Charles P.

Allen High School

How did the cultural and linguistic background of German and Austrian Jewish refugees
contribute to the allied counterintelligence against Nazi Germany?

Nicole Murray

Global History 12

Mme. Y. Smith

3 January 2018
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In the 1930s all the way to the end of World War Two, saw an abundance of Jewish

people fleeing from the Nazis relocated to the United States for various reasons, and in varying

fashions. A large number of those refugees were men who were eager to fight with the United

States Armed Forces after the country joined the war. Though initially it was very difficult for

those men to join, as they were oftentimes subjected to a lot of discrimination and were labeled

enemy aliens and were therefore not permitted to enlist, and placed in non-combatant roles once

they were drafted, eventually the United States government came to realise that they had a very

useful advantage against Germany. The cultural and linguistic background of German and

Austrian born Jewish refugees in America, during World War II, aided greatly in gathering

counterintelligence against Nazi Germany. Their knowledge of the language, psychology &

geography of their home countries aided them in developing effective Prisoner of War

interrogating strategies; reading maps, and using their knowledge of local landmarks to navigate

hazardous unknown territory to the American troops; using their personal history of growing up

in the area to connect with, and get into the mindset of their former friends turned enemies, as

well as using the German language with their unique dialect to intimidate or even to falsely

befriend Nazi soldiers into revealing key information.

When in a time of war, knowing what the enemy is going to do next is key, and the

people that know that information, are the enemy. Interrogating prisoners of war remains one of

the quickest ways to gain access that information but communication is hard when the people

being questioned speak another language. Fortunately someone had the brilliant idea to create a

special training base for people who already knew useful languages: Camp Ritchie. German and

French were among the top requested languages, and many of those able bodied who knew
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German were Jewish refugees. After being fast-tracked to being granted US citizenship, the now

Jewish American soldiers went through rigorous training, all designed to test their critical

thinking, relationship building, and aptitude for intelligence work.

“As far as I know, the United States of America was the only country to trust refugees

from enemy countries enough to train and use them for intelligence purposes. I was also

fortunate to have many who were knowledgeable about Germany. [...] To me, interrogation was

not only a science that could be learned, but also an art that must be practiced to be perfected. I

found that much of what we had learned during our training at Camp Ritchie was not

applicable.” (Selling, 72)

The use of native German speakers was an asset to the United States Armed Forces, as it was

clear to the German prisoners of war that they were dealing with men who had familiarity with

the local customs and who possessed linguistic competence. To some POWs, they were

impressed by the US soldiers’ language abilities and felt more at ease knowing that their captors

experienced life in Germany and could accurately translate and transfer their information in

hopes of better treatment. The Jewish Refugees found that the former was a very helpful and

beneficial tactic for both the interrogator and the questioned, however not all cases were so

welcoming. In many cases the fact that they spoke German so well actually intimidated or even

frightened the POW. Several of the captured German soldiers guessed that they were being held

and questioned by Jews who had fled the Nazis, this lead to the soldiers being quite anxious to

remain on the good side, or at least, not the bad side, of their detainer. There was however, many

Nazi soldiers who guessed that they were in the same room as Jewish individuals and were quite

the opposite of their fearful fellows.

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In one case, a group, including a few very pro-Nazi, pro-Hitler soldiers, was forced to

surrender. Upon learning that they were taken by those with Jewish soldiers, who lived in

Germany, among their ranks, including Sergeant Kurt Jacobs and Technician Fifth Grade Murray

Zappler, and were even forced to be in a fairly small, claustrophobic room with them while they

were being questioned, they either became enraged and angry or refused to talk, and instead sat

stoically only reciting the required information that one is required to declare upon being

captured, as set by the Third Geneva Convention at that time1: surname, given names, rank

and/or regimental number. Soon after the small victory, another troop of Nazi soldiers came and

freed the prisoners of war and took the US soldiers as prisoners of war. The very zealous Nazi

soldiers that had been captured informed their liberators that they had been apprehended by

Jewish escapees of Nazi occupied occupied, and the US soldiers mentioned were questioned and

were promptly shot and killed by a volley of rifle shots on December 20 1944, under the

command of Wehrmacht Hauptmann (equivalent to Captain) Curt Bruns, saying: “Jeuden haben

kein Recht, in Deutschland zu leben.”. Jews have no right to live in Germany. The killing of

POWs is an act that constitutes a war crime and Hauptmann Bruns was later tried and executed

by firing squad on June 9 1945, the same way that Jacobs and Zappler were killed. Though

incidents like that occured, for the most part, the implementation of the specially trained soldiers

was a great success.

