When you think of military organisations torturing prisoners of war (POWs) in World War II,
it's likely the Soviet NKVD, the Nazi SS and Gestapo, or just the Japanese come to mind.
While the techniques of these organisations were often monstrous, and while they sometimes tortured
prisoners for means other than to gain crucial intelligence, the Western Allies may have had
blood on their pliers too. And while no fighting country's record remained untarnished throughout
the Second World War, accusations involving Britain, I think, are particularly scandalous,
given its role as one of the great Allied powers and its tall moral stature.
In this video, we're going to discuss the controversies of Britain's Military
Intelligence section MI19: Enemy prisoner of war interrogation, with a focus on the
controversy of the London Cage, and then consider the morality of torture in general.
Before we go ahead, the Geneva Convention (1929) was a follow up to the Hague Conventions of 1899
and 1907, which were deemed lacking after the First World War. The Geneva Convention was
made up of a number of articles pertaining to POWs, though it's only important to know that
the Convention basically set the bar for POW treatment in World War II and Germany
and Great Britain were among those who did sign it, and the USSR and Japan were not.
It should be obvious that the Nazis breached the scheiße out of the Geneva Convention,
though what about the British and MI19? We'll get there, but first, a little on MI19.
So, the Directorate of Military Intelligence was a department of the British War Office, and under
the Directorate were many sections. From December 1940 to December 1941, POW interrogation fell to
the subsection of MI9 MI9a, which was formed thereafter into the new and separate section
MI19. MI19 kept many interrogations centres, both on home soil and overseas, though it's most
controversial centre stood on Kensington Palace Gardens. Overseeing the interrogations in this
inner-suburb unit/top-secret government facility called the London Cage, was Lieutenant Colonel
Alexander Scotland, to whom much of the prolonged public interest in the London Cage is owed.
The use of an inner-suburb unit as a temporary internment and interrogation facility may not
have been so closely guarded a secret as the "torture" that purportedly occurred there.
While Scotland may have prolonged the public interest and controversy, it was sparked by the
Nazi POWs. In war crime trials conducted during and after the war, SS, Gestapo,
and other Nazi POWs who passed through the London Cage claimed they were tortured at the facility.
Among those standing trial were Nazis convicted of murdering and massacring
British POWs. And of those, perhaps the most notorious was SS officer Fritz Knöchlein,
who was convicted and executed mostly for his role in the Le Paradis massacre of 1940. Also among the
Nazis to accuse the London Cage of torturing them were SS officer Josef "Sepp" Dietrich,
accused but never prosecuted for participating in the murder of forty-one Allied prisoners who
escaped from Stalag III, and SS and Gestapo officer Erich Hermann August Zacharias,
who was trialled and hung for murdering Royal Air Force prisoners in that same escape.
Summating the methods of torture to which these and other Nazis claimed they were subjected,
they were deprived of sleep; made to stand on their feet for days at a time; made to
exercise naked; forced to clean dirty water from their cells and clean the facilities lavatories;
forced to excrete in a bucket, which remained in their cells,
or in their clothes, which they were forbidden to change; provided insufficient clothing;
denied treatment of disease and injury; starved; beaten, sometimes until they begged for death;
and tortured with electricity. On top of this — and, again, this is what the Nazis on trial
claimed — they were drugged, threatened with death and/or having their wives deported to Siberia,
and forced to confess to war crimes for which they had originally claimed innocence. Several
POWs committed suicide at the London Cage, and others died from illnesses
such as pneumonia. Ironically, SS officer Fritz Knöchlein called MI19 the "British Gestapo."
With so many Nazi POWs claiming they were tortured, Alexander Scotland
was himself put on trial. While the case of Scotland bears contradictory evidence,
he claimed his methods of interrogation did not breach the Geneva Convention
and refuted the accusations held against him, stating he relied on interrogation
methods such as cross-examination and not violence. Scotland was not persecuted.
