide at the United States Military Academy,said that in the late 1930s, Gen. George Marshall, then the Army Chief of staff, realized that if the United States was going to war, it needed battlefield intelligence capabilitywhich its military lacked. The award will be presented this spring. Enter. Jon Wertheim: Was it your knowledge of the language or your knowledge of the psychology and the German culture? WebIn the United States at the end of World War II, there were prisoner-of-war camps, including 175 Branch Camps serving 511 Area Camps containing over 425,000 prisoners of war (mostly German).The camps were located all over the US, but were mostly in the South, due to the higher expense of heating the barracks in colder areas. Book Summary: The title of this book is Ritchie Boy Secrets and it was written by Eddy, Beverley Driver. David Frey: Much of it originated at Camp Ritchie because it had never it hadn't been done before. Early on in the war, the Army realized it needed German- and Italian-speaking U.S. soldiers for a variety of duties, including psychological warfare, interrogation, espionage and intercepting enemy communications. It was not only that short term impact on the battlefield. David Frey: This is where the having an intelligence officer from Camp Ritchie was of critical importance. Just two weeks shy of turning 100, Guy Stern drips with vitality. Bill. You sort of swing it around the neck from behind and then pull. Guy Stern: Yes, that's my interrogation tent. You playacted. Guy Stern: I had a war to fight and I did it. I think that's quantifiable. Paul Fairbrook: Well, because it was an unusual part of the United States Army. In the age of mechanized warfare, you need to know what these large armies look like, what their capabilities are, how theyre arrayed, Frey says. Photo credit DoD/Holocaust Memorial Center, Why Marlene Dietrich Was One of the Most Patriotic Women in World War II, In World War I, African American 'Hellfighters from Harlem,' Fought Prejudice to Fight for Their Country, VE Day Marked End of Long Road for World War II Troops, Programs for Service Members and Their Families. Guy Stern: God no. Sixty-plus percent of the actionable intelligence gathered on the battlefield was gathered by Ritchie Boys. The Ritchie Boys, some of whom landed on the beaches at Normandy, helped to interpret documents and gather intelligence, and conducted enemy warfare. "It was a terrible situation. 5 likes. Broadcast associate, Elizabeth Germino. You know where the strong points are, and you know you what to avoid and what to attack. There's no fee to visit the local community David Frey: They were incredibly effective. Paul Fairbrook: Look I'm a German Jew. Naturally, I turned to Dan Gross, the unofficial archivist for the Ritchie Boys. After following in his familys footsteps and serving in the military, Air Force veteran Lyle Apo turned to USO Hawaii for the opportunity to volunteer and help current service members. Victor Brombert: Yes of course. In 2011, the Holocaust Memorial Center, in Farmington Hills, Michigan, hosted an exhibit of the Ritchie Boys' exploits. Jon Wertheim: This-- This is a remarkable story. It was also in Europe that some of them, like Guy Stern, learned what had happened to the families they left behind. (U.S. Army Signal Corps). Martin Selling, 24, was undergoing training as a U.S. Army medical orderly in February 1943 and chafing under a Pentagon policy that kept hima Jewish refugee from Germany and hence an enemy alienaway from any combat unit. 70 ratings17 reviews. Bruce Hendersons account of the Ritchie Boys, as the camps graduates came to be known, is full of arresting moments like Sellings arrival, almost all of them virtually unknown. After recruiters found out he spoke four languages, they dispatched him to Camp Ritchie, where strenuous classroom instruction was coupled with strenuous field exercises. It was wonderful to be part of them. In any major military conflict, there will likely be both individual heroes and groups of heroes. Museum to Confer its Highest Honor, The Elie Wiesel Award, Secret Unit Formed 80 Years Ago Was Instrumental in Nazi GermanysDefeat and Included Many Who Had Fled the Regime. Guy Stern: I think it was the continuous flow of reliable information that really helped expedite the end of the war. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. Since the story of the Ritchie Boys remained relatively unknown for a half-century or more, it was often left to their children and grandchildren to bring their accomplishments to light. According to the kind of unit, according to the kind of person we were interrogating. Of the nearly 20,000 Ritchie Boys who served in WWII, around 140 were killed in action, including at the costly "where are your reserve units?" According to the Holocaust Museum, two Jewish soldiers were taken captive and executed after being identified as German-born Jews, and there were about 200 Ritchie Boys alive as of May 2022. I gave myself all the accouterments of looking like a fierce Russian commissar. Guy Stern speaks at the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Centers Ritchie Boys exhibit and reunion at Farmington Hills, Michigan in 2011. Essentially they were intellectuals. Even after the Pentagons change of heart about handing weapons to enemy aliens, suspicion of their bearing and accents remained widespread among regular American soldiers, sometimes reaching higher ranks. 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. David Frey: There were Ritchie Boys that were in the first wave on the first day at D-Day. Paul Fairbrook: You can learn to shoot a rifle in six months but you can't learn fluent German in six months. 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. ", Jon Wertheim: "Unprincipled and dishonorable and I'm sorry?". Follow him at @ffrommer. It was wonderful to see these people again. WebThe Ritchie Boys were the US special military intelligence officers and enlisted men of World War II who were trained at Camp Ritchie in Maryland. All the while, they tracked down evidence and interrogated Nazi criminals, later tried at Nuremberg. You had people coming from all over uniting for a particular cause. 