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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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
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 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, 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 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.