Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Voleebaum. Here.
Speaker 1: During World War II, the US military recruited and trained
Speaker 1: a secret army of nearly twenty thousand intelligence officers at
Speaker 1: a site called Camp Richie in rural Maryland. The Richie Boys,
Speaker 1: as they're known today, weren't your average American soldiers. They
Speaker 1: represented seventy different nationalities and spoke many different languages. The
Speaker 1: best known Richie Boys were some two eight hundred Jewish
Speaker 1: refugees from Germany and Austria who fled the Holocaust then
Speaker 1: heroically returned to Europe as American soldiers to defeat Hitler.
Speaker 1: Their remarkable story was chronicled by Sixty Minutes in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one and in a German documentary from two thousand
Speaker 1: and four. But there were also Black Ritchie Boys, Japanese
Speaker 1: American Richie Boys, and female Richie Girls, all of whom
Speaker 1: played a critical and largely unrecognized and the Allied victory
Speaker 1: in World War II. When war broke out in Europe
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty one, the US military lagged far behind
Speaker 1: the British when it came to intelligence capabilities. The Americans
Speaker 1: knew that if they were going to join the fight,
Speaker 1: they couldn't win without soldiers trained in the latest interrogation techniques, counterintelligence,
Speaker 1: that is, spying, and psychological warfare. In April of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two, the US Army converted a Maryland National Guard
Speaker 1: site into Camp Ritchey, a dedicated military intelligence training center.
Speaker 1: From the start, the Army sought out recruits with foreign
Speaker 1: language skills, particularly the languages of their enemies. Before the
Speaker 1: article this episode is based on How Stuff Works, spoke
Speaker 1: with Land and Grove, an educator who directed the creation
Speaker 1: and opening of the Richy History Museum in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: He said, you can teach anybody how to fire a
Speaker 1: rifle in just a few weeks, but you can't teach
Speaker 1: them fluent German, Japanese or Italian. Of the nearly twenty
Speaker 1: thousand trainees who passed through Camp Riccie, about sixty percent
Speaker 1: were American born, including Native Americans, and the rest included
Speaker 1: refugees classified as enemy aliens like Germans and Austrians, plus
Speaker 1: immigrants from everywhere from Morocco to Iceland to India. For
Speaker 1: eight weeks, Camp Richie recruits learned how to extract information
Speaker 1: from captured prisoners of war, a right propaganda pamphlets to
Speaker 1: drop behind enemy lines, analyze reconnaissance photos, and kill the
Speaker 1: enemy in hand to hand combat if necessary, although their
Speaker 1: methods were more based in soft power and cultural know
Speaker 1: how than in violence. To complete their training, Richie Boys
Speaker 1: were shipped off to England to learn advanced intelligence techniques.
Speaker 1: It's there that the Americans may have earned the nickname
Speaker 1: Richie Boys from their more experienced British instructors. As newly
Speaker 1: minted intelligence officers, Ritchie Boys were embedded in every American
Speaker 1: military branch and unit, and they fought in every major
Speaker 1: World War II battle, from the D Day Invasion of
Speaker 1: Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge to Euejima. In
Speaker 1: fighting the Nazis, one of the Ritchie boys most important
Speaker 1: contributions was something called the Order of Battle of the
Speaker 1: German Army aka the Red Book. Using captured German documents,
Speaker 1: the Ritchie Boys assembled a continuously updated list of every
Speaker 1: Nazi unit in Europe, including its leadership, structure, troop numbers,
Speaker 1: battle history, and more. Houstuffworks also spoke with Beverly Eddy,
Speaker 1: author of Richie Boy Secrets, how a force of immigrants
Speaker 1: and refugees helped win World War II. She said the
Speaker 1: order of battle was crucial for interrogation purposes and for
Speaker 1: the Allies to know exactly what they were up against.
Speaker 1: The Richie Boys conducted tens of thousands of interrogations of
Speaker 1: both enemy soldiers and civilians. A fluent in the language
Speaker 1: and culture of their Captivesie Boys didn't need to resort
Speaker 1: to violence to get information. Instead, they would offer a
Speaker 1: friendly cigarette and commisserate over local sports rivalries. Grove said
Speaker 1: that then launch into this spiel. Isn't the war awful?
