For as casually as we regularly toss across the phrase “hero”, typically no lesser time period applies. Final yr, we launched you to members of a secret American intelligence unit who fought in World Battle II. What’s most extraordinary about this group: lots of them had been German-born Jews who fled their homeland, got here to America, after which joined the U.S. Army. Their mission: to make use of their data of the German language and tradition to return to Europe and battle Naziism. The Ritchie Boys, as they had been recognized, skilled in espionage and frontline interrogation. And extremely, they had been answerable for many of the fight intelligence gathered on the Western Entrance. For many years, they did not talk about their work. Happily, a few of the Ritchie Boys are nonetheless round to inform their tales, and that features Man Stern, age 100.
Jon Wertheim: You’re employed 6 days per week, you swim each morning, you lecture, any indicators of slowing down?
Man Stern: Nicely I feel not (snort) however I do not run as quick, I do not swim as quick however I really feel pleased with my duties.
After we met 100-year-old Man Stern, he was nonetheless working six days per week. And for those who obtained up early sufficient, you may need seen him understanding at his native park within the suburbs of Detroit.
However ask him about his most formative expertise – and he would not hesitate. It was his service within the army throughout World Battle II.
Jon Wertheim: What was it like for you, leaving Nazi Germany, escaping as a Jew, and the following time you return to Europe it is to battle these guys? What was that like?
Man Stern: I used to be a soldier doing my job and that precluded any concern that I used to be going again to a rustic I as soon as was very hooked up to.
Man Stern: I had a warfare to battle and I did it.
That is Man Stern 80 years in the past. He’s among the many final surviving Ritchie Boys – a bunch of younger males – lots of them German Jews – who performed an outsized position in serving to the Allies win World Battle II. They took their identify from the place they skilled – Camp Ritchie, Maryland – a secret American army intelligence middle throughout the warfare.
Beginning in 1942, greater than 11,000 troopers went via the rigorous coaching at what was the Army’s first centralized college for intelligence and psychological warfare.
David Frey: The aim of the ability was to coach interrogators. That was the largest weak spot that the Army acknowledged that it had, which was battlefield intelligence and the interrogation wanted to speak to typically civilians, more often than not prisoners of warfare, with the intention to glean info from them.
David Frey is a professor of historical past and director of the Middle for Holocaust and Genocide Research on the U.S. Army Academy at West Level.
Jon Wertheim: How efficient had been they at gathering intelligence?
David Frey: They had been extremely efficient. Sixty-plus p.c of the actionable intelligence gathered on the battlefield was gathered by Ritchie Boys.
Jon Wertheim: Sixty p.c of the actionable intelligence?
David Frey: Sure.
David Frey: They made an enormous contribution to primarily each battle that the People fought – the whole units of battles on the Western Entrance.
Recruits had been chosen primarily based on their data of European language and tradition, in addition to their excessive IQs. Primarily they had been intellectuals. The most important set of graduates had been 2,000 German-born Jews.
David Frey: If we take Camp Ritchie in microcosm, it was virtually the perfect of an American melting pot. You had individuals coming from throughout uniting for a specific trigger.
Jon Wertheim: All in service of successful the warfare?
David Frey: All in service of successful the warfare. And there is nothing that forges unity higher than having a standard enemy.That is Man Stern 80 years in the past. He’s among the many final surviving Ritchie Boys – a bunch of younger males – lots of them German Jews – who performed an outsized position in serving to the Allies win World Battle II. They took their identify from the place they skilled – Camp Ritchie, Maryland – a secret American army intelligence middle throughout the warfare.
Beginning in 1942, greater than 11,000 troopers went via the rigorous coaching at what was the military’s first centralized college for intelligence and psychological warfare.
David Frey: The aim of the ability was to coach interrogators. That was the largest weak spot that the military acknowledged that it had, which was battlefield intelligence and the interrogation wanted to speak to typically civilians, more often than not prisoners of warfare, with the intention to glean info from them.
David Frey is a professor of historical past and director of the Middle for Holocaust Research on the U.S. Army Academy at West Level.
Jon Wertheim: How efficient had been they at gathering intelligence?
David Frey: They had been extremely efficient. 60-plus p.c of the actionable intelligence gathered on the battlefield was gathered by Ritchie Boys
Jon Wertheim: 60% of the actionable intelligence?
