London Cage

by Helen Fry

  It also came to light during the writing of this book that coroners are among those government bodies exempt from the freedom of information act. Neither was there any clarification from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which did not reply to questions about why Helmut Tanzmann was interred at Cannock Chase Cemetery without a death certificate in his real name.

  Even though certain files for the London Cage appear to have been retained by the government, it has still been possible to reconstruct for the first time a vivid picture of life in the cage, and to shed light on the shadier side of intelligence. Colonel Scotland’s unpublished memoirs appear remarkably accurate when compared against the official files that have since been released.

  What could be the consequences of declassifying any remaining information today, if it does still exist? In this age of increased legal challenges and compensation, it could open the way for relatives of prisoners to make claims against the British government for their family members’ ill-treatment, manslaughter or even murder. If a legal challenge were successful, it could mean compensating the descendants of some of the worst Nazi war criminals ever held in England. Whilst the state did not authorise the mistreatment and torture of prisoners, it looks as if certain departments of state have subsequently been responsible for covering up the truth. What is more, if it were proved that statements were obtained from Nazi war criminals under duress, that would undermine the guilty verdicts that sent many of them to their deaths. It would also call into question the verdicts of all Nazi war criminals who faced justice after the war. Of course, it could be argued that the Allies had sufficient independent evidence to convict them. Nevertheless, a democratic society prides itself on upholding the judicial system, and to undermine that system would call into question the ability of bodies like the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the Netherlands to continue to bring war criminals to justice. In an age of global terrorism, these questions are profoundly relevant. When democracies are faced with terrorist threats, is it acceptable to take a rough approach during interrogation? Where are the boundaries? There could be protracted consequences of a very public debate about the interrogation methods being used in Britain and America today, particularly when it is still an extremely sensitive and contentious issue in relation to countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.

  Was what was done in the cage justifiable? Between 1939 and 1945, as Britain was waging an existential war of possible obliteration, and democracy itself was placed at risk, what happened at the London Cage and other similar intelligence sites raise important moral questions. They also pose a tough problem for critics of torture. From the perspective of espionage, when dealing with die-hard fanatics, whether religious or political, history has shown that no results can usefully be achieved by being soft on them. A tough approach is necessary. But that approach must be within the boundaries of the Geneva Convention, to which all civilised countries adhere. Otherwise, how can such civilised societies uphold justice and deal with future war crimes? The only rationale is the realisation that brutality in interrogation produces unreliable results at best – and at worst, wrong and unjust outcomes.

  So, what is the lasting legacy of the London Cage? The cage is scarcely dealt with in books on the Second World War. Yet, through its interrogation of thousands of German prisoners of war, it made a contribution to intelligence gathering that had an impact on the war, military campaigns and operations across five years. As part of the famous commando raids of 1941 and 1942, it dispatched brave intelligence officers to bring back German prisoners from behind enemy lines for MI19’s interrogation sites. But perhaps most importantly, it successfully brought to justice a number of major Nazi war criminals – sending them either to prison or to the gallows. Ironically, there is a degree of uncertainty over whether the London Cage was guilty of its own war crimes.

  And what view are we to take of Colonel Scotland? He ran the cage in his own way. A competent military figure of the old school, he was uncompromising on discipline and expected his prisoners to cooperate. The intractable SS and Nazi officers who refused to do so were shown a darker side of British intelligence. Colonel Scotland did not believe in taking a soft approach towards truculent prisoners. And nor – with the exception of Field Marshal Kesselring – did he befriend them: that kind of approach was reserved for other MI19 sites at Trent Park, Latimer House and Wilton Park. The London Cage was reserved for prisoners who held information that could not be acquired through bugged conversations – prisoners who needed tough interrogation. Here it is important to keep the backdrop of the London Cage in focus: Colonel Scotland and his staff had to deal with some of the toughest prisoners of war ever held by the British; and not just prisoners of war, but war criminals. The detailed catalogue of atrocities which he and his staff listened to is beyond comprehension – the vilest acts of inhumanity, genocide and cruelty on an unprecedented scale. Coupled with this extreme cruelty, those German officers had sworn an oath of undying loyalty to Hitler. The only way in which Colonel Scotland could have had any chance of breaking their will to resist was through rough treatment. But few can deny that he went too far. Today, the military still does not condone mistreatment or torture. Branches of Military Intelligence have often learned the hard way that torture and brutality do not produce a cooperative prisoner; they only serve to make the prisoner tell you what you want to hear.

