{{Short description|WW2-era facility in London known for human rights abuses}} {{Use British English |date=November 2024}} {{Use dmy dates|date=June 2018}} {{Location map | United Kingdom London Kensington and Chelsea | relief = yes | width = | caption = Location of the London Cage in Kensington and Chelsea | lat_deg = 51.5087 | lon_deg = -0.1914 | label1 = London Cage }} The '''London Cage''' was an MI19 prisoner-of-war facility during and after the Second World War to mainly interrogate captured Germans, including SS personnel and members of the Nazi Party. The unit, which was located within numbers 6, 7 and 8 Kensington Palace Gardens in London, was itself investigated following accusations that it often used torture to extract information.<ref name='Secrets'/> It was wound down in early 1948.
==History== The United Kingdom systematically interrogated all of its prisoners of war.<ref name="carlson1997">{{cite book |title=We Were Each Other's Prisoners: An Oral History of World War II American and German Prisoners of War |publisher=Basic Books |author=Carlson, Lewis H. |year=1997 |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/wewereeachothers00carl/page/30 30] |isbn=0-465-09120-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/wewereeachothers00carl/page/30}}</ref> A "cage" for interrogation of prisoners was established in 1940 in each command area of the United Kingdom, manned by officers trained by Alexander Scotland, the head of the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (PWIS) of the Intelligence Corps (Field Security Police).<ref>{{cite book |last=Scotland |first=Alexander Paterson |author-link=Alexander Scotland |year=1957 |title=The London Cage |publisher=Evan Brothers |location=London |oclc=223431209|page=45}}</ref>
The cages varied in facilities. The Doncaster Cage used a portion of the town's racecourse as a camp, while the Catterick and Loughborough cages were in bare fields.<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|p=63}} The London Cage, located in a fashionable part of the city, had space for 60 prisoners, was equipped with five interrogation rooms, and staffed by 10 officers serving under Scotland, plus a dozen non-commissioned officers (NCOs) who served as interrogators and interpreters. Security was provided by soldiers from the Guards regiments selected "for their height rather than their brains."<ref name='Secrets'/> Many of the British NCOs were fluent in German, and were skilled in persuading prisoners to reveal information. Some wore Soviet uniforms due to the Germans' fear of the Russians.{{r|carlson1997}}
After the war, the PWIS became known as the War Crimes Investigation Unit (WCIU), and the London Cage became the headquarters for questioning suspected war criminals.<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|p=63}} Among the German war criminals confined at the London Cage was SS {{langr|de|Obersturmbannführer}} Fritz Knöchlein, who was in charge of the murder of 97 British prisoners who had surrendered at Le Paradis, France, in May 1940. Knöchlein was convicted and hanged in 1949.<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|p=81}} <!-- Commented out: [[File:Meyerklissura.jpg|left|thumb|250px|SS General Kurt Meyer, imprisoned at the London Cage for war crimes, was sentenced to death but never executed.]] -->
Alexander Scotland participated in the interrogation of General Kurt Meyer, who was accused of participating in a massacre of Canadian troops. Meyer was eventually sentenced to death, although the sentence was not carried out. Scotland observed that Meyer received milder treatment after news of the atrocity had grown "cold".<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|p=86}}
SS and police leader Jakob Sporrenberg was interrogated at the cage after the war, which helped to establish his responsibility for the deaths of 46,000 Jews in Poland toward the end of the war.<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|pp=87–89}} Sporrenberg was sentenced to death by a Polish court in Warsaw in 1950 and hanged on 6 December 1952.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Megargee |first1=Geoffrey |author-link=Geoffrey P. Megargee |year=2009 |title=The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum encyclopedia of camps and ghettos, 1933–1945 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vsQMAQAAMAAJ |publisher=Indiana University Press |page=895 |isbn=9780253353283 |access-date=23 June 2016}}</ref>
Other war criminals passing through the London Cage after the war included Sepp Dietrich, an SS general accused of but never prosecuted for the murder of British prisoners in 1940. Alexander Scotland participated in the investigation of the SS and Gestapo men who murdered 50 escaped prisoners from Stalag Luft III in 1944, in the aftermath of what became known as the "Great Escape".<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|p=89, 102}} The London Cage closed in 1948.<ref name='Secrets'/>
