Camp Sharpe

Camp Sharpe (formally Camp George H. Sharpe) was a U.S. Army training camp for psychological warfare on the Gettysburg battlefield in Adams County, Pennsylvania, during World War II. It was set up as a subcamp of Camp Ritchie, about 15 miles away in Maryland, and prepared men for combat propaganda in the European Theater: morale analysis, leaflets, radio broadcasting and front-line loudspeaker appeals. Local newspapers reported in November 1943 that a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp had been turned into a secret Army installation, and by July 1944 the last of its companies had shipped out. Many of its students were Ritchie Boys, and the men who trained there are sometimes called the "Camp Sharpe Boys" or, as in the title of Beverley Driver Eddy's book, the "Psycho Boys".

Overview

Historian Beverley Driver Eddy says that where Camp Ritchie taught interrogation and other intelligence skills across the board, Camp Sharpe "concentrated just on psychological warfare." She first heard of it from Ritchie Boy Guy Stern, who told her that "there was a subcamp of Ritchie in Gettysburg called Camp Sharp." That was when she realized its story had never been told.

Eddy estimates that "about 800" men passed through Camp Sharpe. Camp Ritchie trained about 20,000 men. Camp Sharpe's students also interrogated prisoners, but in her words "they did it for a different purpose… the Camp Sharp Boys were interrogating in order to study morale." In the field, she says, they were the ones who "got the prisoners in many cases to surrender by going out in front of the front of the lines and speaking by microphone directly to the enemy troops."

In her Gettysburg History interview, Eddy says that most of the men "belonged to four special units called mobile radio broadcasting companies" and came to the camp "for an intensive training program in propaganda services and psychological warfare." She describes them as older and highly educated. Many were foreign-born, many were Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria, and many spoke between two and five languages. Among them were writers, journalists, filmmakers, musicians, professors and actors, including the novelist Stefan Heym, the Bulgarian composer Boris Cvetkov, the Czech author Joseph Wechsberg, the Disney animator Tony Strobl, the columnist Igor Cassini and the Czech-born Walter Kohner. She says the Army called them, half in jest, "a unit of geniuses." The men called themselves the "psycho boys", and called the camp "Camp Shapiro" because so many of them were Jewish.

Site and origins

The camp stood in McMillan Woods on the Gettysburg battlefield. According to Eddy's Gettysburg History interview, it began as CCC Gettysburg 2, an all-Black Civilian Conservation Corps camp whose men cleared brush and built roads on the battlefield before the dedication of the Peace Light memorial in 1938. The Wikipedia article identifies the Camp Sharpe site as CCC camp NP-1, next to a second CCC camp (NP-2). Leon Edel remembered it in his memoir as lying "in a muddy hollow at the bottom of a slanting road." A USO facility for Camp Sharpe soldiers was in the former Hill house on Chambersburg Street in the town of Gettysburg.

In November 1943, Eddy says, local newspapers reported that the abandoned CCC camp had become a secret Army installation. She quotes one report: "this local camp… has been named Camp George H. Sharpe… the exact nature of the camp could not be determined."

Secrecy and conditions

Eddy calls Camp Sharpe even more secret than Camp Ritchie. It was "surrounded by such secrecy that it was not even connected by telephone." Visitors were not allowed. The Army took no photographs of training, weapons or formations, so the only pictures from the camp are class photographs. The men found the old CCC barracks "filled with dust and cobwebs," with signs that "mice and rats had left their deposits," and the camp "surrounded by a sea of mud." Wind came through gaps in the walls and the stoves barely worked.

Training

When the camp was in use

The Wikipedia article gives May 1944 as Camp Sharpe's construction date and lists the 2nd through 5th Mobile Radio Broadcasting Companies (MRBCs) and the Psychological Warfare Division as its occupants in 1944–1945. Dan Gross's research, as imported to the profile of Arthur H. Jaffe (commanding officer of the 2nd MRBC), describes the camp as a kind of postgraduate school in psychological operations for selected graduates of the eight-week Camp Ritchie course and for other soldiers with skills in radio and broadcasting.

Men usually reached Camp Sharpe through Camp Ritchie. Profiles on this wiki typically record a soldier being assigned to an MRBC at Camp Ritchie and then sent to Camp Sharpe for a psychological warfare or combat propaganda course. The dates they give are often the MRBC assignment dates, not dates for the course itself. The 3rd MRBC was activated at Camp Ritchie on 29 December 1943, and Emil Lehman was assigned to the 2nd MRBC at Camp Ritchie on 31 December 1943. Other sources place the camp in 1943. The November 1943 newspaper report quoted in Eddy's Gettysburg History interview shows that the camp existed and had been named by then. The Dan Gross research on Jaffe's profile gives 9 November 1943 as its opening date, and Leon Edel's profile says he transferred to Camp Sharpe and joined the 3rd MRBC "at the end of 1943", although neither gives a record or page reference for its date.

Several profiles, drawing on Austriansoldiers biographies, Dan Gross's research, interviews and personal papers, put the Camp Sharpe course in the first months of 1944, before the men sailed for Europe in March or April 1944. Those dates fit a camp that was open by November 1943. They are earlier than the May 1944 construction date in the Wikipedia article, and the sources do not say what that date refers to:

• Philip Pines was assigned to the 2nd MRBC on 19 February 1944 and sent to Camp Sharpe for about six weeks of training.
• Jacob Isaak Tennenbaum was assigned to the 2nd MRBC on 8 February 1944, took the psychological warfare course at Camp Sharpe and embarked for Glasgow on 31 March 1944.
• Maximilian Lerner spent about two months at Camp Sharpe before shipping out from Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, in March 1944.
• Boris Krass studied propaganda techniques and strategic interrogation at what his papers call the Psychological Warfare School, Camp Sharpe. His profile dates this from February or March 1944; he left for overseas on 12 May 1944.

Later groups are recorded there from May 1944. Howard K. Marr was assigned from 31 May 1944 to the 5th MRBC at Camp Sharpe; Bernhard Hans Reijmers joined the 5th MRBC on 12 May and the 4th on 12 June 1944 and took propaganda training at Camp Sharpe; and Arthur Hadley was assigned on 21 July 1944 to the 5th MRBC, a company "scheduled to train at Camp Sharpe". Eddy says training lasted anywhere from one week to three months, depending on a man's earlier experience. Many Camp Sharpe men went on to the Psychological Warfare School at Brondesbury Park near London before going into action in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.

What the men learned

Eddy reconstructed the curriculum from notes kept by veterans. In her Gettysburg History interview she says the companies were organized in Headquarters, Radio, Propaganda, Printing and Motor pool sections, and describes the main skills:

• Propaganda. Men learned to write pamphlets, leaflets, posters and radio broadcasts, monitor German radio, analyze enemy morale and draft surrender instructions. A recurring question in their notes was "Where is the red thread?"
• Interrogation for morale. The men were taught to handle tough and easy prisoners differently, to use psychological techniques and to ask questions they already knew the answers to. With officers, "interrogation may turn to the not strictly military subjects… the significance of which German officers rarely appreciate."
• Radio monitoring. Monitors used shorthand-like "q-words" and wrote accurate reports without editorial comment, including "personalities in the news" and "highlights in the news."
• Broadcasting. News went out in 15-minute segments. To keep German listeners tuned in, announcers read the names of prisoners indistinctly at the start of a program and clearly at the end.
• Leaflets. Leaflets stressed treatment under the Geneva Convention and gave surrender instructions. Writers were told to avoid impatience, bombast, prophecy and claims that could not be checked.
• Loudspeaker appeals. The men who addressed German troops by loudspeaker at the front were known as "hog callers". Eddy calls it the most dangerous job, and says the longest a man could safely keep speaking was 90 seconds.

Instructors and recollections

The émigré writer and editor Hans Habe was an instructor. Edel, Walter Kohner, Albert G. Rosenberg, Bert Walther Anger and Peter H. Weidenreich all name him. Edel recalled Habe describing opposition within the Army to psychological warfare: "Old army hands regarded us as superfluous." Not every memory is flattering: Lerner remembered the camp as cold and disorganized and told an interviewer, "We did nothing."

Eddy says the writer Stefan Heym "went through training at Camp Ritchie and then went to Camp Sharp for more training in psychological warfare."

Life in Gettysburg

The men walked into Gettysburg for meals, films and the public library. Eddy names Mitchell's, Ned's Place and Mrs. Smith's Restaurant, which served "an excellent meal for $1", among the places they went. Wives and girlfriends stayed at the Gettysburg Hotel. Two of the soldiers married women from Gettysburg.

Departure and later years

According to Eddy's Gettysburg History interview, all the Mobile Radio Broadcasting Companies had shipped out by July 1944. The 2nd and 3rd MRBCs left first with their broadcasting and printing trucks, which she describes as "an assembly of transmitters, microphones and printing presses ingeniously laid out within the narrow confines of the deluxe vehicles." The 4th and 5th companies left in a hurry after Hans Habe was transferred to London.

According to the Wikipedia article, the camp closed as a training site in 1944. Around January 1945 the USO operation moved to the recreation center for the guards of the Gettysburg prisoner-of-war camp, and the former camp housed migrant workers in the summer of 1945. Eddy says the Camp Sharpe buildings also housed German prisoners of war after the training companies left. The buildings were later removed and the land became part of Gettysburg National Military Park.

