London Cage

by Helen Fry

  In his published memoirs, Gary Leon, a German-Jewish refugee who was transferred from the Pioneer Corps into the Intelligence Corps in 1944, barely mentions the nature of his work at the London Cage, but he does cite one incident of psychological blackmail of an unnamed German sergeant who had taken part in the shooting of British soldiers captured in battle. Leon tried to gain a confession from him about his role in the atrocity:

  He would not talk. I asked him if he was married and he told me that he had a wife and daughter. I asked where they were and he told me. I then put it to him that the Russians were about to take that town, if indeed they were not already in it, and a word from me to the Soviet Embassy next door would make sure that he would never see his wife and child again. He broke down and told me enough for the case to be brought to trial after the war in Hamburg.6

  The postscript to the story is that, during his trial, the prisoner claimed that undue influence had been brought to bear during his incarceration at the London Cage, and that his confession had been extracted by threats. It was enough for the prosecution to drop the case, and he never faced justice for his war crimes.

  Another example of psychologically unnerving a prisoner was the case of an SS colonel whose cell was searched at night by a guard who taunted him with the words, ‘I’m searching for nails in the wall. Don’t hang yourself here; that’s for later.’

  In the case of three German prisoners who claimed to be doctors, Scotland suspected from their interrogations that only two of them had received full training. It was important to work out the profile and history of each prisoner who was sent to the cage. To test the case, the men were brought to Scotland’s office. He instructed the suspect ‘doctor’ to remove the appendix of one of his comrades. The other two prisoners, a senior doctor and surgeon, protested that there was no need for an operation – no one had appendicitis. At this point, Scotland exhibited his sinister side and called their bluff. ‘If I say that you are to have an operation, you will have an operation!’ he barked at them in German. The third prisoner then stammered that he was only a second-year medical student. Perhaps he was the lucky one; having secured the truth, Scotland ordered him to be posted off to another prisoner-of-war camp as a medical orderly. It is not known what happened to the other two doctors.

  When Scotland’s instincts told him that a prisoner was hiding something, he appears to have been determined to extract the secret by whatever means necessary. That included forcing a prisoner to run for up to six hours around the paths in the paddock area of the cage (see chapter 1). There were numerous cases of prisoners collapsing on the parade ground and of temporary hospitalisation during exercises. Prisoners could find themselves bound and locked in thin-walled lockers and rolled around the parade ground for forty minutes. Many returned from their outdoor exercise in a state of exhaustion. It was all apparently designed to break their will to resist, and it usually succeeded. But four prisoners whom the interrogators failed to break ended up as ‘suicide cases’ (discussed in chapter 15).

  Discipline

  The prisoners who arrived at the cage were often deeply imbued with Nazi ideology and committed to the belief that Germany could still win the war. These were some of the toughest men that the interrogators encountered throughout the war. The challenges were numerous, and success relied on their careful handling; and that was usually down to Colonel Scotland, who, as the commanding officer, ran the cage according to his own tough rules. The guards sometimes came up against resistance from German officers who refused to get out of bed. They dealt with the Germans the same way as they would any British soldier who refused to get up: ‘Their beds were turned over and they found themselves underneath. Their uniforms were taken away and they were set to work on cleaning the London Cage and other manual chores for three days.’7

  Barking orders at prisoners was apparently commonplace. Fritz Wenzel, a U-boat commander who first spent time as a prisoner at MI19’s Trent Park site, knew about the harsh conditions in the London Cage. In an interview, he recalled: ‘Their tone was very harsh and even brutal. I shouldn’t have liked an extended cure at their hands. I get naturally obstinate and resentful if anyone bawls at me, and I shouldn’t have had much to laugh at with them, for they were bawling all the time.’8

  Disruptive prisoners were sent to the London Cage from other camps or cages for disciplining. One particular ardent young Nazi who had been causing trouble in his POW camp felt that he was waging a private war on the British army – a war which, in Scotland’s view, he adamantly believed he could win.9 He was summoned to appear before Scotland, who decided to challenge him to a test of toughness. Knowing the German would obey orders from someone of higher military rank, even if British, Scotland ordered him to remain standing bolt upright and not speak unless spoken to. Scotland carried on with work at his desk, ignoring the sullen, defiant Nazi, who was given food and taken to the toilet whenever necessary. Then Scotland left for the evening.

  The incident was censored out of his original manuscript by MI5, but in it Scotland recalled:

  Hour after hour the Nazi stood in my room. The light was kept on during the night and he was not allowed to sleep. He stood there for twenty-six hours. Then the young Nazi declared, ‘I give in.’ He asked to speak with me. I mellowed towards the submissive German, offered him a chair and a cigarette.10

  No longer resistant to questioning, the German gave Scotland the information he asked for. Why did Scotland believe he had succeeded? In his words: ‘I was able to discipline this man in such a manner because he was foolish enough to let me challenge his toughness and his pride, and ignorant enough to think he could not be handled or out-witted.’ Scotland achieved results with ‘minor discomfort on the part of the prisoner’.

