Fort Ritchie

Camp Ritchie (official name: Military Intelligence Training Center ) was a training camp in the U.S. Army in Maryland, United States, near Washington, DC Its name honors a former Governor of Maryland, Albert C. Ritchie. . 1926, the land was purchased and the barracks based on 9 July 1927 by the National Guard's 5th Infantry for the first time. The building then went over to the federal government. In this camp, among other things, the secret unit of the Ritchie Boys was formed; these were young German who wanted to take up the fight against the Nazi dictatorship in the U.S. Army. Total likely to have been formed between 1942 and 1945 some 19,000 soldiers. Of these, approximately 80 percent were not U.S. citizens.

Most of the documents relating to Camp Ritchie had been stored in the U.S. National Archives in St. Louis. A fire in 1973 nearly 80 percent of the documents were destroyed.