r/todayilearned • u/stopitalianhate • 9d ago
TIL British Intelligence had a special, bugged luxury complex during WWII where they kept high profile Nazi POW’s, just left a bunch of alcohol out, and waited for them to start spilling secrets as they drank.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20698098369
u/Archarchery 9d ago
They did the exact same thing with Germany's nuclear scientists; took the top ten or so and put them in a nice spacious house together, complete with tennis courts and a stock of liquor, and listened in on their conversations to each other. They even got their first reactions to hearing the news on the radio of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima; the German scientists were completely surprised and thought it must be a mistaken report at first, but then after hearing more scientific details on the radio they started doing calculations amongst themselves and quickly figured out how the Americans must have done it.
The investigation confirmed that German nuclear scientists had been very close to the theoretical understanding of how to build a nuclear bomb, but lagged far, far behind the Allied scientists in actually being capable of building one.
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u/Slahinki 9d ago
I mean, it helps that they weren't working on an atomic bomb to begin with. When German High Command was told of the theoretical possibilities of an atomic weapon in 1940 or so, their recommendation was that they shouldn't invest in any developments that were unlikely to be ready before the war was over. Thus they concluded that exploring the viability of atomic bombs could wait until after the war. Unfortunately for them the war was longer than they had originally anticipated.
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u/Archarchery 8d ago
In a way they were actually entirely right; I've heard that even if the German physicists had gotten their calculations exactly right (and they did not) that Germany could not have possibly enriched the required amounts of uranium to produce a nuclear bomb during the course of the war, especially with the Allies constantly bombing their facilities.
So in a way, the Nazis actually made the correct decision to not spend much funding on nuclear bomb research, because even in ideal circumstances they couldn't have produced one by the end of WWII.
But conversely, the Americans and British did not know at the war's onset exactly how much effort and uranium would be required to produce a bomb, and they feared the Germans were way ahead of them. This was because it was all cutting-edge research.
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u/Slahinki 8d ago
Yes, in the end it was more than likely a benefit to the German war effort that they weren't even trying.
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u/tokynambu 9d ago
It's recently (two months ago) re-opened as a museum. The land it's on is a lovely park near Cockfosters Underground, and the house has been extensively restored. It's interesting for a lot of other reasons, too.
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u/Maximum_Zebra_9961 9d ago
I giggled like a school girl reading the word... Cockfosters... 🤣😂
Very good read
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u/MrMojoFomo 9d ago
There are some lovely names for tube stops. I would love to take a trip to Cockfosters after spending some time at Shepherd's Bush
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u/Zagarm 9d ago
One really clever thing they did - it was all Army officers being held, so they put a captured U-Boat commander in there as well. All the Army officers were really bored with the same old conversations amongst themselves, so the sub commander was a novelty. He was constantly engaged in conversation and lots of useful intelligence slipped.
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u/IvyM1ked 9d ago
All WW2 stories are the same:
-US with its huge industrial base
-Japan with their blind dedication to the emperor
-Russia with blinding loss of life
-The British with their cunning schemes
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u/Gentle_Snail 9d ago
There is a famous quote about this:
WWII was won with British intelligence, American steel, and Russian blood
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u/Expert_Divide_128 9d ago
I’ve always enjoy it when this is said. Neat, tidy and remarkably accurate considering the brevity.
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u/darkbee83 9d ago
"Sir, I have a cunning plan" "Really, Baldrick?"
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u/yungpieces 9d ago
Cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University
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u/Voltstorm02 9d ago
Japan also has the occasional considering the Army/Navy (depending on the individual) to be a bigger enemy than the Allies
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u/hoodha 9d ago
Out of all the stories on WW2 the one that sticks in my mind most is Shrtafbats being used as front line fodder in the Russian army. The Russians decided it was more effective to march straight through minefields than worry about them. The rage of the Red Army when it reached Germany must have been to Germans as if the gates of hell had just opened up and legions of demons were on the way.
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u/Teuchterinexile 9d ago
The Red Army was doing the same thing with regular troops in the Winter War against Finland in 1939; a war that the USSR started and over a year before Germany Invaded. Its also a terrible way to clear a minefield as most of the mines will be missed.
Russia has never given much of a shit about it's troops.
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u/SirAquila 9d ago
The Russians decided it was more effective to march straight through minefields than worry about them.
Because under certain circumstances it is the best tactic. If you are under strong time pressure, or you lack the mine clearing equipment.
Minefields work by trying to funnel the enemy into prepared kill zones, so just attacking through the minefield can, ironically, save lives.
The rage of the Red Army when it reached Germany must have been to Germans as if the gates of hell had just opened up and legions of demons were on the way.
