February 6, 2025 • 9 mins
During World War II, the U.S. military recruited diverse multilingual Americans -- including many immigrants -- to be trained as intelligence officers at Camp Ritchie. Learn how the Ritchie Boys helped the Allies win the war in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/world-war-ii/ritchie-boys.htm
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Voleebaum. Here.
During World War II, the US military recruited and trained
a secret army of nearly twenty thousand intelligence officers at
a site called Camp Richie in rural Maryland. The Richie Boys,
(00:22):
as they're known today, weren't your average American soldiers. They
represented seventy different nationalities and spoke many different languages. The
best known Richie Boys were some two eight hundred Jewish
refugees from Germany and Austria who fled the Holocaust then
heroically returned to Europe as American soldiers to defeat Hitler.
(00:44):
Their remarkable story was chronicled by Sixty Minutes in twenty
twenty one and in a German documentary from two thousand
and four. But there were also Black Ritchie Boys, Japanese
American Richie Boys, and female Richie Girls, all of whom
played a critical and largely unrecognized and the Allied victory
in World War II. When war broke out in Europe
(01:06):
in nineteen forty one, the US military lagged far behind
the British when it came to intelligence capabilities. The Americans
knew that if they were going to join the fight,
they couldn't win without soldiers trained in the latest interrogation techniques, counterintelligence,
that is, spying, and psychological warfare. In April of nineteen
(01:26):
forty two, the US Army converted a Maryland National Guard
site into Camp Ritchey, a dedicated military intelligence training center.
From the start, the Army sought out recruits with foreign
language skills, particularly the languages of their enemies. Before the
article this episode is based on How Stuff Works, spoke
with Land and Grove, an educator who directed the creation
(01:48):
and opening of the Richy History Museum in twenty twenty three.
He said, you can teach anybody how to fire a
rifle in just a few weeks, but you can't teach
them fluent German, Japanese or Italian. Of the nearly twenty
thousand trainees who passed through Camp Riccie, about sixty percent
(02:08):
were American born, including Native Americans, and the rest included
refugees classified as enemy aliens like Germans and Austrians, plus
immigrants from everywhere from Morocco to Iceland to India. For
eight weeks, Camp Richie recruits learned how to extract information
from captured prisoners of war, a right propaganda pamphlets to
(02:29):
drop behind enemy lines, analyze reconnaissance photos, and kill the
enemy in hand to hand combat if necessary, although their
methods were more based in soft power and cultural know
how than in violence. To complete their training, Richie Boys
were shipped off to England to learn advanced intelligence techniques.
It's there that the Americans may have earned the nickname
(02:52):
Richie Boys from their more experienced British instructors. As newly
minted intelligence officers, Ritchie Boys were embedded in every American
military branch and unit, and they fought in every major
World War II battle, from the D Day Invasion of
Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge to Euejima. In
fighting the Nazis, one of the Ritchie boys most important
(03:13):
contributions was something called the Order of Battle of the
German Army aka the Red Book. Using captured German documents,
the Ritchie Boys assembled a continuously updated list of every
Nazi unit in Europe, including its leadership, structure, troop numbers,
battle history, and more. Houstuffworks also spoke with Beverly Eddy,
(03:35):
author of Richie Boy Secrets, how a force of immigrants
and refugees helped win World War II. She said the
order of battle was crucial for interrogation purposes and for
the Allies to know exactly what they were up against.
The Richie Boys conducted tens of thousands of interrogations of
both enemy soldiers and civilians. A fluent in the language
(03:58):
and culture of their Captivesie Boys didn't need to resort
to violence to get information. Instead, they would offer a
friendly cigarette and commisserate over local sports rivalries. Grove said
that then launch into this spiel. Isn't the war awful?
