Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck and this is short Stuff the greatest generation
Speaker 1: of podcasts.
Speaker 2: Caught me a mid laugh from a pre recording joke
Speaker 2: from Josh.
Speaker 1: Thanks for mine ears yep, and Jerry's too.
Speaker 3: That's right, but she's not loving, She's not.
Speaker 2: She's so all right. Shall we talk about the Richie Boys?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a great way to put it, because
Speaker 1: this is a World War two era story about a
Speaker 1: generally overlooked group that I was like, I've heard of
Speaker 1: these guys before, and then sixty minutes was mentioned. I
Speaker 1: was like, that's what it was. I saw, Oh, a
Speaker 1: really cool segment on the Richie Boys. There were twenty thousand,
Speaker 1: roughly intelligence officers who were trained in the United States
Speaker 1: who may or may not have been born in the
Speaker 1: United States, and we're trained in counterintelligence, aerial photo analysis,
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff that you would need to basically
Speaker 1: run an intelligence operation, which the US badly needed at
Speaker 1: the outset of World War Two because we didn't really
Speaker 1: have a good amount of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: You mentioned some American born About sixty percent were American born,
Speaker 2: which did include some Native American soldiers. The rest were
Speaker 2: It's some pretty incredible story. They were refugees a lot
Speaker 2: of times. A lot of times they were Jewish people
Speaker 2: from Germany refugees. I think about twenty eight hundred of
Speaker 2: which were of that twenty thousand that you know, they
Speaker 2: got out just before or maybe they somehow got lucky
Speaker 2: and were granted the right to leave. People who may
Speaker 2: have lost their entire families in Nazi death camps, and
Speaker 2: so they came to the United sometimes Japanese citizens whose
Speaker 2: family were in tournament camps and they signed up for
Speaker 2: the US Army to help defeat those Nazis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were in American internment camps and still volunteered
Speaker 1: for the army. That's really something you know.
Speaker 2: Also Richie girls, right, Yeah, there.
Speaker 1: Were WAX Women's Auxiliary Corps is what they what WAX
Speaker 1: stood for, but they were called Wax and there were
Speaker 1: I mean just basically anybody you could think of who
Speaker 1: had any kind of specialty that made them kind of
Speaker 1: international to some degree. It was probably recruited to do
Speaker 1: the eight week program at Camp Richie, which was a
Speaker 1: little it started out, I guess a National Guard camp
Speaker 1: in Maryland that the Army took over. The National Guard
Speaker 1: had zero say in that, and they turned it into
Speaker 1: this highly secretive intelligence training camp. It sounds I mean,
Speaker 1: it's exactly the kind of place that a movie is
Speaker 1: made about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm surprised there haven't there hasn't been. I'm sure
Speaker 2: it's in the works somewhere.
Speaker 1: I believe. So it's Guy Ritchie's The Richie Boys, a
Speaker 1: film by Guy Richie coming soon.
Speaker 2: So, like you said, it was an eight week program.
Speaker 2: After that eight week program at Richie they were sent
Speaker 2: to England to get some more advanced intelligence training going basically,
Speaker 2: and you know, they were in supposedly every battle, every branch,
Speaker 2: and every unit that we had in World War Two.
Speaker 2: They spread them out. None other than JD. Salinger was
Speaker 2: a Richie Boy, among some other notable people. But they
Speaker 2: you know, they got a lot of these people spoke
Speaker 2: foreign languages or were even taught foreign languages. And that
Speaker 2: was one of the big benefits of the Richie Boys
Speaker 2: is they could they could get in there for an
Speaker 2: interrogation and they knew the local cultures. They could bond
Speaker 2: with someone say hey, you know, let's have a cigarette
Speaker 2: and talk about the local soccer team or football or whatever.
Speaker 2: They would say m hm, and before you know it,
Speaker 2: they're getting more information than they would by you know,
Speaker 2: tying someone to a chair and beating them.
