Ritchie Boy Secrets

How a Force of Immigrants and Refugees Helped Win World War II

De: Beverley Driver Eddy

Narrado por: Bob Souer

Duración: 9 h y 4 m

Resumen del Editor

In June 1942, the US Army began recruiting immigrants, the children of immigrants, refugees, and others with language skills and knowledge of enemy lands and cultures for a special military intelligence group being trained in the mountains of northern Maryland and sent into Europe and the Pacific. Ultimately, 15,000 men and some women received this specialized training and went on to make vital contributions to victory in World War II. This is their story, which Beverley Driver Eddy tells thoroughly and colorfully, drawing heavily on interviews with surviving Ritchie Boys.

The army recruited not just those fluent in German, French, Italian, and Polish (approximately a fifth were Jewish refugees from Europe), but also Arabic, Japanese, Dutch, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Turkish, and other languages — as well as some 200 Native Americans and 200 WACs. They were trained in photo interpretation, terrain analysis, POW interrogation, counterintelligence, espionage, signal intelligence (including pigeons), mapmaking, intelligence gathering, and close combat.

Many landed in France on D-Day. Many more fanned out across Europe and around the world completing their missions, often in cooperation with the OSS and Counterintelligence Corps, sometimes on the front lines, often behind the lines. The Ritchie Boys’ intelligence proved vital during the liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulge. They helped craft the print and radio propaganda that wore down German homefront morale. If caught, they could have been executed as spies. After the war they translated and interrogated at the Nuremberg trials. One participated in using war criminal Klaus Barbie as an anti-communist agent. Meanwhile, Ritchie Boys in the Pacific Theater of Operations collected intelligence in Burma and China, directed bombing raids in New Guinea and the Philippines, and fought on Okinawa and Iwo Jima.

This is a different kind of World War II story, and Eddy tells it with conviction, supported by years of research and interviews.

©2021 Beverley Driver Eddy (P)2021 Rowman & Littlefield

An excellent book with some serious down sides

Overall, this was excellent. The author did a great job, which was not upheld by the production staff. I wish there were a link to the lavish illustrations referred to in the foreword.
There are several breaks in the recording, which are abrupt and disconcerting. I have no idea how much material was left out, but there is no continuity with what follows.
Another annoyance was persistent mispronunciation of “Hagerstown,” “non-com,” and most Japanese names. The narrator was otherwise excellent.

Refund, please.

60 minutes ran a segment on this group which was fascinating.
I couldn’t get in to this book too far due to its profound prolixity.
Found reader annoying too.
Lost my “raison d’etre”

As seen on 60 minutes

To many statistics which somewhat made the book somewhat un interesting . I expected individual stories