Someday You Will Understand

by Nina Wolff Feld

  Joseph A. Beisler, Assistant Trust Officer, Manufacturers Trust Company

  Professor Otto P. Peterson, Officer of the French Academy, Paris, France

  E. F. Khun, Assistant Manager, Foreign Department of Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust

  Colonel F. A. Commandant William F. Howe, Army Services Forces, Yale University

  Lee L. Rosenthal, The City Center of Music and Drama (Monroe’s mother)

  Robert L. Oppenheimer, French Embassy

  When his list was finished, he put it away for later. On his way to dinner, he stopped at a drugstore. Spotting a major from the Adjutant General’s Office (AGO) in one of the aisles, he casually walked over and started a conversation about the weather. They spoke for a little while until, satisfied that he had made a suitable impression, he excused himself and walked to the mess hall. Within moments, a colonel sat down next to him. With courteous reserve, my father nonchalantly asked about the medical service of the Department of Civil Affairs (AMGICA). He was told that assignments for soldiers outside the medical department were rare. My father explained his ambitions further, telling the colonel as he had the major that in fact he did not want to leave. Quite to the contrary, he was considering being an attaché to the medical or health service of the Department of Civil Affairs. When the colonel finished with his dinner, he excused himself and left the table. Between the lieutenant at the Reclassification office, the major, and the colonel, he had gathered some very useful intelligence about how to advance his position. He loved Washington.

  Most importantly, he found out during his conversation at Reclassification that he would be interviewed at the Pentagon. There really was no time to waste. He had to capitalize on these chance encounters. As soon as time allowed, he would casually drop by the French embassy and pay a little visit to Robert L. Oppenheimer to thank him personally for his kindness at Fort Dix. While he had the man’s attention, he would ask him if he might elaborate upon the French government’s plans for the administration of the freed territories—and of course, in what capacity he could be the most useful. Then, if the visit had gone well, he would ask for a letter of recommendation before leaving. The others he would write to.

  Within weeks of his visit with Oppenheimer, he received all of his letters of recommendation. Reading each carefully and noting how complimentary they were, he stacked them neatly with his application for Warrant Officer in a manila file and placed it in his metal capitol file:

  Robert L. Oppehheimer: “. . . was in touch with him at the time he was stationed at Fort Dix . . . I can certify that he has a perfect knowledge of the French language . . . favorably impressed as to his character and abilities.”

  Professor Otto P. Peterson: “A most conscientious, reliable, and industrious young man . . . possessed of excellent character. He speaks and writes French, German and English fluently, and can also converse in Spanish . . . has travelled extensively in Europe . . . his travels have deepened his understanding of the languages he mastered.”

  Joseph A. Beisler: “Walter Wolff . . . requested the consideration of his application for Warrant Officer in the Army of the United States . . . known him personally for several years . . . known his family for even a longer period . . . he is an intelligent and honest individual . . . possessed of many capabilities . . . will be of use to the Army in the rank of Warrant Officer . . . fine character . . . applies himself to a job . . . successful conclusion . . . Recommend . . . serious consideration of . . . Application . . . he can be of great service to the Army and his country.”

  Not long after his interview and the chance encounters with some of Washington’s military elite, my father boldly walked into the Pentagon and found his way to the office of the colonel whom Mr. Kresser had recommended he meet about becoming an intelligence officer. Some of Kresser’s former colleagues had now risen to high positions there. As he crossed the threshold, my father made note of the surprised look on the officer’s face as he pointedly finished what he was doing before looking up to ask, “How did you get in here?”

  “Sir, I simply told the guard that I had to see you and that I could not possibly tell him what I had to tell you, and he let me through.”

  My father paused for effect, holding the colonel’s eyes just long enough before he could no longer resist and a wry smile broke across his face.

  The man looked back at him with equal candor and a slight downturn to his mouth contrasting his raised eyebrows. As he took in a breath, placing both hands on his desk, he said, “You got into the War Department? We can use you.”

