Weiss, Peter (42134220)

Peter Weiss
Personal details
Born	1925 Vienna, Austria
Nativity	Austria
Religion	Jewish
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch	United States Army
ASN	42134220
Rank	Private First Class
Camp Ritchie	Class 28 (11 March – 10 May 1945)
Section	5B

Research notes on this page are compiled from the source file and later edits. They may be unverified, incomplete, or incorrect, and should not be treated as established fact. Please correct the article or add sources on the talk page. For class-roster terms, see About the data.

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Peter Weiss (born 1925) was a Vienna-born U.S. Army Private First Class and Ritchie Boy who trained at Camp Ritchie with Class 28. After Ritchie he monitored high-value prisoners at P.O. Box 1142, helped process German scientists at Fort Strong, and later worked on denazification screening and for the Office of Military Government in Germany.

Biography

Peter Weiss was born in Vienna in 1925. In 1939 he fled with his parents to France, then to the United States in 1941 on an affidavit from relatives already in America. The escape was close: Portugal nearly sent them back to occupied France, and they got through only by forging a visa extension. In New York his parents put him in Straubenmuller Textile High School, figuring intellectuals were hit first under the Nazis. He did so well that he became the first graduate of that school admitted to Harvard, but he took a scholarship instead to St. John’s College in Annapolis.

Drafted in 1944 during his sophomore year, he trained in field artillery at Fort Bragg and took U.S. Citizenship in Fayetteville, North Carolina. When the Battle of the Bulge raised the demand for infantry, he was retrained at Paris, Texas. At Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio a colonel learned he spoke German, had him recite a line of Goethe, and said that was good enough—he was going to Camp Ritchie.

There Weiss joined Class 28 for a short, intensive course in interrogation, photo interpretation, order of battle, and intelligence analysis. Fellow trainees included other multilingual refugees such as Arno Mayer. He graduated with a Camp Ritchie diploma.

From Ritchie the group went to the Pentagon and then, secretly, to P.O. Box 1142 at Fort Hunt (roster notes place him there by June 1945). Weiss spent much of his time in the monitoring section, listening from booths to microphones hidden in the ceilings of underground cells where high-value German prisoners were often paired to get them talking. When something useful came up, monitors started the tape recorders. Shifts ran about two hours, including evenings and nights, around the clock. He also censored prisoners’ letters home—sometimes swapping “juicy bits” with other censors, which he later regretted.

Two episodes stuck with him. In one, a man who had served at the German embassy in Madrid was billeted with another prisoner who boasted of an affair with a German woman there; the first man realized it was his wife, and the two nearly killed each other before guards pulled them apart. In another, a Japanese military attaché from Berlin who liked bourbon and spoke English was wined and dined so the Americans could loosen him up—only the officers got drunk instead and began talking too freely, and Weiss’s team had to break up the dinner. He also spoke face to face with scientists, literary figures, embassy people, and senior officers about Nazi ideology, wartime guilt, and how Germany had become what it became, and he and his colleagues argued over how to tell hard Nazis from opportunistic Party members and non-political technicians.

After Fort Hunt he went to Fort Strong in Boston Harbor for intake interviews of German scientists—basic histories and where each man should go next. The island also held a mental hospital; patients wandered about and were sometimes hard to tell from the scientists. He was there on 6 August 1945 when word of Hiroshima arrived. He spent several weeks at Fort Devens screening German POWs for Nazi affiliation—voluntary Party members or not, clear or restrict—and wrestled with whether he was being lied to and with the weight of those judgments.

Weiss left the Army in 1946, then spent a year in Germany with the Office of Military Government on postwar administration.

Research notes

• Camp Ritchie Class 28; Fort Hunt / P.O. Box 1142 (roster FH 9 June 1945; NPS oral history — monitoring and mail censorship).
• Fort Strong Paperclip scientist intake; Fort Devens denazification screening.

Gallery

No portrait on file yet.

Technical record

Field	Imported value
Nara ASN	42134220
Nara Name	WEISS PETER
Nara State	23
Nara County	61
Nara POE	2314
Nara DOE	100544
Nara Grade Alpha	PVT
Nara Grade Code	8
Nara Branch Alpha	NO
Nara Branch Code	2
Branch	No branch assignment
Nara Term or Enlistment	5
Term of enlistment	Enlistment for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law
Defer. Date	0
Nara Source	0
Nara Nativity	N2
Nara Year of Birth	25
Nara Race	J
Nara Race Description	White not yet a citizen
Nara Education	5
Nara Civilian Occupation	992
Nara Marital Status	6
Nara Height (inches)	0
Nara Weight (lbs)	0
Class_ASN	42134220
Class_Name	WEISS, Peter
match_method	asn_exact_name_exact
row_source	both

Timeline

• 1925 — Born in Vienna, Austria.
• 1939 — Fled with parents to France.
• 1941 — Reached the United States (narrow escape via Portugal); Straubenmuller Textile High School; later St. John’s College, Annapolis.
• 1944 — Drafted (sophomore year); field artillery at Fort Bragg; naturalized in Fayetteville, North Carolina; infantry retraining at Paris, Texas; selected for Camp Ritchie at Fort Sam Houston.
• Class 28 — Camp Ritchie (interrogation, photo interpretation, order of battle).
• 9 June 1945 — Fort Hunt / P.O. Box 1142 (roster FH note): cell monitoring and mail censorship.
• Late 1945 — Fort Strong, Boston Harbor: Paperclip scientist intake (including period of Hiroshima news, 6 August 1945).
• c. 1945–1946 — Fort Devens: denazification screening of German POWs.
• 1946 — Left the Army; about a year with the Office of Military Government in Germany.

Sources

• NPS Fort Hunt Oral History — Peter Weiss interview transcript (Camp Ritchie Class 28; P.O. Box 1142 monitoring / Fort Strong / Fort Devens; formerly published on the NPS Fort Hunt oral-history exhibit)
• Camp Ritchie Museum, Inc. (The Ritchie History Museum), Classes 1–31 roster data
• Dan Gross research spreadsheets, including original Excel timeline/roster work, combined with other research and records
• NARA World War II Army enlistment records (where a NARA ASN is present)
• 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)
• Dan Gross, Timeline of Peter Weiss for Camp Ritchie (private research document; 1 source documents reviewed)
• Dan Gross, Timeline of Weiss, Peter for Camp Ritchie (private research files; selected non-private narrative findings; 1 source files: PETER WEISS (2021).doc)