For a few days in 1943, the rumor rocketed around the Camp Ritchie military training center in the Maryland hinterlands. The scuttlebutt went something like this: A famous and cartoonishly muscled professional wrestler, who lately had been moonlighting as a movie star, would be giving the new soldiers a crash course in hand-to-hand combat before their dispatch to the Western Front.
It was, of course, preposterous on its face—the World War II equivalent of, say, The Rock suddenly showing up at basic training as an instructor. Then again, the entire tableau was already a study in surrealism, a straight-out-of-Hollywood conceit. Camp Ritchie had been a vacation resort, framed by the Blue Ridge Mountains, just under the Pennsylvania state line. After the war broke out, though, it was quickly morphed into a military intelligence training center. The U.S. Army recognized the need for translators and interrogators who spoke fluent German and understood the culture of the enemy. What better location to train than this, nestled unassumingly in the countryside but easily accessible to D.C.’s decision makers?
Camp Ritchie’s soldiers, such as they were, did not exactly cut the figure of G.I. Joe. Many of the recruits were not only new to the United States military, they were also new to the United States. And a large subset were German immigrants who now were preparing to fight in and against their country of origin.