  This was one of the few stories that, if pressed, my father would tell about his army days and one of the few that is not recounted in his letters. He submitted his application for a posting to intelligence training and waited for a response following what would be a thorough investigation of the former stateless citizen and resident alien whose last legal passport had been Belgian. In the meantime, the program at Walter Reed was interesting enough. He was placed in Thoracic Surgery—preparing for operations and recovery. The nurses and WACs were very competent, the work was not hard, but it was engaging: he made beds, took patient temperatures, pulses, and monitored breathing, distributed pineapple juice (drank his share as well), and observed surgery. By the end of June, with his twentieth birthday fast approaching, he arranged for my grandparents and Ellen to come for a visit. Should his orders come through, he might be unable to see them for a while. He booked rooms for them at the Hotel Hamilton. They arrived Friday, the 30th of June, and stayed the weekend. Almost as soon as their visit ended on July 2, my father was off again.

  His company left their barracks at ten o’clock. After a massive delay caused by a derailment farther south, they finally boarded the Pullman at four a.m. Around midnight, Captain Haden had pulled my father aside and confirmed that his orders had arrived; the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, had approved his application and he would be transferred to Camp Ritchie, the intelligence training center at Cascade, Maryland, but it was too late to annul his travel orders. Unbelievably, they were sending him back to Camp Grant in Illinois! No matter, he was on army time. They reached Rockford by midnight the following night. As soon as they arrived, they were given bivouac orders and were to be in the field for three days. Out of shape and out of practice from months of inactivity, they were back to the barracks by Wednesday, in time to receive a furlough on Thursday and for him to spend his twentieth birthday in Chicago.

  Hotel Knickerbocker

  Chicago, Illinois

  July 9th, 1944

  My Dears,

  Well, I still have not begun my voyage east, but I did spend the weekend in Chicago. I spent over an hour looking for a room at all sorts of hotels . . . on the recommendations of taxi drivers whom I thought were well informed—until an official procured one here, at the Officer’s Club. I had to share the room with a Captain/dentist; don’t look a gift horse in the mouth! I have yet to see a soldier here. I spent the morning strolling around and above all sleeping, reading the newspaper etc.

  After that I ate a delicious dinner at Jacques, a place a little like L’Escargot—with a “Ung bong verre de veng.” . . . I don’t know exactly when I will leave Camp Grant, but it’s either Monday or Tuesday. If possible, I will pass through N.Y. and I will let you know how and when. I suppose that I will be traveling alone which will be quite pleasant. The whole business developed quickly.

  Hasta la vista!

  Walter

  On the way back to camp my father ran into the WAC he had dated during his time in Rockford. They chatted for a long time, and when their conversation dulled into a comfortable silence, his eyes wandered to the next aisle. In the corner someone had left a newspaper folded between the seat and the window.

  “Do you mind?” asked my father as he leaned across and reached for the paper. It read: The Evening Independent, St. Petersburg, Florida. July 7, 1944. He turned twenty the next day.

  He lost himself in the paper for a couple of minutes, fli
pping through the first few pages until he stopped to read an article about a French farmer who was a distant cousin of Edmond Rostand, the author of Cyrano de Bergerac. His château in Flamanville was an hour or so from Noyelles-sur-Mer on the Normandy coast, not far from where they had been hiding during the summer of 1940. Unlike the owners of the château in Noyelles, Rostand had insisted on remaining to keep an eye on his land. The article goes on to describe what it was like to live under the same roof as the enemy. “When the officers were drunk, which happened fairly often, they went mad.” My father was all too familiar with their behavior. He thumbed through until he found the continuation of the article from the front page about de Gaulle’s visit to Washington and remarked to the WAC, “De Gaulle visited General Pershing at Walter Reed the other day. Look at them,” and he pointed to the photograph. “I would have loved to have seen that hard-headed general.”

