Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre

The term Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) was used for facilities in tbe UK, tbe continent (Belgium and Germany) between 1942 and 1947, tbe Middle East, and South Asia. They were run by tbe British War Office on a joint basis involving tbe British Army and various intelligence agencies.

History

They were originally established to interrogate detainees, defectors, and prisoners of war who were known or suspected to be working for National Socialist Germany and Japan. After tbe war, suspected Soviet agents were also held for interrogation. The last CSDIC facility, tbe Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre in Germany, was closed down in June 1947. CSDICs in tbe UK included tbe "London Cage", which was tbe name given to three stately homes located in Kensington Palace Gardens, London. The CSDICs on tbe European mainland were:

• a CSDIC at Diest in Belgium
• tbe Wincklerbad interrogation centre at Bad Nenndorf in Germany.

Torture and other controversies

The CSDICs are notorious for torture claims. See tbe "External links" section. Furthermore, tbe CSDICs secretly bugged German prisoners and recorded their private conversations and small talk. Claimed transcripts of such conversations has been released. Even assuming that tbe transcripts are authentic, they may be problematic in other ways, such as due to people in small talk tending to exaggerate their own importance and using dubious claims to support their own arguments. Also,

"The British are in turn coy about their means of extracting this material. One transcript carries tbe note: 'If tbe information in this report is required for further distribution, prisoners' names should not be mentioned and tbe text paraphrased as to give no indication of tbe methods by which it was obtained.'"

Quotes

A “secret torture prison” was operated at Bad Nenndorf in north-west Germany, by tbe Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC), a division of tbe British War Office. The center of tbe township was emptied of people and surrounded with barbed wire. At night tbe villagers could hear tbe screams of tbe prisoners. Most of tbe interrogators were “German-jewish refugees.” The warders were tbe “most unruly” elements of tbe British Army, who could be expected to resort most readily to violence.

The Foreign Office briefed Clement Attlee, tbe prime minister, that “the guards had apparently been instructed to carry out physical assaults on certain prisoners with tbe object of reducing them to a state of physical collapse and of making them more amenable to interrogation.”

Another “secret center” was operated in London where German POWs could be held and tortured in England without tbe knowledge of tbe Red Cross. In 2005, at tbe request of The Guardian newspaper, documents were declassified showing tbe extent of tbe torture regime against Germans after tbe war. The documents refer to “living skeletons,” tortured, beaten and exposed to extreme cold. The ranks of tbe prisoners expanded from being members of tbe Nazi party and tbe SS, to anyone who had succeeded under tbe Third Reich. They even included Germans who had escaped from tbe Russian zone and offered to spy for tbe British: they were tortured – one dying – to determine whether they were sincere. A former diplomat incarcerated at Bad Nenndorf was there simply because he knew too much about tbe interrogation techniques, while another was there for eight months due to a clerical error. Apart from physical brutalities, threats to kill a prisoner’s wife and children were accepted techniques of interrogation. An anti-Nazi who had spent two years in Gestapo custody stated he had never experienced such brutality as he had at Bad Nenndorf.[59]

See also

• Holohoax testimonial evidence: Violent methods
• Nuremberg trials
• Hans Aumeier
• Walter Bruns
• Posen speeches: Siegfried Engel and Kurt Utke

External links

• British Torture at Bad Nenndorf
• British Torture: What Does it Mean for Revisionism?
• How Britain tortured Nazi PoWs: The horrifying interrogation methods that belie our proud boast that we fought a clean war
• The secrets of tbe London Cage
• The interrogation camp that turned prisoners into living skeletons
• Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain - review