Highest ranking captured Ally / Nazi interrogation methods?

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Cory C
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Highest ranking captured Ally / Nazi interrogation methods?

#1

Post by Cory C » 03 Jun 2003, 23:12

Hello!

What methods did the Nazis use during the interrogations of Allied prisoners? I assume there was some torture or drugging. I would prefer being told of individual cases (e.g. "Capt. John Smith of the U.S. Army was lashed 100 times" instead of "Soldiers were lashed"), if possible. If not, generalizations will do just fine. :)

Oh, and who was the highest ranking Allied serviceman ever captured by the Nazis? If there were several of the same rank, then names and ultimate fates will do fine. :)

(Added to original post): Was any useful intelligence info ever gained by the Nazis from these officers/interrogations?

Cordially,
~Cory

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Harri
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#2

Post by Harri » 04 Jun 2003, 00:16

I think the highest ranking allied officer who surrendered to Germans was without doubt a French one: Marshal Petain, but he was not actually captured and he led the so called Vichy France. There were also many other French and Polish generals.

Germans captured several Soviet generals during the war, Vlassov being the most known but was he the highest?

The highest British officers were captured in North Africa, I think, and Major General (or Brigadier?) Connor. Was any that high officer captured elsewhere, like at Arnhem in 1944?

Highest American was perhaps a Colonel, probably a pilot.

----

Crankshaw's book "(Inside?) Gestapo" tells about German's interrogation methods. They for example smashed testicles, stick burning phosphore matches under nails (phosphore "ate" the fingers later), tore nails away and such less nice.

I don't know what info Germans got but Finns (using much milder methods) could get almost any information needed or asked. Maj.Gen. Kirpitshnikov who was captured in 1941 wrote an essay about Soviet military and his career in Red Army because he was so grateful to Finns. Unfortunately this has not yet been published.


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Brig
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#3

Post by Brig » 04 Jun 2003, 02:13

Harri wrote:I think the highest ranking allied officer who surrendered to Germans was without doubt a French one: Marshal Petain, but he was not actually captured and he led the so called Vichy France. There were also many other French and Polish generals.

Germans captured several Soviet generals during the war, Vlassov being the most known but was he the highest?

The highest British officers were captured in North Africa, I think, and Major General (or Brigadier?) Connor. Was any that high officer captured elsewhere, like at Arnhem in 1944?

Highest American was perhaps a Colonel, probably a pilot.

----

Crankshaw's book "(Inside?) Gestapo" tells about German's interrogation methods. They for example smashed testicles, stick burning phosphore matches under nails (phosphore "ate" the fingers later), tore nails away and such less nice.

I don't know what info Germans got but Finns (using much milder methods) could get almost any information needed or asked. Maj.Gen. Kirpitshnikov who was captured in 1941 wrote an essay about Soviet military and his career in Red Army because he was so grateful to Finns. Unfortunately this has not yet been published.
the tearing away of fingernails, I believe, was the method known as 'Gestapo Finger Screws', which involvewd a type of clamp, whereas fingernails were pulled slowly straight out, bit by bit to enhance pain.

I also recall hearing pins under the finger nails. But what's this of phosphorous matches? Can I assume they don't produce them anymore, but rather use sulfer?

And, of course, there was the old-fashioned method of beating with a rubber trunchean.

I do know that there were different levels of interrogators, and if you were 'stubborn', you'd go on and on to more...'creative' ones

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#4

Post by CHRISCHA » 04 Jun 2003, 10:43

Just to add to the previous posts, I am unaware of any high ranking officer being interigated with the methods described.

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Harri
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#5

Post by Harri » 04 Jun 2003, 11:22

You are right, Western generals were not interrogated using the most harsh methods, but I'm not sure about the Soviet ones.

In the book I mentioned is an example of interrogating British Major or Lt.Col. I don't remember his name for sure but it was two-piece one like "Yeo-Thomas" or somehing like that. I'll have to check that out some day.

Old matches contained phosphore, that is why they light up so easily in old movies. Modern matches are so called "safety matches", and they need two separate "scratch surfaces" to light up.

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#6

Post by Witch-King of Angmar » 04 Jun 2003, 12:46

According to one of our friends around, the British troops did not torture the German POWs themselves, but asked the Poles to do it.

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#7

Post by Cory C » 04 Jun 2003, 17:34

Thank you very much Harri, Brig, Chrischa, & Witch-King of Angmar! Sounds like I would have kept my secrets safe all of 5 minutes if I were an officer captured by the Germans. :| 8O

~Cory

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#8

Post by Paddy Keating » 04 Jun 2003, 22:42

A favourite method employed by the Gestapo and also by military interrogators and their allies - French miliciens and police etc etc - was «la baignoire». This involved being half-drowned in a bathtub. Sometimes they added to the sense of claustrophobia by plunging the victim upside-down into a water-filled 50-gallon oil drum. The water-soaked towel around the head also got results. Try this on yourself at home and you'll see how unpleasant it is! Electricity was also used. There is a room in France with fingermarks in the plaster of the walls, gouged by prisoners in agony as their tormentors electrified the soaked floor of the chamber. Making prisoners drink diesel was another favourite, as was using blowtorches on prisoners.

The problem, however, with using pain on prisoners is that it usually increases their resistance after a certain point. This is why we did not mistreat prisoners in Northern Ireland. Well...not much anyway. A hardened terrorist captive was unlikely to break under torture. Fear and judiciously applied pain was effective in the case of minor players. One very efficient way of getting a minor thug to spill his guts was to insert a soldering iron in his rectum and - UK plugs have switches - flick the switch on and off before telling him that it would be left on if he didn't talk. Another method, used in previous times, was to place an anti-personnel grenade between the thighs or knees of a man tied to a chair, remove the pin, and leave him to think about whether he wanted to talk before he fell asleep.

