The Benefits of Intelligence Agencies During World War II

Hope Barbour

James Madison University

When looking back on World War II people recognize the pain and suffering that the Nazi party committed. They remember the holocaust, how Hitler betrayed Stalin by breaking the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is something about listening to the gruesome details of how massacres of nations and genocides of certain groups of people that makes history interesting. However, if one were to look at the people that fought back and held a resistance, a substantial amount of organizations were helpful in ending the war and assisting the Western Allies into their victory. Undoubtedly the militaries were responsible for the victory, but the people behind the scenes are not regularly thanked for their service and their achievements during the war. ¹

Intelligence and Interrogation agencies were key factors that succeeded in helping the Western Allies win the war because of the intelligence they gathered as well as the interceptions of information they prevented the Axis powers from sending each other. These agencies were necessary because they were the quickest and most qualified at retrieving information. The Western Allies were full of various behind the line fighters. In addition to the United States, Britain, and France (and once Hitler had betrayed Stalin) the Soviet Union became a prominent part of the Western Allies. While the United States had agencies like the Ritchie Boys, the Soviet Union had organizations like the Bielski Brothers, the British had the Secret Intelligence Service, and the French had the Bureau Central De Renseignements et d’Action (Central Bureau of Intelligence and Operations) which greatly assisted them during the war. While most of these service agencies were created and trained by the military, some of them were actually just extremely motivated citizens that were more interested in helping the Jewish people than they were helping the Nazi party. Regardless if the organization was created to extract information from the enemy or rescue the Nazi targeted communities, Intelligence agencies are some of the most dangerous, lethal, and underappreciated necessities in a war.

The world generally believes that the majority of the German people had been involved in the Holocaust and accepted what the Nazi party was doing. On the contrary, there were people that were able to escape the Nazi regime by immigrating to other countries, such as America, because they were either against Hitler’s activities or they feared their life. Some of the immigrated men were highly interested in fighting for their new country in order to save their loved ones, as well as the innocents, that were unfortunately unable to escape Hitler’s actions. Although the men were willing to risk their lives for their new home, they were not exactly trusted enough to become an American solider because people feared that they were German accomplices.

Furthermore, World War II was not a big enough threat to the American people until the attack of Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7^th, 1941 when the Japanese conducted a military strike on the navel base. Precisely four days after the attack of Pearl Harbor, Germany had declared war on the United States. During the period of 1939 to 1945 there was an increase in the creation of various American Special Forces.² As time progressed there was the sudden interest in enemy aliens³. ⁴ With the use of enemy aliens the Western Allies did not need to take the time to train people to be fluent in a language. The enemy alien’s were familiar with the country, culture, and especially the language. This can save a great deal of time during a warfront because instead of the soldiers having to learn various languages, which they would not be able to become fluent in in a short amount of time, they were able to train the enemy aliens strictly on how to conduct American military activities alone. Because the United States of America is known for its diversity in race and ethnicities, there were various cultures, languages, and accents in every corner of the country. The Americans started to draft individuals that were already fluent in multiple languages and placed them in Ritchie, Maryland.

Camp Ritchie became a school for intelligence and psychological warfare training, which was founded by the Maryland National Guard. The training of the Ritchie Boys began in 1942, when Germany was at the height of its power. The camp was filled with people from various European countries that were not necessarily fighters, but rather intuitive, creative, and people with ingenuity. The military intelligence training center, as seen in the image to the left, was set up within Ritchie, Maryland because of its remote location, near the Blue Ridge Mountains.⁵ The Western Allies enemy aliens that were located in Camp Ritchie started referring to themselves as the Ritchie Boys. While in Camp Ritchie, they were taught intelligence activities such as; Morse code, how to interpret areas of photography, and would review the German’s battles in order to understand the breakdown of the German Military. For the Ritchie Boys that were training in interrogations, some of the German prisoners of war were sent to the camp for them to practice with. By 1943 the Ritchie Boys were prepared to enter the war and placed into different unit divisions. ⁶

The people were fearful of an invasion of the German Nazis into England but were rather surprised when Germany had launched against the Soviet Union instead.⁷ Hitler was never fearful of a war with Britain though, in fact Britain and Germany had rival intelligence services. Many people had believed that there were German spies within each country, prior to the Blitzkrieg, due to the travesties that occurred in the various collapsing European countries. ⁸ Espionage⁹ was actually very popular during World War II, but it was also very dangerous. If a spy was caught during wartime they were generally killed on sight because they were usually double agents. When looking for intelligence agents, the agencies would seek out the most accomplished linguist, analyst, and people that were familiar with foreign psychology because they could be used to extract information and interrogations. After Hitler had betrayed Stalin, the Russians started invading the German areas and were believed to have gained the information of thousands of major international criminals. These records were held in Berlin by the Nazi regime and later confiscated by the Soviet Union. The men mysteriously disappeared and were believed to be protected by the Iron Curtain. ¹⁰ The benefit of having an extremely experienced covert agent can be make or break during wartime efforts. However, some are still hesitant to believe that the Soviet Union gained this information. In 1939, the British Secret Service was not familiar with the German Military intelligence Service and admitted to no knowledge of what Germany’s Intelligence Service was referred as nor did they know who ran it. ¹¹

