In 1942, the sound of boots on gravel and German whispers echoed through the air of a secluded woods. Soldiers darted around at the shout of foreign commands while interrogations were conducted within the walls of uniform stone barracks. Behind the cover of large black iron gates, the camp pulsed with the rhythm of a battlefield. But this wasn’t Nazi-occupied Europe. Tucked away in the mountains of western Maryland, just below the Pennsylvania state line, this unassuming training ground became one of the United States’ most crucial secret weapons in World War II. Entitled Fort Ritchie, the camp was home to a remarkable group of people who knew the enemy better than anyone: Jewish refugees turned U.S. intelligence officers, known as the Ritchie Boys.
Established in 1926 when the Maryland National Guard purchased the site, it rose to prominence at the beginning of World War II. Eventually overtaken by the U.S. army, in 1942, the fort began teaching soldiers skills ranging from how to understand morse code to interrogation techniques and psychological warfare.
The most unique aspect of the camp, however, was not the techniques taught, but the people recruited to learn them. Of the nearly 20,000 men who trained at the Fort, close to 3,000 were Jewish refugees escaping Nazi persecution from Germany and other parts of Europe, dubbed as “Ritchie Boys.” The trainees’ intimate knowledge of German language and culture was key to the United States’ success against the Axis powers during World War II. “[Fort] Ritchie was very much a linguistic training ground,” said Landon Grover, the former director of the Ritchie History Museum, in an interview that I conducted with him. “It was almost like a prerequisite to get in.”
Fort Richie’s slogan was “Fas est et ab hoste doceri,” – “You must learn from the enemy.” The German Jews who graduated from the Fort allowed the United States to do just that. Interrogating prisoners of war in their native language and translating intercepted documents, their work is estimated to have made up more than 60% of the United State’s actionable intelligence during World War II.
But, becoming a Ritchie Boy was not easy. Around 25% of the soldiers who entered the training camp did not pass the necessary exams to graduate. The 8-week experience was extremely rigorous and eerily realistic. “It was just an extremely immersive experience,” said Katy Self, director of the Ritchie History Museum. “I think that was probably the most unique part about it.” Fort Ritchie built life-sized models of German villages for trainees to practice street-fighting, and real German prisoners of war were often brought into the camp for the Ritchie Boys to practice their interrogation skills on. The camp also staged war-like conditions for soldiers to practice in. “[An instructor] would fly over sometimes and do mock air raids with bags of flour,” said Self.
Before they could even begin training, many of the men who would become Ritchie Boys had to advocate for their ability to serve. “There was a point at the beginning of the war where the United States did not want foreign nationals participating in the military,” said Grove. “Prior to being accepted in the U.S. military, [Jewish refugees] sent letters to local government officials and military officials requesting to be enlisted.”
Jewish refugees who trained at Fort Ritchie were personally invested in World War II. “There’s nothing that I wanted more than to get some revenge on Hitler who killed my uncles, and my aunts and my cousins and there was no question in my mind, and neither of all the men [sic] in Camp Ritchie,” shared Paul Fairbrook, a former Ritchie Boy, in a 2022 interview with CBS News.
Other Ritchie Boys joined the war effort to prove their commitment to America. As many were immigrants, fighting was a way to solidify their loyalty and express their gratitude to their new home. “They felt indebted to the United States,” said Grove.
This newfound loyalty to the U.S. is what motivated the Ritchie Boys, both during their time training at Ritchie and in combat. The Ritchie Boys were present for some of World War II’s most important battles in the European theatre, including D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, unearthing information that kept the Allied war effort afloat. “During battle they collected intelligence, and that could be anywhere from troop movements to different, safer routes for our soldiers to go through, or what to look for in hidden enemy fire,” said Self.
When questioning both European civilians and soldiers, the interrogations were primarily centered around tactical knowledge. Questions such as, “Where is the machine gun nest?” and “How many machine guns do you have there?” and “Where are your reserve units?” were most typical, according to former Ritchie Boy Victor Brombert in a 2022 interview with CBS News.