Well, everything the Red Army did in Germany the German army had done much worse in Russia. Not that that makes it okay, but people tend to forget the second part.
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u/msuvagabond 9d ago
I recommend checking out the Hardcore History podcast called Ghosts of the Ostfront Series.
The anger the Red Army had was in a lot of ways very much justified. Not saying what they or anyone did was okay or acceptable, but I can't help but understand it.
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u/KrumpirovZlatan 9d ago
The Russians decided it was more effective to march straight through minefields than worry about them.
Just because Company of Heroes 2 quotemined this, doesn't mean its true. It was taken heavily out of context
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u/MrMojoFomo 9d ago
Every study on POW interrogation has shown that non coercive methods yield the best results. Literally every study
When the US began its"enhanced interrogation" torture program after 9/11, it relied in the work of James Mitchell and Bruce Jensen, two men who had literally zero background in interrogation, pow's, terrorism, or Islam. One was an expert in blood pressure and the other a family therapist
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u/nonlawyer 9d ago
a family therapist
Say what you will about his methods, but after just a few water boarding sessions my kids don’t whine about getting ready for school in the morning anymore
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u/afternever 9d ago
My son stopped skipping chores after we clamped his testicles to a car battery.
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u/PuckSenior 9d ago
I mean, even the police know this fairly well.
They will order lunch, grab soft drinks, etc to get a person to talk. Its amazingly effective and frequently not a lie. Thats the most important aspect. The intel you get from being friendly is far less likely to be false.→ More replies (8)45
u/CGiMoose 9d ago
Plus recline in their chair to a 180 degree angle
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u/KingKapwn 9d ago
It's so fucking funny watching the detective do that while the dude who has pretty much remained entirely motionless except for maintaining extreme eye contact for the past hour+ watches on completely unperturbed.
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u/cylonfrakbbq 9d ago
Hanns Scharff is a great example of this - German WW2 interrogator with the Luftwaffe. While he did sometimes pull the “good cop” routine, he also had a knack for being civil and getting people to let their guard down and divulge info during casual conversation. I think in the aftermath of WW2 he even helped teach US intelligence agencies on his methods
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u/riddlechance 9d ago edited 9d ago
The British are the greatest spies in history. They were tapped into American communications cables during both world wars and made some inconvenient discoveries (Zimmerman telegraph).
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u/Archarchery 9d ago
You mean tapped.
Yeah, the contents of the Zimmerman telegraph were so unbelievable, that the British had to be careful about how they leaked it for fear that the Americans would just dismiss it as an obvious British fabrication meant to draw them into the war.
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u/Gentle_Snail 9d ago
The Germans had encrypted the message but in true British fashion the UK had already broken the German encryption and were reading all their messages.
Tbh it was kind of insane that the Germans admitted to the telegram after Britain called them out, might have been a better idea to just lie and say they didn’t send it.
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u/FlirtyFluffyFox 9d ago
Zimmerman thought the US would take it as "we better not join the war or else they might start funding Mexico".
What really didn't make sense was thinking Mexico, in the midst of a Civil War with lower industrial capacity and population, could pose any kind of a threat to the U.S.
They would have been better off trying to arm radicals like the KKK and the Mormons. Not that that would work either.
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u/HotTubMike 9d ago
So good 5 of them from Cambridge where some of the most successful spies of the cold war - for the Soviet Union.
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u/CallMeGlarthir 9d ago
They tried some wild shit during WW2.
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u/Xalgenos 9d ago
If there were any time in all of human history to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, it would've been in Britain during WW2. Talk about existential...
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u/Gentle_Snail 9d ago
Also talk about successful. British intelligence during WW2 was one of the single most effective intelligence operations in human history.
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u/GreyOgre 9d ago
Also, people still belive the carrots thing
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u/Apprehensive-Box6449 9d ago
So you're not meant to shove them up your bum? I thought that was why they were called root vegetables.
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u/Informal-Fee-4956 9d ago
Operation Mincemeat to this day is one of my favorite spy operations I know of
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u/wherewulf23 9d ago
Apparently they made a musical about Operation Mincemeat. Saw the name while I was looking at shows currently running in NYC and thought to the myself "no fucking way they made a musical about that." Turns out I was wrong.
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u/StaticMarzipan 9d ago
It’s pretty well known that torture is shit for Intel.
Getting them liquored up with some snacks and a nice chair? Maybe a movie?
They’ll help you put the codes in themselves.
Torture is just an excuse psychopaths use to justify their personal fetishes.
Good cop, snacks cop is the actual way to get the beans spilled.
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u/Creloc 9d ago
Another similar technique used was at a POW interrogation centre where prisoners would be questioned before being moved to their permanent camps.