Unknownst back at the US Army training base Camp Ritchie located in Maryland, at the

time, the German Jews were already building upon what they learned, and discarding unuseful

tactics based on their experience in the field, but especially, based their knowledge of Germany

1
Revised later in 12 August 1949 to include: data of birth and army, regimental, personal or serial number.
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and the conditions in which the the enemy soldiers were in, which the picked up from hearing the

Nazi soldiers’ conversations and understanding the regulatory and strict environment the german

soldiers grew up in during the Nazi occupation.

“ In my work as an interrogator, the fears of German POWs, and their unquestionable obedience

and instant reaction to sharp commands, were my greatest asset. These soldiers had lived a brutal

life. They were barked at by their superiors and faced severe punishment for every misstep.

These men expected the same treatment from us. Even if interrogators would have wanted to,

they could not have imagined the brutality that a POW anticipated and took for granted. Most

POWs had vivid imaginations and expected the worst. They had reason for it. They saw how

bestial their own people behaved in conquered territories, and may even have participated in

these excesses. They expected the same treatment from us and received the shock of their lives

when I talked to them in a calm voice. They were completely taken off guard and they wanted

nothing more than to maintain my civilized approach.” (Selling, 74)

Knowing that the Nazi soldiers were strictly disciplined, a fair few of the “Ritchie Boys”, instead

firmly kept a calm and courteous demeanor, using the formal form of address. Quite the opposite

of a few strategies they were taught to do during training: intimidate, be aggressive and use

reasonable amount of force, some trainees even receiving low marks in Interrogation at Camp

Ritchie if they did not act brashly. Offering luxuries like chocolate or cigarettes in exchange for

information was also a common tactic; as well as trying to find common interests, in order to get

the prisoners talking until they forgot that that were on the enemy side. Master Sergeant Werner

Angress, who parachuted into Normandy on D-Day with the 82nd Airborne Division, despite

having no parachute training whatsoever, joked once with a German Paratrooper who said that
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“paratroopers on both sides should pressure the International Olympic Committee to include

parachute jumping in the next Olympic Games.” (Henderson, 233). Sergeant Angress had no

shortage of prisoners lining up to be interviewed at that prisoner of war camp while he was

stationed there.

For those trained to be interrogators, keeping everyone calm and gaining information

without having to use force was the ideal scenario, but unfortunately that was not always the

case. More than one Ritchie boy felt that no other ploy would work except that of psychological

warfare or confrontational techniques. One soldier, who was part of an IPW (interrogating

prisoners of war) team, known to be rarely aggressive, resorted to a form of psychological

torture; having his particularly rude and uncooperative prisoner dig his own “grave” and then

given the count of ten to speak or die. The soldier, who never intended to actually kill the man,

found that such an action was very destructive to one’s soul and swore never to go that far again.

Other acts of aggression or passive aggressiveness were much less extreme. Martin Selling, who

was incarcerated in Nuremberg Prison for six weeks and the transferred in the Nazi concentration

camp Dachau for another four weeks, before arriving to the United States, would occasionally

wonder aloud what the SS guards at Dachau would have done to him if he had met them with

such arrogance and rudeness. “‘At Dachau, we were slapped around or worse for much less, or

even for no reason at all.’” (Henderson, 211). Upon slipping the information that he had been in

Dachau, most prisoners would shut up and start answering his questions immediately. Selling, in

his book, also recalls of a particularly well spoken prisoner, asking in his most polite voice where

he had learned German flawlessly. Selling responded in a blunt manner: “In Germany, where I

also learned how to interrogate prisoners [by watching the SS] while I was in Dachau.” (Selling,
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74) The shock that came with the realisation that he was facing a former inmate of a Nazi

Concentration, resulted in the German prisoner lost control of his bowels right then and there.