You and I aren't really that different. We're all just
sick of fighting and want to go home. It'll all
(04:18):
be over a lot sooner if you tell me where
the minefield is. And if a Nazi officer was really
tight lipped, they might threaten to hand them over to
the Russians. Grove was using Russians and scare quotes there
as it'd be another Richie Boy playing the role convincingly
in a Russian officer's uniform. According to a US Army
(04:39):
report published in nineteen forty six, the Ritchie Boys were
responsible for gathering sixty percent of all actionable battlefield intelligence
in World War two, though Eddie thinks that number should
probably be lower, since the Americans who wrote the report
didn't know at that time the full extent of the
secret British program that cracked the Enigma code. Several famous
(05:01):
people were members of their ranks, including author J. D. Salinger,
one of the founders of Wafflehouse, Tom Faulkner, financial magnate
David Rockefeller, and politicians like Frank Church. But some of
the most inspiring stories about the Richie Boys concerned those
Jewish refugees who fled Nazi atrocities in Europe and returned
(05:21):
to fight for the family members and communities that had
lost to Hitler's genocide. Ediside's examples like Ernest Kramer, a
German Jew who, at eighteen years old, was imprisoned at
the notorious Bukenwald concentration camp. Kramer was one of the
lucky few to get an affidavit for release to America
the minute he stepped on US soil. Kramer enlisted in
(05:42):
the Army and was sent to Camp Ritchie to train
in psychological warfare. During the war, Kramer wrote pamphlets urging
German soldiers to surrender, and when the war was finally over,
he helped establish independent newspapers and destroyed German cities. Another
sample is Albert Rosenberg, who was a university student in
(06:03):
Germany in nineteen thirty seven when he was brutally attacked
by an antisemitic mob. He escaped to America, joined the army,
and became the leader of a richie boy interrogation team
responsible for extracting information from high value Nazi targets Alike Kramer,
Rosenberg lost his entire family in Hitler's death camps, and
he was determined to see Nazi war criminals brought to justice.
(06:27):
Eddie said. At the end of the war, Rosenberg and
his team were assigned by General Eisenhower to investigate book involved.
They interviewed prisoners to learn exactly how the camp was
organized and who was in charge. Those materials were used
at the Nuremberg Trials. During World War two, black soldiers
in the US military often faced Jim crow eras segregation.
(06:50):
Even at Camp Ritchie, black trainees graduated with impressive credentials,
but had to navigate a military culture that treated them
as second class soldiers. Take one Daniel Skinner, a professor
at a black college who came to Camp Richie with
a Harvard degree influency in French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Eddie said at Camp Richie, Daniel Skinner was as good
(07:13):
or better than any of the other trainees, but when
he was posted abroad, he couldn't serve over white soldiers.
What they did was make him the driver of the
interrogation team so he could still participate as a translator
and interrogator. The Richie Boys also included Japanese Americans among
their ranks. Take David Akira Atami, who was born an
(07:35):
American citizen, but was imprisoned along with his family in
an internment camp after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
A year later, Atami volunteered for the army. As Atami's
daughter wrote, the US government would not recognize your citizenship rights,
but they would let you volunteer to serve the same
country who had deprived you of those rights. Atammi trained
(07:58):
at Camp Richie and later served as the lead interpreter
at the Japanese War crimes trials in Tokyo. And around
two hundred Richie girls trained or worked at Camp Ritchie,
including twenty two women instructors. The Women's Auxiliary Corps was
an active duty branch of the Army for women, but
they often struggled to earn the respect of the male
(08:19):
dominated military. A Two high profile Richie Girls were Sally Davis,
who trained in the Order of Battle and served with
General MacArthur in Australia, and Lillian Tombacher, who served as
General Eisenhower's personal Polish interpreter in Europe and received the
Bronze Star. Of the nearly twenty thousand Richie Boys who
(08:40):
served in World War II, around one hundred and forty
were killed in action, including at the costly landings at
Normandy and Euejima. Richie Boys earned more than sixty five
Silver Star medals and countless Bronze Star medals for their service.
In twenty twenty two, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum present
the Richie Boys with its highest honor, the Elie Weisell Award,
(09:04):
and legislation has been submitted to Congress to award the
Richie Boys with the Congressional Gold Medal. Eddie and Grove
estimate that over one hundred Richie Boys are still alive today.
Today's episode is based on the article how the Richie
Boys Secret refugee infiltrators took on the Nazis on HowStuffWorks
(09:26):
dot Com, written by Dave Brus. Brain Stuff is production
of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is
produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Voleebaum. Here.
