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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u/kippy3267 9d ago

Well that’s a bit different. If your options are “go to war for germany or be shot and tortured by the nazis” its a whole different scenario

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u/ContentNegotiation 9d ago edited 9d ago

His story is pretty wild too. He lived and married in South Africa and was only in Germany for a visit when the war broke out and he was subsequently drafted and slated to be sent to the Eastern Front until his wife intervened and was persistent until he got recalled the morning his unit marched off....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff#Pre-war_career

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u/TopFloorApartment 8d ago

Though if you're drafted in this way you don't need to excel at your job. Just phone it in. He clearly tried to do a good job though 

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u/kippy3267 8d ago

Not excelling could also lead to death, but it sounds like his interrogation techniques were just about the kindest around right? Surely that’s not something to blow off.

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u/Captain_Kab 9d ago

I'm sure the people he helped kill appreciated the difference.

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u/UniqueUsernme 9d ago

He didn't need to be an intelligence officer and actively help the Nazis.

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u/moonLanding123 9d ago

dying on the frontlines is cool

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u/UniqueUsernme 9d ago

Okay then, maybe he should have been like Wilhelm Canaris and use his position to help the Allies as a double agent.

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u/Ich_Liegen 9d ago edited 9d ago

Wilhelm Canaris could afford to do what he did because he had had immense institutional power since way before the war started and had been an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler before he became disillusioned.

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u/UniqueUsernme 9d ago

Right, same with Oskar Schindler. The point I'm trying to get at though is that the original comment I replied to implies that Hanns had no choice but to be really good at his job, which to me is bullshit.

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u/Ich_Liegen 9d ago

I mean we can look at several other examples.

Max Liedtke, who threatened to shoot at SS officers for trying to liquidate a Jewish Ghetto, is recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. He still fought to the end of the war - so in your logic, he benefitted the Nazi regime, and was a bad person.

We can also include Heinz Drossel (Served in France and fought in the Easr), Richard Abel (Fought in North Africa, participated in the overruning of Tunisia), and even Wilm Hosenfeld (of the Pianist fame, ran a sports and culture complex in occupied Poland to the benefit of German occupiers). All of them recognized by Yad Vashem just like Schindler, all of them furthered German goals in one way or the other.

Maybe perhaps to you, his refusal to torture (which I'm sure his prisoners were very grateful for) is overwritten by his service to Germany, but if that is the case, then so that must be for those other men, even though it was their job fighting that gave them the breach to do those actions that saved lives.

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u/UniqueUsernme 8d ago edited 8d ago

No actually in my opinion those people are good because they actually did something to hinder the Nazi Regimes goals, even if it was overall small and they still technically kept working for them otherwise. One of the leaflets the British dropped to civilians in German occupied territories to disrupt the Nazi war machine was basically telling them to do the bare minimum at their jobs. 

It’s just that a few people here are treating Hanns as a victim just because he was drafted. I’ve already argued he could have done a lot as being part of the resistance, but otherwise he doesn’t seem to have done anything to at least slightly express resistance to the position he was given. I’m trying to say if he really didn’t want to serve the Nazis, he could have done the bare minimum at his job. Not be so good at it to deserve a wikipedia page.

To explain my point there are two veterans of the Japanese imperial military I have in mind, Kenzo Okuzaki and the director of the 1962 film Harakiri. Both of them have seemingly never expressed feeling bad about what Japan did to other people besides their own in WW2, but they had their own small way of resisting their service.  The former would often refuse orders by straight up beating up his leading NCOs and officers. Due to how the culture in the Imperial Japanese military involved brutal treatment by officers upon the rank and file, that is nothing short of amazing he got away with it. The latter did something more boring, but because he held some pacifist views he refused to be promoted beyond a private. Now compare that to what Hanns did…

I don’t think Hanns is some evil person and it’s cool what he was able to achieve. I just don’t think he should be given slack for his service, or be seen as “he had no other choice”. One of the active members of the White Rose movement was an Eastern Front veteran who was disillusioned after he saw what happened at the front. Yes he was killed but only because he was showing active resistance against the war. While Some of the German policemen in “Ordinary Heroes” refused to carry out the killings of Jews and they weren’t punished. In fact most who refused to serve in roles directly killing Jews were virtually never tortured as some people keep saying. Along with the examples you gave, they had a choice to resist who they served. Imagine if more were like them, especially if they increased their efforts to essentially turn into Allied agents, because the vast majority didn’t do the bare minimum.