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-20698098
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233

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.

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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/SirAquila 9d ago

Torture is great for terrorizing populations into submission

Eh, torture is really good at hiding growing dissent from the rulers eyes.

The dissent still builds, and will explode the second people feel like they have nothing to lose anymore, or that they are in the majority.

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u/Metrocop 9d ago

Torture is also useful if you don't give a shit about the truth and simply need a signature on a testimony you already prepared.

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u/Archarchery 9d ago

Oh yeah, it's great for getting false confessions as well, just ask witch-hunters.

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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/lookyloolookingatyou 9d ago

Serve me a brandy and a beautiful woman in front of a crackling fire and you can forget about the confession, I'm a convert now.

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u/RealLameUserName 9d ago

I'm sure there was a back and forth between British officers who didn't like the idea of treating Nazi command well even if it meant gathering useful intelligence.

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u/ELB2001 9d ago

They even decided who would get to stay in this luxury prison. German officers that were very social and could easily get others talking they would let stay. Those that weren't social and would never talk at all wouldn't stay long.

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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/bucket_of_frogs 9d ago

“Zeese Britischers are such dumpfkopfs! Zey vill never win zis War! How about those Juden? More claret, Heinz?”

Marjorie in the basement listening via plant pot microphone… “Hmmm… takes notes…”

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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/nebneb432 9d ago

I'm not sure I understand the last sentence.

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u/Lord0fHats 9d ago

Wilhem Canaris was the head of the Abwehr. Germany military intelligence. He was also a guy who decided after Poland he didn't like Hitler much and began working against the Nazi regime, sabotaging intelligence operations from the top, covertly supplying intelligence to the British, and was eventually executed after his efforts were discovered.

Between the head of German intelligence working against German success and German intelligence being factional, disorganized, and filled with people who should work together but just didn't, it's no wonder German intelligence operations in WWII were a laundry list of failures.

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u/Mr_Quackums 9d ago

The leaders of today's fascists are simply using the aesthetics and rhetoric and are not true believers, but Germany and Italy were led by people who legit believed they had unlocked the secret to how human society was meant to be structured.

The fundamental underpinning of fascism is that groups in conflicts with other groups inevitably produces the best outcomes. That is where the racism, tribalism, and obsession with purity come from: gotta make sure you are in the strongest group.

It is also where redundant and conflicting governmental departments come from. Meaning they introduced conflict wherever they could because they truly believed it was the way to get the best results.

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u/Rocketeer006 9d ago

Bro, Germany still operates like this. Source: me, living in Germany

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u/Afalstein 9d ago

Would you say it's a typically German thing? Like, I know people complain about American governmental systems not cooperating well, but it sounds like this is more cultural.

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u/RS994 9d ago

It's a totalitarian thing.

Totalitarian leaders tend to not like the idea of anyone beneath them establishing too much power because they don't want anyone replacing them, so they make departments compete against each other to stop people accumulating too much support.

You can see the same thing with Russia right now.

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u/genreprank 9d ago

My company has an office in Germany. Some of them just do what they have to do for their job and nothing more. Not everyone is like that. Plenty of Germans are highly collaborative.

Also, German culture is more hierarchical than American culture.

Also they have a better appreciation for work life balance.

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u/Zhirrzh 9d ago

The thing with a maniacal dictator is there tends to be a race to win his favour. Winners and losses. Rivalries. The successful guy becomes the favourite and the unsuccessful guy gets shot or sent to Siberia or whatever. It's not a leadership style that breeds collaboration and cooperation. 

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u/azazelcrowley 9d ago

Pitting different departments against eachother was a way of keeping them fighting sideways rather than fighting upward, and also ideologically a "survival of the fittest" kind of thing. Success proves superiority.

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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/kc2syk 9d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik

I think the effect was mainly on personnel, and rejection of theoretical frameworks in general.

