Don’t Know The Ritchie Boys? You Should!

Despite all their hatred, vitriolic lies and anti-immigrant bombasts as they paraded through the streets of Charlottesville shouting “Jews will not replace us,” many of those “good people” (and the insurrectionists of January 6) owe their American freedoms to some courageous Jewish refugee immigrants.

The tiki torch-carrying marchers, of course, know so little American history or are too steeped in their bitterness that we can almost hear them shouting “That’s not true.”

Consider:

“Sixty-plus percent of the actional intelligence
gathered on the battlefield was gathered by the Ritchie Boys…
They made a massive contribution to essentially every battle that
Americans fought – the entire set of battles on the Western Front…
They certainly saved lives…I think that’s unquestionable…
Part of what the Ritchie Boys did was to convinced German 
units to surrender without fighting…There were Ritchie Boys that were in the 
first wave on the first day at D-Day. There were Ritchie Boys 
who were in POW camps embedded and gathering
information in the United States. 
Some didn't even go over to – to Europe. 
There were Ritchie Boys who were in virtually every battle 
that you can think of and some actually suffered the worst fate. 
There were two who were actually captured at the Battle of the Bulge. 
And when their identity was discovered, 
they were summarily executed [by firing squad in June 1945]
by the Germans that had captured them…
Because they were Jewish…
I think we look at this group and we see true heroes. 
We see those who are the greatest of 
the greatest generation. 
These are people who made massive contributions. 
Who helped shape what it meant to be American 
and who – in some cases – gave their lives 
in service to this country…” 
David Frey, professor of history and director of the
Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the 
United States Military Academy at West Point.

Months after the day “that will live in infamy” – the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States Army activated a Military Intelligence Training Center on Maryland’s border with Pennsylvania. Camp Ritchie was the training ground for almost 20,000 Americans – including 2,200 Jewish refugees from Germany and Australia – who would become frontline interrogators and battlefield intelligence specialists. The immigrant trainees, who would make a massive contribution to almost every battle the Americans fought in Europe, were chosen because of their high IQs - they were intellectuals, their proficiencies in German, French, Italian, Polish and other European languages and their familiarity with the cultures of Axis troops. They would eventually provide sixty percent of America’s actionable intelligence during the European conflict – saving American lives and altering the course of the War in Europe.

By the mid-1930s, as violence against Jews was escalating, German, Austrian and other European Jewish families attempting to escape the impending cataclysm were often only able to send only one family member – frequently a son – to safety. These boys and teenagers had no idea if they would ever again see the families and friends they left behind. The German-born Jewish-American Ritchie Boys underwent rigorous training at what was the Army’s first centralized school for intelligence and psychological warfare; they were often the only members of their families to survive the Holocaust. 

Camp Ritchie became the birthplace of modern psychological war and, following D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Ritchie Boys became a decisive force in the war – understanding and breaking the enemy’s morale. The Ritchie Boys were in Paris before its liberation, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and lived in day-to-day danger of being shot as spies by Americans because of their accents and by the Germans who might learn of their backgrounds. 

In addition to interrogating German prisoners, defectors and civilians, they collected tactically and strategically critical information about troop sizes and movements, the psychological situation of the enemy and the inner working of the German regime. They drafted leaflets, produced radio broadcasts and even published a German newspaper dropped behind enemy lines. Using trucks equipped with loudspeakers and amplifiers, they went to the front lines and – under heavy fire – tried to persuade German troops to surrender.

They were among the first to enter the liberated concentration camps and, after the War, helped establish policies for the de-Nazification of Germany. They also played critical roles in collecting and preparing evidence which led to the prosecution of many high-ranking Nazis, including Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe; Rudolph Hess, deputy furher to Adolf Hitler; and Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Wehrmacht, Germany's armed forces.  

Dozens of Ritchie Boys worked as prosecutors, interrogators and translators during the Nuremberg Trials. And, in the aftermath of the War, as part of de-Nazification, they posted photos of Nazi atrocities in German shop windows and led German citizens on tours of the concentration camps to educate the local populations about the evils Hitler and his henchmen had perpetrated. 

