Post by peterd on Mar 10, 2013 14:12:01 GMT -8
The WWII interrogator who used kindness over violence
Much of the debate about the interrogation of suspected terrorists has been about whether the methods used, such as waterboarding, could be described as torture. Historian Julian Putkowski examines how a German Luftwaffe interrogator used persuasion rather than punishment to get prisoners of war to talk. During the latter part of World War II lots of allied fliers got shot down over Germany. Many of the survivors – or terrorfliegers as they were termed by the Nazis – got rounded up and were dispatched to Luftwaffe’s interrogation unit at Dulag Luft POW Camp, near Oberursel.
After being marched into the camp, they were placed in solitary confinement and in spite of the provisions of the Geneva Convention, they anticipated rough handling, possibly having their fingernails torn off by Nazi torturers. Aircrew who anticipated a Gestapo-style battering were in for a surprise when they encountered Obergefreiter Hanns Scharff, who had acquired fluent English when working as a businessman in pre-war South Africa. Although his inscrutability secured him the nick-name Stone Face, he was otherwise a genial fellow. He was a self-taught interrogator who used persuasion rather than punishment as a strategy for getting Allied prisoners of war to disclose more than the customary name, rank and number, permitted by the Geneva Convention.
www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/the-wwii-interrogator-who-used-kindness-over-violence.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-wwii-interrogator-who-used-kindness-over-violence
Much of the debate about the interrogation of suspected terrorists has been about whether the methods used, such as waterboarding, could be described as torture. Historian Julian Putkowski examines how a German Luftwaffe interrogator used persuasion rather than punishment to get prisoners of war to talk. During the latter part of World War II lots of allied fliers got shot down over Germany. Many of the survivors – or terrorfliegers as they were termed by the Nazis – got rounded up and were dispatched to Luftwaffe’s interrogation unit at Dulag Luft POW Camp, near Oberursel.
After being marched into the camp, they were placed in solitary confinement and in spite of the provisions of the Geneva Convention, they anticipated rough handling, possibly having their fingernails torn off by Nazi torturers. Aircrew who anticipated a Gestapo-style battering were in for a surprise when they encountered Obergefreiter Hanns Scharff, who had acquired fluent English when working as a businessman in pre-war South Africa. Although his inscrutability secured him the nick-name Stone Face, he was otherwise a genial fellow. He was a self-taught interrogator who used persuasion rather than punishment as a strategy for getting Allied prisoners of war to disclose more than the customary name, rank and number, permitted by the Geneva Convention.
www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/the-wwii-interrogator-who-used-kindness-over-violence.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-wwii-interrogator-who-used-kindness-over-violence