We also have a video about the Jewish Brigade, the first Jewish unit to see combat with the Allied forces. The men also played a founding role in the state of Israel. ruclips.net/video/aJUoeIWgSMw/видео.htmlsi=jxrfvtx-qjSNTKy8
@@antonlopatinsky9154they have truly exceeded our and everyone's expectations in their work!! I hope this is seen by everyone single person old enough to see it, and especially those in power. May we all Never Forget!! ❤
I had a strange bad dream about those extermination camps last night, something about the smell of cyanide, and a train involving the Bolsheviks and I think probably the way that Soviet Jews were killed there. Not a dream I would want to remember of course.
PFC Eric (Erich) Ziegelstein, Killed in Action in August 1944 close to Brest, France. Age 21. Silver Star recipient. Last living member of his family as his sister and parents were killed in Treblinka in 1942. Born in Treis an der Lumda, Germany, he was the only one of his family who managed to leave the country in 1939. After the war broke out, he never heard from his family again. I came across his grave by chance, did some research and never forgot his heartbreaking story. His final resting place is on the Brittany American Cemetery.
I worked with one of the former Ritchie Boys back in the mid-1980s. He was not Jewish and had been born in the US to German parents, so he spoke German fluently. He was recruited by the OSS and sent to Ft. Ritchie for training. He told one story about a field maneuver he was on while with troops wearing German uniforms. A local farmer confronted them and said he had given the US Army permission to train on his property, but that didn't include "You Germans!"
He was part of Ken Burns' America and the Holocaust documentary... and told the story on how his name went from Gunther to Guy. Apparently, a girlfriend he had in America had a hard time pronouncing Gunther and just called him "Guy." At least that was what was said in the documentary.
The pattern was repeated for many Jewish German families. The U.S. would only allow one person from each family to immigrate to the U.S. The families almost always chose the oldest son. They thought that a son has the best chance to be successful in the U.S. and as a minimum will be able to carry on the family name. Often, these young boys were the only survivors of their family.
Right. I was also thinking: Why didn't the flee to nearby Sweden? Then I remembered, Sweden didn't allow any Jewish refugees, until Niels Bohr convinced them much later to take the Danish Jews.
My grandparents hid both Jews and young Dutch men in Haarlem, The Netherlands. While thankful they helped save some I mourn for those that could not be saved. Three weeks ago my father shared that as a 10 year old boy in 1944 he came across a German reprisal for the death of two of their soldiers. They had killed some civilians in relatiation and the towns people were protesting. My father ran up to one of the Germans and kicked him in the shins. For this he was put in jail for two days.
My uncle was not Jewish, but he was a gifted linguist who worked with many Jews in the US Army's military intelligence. I still have his letters home before he met his end in the Huertgenwald. They weren't even much redacted, as he knew better than most what would trigger the censors. The courage of the German Jews who fought for the Allies is not to be underestimated. If captured, no provision of the Geneva Convention would have saved them.
@@NahuelSilberstein So...Nazi, Nazi, Nazi all the way to Goetterdaemmerung? How many Goyim have you tallied in our wartime government? Why don't those cornbread boys matter? Nazi fckwit.
At Camp Ritchie the "Ritchie Boys" were trained in interrogation of German prisoners using instructors acting as Wehrmacht or SS prisoners. The Camp was notorious for having all sorts of men walking around in strange costumes and uniforms, and that included those instructors speaking German and wearing full German uniforms. I read once that a common joke was that the way for the Germans to take over the place would just be to send a Wehrmacht squad in uniform to the main gate, as the guards would undoubtedly assume they belonged there and would let them in.
@@cameron4562 that could honestly make a very funny scene in the first part of a movie about the Ritchie boys ^^ (all the more important as the movie should be a sobering descent into darkness as the boys approach and finally cross into Germany)
I saw a show when a German speaking American was talking to a teacher in mid 1945. He left Germany at 10 in 1935. He told this older teacher he is Deuchafolk…. Drafted into the us army and had nice feelings to Germans. He old lady said she is not a Nazi and knew nothing … but just 15 minutes, she started spouting Nazi slogans and said Hitler was betrayed by the military!!! He leaves the interview and writes… “yes, she is a full Nazi… probably party member… should never teach again”
She probably did teach again. The time was approaching when they began to be more worried by Communists in positions of authority than Nazis. I was in Germany in the 1980s and read about a teacher fired for encouraging his pupils to go to anti-nuclear demos - he was considered to be a supporter of the DKP (German Communist Party). Another teacher nearby who was a member of the far-right National Democrats (NPD) was having no trouble and the article author wondered why.
sadly, he lived long enough to see the world start to forget the horrors of the past. It's import to remember those guys who chose to act but not to hate.
My father helped liberate a small camp and spoke German. They made the locals walk through the camp, and he said you could tell from what they were muttering to each other and see it in their eyes that they knew.
"Churchill's German Army" by Helen Fry tells the story of similar service in the British forces, including the early frustration where they were treated with suspicion as enemy aliens.
A friend of our family was a Ritchie boy who was captured during the Battle of the Bulge but did not give up his identity nor did any of his fellow POWs. I had an uncle by marriage who was an ordinary soldier in the British army. Due to his ability to speak Yiddish, when ever German soldiers were captured, he was often used to make the initial interrogation. I bet that made them nervous.
Yiddish is close enough to German to be more or less comprehensible to German speakers, so it was a functional choice. The caretaker of Hitler's bunker was approached by female Red Army soldiers after Hitler and Goebbels had killed themselves. Several spoke bad German, which the caretaker suspected was in fact more or less Yiddish. Their leader however spoke good, colloquial German.
I was lucky enough to get to meet and work with Guy Stern before he passed away earlier this year. he was a humble, open-hearted, and brilliant man who worked tirelessly to tell the story of the Holocaust into his 100s. Rest in Peace ❤
My father had a friend whose Army unit helped liberate one of the camps. This fellow never talked about what he saw there, but after her returned to the USA he converted to Judaism.