  What is certain is that the reputation of the London Cage will endure – and not for the justice that it secured against the evil Nazi perpetrators of mass murder. The rumours surrounding it will forever cast a shadow over British intelligence.

  APPENDIX

  Staff at the London Cage

  This appendix provides a list of known staff who worked at the London Cage or one of the other cages in Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (Home Command) during the period 1940 to 1948. The information is taken from WO 208/4294 and WO 208/4970.

  Colonel Alexander Scotland OBE (commander of the unit).

  Capt. R.A. Allen, WOII P.S Ashe, Capt. M.B. Baron, Capt. W. Bennett, WOI W. Bonwitt, Lieut. F.O. Brann, Capt. A.C. Broderman, Capt. E.G. Burdett, Capt. P.H. Burges, Capt. Burrows, Capt. Victor Caroe, Capt. Randoll Coate, Capt. R.B. Colvin, Capt. Maurice F. Cornish, Capt. K.A. Cottam, Capt. E.A. Davies-Cook, Capt. J.M. Denison, Capt. W. Dewhirst, Capt. J. Dill-Smith, Capt. R.P. Edwards DSO, Capt. E. Egger, Sgt M.E. Eversfield, Lieut. J.S. Fawell, Capt. F.C. Fenton, Lieut. D.B. Gregor, Capt. C. Hay, Lieut. R.A. Hepton, Capt. H.M. Hoffman, Capt. R.D. Jeune, Capt. A.H. Keane, Capt. C.C. Keith, Capt. H. Kettler, Lieut. V. Khoroche, Capt. W.E. Kieser, Sgt H. Kyval, Capt. R. Le May MBE, WOII Gary Leon, Capt. T.J. Leonard, Capt. C.D. Macintosh, Major Cyril MacLeod, Major A.V. Magnus, Capt. A.J. Marsden, Lieut. M.W. Meyer, Capt. J. Moorhouse, Capt. Kenneth Morgan, Sgt A. Morgenthau, Capt. Ian Munro, Lieut. G.J. New, Capt. D.E. Oglander, Capt. L. Okell, Capt. R.A. O’Rorke, Lieut. Theodore X.H. Pantcheff, Capt. G.W. Paton, Sgt J. Rapp, Capt. C.J. Raven, Capt. Eric Rhodes, CSM Richter, Capt. A. Ryder, Sgt Felek Scharf, Capt. H. Sheldon MBE, Sgt H. Siegel, Capt. George Sinclair, Capt. A. Soldatenkov, Capt. H.E. Spearman, Capt. P. Stampe, RSM Stanton, Capt. C.H. Stokes, Capt. M.F. Strachan, Capt. G. Sugden, Capt. A.E. Teare, Major Antony Terry, Capt. B. Tucker, WOI M. Ullman, Lieut. J.A. Viccars, Capt. H.A. Vischer, Capt. A.E. Wernly, Lieut. G.D. West.

  Lucy Haley and Miss Metzler (ATS sergeants).

  Major Ted Lessing (Grenadier Guards, liaison officer).

  Robin Forbes (308 Field Security Section, responsible for security at the London Cage).

  Other cages: Command

  Scotco – Major Cyril MacLeod; Northco – unknown (Catterick); Eastco – Capt. J. Leonard (Newmarket); Seco – Capt. A.V. Magnus (Lingfield); Southco – Capt. Sugden (Swindon); Westco – Capt. Jeune; Adjutant at Wilton Park, Beaconsfield – Capt. J. Dill-Smith, succeeded by Capt. Kenneth Morgan; Adjutant at Kempton Park and Devizes – Capt. Raven, then Capt. Allen.

  NOTES

  Introduction: Impounding the evidence

  1.
WO 208/5381.

  2.Ibid.

  3.Ibid.

  4.Letter to the War Office, 16 March 1955, in WO 208/5381.

  5.Ibid.

  6.Contained in WO 208/5381, dated 26 January 1955.

  7.WO 208/5381, pp. 77–8.

  8.Scotland, unpublished memoirs (WO 208/5381), p. 73–4.

  9.Ibid., pp. 74 and 77.

  10.Ibid., pp. 95–6.

  11.Ibid., pp. 199–200, 233, 293–4 and 347.

  12.Ibid., pp. 126, 130–4 and 135–40.

  13.Ibid., pp. 297–8.