Like the best horror movies, it was all by suggestion. No actual physical pain was applied but the victim believed it would be. The grenade, BTW, was actually a drill grenade repainted to look like the real thing. The Germans' problem was that they lacked a certain finesse. They just demolished people who, if they didn't die under torture, were then shot or hanged, even if they did cooperate. Stupid! Inefficient...

PK

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#9

Post by Christian Ankerstjerne » 05 Jun 2003, 00:43

The finger screw, as I recall, was an actual kind of screw, where the fingers (one joint at a time) were slowly crushed in a vice...

Christian

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#10

Post by Witch-King of Angmar » 05 Jun 2003, 02:00

Prosper Keating wrote:The problem, however, with using pain on prisoners is that it usually increases their resistance after a certain point.
I've written something similar here:

Is this a form of torture?
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopi ... 7&start=15

and I repost the text below:

Actually, proper torture is a very inefficient method of extracting information, and it's more useful for:

- personal revenge(as practiced by gangsters, anti-partisan commanders etc)
- calming down the population, to assure them in show-like manner that "justice is working" (medieval public executions)
- deterence of a potential criminal or battlefield enemy: "don't do like them, or you'll end up like them"(medieval public executions, partisan executions)

But for extracting information and control, it isn't a good method at all. First of all, the victim can die before speaking, and, if he/she lives, will seek revenge - so no info and no control, just creating a supplemental enemy.

Brainwashing methods are very useful for breaking the will and self-control of the victim, creating terror, control someone's mind etc. Plus, it leaves no trace of physical abuse, hence no proof for any sort of investigator; they can even be camouflaged in normal everyday speech and behavior. But they need great subtlety to be practiced - and to be hidden.

The best and most subtle way to brainwash someone is not to use a generalized approach, as "don't let them sleep", but to study each victim carefully and exploit his/her obsessions and frustrations. For example: how do you think an arachnophobic person will react when a tarantula is placed on his/her hand(or, God forbid, his/her face? :roll: and there are plenty of obsessions that can be exploited this way. By alternating pleasure/relief and obsession-fueling, you can turn the person into a zombie very quickly. If you don't believe me, just try on yourself.

~The Witch King of Angmar

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#11

Post by T.R.Searle » 05 Jun 2003, 02:42

An interesting topic, Would methods such as in the film The Grey Zone work well or would it have the opposite effect, like when she killed herself i.e. the scene where the girl wouldnt talk so they lined up everone in her barracks and shot them one by one(while she was watching) until she told them what they wanted to know? That sounds like it would have a terrible mental effect on someone.

T.R.Searle :)

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#12

Post by Sgt. Reese » 05 Jun 2003, 06:11

yeah but thats the SS and crimes against humanity were talking about POW "interrigation"

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Lawrence Tandy
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#13

Post by Lawrence Tandy » 05 Jun 2003, 06:27

Witch-King of Angmar wrote:
Prosper Keating wrote:The problem, however, with using pain on prisoners is that it usually increases their resistance after a certain point.
I've written something similar here:

Is this a form of torture?
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopi ... 7&start=15

and I repost the text below:

Actually, proper torture is a very inefficient method of extracting information, and it's more useful for:

- personal revenge(as practiced by gangsters, anti-partisan commanders etc)
- calming down the population, to assure them in show-like manner that "justice is working" (medieval public executions)
- deterence of a potential criminal or battlefield enemy: "don't do like them, or you'll end up like them"(medieval public executions, partisan executions)

But for extracting information and control, it isn't a good method at all. First of all, the victim can die before speaking, and, if he/she lives, will seek revenge - so no info and no control, just creating a supplemental enemy.

Brainwashing methods are very useful for breaking the will and self-control of the victim, creating terror, control someone's mind etc. Plus, it leaves no trace of physical abuse, hence no proof for any sort of investigator; they can even be camouflaged in normal everyday speech and behavior. But they need great subtlety to be practiced - and to be hidden.

The best and most subtle way to brainwash someone is not to use a generalized approach, as "don't let them sleep", but to study each victim carefully and exploit his/her obsessions and frustrations. For example: how do you think an arachnophobic person will react when a tarantula is placed on his/her hand(or, God forbid, his/her face? :roll: and there are plenty of obsessions that can be exploited this way. By alternating pleasure/relief and obsession-fueling, you can turn the person into a zombie very quickly. If you don't believe me, just try on yourself.

~The Witch King of Angmar
Interesting. Spiders scare the crap outta me, not snakes or anything else I can think of(maybe sharks) So this may work on me. A beating wouldn't have much effect on me either, had a few severe ones, but if anyone went near my eyes or genetalia with a sharp object I'm afraid that the jig would be up for me.

LT

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#14

Post by Caldric » 05 Jun 2003, 08:04

I have a book written by a British Gentlemen, it is called "Rack, Rope and Red Hot Pinchers". It is a good book, is overview of torture throughout history. Its a bit too thin to really be a history but is interesting none the less.

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Lawrence Tandy
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#15

Post by Lawrence Tandy » 05 Jun 2003, 08:44

There was a program on the Spanish inquisition a little while back that got onto the methods that they used to extract confessions. Pretty gruesome stuff. It airs every once in a while on the history channel. If someone wants to spend enough time on you, you will break eventually.

LT

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