Previously, the IN SEASON Lifestyle blog, we published some Memorial Day thoughts about the heroes of World War One.
Today we decided to spend some time looking into the heroes of World War Two.
ONE AMAZING GROUP OF MEN
The subject was already on our minds because of the series we were writing and publishing at that time which included articles asking whether Christians should be involved in movements of social justice. The World Wars kept coming up in these discussions as we considered what is fair and what is right and how it all played out in history.
In studying social justice history through a past series of articles, we were already pondering the social justice issues of World War Two. A lot of what is fair certainly depends on perspective, your own personal set of morals, and sense of right and wrong as a nation.
Those facts did come forth into a whole series of social justice articles eventually. Today though, I want to talk about this amazing group of men who were very detrimental to the outcome of World War Two.
They were called The Ritchie Boys.
BACKGROUNDS
Their group name came from the fact that they were all trained at Camp Ritchie in Maryland.
These men did not have the military training of a typical base. Though it was a part of their courses; their studies were much more detailed and complex than that of a regular soldier.
The main nature of their studies and training was all about how to interrogate the enemy in order to obtain specific facts needed for battle strategies.
All of these men at Ft. Ritchie had two things in common. They were immigrants from Germany who came to America seeking citizenship as young children in order to escape the terrors of Nazi Germany and Hitler’s regime. Also; they all spoke fluent English, but their native tongue was German.
KNOWING THE ENEMY
These traits proved to be very useful to the American military maneuvers. All of these brave men could understand the language of the plots of the enemies and translate them into English in a quick and accurate manner.
They were also already familiar with the customs and traditions of Germany, which helped a lot when we needed important information and could not attain it any other way than to infiltrate the enemies’ territory and seek it out by deception.
Who would be better with this task than a native of the land who had now become a loyal American citizen?
FOREIGN BORN BUT TRUE AMERICANS
This unlikely band of German men did not come by their loyalty to winning the war for America the easy way.
Most of them had families who were killed in the Holocaust, or who were held prisoner in the concentration camps of Hitler.
They emphatically believed in America’s reasons for being involved in stopping the Communist from progressing any further into free lands.
The Ritchie Boys had experienced the terror and devastation of communism first-hand.
They knew up-close and personal what it meant to lose every single liberty, to have all of your individual rights stripped away and all of your family members and possessions taken and destroyed, with no way out.
Most all of them had memories of times when all one had to look forward to was wasted years in work-camps where people were treated like disposable animals.
I would love to hear their take on today’s often quoted line from WEF with the aim for all Americans to “own nothing but be happy.” Somehow I don’t see them agreeing with that nonsense.
ALL ABOUT FREEDOM, LIBERTY AND LIBERATION
These men, even more than their new found loyalty to America, simply wanted to see communist ways wiped off the map. They did everything within their power to help the troops that were fighting for freedom, liberty and liberation of the suffering and the oppressed.
The original count for these well-trained men who knew the enemy’s language and culture, who were able to penetrate the front lines and obtain good information; was about 15,200 in totality.
The camp where they were trained was top secret.
On the day they were recruited for this position, they would be called up after enlisting; given train tickets to an unknown location and told not to open their orders until they were almost to their destination. As they arrived at Ft. Ritchie, they discovered what was in store for their future life as enlisted men.
ONE THOUSAND CHILDREN
Many of these men came from a group now known as One Thousand Children. This was a group of approximately 1,400 Jewish children who were rescued from Nazi Germany and other Nazi occupied European countries. After rescue they were taken directly to America during a period of time from 1934-1945.
They came unaccompanied by their parents because their parents were not able to get the necessary visas for escaping.
In order to protect them, these parents sent their children away with strangers in hopes that they would not be murdered by the Nazis whenever it was that they showed up.
Many brave people helped with this international effort. Eventually, many of these OTC’s wound up being a part of The Ritchie Boys.
THE RITCHIE BOYS
Once the Germans declared war against The United States in 1941, the well-trained “Ritchie Boys” became an important weapon for the Allies.