Speaker 1: You and I aren't really that different. We're all just
Speaker 1: sick of fighting and want to go home. It'll all
Speaker 1: be over a lot sooner if you tell me where
Speaker 1: the minefield is. And if a Nazi officer was really
Speaker 1: tight lipped, they might threaten to hand them over to
Speaker 1: the Russians. Grove was using Russians and scare quotes there
Speaker 1: as it'd be another Richie Boy playing the role convincingly
Speaker 1: in a Russian officer's uniform. According to a US Army
Speaker 1: report published in nineteen forty six, the Ritchie Boys were
Speaker 1: responsible for gathering sixty percent of all actionable battlefield intelligence
Speaker 1: in World War two, though Eddie thinks that number should
Speaker 1: probably be lower, since the Americans who wrote the report
Speaker 1: didn't know at that time the full extent of the
Speaker 1: secret British program that cracked the Enigma code. Several famous
Speaker 1: people were members of their ranks, including author J. D. Salinger,
Speaker 1: one of the founders of Wafflehouse, Tom Faulkner, financial magnate
Speaker 1: David Rockefeller, and politicians like Frank Church. But some of
Speaker 1: the most inspiring stories about the Richie Boys concerned those
Speaker 1: Jewish refugees who fled Nazi atrocities in Europe and returned
Speaker 1: to fight for the family members and communities that had
Speaker 1: lost to Hitler's genocide. Ediside's examples like Ernest Kramer, a
Speaker 1: German Jew who, at eighteen years old, was imprisoned at
Speaker 1: the notorious Bukenwald concentration camp. Kramer was one of the
Speaker 1: lucky few to get an affidavit for release to America
Speaker 1: the minute he stepped on US soil. Kramer enlisted in
Speaker 1: the Army and was sent to Camp Ritchie to train
Speaker 1: in psychological warfare. During the war, Kramer wrote pamphlets urging
Speaker 1: German soldiers to surrender, and when the war was finally over,
Speaker 1: he helped establish independent newspapers and destroyed German cities. Another
Speaker 1: sample is Albert Rosenberg, who was a university student in
Speaker 1: Germany in nineteen thirty seven when he was brutally attacked
Speaker 1: by an antisemitic mob. He escaped to America, joined the army,
Speaker 1: and became the leader of a richie boy interrogation team
Speaker 1: responsible for extracting information from high value Nazi targets Alike Kramer,
Speaker 1: Rosenberg lost his entire family in Hitler's death camps, and
Speaker 1: he was determined to see Nazi war criminals brought to justice.
Speaker 1: Eddie said. At the end of the war, Rosenberg and
Speaker 1: his team were assigned by General Eisenhower to investigate book involved.
Speaker 1: They interviewed prisoners to learn exactly how the camp was
Speaker 1: organized and who was in charge. Those materials were used
Speaker 1: at the Nuremberg Trials. During World War two, black soldiers
Speaker 1: in the US military often faced Jim crow eras segregation.
Speaker 1: Even at Camp Ritchie, black trainees graduated with impressive credentials,
Speaker 1: but had to navigate a military culture that treated them
Speaker 1: as second class soldiers. Take one Daniel Skinner, a professor
Speaker 1: at a black college who came to Camp Richie with
Speaker 1: a Harvard degree influency in French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Speaker 1: Eddie said at Camp Richie, Daniel Skinner was as good
Speaker 1: or better than any of the other trainees, but when
Speaker 1: he was posted abroad, he couldn't serve over white soldiers.
Speaker 1: What they did was make him the driver of the
Speaker 1: interrogation team so he could still participate as a translator
Speaker 1: and interrogator. The Richie Boys also included Japanese Americans among
Speaker 1: their ranks. Take David Akira Atami, who was born an
Speaker 1: American citizen, but was imprisoned along with his family in
Speaker 1: an internment camp after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 1: A year later, Atami volunteered for the army. As Atami's
Speaker 1: daughter wrote, the US government would not recognize your citizenship rights,
Speaker 1: but they would let you volunteer to serve the same
Speaker 1: country who had deprived you of those rights. Atammi trained
Speaker 1: at Camp Richie and later served as the lead interpreter
Speaker 1: at the Japanese War crimes trials in Tokyo. And around
Speaker 1: two hundred Richie girls trained or worked at Camp Ritchie,
Speaker 1: including twenty two women instructors. The Women's Auxiliary Corps was
Speaker 1: an active duty branch of the Army for women, but
Speaker 1: they often struggled to earn the respect of the male
Speaker 1: dominated military. A Two high profile Richie Girls were Sally Davis,
Speaker 1: who trained in the Order of Battle and served with
Speaker 1: General MacArthur in Australia, and Lillian Tombacher, who served as
Speaker 1: General Eisenhower's personal Polish interpreter in Europe and received the
Speaker 1: Bronze Star. Of the nearly twenty thousand Richie Boys who
Speaker 1: served in World War II, around one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: were killed in action, including at the costly landings at
Speaker 1: Normandy and Euejima. Richie Boys earned more than sixty five
Speaker 1: Silver Star medals and countless Bronze Star medals for their service.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty two, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum present
Speaker 1: the Richie Boys with its highest honor, the Elie Weisell Award,
Speaker 1: and legislation has been submitted to Congress to award the
Speaker 1: Richie Boys with the Congressional Gold Medal. Eddie and Grove
Speaker 1: estimate that over one hundred Richie Boys are still alive today.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article how the Richie
Speaker 1: Boys Secret refugee infiltrators took on the Nazis on HowStuffWorks
Speaker 1: dot Com, written by Dave Brus. Brain Stuff is production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio,
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