David Frey: Sure
David Frey: They made an enormous contribution to primarily each battle that the People fought – the whole units of battles on the Western Entrance.
Recruits had been chosen primarily based on their data of European Language and tradition, in addition to their excessive IQs. Primarily they had been intellectuals. The most important set of graduates had been 2,000 German-born Jews.
David Frey: If we take Camp Ritchie in microcosm, it was virtually the perfect of an American melting pot. You had individuals coming from throughout uniting for a specific trigger.
Jon Wertheim: All in service of successful the warfare?
David Frey: All in service of successful the warfare. And there is nothing that forges unity higher than having a standard enemy.
David Frey: You had a complete load of immigrants who actually needed to get again into the battle.
Immigrants like Man Stern. He grew up in a close-knit household within the city of Hildesheim, Germany. When Hitler took energy in 1933, Stern says the local weather grew more and more hostile.
Man Stern: My fellow college students – it was an all-male college – withdrew from you.
Jon Wertheim: Since you had been Jewish you had been ostracized?
Man Stern: That’s appropriate.
Man Stern: I went to my father someday and I mentioned, “lessons have gotten a torture chamber”
By 1937, violence towards Jews was escalating. Sensing hazard, Stern’s father tried to get the household out. However the Sterns may solely ship one among their very own to the U.S. They selected their eldest son.
Jon Wertheim: Do you keep in mind saying goodbye to your loved ones?
Man Stern: Sure.
Jon Wertheim: What do you keep in mind from that?
Man Stern: Handkerchiefs, I could not know at that time that I might by no means see my siblings or my mother and father once more nor my grandmother and so forth and so forth.
Man Stern arrived within the U.S. alone at age 15, settling with an uncle in St. Louis. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Stern, by then a university pupil, raced to enlist.
Man Stern: I had an instantaneous visceral response to that and that was that is my warfare for a lot of causes. Private, in fact, but in addition this nation – I used to be actually handled nicely.
In New York, Paul Fairbrook, had the same impulse. Now 98, Fairbrook is the previous dean of the Culinary Institute of America. His Jewish household left Germany in 1933 when he was 10.
Jon Wertheim: Why did you need to enlist initially?
Paul Fairbrook: Look I am a German Jew. And there is nothing that I needed extra is to get some revenge on Hitler who killed my uncles, and my aunts and my cousins and there was no query in my thoughts, and neither of all the lads in Camp Ritchie. So lots of them had been Jewish. We had been all on the identical wavelength. We had been delighted to get an opportunity to do one thing for the US.
On the time although, the army would not take volunteers who weren’t born within the U.S. However inside a number of months the federal government realized these so-called enemy aliens may very well be a priceless useful resource within the warfare.
Jon Wertheim: Why had been the Ritchie Boys so profitable?
Paul Fairbrook: Nicely, as a result of it was an uncommon a part of the US Army.
Paul Fairbrook: You possibly can study to shoot a rifle in six months however you’ll be able to’t study fluent German in six months. And that is what the important thing to the success was
Jon Wertheim: Was it your data of the language or your data of the psychology and the German tradition?
Paul Fairbrook: Oh that may be a excellent query. That’s the key to being a great interrogator. You actually know an terrible lot of the subtleties whenever you’re having a dialog with one other German and we had been capable of finding out issues of their solutions that enabled us to ask extra questions. You actually have to grasp it helps to have been born in Germany with the intention to – with the intention to do a great job.
Each refugees like Fairbrook and Stern, in addition to a variety of American-born recruits with requisite language abilities – had been drafted into the Army and despatched to Camp Ritchie.
Jon Wertheim: How did you discover out you had been going to go to Camp Ritchie?
Man Stern: I used to be referred to as to the corporate workplace and instructed you are delivery out. and I mentioned “might I do know the place I am going?” and he mentioned “no, army secret.”
Jon Wertheim: They swore you to secrecy?
Man Stern: Sure.
Initially a resort, Camp Ritchie was a curiously idyllic setting to organize for the harshness and brutality of warfare. Nestled within the Blue Ridge Mountains of Maryland – it was away from prying eyes and prying spies – however shut sufficient to choice makers on the Pentagon.
Jon Wertheim: Give us a way of the sorts of programs they took.
David Frey: Nicely an important a part of the coaching was that they discovered to do interrogation, and particularly of prisoners of warfare.