Most of them were sent to Europe on D-Day.
A few of them had no training whatsoever in parachuting, but they were able to master the necessary jumps and land on the shoreline from the last-minute instructions given on their planes.
Shortly after they landed they launched right into their special assigned tasks. They obtained valuable logistic and statistical information for the Allies.
Their units gained knowledge related to the German Bulge Offensive which provided advance warnings for General Patton.
EXPERTS AT INTERROGATION
The Ritchie Boys helped to break the German resistance in covert operations. They expertly interrogated prisoners of war to determine troop movements, troop sizes and troop morale.
After their success in the war operations many of these young men were later helpful in the Nuremburg Trials.
When the trials were over several of The Ritchie Boys went on to live out very successful careers in law, politics, science and business.
WHO THEY WERE
Some of the more prominent names were:
Hans Habe the famous writer and newspaper publisher;
Klaus Mann a well-known writer and dissident;
Oskar Seidlin an author and professor of Smith College, Middlebury College, Ohio State University and Indiana University;
Stefan Heym a German writer;
Hanus Burger who was well known in the theater, as a film and television director, playwright, author of books and screenplays;
Gerald Geiger who served under Patton’s Third Army, received a Bronze Medal, went on to help in the liberation of France, then established his own translation and research company;
George Mandler who became a distinguished psychologist, then a Professor of Psychology at University of California, San Diago;
Richard Schifter who later became an Austrian-American attorney and diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs from 1985 to 1992;
Guy Stern who became a Director at The Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills as well as Professor at Wayne State University;
Werner Angress who became a professor of modern European and German history who died in 2010 at age 90;
Walter Schwarz did interrogations at The Battle of The Bulge. After the war he went into the textile industry, which was his father’s trade before him. He was also a journalist. You can find his stories about the Holocaust are still being told in several memorial museums.
Hans Louis Trefousse became an author and historian who was a professor at Brooklyn College. He also taught history at City University in New York;
Alfred de Grazia went on to do much more than we could ever write here. He was a political scientist and author who developed techniques of computerization based on social network analysis early-on within that industry.
Grazia wrote manuals of psychological warfare for the CIA during the Korean war. He was involved in aspects of the Vietnam war. Later on, he held the position of Professor at several universities – University of Minnesota, Brown University and New York University. During his lifetime he served on several committees at Stanford.
Back in the 1970’s Alfred de Grazia founded an alternative to American colleges in Switzerland called The University of The New World. It was a very liberal school and apparently it did not fare well with the more conservative folks of Switzerland;
Gilbert de Goldschmidt went on to learn how to make films. He produced many films for the American military while working under the Marshall Plan. Later he turned his attention to film-making in France. While there he produced many famous screen titles; such as The Man With One Red Shoe, Monty Python And The Holy Grail and The Life Of Brian as well as many others;
J.D. Salinger – was another amazing writer who did a lot of short story writing even before his days with The Ritchie Boys. After the war he did a lot of writing for The New Yorker. In 1951 he published his best-selling novel called The Catcher In The Rye. (You can buy yourself a copy below if you like.) With that novel’s success, he became very reclusive. He lived quietly but continued to produce several other well-read manuscripts.
EACH MAN HAS HIS OWN STORY
These short snippets of words do none of these men justice. Their life stories are amazing as well as amusing What we have mentioned here are only a few of the facts of the most brilliant minds that helped us to end World War II.
So many others were involved in the successful efforts from Camp Ritchie, and their (many un-told) stories are endless.
Can you imagine what it was like when they all were reunited at later reunion dates?
REUNIONS
Many of these men are gone now; but those who were left and able did reunite in 2011 and 2012.
The 2012 reunion took place at Ft. Ritchie, which had long been closed for use as a base.
So many amazing personalities and stories came from this group of brave men, that Christian Bauer produced their story for the big screen in a documentary in 2004. The title, of course, is “The Ritchie Boys.”
Bauer’s production would be a great movie to view as your family gathers to remember all of their war heroes on Memorial Day.