Camp Ritchie!? Yo, Ritchie became an air force fort (too small to be a base) after the war! I grew up there while my dad was serving in the USAF. I had no idea my childhood home was the training camp of these guys. That's incredible
When I was in Grad School in the late 80s, I had a friend. I wasn't able to understand why he, and his fiance, who were German, were my age, felt any guilt over events that had occurred two decades before we were born. Thank you, Sparty. I'm starting to see what I couldn't, even though I knew a lot about WW2, and the Holocaust.
I was born in 2002 and still feel a sense of shame and guilt over these events. I didn't even have that much contact with people who lived through these times apart from my Great Grandmother who passed away in 2012, her sister in law, which is still alive, and an old neighbour from my father in Silesia which I met twice in my life before she too passed away during Covid. But despite this little contact with people who lived during these times as little children, the crimes of the nazis are still like a deep burned in scar that will never go away from my identity as a German.
The Reader is a good examination of this. You can't honestly be patriotic and proud to be a German without feeling guilt. To acknowledge pride in your countries past and present means accepting a measure of guilt as well... One without the other is intellectually dishonest.
Thank you for the time and effort you put in every week on the darkest subject I can imagine. Thank you so very much. I've been a ww2 head since 4 or 5 years old and made attempts to understand the scale of worldwide terror and you made it something i can start to digest in smaller spread out bits. So once again Thank You.
"In 1937, the Bauhaus graduate Franz Ehrlich was sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp due to political persecution. There he was forced to design the lettering "Jedem das Seine" (To each his own) on the gate of the inmates' camp, among other jobs...."
Never really understood that one. I get "Work makes you free," (To the narrow minded and those ignorant of the reality a literal promise of freedom for labor. To the philosophical a more realistic promise of at least some kind of autonomy. A lie, ironic, but basically beneficial to the Nazis and their propaganda either way.) but "To each his own," just seems perversely ironic in a way you wouldn't think even the Nazis would appreciate...
@@davidgeslani48 Preventing different categories of prisoner from associating was a major concern for them. They didn't want "politicals" associating with "habitual criminals" etc.
@@Ben-zr4ho Today, we would call that gaslighting. "You deserve to be here. It's only your own fault that you have to suffer here. And what you do and how you behave, will affect how badly you are treated. So be a good boy/girl." Dehumanisation was a big part of the camp system, and this idea contributed to that.
Thank you for continuing teaching us about the horrors of the holocaust and the „second hand victims“, who managed to get away but lost their loved ones. It must have been terrible to arrive at a concentration camp, where it was not abstract anymore but grim reality.
It’s very interesting to read about stories of soldiers who had a deep personal connection. Soldiers that fought against Nazism in Italy, the Western Front, or on the Eastern Front. Many of them would lose their lives, but their efforts shall not be in vain. For they and their comrades pushed into Nazi Germany and destroyed nazism. Liberating thousands of inmates and bringing those responsible to justice. The war in Europe is over, but now shall begin the process of reconciliation and persecution.
If i recall a young man named Henry Kissenger was a german jew who was made an intellegence officer. Because he spoke fluent german he was put in charge of cities despite being a private.
Stern turned down because he wasn't born in the US. Knew the Navy (like the Army) could be a little dense at times but......really? ( Map behind Sparty needs updating as of the 9th? )
@@stevekaczynski3793he was a hardcore conservative who was ideologically aligned with German conservatives. He is on the record about his Jewish ancestry having no impact on his views. He had no problems post war working with nazi’s.
@@zeitgeistx5239 Oh, I am not saying I like him, but he does not seem to have gone on a sort of revenge campaign when given some authority over Germans. At one point the calorie allocation in the American zone for Germans was actually lower than in the Soviet zone, and some attributed this to American officials seeking revenge on the German people.
@@zeitgeistx5239 well Nazi's were very prevalent in the US in the 60's especially. They were working for the CIA doing experiments on people. Supposedly the infamous Dr Mengele was among them.
Kissinger was also involved in the ASTP, the Army Specialized Training Program, some of whose other participants became famous later, like Kurt Vonnegut, Gore Vidal and Mel Brooks.
Werner Angress became an eminent historian and professor at SUNY Stony Brook where I had the good fortune to be his student. His modesty resulted in reticence about his experiences, but in the last class of a graduate seminar, which he held at his house, I was able to get him to talk about some. For brevity I'll just mention one - the story of his capture that you talked about. It was, as you said, brief because his captors were surrounded, though unbeknownst to them at the time. Wounded, Angress was taken to the second floor of a barn to be interrogated by an English speaking colonel. Angress pretended to be a native born American and knew full well what might happen if they found out he was a Jew which is why he had had his dog tags labeled "P" for Protestant. (When I asked him why the colonel couldn't detect his accent, which was thick even in the 80's, he said that to the colonel he had no accent!) Seeing his germanic name the colonel asked: "You were named for your grandfather?" "Yes" replied Angress - a total lie. "Where are you from?" Angress replied with the first thing that came to his mind: "Lynchburg Virginia", a place to which he had never been. Turns out that the colonel had been a salesman before the war and had been to Lynchburgh. The colonel now happy to talk about old times asked him how Lynchburg was today to which Angress quickly replied "You wouldn't recognize it".
An exceptional factual summary that bridges those impacted to participation in the end of an evil force, all while suffering their own losses. To bring those civilians in to see and labor on the results of their beliefs was a psychological/real exposure of the consequences of evil. I will share this with anyone who says "it didn't happen" . Never forget..across the pond and a veteran....thank you again
My mother's biological father was one such German Jewish boy who survived the Holocaust by migrating to America. He served in the U.S. Army during the war, but was assigned statesidek as a translator. Thank you for sharing this story.