By midnight of June 5^th, prior to the invasion on Normandy France, there was between four thousand and six thousand vessels ready to invade. Before the actual invasion of soldiers occurred, there had to be minesweeping divisions that would deliberately detonate the mines to prevent them from harming the Western Allies during invasion; luckily for the Western Allies Hitler did not have the full extent of his mines placed on the beaches because he wanted full conformation that the Allies were going to be coming to shore. The minesweepers started sweeping June 5^th from 8:00pm until daylight, leaving buoys to show where it had been cleared. On June 6^th, 1944 at approximately 6:30 am, the Ritchie Boys, along with other various military units, carried out Operation Neptune, the Normandy landings.¹² Normandy was the perfect location to start the attack because the Germans thought Pas de Calais was a more likely attack point for the allies.¹³

The Normandy invasion was set up to be a series of attacks, instead of just placing all of the weaponry and personnel on the battlefield at once. As seen in the picture above, which is one of the waves of Western Allied forces, there was enough chaos with the simple invasion waves alone.¹⁴ After the minesweepers detonated the mines, the tanks were sent in, then the amphibian vehicles, and then the soldiers. While attacking Normandy, the Western Allied bombers attacked the railroad network in order to prevent the Germans to have easy transportation of reinforcement as well as an influx of medical or weapon supplies. ¹⁵ With this systematic attack by the Western Allies, Germany’s forces began to weaken.

Within their various divisions, the Ritchie Boys operated separately from their units. Their jobs included trying to get the enemy to surrender by using a loud speaker and talking to the enemy, scanning gathered intelligence information, and they were also the interrogators of the prisoners of war. The Ritchie Boys were extremely well known for their ability to gather information and their amount of useful material they found. For example, Guy Stern, an interrogator for the Ritchie Boys, was able to use the fear of the Russian captivity as a scare tactic to extract information. Similar to the concept of a good cop-bad cop team, Guy Stern would be the raging Russian interrogator, playing on the prisoners fears, while his partner, would be the American that tried to reason with them.¹⁶ As the raging Russian officer, in a uniform that the boys had created and was not an authentic Russian Uniform, Guy Stern would intimidate the prisoners of war by using psychological warfare. Within Guy Stern’s tent he kept a bayonet and would individually cut off the buttons of the enemy’s uniform all while speaking in German with a Russian accent. The tag team duo would express that the captured men fell under the automatic arrest category, which sent them straight to Russia. This generally intimidated the prisoners of wars enough to try and give enough information to prevent them from Russian captivity.¹⁷ He received the Bronze Star, a citation for heroic or meritorious achievement not involving participation in aerial flight, for retrieving information from Nazi captives that concluded that the Germans were no longer training their newest recruits in the development of gas warfare.¹⁸

Because the Ritchie boys were able to speak German, French, Russian, or other languages, the towns people were much more forthcoming with information. When going into a country it is customary to know the host country’s language. The majority of the boys were either natives to the country or, customary to European schooling, they were required to learn certain various languages. ¹⁹ They were able to get information quickly because they were able to understand the languages and they were able to casually retrieve information in conversation as well. The townspeople believed that it was just another German or Frenchman and trusted them much more than they did an American. When an American would try to gain information as simple as directions, the country folk would pretend or not actually be able to understand them. With these benefits the Ritchie Boys were one of the prominent sources of retrieving and transmitting information between the Allies because they were located in various divisions.²⁰

While America had the Ritchie Boys as a key contributor to obtaining information, the British had their own military intelligence. Intelligence agencies are not all about interrogations conducted or about fighting with the enemy. The British security service was recognized as the responsibility of interpreting and advising the British government based off of the information gained in order to have a sense of defense for the greater good of the nation.²¹ Most agencies were about catching up with the enemy’s tactics or being able to out smart them. From the beginning of World War II, the Germans were winning the majority of the battles and people were fearful that they would win the war.²² They were good with distributing information between the military armies they had in various countries. Thankfully the British Military Intelligence was able to create an agency that was able to keep up with the Germans.