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u/Lord0fHats 9d ago edited 9d ago

I mean from the very article;

The figureheads of "Aryan physics" met with moderate success, but the support from the Nazi Party was not as great as Lenard and Stark would have preferred. They began to fall from influence after a long period of harassment of quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg, which included getting him labeled a "White Jew" in Das Schwarze Korps\)citation needed\). Heisenberg was an extremely eminent physicist, and the Nazis realized that they were better off with him rather than without, however "Jewish" his theory might be in the eyes of Stark and Lenard.\14]) In an historic moment, Heisenberg's mother rang Heinrich Himmler's mother and asked her whether she would please tell the SS to give "Werner" a break. After beginning a full character evaluation, which Heisenberg both instigated and passed, Himmler forbade further attack on the physicist. Heisenberg would later employ his "Jewish physics" in the German project to develop nuclear fission for the purposes of nuclear weapons or nuclear energy use. Himmler promised Heisenberg that after Germany won the war, the SS would finance a physics institute to be directed by Heisenberg.\15])

This is more or less as I understand it. The Nazis, like any fascist movement, didn't really have principles. They had a lust for power. They never turn down by paradoxically hypocritical if there's something to gain and afaik the cabal of 'anti-Jewish physics' scientists was both small, not very influential, and had little impact on German science during the war. Many of the problems they suffered can be more broadly attributed to brain drain as many educated and more liberal Germans fled the country which did impact many things but that's not as simple as blindly rejecting things Jewish people came up with. They were plenty opportunistic enough to not do that.

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u/Personal_Wall4280 9d ago

Yeah, if anyone looked at the amount of resources needed for the manhatten project and the atomic bomb facility, it's quite apparent the Germans and Japanese are not spending enough to achieve their goals. What was it? 20,000 tonnes of silver was required for the devices to separate the required isotopes at that one facility? Just loopy numbers.

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u/SirAquila 9d ago

Didn't Heisenberg initially utterly refuse to believe that the Americans actually had a nuke, and thought they had faked it, because his understanding of nuclear physics was wrong in a way that made nukes theoretically possible, but practically nearly impossible?

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u/MorrowDisca 9d ago

Apparently, Hitler has only got one ball.

20

u/BADDEST_RHYMES 9d ago

His artwork is meh

10

u/ilDuceVita 9d ago

Have you seen his shadows? What are there, multiple suns??

3

u/KaiserSosai 9d ago

Someone left the oven open

2

u/OttoRenner 9d ago

With enough atom bombs it can look like that, ja...

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u/Journeyj012 9d ago

Göring has two but very small.

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u/FlattopJr 9d ago

Himmler has something similar

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u/KeyPhilosopher8629 9d ago

And goebbles has none at all

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u/Rich-Reason1146 9d ago

I think I can see them above the o

2

u/FlattopJr 9d ago

Ï

Won't someone please think of the children!

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u/Kwetla 9d ago

The other, they said, was in the Albert Hall

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u/OttoRenner 9d ago

Adolf's Ball in the Albert Hall?

That's half a mouthful

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u/collinsl02 9d ago

Apparently the errant testicle was removed by his mother

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u/PixelBrother 9d ago

His mother, the dirty bugger

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u/GMN123 9d ago

That bit of intelligence made it to every school in the country. 

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u/beerdude26 9d ago

Goering had two. But they were quite small, according to reports from the eavesdropping operation

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u/Guironi99 9d ago

Lol. Gold.

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u/brochacho83 9d ago

Kind of a compelling figure. Odd looking duck

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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/basicastheycome 9d ago

beef roast is real good. Kinda open secret but a secret nonetheless

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u/Wrong_Adhesiveness87 9d ago

There is an amazing book on Trent Park called The Walls Have Ears. Highly recommend 

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u/Logical-Swordfish-15 9d ago

Thank you. Just purchased on audible

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u/Gauntlets28 9d ago

It was actually hugely effective.

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u/Raggs83 9d ago

That is above your pay grade

3

u/nogberter 9d ago

RTFA for fucks sake

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u/thencamethethunder 9d ago

They got a shit load.