==Torture allegations== Alexander Scotland wrote a postwar memoir entitled ''London Cage'', which was submitted to the War Office in 1950 for purposes of censorship. Scotland was asked to abandon the book, and threatened with a prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, and officers from Special Branch raided his home. The Foreign Office insisted that the book be suppressed altogether, as it would help persons "agitating on behalf of war criminals". An assessment of the manuscript by MI5 listed how Scotland had detailed repeated breaches of the 1929 Geneva Convention, including instances of prisoners being forced to kneel while being beaten about the head, forced to stand to attention for up to 26 hours, and threatened with execution and "an unnecessary operation". The book was eventually published in 1957 after a seven-year delay, and after all incriminating material had been redacted.<ref name='Secrets'/>
In ''London Cage'', Scotland claimed that confessions were obtained by seizing upon discrepancies in the accounts of prisoners, and stated:<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|p=154}} {{blockquote |text=We were not so foolish as to imagine that petty violence, nor even violence of a stronger character, was likely to produce the results hoped for in dealing with some of the toughest creatures of the Hitler regime.}}
While denying "sadism", Scotland said things were done that were "mentally just as cruel". One "cheeky and obstinate" prisoner, he said, was forced to strip naked and exercise. This "deflated him completely" and he began to talk. Prisoners were sometimes forced to stand "round the clock", and "if a prisoner wanted to pee he had to do it there and then, in his clothes. It was surprisingly effective."<ref name='Brainwash'>{{cite book |last=Streatfeild |first=Dominic |title=Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control |publisher=Macmillan |year=2007 |url=https://archive.org/details/brainwashsecreth0000stre |isbn=978-0312325725 |url-access=registration }}</ref>
Scotland refused to allow Red Cross inspections at the London Cage, on the grounds that the prisoners there were either civilians or "criminals within the armed services."<ref name='Torture'>{{cite book |last=Rejali |first=Darius M. |author-link=Darius Rejali |title=Torture and Democracy |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2007 |location=Princeton, NJ |isbn=978-0-691-11422-4}}</ref>
In September 1940, Guy Liddell, director of MI5's counterintelligence B Division, said that,<ref name='Deceiving'>{{cite book |last=Crowdy |first=Terry |title=Deceiving Hitler: Double-Cross and Deception in World War II |publisher=Osprey Publishing |year=2008 |isbn=978-1846031359}}</ref><ref name='Crowdy'/><ref name='Guy Liddell'>{{cite book |last=West |first=Nigel |title=The Guy Liddell Diaries - Volume 1: 1939-1942 |publisher=Routledge |year=2009 |isbn=978-0415547987}}</ref> {{blockquote |text=Scotland turned up this morning with a syringe containing some drug or other, which it was thought would induce the prisoner [Tate] to speak.}}
Schmidt subsequently became a double agent against the Germans as part of the Double Cross System of double agents operated by MI5.<ref name='Crowdy'>{{cite book |last=Crowdy |first=Terry |title=The Enemy Within |publisher=Osprey Publishing |year=2006 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/enemywithinhisto00crow/page/250 250] |url=https://archive.org/details/enemywithinhisto00crow |url-access=registration |isbn=978-1841769332}}</ref>
In 1943, allegations of mistreatment at the London Cage resulted in a formal protest by MI5 director Maxwell Knight to the Secretary of State for War.<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|p=70}} The allegations were made by Otto Witt, a German anti-Nazi who was interrogated to determine if he was acting on behalf of German intelligence.<ref name='Witt'>{{cite web |url=http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATID=8095670&CATLN=6&accessmethod=5&j=1 |title=The National Archives Catalogue, Piece Details KV 2/471 |access-date=27 January 2009 |publisher=The National Archives}}</ref>
At his war crimes trial, Knöchlein claimed that he was tortured, which Scotland dismisses in ''London Cage'' as a "lame allegation".<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|p=81}} According to Knöchlein, he was stripped, deprived of sleep, kicked by guards and starved. He said that he was compelled to walk in a tight circle for four hours. After complaining to Alexander Scotland, Knöchlein alleges that he was doused in cold water, pushed down stairs, and beaten. He claimed he was forced to stand beside a hot gas stove before being showered with cold water. He claimed that he and another prisoner were forced to run in circles while carrying heavy logs.<ref name='Secrets'>{{cite news |first=Ian |last=Cobain |title=The secrets of the London Cage |date=12 November 2005 |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/nov/12/secondworldwar.world |access-date=17 January 2009}}</ref>
Knöchlein wrote,<ref name='Secrets'/> {{blockquote |text=Since these tortures were the consequences of my personal complaint, any further complaint would have been senseless. [...] One of the guards who had a somewhat humane feeling advised me not to make any more complaints, otherwise things would turn worse for me.}}
Other prisoners, he alleged, were beaten until they begged to be killed, while some were told that they could be made to disappear.<ref name='Secrets'/>