  With the change of season since he was last here, Camp Grant was much prettier. There were trees, bushes, flowers, and little gardens everywhere. His “elevated” status amused him. With thirteen or fourteen months of service behind them while the majority of the new recruits at Grant had only been in the army for about seventeen weeks, his troop was considered veterans. They doled out advice and exchanged stories with the “blues.” A few days later, my father boarded a train heading east, bypassing New York on his way south. Looking out of the train window, he thought how wonderful it was to be alone if only for a little while. He could finally look ahead. If he was going to get shot at or killed, he believed it should be against the Germans rather than by any other army. They were his enemy. He would train at Camp Ritchie for close to a year.

  UNITED STATES ARMY

  CAMP RITCHIE

  MARYLAND

  [official stationery]

  July 12TH, 1944

  LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS!

  My Dears,

  I got here at 3 o’clock this afternoon. Since the train did not pass through N.Y., I couldn’t stop to see you. For the next week I’ll be confined to the post. After that, we shall see.

  I repeat that from now on all information concerning my activities that you may have are not to be a subject of discussion for the family or anyone else. On my arrival here, I learned that it’s not impossible, once I have my qualifications, that a commission of lieutenant will be awarded to me on completion of my training. Qui vivra verra.

  The camp is situated in the wooded hills of Maryland—it’s really nice. There is a little lake where we can swim. The quality of the men is excellent. The food is abundant and 1st class. The barracks are really good. Classes don’t start until the 21st, and I will spend the rest of the days being interviewed and doing minor jobs—and a lot of KP. I saw some staff sergeants [my father included a sketch] repairing the pavement this afternoon—and sergeants first class [sketch] doing laundry. I don’t care, and it’s only for a few days and if I get the job I want I won’t have that much work.

  The training will be hard and rigorous, especially mentally, without excessive discipline (everything is very informal)—but if after 8 weeks I’ll be a lieutenant [sketch] or a master sergeant [sketch] it’ll be worth it. If I can earn my commission here, I won’t have to spend three months of misery in officer’s school. I won’t have a “perm[anent].” Only at the end of training. What a pity.

  Kisses,

  Walter

  I’m really happy to be here!

  P.S. Please send me two (not more) uniform shirts, and my laundry along with the uniform. (Not more.) W.C.W.

  After a year and a half of moving about in a no-man’s-land of young recruits and army indecision, finally my father was at a place where he could hone his skills. During World War II, over 19,600 soldiers were trained at Camp Ritchie. These men became known as the Ritchie Boys and were sent overseas in the capacity as intelligence officers and experts in a new kind of psychological warfare. Troops were transferred to Camp Ritchie under classified orders and arrived alone or in small groups. Once there, they were ordered not to discuss their posting with anyone. The barracks at the camp were filled with young refugees who had escaped from all over Europe. Many had been born in Germany, like my father. Some had escaped concentration camps. Many had lost their entire family. They were chosen to be part of this new program because they, better than anyone else in the army, could infiltrate the psyche of their prisoners precisely because they were their cultural equals. They understood the mentality of the enemy intimately, unlike their American-born comrades; they were raised in a world at war or fraught with the tensions of the build-up to war. Now assembled at one camp, they moved together easily and with a genial familiarity they had thought lost in the wake of their private battles to survive. Because most of these young men had left loved ones behind and knew nothing of their fate, a profound and unifying bond was created, which made them a very powerful and cohesive unit of soldiers.

  Days at Ritchie were spent in intensive training in the classroom and on the field in interrogation and counter-intelligence techniques. Here mental acuity was valued more than the conditioning of one’s body. Classes were hard, very thorough, and interesting; much more intensive than the ASTP program at Yale. My father felt in his element. He was studying mathematics in connection with cartography as well as communications and radio intelligence, where he learned how to transmit and intercept information. Ritchie Boys were also trained in sabotage, photo intelligence, and intelligence record keeping, but by far the most important aspect of the IPW (Interrogation Prisoner of War) course was to impart a thorough knowledge of the German army, its organization and tactics, its maps and map symbols, and its documents and records of every description. Even though most of the officers and men at Camp Ritchie were being trained as IPWs, they were required to take a course in the organization of the American army, the British army, the French army, and the Italian army.