Eddy tells a story from German prisoners held at the Gettysburg Armory, who remarked that "American soldiers who all spoke German surely had some purpose in their training at your special camp." Camp Sharpe veterans held reunions for decades after the war; Eddy says the last was in 1990. She says Heym and other veterans later reflected on what their time in Gettysburg had meant to them.

The site today

In a C-SPAN Booknotes+ interview, Eddy described the site as "now a youth camp site," where "the youth that stay there have absolutely no idea what the place is or what it was." The barracks are gone, but "there's rows of evergreens outlining where the barracks were." The motor pool area "is now the horse trailer parking lot," and "where the commandant's office was is now the trailer for where the youth leader camps."

In her Gettysburg History interview she adds that a flagpole, two rows of evergreens marking the barracks and the old parade ground remain, reached by a dirt road off Confederate Avenue near the North Carolina Monument. "I imagine… scarcely one realizes this is a significant World War II site," she says. At the time of both interviews there was no historical marker. Eddy said she was collecting signatures "to approach the National Park Service of Gettysburg to try to get a sign put up."

Research and books

Eddy set aside her work on the Manns for two years to study the camp ("I set my work on the Manns aside for 2 years and interviewed intensely 10 of the men that had gone through that camp"). The result was her book Camp Sharpe's "Psycho Boys": From Gettysburg to Germany, which follows German refugees who joined the Mobile Radio Broadcasting Companies at Camp Sharpe through the war in Europe; her Gettysburg History program on the camp is on Ritchie Boy Programs. She later wrote Ritchie Boy Secrets about the parent camp (see Books and Contributors). Florian Traussnig of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, whose Austriansoldiers biographies are cited on many profiles here, wrote Die Psychokrieger aus Camp Sharpe: Österreicher als Kampfpropagandisten der US-Armee im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Böhlau, 2020) about the camp's Austrian-born soldiers.

Ritchie Boys on this wiki connected to Camp Sharpe

These lists include only people whose profiles on this wiki (or the sources cited below) connect them to Camp Sharpe. They are not a complete roster.

Officers and instructors

• Hans Habe — "In 1944 he became an instructor of psychological warfare at Camp Sharpe"
• Arthur H. Jaffe — commanding officer, 2nd MRBC
• John T. Jarecki — roster research note: "Commander; Camp Sharpe"

Trained at Camp Sharpe (according to their profiles or Eddy)

• Bert Walther Anger — joined the new 2nd MRBC at Camp Ritchie, January 1944; "Assigned to Camp Sharpe, PA. Instructor was Hans Habe."
• Albrecht Paul Barsis — assigned to the 3rd MRBC on 5 January and the 2nd MRBC on 11 February 1944; combat propaganda training at Camp Sharpe
• Rudolf Baum — "Trained at Camp Sharpe, PA. Served with MRBC 3." (undated)
• Jules Jerome Bond — assigned to the 3rd MRBC on 15 January 1944; psychological warfare course at Camp Sharpe
• Igor L. Cassini — named by Beverley Driver Eddy (Gettysburg History interview); roster research notes: "4 (Camp Sharpe)", "To 3rd MRBC, 4/20/44"
• Leon Edel — transferred to Camp Sharpe and joined the 3rd MRBC "at the end of 1943" (his profile's summary of his memoir The Visitable Past)
• Paul Alfred Eisler — assigned to the 2nd MRBC at Camp Ritchie in January and the 3rd MRBC in February 1944; psychological warfare course at Camp Sharpe
• Stefan Heym — per Beverley Driver Eddy (both video interviews)
• Walter Klinger — Camp Ritchie from February 1944, assigned to the 2nd and then the 3rd MRBC; combat propaganda training at Camp Sharpe
• Walter Kohner — named by Eddy (Gettysburg History interview); memoir page on psychological warfare training at Camp Sharpe under Hans Habe; 4th MRBC by 28 March 1944 (roster note)
• Boris Krass — Psychological Warfare School, Camp Sharpe (his papers); overseas from 12 May 1944
• Emil Lehman — assigned to the 2nd MRBC at Camp Ritchie on 31 December 1943; propaganda course at Camp Sharpe (undated); sailed April 1944
• Maximilian Lerner — about two months (interviews); shipped out March 1944
• Howard K. Marr — 5th MRBC at Camp Sharpe from 31 May 1944
• Philip Pines — assigned to the 2nd MRBC on 19 February 1944 and sent to Camp Sharpe (about six weeks)
• Bernhard Hans Reijmers — 5th MRBC from 12 May and 4th MRBC from 12 June 1944; propaganda training at Camp Sharpe
• Albert G. Rosenberg — 4th MRBC; worked under instructor Hans Habe at Camp Sharpe
• Rudolph Schattner — "probably in early 1944" assigned to the 2nd MRBC; propaganda training at Camp Sharpe; sailed April 1944
• Anthony J. (Tony) Strobl — named by Eddy (Gettysburg History interview); roster lists him with the 3rd MRBC
• Jacob Isaak Tennenbaum — assigned to the 2nd MRBC on 8 February 1944; psychological warfare course at Camp Sharpe; embarked 31 March 1944
• Joseph Wechsberg — named by Eddy (Gettysburg History interview); continued psychological warfare training at Camp Sharpe (Ritchie History Museum essay); served with the 4th MRBC
• Peter H. Weidenreich (Peter Wyden) — "sent to Camp Sharpe in Gettysburg PA where he studied Psychological Warfare under Hans Habe"
• Friedrich Wolinsky — assigned to the 2nd MRBC on 26 January and the 3rd MRBC in February 1944; propaganda training at Camp Sharpe
• Arthur Hadley — assigned on 21 July 1944 to the 5th MRBC, a company "scheduled to train at Camp Sharpe"