I read the book Sons and Soldiers about several of the Ritchie Boys. One of them was even imprisoned at Dachau for about a month before his visa was approved. Another was a kid who was able to come to America before the war and ended up joining the Army. When America was pulled into the war, he was immediately disarmed and transferred to a unit for enemy aliens as he wasn't a US citizen. He was hazed by the Sergeant in charge of his unit, until one day his Sergeant was white as a ghost when a letter came in from DC to immediately release him. Such an amazing story of even more amazing men who faced brutal persecution in their own home land, just to come back years later as soldiers with the US Army.
Werner Tom Angress after the war studied history at Wesleyan, got his Ph.D. at Berkeley, and was a deeply respected historian of modern Europe for many decades. He was one of the best professors I ever had, and I was overjoyed to see his wartime activities recorded here.
Thank you for this episode. When I read Niall Ferguson's book on Henry Kissinger I found out that he had a similar experience, but I had no idea of the scope of the military program of these service members. This could be a book on its own about the idea and exploits of these men,
13:47 Those woman... "So flowers? Yes? Here? Here. Okay." I would have found it very hard to keep my temper. To say the least. Honestly without the infrastructure of the Army and without the threat of court martial and punishment... Im not sure I would have.
10:30 Sometimes you are powerless to stop something terrible from happening, to the point where the best you can do is to make some kind of record to say "we knew what was going on and how bad it was." After the fact, you'll sometimes find people saying that they didn't know, that they couldn't have known, but that's where you come in. The information was there, and some of us were aware of it, and said it was bad at the time. People knew, but they chose to do it anyway. Doesn't help people much in the moment, but it's still something you can do for history.
I remember hearing about something like this WW2 in HD documentary. During the North African theater, a platoon of US soldiers come across some surrendering Germans. The platoon commander tells a BAR gunner to escort the men back to friendly lines for interrogation. The BAR gunner takes them away and then he shoots the German prisoners. When he was coming back, his CO was so furious he wanted to shoot him on the spot. This was until one of his men told him that his BAR gunner was Jewish and his family was taken by the Nazis. So the incident went unreported.
The book on the Ritchie boys is fantastic I would highly recommend it to anyone. It’s very haunting at the end when they go look for their families only to never know what truly happened to them.
I've seen a couple documentaries on the Ritchie Boys. What a phenomenal group of soldiers. I always have high regards for people who know more than one language. It is one thing to find enter the camps and knowing they murdered thousands there, but to go in fearing you may find something about family members, gut wrenching.
My mother`s family is German Jewish and many of them served... My grandfather got lucky as was a medic but never sent overseas - he was stationed the whole time at Fort Dix. One uncle was wounded in combat - he was in a Sherman tank that got hit in Germany and lost part of his stomach. He also pointed out that he was taken care of by some Catholic nuns who hid him at risk to themselves. I think they had very complicated feelings to Germany.. My grandfather was from a small town and there were just a few Jews in the town. He was very popular (according to one of my aunts, he had a few gentile GFs) and after the war many of his old friends got back in contact and we stayed with one of them for an extended summer vacation (and were welcomed very nicely). My grandmother however, had more negative experiences and also lost her sister (who sadly decided to stay in Germany)... Not surprisingly, while she visited Germany a few times she retained a strong bitterness...
Thank you for your excellent presentation . I am also a student of history and knew several of the veterans of WW2 , on came in on a glider on D-Day and my Flight instructor was one of the B-24 pilots at Poletsi . And why do I feel we are starting WW3 ?
This reminds me of Willie Glaser, who was born in 1921 in the German town of Fürth and grew up there, although he technically had Polish citizenship, like his parents. He got to Britain before the war and eventually enlisted in the Polish 1st Armoured Division. He had some similar experiences, like interrogating the POWs.
I like the anecdote in the Monuments Men book about the German Jew turned American soldier who was never allowed to see this famous painting in his hometown because he was a Jew but he wound up holding it in his hands... Or something like that. Lol.
How has there not been a movie about these guys already ? The is everything here : heroism, survival guilt, irony and absurdness of war, the just temptation of retribution to be tempered by humanity in face of litteral evil, battlefield and traincamp tensions... Yes the subject is far from happy, but from an artistic point their story has a huge potential, and from a remembrance point their story is essential to tell.
I was in Normandy last September and naturally visited the big American graveyard above Omaha. The crosses with stars that were there felt even sadder than the regular crosses. Our guide also told us that there were plenty of US soldiers who didn't wear any outwards symbols of their faith because they knew what the Germans were up to so there are plenty of graves without stars there.
Fortunately, a good size portion of these ‘ignorant’ civilians will be called out to their faces by their own children and/or grandchildren who find out what their country once did. Like most Allies, they too don’t believe that their family member had no idea.
From a emotional perspective it makes me really angry that the germans all claimed they knew nothing about the holocaust. It certainly reminds me that the german attitude or behaviour still reflects this. Today in germany, if something happens, most of the people simply ignore, condem outright without critical discussion or lie about empirical facts because it supports their self-gratifying narrative. Now, my conjecture is a result of personal experience but I have reason to believe that this conjecture has some statistical significance. In the modern context it is in my view a fresh reminder that we are prone to repeat the mistakes that have led to the holocaust. (Racism, Antisemitism, Tribalism, Arrogance and Mysticism). The best contemporary example is the german AFD or the underground of the far right in germany.
My grandfather fought in WW2 and was present during a concentration camp liberation. I also have a close relative who denies the holocaust ever happening. How can I correct this thinking?
How a human, whatever that is i am wondering in my nearly 70 years, can do such evil acts against civilians not interested in these wars, i will never understand. WW2 was man's inhumanity to man at its most virulent. In the early 1990s i worked with a Czech woman who spent time in a metal fabrication plant. Strange we worked at a Grand Rapids, MI plant much like her plant in war time. She told me about the drugs the Germans soldiers were on, how the British were not so kind to freed death camp and civilian forced workers. She talked if how handsome and nice the American men were, how they treated the older victims like parents, the children like their own.
