Tapping Hitler's Generals

We often shook our heads about our people, who seemed to be committing suicide, and at times we raged over a leadership without accountability which was leading this people to annihilation, riding to the death the mad idea of their intense heroism… accordingly we saw from a distance the horrifyingly irretrievable situation, apparently with no way out. Then we would retire once more to our ‘monastic cells’, or into the ‘monastery garden’–pious brothers who had once been warriors… We tried to understand how it had come about, where its origins and errors lay, who was responsible. One thing we saw clearly: to lose two World Wars in a lifetime seemed like a judgement of God.[58]

It is natural to ask whether the inmates of Trent Park, and at the other two centres, knew that they were being spied upon. The authenticity of the protocols might be doubted if the generals suspected that the British were actively tapping their knowledge, for it would then be plausible for them to lace their conversations with disinformation. British methods of information gathering were by no means unknown in Germany. Before his transfer abroad in October 1940, the fighter pilot Franz von Werra was for a short time at Trent Park. After his escape from Canada, he reported extensively on British interrogation methods.[59] On 11 June 1941 Ausland-Abwehr issued guidelines for the conduct of Wehrmacht personnel in British captivity, warning expressly of stool pigeons masquerading in German uniform, and hidden microphones. It was pointed out emphatically that the enemy had succeeded in obtaining valuable information by such means.[60] The British protocols show that most German prisoners disregarded these warnings very quickly, irrespective of how hard it had been drummed into them, and gossiped habitually with their colleagues about military secrets.

The conversations of NCOs contain repeated reference to the National Socialist propaganda film Kämpfer hinter Stacheldraht (‘Warriors behind Barbed Wire’)[61] aimed at preventing careless talk. Yet in the same breath they would then proceed to enlighten their colleagues on what they had deliberately withheld from the interrogation officers,[62] thus dictating their secrets directly into British microphones, so to speak. Most German PoWs gave no thought to the possibility of their being overheard, or they would not have incriminated themselves by discussing their involvement in war crimes.[63] Only in a single case is it known for certain that prisoners discovered hidden microphones.[64] Officers were no different to other ranks in this respect. Oberst Kessler said that he had withheld from the intelligence officer at an interrogation centre details of his attitude to Nazism, then told Oberst Reimann what his attitude was (Document 28). There are numerous such examples which show that even senior officers at Trent Park fell into the craftily designed CSDIC (UK) trap.

To prevent the monotony of camp life causing the flow of talk to dry up, the British supplied falsified newspapers and magazines to provoke ever-more lively debate. Trent Park intelligence officers took selected prisoners on long excursions. This method succeeded in making General Crüwell more forthcoming. He had been initially ‘singularly uncommunicative’ but after a day out sightseeing he spoke for the first time about his impressions, then on general matters and finally on military questions.[65] In the course of time he opened up to ‘one of our best interrogators’. Especially valuable were Crüwell’s conversations with Oberleutnant zur See Wolfgang Römer, commander of U-353 sunk in the North Atlantic on 16 October 1942. Roemer responded to his enquiries by describing U-boat tactics which the British found to be of inestimable value.[66] When General von Thoma was made Senior German Officer in June 1944, he made it his custom to get new arrivals to speak out on their experiences. No stool pigeon could have done it better.