One interrogation strategy employed by the Ritchie Boys was dressing up as Russian soldiers. German prisoners of war were exceedingly afraid of being taken captive by the Russians, and when they refused to talk, Ritchie Boys would often pretend to be Russian soldiers as a scare tactic.
Another interrogation strategy was acting friendly with the prisoners of war, emphasizing a mutual experience. Soldiers connected with prisoners about trivial subjects like soccer and food, and also a shared wariness of the war. “Oh we are together in this war. You on one side and we on this side. Isn’t it a miserable thing? Aren’t we all sort of, tired of it?” said Brombert in his CBS News interview.
Despite these “shared experiences,” Europe was still riddled with Nazi influence and strong antisemitic sentiments, making the Ritchie Boys’ time abroad exceptionally dangerous. If they were captured and identified as Jewish, they faced execution. One notable risk was the U.S. army’s use of dog tags to identify soldiers, which the Ritchie Boys were required to wear. On these dog tags, there was a marker for a soldier’s religion. For Jewish Ritchie Boys, it was typically a “J” for Jewish or an “H” for Hebrew. “This would’ve been a death sentence if they had been captured and found with those dog tags,” said Grover.
While many Ritchie Boys eventually received tags that labeled them as Protestant, or forwent indicating their religion altogether, fighting abroad in Europe was far from safe. Murray Zappler and Kurt Jacobs were two Jewish refugee Ritchie Boys killed at the hands of the Nazis when deployed to Europe during the war. Part of a group of three hundred other American soldiers taken as prisoners of war by Germany, the two men were singled out and shot by the side of the road. The Nazi soldier who ordered their deaths allegedly stated, “The Jews have no right to live in Germany,” before separating the prisoners from the rest of the American soldiers.
Zappler and Jacobs were not the only Jewish-American soldiers murdered by the Nazis. Even after World War II ended, the Ritchie Boys refused to forget the Nazi’s crimes. Prior to the war, many had fled from Europe with the expectation that they would eventually reconnect with family abroad, only to realize that their loved ones were exterminated. “None of my family survived. I was the only one to get out,” said Guy Stern, a former Ritchie Boy, in a 2023 interview with CBS News.
This loss propelled many Ritchie Boys to fight the remnants of Naziism even as the war came to a close. “If you were saved, you got to show that you were worthy of it. And that has been the driving force in my life,” said Stern.
After World War II ended, many Ritchie Boys took part in the Nuremberg Trials, continuing their wartime work as interrogators and translators. Others stayed in Europe, liberating concentration camps and serving as policy advisors for German denazification.
As the years after the war unfolded, many Ritchie Boys began to take up more traditional careers, assimilating into typical American life. Jewish-America writer J.D. Salinger was in Europe until 1946, fighting at D-Day and liberating concentration camps. Five years later he published American classic Catcher in the Rye. German-Jewish diplomat Henry Kissinger also continued his Ritchie Boy work in Europe until 1946, and twenty-seven years later served as United States Secretary of State. Other less famed Ritchie Boys found jobs in a wide range of fields, from law and literature to business entrepreneurship and science.
Yet for all their success after the war, few knew about the role they played during it. Due to Fort Ritchie’s status as a vital U.S. intelligence center, information about the Fort and the Ritchie Boys remained classified until the 1990s, long after World War II ended. “It was kept top secret for so long that a lot of the soldiers passed away before they got the recognition for the great service that they gave us in World War II,” said Self.
Preserving and sharing this history is not only a way to honor their legacy, but to ensure the history is not forgotten. “It’s a tale as old as time. It’s a group of people that were fleeing another inhospitable land due to hostilities from religious oppression, and they came to our country,” said Grover.
The Ritchie Boys –“It’s a redemptive story of immigrants.”
This loss propelled many Ritchie Boys to fight the remnants of Naziism even as the war came to a close. “If you were saved, you got to show that you were worthy of it. And that has been the driving force in my life,” said Guy Stern, a former Ritchie Boy.