  1 Genesis of the cage

  1.Forthcoming book on Kensington Palace, edited by Tracy Borman, to be published by Yale University Press in 2018.

  2.Helen Fry, The M Room: Secret listeners who bugged the Nazis in WW2, 2nd edn, Thistle Publishing, 2015.

  3.Sir Joseph Duveen (d. 1908) lived at Hawthornes, Golders Green, a smart detached house on the corner of Finchley Road and Golders Green Road, long since demolished and now a parade of shops.

  4.Helen Fry, Spymaster: The secret life of Kendrick, 2nd edn, Thistle Publishing, 2015.

  5.‘H’ in PWIS(H) stood for ‘home’.

  6.Under the command of 905 Squadron of the RAF.

  7.WO 208/5615.

  8.Ibid.

  9.Ibid.

  10.The section of Air Intelligence that carried out the interrogation of German prisoners of war was ADI(K); this had previously been dealt with by Air Intelligence Section AI1(K). It was not dissimilar to army Military Intelligence MI9, which later in the war split to form MI19 for the interrogation of prisoners of war. Examples of ADI(K) files at the National Archives include AIR 40/2636, AIR 40/2868–77 and AIR 40/2833.

  11.WO 208/4970.

  12.Courtesy of Mark Scoble, from an unpublished wartime intelligence diary.

  13.Ian Cobain, Cruel Britannia: A secret history of torture, Portobello Books, 2013.

  14.The full story of this can be read in Fry, The M Room; and also in Sönke Neitzel (ed.), Tapping Hitler’s Generals: Transcripts of secret conversations, 1942–45, Frontline, 2007.

  15.See, for example, WO 208/5016, WO 208/5017 and WO 208/5018. See also Fry, The M Room.

  16.Barry Sullivan, Thresholds of Peace: German prisoners and the people of Britain, Hamish Hamilton, 1979.

  17.WORK 16/1564.

  18.Military photographic interpretation of the 1946 aerial photograph of the tented POW compound.

  2 A very ‘German’ Englishman

  1.The other was MI5’s Edward Hinchley-Cooke.

  2.It is my belief that Scotland went to South Africa to do intelligence work for the British, perhaps as a contact person providing the eyes and ears on the ground in and around the empire; but he could not admit as much during his lifetime, because any official British intelligence organisation or network was always denied.

  3.Alexander P. Scotland, The London Cage, Evans Brothers Ltd, 1957, p. 15.

  4.His official British military record gives his occupation from 1902 to 1914 as land and mining.

  5.This period of Scotland’s life can be read in more detail in his unpublished memoirs, pp. 17–23.

  6.Fry, Spymaster. Alexander Scotland had contact with SIS circles for decades, many of his closest friends being members of SIS. He wrote one of the references required for Thomas Kendrick to join the Intelligence Corps in France in the First World War. Kendrick had a long career with SIS.

  7.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, p. 27.

  8.Ibid., p. 27–8.

  9.Marshall-Cornwall joined the Intelligence Corps in Le Havre in 1915, later serving in General Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force under Sir Douglas Haig. Towards the end of the First World War, Marshall-Cornwall became the head of MI3, the military section that dealt with geographical information. During the Second World War, he served with Special Operations Executive and SIS.

  10.Scotland, London Cage, pp. 38–48.

  11.Letter in Scotland’s personal military file, Army Historical Disclosures, Glasgow.

  12.Scotland’s personal military file.

  13.It is the author’s belief that Alexander Scotland was undertaking work for British intelligence while in South America as an SIS contact man, although Scotland was never able to mention it in his memoirs because officially SIS did not exist. He does, however, provide scant references to his intelligence work for the British.

  14.Personal military file from the army’s Historical Disclosures section, Glasgow.

  15.Scotland, London Cage, p. 52.

  16.Ibid., p. 53.

  17.Ibid.

  18.Scotland, London Cage, p. 57.

  19.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, pp. 29–30.

  20.WO 208/5381.

  21.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, p. 352.

  22.Ibid.

  23.Ibid.

  24.Ibid., p. 355.

  25.WO 373/148.

  3 Cage characters: The interrogators

  1.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, p. 99.

  2.The one exception was Matthew Sullivan, who wrote about his work as an interrogator at another MI19 site, Latimer House in Buckinghamshire, in his book Thresholds of Peace. In it, he wrote a short section about the London Cage, but he was not intimately acquainted with its day-to-day work.