  Most of the men in my father’s barracks were French. He ran into old friends, a Belgian fellow from the Victor Hugo Circle in Paris and some buddies he hadn’t seen since Camp Pickett; a cook, a Greek, and another soldier named Wolff. My father and the other Wolff found each other at headquarters when their dossiers got mixed up. A man named Henry Arnhold would find me in Washington, DC, sixty-eight years after he ran into my father in the mess hall at Camp Ritchie. He recognized my name on the program when I was there to give the keynote speech at an event commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the founding of Camp Ritchie. I was so moved when he stopped me that tears just rolled down my face. It was my fiftieth birthday and his memories of my family were the perfect gift.

  July 23rd

  My Dears,

  Before I go to sleep, a little note . . . Ellen, imagine who I ran into today: HaHa (Henry Arnhold). He has been here for a year—he was on KP and put my chicken on my plate when I looked at him—and he looked at me—we recognized each other at the same time . . . Good Night,

  Walter

  The air had cooled some with the coming change of season, but the classroom remained close. Yet, even with the open windows, nothing would distract my father, not the lake outside, not the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains. None of that was more alluring than the promise of what he held in his hands. After being shuttled around the camp for the first couple of weeks from one specialty to another, he wound up in Order of Battle class to train as an expert in the details of the enemy army. This class gave “Ritchie Boys” the tools needed to recognize which role each German soldier played, so that during interrogation they could sort through a POW’s lies and evasions to get to the truth. The knowledge of one small fact from this book could potentially force a POW during an interrogation to release a vast quantity of information.

  Hope of that lay within the sheets of a five-by-seven, six-hundred-page manual called the Order of Battle of the German Army. Its cover warns: “RESTRICTED THIS DOCUMENT MUST NOT FALL INTO ENEMY HANDS” in bold letters. My father carefully unstapled the pages and punched holes in each one to fit them in a blac
k three-ring binder he had bought. The manual provided a detailed explanation of the organization of the German army, with the name of every commanding officer and their position to date. Two of these manuals survive intact; they are dated February 1944 and March 1945: before D-Day and after. These manuals were updated, revised, and redistributed as soon as information changed.

  The 1944 issue shows the details of every uniform in the Wehrmacht, whose forces many of my father’s comrades would face on the beaches of Normandy in June. His notes are scribbled in the margins and across the pages, indicating where units have been disbanded. Names are crossed out and their replacements penciled in. Leafing through the fragile pages, I remember a detail from his testimony for the Shoah Foundation. My father said, “A namesake of mine, General of the SS Wolff, was a prisoner at my camp for a while until we sent him to Nuremberg. That was sort of . . . almost funny. I have his visiting card if you want to see it. You know, if you become a high-ranking general in the SS, you can imagine you earned your stripes.”

  Order of Battle, German army.

  I opened the book and carefully thumbed through to the list at the back, until I found his name. The namesake had become a prisoner of war. For the first time since I began to reconstruct my father’s story, hunter had been captured and the hunted saw the tide change. Faced with the magnitude of their crimes, my father chose a memory laced with humor to override his rage. Two men with the same last name, Jew and murderous anti-Semite face to face. One was sent to Nuremberg, the other helped to ensure his prosecution.

  SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen SS Karl Wolff NSDP 695 131, SS number 14 235, was responsible for the mass killings of more than 300,000 Jews throughout occupied Europe, for the forces that carried out the murders had to report directly back to him. He was subordinate only to Hitler and Himmler. Considered Himmler’s right-hand man and closest confidant for at least a decade, he was such an intimate that Himmler called him Wolffie. Wolff was the top-ranking Nazi in northern Italy from 1943 to 1945. He claimed to have foiled a plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII. He understood that the Italians were a nation of deeply pious Catholics who would not trust their faith to anyone except their pope and the Vatican, so he claimed to have taken the initiative to foil the kidnap attempt in order to further the interests of the Nazi Party in Italy. My father remembered: “He was Himmler’s right hand and number three out of all of them until he fell out of his favor. That’s when Hitler sent him to supervise Il Duce. Never one to waste talent! That one I sent straight to Nuremberg. It’s kind of, almost funny.”