Meet the little known Jewish-American intelligence force that helped topple Nazi Germany.

Hopefully by now all of you fine folks out there have seen the movie "Inglorious Basterds." If not, I can't recommend it enough. The fictional movie follows a band of Jewish-American special operations fighters dropped behind enemy lines to conduct a guerrilla campaign with the goal of breaking the morale of the Nazi military through brutality. Eventually, they find themselves in a position to kill Hitler and end the war. Here at Rock Island Auction Company, we recently had a gun come through the door that, while researching and writing the description for it, immediately made me think of protagonist Lt. Aldo Raine and his Nazi-slaying band of Jewish fighters.  So grab yourself a glass of Scotch and make sure not to spill it, because we all know there's a special rung in hell reserved for people who waste good Scotch. Bring me over those Nazi scalps, and listen to the tale of the actual Jewish refugee soldiers that helped to bring down Hitler's war machine: the Ritchie Boys.

Ritchie Boys Colt Revolver

Before we get too carried away with discussing who the Ritchie Boys were, let’s take a look at the gun in question. You can find it in lot 485 of our upcoming June 5-7th Premier Auction at Rock Island Auction Company. It is a First Issue Colt Detective Special double action revolver, a gun that isn’t normally thought of as a military arm of the Second World War. However, as you will read later on, these revolvers would have been perfect for the types of soldiers being trained at Camp Ritchie and the sometimes clandestine activities they carried out during the war.

World War II U.S. Military Intelligence Shipped Colt First Issue Detective Special Double Action Revolver with Factory Letter. Estimate: $1,800 - $2,750

This gun was a Colt revolver that was sent to Camp Ritchie, where many of the U.S. intelligence personnel were trained during World War II. If it weren’t for the factory letter included with this revolver it would have just been another Colt Detective Special, albeit a very nice one, that fits in perfectly with the other exceptional Colt double actions in the auction. This is partially because the revolver shows no government property markings, again due to the nature of the activities the soldiers issued them would be carrying out.

The factory letter confirms the configuration of the revolver, but it is near the bottom where things get interesting. It states that the revolver was shipped to the United States Government Transportation Officer at Camp Ritchie in Highfield, Maryland for the military intelligence depot on 16 May 1944. This shipment date makes it quite possible that this revolver was issued to an intelligence operative, such as a Ritchie Boy, and landed with them in Europe to begin the dismantling of the Nazi occupation of Europe. The revolver is in very fine condition with 95% of its original finish which tends to hint at it not being heavily used, if issued, but it appears quite likely that it was at least in the possession of one of these specialized troops.

An excerpt from the Colt factory letter listing the configuration and shipment information

Who Were the Ritchie Boys?

Fully understanding the Ritchie Boys starts in the 1930s in Europe. In Germany during the 1930s, with the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party, things progressively got worse for Jews. What had started out as a slight disdain quickly grew into a murderous hatred that by 1945 would see around six million Jews murdered. Due to this growing, more public, and more aggressive hatred, many Jewish families attempted to flee Germany or Europe altogether.

For many of these families, Kristallnacht, or the “night of broken glass” was the last straw. During these violent nights in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland 7,000 Jewish businesses and 267 synagogues were destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and transported to concentration camps. Further compounding this travesty, many families were only able to send one or two members either due to immigration restrictions or the high cost. Many chose the eldest son to carry on the family name. These nights in early November 1938, combined with the new level of violence is what led many of the eventual Ritchie Boys to find their way to the United States. They were often sent here by their families, knowing that if the rest of the family did not survive the violence, at least one member would. Unfortunately for many of them, it would be the last time they ever saw their families.

When the United States finally entered World War 2 these men that fled Europe were often shunned. Speaking English with a German or other accent would often get them turned away from recruiting stations for fear of being spies. Eventually, the military recognized the usefulness of these men who hand first-hand knowledge of the enemy and also spoke their language. When these skills were discovered by the military, they were sent to Camp Ritchie in Maryland, established by the Army as the Military Intelligence Training Center or M.I.T.C. It is here that 15,200 intelligence operatives would eventually be trained, of which 14% were Jewish refugees born in Germany or Austria. Though not all of the men trained at Camp Ritchie for intelligence operations were Jewish refugees, the vast majority of them appear to have been selected for their ability to speak multiple languages useful for the war effort, skills in analyzing photographs and maps, and experience with prisoners.