David Frey: Strategies the place you need to get individuals to speak to you. You need to persuade them that you just’re reliable. You need to give them that feeling that you realize who they’re, they know who you’re. lots about them already. So no matter info they’re providing you with is info that you just most likely already know.
David Frey: However additionally they did terrain evaluation, additionally they did photograph evaluation, and aerial reconnaissance evaluation. They did counterintelligence coaching.
Jon Wertheim: This was actually a broad vary of intelligence actions.
David Frey: It was a really broad vary They usually did all of it typically in eight weeks.
Jon Wertheim: What you describe, it virtually appears like these had been precursors to CIA brokers.
David Frey: They had been the truth is. A few of them had been skilled as spies and a few of them went on to careers as spies
Victor Brombert: My mother and father had been pacifists so the concept of my going to warfare was for them calamitous, nonetheless they realized that it was a crucial warfare, particularly for us.
Victor Brombert, now 98 years outdated, is a former professor of romance languages and literature at Yale after which Princeton. He was born in Berlin to a Russian Jewish household. When Hitler got here to energy, the Bromberts fled to France, after which to the U.S. Desperate to battle the Nazis, he, too joined the Army. After recruiters came upon he spoke 4 languages, they dispatched him to Camp Ritchie, the place strenuous classroom instruction was coupled with strenuous subject workouts.
Victor Brombert: There have been lengthy and demanding workouts and shut fight coaching. “Find out how to kill a sentry from behind.” I assumed, “I am by no means going to do this,” however I used to be proven the right way to do it.
Jon Wertheim: So bodily fight coaching in addition to intelligence?
Victor Brombert: Sure, nicely with a stick. You form of swing it across the neck from behind after which pull.
Among the many uncommon sights at Ritchie: a group of U.S. troopers wearing German uniforms. The Ritchie Boys skilled for warfare towards these faux Germans with faux German tanks made out of wooden. One other uncommon sight: towering over recruits, Frank Leavitt, a World Battle I veteran and professional wrestling star on the time, was among the many instructors.
Coaching was designed to be as lifelike as attainable. The Ritchie Boys practiced road combating in life-size replicas of German villages and questioned mock civilians in full scale German houses. Among the prisoners had been precise German POWs dropped at Camp Ritchie so the Ritchie Boys may follow their interrogation methods.
Jon Wertheim: I perceive you – you had sparring companions. You playacted.
Victor Brombert: One needed to playact with a few of the individuals had been performing as prisoners and a few of them had been actual prisoners.
By the spring of 1944, the Ritchie Boys had been able to return to Western Europe – this time as naturalized People in American uniforms.
Nonetheless, in the event that they had been captured, they knew what the Nazis would do to them.
A few of them requested new canine tags – with excellent cause.
Jon Wertheim: This canine tag says Hebrew. Did your canine tag establish you as Jewish?
Man Stern: I most popular not having it. I requested them to go away it off
Jon Wertheim: You did not need to be recognized as Jewish going again to Western Europe.
Man Stern: No as a result of I knew that – the contact with Germans won’t be very good.
On June 6, 1944, D-Day – the Allies launched one of the crucial sweeping army operations in historical past. A mighty onslaught of greater than 160,000 males, 13,000 plane, and 5,000 vessels.
Man Stern: We had been on a PT boat taking off from Southampton. And all of us had been scared. We had been briefed that the Germans weren’t going to welcome us tremendously. As a Jew, I knew I won’t be handled precisely by the Geneva guidelines.
Divided into 6-man groups the Ritchie Boys had been hooked up to totally different Army items. Their job: to offer battlefield intelligence. Once they landed on the seashores of Normandy, Wehrmacht troops had been ready for them – nicely armed and nicely ready.
Victor Brombert was with the primary American armored division to land on Omaha Seashore. He’s nonetheless haunted by what he skilled that day.
Victor Brombert: I noticed immense particles. Wounded individuals. Useless individuals.
Victor Brombert: I keep in mind being up on a cliff the primary night time over Omaha seashore. And we had been strafed and I mentioned to myself, uh, “now, it is the top’ as a result of I may – you possibly can really feel the machine gun bullets
Jon Wertheim: Is that whenever you first notice – I am – I am in a warfare right here?
Victor Brombert: Sure, I spotted that I used to be afraid. I by no means calculated that there’s such a factor as terror, worry. So I skilled viscerally, worry.
