The London Cage: The Secret History of Britain's World War II Interrogation Centre

by Helen Fry

Behind the locked doors of three mansions in London’s exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens neighborhood, the British Secret Service established a highly secret prison in 1940: the London Cage. Here recalcitrant German prisoners of war were subjected to “special intelligence treatment.” The stakes were high: the war’s outcome could hinge on obtaining information German prisoners were determined to withhold. After the war, high-ranking Nazi war criminals were housed in the Cage, revamped as an important center for investigating German war crimes.
 
This riveting book reveals the full details of operations at the London Cage and subsequent efforts to hide them. Helen Fry’s extraordinary original research uncovers the grim picture of prisoners’ daily lives and of systemic Soviet-style mistreatment. The author also provides sensational evidence to counter official denials concerning the use of “truth drugs” and “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Bringing dark secrets to light, this groundbreaking book at last provides an objective and complete history of the London Cage.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Espionage, Audiobook, Military History, War

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 2017

About the author

Helen Fry has written numerous books on the Second World War with particular reference to the 10,000 Germans and Austrians who fought for Britain in the war.

Other books by Helen include histories of various Anglo-Jewish communities, including The Lost Jews of Cornwall (with Keith Pearce); and The Jews of Exeter. Her titles also include books on Christian-Jewish Dialogue. Her textbook Christian-Jewish Dialogue: A Reader has been translated into Russian, Czech and Polish.

Helen has branched out into fiction with James Hamilton under the pseudonym JH Schryer. Together they have written two novels of historical fiction and been in development on scripts with Green Gaia Films for a TV drama based on their novels.

Helen is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Dept of Hebrew & Jewish Studies at University College London and Lecturer at the London Jewish Cultural Centre. She is a member of The Biographers’ Club, The Society of Authors and an Honorary member of The Association of Jewish Refugees.

Reviews

[Eric Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the end, this is a book about morality. The London Cage was a top secret interrogation centre set up by British intelligence during the Second World War. Located in Kensington Palace Gardens, it was closed down in 1948. For most of that time, it was a place that German prisoners of war passed through, where they were questioned, and valuable intelligence was gathered. From 1945 onwards, it collected evidence for use in war crimes trials. No one questions that the Cage, and its commanding officer Colonel Alexander Scotland, did collect useful intelligence that helped the Allies win the war. And it is also clear that Colonel Scotland's team did excellent work in helping to prepared the cases that led the imprisonment, and sometimes hanging, of German Nazi war criminals in the years after 1945.

The moral issue is that despite Colonel Scotland's insistence that everything done under his command was strictly in accord with the Geneva Convention, there is some evidence of mistreatment of some prisoners. There have been allegations of torture, and there were four suspicious deaths in custody at the London Cage.

Helen Fry has done an outstanding job with this book, going deep into the archives to find new sources and to attempt to reconstruct what actually happened at the London Cage. Among her many interesting finds was the original, uncensored memoir by Colonel Scotland himself.

The reputation of Colonel Scotland reminds me a bit of what happened with Arthur "Bomber" Harris, who led the strategic bombing campaign against Germany. Harris clearly contributed to a successful conclusion of the war, though the tactics he employed -- which destroyed entire German cities -- proved embarrassing to some after the war. It took several decades, but eventually a statue was erected to Harris in London, and Bomber Command got its own memorial in Green Park. One wonders if some day Colonel Scotland will also be recognised for his contribution to victory.

If that ever happens, this book will have made an important contribution to rediscovering the work he and his staff did in the London Cage.

[Ted · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting read, but its a real disappointment if your focus is on the interrogation/intelligence premise. The author would have benefited greatly if she would have partnered with a subject matter expert in putting this together. As it is, she fumbles through relating the interrogation story at the center of the piece and does a poor job of presenting an interesting piece of WWII history.