Speaker 1: Right. They were also valued, like in the case of JD. Salinger,
Speaker 1: because some of them could really spot a phony a
Speaker 1: mile away. Yeah, so they could suss out spot in
Speaker 1: their own ranks.
Speaker 3: Good one.
Speaker 1: So there are a few other things that they learned
Speaker 1: a lot of other things actually, Like I said, aerial
Speaker 1: photo analysis, which is handy if you were a pilot
Speaker 1: or if you were in touch with pilots and wanted
Speaker 1: to tell pilots what to go bomb, or how to
Speaker 1: find things that were camouflage pretty well, like how to
Speaker 1: spot like a I don't know, a plane that was
Speaker 1: under some of that cool like three D camouflage netting.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 1: You would learn that at Camp Riccie. If you wanted
Speaker 1: to learn how to kill a person with your bare hands,
Speaker 1: there was a former wrestler who trained people to do
Speaker 1: that at Campricchie. Like they learned again, anything that you
Speaker 1: can imagine in a World War two training movie montage,
Speaker 1: this actually went on at Camp ricci.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like intelligence was one of the big
Speaker 2: focuses I think in the end they got about sixty
Speaker 2: percent of all actionable battlefield intelligence came from the richie
Speaker 2: boys and girl and that's what they were called. By
Speaker 2: the way, the Red Book, aka the Order of Battle
Speaker 2: of the German Army was a very big deal and
Speaker 2: it was basically just an ongoing list of like everything
Speaker 2: they could learn about the German Army. Anytime they would
Speaker 2: get documents or any kind of plans or anything, it
Speaker 2: would go into the Red Book where they would, you know,
Speaker 2: counterintelligence wise, they would get this stuff and it was
Speaker 2: you know, every unit that they had, who the leaders were,
Speaker 2: where they battles they had fought, how those went. It
Speaker 2: was just sort of the master book called the Red Book.
Speaker 1: I say, we take a break and come back and
Speaker 1: talk some more about the richie boys.
Speaker 3: Let's do it as w s K as good.
Speaker 1: Tough you should know, all right, check there was something
Speaker 1: I wanted to toss in because I opted for a JD.
Speaker 1: Salinger joke instead of a yes and to yours. That
Speaker 1: interrogation technique he talked about where like they were able
Speaker 1: to speak in like a local dialect and kind of
Speaker 1: commiserate with the prisoner to interrogate them I saw another
Speaker 1: thing that they would use. Would they would dress up
Speaker 1: as like Soviet officers, imposed as a Soviet officer because
Speaker 1: German POWs were scared to death about being handed over
Speaker 1: to the Soviets because there were bad, bad things awaiting
Speaker 1: them in the hands of the Soviets at a pow camp.
Speaker 1: So the like a Richie Boys would show up dressed
Speaker 1: the Soviet officers saying like, I'm going to take this
Speaker 1: prisoner into custody, and the Americans would be like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we think we can talk to him, you go away.
Speaker 1: The German would suddenly be very talkative about whatever the
Speaker 1: American and prrogator wanted to know.
Speaker 3: Pretty sick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they learned that at Camp Richie.
Speaker 2: That's a new T shirt. I learned it at Camp Richie.
Speaker 1: Where where did the name or where did the name
Speaker 1: Richie Boys come from? I mean, obviously it came from
Speaker 1: Camp Richie, But do they call themselves that now?
Speaker 2: I think once they got to England it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: what of the Richie Boys has come over for more
Speaker 2: training that kind of thing. M hm hm, that's not
Speaker 2: about right.
Speaker 1: It does. And there were like specific, i mean specific
Speaker 1: stories that emerged from this. Some of the ones that
Speaker 1: like really stand out or where, like you said, there
Speaker 1: were German jewish Men who fled the Holocaust, whose families
Speaker 1: were killed in the Holocaust, who arrived in America as
Speaker 1: German nationals, volunteered for the army, went to Camp Ritchie
Speaker 1: and then went back to Europe to fight the Nazis.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of those guys name was Ernst Kramer. He was
Speaker 2: eighteen years old and he was at Buchenwald or buch
Speaker 2: and Fald excuse me, and got out, was very lucky,
Speaker 2: got an affidavit for release to go to the United States.