You'd be surprised how easily people are convinced. Go to a video of an English translation of a speech of Hitler, and you will most likely find tons of people agreeing with him
His family background was actually what the Nazis would have called Volksdeutsch - ethnic German from the Balkans (Danube Swabian). That explained his knowledge of German. Except for the fact that his parents or grandparents had emigrated to the USA, he might have been conscripted into the Waffen-SS. Lots of Danube Swabians were.
Liebgott wasn't Jewish, but he apparently told everyone in Easy Company that he was because all of them thought he was Jewish. His mother was maybe Jewish, though.
@@DominionSorcerer Some German-Americans were Nazi sympathisers but far more were not, and indeed some were so willing to fight Germany that it was as though they were out to prove their loyalty. Eisenhower for example was of German ancestry though rather remote, his ancestors emigrating in the 18th century. "Manny" Klett, a US 8th Air Force pilot, flew over 90 missions, mostly bombing Germany, continuing to fly and refusing to bring his tour to an end, flying his last mission at the end of April 1945. His father was a German Lutheran minister who had left Germany before WW1. Klett ended the war a lieutenant-colonel.
My grandfather Heman Halle was one of the Richie boys but he transferred to work with British Intelligence soon after completing his training. He was one of the lead interrogators for Britian throught the war and during the Nuremberg trials. Unfortunately I haven't had much success finding details of his service because it is spread between two nations and he continued to work on top secret things for many years afterwards including operation Paper Clip. From his notes he interrogated Rommel's Driver, Fritz Kraemer, Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, Wilhelm Josef Ritter von Thoma (the German POW who accidentally revealed the V1 and V2 programs), Fritz Bayerlein, Dr. Hanskarl Hasselbach, Franz Halder, Adolf Josef Ferdinand Galland, Theodor Gilbert Morell, Hanna Reitsch, Baron Hiroshi Ōshima, Field Marshall Herman Göring, Josef Albert Meisinger, Josef Kramer (The Beast of Belsen), Fritz Bayerlein, Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Rudolf Hess, Kurt Meyer, and many others.
Wasn't it a Richie Boy who convinced the German forces in northern Italy in 1945 to surrender to him while he was their prisoner and being tortured by the Gestapo?
@@WorldWarTwo Yes, he's the guy and his is a truly amazing story. He had what we call chutzpa (hutzpa). For anyone who is interested in learning more, there is a docudrama from 2012 available on RUclips. Search for "The Real Inglorious Bastards" and you'll find it.
RUclips does this since launch ffs. They don't care that you don't immediately see the statistics. They are not meddling with the count, they are just not updating it every second. Are you new to RUclips?
@@trillionbones89 Nope, this channel is being suppressed by RUclips. It's why they started doing shorts, people who switched on video notifications don't get notifications.
Indy, on the lighter side, how about that Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Skenes! if you haven seen him check-out his performance at Rigley field. His second pitching outing, check-out the movment of his 100mph fastball!
We also have a video about the Jewish Brigade, the first Jewish unit to see combat with the Allied forces. The men also played a founding role in the state of Israel. ruclips.net/video/aJUoeIWgSMw/видео.htmlsi=jxrfvtx-qjSNTKy8
Not just the men. Jewish women fought as partisans, just as heroically as the men of the Jewish Brigade.
Hope to see you make even more ww2 special content!! Keep up the good work!! Good luck towards your upcoming project on the Korean War!!
@@antonlopatinsky9154they have truly exceeded our and everyone's expectations in their work!! I hope this is seen by everyone single person old enough to see it, and especially those in power. May we all Never Forget!! ❤
I had a strange bad dream about those extermination camps last night, something about the smell of cyanide, and a train involving the Bolsheviks and I think probably the way that Soviet Jews were killed there. Not a dream I would want to remember of course.
PFC Eric (Erich) Ziegelstein, Killed in Action in August 1944 close to Brest, France. Age 21. Silver Star recipient.
Last living member of his family as his sister and parents were killed in Treblinka in 1942.
Born in Treis an der Lumda, Germany, he was the only one of his family who managed to leave the country in 1939.
After the war broke out, he never heard from his family again.
I came across his grave by chance, did some research and never forgot his heartbreaking story.
His final resting place is on the Brittany American Cemetery.
so he never got the change to hear of his family's fate?
Thank you for this comment, very sad but important to not forget
I worked with one of the former Ritchie Boys back in the mid-1980s. He was not Jewish and had been born in the US to German parents, so he spoke German fluently. He was recruited by the OSS and sent to Ft. Ritchie for training. He told one story about a field maneuver he was on while with troops wearing German uniforms. A local farmer confronted them and said he had given the US Army permission to train on his property, but that didn't include "You Germans!"
That's an incredible story! It's amazing to hear first-hand accounts like this. Thanks for sharing!
😂
I knew guy stern! He worked at our local holocaust museum until his passing this year
He was part of Ken Burns' America and the Holocaust documentary... and told the story on how his name went from Gunther to Guy. Apparently, a girlfriend he had in America had a hard time pronouncing Gunther and just called him "Guy." At least that was what was said in the documentary.
Wow, that's incredible! It must have been amazing to have known him personally. Thank you very much for sharing.
The pattern was repeated for many Jewish German families. The U.S. would only allow one person from each family to immigrate to the U.S. The families almost always chose the oldest son. They thought that a son has the best chance to be successful in the U.S. and as a minimum will be able to carry on the family name. Often, these young boys were the only survivors of their family.
Right. I was also thinking: Why didn't the flee to nearby Sweden? Then I remembered, Sweden didn't allow any Jewish refugees, until Niels Bohr convinced them much later to take the Danish Jews.
And this why we must support Israel against the evils of regenerated facism in the 21st century by historic illiterates
My grandparents hid both Jews and young Dutch men in Haarlem, The Netherlands. While thankful they helped save some I mourn for those that could not be saved. Three weeks ago my father shared that as a 10 year old boy in 1944 he came across a German reprisal for the death of two of their soldiers. They had killed some civilians in relatiation and the towns people were protesting. My father ran up to one of the Germans and kicked him in the shins. For this he was put in jail for two days.