During World War II, the US military recruited and trained
a secret army of nearly twenty thousand intelligence officers at
a site called Camp Richie in rural Maryland. The Richie Boys,
(00:22):
as they're known today, weren't your average American soldiers. They
represented seventy different nationalities and spoke many different languages. The
best known Richie Boys were some two eight hundred Jewish
refugees from Germany and Austria who fled the Holocaust then
heroically returned to Europe as American soldiers to defeat Hitler.
(00:44):
Their remarkable story was chronicled by Sixty Minutes in twenty
twenty one and in a German documentary from two thousand
and four. But there were also Black Ritchie Boys, Japanese
American Richie Boys, and female Richie Girls, all of whom
played a critical and largely unrecognized and the Allied victory
in World War II. When war broke out in Europe
(01:06):
in nineteen forty one, the US military lagged far behind
the British when it came to intelligence capabilities. The Americans
knew that if they were going to join the fight,
they couldn't win without soldiers trained in the latest interrogation techniques, counterintelligence,
that is, spying, and psychological warfare. In April of nineteen
(01:26):
forty two, the US Army converted a Maryland National Guard
site into Camp Ritchey, a dedicated military intelligence training center.
From the start, the Army sought out recruits with foreign
language skills, particularly the languages of their enemies. Before the
article this episode is based on How Stuff Works, spoke
with Land and Grove, an educator who directed the creation
(01:48):
and opening of the Richy History Museum in twenty twenty three.
He said, you can teach anybody how to fire a
rifle in just a few weeks, but you can't teach
them fluent German, Japanese or Italian. Of the nearly twenty
thousand trainees who passed through Camp Riccie, about sixty percent
(02:08):
were American born, including Native Americans, and the rest included
refugees classified as enemy aliens like Germans and Austrians, plus
immigrants from everywhere from Morocco to Iceland to India. For
eight weeks, Camp Richie recruits learned how to extract information
from captured prisoners of war, a right propaganda pamphlets to
(02:29):
drop behind enemy lines, analyze reconnaissance photos, and kill the
enemy in hand to hand combat if necessary, although their
methods were more based in soft power and cultural know
how than in violence. To complete their training, Richie Boys
were shipped off to England to learn advanced intelligence techniques.
It's there that the Americans may have earned the nickname
(02:52):
Richie Boys from their more experienced British instructors. As newly
minted intelligence officers, Ritchie Boys were embedded in every American
military branch and unit, and they fought in every major
World War II battle, from the D Day Invasion of
Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge to Euejima. In
fighting the Nazis, one of the Ritchie boys most important
(03:13):
contributions was something called the Order of Battle of the
German Army aka the Red Book. Using captured German documents,
the Ritchie Boys assembled a continuously updated list of every
Nazi unit in Europe, including its leadership, structure, troop numbers,
battle history, and more. Houstuffworks also spoke with Beverly Eddy,
(03:35):
author of Richie Boy Secrets, how a force of immigrants
and refugees helped win World War II. She said the
order of battle was crucial for interrogation purposes and for
the Allies to know exactly what they were up against.
The Richie Boys conducted tens of thousands of interrogations of
both enemy soldiers and civilians. A fluent in the language
(03:58):
and culture of their Captivesie Boys didn't need to resort
to violence to get information. Instead, they would offer a
friendly cigarette and commisserate over local sports rivalries. Grove said
that then launch into this spiel. Isn't the war awful?