Through the first half of the book, she constantly teases that she's going to present the naughty bits - implying prisoner abuse and torture - later in the story. As someone with a professional interest in the history of tactical and strategic interrogation, I found her brief mentions of intelligence support to interrogation planning and the approaches to the different types of sources to be a surface-level treatment at best of what should have been a substantial part of the narrative. She touches on the importance of technical experts to support interrogations of U-boat and bomber crewmen, but never really discusses it substantively. The same thing goes for approaches: She brings up most of the standard approaches (we know all, file-and-dossier, variations on manipulation of emotion and pride, repetition, rapid-fire, etc.), but only in brief mentions without substantial discussion of success or failure. She doesn't mention prisoner screening until halfway through the book, and even then doesn't really discuss the effort as a structured precursor to detailed interrogation. And despite presenting examples of individuals interrogated for specific tactical knowledge, she never really discusses how it was effectively leveraged on the battlefield, keeping to generalities and avoiding specifics. They are shallow vignettes, not interrogation case studies.

The second half of the book deals with the immediate post-war change in focus of the London Cage from intelligence interrogations to investigative interrogations in support of the war crimes tribunals. What I found interesting was the number of investigations focused on mass killings of British PWs by German Forces. Some of conventional soldiers as they were withdrawing from France in 1940, many others of Commando forces captured during the war. Many of these I was not aware of, and I found this section of great interest. However, the author gives the interrogation part of the story the same surface treatment, just giving a bit more focus on the personalities of the German war criminals involved.

The promised narrative on abuse and torture of German prisoners eventually comes out, but it turns out to be heavily based on speculation and the derivation of conclusions from vague statements, questionable sources, and rumors. What is related often sounds to me like the methods discussed in the 2004 book "The Interrogators", which tells the story of a group of US Army interrogators in Afghanistan trying to work hard sources with minimal training and poor leadership. A lot of professional floundering around and gray area abuses - but nothing on the level of Abu Ghraib. There may have been more substantial and/or systematic abuses at the London Cage, but the author is less than convincing in telling the tale.

I don't really recommend this one unless you have a strong interest in the subject matter and some time to kill.

[Ted Mccormack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as interesting as I thought it would be. Hampered by the refusal to release records of interrogations after a certain date even though WWII ended almost 75 years ago. Or that other records were "spoiled" by water and asbestos.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating summary of a little known piece of WWII history. I liked the way short summaries were used although it did mean at times it felt disjointed.

[Giselle Jakobs · Rating 3 out of 5]

The London Cage stormed into public view over 10 years ago (2005) when Ian Cobain published a provocative article in The Guardian - The Secrets of the London Cage. The article took the lid off and established that torture had been used at the London Cage. Cobain's follow-up book, Cruel Britannia pretty much put a nail in the coffin. Without a doubt, the London Cage, under the command of Lt. Col. Alexander Scotland, had been the scene of hideous events against members of the German Army as well as Nazi officers. What more could be said about it?

In 2017, Helen Fry tackled the subject in a full-length book. The write-up sounded promising. An excerpt from the inside cover of the book jacket tell us that:

"Until now, what has happened at the London Cage has remained a secret closely guarded by the Home Office. This riveting book reveals the full details of operations there as well as the subsequent efforts to hide them.

Helen Fry's extraordinary original research paints rich portraits of the interrogators and their prisoners, and gives disturbing, compelling accounts of daily life revolving around systemic Soviet-style mistreatment. Fry also provides sensational evidence to counter official denials concerning the use of 'truth drugs' and 'enhanced interrogation' techniques.

Bringing dark secrets to light, this groundbreaking book at last provides an objective and complete history of the London Cage."

The author devotes various chapters to such diverse topics as: Lt. Col. Scotland, interrogators, "guests", interrogation methods, truth drugs and various war crimes carried out against Allied forces by the Nazis. The book is not arranged chronologically, so each chapter tends to jump around a fair bit in time and space, with the exception of the war crimes chapters which are relatively coherent. The author takes great pains to point out how the information gathered at the London Cage between 1940 and 1945 helped Allied forces defeat the Nazis.

I've read Lt. Col. Scotland's own memoir on the London Cage and I've read Ian Cobain's book on Cruel Britannia. I've read Lt. Col. R.W.G. Stephens' report on MI5's secret interrogation centre (Camp 020) where violence was ostensibly verboten. Stephens was working on the Camp 020 report while his subordinates were abusing prisoners at the Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre. I have to admit that Helen Fry's book was a bit of a challenge.

