by Helen Fry
The king granted permission and the paddock became an extension of the London Cage until 1946, with two segregated areas: accommodation and support. An aerial photograph taken by the RAF in 1946 shows that it was a triple-fence-secured compound with a dividing fence between the two areas and a guard tower in each. In the accommodation area, there were dozens of tents: five marquees and forty-nine bell tents (seven rows of seven); two bell tents and two marquees; and in a support area, three bell tents and two marquees, along with eleven single-storey, mainly flat-roofed support buildings. The marquees were probably British army hospital marquees.18
The king and the palace officials were unaware of what was unfolding. For the duration of the war, the London Cage did not appear on any official list of POW camps under British jurisdiction. The International Red Cross would not find out about its existence until 1946. What went on behind closed doors remained a closely guarded secret until complaints of ill-treatment emerged at the end of the war from Nazi war criminals held there. Foliage and bushes obscured the barbed wire along the boundary fence. No unsuspecting member of the public would notice the bars on the windows, painted white to blend in with the frame. To an outsider, the London Cage would pass as a grand residence for a wealthy businessman or a foreign prince. Its millionaire neighbours never suspected that the real occupants of Nos. 6–8 were the British intelligence services.
2
A VERY ‘GERMAN’ ENGLISHMAN
At the outbreak of war in September 1939, British intelligence lacked any formal guidelines or training in the interrogation of enemy prisoners of war. The scope and possibilities of interrogation were little known and entirely unpredictable. A full policy was urgently required and interrogators needed to be swiftly trained. British intelligence turned its attention to its most experienced interrogator from the First World War, the 57-year-old Alexander Scotland. With years of experience in the handling and interrogation of German prisoners from 1915 to 1918, Scotland headed a new interrogation unit within Military Intelligence branch MI9, called the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (PWIS), which included personnel from the Intelligence Corps. Known for his tough approach, Scotland was tasked with setting up its headquarters in one of the most exclusive streets in the capital.
A man of strong personality and with a formidable reputation as an interrogator, Scotland was disliked by most people who crossed his path, including many of his own staff at the London Cage. In stark contrast to his humorous, conversationalist playwright uncle, George Bernard Shaw, Scotland was not a popular choice of guest at the dinner table. But he had an unusual past, and that made him both controversial and interesting. Scotland spoke German, Spanish, Dutch and Afrikaans. Moreover, he thought and acted like a German. One of only two British officers ever to have served in the German army (1904–07),1 he had a comprehensive understanding of the German mindset and psyche, garnered from having lived among the Germans in South-West Africa immediately after the Boer War. His experience made him invaluable to British intelligence in the First World War, the inter-war years and into the Second World War, during which he was able to develop urgently needed and successful methods for the interrogation of German prisoners based on his understanding of their psychological profile and, therefore, on how best to make them talk. As commanding officer of the London Cage for five years, then the War Crimes Investigation Unit for three years, Scotland set the rules. How different the story might have been if a different commanding officer had been appointed. In army circles, the London Cage was rumoured to have ‘a bit of a reputation’ – not a place a prisoner would wish to be sent.
South-West Africa: A melting pot
Alexander Scotland sailed for German South-West Africa in 1903, a young man with idealistic dreams in search of a promising new future. Born on 15 July 1882 in Middlesbrough in the north of England, he came from humble beginnings, the son of a railway engineer and one of nine children. He left school at the age of fourteen, worked for a time in London in an office, and spent a year in Australia.
He had entertained hopes of joining the British forces in South Africa, but with the end of the Boer War those hopes were dashed. He took up work with a trader in German South-West Africa, now Namibia.2 The biggest customer was the German army, but only a member of the German armed forces could trade with it. That is apparently why Scotland decided to enlist in the kaiser’s army in German South-West Africa at this time. The Khoikhoi Wars, which had kicked off in 1903, were then raging, and Scotland served in the German army for four years until 1907. At the end of his service, ‘Herr Schottland’, as he was known, was awarded the Order of the Prussian Red Eagle.
On demobilisation, the 25-year-old Scotland fortuitously crossed paths with Major Wade, British attaché to the German forces in South-West Africa. Scotland was immediately recruited into intelligence activities and tasked with spying on the German army. Major Wade told him: ‘Learn all you can about the German army and one day you will be a valuable man for your country.’3 How true that turned out to be, for it marked the beginning of a distinguished four-decade-long career in British intelligence, during which Scotland became one of its most prized German experts. It is my belief that Scotland’s unusual career over several decades, often abroad in interesting places at key moments in history, meant that he might have provided information to SIS on a casual basis.
In 1908, Scotland was posted to Keetmanshoop to carry out intelligence duties under the guise of being a trader.4 He was to observe the German military forces in the region and assess their strength and the new weapons being deployed. It was here that Scotland discovered that the Germans were using a secret new gun. From 1910, he surreptitiously photographed the weapons and reported back to General Jan Smuts at British intelligence headquarters in Cape Town.