You and I aren't really that different. We're all just
sick of fighting and want to go home. It'll all
(04:18):
be over a lot sooner if you tell me where
the minefield is. And if a Nazi officer was really
tight lipped, they might threaten to hand them over to
the Russians. Grove was using Russians and scare quotes there
as it'd be another Richie Boy playing the role convincingly
in a Russian officer's uniform. According to a US Army
(04:39):
report published in nineteen forty six, the Ritchie Boys were
responsible for gathering sixty percent of all actionable battlefield intelligence
in World War two, though Eddie thinks that number should
probably be lower, since the Americans who wrote the report
didn't know at that time the full extent of the
secret British program that cracked the Enigma code. Several famous
(05:01):
people were members of their ranks, including author J. D. Salinger,
one of the founders of Wafflehouse, Tom Faulkner, financial magnate
David Rockefeller, and politicians like Frank Church. But some of
the most inspiring stories about the Richie Boys concerned those
Jewish refugees who fled Nazi atrocities in Europe and returned
(05:21):
to fight for the family members and communities that had
lost to Hitler's genocide. Ediside's examples like Ernest Kramer, a
German Jew who, at eighteen years old, was imprisoned at
the notorious Bukenwald concentration camp. Kramer was one of the
lucky few to get an affidavit for release to America
the minute he stepped on US soil. Kramer enlisted in
(05:42):
the Army and was sent to Camp Ritchie to train
in psychological warfare. During the war, Kramer wrote pamphlets urging
German soldiers to surrender, and when the war was finally over,
he helped establish independent newspapers and destroyed German cities. Another
sample is Albert Rosenberg, who was a university student in
(06:03):
Germany in nineteen thirty seven when he was brutally attacked
by an antisemitic mob. He escaped to America, joined the army,
and became the leader of a richie boy interrogation team
responsible for extracting information from high value Nazi targets Alike Kramer,
Rosenberg lost his entire family in Hitler's death camps, and
he was determined to see Nazi war criminals brought to justice.
(06:27):
Eddie said. At the end of the war, Rosenberg and
his team were assigned by General Eisenhower to investigate book involved.
They interviewed prisoners to learn exactly how the camp was
organized and who was in charge. Those materials were used
at the Nuremberg Trials. During World War two, black soldiers
in the US military often faced Jim crow eras segregation.
(06:50):
Even at Camp Ritchie, black trainees graduated with impressive credentials,
but had to navigate a military culture that treated them
as second class soldiers. Take one Daniel Skinner, a professor
at a black college who came to Camp Richie with
a Harvard degree influency in French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Eddie said at Camp Richie, Daniel Skinner was as good
(07:13):
or better than any of the other trainees, but when
he was posted abroad, he couldn't serve over white soldiers.
What they did was make him the driver of the
interrogation team so he could still participate as a translator
and interrogator. The Richie Boys also included Japanese Americans among
their ranks. Take David Akira Atami, who was born an
(07:35):
American citizen, but was imprisoned along with his family in
an internment camp after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
A year later, Atami volunteered for the army. As Atami's
daughter wrote, the US government would not recognize your citizenship rights,
but they would let you volunteer to serve the same
country who had deprived you of those rights. Atammi trained
(07:58):
at Camp Richie and later served as the lead interpreter
at the Japanese War crimes trials in Tokyo. And around
two hundred Richie girls trained or worked at Camp Ritchie,
including twenty two women instructors. The Women's Auxiliary Corps was
an active duty branch of the Army for women, but
they often struggled to earn the respect of the male
(08:19):
dominated military. A Two high profile Richie Girls were Sally Davis,
who trained in the Order of Battle and served with
General MacArthur in Australia, and Lillian Tombacher, who served as
General Eisenhower's personal Polish interpreter in Europe and received the
Bronze Star. Of the nearly twenty thousand Richie Boys who
(08:40):
served in World War II, around one hundred and forty
were killed in action, including at the costly landings at
Normandy and Euejima. Richie Boys earned more than sixty five
Silver Star medals and countless Bronze Star medals for their service.
In twenty twenty two, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum present
the Richie Boys with its highest honor, the Elie Weisell Award,
(09:04):
and legislation has been submitted to Congress to award the
Richie Boys with the Congressional Gold Medal. Eddie and Grove
estimate that over one hundred Richie Boys are still alive today.
Today's episode is based on the article how the Richie
Boys Secret refugee infiltrators took on the Nazis on HowStuffWorks
(09:26):
dot Com, written by Dave Brus. Brain Stuff is production
of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is
produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
BrainStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Jonathan Strickland
Ben Bowlin
Lauren Vogelbaum
Cristen Conger
Christian Sager
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.