On the entrance strains from Normandy onwards, the Ritchie Boys fought in each main battle in Europe, amassing tactical intelligence, interrogating prisoners and civilians, all in service of successful the warfare.
In 1944, the Ritchie Boys headed to Europe to battle in a warfare that was, for them, intensely private. They had been members of a secret group whose mastery of the German language and tradition helped them present battlefield intelligence that proved pivotal to the Allies’ victory. The Ritchie Boys landed on the seashores of Normandy on D-Day and helped liberate Paris. They crossed into Germany with the Allied armies and witnessed the horrors of the Nazi focus camps. All of the whereas, they tracked down proof and interrogated Nazi criminals, later tried at Nuremberg. It was additionally in Europe that a few of them, like Man Stern, discovered what had occurred to the households they left behind.
By the summer time of 1944, German troops in Normandy had been outnumbered and overpowered. The Allies liberated Paris in August and drove Nazi troops out of France. However Hitler was decided to proceed the warfare. Within the Ardennes area of Belgium, the Germans mounted an enormous counteroffensive, which turned often known as the Battle of the Bulge.
Jon Wertheim: I see a tent within the background of that photograph proper in entrance of you.
Man Stern: Sure, that is my interrogation tent.
Jon Wertheim: So that is you on the job. You are in Belgium?
Man Stern: Sure, doing my job interrogating. Proper.
Amid the chaos of warfare, Man Stern and the opposite Ritchie Boys had a job to do. Embedded in each Army unit, they interrogated tens of hundreds of captured Nazi troopers in addition to civilians – extracting key strategic info on enemy energy, troop actions, and defensive positions. They then typed up their each day stories within the subject to be handed up the chain of command.
Victor Brombert: Our interrogations – it needed to do with tactical quick considerations. And that is why civilians may very well be helpful and troopers may very well be helpful, “the place is the minefield?” essential since you save life if you realize the place the mine – “the place is the machine gun nest?” “What number of machine weapons do you’ve there?” “the place are your reserve items?” and if you aren’t getting it from one prisoner, you may get it from the opposite.
98-year-old Victor Brombert says they relied on their Camp Ritchie coaching to get individuals to open up.
Victor Brombert: We improvised in line with the state of affairs. In accordance with the type of unit, in line with the type of particular person we had been interrogating. However definitely what didn’t work was violence or risk of violence. By no means. What did work Is complicity.
Jon Wertheim: What– What do you imply?
Victor Brombert: By complicity I imply, “Oh we’re collectively on this warfare. You on one facet and we on this facet. Is not it a depressing factor? Aren’t all of us form of, uninterested in it?”
Jon Wertheim: The shared expertise?
Victor Brombert: The shared expertise, precisely. Giving out some cigarettes additionally helps lots. A pleasant method – making an attempt to be human.
The Ritchie Boys related with prisoners on topics as diversified as meals and soccer rivalries however they weren’t above utilizing deception on troublesome targets. The Ritchie Boys found that the Nazis had been afraid of ending up in Russian captivity they usually used that to nice impact. If a German POW would not discuss, he may face Man Stern dressed up as a Russian officer.
Man Stern: I had my entire uniform with medals, Russian medals. And I gave myself the identify Commissar Krukov.
Jon Wertheim: That is what you referred to as your self?
Man Stern: That was my pseudonym.
Jon Wertheim: How did you do commissar?
Man Stern: Thanks for asking. I gave myself all of the accouterments of wanting like a fierce Russian commissar.
Man Stern: And a few we did not break however 80% had been so darned fearful of the Russians and what they might do.
Jon Wertheim: So there’s an actual ingredient of – costumes and deception and accents.
Man Stern: Sure and it is theatrics in a means sure.
Their topics ranged from low-level German troopers to high-ranking Nazi officers together with Hans Goebbels, brother of Hitler’s chief propogandist, Joseph Goebbels.
One other little bit of indispensable Ritchie Boy handiwork: the order of battle of the German military. Paul Fairbrook helped write this compact handbook, often known as the crimson ebook, which outlined in nice element the make-up of nearly each Nazi unit, info each Ritchie Boy dedicated to reminiscence.
Paul Fairbrook: When the troopers mentioned “I am not going to speak” they may say “wait a minute. I do know all about you. Look, I obtained a ebook right here and it tells me that you just had been right here and also you went there and your boss was this.” They usually had been impressed with that.