Speaker 2: Got here, it was like sign me up, and was
Speaker 2: a very you know, valuable richie boy. I guess he
Speaker 2: would write these pamphlets in German urging German soldiers to surrender,
Speaker 2: and I believe he even set up a couple of
Speaker 2: newspapers that, you know, in these German cities that had
Speaker 2: been just wiped out and bombed out after the war
Speaker 2: was over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a big part of liberation was denotification,
Speaker 1: and to get the German people behind the process of denotification,
Speaker 1: you basically had to I mean one of the ways
Speaker 1: you did that was through the media, so they would
Speaker 1: set up independent newspapers in different towns that would be
Speaker 1: run by, you know, some of the Richie boys. That
Speaker 1: was a really important part of it. There was another one,
Speaker 1: a guy named David Akira Tommy, he's one of those
Speaker 1: people who's who himself along with his family was interned
Speaker 1: in a Japanese internment camp here in the United States
Speaker 1: who volunteered to fight for the army, and he ended
Speaker 1: up going on to become the lead interpreter at the
Speaker 1: Japanese War crimes trials in Tokyo. Yeah, which was a
Speaker 1: really big deal.
Speaker 2: Another big deal. You know, we mentioned the Richie Girls,
Speaker 2: who are about two hundred of those that were from
Speaker 2: the You mentioned the whack the women's Auxiliary Corps. There
Speaker 2: were also twenty two women who are instructors at Camp Richie,
Speaker 2: and a couple of them, you know, were really really notable.
Speaker 2: One's name was Sally Davis. She trained in the Order
Speaker 2: of the Battle, served with MacArthur. And then a woman
Speaker 2: named Lillian Tombacker in Europe was Eisenhower's Polish interpreter, his
Speaker 2: personal interpreter, and got a Bronze star.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's pretty great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, bronze star.
Speaker 1: The thing is the Richie Boys were largely I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's secret. They were certainly secret during the war,
Speaker 1: but they weren't really well known until the mid two thousands.
Speaker 1: I think there's a German documentary five that really started
Speaker 1: to get people talking about them. So it's only fairly
Speaker 1: recently that they've started to kind of get commendations. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum presented Richie
Speaker 1: Boys that collectively with the Eli Wiesel Award, which is
Speaker 1: their highest honor. And I think in Congress there's a law.
Speaker 1: Now what's the word of Bill. I had to I
Speaker 1: had to really dig back to my schoolhouse. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: sitting on Capitol Hill that honors the Richie Boys and
Speaker 1: awards all of them the Congressional Gold Medal, and it
Speaker 1: hasn't passed yet.
Speaker 2: Strangely, Yeah, well sixty five of them got silver stars,
Speaker 2: many many bronze stars. But again at the time, it
Speaker 2: was just like this is just someone else from the unit.
Speaker 2: They weren't designated as you know, this special group.
Speaker 1: Right, what else you got?
Speaker 3: I got nothing else.
Speaker 2: That's a quickie overview on what will surely be a movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, look for it and also in the meantime,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can find that sixty minute segment somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's definitely worth watching.
Speaker 2: On the Richie Boys, Yeah, get ready, Benedict Cumberbatch, you'll
Speaker 2: be leading the troops in England.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you do your Benedict Cumberbatch talking about richie
Speaker 1: boys coming along to be trained?
Speaker 2: No, I don't even know what he sounds like pretty.
Speaker 1: Much what you did earlier. Oh okay, he sounds like
Speaker 1: whatever you wanted to sound like. That guy can do
Speaker 1: some pretty good dialects in accent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although I don't his American accent in the Doctor
Speaker 2: Strange stuff is.
Speaker 3: A little wacky.
Speaker 2: I like this movies, but oh yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, since we started going way off script and
Speaker 1: talking about Benedict cumber Batch, and since there's not even
Speaker 1: a script in the first place, they think short stuff
Speaker 1: is out.
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