  Little patience was reserved for another unnamed prisoner, who had caused trouble in his camp by reading anti-Jewish literature and being so abusive to the guards as to provoke an incident. The uncomfortable surroundings of the London Cage did not necessarily dampen the Nazi’s ego and objectionable attitude towards the guards. Sergeant Prion is said to have cautioned Scotland that his guards were close to physically assaulting the prisoner. Scotland called all officers and NCOs of the guards into Room 22. The prisoner was brought in. Scotland reports that he confronted the prisoner with the facts and laid before him his belief that he was trying to provoke a violent reaction or physical assault in order to make a formal complaint about the London Cage. Scotland ordered the prisoner to kneel down and, in his own words, ‘proceeded to box his ears’ with his bare hands.11 According to Scotland, the prisoner sprang to his feet, ready to strike back, but Scotland was already rounding his desk. He explained in fluent German how the punishment was no different from that meted out by a commanding officer in the German army for such riotous behaviour and lack of discipline. Although this was the last of any trouble from this particular officer, he was called as a witness during the Sagan trials in 1946 to testify to the ill-treatment of prisoners at the London Cage. The ‘regimental box on the ears’ became sixty punches with a clenched fist. Even allowing for a degree of embellishment of the truth, the military court decided to dismiss this evidence against Scotland.

  Scotland may have believed that it was acceptable to apply moderate physical force to discipline a prisoner, but not to obtain military information. He wrote: ‘Nazi prisoners expected to be beaten up; after all, they were past masters in the practice … but this occurred only in one instance at the cage and that was after the war.’12 Predictably, this was edited out of the final version of his manuscript by MI5 and the War Office.

  Occasionally, Colonel Scotland was called upon to deal with particularly disruptive and volatile incidents at other POW camps. This took him to Oldham, Lancashire, where trouble had flared up and some 500 paratroopers and SS men had taken over the third floor of an old cotton mill. Scotland arrived at a tense moment, with the staff having withheld food from the insurgents for two days in an attempt to discipline them. Scotland explains
how he refused to be intimidated by the sheer number involved or by their uncooperativeness.13 His first move was to call for the 500 men to be brought before him for an inspection. The camp staff looked on in disbelief as he entered the room alone, with no guards, to find the prisoners standing bolt upright. Scotland knew he could rely on the German sense of military discipline when asked to stand to attention by a senior ranking officer. Walking down the line, he paused occasionally to look them up and down. There was total silence.

  According to Scotland, he stood behind the prisoners and barked ‘About turn!’ The men obeyed. Scotland turned to the senior German NCO and remarked that he was disappointed with the discipline of the men, because they did not know how to parade. And why, he asked, did their eyes follow him when he moved around the room? Scotland proceeded to address the men with a speech they were not expecting; it is reproduced in full in his unpublished memoirs, but censored out of the book by MI5. Scotland told them that they were prisoners of war who would be punished with bare rations and no privileges if they refused to cooperate. He reminded them that their rations were generous, and if they continued to rebel, they would be kept in the room until their repatriation to Germany and given very little food. ‘By then,’ he told them, ‘you may not be strong enough to march.’ He acknowledged that they had grievances and gave them the option of sending a deputation of six men to him at any time to discuss the matter. He then left the room. Four hours later, a deputation came to see him. Their grievance was quite basic: some prisoners of war were allowed outside the camp for work duties, but they had to stay within the camp’s confines. Scotland told them frankly that prisoners who behaved in camp would have privileges. He agreed that 15 per cent of the SS and paratroopers could work outside the camp immediately, and that if their behaviour improved, that number would increase. ‘Make no mistake,’ he told them. ‘Those men who won’t work and won’t obey orders and don’t behave will remain in that room.’

  Scotland left the camp and life there settled down. He himself said that he always worked on the golden rule that German prisoners of war should be treated as they expected to be treated. When they broke the rules, all were to be punished, and the whole group would find a solution to the ill-disciplined comrades.

  Colonel Scotland was at pains to protect some prisoners from rough treatment if they were proving to be a valuable asset. One such person was 24-year-old Kurt Koenig, aka Karl Kubelka, who arrived in Britain in the autumn of 1942. A deserter from the German army and an anti-Nazi, he was interrogated by Colonel Scotland and Captain Cyril MacLeod at the London Cage on 12 October 1942. He was questioned about his time in Madrid in order to establish whether he was, in fact, a German spy. Koenig was allegedly in trouble with the Gestapo for subversive activities.

  Scotland was particularly concerned ‘lest MI5 should handle Koenig in a manner which would disturb his present cooperative state of mind’.14 Koenig was considered by Scotland to be ‘of somewhat higher education than the average German and exceptionally reliable’.15 The interrogation report survives and demonstrates the valuable material that Koenig was able to provide to MI19, ranging from key military installations in Germany to field posts, German units, ground personnel, railway engine sheds, bridges, camouflaged water works, and a plan of the port and town of Bremen. Koenig revealed during interrogation that the crack battalions of SS units were given the best-quality equipment and the newest wireless transmitter sets. Scotland told MI5 interrogator Helenus ‘Buster’ Milmo that Koenig was, in his view, ‘one of the most valuable prisoners of war who had been handled by his department since the beginning of the war’.16 He was in no doubt that Koenig could have supplied him with a considerable amount of further military information, but did not do so.