Jon Wertheim: So it appears like this gave the officers within the subject a information to the German Army so they may then interrogate the German POW’s extra effectively.
Paul Fairbrook: That is precisely proper.
The Ritchie Boys earned a status for delivering vital tactical info quick, making a serious contribution to each battle on the Western Entrance.
David Frey: The work they do within the subject, with the ability to glean info just by – from the uniform {that a} captured POW is carrying or the kind of weapon that they’ve or the unit that they’ve simply captured. That info is of important significance as a result of it tells you the place sure items are, and if you realize the place sure items are, you realize the place the weak spots are. the place the sturdy factors are, and you realize you what to keep away from and what to assault.
David Frey teaches historical past to cadets on the U.S. Army Academy at West Level.
David Frey: That is the place the having an intelligence officer from Camp Ritchie was of important significance. As a result of they might know this info. Your common commander within the subject won’t.
Jon Wertheim: Their work saved lives?
David Frey: Completely. They definitely saved lives. I feel that is quantifiable.
David Frey: A part of what the Ritchie Boys did was to persuade German items to give up with out combating.
Jon Wertheim: And also you’re saying that a few of that originated at Camp Ritchie?
David Frey: A lot of it originated at Camp Ritchie as a result of it had by no means – it hadn’t been carried out earlier than. How do you enchantment to individuals in their very own language? Realizing the right way to form that enchantment was fairly important to the success of the cell broadcast items.
In vehicles geared up with loudspeakers, Ritchie Boys went to the entrance strains underneath heavy hearth, and tried, in German, to influence their Nazi counterparts to give up. Additionally they drafted and dropped leaflets from airplanes behind enemy strains.
Jon Wertheim: This was one of many leaflets that was dropped out–
Man Stern: Out of a aircraft. I’ve some that had been shot.
Man Stern: This one was our handiest leaflet and why was that? As a result of Eisenhower had signed it and the Germans had an extremely naïve method to all the things that was signed and sealed.
Jon Wertheim: And also you suppose as a result of it had that signature, by some means that licensed it.
Man Stern: Sure, that carried weight and the idea within the printed matter was very nice.
Jon Wertheim: That is the type of factor you’ll know.
Man Stern: Sure.
Jon Wertheim: As a former German who understood the psychology and the mentality.
Man Stern: That is appropriate.
Aside from the combating, there have been different threats confronting the Ritchie Boys. Given their international accents, they had been particularly hazard of being mistaken for the enemy by their very own troops, who instituted passwords at checkpoints.
Victor Brombert: What occurred to one of many Ritchie Boys – at night time on the best way to the latrine, he was requested for a password and he gave the identify – the phrase for the password – however with a German accent. He was shot immediately and killed.
Jon Wertheim: Did you ever fear your accent may get you killed?
Victor Brombert: Sure in fact. , I do not discuss like an Alabama particular person or a Texan.
Some Ritchie Boys had been recruited to go on secret missions throughout the warfare. 97-year-old Max Lerner, an Austrian Jew fluent in German and French, served as a particular agent with the counterintelligence corps, passing info to French underground resistance teams.
Jon Wertheim: You had been skilled as a spy?
Max Lerner: Sure.
Jon Wertheim: What had been you skilled to do?
Max Lerner: Put on civilian garments, cross messages, kill.
Jon Wertheim: That is going behind enemy strains. I imply – this is you take your life in your arms right here.
Max Lerner: Nicely, it was a warfare.
Jon Wertheim: That is the way you checked out it.
Max Lerner: It was my warfare. And I wanted to get my very own again. I needed, desperately, to do one thing.
At one level, Max Lerner disguised himself as a German officer and snuck behind enemy strains – main a group of American troopers right into a German depot at night time and destroying the tools.
Jon Wertheim: Did you are worried what may occur for those who had been captured?
Max Lerner: I wasn’t sensible sufficient.
Jon Wertheim: What do you observed may need occurred?
Max Lerner: Oh I might have been killed.
By the spring of 1945, Allied forces neared Berlin and Hitler took his life in his underground bunker. Germany surrendered on Might eighth of that yr.
Jon Wertheim: What do you keep in mind feeling that day?
Man Stern: Elated.
Man Stern: It was completely, we received child.
Jon Wertheim: And people are your – these are your comrades.