Recognising that many of their techniques were relatively ineffective against some of the

higher ranking officers or the really stubborn prisoners, a handful of members in IPW teams

decided to get creative. One of the more common strategies, when faced with an officer who

frequently overlooked lower ranked men, was for the inquirer to switch out his enlisted-grade

insignia (normally some kind of sergeant) to that of at least equal rank to the officer being

questioned. Under any other circumstance, enlisted men who pretended to be officers would

immediately be courtmarshaled, however, seeing the effectiveness of their method, the

interrogating prisoner of war teams were permitted to continue this approach. A notably difficult

situation, was one in which a Sergeant Fred Howard (born in Berlin as Manfred Ehrlich) was

tasked in finding out “supply map coordinates for new a ball-bearing factory outside

Schweinfurt” from German soldiers who had grown up there, and most likely had family and

friends working in the factory. Those who were asked for any information, automatically stopped

talking, even those who were previously talkative and cooperative, knowing that the information

would be used to bomb their hometown. Aware of how important getting the information was,

Howard, teamed up with Günther “Guy” Stern (another German Jew) to talk about the last tactic

that might get the information, “Use of Fear”, what were these guys more afraid of than anything

else? “Easy” Guy replied. “Sieg oder Sibirien.”. Victory of Siberia. The german soldiers were

taught that to be captured by the Soviets was worse than death. Opposing Howard’s idea to

“import a Ruskie!”, Stern, and a slightly disappointed Howard got to work creating their fictional

“mad Russian” Commissar Krukov, a liaison officer to their American allies. Stern playing
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Krukov, using exchanged uniforms and confiscated Soviet medals and souvenirs from the

captured German, and Howard playing the “nice American soldier”. Their good cop/bad cop

routine, often breaking even the most hardened and defyant prisoners. (Henderson, 293)

The men who were sent to learn at Camp Ritchie were not only educated in interrogation

but also many different forms of navigation and cartography, as well as creating reports and

deciphering seized written intelligence. As a training exercise the recruits would be dropped off

in an unknown place in the heart of the woods with a small compass and a map in an unfamiliar

foreign language. They were then expected to lead their team back to the meet up spot marked on

their map before eleven at night to catch the jeep ride back to base, or they would have to make

the long twenty-five mile trek back to to camp, which was not such a unheard of occurrence.

They were not supposed to ask local residents for directions but lots students would when they

became really lost. The instructors were aware that students did such a thing and let it slide as it

aided the students develop the ability to solve such problems when they were deployed out in the

field. Developing their navigation expertise, and capability to accurately convey directions

became a vital skill when on the battle ground. Before the invasion of Omaha beach, Victor

Brombert, a master sergeant born in Germany and raised in France, was assigned to talk to a

large group from the 2nd Armoured division about what they might encounter after moving

inland after landing in France. Because he wasn’t familiar with the region around Calais, the

shortest distance across the English Channel, and the area which Hitler and his informers though

mostly likely for an Allied invasion, Sgt. Brombert instead decided to paint a detailed verbal

picture of the town where he had once vacationed for an entire summer, Normandy. Later, when

informed of their landing site, some of the officers present for that presentation, as well as his
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own men declined to believe that Brombert had not been secretly briefed by someone high up at

headquarters. (Henderson 153)

After the war, men who were trained at Camp Ritchie were tasked with translating letters

of surrender (Henderson 336) and worked as translators at various trials around Europe against

Nazi war criminals, including the Nuremberg Trials. All of their knowledge, previously known

and specially learned, and courage2 as well as their determination to see Germany, and their other

home countries, freed from Hitler’s grasp, created a strong-willed force to be reckoned with. By

their various means of gaining information and deciphering incomprehensible data to

English-speaking only individuals, they gave the United States and the Allies a upperhand and

knowing the movements of their enemies, enabling their force to deliver surprise attacks, target

important factories and other structures and generally be prepared for what was to be faced.

(2,130 words)

2
Guy Stern was tasked with questioning prisoners of war right after seizing Normandy. Not knowing that one
artillery shot is usually followed by many others, he yelled at his prisoner, who slammed himself to the ground and
who previously was not saying anything except his name and rank, “Krieg deinen verdammten Arsch hoch und
antworte auf meine Fragen, du Feigling!”, or to “raise your damned ass and answer my questions!”. The prisoner,
somehow thinking that Stern’s foolish action was bravery, began to answer the questions. (Henderson 186)