Scotland said in his memoirs that Knöchlein was not interrogated at all at the London Cage because there was sufficient evidence to convict him, and he wanted "no confusing documents with the aid of which he might try to wriggle from the net." During his last nights at the cage, Scotland states, Knöchlein,<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|p=81}} {{blockquote |text=began shrieking in a half-crazed fashion, so that the guards at the London Cage were at a loss to know how to control him. At one stage the local police called in to enquire why such a din was emanating from sedate Kensington Palace Gardens.}}
At a trial in 1947 of eighteen Germans accused in the massacre of fifty Allied prisoners who escaped from Stalag Luft III, the Germans alleged starvation, sleep deprival, "third degree" interrogation methods, and torture by electric shock. Scotland describes these in his memoir as,<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|p=145}} {{blockquote |text=fantastic allegations [... .] At more than one stage in those fifty days of courtroom wrangling, a stranger to such peculiar affairs might have suspected that the arch-criminal of them all was a British Army intelligence officer known as Colonel Alexander Scotland.}}
Scotland denied the allegations at the trial. In ''London Cage'' he says he was,<ref name="fry18" />{{rp|p=153}} {{blockquote |text=greatly troubled [...] by the constant focus on our supposed shortcomings at The Cage, for it seemed to me that these manufactured tales of cruelty toward our German prisoners were fast becoming the chief item of news, while the brutal fate of those fifty RAF officers was in danger of becoming old history.}}
==See also== *Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre *Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre *Camp 020 *{{section link|Trent Park|Second World War}} – the "Cockfosters Cage"
== References == <references>
<ref name="fry18">{{cite book |last=Fry |first=Helen |author-link=Helen Fry |year=2018 |title=The London Cage: The Secret History of Britain's World War II Interrogation Centre |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |isbn=978-0300238655 |oclc=1064687739 }}</ref>
</references>
==External links== *[http://www.metafilter.com/46608/The-London-Cage The London Cage] *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=8200484 Piece details TS 50/3], Publication of book 'The London Cage' by Lt Col A P Scotland: retention of his manuscripts under the Official Secrets Act 1911; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=7&CATID=-4733013 Item details TS 50/3/1]; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=3262468 WO 32/16025], Film "Britain's Two Headed Spy": provision of facilities and correspondence with Colonel A P Scotland; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=5428327 Piece details WO 208/4294], Papers recovered from Lt Col A P Scotland: notes on operation of War Crimes Interrogation Unit, work and organisation of Prisoners of War Interrogation Section (Home) and miscellaneous subjects; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=5428328 Piece details WO 208/4295], Papers recovered from Lt Col A P Scotland: reports of atrocities in European theatre of operation; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=5428329 Piece details WO 208/4296], Papers recovered from Lt Col A P Scotland: German concentration camps; POW interrogation reports; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=5428330 Piece details WO 208/4297], Papers recovered from Lt Col A P Scotland: Emsland penal camps; reports; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=5428331 Piece details WO 208/4298], Papers recovered from Lt Col A P Scotland: Emsland penal camps; statements of former prisoners and guards; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=5428332 Piece details WO 208/4299], Papers recovered from Lt Col A P Scotland: Emsland penal camps; War Crimes Investigation Unit correspondence; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=5428333 Piece details WO 208/4300], Papers recovered from Lt Col A P Scotland: miscellaneous papers; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=7&CATID=-4137632 Item details WO 208/4300/1]; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=5428334 Piece details WO 208/4301], Papers recovered from Lt Col A P Scotland: shooting of RAF officers at Stalag III; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=32048 Piece details WO 309/1813], Report on Wormhoudt case by Lt Col A P Scotland, OC War Crimes Interrogation Unit; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=32049 Piece details WO 309/1814], Report on Wormhoudt case by Lt Col A P Scotland, OC War Crimes Interrogation Unit: later version, with additional material; Catalogue of The National Archives *[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=34179 Piece details WO 311/567], Review of sentences given to war criminals and correspondence between Lt Col A P Scotland and Brig H Shapcott, Army Legal Service; Catalogue of The National Archives
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Category:Torture in England Category:British war crimes in World War II Category:Human rights abuses Category:United Kingdom intelligence community Category:World War II prisoner-of-war camps in England Category:1940 establishments in England Category:1948 disestablishments in England Category:London in World War II Category:Buildings and structures in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Category:Former buildings and structures in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Category:British Defence Forces