Ritchie Boys Fight in World War 2

Once at camp, the men were subjected to intense training and education to prepare them for their role in the war. This involved in-depth lessons on filtering through information to gather useful intelligence and how to pass it up the chain of command to the necessary people. It also involved interrogation techniques that could be employed to extract information from captured Nazi troops and civilians, as well as how weather or terrain may effect the intelligence gathered. They would learn how to interpret captured enemy and allied maps alike, and how to apply the use of additional aerial reconnaissance to glean more information out of these. Finally, they were taught intelligence techniques to obtain the most useful information. For example, it is often not possible to gain all the needed information from one prisoner. This was either due to them being of a low rank and genuinely not knowing very much useful information, or being a higher rank and less likely to divulge much. For this reason the Ritchie Boys were taught to assemble a larger picture from the bits and pieces gained from a multitude of different prisoners.

M1 Garand rifles like this one can be seen in the previous photo, being carried by troops training at Ft. Ritchie.

Once their training was complete most of these men were split up into small teams which were attached to units on or near the front. This allowed them to have access to prisoners during the time when they were most vulnerable to interrogation, immediately after capture. Their proximity to the front lines led many of the Ritchie Boys to change their names to make them sound less Jewish or less German, and to remove the “H”, for Hebrew, from their dog tags. Of course it goes without saying, that if any of these German-born Jews now fighting for Germany’s enemy were captured and discovered for what they were, the Nazis would show them little mercy. Sadly, two Ritchie Boys, Kurt Jacobs and Murray Zappler, who were attached to the 106th Infantry Division were captured. When their captors discovered who and what they were, they were led to a nearby field and executed by firing squad.

Many of these men landed on D-Day or shortly after with their units and quickly found themselves thrown right into the jobs they had trained so hard for. It was here that they began to employ many of the tactics they had been taught. Whether it was overwhelming the prisoner with their knowledge of the enemy or resorting to fear by placing a loaded .45 or revolver on the table in a feigned threat. Later in the war the Ritchie Boys used the German’s fear of being captured by the Soviets and sent to Siberia to their advantage, sometimes even dressing up in Soviet uniforms to make that fear all too real for their POW. It is estimated that nearly 60% of all useful intelligence gathered in the European theater of war was procured by military intelligence teams and that upwards of 36% came from German language interrogations conducted by teams such as the Ritchie Boys. With statistics like that it is impossible to deny the massive impact had in bringing down those who had persecuted them and their families.

Ritchie Boys Post-War

After the war many of these brilliant men went on to lead very successful lives but sadly often were not recognized for their vital achievements and received very little in the way of accolades. With their accents and names they were often shunned from veterans organizations and much of what they were trained in and did during the war was not meant to be discussed publicly. In most cases they were not even allowed to reveal the part they played in the war to their own families. For this reason, the Ritchie Boys didn’t have their first reunion with their comrades until 2011, sadly after many of them had passed away. So while these men certainly had every reason to be as vengeful and violent as the Inglorious Basterds were towards the people that had turned their world upside down, the Ritchie Boys managed to make a massive impact on the war and assist in bringing down Hitler’s reich through means that often used no violence at all. The number of lives that were saved and months that were cut off the duration of the war by these men will probably never be quantifiable, but their bravery and impact on the war is without question.

If you are interested in this historically significant revolver that was possibly issued to a Ritchie Boy or any other firearms and memorabilia from the Second World War you can have a look through our catalog here.

SOURCES:
Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler by Bruce Henderson

The Castle of Intelligence: Camp Ritchie Maryland and the Military Intelligence Training Center during the Second World War by Kevin M. Aughinbaugh The Gettysburg Historical Journal Volume 17

https://jewishjournal.com/judaism/holidays/232684/think-daddy-ritchie-boy/

https://www.npr.org/2012/06/18/155308622/ww-iis-ritchie-boys-were-a-key-intelligence-group

https://nypost.com/2017/07/25/how-german-born-ritchie-boys-helped-america-defeat-hitler/