Although the Boer War had formally concluded in 1901, it had not ended the conflict in the region. South Africa witnessed numerous uprisings between native Khoikhoi and German forces in a four-year battle. From Keetmanshoop, Scotland was transferred to Cape Colony as a civilian clerk representing a successful enterprise company, South African Territories Ltd, again as a cover for his intelligence work.5 It is perhaps one of the oldest ruses in the book: to place an agent in a business to mask his real duties as a spy. Stationed at the remote backwater of Ramonsdrift, between Cape Colony and German South-West Africa, Scotland travelled widely and spied for the British. Here he rapidly learned to speak fluent German and Cape Dutch. German forces in the region unexpectedly became his biggest customer, purchasing cans of food, biscuits and soft drinks from his company. He began to follow Major Wade’s advice and became an expert on German troop movements and rearmament, travelling regularly from Ramonsdrift to Cape Town with his precious information.
Much of Scotland’s work was carried out on horseback and took him close to the protected diamond region of Lüderitzbucht. On one occasion, he was assigned to investigate two rogue diamond traders who had moved into the Lüderitzbucht area in search of a new stream. This was the stomping ground of two other British intelligence officers: Thomas Joseph Kendrick and Kendrick’s brother-in-law, Rex Pearson, both of whom would serve the British Secret Intelligence Service for over forty years.6
Another figure in British espionage in South Africa at this time was Claude Dansey, who had also been drafted into intelligence duties in the region immediately after the Boer War. Having served with the British South African Police during the Matabele Rebellion (1896–97), he had gone on to fight bandits in Borneo. From 1899 to 1901, he was a lieutenant involved in reconnaissance missions, and from 1904 to 1909 he served as colonial political officer in Somaliland. It is believed that the paths of Dansey and Scotland crossed in South Africa, at a time when both were carrying out intelligence duties; Dansey and Kendrick were among the early members of the Secret Service Bureau, founded in 1909, before it split into MI5 and MI6. Decades later, Dansey would rise to become deputy head of MI6.
A prisoner of the Germans
At the t
ime of the fatal shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, Alexander Scotland was living in Keetmanshoop. There were immediate signs of war in South-West Africa as the German forces embarked upon their expansion. In response, neighbouring Dominion forces mobilised against them. A priority for British forces was the capture of the key ports of Lüderitzbucht and Swakopmund, where German troops had radio equipment that could transmit messages as far as Nauen in Germany in good weather conditions. Knocking out the coastal wireless transmitters was one of the first priorities to protect the British Empire in the region.
Although Scotland had served for four years in the German army, the Germans were unsure which side he was really on, and he immediately fell under suspicion as a British spy. His lodgings in Keetmanshoop were searched by German military police, but no incriminating evidence was found. This did not prevent Scotland’s arrest, but nevertheless he fortunately managed to get a message to General Smuts in Cape Town about German troop movements.
Scotland was taken to Windhoek prison to begin what turned out to be eleven months behind bars. His ability to withstand his German captors’ isolation treatment – holding him in solitary confinement in a narrow cell measuring 5 feet by 12 feet, with no newspapers or books – tells us much about his character. He had already been warned that if he tried to escape, he would be shot. Not knowing whether he would ever be released, Scotland made the conscious decision to use the situation to observe and understand how the Germans treated their prisoners. It gave him a unique and unprecedented insight into the German psyche and military method. During the long hours of many interrogations at the hands of German officer Lieutenant Hepka, Scotland observed the techniques being used and resisted being broken. Whenever he protested about his incarceration, he was told: ‘Don’t worry, you will never leave this place alive. We are going to shoot you.’7
It can be argued that Scotland’s own later success as an interrogator and expert ‘psychologist’ of the German mind was honed during his long hours of solitary confinement in Windhoek prison, during which he processed what was happening to him and stored it in his mind for future use. Living with the possibility that he could be shot any day was an invaluable, if disconcerting, experience. He later wrote:
I gained a first-hand knowledge of the hopes and fears of a prisoner-of-war so that in later years, I could guess pretty well what a German prisoner might be hoping to hide when he was interrogated, how he might conceal useful information by verbal false scents and how ultimately his ‘front’ might be broken down.8
Within a year, the tide had turned for German forces in South-West Africa. On 9 July 1915, they surrendered to the Union Defence Forces under Afrikaner General Louis Botha. Just days before his thirty-third birthday, Scotland was released from prison.
The Intelligence Corps
Scotland sailed for England, hungry for action and determined to be drafted into Military Intelligence. He soon realised that enlisting in the Intelligence Corps would be harder than expected. No Whitehall department seemed willing to recruit him into its intelligence section. But Scotland was not the kind of man to let bureaucracy or officialdom stand in the way of his ambition or belief that he had an expert knowledge of the German forces that would be of value to the War Office. He attended an interview with the Inns of Court infantry battalion, but initially received no encouragement unless he could provide a strong reference. Scotland offered the name of General Smuts and waited for the reaction. It worked. General Smuts cabled a reference a few days later from South Africa.