Special services, such as the Secret Intelligence Service, would analyze and break down cryptic messages to try and gain knowledge on foreign military procedures.²³ The Secret Intelligence Service developed a system, known as Ultra, to break down encrypted information that they found through radio broadcasts. Ultra became the basic way to gain information for the Allies during World War II because the Germans were famous for using Enigma decrypts, which at first, prevented the Allies from intercepting Axis powers’ information. Once they were able to decipher the system, they were able to learn how the Germans commanded their armies, who they were sending radio broadcastings to, and what the broadcastings were about. ²⁴

The British even had a Radio Security Service, which was able to decrypt government codes. This Security agency actually intercepted the first radio transmission that was associated with Abwehr²⁵ in August of 1940. With the assistance of double agents, the signas intelligence was able to defeat Abwehr’s first offensive attack towards the United Kingdom between September to November of 1940. ²⁶

France was also familiar with the intelligence warfare scene with their special forces known as The Bureau Central de Reseignements et d’Action (Central Bureau of Intelligence and Operations). The British Secret Service worked hand in hand with France’s agency in order to prevent communism from spreading and detain the Nazis during the war. This intelligence service was the official working body that conducted the operations that would oppose communism, and it resisted the German armies and their military. France was very vengeful towards Germany due to the German activity of the First World War where they lost a considerably large amount of land and resources to the Germans. Because they refused to lose anything else to the Germans, they were willing to do anything that could defeat the Germans for their betrayal. The French Military Secret Service was organized mostly to protect France instead of attacking the enemy.²⁷

Militaries were not the only people fighting with intelligence tactics to save the people and beliefs they had. For example, the surviving Bielski Brothers (As seen in order on the left, From Left Zusia (1906-1987), Asael (killed on the Soviet front in 1944) and Tuvia (1906-1987)) took it upon themselves to create their own intelligence camps that would set up guerilla warfare in Belarus with their knowledge and familiarity of the forests around the cities and towns.²⁸ Belarus is a landlocked country that is bordered by Russia, Ukraine, and Poland thus allowing the Nazis that invaded Poland to attack people in the majority Russian country after Hitler had betrayed his treaty with Stalin. These brothers were forced to witness their family walk to their death, which motivated them to create something that could help the Jewish community. By convincing more Jewish people to join them, they were able to create an establishment that would end up saving over one thousand Jews and were able to keep their community’s camp alive for more than three years. ²⁹

Within the Naliboki forest, the organization would create and carry out food raiding plans, kill Germans and their collaborators, and they would even sabotage the Germans soldiers by destroying their food supplies. They were able to gather weaponry from their non-Jewish Belorussian³⁰ friends, thus leading to the capturing of more German and Soviet weapons and equipment.³¹The intelligence group proves just how important it is because it was able to not only save so many people; it was also able to fight back against the Nazi community. This camp became a place where people could barter, attend school, and it even had a system of law. The Bielski brothers had made their camp become a home for these people, not just a place to hide.

Towards the end of the war, when an American military division went into a large city, a regiment of the Ritchie Boys would be a part of that division. Their mission was to continue to try and break the moral of the enemy with psychological warfare. Words became the most powerful thing to assist the Ritchie Boys in changing the moral of the enemy. With the help of typewriters, the intelligence agents produced strategic propaganda on the procedure of surrendering. Similar to the mass production of Nazi propaganda that assisted in converting the Hitler Youth, if a person is exposed to something enough they slowly start to understand things differently. Furthermore, during December of 1944, the Luxemburg Radio Station, which was widely recognized as the most powerful radio station in Europe located in Belgium, was taken over by the Western Allies. With the Luxemburg Radio Station the Ritchie boys were able to communicate to Nazi Germany. ³²

The Americans started passing out a document to people that surrendered to the Western Allies. This document permitted safe conduct, each document contained a D.Eisenhower signature, and if you show it to an American soldier he is instructed to let you cross the American lines. If able to cross American lines, you were allowed a rationed amount of food. This was actually a convincing reason to surrender because most people were sick of the war and actually wanted it to end. The incentive of a hot meal and peacetime is sometimes the only thing that you really need. ³³

Although Intelligence agencies, such as the Ritchie Boys, were a prominent key in assisting the Western Allies winning of the war, they are not recognized and appreciated like they should be. Various scholars argue that one of the reasons that organizations like the Ritchie Boys do not exist is due to the concept of survivor’s guilt. Although the Ritchie Boys are one of the better known Intelligence organizations, most of the boys did not join the veterans groups or even have reunions because most of the men had the guilt of surviving the holocaust and the new beliefs and values of their adopted country. ³⁴