Sons and Soldiers

May 1, 2017
Military historian Henderson (Rescue at Los Baños) shares the story of eight of the 1,985 young German and Austrian Jewish men who escaped the Nazis, emigrated to America, joined the U.S. Army, and returned to Europe to interrogate German POWs, largely during the last year of WWII. Called the Ritchie Boys after the military camp where they underwent eight weeks of intensive training, this group of young men proved highly effective in their work because of their accent-free German and knowledge of the nuances of German culture. Yet their activities were also risky because they were Jewish. For example, in December 1944 two Ritchie Boys, Kurt Jacobs and Murray Zappler, were captured in the Ardennes while fighting alongside other American soldiers and were separated from their comrades and shot. Henderson does well to humanize the story of the boys, although he occasionally gets bogged down in the details of particular battles. He also opens the book by overstating the number of victims of the November 1938 German national pogrom known as Kristallnacht. Despite these shortcomings, this is an ably researched and written account of a previously unknown facet of the American-Jewish dimension of WWII. Agent: Writers House.

Starred review from June 1, 2017
The inspiring story of the "Ritchie Boys" and their unique contribution to the Allied victory in World War II.The Ritchie Boys, named for Maryland's Camp Ritchie, where they trained, were primarily Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany, chosen for their language skills and knowledge of German culture. In a highly readable, often thrilling narrative, prolific nonfiction author Henderson (Rescue at Los Banos: The Most Daring Prison Camp Raid of World War II, 2015) focuses on the members of this elite, 2,000-man unit who escaped from Europe and by one means or another made it to the United States. Enlisting for military service, they were given specially designed intelligence training at Camp Ritchie. After their training, they went back to Europe as intelligence specialists and interrogators and performed a vital function on the front lines for the 82nd Airborne and Patton's 3rd Army, among many others. Trained specifically in the details of the Nazi military's order of battle, the Ritchie Boys had the skills to provide Allied forces with detailed knowledge of what they would encounter as they moved forward in the advance across Europe. While Henderson acknowledges the contributions of all the Ritchie Boys his researcher could identify, his account focuses on about a dozen men. He tells the individual stories of how these youngsters' families were split up, especially after Kristallnacht in 1938, and they came here to make a new start, some with just a few dollars in their pockets. Some of the standouts from this impressive group were Werner Angress, who, without proper parachute training, jumped into Normandy with the 82nd Airborne on D-Day; and Victor Brombert, who provided intelligence for the counterattack in the Battle of the Bulge. Others were among the first into some of the most notorious death camps in Germany, and many went on to make equally significant postwar contributions to their adopted country. A gripping addition to the literature of the period and an overdue tribute to these unique Americans.

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March 1, 2017

In 1942, the U.S. Army trained nearly 2,000 German-born Jews in special interrogation techniques and sent them to gather intelligence from German POWs. From the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling And the Sea Will Tell; with a 200,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2017

Discriminatory laws and increasing violence forced many Jews to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Families made heart-wrenching decisions to split up, knowing they might never see one another again. Henderson (And the Sea Will Tell) tells the untold story of the sons of these families who joined the U.S. Army after the outbreak of World War II. Recruited for their knowledge of German language, culture, and psychology, these Camp Ritchie boys, as they came to be known in their training center in western Maryland, endured intense instruction in order to gather intelligence. They fought in every major battle from D-Day until the defeat of Germany in 1945. According to an army estimate, 60 percent of all credible intelligence during World War II resulted from work done by the Camp Ritchie boys. VERDICT An inspiring story about a group of men who took up arms for their adopted country against their former countrymen. Fans of Stephen Ambrose and World War II histories will enjoy this look into a little-known aspect of U.S. Army operations. [See Prepub Alert, 2/6/17.]--Chad E. Statler, Lakeland Community Coll., Kirtland, OH

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.