From December 1915 to May 1916, Scotland underwent officer training with the Inns of Court, followed by a course of instruction on intelligence duties in London up to July 1916. He was then dispatched to General Headquarters in France at Le Havre with the rank of second lieutenant for ‘special intelligence duties’, and was briefed by Captain James (later General Sir James) Marshall-Cornwall of the Intelligence Corps.9
The next three years marked an exciting time for Scotland, as he was sent on several covert reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines in Belgium. He often went on undisclosed intelligence forays into neutral Holland and passed easily as a Dutchman because he spoke fluent Cape Dutch. The sandy-haired Scotland had no striking physical features (something of an asset in the world of espionage), which enabled him to blend into the background. He linked up with a network of civilian Belgians called La Dame Blanche, which was being run from Paris by British intelligence, and which sent coded messages in newspapers and knitwear across the lines from Belgium to France.10 They observed and collected valuable data for British intelligence on German troop movements, numbers and equipment being moved by train across Belgium towards the front line. It enabled the British to begin to work out the Germans’ ensuing battle plans.
During a period of leave in England, Scotland met his future wife Roma at a party at the Savoy Hotel and they married a short time later. But that did not stop Scotland’s intelligence work. As the war entered its final year, and with the capture of thousands of German prisoners of war in France, Scotland was tasked with classifying the prisoners in ‘the cage’ – the transit camp and interrogation quarters – at Le Havre. He collated vital information for the British military authorities and was subsequently appointed their ‘German expert’ in France. There was much speculation among the prisoners about Scotland, given he could speak fluent German with no accent, and behaved like a native German. At Le Havre he interrogated over 3,000 German prisoners of war; the success he achieved seemed to be down to his understanding of their mindset.
In a reference at the end of the war, countersigned by Lieutenant Colonel A. Fenn, Major Wynne of the General Staff wrote of Scotland that he had ‘compiled most valuable information regarding German manpower. His experience while working with the Germans in their South West African Campaign has given this officer an insight into the German character, which he has used successfully in the present war.’11 There was a glowing reference, too, from Lieutenant Colonel Marshall-Cornwall, who wrote that Scotland was a man of ability and high energy whose ‘knowledge of the German language and of the German character enabled him to render the greatest assistance to the British General Staff in conducting the interrogation and classification of thousands of German prisoners which fell into our hands during the battles of 1916, 1917, and 1918.’ Because of his competence, discretion and energy, Scotland was placed in charge of this entire duty.12
After the Armistice on 11 November 1918, Scotland returned to South-West Africa where he worked on a farm estate. In 1929, he sailed with his wife to Argentina to work for an unnamed enterprise company. He spent the next six years travelling around the Argentine, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, discreetly gathering information on the immigrant German community for British intelligence.13 Oral tradition suggests that Scotland worked for MI5, but it has not been possible to provide credible evidence to support this.
While he was in these parts of South America it is possible that Scotland acted as an ‘along-sider’ for SIS (the latter of course cannot be acknowledged or denied by MI6). South America in the late 1920s was a hotbed of espionage, business and diplomatic parties, with secret agents working out of embassies and consulates. In Argentina, Scotland lived and worked as a company manager in the north-eastern regions of Corrientes and neighbouring Entre Ríos between the Paraná and Uruguay rivers. He discovered that it was general practice for a German national to make contact with the local German consulate and offer his services in a loose espionage role. He was in the region during the crucial Chaco War – the bloody struggle between Bolivia and Paraguay that lasted nearly three years and led to the death of over 100,000 native troops. According to Scotland’s official military record,14 he himself served in the Chaco War between July and September 1932. Although his record makes no reference to his regiment for those three months, it is likely that he was there on intelligence duties.
Scotland had accumulated a substantial picture of German es
pionage activities in South America by the time Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany the following January. ‘By 1933,’ Scotland commented, ‘I watched the spectacle of a country gone mad.’15 It was perhaps no coincidence that he made three tours of Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1937. On his itinerary during one visit was a meeting at the Colonial Institute in Stuttgart with its head, Captain Schmidt. According to Scotland, during the meeting Schmidt raised the issue of a scheme to enable 200 German-Jewish families to emigrate to South America. There is no apparent reason to doubt Scotland’s testimony. He kept in touch with Schmidt and discovered several years later that the Colonial Institute had become the main centre for controlling German agents based in Africa and South America. Scotland also made a point of visiting old friends in Germany from his days in South-West Africa. His ‘HUMINT’ – human intelligence – was all about building up contacts and friends in Germany and casually enquiring about life under Nazism.
Coffee with Hitler
In 1937, Scotland took another trip to Germany. In Munich, he sought out a wealthy old friend from his days in South-West Africa, identified only as Herr K. A life of luxury could not hide the fact that Herr K was in very poor health. But his mind remained sharp. He kept asking Scotland about his experiences during the Khoikhoi Wars and in the Orange River valley, and his relationship with the German colonial administrators. The conversation rolled on from afternoon tea to evening and supper. Scotland had no inkling that it was all was being recorded.