My uncle was not Jewish, but he was a gifted linguist who worked with many Jews in the US Army's military intelligence. I still have his letters home before he met his end in the Huertgenwald. They weren't even much redacted, as he knew better than most what would trigger the censors. The courage of the German Jews who fought for the Allies is not to be underestimated. If captured, no provision of the Geneva Convention would have saved them.
True.
The bravery was extraordinary, thank you for sharing and thanks for watching.
Gf og få go off deres saft dd
@@Evamusen Unironic antisemitism or am I mistaken idiomatically
@@NahuelSilberstein
So...Nazi, Nazi, Nazi all the way to Goetterdaemmerung? How many Goyim have you tallied in our wartime government? Why don't those cornbread boys matter? Nazi fckwit.
At Camp Ritchie the "Ritchie Boys" were trained in interrogation of German prisoners using instructors acting as Wehrmacht or SS prisoners. The Camp was notorious for having all sorts of men walking around in strange costumes and uniforms, and that included those instructors speaking German and wearing full German uniforms.
I read once that a common joke was that the way for the Germans to take over the place would just be to send a Wehrmacht squad in uniform to the main gate, as the guards would undoubtedly assume they belonged there and would let them in.
As secretive as the Camp was, they had to tell the nearby farmers to not shoot what looks like German soldiers.
@@cameron4562 that could honestly make a very funny scene in the first part of a movie about the Ritchie boys ^^
(all the more important as the movie should be a sobering descent into darkness as the boys approach and finally cross into Germany)
I am close to Richie.
They also had many Japanese- Americans serving there.
Brave souls, all.
I saw a show when a German speaking American was talking to a teacher in mid 1945. He left Germany at 10 in 1935.
He told this older teacher he is Deuchafolk…. Drafted into the us army and had nice feelings to Germans. He old lady said she is not a Nazi and knew nothing … but just 15 minutes, she started spouting Nazi slogans and said Hitler was betrayed by the military!!! He leaves the interview and writes… “yes, she is a full Nazi… probably party member… should never teach again”
She probably did teach again. The time was approaching when they began to be more worried by Communists in positions of authority than Nazis.
I was in Germany in the 1980s and read about a teacher fired for encouraging his pupils to go to anti-nuclear demos - he was considered to be a supporter of the DKP (German Communist Party). Another teacher nearby who was a member of the far-right National Democrats (NPD) was having no trouble and the article author wondered why.
@@stevekaczynski3793At that time you could be considered a communist
even because your nose
was red by the cold...
Guy Stern died just a few months ago in December 2023, in Detroit. RIP.
RIP
sadly, he lived long enough to see the world start to forget the horrors of the past. It's import to remember those guys who chose to act but not to hate.
Ironically, I live about 30 to 45 minutes outside of Detroit. Detroit also happens to be where I was born.
Thanks each and every one of you for everything that you do and for teaching such important history that should never be forgotten!!
Thank you for such a lovely comment, ones like these really warm our hearts!
I have know many courageous people in my life but the courage these men had is almost unbelievable.
They all knew. German ignorance is the biggest myth of the war.
Ignorance in general is the biggest myth. EVERYONE knew. And did nothing. The UK and the US even denied the Jews visas *even though they knew*.
My father helped liberate a small camp and spoke German. They made the locals walk through the camp, and he said you could tell from what they were muttering to each other and see it in their eyes that they knew.
@@stevenverdoliva6217 The smell.
@@starlinguk by the time they were denying them visas no one knew the true horrors of what the Germans planned.
"iCh bIN kEiNe nAzi", pathetic ass words coming from peoples who worship hitler like a god a few months or years earlier
"Churchill's German Army" by Helen Fry tells the story of similar service in the British forces, including the early frustration where they were treated with suspicion as enemy aliens.
I've heard it's a fascinating read, thanks for sharing.
- Jake
A friend of our family was a Ritchie boy who was captured during the Battle of the Bulge but did not give up his identity nor did any of his fellow POWs. I had an uncle by marriage who was an ordinary soldier in the British army. Due to his ability to speak Yiddish, when ever German soldiers were captured, he was often used to make the initial interrogation. I bet that made them nervous.
Yiddish is close enough to German to be more or less comprehensible to German speakers, so it was a functional choice. The caretaker of Hitler's bunker was approached by female Red Army soldiers after Hitler and Goebbels had killed themselves. Several spoke bad German, which the caretaker suspected was in fact more or less Yiddish. Their leader however spoke good, colloquial German.
I was lucky enough to get to meet and work with Guy Stern before he passed away earlier this year. he was a humble, open-hearted, and brilliant man who worked tirelessly to tell the story of the Holocaust into his 100s. Rest in Peace ❤
My father had a friend whose Army unit helped liberate one of the camps. This fellow never talked about what he saw there, but after her returned to the USA he converted to Judaism.
Camp Ritchie!? Yo, Ritchie became an air force fort (too small to be a base) after the war! I grew up there while my dad was serving in the USAF. I had no idea my childhood home was the training camp of these guys. That's incredible
When I was in Grad School in the late 80s, I had a friend. I wasn't able to understand why he, and his fiance, who were German, were my age, felt any guilt over events that had occurred two decades before we were born.
Thank you, Sparty. I'm starting to see what I couldn't, even though I knew a lot about WW2, and the Holocaust.
I was born in 2002 and still feel a sense of shame and guilt over these events.
I didn't even have that much contact with people who lived through these times apart from my Great Grandmother who passed away in 2012, her sister in law, which is still alive, and an old neighbour from my father in Silesia which I met twice in my life before she too passed away during Covid.
But despite this little contact with people who lived during these times as little children, the crimes of the nazis are still like a deep burned in scar that will never go away from my identity as a German.
The Reader is a good examination of this. You can't honestly be patriotic and proud to be a German without feeling guilt. To acknowledge pride in your countries past and present means accepting a measure of guilt as well... One without the other is intellectually dishonest.