Man Stern: Sure.
Jon Wertheim: These are your guys.
Man Stern: Sure.
However pleasure turned to horror as Allied troopers and the world discovered the complete scale of the Nazi mass extermination.
Man Stern remembers arriving at Buchenwald Focus Camp three days after its liberation, alongside a fellow American sergeant.
Man Stern: We had been strolling alongside and also you noticed these emaciated, horribly wanting, near dying individuals. And so I fell again behind as a result of I did not need to be seen crying to a hardened soldier after which he appeared round to look the place I used to be, how I used to be delayed, and he, this good fellow from center of Ohio was bawling simply as I used to be.
A couple of days later, Stern returned to the place of his beginning, hoping to reunite along with his household. However Hildesheim was now in ruins. A childhood buddy described to Stern how his mother and father, youthful brother and sister had been pressured from their dwelling and deported.
Man Stern: They had been killed both in Warsaw or in Auschwitz.
Man Stern: None of my household survived. I used to be the one one to get out.
Jon Wertheim: Did you ever ask your self why me? Why had been you the one which made it to the US?
Man Stern: Sure, even final night time. And I mentioned “Nicely, huh, in slang, there ain’t nothing particular about you, however for those who had been saved, you bought to point out that you just had been worthy of it. And that has been the driving drive in my life.
Jon Wertheim: As a solution to honor your loved ones that perished.
Man Stern: Yeah.
After the German military’s give up, Man Stern and the opposite Ritchie Boys took on a brand new project: looking down prime Nazi officers answerable for the atrocities that killed so many, together with lots of their family members.
The Ritchie Boys had been members of a secret American intelligence group whose mastery of the German language and tradition proved important to the Allies’ victory over Hitler. A lot of them had been Jewish refugees from Europe, who fled their homeland, got here to America and joined the U.S. Army. After Hitler’s defeat, lots of them took on a difficult new project – utilizing their language and interrogation abilities to search out and arrest prime Nazi warfare criminals.
Jon Wertheim: What do you suppose is the best contribution of the Ritchie Boys?
Man Stern: I feel it was the continual circulate of dependable info that basically helped expedite the top of the warfare.
Jon Wertheim: This had an actual materials impression on World Battle II.
Man Stern: Sure.
For 100-year-old Man Stern, a German Jew whose total household was killed by the Nazis, the Allies’ victory over Hitler was the fruits of a public campaign and a personal one as nicely.
Man Stern: Defeating the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS and all the flowery troops that they had was a satisfaction each as a group member and as a private satisfaction. The very side of those SOBs now being at my command (snort) gave me additionally some private satisfaction.
After Germany’s give up, the Ritchie Boys took on the troublesome job of figuring out and monitoring down Nazi criminals. Longtime Yale and Princeton professor Victor Brombert helped enact the official Allied coverage of eradicating Nazi affect from german public life – often known as denazification.
Jon Wertheim: So in Might of 1945, Germany surrenders, and also you’re assigned to the denazification course of. What – what did that entail?
Victor Brombert: We had been alleged to arrest vital Nazi officers. Not simply any Nazi occasion member.
Victor Brombert: It was very, very exhausting, very troublesome and really uncommon to have a German denounce one other German at that time. Now’s it as a result of they had been afraid that the Nazis may come again, that it is not over? Or is it only a behavior or behavior of obedience or dignity? I do not know.
Victor Brombert: And at nice effort we discovered individuals, we arrested them, we had been happy with doing that.
As a part of denazification, photographs of Nazi atrocities had been posted in German store home windows and Ritchie Boys led the nation’s residents on excursions of the focus camps to coach the native inhabitants concerning the evil Hitler had perpetrated. Generally total German cities had been pressured to pay respects to the useless.
Max Lerner was assigned to interivew German civilians to assist gauge the diploma to which that they had served the Nazi trigger and decide which of them ought to be punished.
Jon Wertheim: I think about unexpectedly nobody desires to confess to being a Nazi
Max Lerner: There have been no Nazis. They had been all pressured to do it.
Jon Wertheim: That is what you had been instructed. I am denouncing this and I used to be pressured to do it.
Max Lerner: Sure.
Max Lerner: They had been all justifying themselves. “It was a horrible state of affairs. And I had no alternative.” “I had no alternative.” That was the mantra. “I might have been killed if I hadn’t gone alongside.”