Despite – and because of – America’s understanding of “the final solution” and to protect their identity, American Jewish soldiers were sent into battle with “H” – Hebrew – stamped on their dog tags. On December 20, 1944, German forces captured about 300 American soldiers and thirty German POWs near Bleialf, Germany. At least one of the German POWs informed Captain Curt Bruns that two Jewish Americans who spoke good German and had interrogated them were among the captives. 

Bruns responded, “The Jews have no right to live in Germany.” American Staff Sergeant Kurt Jacobs and Technician Fifth Grade Murray Zappler, who should have been treated as prisoners of war, were separated from their compatriots and shot beside the road. On February 12, 1945, an American soldier found the bodies of the two men, lying on their backs in a small hole. 

At a Military Commission trial held in Luren, Germany on April 7, 1945, Brun was charged with violations of the law of war. In a sworn statement, Margarethe Meiters, who lived in the customs house where Bruns had been informed of the identities of the two Ritchie Boys, reported that a German lieutenant told her, “Today we have captured a large number of Americans again. In Germany, there isn’t room for captured Negroes or Jews. Today we shot two Jews. … They were shot because the captured German prisoners identified them as two who had questioned them.” He then pointed to the place where they were killed.

Prosecution witness and German POW Anton Korn, reported that in February 1945, while they were POWs, Captain Bruns said he had sworn a holy oath to himself that, if the war were won or lost, he was going to shoot every Jew in Germany.

A third witness, who may have identified Jacobs and Zappler to the Germans, told the court that Brun, who had spoken to a sergeant who selected a firing squad of five or six officers, was not at the actual site of the execution. Bruns was not accused of being directly involved in the execution, but was charged with causing the murder of Jacobs and Zappler. The Commission found sufficient – albeit circumstantial – evidence to find him guilty.

Captain Bruns was executed on June 6, 1945.

Approximately 600,000 American Jews – some barely teenagers, some Ritchie Boys refugees from Germany and Austria who would never again see their families lost in the Holocaust – served in the United States armed forces in World War II. More than 35,000 were killed, wounded, captured, or missing. Approximately 8,0000 died in combat. Three were awarded the Medal of Honor:

• Staff Sergeant Isadore S. Jachman. January 4, 1945. His citation read in part: "[L]eft his place of cover and with total disregard for his own safety dashed across open ground through a hail of fire and seizing a bazooka from a fallen comrade advanced on the tanks, which concentrated their fire on him. Firing the weapon alone, he damaged one and forced both to retire."

• Army Sergeant Ben L. Salomon. July 7, 1944: Held off advancing Japanese soldiers to protect the wounded he was treating.

• Army Second Lieutenant Raymond Zussman. September 12, 1944. His citation read in part: "[R]econnoitered alone on foot far in advance of his remaining tank and the infantry ... Fully exposed to fire from enemy positions only 50 yards distant, he stood by his tank directing its fire ... Again he walked before his tank, leading it against an enemy-held group of houses, machinegun and small arms fire kicking up dust at his feet. ... Going on alone, he disappeared around a street corner. The fire of his carbine could be heard and in a few minutes he reappeared driving 30 prisoners before him."

In the aftermath of World War II, the Ritchie Boys returned home to become entrepreneurs and inventors, men of medicine and science, and academicians, husbands, fathers and grandfathers and leaders of their local and faith communities. In January 2022, CBS News and 60 Minutes introduced some of these forgotten heroes to the world.

It may be best to let a few of them speak for themselves:

• Inventor and entrepreneur Fred Howard: “[I] felt rage at what had happened to Europe, I felt rage at what happened to Jews – Europe was raped by a very powerful, very disciplined, well-oiled military machine… We were all basket cases – kids!”

• Wayne State University Distinguished Professor Guy Stern: “We worked harder than anyone could have driven us. We were crusaders!”

• Princeton Professor Emeritus Victor Brombert: “Our teams were bright, available not always courageous – not always expert warriors, but certainly our hearts were in it.”

The next time men parade with tiki torches and the flag of a traitorous army that was defeated by Union forces that included 179,000 Black soldiers and 19,000 Black sailors or the banners of a twice-impeached former president who twice lost the popular vote or spewing veiled and not-so-veiled anti-Semitic hate speech, let us think of and pray in thanksgiving for the Ritchie Boys. The tiki torch-bearers owe their freedom to march and spew hatred to Jewish refugee men like these.