  3.From 1942, Naval Intelligence Division used female interrogators at Latimer House in Buckinghamshire, headquarters of Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre. Confirmed in 2015 in the author’s interview with Evelyn Barron, former member of the Naval Intelligence team at Trent Park, then Latimer House.

  4.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, p. 40.

  5.Much of the information on the interrogators here has been provided by the Military Intelligence Museum, Chicksands.

  6.WO 311/61.

  7.Letter dated 23 March 1942 to No. 1 Commando from MI9, copy provided to the author by the family.

  8.Unpublished papers of Randoll Coate, with kind permission of Pamela Coate.

  9.Coate was mentioned in dispatches for his service there. Obituaries in the Independent (14 January 2006) and the Daily Telegraph. He is thought to have served in MI5, SIS, SOE and MI19.

  10.WO 311/61.

  11.Announced in the London Gazette in February 1946. See also The Honours and Awards of the Intelligence Corps, Military Intelligence Museum, Chicksands.

  12.Sullivan, Thresholds of Peace, p. 49.

  13.Interrogator Kenneth Morgan, quoted in Ibid., p. 49.

  14.Cobain, Cruel Britannia, p. 64.

  15.His collection of papers (‘The Pantcheff Papers’) was donated to the Intelligence Corps archives.

  16.WO 311/61.

  17.According to the Military Intelligence Museum, no official entries have been found confirming his membership of the Intelligence Corps, although he is described as ‘Intelligence Corps’ in the Pantcheff Papers, where he is included in the staff list of the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (the ‘London Cage’) in 1942.

  18.Military Intelligence Museum archives (Pantcheff Papers); Honours and Awards of the Intelligence Corps.

  19.WO 373/100.

  20.Sullivan, Thresholds of Peace, p. 244.

  21.Ibid., p. 49.

  22.Information on Campbell Dundas Macintosh kindly supplied by the Military Intelligence Museum.

  23.Macintosh is referenced in TNA files KV 2/11, KV 2/18, KV 2/13.

  24.Guy Liddell, The Guy Liddell Diaries, Vol. 1, 1939–1942, ed. Nigel West, Routledge, 2009, diary entry for 17 December 1940.

  25.B8L was a counter-intelligence branch of ‘B’ Branch of MI5, responsible for security of the camps in the war.

  26.Information provided by the Military Intelligence Museum.

  27.Medal Card Reference WO 373/111/2, Bundle 1. Information supplied by the Military Intelligence Museum.

  28.WO 311/61.

  29.WO 165/41.

  30.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, pp. 61–2.

  31.Ibid., p. 39

  32.ADM 223/475.

  33.WO 208/5381.

 
4 Cage characters: The ‘guests’

  1.Reports in WO 208 and AIR 40.

  2.FO 1093/1–16.

  3.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, p. 53.

  4.DEFE 2/83.

  5.Initially part of Air Intelligence, AI1(K), later the Air Documents Research Centre, see AIR 40/2636.

  6.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, p. 80.

  7.WO 208/5494.

  8.Ibid.

  9.Ibid.

  10.Ibid.

  11.Ibid.

  12.AIR 40/2636.

  13.Commodore E.G.N. Rushbrooke, head of Naval Intelligence Division, an experienced interrogator from the First World War, drafted a comprehensive report on interrogation techniques for ‘C’ (the head of MI6). See ADM 223/475.

  14.AIR 40/2636.

  15.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, p. 60.

  5 Downstairs: Interrogation methods

  1.Scotland, unpublished memoirs.

  2.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, p. 348.

  3.WO 33/2335: manual entitled Interrogation in War, p. 18. Although published in 1955, it was written during the Second World War and updated for the Cold War.

  4.These included pp. 57–8, 67–8, 69–70, 73–4, 78–9.

  5.Sullivan, Thresholds of Peace, pp. 53–4.

  6.Gary Leon, The Way It Was, Book Guild Ltd, 1997, p. 59.

  7.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, p. 77.

  8.Sullivan, Thresholds of Peace, p. 50.

  9.Scotland, unpublished memoirs, p. 68.

  10.Ibid.

  11.Ibid.

  12.Ibid., p. 71.

  13.Ibid., p. 84.

  14.Memo dated 19 October 1942 in KV 6/33.

  15.Koenig’s personal SOE file in HS 9/855.

  16.KV 6/33.