  Scotland concluded that Koenig was ‘an exceptionally fit and strong man for an ordinary soldier. The worse impression he makes on me is his obvious unsuitability for normal infiltration operations. In conclusion, to me it does not all add up.’17 He wrote to Victor Caroe at MI5 a letter marked ‘MOST SECRET’, dated 28 October 1942:

  The amount of general knowledge he [Koenig] has is far above what could be considered normal in even a high class workman … his spoken German is that of the local lower class in Bremen. He gave us a great deal of general information which he knew would be helpful and full details of his own small military unit. But on a point of precise information on the use of diesel motors in transport vehicles of a certain kind, he became vague and unhelpful.18

  Koenig was transferred from the jurisdiction of the Prisoner of War Department to Brixton prison as a civilian internee. He was interrogated by Victor Caroe on 30 October 1942 and expressed his keenness to work for the British. Like Colonel Scotland, Caroe could not make him out. On 1 November 1942, Caroe offered him to Major R.H. Thornley of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Koenig was released from prison and trained with SOE to undertake sabotage missions behind enemy lines. A memo from ‘C’ (head of MI6) to SOE, dated 1 March 1943, read: ‘He is now hidden in San Sebastian.’

  Koenig was exceptionally brave in serving Britain. He was parachuted into Germany on a number of occasions, including as part of Operation Squad and Operation Calvados. He paid the ultimate price – being captured by the Germans in January 1944 and executed the following February.19

  The case of Otto Witt

  The files and interrogation reports for anti-Nazi prisoner of war Otto Witt survive in the National Archives and provide clarification on the controversy surrounding his treatment at both the London Cage and Latchmere House. This kind of material is rare for other prisoners of the London Cage, either because not much information was recorded in their files or because they have not yet been declassified.

  Witt claimed to have been struck during interrogation in the week that he was at the London Cage.20 It was serious enough for Maxwell Knight of MI5 to formally raise the case with the secretary of state for war in 1943.21 Witt arrived in Britain from Stockholm on 5 May 1942 at the suggestion of SOE, which had been tracking his political activities in Sweden. As a political refugee from Germany, Witt had worked as a journalist in Denmark until the Germans invaded in April 1940, whereupon he had fled to Sweden, initially as a turncoat, to carry out anti-Czech propaganda. Described as 5ft 7in with grey hair, blue eyes and a fresh complexion, Witt was known to be working simultaneously for Czech intelligence and the Polish Secret Service. MI5 always seemed to doubt his testimony and suspected that he may even have been a German spy, though his intercepted letters to friends in England before he arrived showed him to be opposed to the Nazis.22 From Sweden, he made contact with the British and Allied governments, claiming to be in touch with German anti-Nazis and seeking to advise the British on the right kind of propaganda to feed them.

  SOE installed Witt in a flat in London that had been prepared before his arrival, and gave him £5 a week and a wireless set. Sefton Delmer, a former British journalist and spy in Berlin in the 1930s, who worked for the Political Warfare Executive in the Second World War, was suspicious of Witt and, after interviewing him, summed him up as ‘a typical Nazi of the minor official class’.23 As a result, Witt was transferred to Camp 020 at Latchmere House for suspected enemy spies. Here he spent eight months in solitary confinement, during which time he was interrogated for a total of five hours. He was informed that his testimony was believed and would lead to his early release. Instead he was transferred in February 1943 to the Brompton Oratory School in London, where he was questioned by the chief interrogator, Major Sampson. Witt was subjected to very harsh treatment; he was locked in a narrow cell, approximately 9 square metres, and the windows were smashed.24 As a result, Witt developed life-threatening bronchial pneumonia, but despite having a high temperature, he was offered no medical help. After being transferred to a different cell, a ‘stool pigeon’ by the name of Hans Kretschmer was placed with him. Stool pigeons – cooperative prisoners who agreed to guide conversations with their cellmates in a particular direction – were useful to
the intelligence services, as they were never usually suspected of being anything other than a genuine prisoner of war. Witt confided in Kretschmer about his connections with the Abwehr in Hamburg and about his fears of being handed over to the Czechs, who would torture him. MI5 could play on this fear during interrogation.

  Witt became the subject of several entries in the personal war diary of Guy Liddell, MI5’s director of counter-espionage. The first was made on 8 March 1943 and referred to a meeting convened by Liddell to discuss the Witt case with Czech officer and interrogator Lieutenant Wiesner, and MI5’s officers Buster Milmo, Francis Aitken-Sneath and Dick White (later director general of MI5). Liddell recorded:

  Wiesner was very confident that if he could employ his own methods he could break Witt down within three days and suggested that Witt should be interrogated at frequent intervals during both the night and day.25

  It was agreed that Witt would be given to Wiesner for three days, after which Wiesner agreed to ‘hand him back without a bruise on his body’. MI5 appeared to view Witt as arrogant, but a coward who would probably cooperate readily.