There should be a movie about this. Thank you Spartacus and team, as always.
Hi Sparty
Never knew about Ritchie boys.
So many people paid their lifes for the war.
Never forget
Thank you for the time and effort you put in every week on the darkest subject I can imagine. Thank you so very much. I've been a ww2 head since 4 or 5 years old and made attempts to understand the scale of worldwide terror and you made it something i can start to digest in smaller spread out bits. So once again Thank You.
Never forget, thank you for watching.
I will never forget the intonation of the words "never forget" on this site.
"In 1937, the Bauhaus graduate Franz Ehrlich was sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp due to political persecution. There he was forced to design the lettering "Jedem das Seine" (To each his own) on the gate of the inmates' camp, among other jobs...."
Never really understood that one. I get "Work makes you free," (To the narrow minded and those ignorant of the reality a literal promise of freedom for labor. To the philosophical a more realistic promise of at least some kind of autonomy. A lie, ironic, but basically beneficial to the Nazis and their propaganda either way.) but "To each his own," just seems perversely ironic in a way you wouldn't think even the Nazis would appreciate...
@@Ben-zr4ho Maybe it means something along the lines of "Every man for himself." Just a guess.
@@Ben-zr4ho It is to prevent the prisoners from establishing any sort of communal identity and working together against the camp guards
@@davidgeslani48 Preventing different categories of prisoner from associating was a major concern for them. They didn't want "politicals" associating with "habitual criminals" etc.
@@Ben-zr4ho Today, we would call that gaslighting. "You deserve to be here. It's only your own fault that you have to suffer here. And what you do and how you behave, will affect how badly you are treated. So be a good boy/girl."
Dehumanisation was a big part of the camp system, and this idea contributed to that.
NEVER FORGET!!!!!
Never forget.
Another brilliant episode! Thank you Sparty and crew!
Thanks for watching!
That funeral moment reminds me a lot of the story Ben Ferencz, one of the Nuremberg prosecutors
Thank you for continuing teaching us about the horrors of the holocaust and the „second hand victims“, who managed to get away but lost their loved ones. It must have been terrible to arrive at a concentration camp, where it was not abstract anymore but grim reality.
60 minutes did great a piece on the Ritchie Boys a few years back, they interviewed some of the surviving members. It's available on youtube.
For the algorithm.
In all seriousness, these lectures are very important. Huge shout out
Thanks for the comment!
It’s very interesting to read about stories of soldiers who had a deep personal connection. Soldiers that fought against Nazism in Italy, the Western Front, or on the Eastern Front. Many of them would lose their lives, but their efforts shall not be in vain. For they and their comrades pushed into Nazi Germany and destroyed nazism. Liberating thousands of inmates and bringing those responsible to justice. The war in Europe is over, but now shall begin the process of reconciliation and persecution.
If i recall a young man named Henry Kissenger was a german jew who was made an intellegence officer. Because he spoke fluent german he was put in charge of cities despite being a private.
Stern turned down because he wasn't born in the US. Knew the Navy (like the Army) could be a little dense at times but......really? ( Map behind Sparty needs updating as of the 9th? )
He seems not to have abused his position or mistreated Germans, despite the temptation to gain revenge. Not all were so scrupulous.
@@stevekaczynski3793he was a hardcore conservative who was ideologically aligned with German conservatives. He is on the record about his Jewish ancestry having no impact on his views. He had no problems post war working with nazi’s.
@@zeitgeistx5239 Oh, I am not saying I like him, but he does not seem to have gone on a sort of revenge campaign when given some authority over Germans. At one point the calorie allocation in the American zone for Germans was actually lower than in the Soviet zone, and some attributed this to American officials seeking revenge on the German people.
@@zeitgeistx5239 well Nazi's were very prevalent in the US in the 60's especially. They were working for the CIA doing experiments on people. Supposedly the infamous Dr Mengele was among them.
You guys have a lot of quality video in everything you do.
We try! Thanks for the comment.
Yet another important and painfully dramatic installment of this brilliant series.
Eugene Fodor, Ib Melchior, J.D.Salinger, and Henry Kissinger were some notable "Ritchie Boys"...
can't win 'em all
@@pnutz_2 200-300 million sperm and YOU'RE the one that got through??? 🤦♂️
@@pnutz_2A snide uncalled for remark about those that served.
Kissinger was also involved in the ASTP, the Army Specialized Training Program, some of whose other participants became famous later, like Kurt Vonnegut, Gore Vidal and Mel Brooks.
Werner Angress became an eminent historian and professor at SUNY Stony Brook where I had the good fortune to be his student. His modesty resulted in reticence about his experiences, but in the last class of a graduate seminar, which he held at his house, I was able to get him to talk about some. For brevity I'll just mention one - the story of his capture that you talked about. It was, as you said, brief because his captors were surrounded, though unbeknownst to them at the time. Wounded, Angress was taken to the second floor of a barn to be interrogated by an English speaking colonel. Angress pretended to be a native born American and knew full well what might happen if they found out he was a Jew which is why he had had his dog tags labeled "P" for Protestant. (When I asked him why the colonel couldn't detect his accent, which was thick even in the 80's, he said that to the colonel he had no accent!) Seeing his germanic name the colonel asked: "You were named for your grandfather?" "Yes" replied Angress - a total lie. "Where are you from?" Angress replied with the first thing that came to his mind: "Lynchburg Virginia", a place to which he had never been. Turns out that the colonel had been a salesman before the war and had been to Lynchburgh. The colonel now happy to talk about old times asked him how Lynchburg was today to which Angress quickly replied "You wouldn't recognize it".
An exceptional factual summary that bridges those impacted to participation in the end of an evil force, all while suffering their own losses. To bring those civilians in to see and labor on the results of their beliefs was a psychological/real exposure of the consequences of evil. I will share this with anyone who says "it didn't happen" . Never forget..across the pond and a veteran....thank you again
Great job, as usual, Spartacus. Greetings, too.
