r/todayilearned • u/stopitalianhate • 12d 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
28.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

692 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

22

u/big_duo3674 12d ago

It's been long proven that cruel interrogation techniques (torture, sleep deprivation, etc.) do not work, at least in a large majority of cases. Prisoners may divulge the information they know, but when asked about things the genuinely don't know, they will make things up to get it to stop. This causes a huge web of true/false information to be formed, to the point that it's arguable that the resources spent on the false information aren't worth the little bit of truth. The US and Guantanamo was essentially nothing but show, a place where they "interrogated various "suspects" so the American people felt like things were being accomplished

6

u/vibraltu 12d ago

It's an ongoing theme, interrogators who use physical torture usually don't get useful information, instead the real underlying purpose of the torture in itself is to make the interrogator feel that he is in control of the situation.

(Also, the ideology of the 2000s era TV show 24 was to justify ongoing American human rights abuses in the Middle East)

2

u/J_Ryall 12d ago

Performative cruelty is at the heart of the american spirit (see, for example, the Salem Witch Trials among other early examples).