Other profiles that mention Camp Sharpe

These profiles mention Camp Sharpe only in roster research notes, which do not say what the connection was:

• Bruno Alessandrini
• Edward W. Bieghler
• Frank R. Brooks Jr.
• Francis A. Comeau
• Frank Henry Duncombe
• Harry A. Jacobs
• Gunter Kosse
• Joseph A. Lazarich Jr. (note is queried)
• Arthur J. Manzi
• Gaston C. Masson
• Hans Mayer
• Thierry L. McCormick
• Alfred New
• James D. Newton
• Robert D. Pfeifer
• Leon Poteshman
• Curt Upright

Also mentioned

• Boris Cvetkov — Bulgarian composer named by Eddy as a Camp Sharpe trainee; no profile on this wiki yet.
• Guy Stern — told Beverley Driver Eddy about the camp. He also suggested that Klaus Mann may have trained there, which Eddy found was not the case.
• Jack Travis Collette — a research note says he trained with the 3rd MRBC at Camp Sharpe (not yet confirmed).

See also

• Camp Ritchie
• 1st Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company
• P.O. Box 1142
• Training materials
• Books
• Ritchie Boy Programs
• Contributors

Sources

• Beverley Driver Eddy, C-SPAN Booknotes+ interview on Ritchie Boy Secrets (YouTube, 2022) — speaker Beverley Driver Eddy; she also discusses Camp Sharpe (accessed 25 September 2026)
• Beverley Driver Eddy, Gettysburg History interview on Camp Sharpe (YouTube) — speaker Beverley Driver Eddy; source for the CCC origin, the November 1943 newspaper report, secrecy and conditions, the curriculum, life in Gettysburg, the departure of the companies, the postwar years and the site's surviving features (accessed 25 September 2026)
• Wikipedia: "Camp Sharpe" (revision of 12 July 2026; accessed 25 September 2026). The article in turn cites:
  • Gettysburg Times, "Tells How War Prisoners Are Treated Here," 14 July 1944, p. 4
  • Star and Sentinel (Gettysburg), "Here and There," 22 July 1944
  • Gettysburg Times, "Teen-Canteen gets USO Room to January 1," 13 December 1944
  • "Fire Company Has Trouble With Truck," 19 October 1946 (Gettysburg newspaper)
  • Tom Ford, "Good Ol' Times: Readers Reminisce About Days Gone By," Gettysburg Times, 12 January 2007
  • Leon Edel, The Visitable Past: A Wartime Memoir (2000), p. 22
  • Peter Hutchinson, Stefan Heym: The Perpetual Dissident, p. 39
  • Further reading: Florian Traussnig, Die Psychokrieger aus Camp Sharpe (Böhlau, 2020), ISBN 9783205210191
• Soldier profiles on this wiki linked above, including Dan Gross's timeline research (Jaffe, Pines, Anger, Hadley, Baum), Austriansoldiers / Ludwig Boltzmann Institute biographies (Barsis, Bond, Eisler, Klinger, Lehman, Marr, Reijmers, Schattner, Tennenbaum, Wolinsky), memoir and interview material (Edel, Kohner, Lerner), Krass's personal papers and Camp Ritchie Museum roster research notes
• Camp Ritchie (3rd MRBC activation, 29 December 1943; Camp Ritchie training numbers)
• Beverley Driver Eddy, Camp Sharpe's "Psycho Boys": From Gettysburg to Germany (book; listed on Books and Featured books pool)
• Contributors: Beverley Driver Eddy