While the book is extremely well-researched, the presentation of the material, particularly in the first half of the book made me question the editorial process. In a nutshell, the material is poorly organized and disjointed. Space is devoted to introducing the well-researched background of minor individuals but these people are never referred to again. At times it feels as if material has been cut from the book, thereby affecting the continuity and flow of the narrative. The war crimes chapters were very familiar as they are described at some length in Scotland's own book. Without referring to the footnotes, it was difficult to tell what material was drawn from Scotland's unpublished memoirs (confiscated by the authorities before the abridged version was published) and what material was drawn from his published book. One chapter dealt with truth drugs but, other than the first and last paragraphs, made no mention of how truth drugs related to the London Cage. The only concrete evidence of truth drugs being used by Lt. Col. Scotland was when he showed up at Camp 020 with a syringe that he promised would make a prisoner talk (as noted in Guy Liddell's diaries).

Scotland is also quoted in various places as stating under oath:
"...he [Scotland] permitted no violence during interrogation and nor were prisoners beaten to extract information." (p.205)

"No physical force was ever used during our interrogations to obtain information, no cold water treatment, no third degrees, nor any other refinements." (p. 206)

I would have liked to see the author dissect these statements with a view to identifying any possible prevarications within them. Perhaps physical force was not used "during" interrogations but does that mean it wasn't used before interrogations or between interrogation sessions? Perhaps prisoners were not beaten "to extract information" but were simply beaten to soften them up prior to interrogation?

The book leaves a lot of questions unanswered but the author does note that "in times of war and extreme tension, moral boundaries can often become blurred". While there is no doubt that the interrogation results from the London Cage helped the Allies win the war against the Nazis and brought many war criminals to justice, one is left wondering... do the ends justify the means?

Or is justice a one-way street? High-ranking German army commanders were tried and found guilty for the crimes of their subordinates. And yet, in the face of overwhelming evidence that their subordinates brutalized prisoners in their charge, Lt. Col. Scotland and Lt. Col. Stephens were either not tried (Scotland) or were tried and acquitted (Stephens re: Bad Nenndorf).

As A.W. Brian Simpson noted in his book In the Highest Degree Odious (1992) - all power corrupts - particularly power exercised in secret (p. 412).

[Brian Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

The London Cage: The Secret History of Britain’s World War II Interrogation Centre by the incomparable Helen Fry is an important work. Fry peels away the many layers of obstruction and obscurity that’s previously prevented any real accounting of the interrogation activities of Britain at war. That story centers on the controversial, brilliant, and slippery interrogator, Colonel Alexander Scotland and how he ran the secret interrogation center. Fry documents what is known about the interrogation techniques used in the center together with the results obtained, while also particularly acknowledging that much may still remain classified or “missing.” The net result is a set of disturbing questions about the roll and methods of interrogation practices used by a nation fighting for its survival – most pointedly, under what conditions is psychological & physical torture acceptable – if, indeed, such methods were deployed by Colonel Scotland and the many interrogators whom he trained. There is no question that the results obtained were useful, even spectacular, and saved many allied lives, or made possible the many war crime convictions obtained in the post-war trials. Ultimately, Fry is questioning whether Britain, as a free democracy, crossed a moral & ethical line in the London Cage. Colonel Scotland and his team appear as masters of the interrogation craft who, to give them the benefit of doubt, balanced precariously on the knife edge of that line.

[Linda Humberstone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everyone will have their own opinion of the details recorded in this book and how the interrogators and Colonel Scotland gained necessary information from their prisoners inside this detention centre. Although I abhor torture and physical abuse, I don't think slapping a hard nosed Nazi round the face for his actions against innocent people is horrific. There was a war on and the Nazis' and Japanese did not think twice about torturing people or killing innocent civilians, sometimes for entertainment. They were quite happy to let people rot to death or execute them in concentration camps. In war time extremely bad things happen and it was vital to get certain information expediently but how to get it in the correct manner is really the question here. Certainly, people do not like to think that uncivilised, clandestine events were carried out secretly, but, on the other hand the staff trying to gain important information about Nazi atrocities, checking and re-checking various stories, listening to horrific stories of cruelty, were doing a thankless job. My view is that the case for enquiry into the London Cage should be finished now and that the Geneva Convention Rules is adhered to by all but one thing is sure, I don't think anyone in this country would have appreciated the Nazi regime and all its doctrine being alive and kicking in England if we had lost the war.