Jon Wertheim: Did you ever confront a Nazi who mentioned “this was morally reprehensible?”
Max Lerner: No.
Jon Wertheim: “Unprincipled and dishonorable and I am sorry?”
Max Lerner: No.
Jon Wertheim: By no means?
Max Lerner: By no means.
One of many methods they recognized topics needed for interrogation was by consulting a ebook – the Central Registry of Battle Criminals and Safety Suspects – which listed enemy nationals suspected of committing tens of hundreds of warfare crimes in Europe – everybody from low rating members of the armed forces to prime Nazi officers. To Allied investigators it turned a form of Nazi hunter’s bible.
Jon Wertheim: Did you take pleasure in looking Nazis? Did it provide you with any satisfaction?
Max Lerner: It gave me quite a lot of satisfaction. “Get pleasure from” is maybe not the best phrase. Nevertheless it gave me nice deal of satisfaction.
Jon Wertheim: Why particularly?
Max Lerner: As a result of I remembered my mother and father. My father was 49 years outdated and– and my mom was 48 they usually left all the things that they had constructed up behind. And arrived in the US penniless.
Jon Wertheim: And also you had been in a position to confront the those who had brought about this – this trauma.
Max Lerner: Sure.
All SS members had been topic to automated arrest. Established by Hitler and led by Heinrich Himmler, the SS was answerable for safety and intelligence assortment in Germany. The SS managed the German police forces and focus camps and directed the so-called “Last Resolution” to kill all European Jews. Max Lerner remembers that in a single respect a minimum of, figuring out most SS members was straightforward.
Max Lerner: You know the way to inform an SS man?
Jon Wertheim: How?
Max Lerner: They’ve a tattoo of their blood group underneath their left arms.
Jon Wertheim: SS males, you are saying, have a tattoo underneath their left arm with their blood sort?
Max Lerner: Sure.
Max Lerner: Or that they had an effort to erase it.
The aim of the tattoo was to establish a soldier’s blood sort in case a transfusion was wanted or if his canine tags went lacking.
Max Lerner remembers being put in command of one distinguished captured German prisoner at a jail in Weisbaden, Germany: that was Julius Streicher – the founder and editor of the Nazi paper “Der Stuermer” and one of many nation’s main antisemites.
Max Lerner: He spent a number of days in my jail. And I made certain he knew that it was a Jew who managed him.
Jon Wertheim: You let him know you had been Jewish?
Max Lerner: Oh sure.
Striecher was later tried and convicted on the Worldwide Army Tribunal at Nuremberg, the place focus camp survivors who bore witness to the mass homicide confronted down their Nazi tormentors.
Dozens of Ritchie Boys labored on the Nuremberg Trials as prosecutors, interrogators and translators.
Ritchie Boys additionally collected proof which led to the prosecution of many excessive rating Nazis together with Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe; Rudolph Hess, deputy furher to Adolf Hitler; and Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Wehrmacht, Germany’s armed forces.
All had been convicted for his or her crimes and lots of had been executed.
After the warfare, Man Stern and the opposite Ritchie Boys had been celebrated for his or her achievements.
Man Stern: The Bronze Star was given to me proper on the finish of hostilities. That is the great conduct medal – which I am probably not entitled to (snort) and this right here is the European theatre of operations medal with 5 battles during which I participated
Jon Wertheim: Do you contemplate your self a hero?
Man Stern: God no. I let you know after we landed on Omaha seashore, there were– the entire heights had been occupied by the German artillery and I appeared up on these heights and there have been our American troopers in full occupation on the day D plus 3 and I mentioned to myself, “that may’t be carried out.” And to take these heights towards heavy firing, going up these steep cliffs, and naturally, it had been carried out. The proof was earlier than us. These had been the heroes.
Man Stern returned to Normandy in 2016 to pay his respects to the greater than 9,300 males buried within the American cemetery there, on the bluff overlooking the hallowed seashore.
Jon Wertheim: Did the Ritchie Boys redefine what it means to be a soldier and contribute to a army?
David Frey: I feel they did. As a result of they served in so many alternative capacities.
Historical past professor David Frey runs the Middle for Holocaust and Genocide Research on the U.S. Army Academy at West Level.