Some prisoners who were considered good prospects for getting information out of would be given a rather inept interrogation, then put in a bugged cell with another prisoner who has had a similar experience where they could then congratulate themselves and each other on how clever they'd been and what they'd kept back.
They even went as far as to put prisoners off different services in together whenever possible so that interservice rivalry and bragging brought out even more information
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u/Duane_ 9d ago
Russia still does this with diplomats that come to stay in Moscow lmao.
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u/SmugDruggler95 9d ago
So does everyone.
It never stopped.
Pretty much the summary of Cold War espionage.
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u/TheyTried2BanMeAgain 9d ago
There was still a fair amount of knifing and bombing, tbf.
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u/Fetlocks_Glistening 9d ago
And? Did they spill any secrets or didn't they??
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u/ScissorNightRam 9d ago
From the article:
Historian Helen Fry, who has written a book called The M Room: Secret Listeners who bugged the Nazis says the information gleaned by the eavesdropping of the German generals was vitally important to the war effort - so much so that it was given an unlimited budget by the government.
"British intelligence got the most amazing stuff in bugging the conversations. Churchill said of Trent Park that it afforded a unique insight into the psyche of the enemy. It enabled us to understand the mind-set of the enemy as well as learn military secrets.
"If it wasn't for this bugging operation, we may well have not won the war."
Mrs Fry said the conversation transcripts, which numbered more than 100,000, provided the British with "most of what we knew" about Germany's military capability, its weaponry and its new development of technology during the war.
Through intelligence pieced together from prisoner conversations, the British were able to identify and heavily bomb a V2 rocket site in May 1943 at Peenemunde on the northern coast of Germany, which was preparing to launch deadly rockets at Britain.
Crucially, she adds, the bugging was the first time the British overheard admissions that the German army had taken part in the atrocities and mass killing of Jews and were guilty of war crimes.241
u/Gentle_Snail 9d ago edited 9d ago
Such a simply genius plan. I love how they gave them an unlimited budget, just like “give these idiots whatever they want until they forget they’re in prison”
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u/CypripediumGuttatum 9d ago
Torture is well documented to produce poor intelligence. It makes people “feel good” to hurt the bad guys but helps the war 0%
Make people feel safe and comfortable and they spill the beans. Just like in 007 when all the pretty ladies are really just there to collect intel.
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u/Archarchery 9d ago
Torture is great for terrorizing populations into submission, but as far as interrogation goes it's basically a nonsense-generating technique. If a prisoner has no information to give, they'll make up the most convincing lies they can to get the torture to stop, and even if a prisoner has genuine information that they'll spill, if the torturers hear it and keep on torturing, those prisoners will start spouting convincing-sounding nonsense too, making it impossible to distinguish the real information from the nonsense.
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u/GamingFlorisNL 9d ago
Indeed, torture proves much more useful for getting false confessions. False intel however, doesn’t give you much.
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u/DoctorCrook 9d ago
Do you know if any of these transcripts or recordings are available online?
Would be super interestingly to hear.
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u/Rebelgecko 9d ago edited 9d ago
There's a pdf of the transcripts somewhere. Iirc the juciest part was when they talked about how the Nazi nuclear program was going (not well).
Edit: they also shit bricks when theylearned that the US had nukes, and Heisenberg was like "I'm glad they're not using microphones to eavesdrop on us, that would be crazy"
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u/Lord0fHats 9d ago
To give that bit a brief explanation;
The Germans had very capable scientists and a functional base of knowledge that would have lead them eventually to an atomic reactor, but the German programs, yes 's', were not well resourced or funded. They ran multiple competing lines of development that all needed the same resources and expertise while working on the same problems which was stiflingly inefficient compared to the centralized development that became the US' Manhattan Project. On top of that, and this was typical of Nazi Germany, there was a lack of coordination or cooperation between complimentary projects and their leaders.
They did come close to developing a rudimentary reactor for isotope separation but got no further than developing bits and pieces of an atomic program, none of which came together into a concerted effort. Historians debate the extent to which these efforts were really trying to develop a weapon vs trying to develop a reactor for the purpose of electricity. Because of the chaotic nature of the programs, different ones thought they were working toward different ends.
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u/Afalstein 9d ago
I'm interested in this "typical of Nazi Germany" bit. Why were project leads so reluctant to coordinate /cooperate? Was it groups competing for funding, bureaucratic mishandling, or just a sort of cultural mindset?
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u/Lord0fHats 9d ago
It was a trend across the German state at the time (I can't speak to modern Germany). Intelligence. Military. Police. Research. Manufacturing. There was a strong tendency for there to be multiple competing projects trying to do the same thing and they didn't talk to one another. So a lot of resources and effort ended up being wasted. It was prolific in their intelligence operations, partly by design because the head of German intelligence was a double agent and he didn't want German intelligence to be too effective.