[Ant Koplowitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting account of The Cage in London during World War II, something I had never heard of and didn't know existed. It was the intelligence service's interrogation centre for captured German service personnel and suspected spies. Lots of interdepartmental infighting and squabbling influenced its operation, although at its head was Colonel Scotland.

Scotland was a pretty top rank interrogator, who both dealt directly with detainees and trained other interrogators. He was something of a maverick and ruffled more than a few feathers amongst the government hierarchy.

Lots of information and stories of the other 'Cages' across Britain and the famous detainees interrogated by Scotland and his team. As the war concluded, the role of The Cage changed from interrogating military personnel to interviewing suspected war criminals.

A fascinating and detailed account of an area of history that was previously unknown. Looking forward to reading more books by Helen Fry.

© Koplowitz 2021

[Krepde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few subjects can be as hard to nail down as a secret interrogation centre linked to allegations of torture. Helen Fry’s meticulous research has cast some light on this dank corner of wartime history. A fascinating study of a frightening centre where prisoners of war and, later, those accused of war crimes were subjected to intense scrutiny. Fry, too, prods at the nature of its head, a man barred from Camp 020, the London wartime interrogation centre for suspected spies, because of his tendency to use violence. Truth can be an inconvenience for secret organisations and the author has done remarkably well to glean as much information as she has about a place that will always be steeped in controversy.
She raises, too, the moral questions about what is acceptable at a time of war when a nation’s very existence is under threat. Along with Ian Cobain’s Cruel Britannia, a significant contribution to aid our understanding of what happen behind high walls all those years ago. Impressive.

[Bob Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tough characters, tough place

I stumbled on this book accidentally, as I was looking for something about bugging conversations of key Nazi figures while they were housed at a London location described in a book I was the reading as almost a country club where they were plied with booze and treated like royalty.
That locale, as it turns out, was most certainly NOT the London cage.
This book recalls a more brutal but probably necessary place where Nazi secrets were sorted out and vile characters were ultimately questioned in preparing them to meet their fate.
It offers good information as part of understanding the British battle against Hitler, and more so it’s aftermath.

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book, and worth a read, but neither as shocking as the cover blurb would suggest, nor as riveting. Interesting and informative, it fails to deliver with its narrative, and it has a slightly incoherent, disjointed style. Read it for interest, but don't expect to be overly shocked by its contents.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read about an aspect of World War II hardly written about or discussed. It sheds light on The London Cage and it’s officer commanding who did a difficult job well and with great success. Harden Nazi’s and SS Officers blighted the world with a violence never unseen - they were brought to heel here and many confessed to their crimes. A must read for anyone interested in WW II.

[eddie jezierski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Behind closed doors

This book gives you an insight to the war behind closed doors . Gathering information to help bring the war to an end and bring the leaders to justice who committed war crimes. But there is a lot of questions left unanswered.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is interesting in that I had never heard of the London Cage so everything was new to me, but some of what went on there was surprising. I guess I never thought of the “good guys” acting like the gestapo, which makes me rather naive, I guess.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A most fascinating read of the moral dilemma of the interrogation centre the ‘London cage’ during WW2 for intelligence and following with bringing those who committed war crimes to justice. Very insightful.

[Nadine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not finished. Very engrossing, and quite horrifying. However as an audio book it was a bit plodding as each and every date and detail is read out, something you'd skim over if you were reading.

[Bookwormthings · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and evenhanded in it's frankness about the dilemmas of whether or not the end justifies the means.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather dry but very original, and making use of documents not publicly available for many years.

[Sue Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating story & well researched

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book, but it is written more like a history book than a novel so can be hard to get through.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative but quite slow paced, this book isn't a light read and is quite academic.

[Renée L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this fascinating look at a part of WWII history that we dont really think or know much of

[Garth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating aspect of WW2 which I was unaware of.