My mother's biological father was one such German Jewish boy who survived the Holocaust by migrating to America. He served in the U.S. Army during the war, but was assigned statesidek as a translator. Thank you for sharing this story.
I read the book Sons and Soldiers about several of the Ritchie Boys. One of them was even imprisoned at Dachau for about a month before his visa was approved. Another was a kid who was able to come to America before the war and ended up joining the Army. When America was pulled into the war, he was immediately disarmed and transferred to a unit for enemy aliens as he wasn't a US citizen. He was hazed by the Sergeant in charge of his unit, until one day his Sergeant was white as a ghost when a letter came in from DC to immediately release him. Such an amazing story of even more amazing men who faced brutal persecution in their own home land, just to come back years later as soldiers with the US Army.
Werner Tom Angress after the war studied history at Wesleyan, got his Ph.D. at Berkeley, and was a deeply respected historian of modern Europe for many decades. He was one of the best professors I ever had, and I was overjoyed to see his wartime activities recorded here.
That's an awesome story and must have been a great experience for you.
-TimeGhost Ambassador
Learned something else today. Painful, but worth learning. Thanks Sparty and company.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks!
Thanks for the superchat!
Thank you for this episode. When I read Niall Ferguson's book on Henry Kissinger I found out that he had a similar experience, but I had no idea of the scope of the military program of these service members. This could be a book on its own about the idea and exploits of these men,
Thank you for this important piece of history.
And thank you for watching.
13:47
Those woman...
"So flowers? Yes? Here? Here. Okay."
I would have found it very hard to keep my temper. To say the least. Honestly without the infrastructure of the Army and without the threat of court martial and punishment... Im not sure I would have.
10:30 Sometimes you are powerless to stop something terrible from happening, to the point where the best you can do is to make some kind of record to say "we knew what was going on and how bad it was." After the fact, you'll sometimes find people saying that they didn't know, that they couldn't have known, but that's where you come in. The information was there, and some of us were aware of it, and said it was bad at the time. People knew, but they chose to do it anyway. Doesn't help people much in the moment, but it's still something you can do for history.
I remember hearing about something like this WW2 in HD documentary. During the North African theater, a platoon of US soldiers come across some surrendering Germans. The platoon commander tells a BAR gunner to escort the men back to friendly lines for interrogation. The BAR gunner takes them away and then he shoots the German prisoners. When he was coming back, his CO was so furious he wanted to shoot him on the spot. This was until one of his men told him that his BAR gunner was Jewish and his family was taken by the Nazis. So the incident went unreported.
Thank you.
Thanks for watching.
Another compelling video. Thank you for posting.
The book on the Ritchie boys is fantastic I would highly recommend it to anyone. It’s very haunting at the end when they go look for their families only to never know what truly happened to them.
It is always good to see the chair of infinite knowledge in the background...❤️
I've seen a couple documentaries on the Ritchie Boys. What a phenomenal group of soldiers. I always have high regards for people who know more than one language. It is one thing to find enter the camps and knowing they murdered thousands there, but to go in fearing you may find something about family members, gut wrenching.
Thank you for another important episode, Sparty and team. Never forget.
It is rare to come across such obvious evil and to have the power to do something about it. Never forget.
Great stuff Sparty! The real life Inglorious Bastards!
My mother`s family is German Jewish and many of them served... My grandfather got lucky as was a medic but never sent overseas - he was stationed the whole time at Fort Dix.
One uncle was wounded in combat - he was in a Sherman tank that got hit in Germany and lost part of his stomach. He also pointed out that he was taken care of by some Catholic nuns who hid him at risk to themselves.
I think they had very complicated feelings to Germany.. My grandfather was from a small town and there were just a few Jews in the town. He was very popular (according to one of my aunts, he had a few gentile GFs) and after the war many of his old friends got back in contact and we stayed with one of them for an extended summer vacation (and were welcomed very nicely).
My grandmother however, had more negative experiences and also lost her sister (who sadly decided to stay in Germany)... Not surprisingly, while she visited Germany a few times she retained a strong bitterness...
What an excellent episode! Thank you.
Thank you!
-TimeGhost Ambassador
Thank you for your excellent presentation . I am also a student of history and knew several of the veterans of WW2 , on came in on a glider on D-Day and my Flight instructor was one of the B-24 pilots at Poletsi . And why do I feel we are starting WW3 ?
Thank you all.
We here boys !!
Yes sir!
Thanks 👍
This reminds me of Willie Glaser, who was born in 1921 in the German town of Fürth and grew up there, although he technically had Polish citizenship, like his parents. He got to Britain before the war and eventually enlisted in the Polish 1st Armoured Division. He had some similar experiences, like interrogating the POWs.
Never bloody forget
german propaganda wanted you to think war was for jews
I like the anecdote in the Monuments Men book about the German Jew turned American soldier who was never allowed to see this famous painting in his hometown because he was a Jew but he wound up holding it in his hands...
Or something like that. Lol.
another great history video👍👍
Glad you enjoyed, thanks for watching!
Thank you for the lesson.
I'm not even Jewish, but this is a difficult watch. A necessary watch.
How has there not been a movie about these guys already ? The is everything here : heroism, survival guilt, irony and absurdness of war, the just temptation of retribution to be tempered by humanity in face of litteral evil, battlefield and traincamp tensions...
Yes the subject is far from happy, but from an artistic point their story has a huge potential, and from a remembrance point their story is essential to tell.
Great video...👍
I was in Normandy last September and naturally visited the big American graveyard above Omaha. The crosses with stars that were there felt even sadder than the regular crosses. Our guide also told us that there were plenty of US soldiers who didn't wear any outwards symbols of their faith because they knew what the Germans were up to so there are plenty of graves without stars there.
Fortunately, a good size portion of these ‘ignorant’ civilians will be called out to their faces by their own children and/or grandchildren who find out what their country once did. Like most Allies, they too don’t believe that their family member had no idea.