David Frey: There have been Ritchie Boys that had been within the first wave on the primary day at D-Day. There have been Ritchie Boys who had been in POW camps embedded and gathering info in the US. Some did not even go over to – to Europe. There have been Ritchie Boys who had been in nearly each battle that you can imagine and a few truly suffered the worst destiny. There have been two who had been truly captured on the Battle of the Bulge. And when their identification was found, they had been summarily executed by the Germans that had captured them.
Jon Wertheim: As a result of they had been Jewish?
David Frey: As a result of they had been Jewish.
Wehrmacht Captain Curt Bruns, convicted by a army tribunal of ordering the homicide of these two Ritchie Boys, was executed by a firing squad in June, 1945.
After the warfare, the Ritchie Boys continued their work. 98-year-old Paul Fairbrook helped arrange the German army paperwork part at Camp Ritchie – an enormous catalog of greater than 20,000 captured German paperwork.
Paul Fairbrook: They despatched us again to Camp Ritchie they usually created one thing that I name the equal of the Library of Congress. We had to– we obtained a whole lot of German prisoners who had been keen to assist us catalog all these paperwork.
He mission detailed each side of the German military’s operations throughout the warfare, together with how they had been structured, how they mobilized and the way they used intelligence. The U.S. Battle Division used this assortment of German paperwork to review Germany’s battles with the Soviets on the Japanese Entrance, with the intention to be higher ready for any future battle with Russia.
Jon Wertheim: So there’s all kinds of impression years and years and years after the warfare from this – this camp in Maryland?
David Frey: Proper. It was not solely that quick time period impression on the battlefield. It was an impression on warfare crimes. Then shaping the chilly warfare period, they actually performed a major position.
After the warfare, Man Stern, Victor Brombert, Paul Fairbrook and Max Lerner got here dwelling, married, and went to Ivy League faculties on the G.I. Invoice. Man Stern turned a professor and taught for nearly 50 years.
All of them rose to the highest of their fields, as did a variety of different Ritchie Boys.
Jon Wertheim: I perceive there are some Ritchie Boys [that] turned pretty distinguished figures.
David Frey: There are a complete number of distinguished Ritchie Boys.
It seems that writer J.D. Salinger was a Ritchie Boy. So was Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt. As was philanthropist David Rockefeller… and media baron and billionaire John Kluge.
David Frey: Some turned ambassadors. Others had been truly actually vital in American science.
And notably, professor Frey says, greater than 250 Ritchie Boys continued to work within the subject of intelligence after the warfare, changing into skilled spies.
David Frey: A lot of those that skilled at Camp Ritchie truly did go on to the OSS – the precursor to the CIA, That meant that the individuals who discovered their craft at Camp Ritchie performed a major position in organising what finally turned the CIA
Jon Wertheim: How do you suppose we ought to be recalling the Ritchie Boys?
David Frey: I feel we take a look at this group and we see true heroes. We see those that are the best of the best technology. These are individuals who made huge contributions. Who helped form what it meant to be American and who – in some circumstances – gave their lives in service to this nation.
Jon Wertheim: This– This can be a outstanding story. Why accomplish that few People find out about this?
David Frey: As a result of it includes army intelligence, a lot of it was truly saved secret till the – the 1990’s
David Frey: A number of what was discovered and the strategies used are vital to maintain secret. And solely within the early 2000’s did we start to see reunions of the Ritchie Boys.
Now of their late 90s, these humble warriors nonetheless keep up a correspondence, swapping tales a few chapter in American historical past now lastly being instructed.
Jon Wertheim: What’s it like whenever you get collectively and replicate on this expertise occurring 80 years in the past?
Man Stern: We at all times discover one other anecdote to inform.
Jon Wertheim: You may have a smile in your face whenever you suppose again.
Man Stern: Sure, that is what occurs.
It was exhausting for us to not discover that past the tales runs a deep sense of satisfaction.
Paul Fairbrook: (snort) You guess your life I am happy with the Ritchie Boys. It was great to be a part of them.
Paul Fairbrook: I used to be proud to be within the American Army and we had been in a position to do what we needed to do. I do not suppose we’re heroes. However the alternative to assist battle and win the warfare was an exquisite means. I can look anyone straight of their eye and say I feel I’ve earned the best to be an American. And that is what– that is what it did for me.
Produced by Katherine Davis. Affiliate producer, Jennifer Dozor. Broadcast affiliate, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Stephanie Palewski Brumbach and Robert Zimet.