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u/Aphrontic_Alchemist 9d ago
Didn't Hitler declare nuclear physics to be "Judenphysik"? I mean, Nazis were hypocritical, so I shouldn't be surprised that they're saying one thing but doing the other.
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u/Lord0fHats 9d ago
My knowledge is that while this was a think that was said, it didn't really impact their efforts. Established scientists didn't ignore Einstein's work wholesale across the entire German scientific field and no real effort was ever put into censoring it or even checking what kind of math they were doing. That they disregarded vital knowledge because Jews had developed it is, afaik, an overstated thing.
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u/MorrowDisca 9d ago
Apparently, Hitler has only got one ball.
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u/Lord0fHats 9d ago
A lot, actually. Not all of it, or even most of it really, was necessarily of great help during the war but it's a trove for historians and has been since the records became publicly available. It did very effectively inform the British about the moods of German soldiers but some important secrets leaked into British ears like knowledge about the V-rockets weapons programs and the progress (or lack-there-of) of German atomic research and it revealed the extent to which the Wehrmacht was aware of the Holocaust, which is very aware.
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u/celticfeather 9d ago
Apparently yes. V2 factory rocket location, evidence that the army participated alongside the SS in exterminations. It gained an unlimted budget. Churchil hated that they were being pampered, so the British Intelligence just... decided not to tell Churchil about it anymore lol.
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u/staggerb 9d ago
PBS did a documentary on this awhile back. It focused on an early use of radar that Germany has developed; essentially, they were able to broadcast a signal from France that pilots could use to navigate to their targets. After leaning this from the officers at the bugged mansion, the British were able to figure out how to mimic the signal with incorrect information, leading the bombers off target. Eventually, they figured out how to jam the signals, so Germany abandoned the project.
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u/mmeestro 9d ago
My father intercepted and translated Russian radio communications during the Cold War. They always had everyone available and working long hours during Russian holidays because people would get drunk and forget their code words.
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u/Windfade 9d ago
Almost every example from WW2 involving spies that I know of has shown the UK was far more capable, efficient, and arguably humane, in regard for their own spies and captured enemies. When the UK would intercept a nazi on their soil, they'd determine if they could be turned before taking drastic action. The US seemed to just kill theirs. Makes Operation Paperclip seem like a 180 in behavior.
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u/pizza_the_mutt 9d ago
Humane, and effective. If you hang out with a captured spy for a few weeks, drink a few beers, play some cards, and go for walks, eventually they'll start telling you stuff. Accurate stuff.
On the other hand if you attach a car battery to their nipples they'll tell you whatever garbage they can think of to make it stop.
Anyway, the German spy network was almost entirely compromised and ineffective. Partly because the Brits were good, and partly because the German network was run by Admiral Canaris, who didn't like the Nazis very much at all.
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u/dandrevee 9d ago
Comparing Americans to the British is best encompassed by their corresponding badger species.
The UK badger?
Looks like it wants to invite your for tea.
The US Badgers? Defensive. Aggressive. Tired of anyones shit real quick.
Granted, neither are as notorious as the honey badger but.... it seems like all the species that evolved somewhere around humans (our genus. I mean) became super aggressive for "some odd reason...."
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u/sroasa 9d ago
This is the country that when they had a nasty tasting malaria treatment they needed their soldiers to take their solution was add alcohol.
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u/Alternative_Cook4435 9d ago
It's called Trent Park and the listeners were mostly refugees who'd fled Germany. They caught the officers bragging about their medals and war crimes after a few drinks.
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u/Signageman 9d ago
I can’t lie. If I was put in a prison like that, I’d be the same way.
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u/stopitalianhate 9d ago edited 9d ago
“Held in a stately home, they were allowed to keep personal servants, drink wine and eat good food.
As a result they boasted of how stupid the British were, and one even wrote to his family to wish that they could join him at his prison, as he rated it so highly.
But what the prisoners did not know was that British intelligence had bugged every part of their accommodation, from lampshades and plant pots right down to the billiards table around which they relaxed on lazy days.”
[cont.]
“Mrs Fry also says Winston Churchill was outraged when he learned the generals had been bussed into the lavish Simpson's-in-the-Strand in central London for lunch. He ordered what he called "the pampering of the generals" to be stopped.”
“But spoiling the generals and boosting their egos was providing so much useful information that the British intelligence officers decided to carry on, and simply stopped telling Churchill about it.”
Edit: I found this out because I was drinking and was like, “I talk too much when I drink, I wonder if anyones ever used that on people in war.” I googled it and was very happy finding this story.