Ritchie Boys
The Ritchie Boys are the graduates of the Military Intelligence Training Center or Camp Ritchie training center of the United States Army during the Second World War . The approximately 9,000 participants were mainly young emigrants from Germany and Austria, mostly Jews , who had found a new home in the United States .
history
In Camp Ritchie, Maryland , the Ritchie Boys were prepared for their deployment in Europe with a special training program. In cooperation with the American armed forces, they were supposed to occupy Germany . When Germany declared war on the USA, the "Ritchie Boys" became an essential part of the Allied army. They knew the mental state and the language. At Camp Ritchie, they were taught concepts of modern psychological warfare . This also resulted in their area of responsibility: to research the opponent, to demoralize them and thus to move them to unconditional surrender .
The first Ritchie Boys arrived in Europe on D-Day , June 6, 1944, along with the other Allied troops . Shortly after reaching the mainland, they left their actual units and pursued their special tasks. So they could provide the Allies with important information. Furthermore, they made sure that the resistance was broken bit by bit by fighting the enemy in open and covert actions. POWs and defectors were systematically interrogated. In this way, the Ritchie Boys were able to pass on information about troop strength, troop movements and the physical and psychological situation of the Germans to the Allies. Targeted disinformation by means of fake newspaper reports, but also through leaflets , radio broadcasts and loudspeaker trucks, requested the German population and soldiers to stop the fighting.
Many well-known personalities were trained in the camp, including Hans Habe , Stefan Heym , Hanuš Burger , David Robert Seymour , Victor Brombert , Werner Angress and Georg Kreisler . Even Klaus Mann was stationed for nearly a month in camp. He was even promoted to Staff Sergeant there , but was not allowed to leave with the troop transport to land in Sicily ( Operation Husky ) in May 1943 , because he was not yet an American citizen at that time; it was not until early 1944 that he was assigned to the 5th US Army and deployed in southern Italy. Ritchie Boys were also lesser-known people such as Joachim von Elbe , Kurt Klein , Eric F. Ross , Hans Spear and Guy Stern .
After the war, Ritchie Boys interpreted during the Nuremberg war crimes trials, occupied important liaison offices in the US military government or helped establish a democratic press landscape in West Germany. Many of the Ritchie Boys also made careers in business, politics and science.
Although this department made an important contribution to the success of the USA in World War II through its work, it remained largely unknown to the public until the documentary filmmaker Christian Bauer took on its story in 2004.
Most of the Camp Ritchie documents were held in the US National Archives in St. Louis. Nearly 80 percent of the documents were destroyed in a fire in 1973, so that research since then has largely been based on oral information.
Movie
- The Ritchie Boys . Documentary, 93 min., Written and directed: Christian Bauer, production: Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion, co-production: BR, WDR, MDR a. a., World premiere: April 23, 2004, Hot Docs Toronto
- Hatred of Hitler: The Ritchie Boys. Short version, 45 min., First broadcast on ARD , May 9, 2005
literature
- Christian Bauer , Rebekka Göpfert: The Ritchie Boys. German emigrants with the US secret service. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-455-09498-8
- Joshua Franklin: Victim Soldiers: German-Jewish Refugees in the American Armed Forces during World War II ( Memento from September 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), Bachelor thesis at Clark University
- Kathryn Lang-Slattery: Immigrant Soldier. The Story of a Ritchie Boy , Pacific Bookworks 2015, ISBN 0990674207
- Bruce Henderson: Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned With the US Army to Fight Hitler , William Morrow 2017, ISBN 978-0062419095
Web links
- Movie website: "The Ritchie Boys"
- Ulrich Baron: "We were no longer defenseless" - The Ritchie Boys: How German émigrés helped the American secret service. In: Die Welt , April 30, 2005, accessed December 14, 2011
- Joachim Gaertner: Hatred of Hitler: Germans in US uniform. ( Memento from June 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) At the WDR-Kulturweltspiegel, May 1, 2005
- Robert Koehler: The Ritchie Boys - Film Review. Critique of the documentary at variety.com (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Jewish Currents: D-Day and the Ritchie Boys "... 9,000 (some sources say 16,000) ..." ( Memento of March 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Dallas Observer / Dallas Holocaust Museum
- ↑ Tanja Krienen on the book: Georg Kreisler: Doesn't exist georgkreisler.de (accessed on August 13, 2013)
- ↑ a b Eike Frenzel: America's German weapon against Hitler , article on Spiegel Online / Eine Tages (accessed on August 13, 2013)
- ↑ The Ritchie Boys ( Memento from January 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), article at Arte.tv from October 7, 2009, (accessed on August 13, 2013)
- ↑ Joshua Franklin: Victim Soldiers: German-Jewish Refugees in the American Armed Forces during World War II ( Memento of September 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), page 53, footnote 34. By Debórah Dwork