THE RITCHIE BOYS A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
THE RITCHIE BOYS, another wonderfully involving story crafted by documentarian Christian Bauer (MISSING ALLEN), relates a World War II story that most people have never heard.
The documentary begins in Nazi Germany in the thirties. As Hitler rose to power, young Jewish men began to escape and immigrate to the United States, usually alone since their parents weren't able to get out. Once World War II began, these lads signed up to fight for their new country against the hated Nazi regime. The Army knew just how to put the services of these eager guys to work. It shipped them off to Camp Ritchie -- hence their nickname of Ritchie boys -- in an isolated area of Maryland, where they trained to perform military intelligence and psychological warfare. Who better to be shipped overseas on D-day than them, so they could interrogate German POWs? These guy were intimately familiar with the country and the language, and they had a burning passion to see Hitler defeated as quickly as possible, since many of their parents were dying in concentration camps.
The movie is filled with great stories, many of them quite funny. It turns out that the Germans were most scared of the Russians, so threats to ship off them to Russia was a good way to get the German POWs to start talking. One Ritchie boy put on a Russian uniform and put a big signed picture of Stalin behind him to intimidate the interviewees. Another story involved the sound truck they used to broadcast messages to German soldiers on the other side of the front. They soon found that they had to separate the speakers from the microphone because the Germans were good at finding and bombing the speakers, killing anyone near them.
Usually the military brass put the knowledge these guys gleaned to use quickly and effectively, but one infamous time when the generals didn't occurred during the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944. These intelligence officers interviewed over a hundred recently captured POWs who told about a huge troop build-up for one last big offensive by the German forces. The higher-ups, to their later regret, disregarded these reports, believing that Germany didn't have the capability left of mounting a major attack.
A half dozen of the Ritchie boys were at our screening and shared some of their stories. It was an emotional experience hearing them.
THE RITCHIE BOYS runs 1:32.
The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs March 2-13, 2005.
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