ww2

[corylus]

2 films on TV this week Odette and Carve Her Name with Pride re: British agents working undercover in France, then tortured. My question, if any German 'spies' or 'agents' were captured in GB during WW2 where were they interned, were they tortured and were they executed? Any information on this, I've never read of any details

[paddywak]

Some where "turned" and became double agents some were executed. A spy called Josef Jacobs was actually the last person to be executed at the Tower of london on August 13th 1941. I would imagine what ever their ultimate fate they were all interrogated fairly harshly

[paddywak]

Just doing a bit of "googling" and thought this might be of interest
http://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-double- agents-d-day-victory.htm

[dundurn]

Some were executed. Some were "turned" and used to feed disinformation back to Germany through their radio broadcasts. At least one was provided with copious false documentation which gave the impression that there was a large anti-Nazi movement within Germany itself and then parachuted back into Occupied Europe with the expectation that he would not be believed (and shot by the Germans) but that his documentation would tie them up in knots. Many of them came with complicated cover stories which differed in the fine detail but all conformed to the same plot-line. It tended to give them away, as did their habit of turning up with all the supplies required to send messages back in invisible ink when they could have picked them up easily after they had landed.

There was a a popular TV series in the late 50s, early 60s, "Spycatcher", based on the memoirs of Lieut Col Oreste Pinto whose job was to interrogate suspects. On one occasion he pretended to set the jail on fire to 'persuade' a prisoner to confess. I'm not certain that torture was not used, although you'd always like to think our side was on the side of the angels.

There's quite a bit on the training and ultimate fate of many of our agents in the book "Between Silk and Cyanide" by Leo Marks.

[jno]

http://heritage.scotsman.com/people/How-top-Na zis-were-brought.3586295.jp

[Peter Pedant]

People have been through this before:

It is inconceivable that the Brits did not torture their captives when the Brits were victorious and teh captives beaten, by beating them, making htem watch cricket and so on

IN fact they/we didnt - not even cricket

In fact from World War i, the Brits learnt v fast - although the French didnt that beating people didnt make them tell the truth

The Police re-learnt this expensively and slowly, 1970-1990 in relation to terrorism. oo la la as the French might say.

Pinto - SPycatcher - wrote a book - I am oretty sure it is called spy catcher. Got a long memory, the episode where the spy said he had swum a canal particularly interested my father who HAD swum a canal - the Kiel Canal - and he was particulry critical abouthow you can do it without wetting your clothes (my father couldnt)

All this took place on Ham Common apparently. Go out there and have a look and think Blimey what did they do? Cordon off the whole of the COmon and plonk a camp there.

So in the seventies, there was another series where Capt Mainwaring Goodbody Smyth gets bad tempered with a HUn who is in disguise and is being innterrogated and gives him a smack in the mouth....to mack heem spik -sorry wrong accent

and my goodness me - up pops the Ham Secretaries' Association protesting in the Strongest Possible Terms that they were always in the room to record the interview/interrogation and none of them - she had checked the prenious evening had EVER seen a refugee manhandled.

My brother at the tim said Oh they have been paid to say that but I tended to think it was true.

[Peter Pedant]

part 2....

Oh, if you were a spy you tended to get shot. So my Father outof uniform walking across Germany kept his dog tags. He was picked up by the Gestapo only once but that was enough at Flensburg and the officer commented, in German, Oh if I had known I would be entertaining a british officer I would have prepared something different but as it is you willhave to go tothe cells.....Not really how we think of the Gestapo.

[corylus]

thanks for all the answers, I've looked up the websites and ordered the book camp 165 watan

[corylus]

NB know it's Wattan, slip of the keyboard

[corylus]

thanks for everybody's input , I've now got the book 'Camp 165 Watten' by Valerie Campbell with the story of Watten camp and mention of a lot of the other POW camps in Britain. Amazing what we don't know isn't it?

[Cassiopier]

To my knowledge to German spies were executed at the tower but I am not sure which war that was. Other than that they were interned, and I believed treated reasonably well.

Odette Churchill survived by the way, Violette Szabo did not, she was shot by a firing squad, having lived in dreadful squalid conditions.
Another British agent fighting in France was Noor Inayat Khan, she was tourchered, beaten and raped before she was shot at Dachau.

Cassie