It doesn't seem like we will remember these atrocities but we should never forget
"Unlawful murder". I love how a legal authority can say that with a straight face, as if there was a lawful form of murder.
This needs to be taught in every school in every country.
From a emotional perspective it makes me really angry that the germans all claimed they knew nothing about the holocaust. It certainly reminds me that the german attitude or behaviour still reflects this. Today in germany, if something happens, most of the people simply ignore, condem outright without critical discussion or lie about empirical facts because it supports their self-gratifying narrative. Now, my conjecture is a result of personal experience but I have reason to believe that this conjecture has some statistical significance.
In the modern context it is in my view a fresh reminder that we are prone to repeat the mistakes that have led to the holocaust. (Racism, Antisemitism, Tribalism, Arrogance and Mysticism). The best contemporary example is the german AFD or the underground of the far right in germany.
My grandfather fought in WW2 and was present during a concentration camp liberation. I also have a close relative who denies the holocaust ever happening. How can I correct this thinking?
Talk about AIPAC with him. That ought to be a fun conversation
@@scottanos9981 Anti-semitism is just under the surface with them as well. Maybe avoid that topic...
Never Forget Never Again
My dad was fluent in Cesky ( Bohemian), and therefore was assigned to Naval Intelligence.
Never Forget. Especially with what is going on in the spring of 2024. Never, ever, EVER, forget.
TY Sparty.
Thanks Sparty.
My summing up of the past 10 years of these channels:
‘The lesser evil… is still evil!’
How a human, whatever that is i am wondering in my nearly 70 years, can do such evil acts against civilians not interested in these wars, i will never understand.
WW2 was man's inhumanity to man at its
most virulent.
In the early 1990s i worked with a Czech woman who spent time in a metal fabrication plant.
Strange we worked at a Grand Rapids, MI plant much like her plant in war time.
She told me about the drugs the Germans soldiers were on, how the British were not so kind to freed death camp and civilian forced workers.
She talked if how handsome and nice the American men were, how they treated the older victims like parents, the children like their own.
You'd be surprised how easily people are convinced. Go to a video of an English translation of a speech of Hitler, and you will most likely find tons of people agreeing with him
never forget...
Never forget.
In honour of the Richie Boys, whom I've never heard about before but now, thanks to this series do. Never forget.
It's the Netherlands! North and South Holland are provinces.
Fascinating topic. Thanks!
Thanks for watching!
Makes you wonder if Liebgott from BOB was a Ritchie Boy. His background was always a mystery.
Liebgott was actually Roman Catholic.
His family background was actually what the Nazis would have called Volksdeutsch - ethnic German from the Balkans (Danube Swabian). That explained his knowledge of German. Except for the fact that his parents or grandparents had emigrated to the USA, he might have been conscripted into the Waffen-SS. Lots of Danube Swabians were.
Liebgott wasn't Jewish, but he apparently told everyone in Easy Company that he was because all of them thought he was Jewish. His mother was maybe Jewish, though.
@@DominionSorcerer If his mother was Jewish, to the Jewish ánd Nazi laws, so was he 🤔
@@DominionSorcerer Some German-Americans were Nazi sympathisers but far more were not, and indeed some were so willing to fight Germany that it was as though they were out to prove their loyalty. Eisenhower for example was of German ancestry though rather remote, his ancestors emigrating in the 18th century. "Manny" Klett, a US 8th Air Force pilot, flew over 90 missions, mostly bombing Germany, continuing to fly and refusing to bring his tour to an end, flying his last mission at the end of April 1945. His father was a German Lutheran minister who had left Germany before WW1. Klett ended the war a lieutenant-colonel.
My grandfather Heman Halle was one of the Richie boys but he transferred to work with British Intelligence soon after completing his training. He was one of the lead interrogators for Britian throught the war and during the Nuremberg trials. Unfortunately I haven't had much success finding details of his service because it is spread between two nations and he continued to work on top secret things for many years afterwards including operation Paper Clip.
From his notes he interrogated Rommel's Driver, Fritz Kraemer, Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, Wilhelm Josef Ritter von Thoma (the German POW who accidentally revealed the V1 and V2 programs), Fritz Bayerlein, Dr. Hanskarl Hasselbach, Franz Halder, Adolf Josef Ferdinand Galland, Theodor Gilbert Morell, Hanna Reitsch, Baron Hiroshi Ōshima, Field Marshall Herman Göring, Josef Albert Meisinger, Josef Kramer (The Beast of Belsen), Fritz Bayerlein, Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Rudolf Hess, Kurt Meyer, and many others.
I really hope we see a special on the Nuremberg trials.
You will, it will be covered after the week by week ends.
Wasn't it a Richie Boy who convinced the German forces in northern Italy in 1945 to surrender to him while he was their prisoner and being tortured by the Gestapo?
Yes, the story of Frederick Mayer!
@@WorldWarTwo Yes, he's the guy and his is a truly amazing story. He had what we call chutzpa (hutzpa). For anyone who is interested in learning more, there is a docudrama from 2012 available on RUclips. Search for "The Real Inglorious Bastards" and you'll find it.
Why are there just 282 views 22 minutes after publication?
Seems like a certain algorithm is trying to avoid a topic or two.
RUclips does this since launch ffs. They don't care that you don't immediately see the statistics. They are not meddling with the count, they are just not updating it every second. Are you new to RUclips?
@@trillionbones89
There are nicer ways to say this.
@@trillionbones89 Nope, this channel is being suppressed by RUclips. It's why they started doing shorts, people who switched on video notifications don't get notifications.
Never forget!
never forget
NEVER FORGET
WAH is going strong. Thank you for your important work.
Wir nicht vergessen. Nie wieder!
Indy, on the lighter side, how about that Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Skenes! if you haven seen him check-out his performance at Rigley field. His second pitching outing, check-out the movment of his 100mph fastball!
I'm Jewish, and I honestly think that if I were in Buchenwald shortly after its liberation, I would have gone insane.