The London Cage was closed in 1948, and six years later,
Scotland submitted a draft of his personal memoir, titled The London Cage, to the British
War Office for review. They ordered him not to publish it and confiscated three of four
copies of the memoir. The fourth remained with his publisher, who did not publish it.
Now Scotland's actions get a little confusing.
In January 1955, seven months after his memoirs were confiscated by the British War Office,
he went into to the Office in person and threatened to publish it. The Office responded
with a warrant to search his home, confiscating all the information on the London Cage he'd been
keeping in secret. A deal was brokered, allowing Scotland to publish his memoir
after MI5, another section of the Directorate of Military Intelligence, had made redactions.
An MI5 document retrieved from Britain's National Archives by Helen Fry, author of The London Cage:
The Secret History of Britain's World War II Interrogation Centre, disclosed that
Scotland's memoir was confiscated because, it "revealed precise irregularities in the
interrogation of prisoners, disclosed methods used during interrogation,
and provided details of infringements of the Geneva Convention." And on the matter,
Lieutenant Colonel J. Broughton of MI5 wrote: "[...] [Scotland's memoir] is highly
undesirable from the point of view of security." Considering this occurred during the Cold War,
the War Office's concerns for British security and international standing were justifiable, though
they may also have confiscated the memoir because it may have compromised ongoing war crime trials.
A report by MI5 officer Bernard Hill outlining MI5's objections to Scotland's original memoir,
for the purposes of their agreed-upon redaction, was also retrieved by Helen Fry. This report
identified MI5's objections to sections of the memoir regarding the ways in which prisoners were
"disciplined" at the London Cage, such as how they were forced to clean the facility for three days
at a time and forced to stand on their feet for up to twenty-six hours at a time, and objections to
sections regarding incidents of "undue pressure," such as how prisoners had their "ears boxed",
how prisoners were threatened with death if they refused to provide information, and how prisoners
were subject to a range of other degrading duties. MI5 also objected to sections of the memoir on how
prisoners were forced to confess to war crimes for which they had originally claimed innocence.
Going off these MI5 documents, the memoir was basically stripped of everything the
public could not have learnt by attending the war crimes trials, though, for some reason,
it still contained contradictions. For instance, Scotland stated that, while the prisoners were not
subjected to physical torture, they were subjected to mental torture which was "just as cruel."
Scotland's heavily-redacted memoir The London Cage was published in 1957.
So are the claims of Nazi POWs during war crime trials and the two MI5 documents on Scotland's
memoir proof that Nazi prisoners were tortured at the London Cage? That, as Helen Fry concluded,
remains up to interpretation. In truth, there is little evidence on the controversies of the
London Cage, with Helen Fry's book being one of the few, and perhaps the most comprehensive,
on the matter. The claims of the Nazi POWs during war crime trials are just that,
and the two MI5 documents, interpreting them only through the conclusions Helen Fry,
are vague. That there are contradictions in the redacted version of Scotland's memoir is not
conclusive evidence of anything; indeed, it only adds to the vagueness of it all. Additionally,
MI19 themselves never declassified any information on Scotland's case.
Scotland's actions throughout the ordeal only attribute to the vagueness. While on trial,
he denied torturing prisoners; then he wrote a book, which was confiscated and
redacted by MI5 because it, among other things to which MI5 objected, it "provided details of
infringements of the Geneva Convention"; and then he published that redacted version. Why
did Scotland write the memoir in the first place? And why else would he have published
the redacted version publication if it wasn't for the money? That he published
the redacted version leads me to believe it was never about some "buried truth,"
and this weakens the already vague argument that Nazis were tortured in the London Cage.
Regardless of whether or not POWs were "tortured" at the London Cage,
the moral questions still stand.
Bearing in mind that the Nazis were known for torturing POWs, would you have considered it
"morally right" to torture SS, Gestapo, and other Nazi POWs? Do you think there would have been
certain conditions in which torturing them would have become "morally right" or "morally wrong"?
Again, it's a sensitive topic, though we want to
know your thoughts. Please share them down in the comments section.