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. Here are five ways Dietrich supported American troops and the USO during World War II. 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.. Still, if they were captured, they knew what the Nazis would do to them. And I gave myself the name Commissar Krukov. Jon Wertheim: Do you remember saying goodbye to your family? David Frey: They were in fact. Jon Wertheim: As a former German who understood the psychology and the mentality. Others were actually really important in American science. We were briefed that the Germans were not going to welcome us greatly. Victor Brombert: I saw immense debris. Making such a distinction in this case is very difficult. Web34K views 1 year ago. Fort Ritchie, as it later became known, closed in 1998. Recruits were chosen based on their knowledge of European language and culture, as well as their high IQs. And there's nothing that I wanted more is to get some revenge on Hitler who killed my uncles, and my aunts and my cousins and there was no question in my mind, and neither of all the men in Camp Ritchie. I was the only one to get out. "I had no choice." Most chose the eldest son, to carry on the family name. By the summer of 1944, German troops in Normandy were outnumbered and overpowered. and he said "no, military secret.". The intelligence they gathered was coveted by higher commanda postwar Pentagon report ascribed more than half of the credible battlefield intelligence gathered in Europe to the Ritchie Boys. The group also included large numbers of first- or second-generation Americans who still spoke German or other languages at home, Frey says. Wayne State University Professor Ehrhard Dabringhaus, another attendee, was ordered, shortly after the war, to become the American control officer to Klaus Barbie, the notorious war criminal. There are valid reasons to consider that the Ritchie Boys as a group made a unique and enormous contribution to our military success in World War II. Victor Brombert: We improvised according to the situation. This books publish date is Sep 01, 2021. Because they served in so many different capacities. Guy Stern: Thank you for asking. ", Dr. We were delighted to get a chance to do something for the United States. Many of the 15,200 selected were Jewish soldiers who fled Nazi-controlled Germany, which was systematically killing Jews. Camp Ritchie served the Maryland National Guard until 1942. The Ritchie Boys, a group of more than 19,000 refugees trained in Maryland to be U.S. intelligence specialists during World War II, are being honored in a Jewish soldiers were in great danger if captured, and two were captured and executed due to being identified by their captors as German-born Jews. 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. Many of the 15,200 selected were Jewish soldiers who fled Nazi-controlled Germany, which was systematically killing Jews. Fort Ritchie, as it later became known, closed in 1998. 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. Some Ritchie Boys were recruited to go on secret missions during the war. Message & data rates may apply. Victor Brombert: There were long and demanding exercises and close combat training. And that's what the key to the success was. Edited by Stephanie Palewski Brumbach and Robert Zimet. 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. Choose which Defense.gov products you want delivered to your inbox. My father was 49 years old and-- and my mother was 48 and they left everything they had built up behind. WebMany of them, like Brombert, were Jewish. (Photo: US Army/US Department of Defense), https://www.history.com/news/ritchie-boys-wwii-jewish-refugees-military-intelligence, The Jewish Refugees Who Fled Nazi GermanyThen Returned to Fight. David Frey: Techniques where you want to get people to talk to you. Giving out some cigarettes also helps a lot. After the war, a number served as translators and interrogatorsespecially during the Nuremberg Trials. This was because he could speak fluent German; and indeed many of the interrogators at Nuremberg were German or Austrian Jews who had emigrated to America before WWII and were known as the Ritchie Boys. It was an impact on war crimes. The Ritchie Boys consisted of approximately 15,200 servicemen who were trained for U.S. Army Intelligence during WWII. They certainly saved lives. If a German POW wouldn't talk, he might face Guy Stern dressed up as a Russian officer. David Frey: I think they did. 98-year-old Victor Brombert says they relied on their Camp Ritchie training to get people to open up. 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. What what did that entail? They became known as the Ritchie Boys. Their enormous contributions to defeating Nazismone Army study concluded they were responsible for obtaining nearly 60 percent of the actionable intelligence gathered in Europe during the warand their postwar justice efforts remain little known to Americans even today. The 10 digit ISBN is 0811769968 and the 13 digit ISBN is 9780811769969. Drawing on archival research, memoirs and interviews with several Ritchie Boys (there were 1,985 in all), he focuses on a half dozen. Mothers Day.. Not all the boys were immigrantsfuture banker David Rockefeller and writer J.D. And I needed to get my own back. All SS members were subject to automatic arrest. Some of the prisoners were actual German POWs brought to Camp Ritchie so the Ritchie Boys could practice their interrogation techniques. To Allied investigators it became a sort of Nazi hunter's bible. But Hitler was determined to continue the war. "How to kill a sentry from behind." He responded with just the information I needed. David Frey: It was a very broad range And they did it all generally in eight weeks.
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