The Interrogator (46 page)

Although there were three U-boat commanders with the name Mohr, none of them served on Admiral Dönitz’s Staff or fell into British hands. One of Admiral Dönitz’s most senior Staff officers was the distinguished U-boat commander Günther Hessler, who sank fourteen ships off the coast of West Africa in May and June of 1941. The official history he wrote for the Ministry of Defence after the war was an important source for the German Staff perspective on the Battle of the Atlantic.

The most successful commander of the war, Otto Kretschmer of
U-99
, was captured in March 1941, brought ashore in Liverpool and taken to Trent Park for interrogation. The officers of
U-99
were then transferred to Grizedale POW camp in the Lake District. His first officer, Hans-Jochen von Knebel Doeberitz, had served for a time on the Staff as Dönitz’s adjutant. During Kretschmer’s time as the senior German prisoner at Grizedale, a secret Council of Honour was held to question and judge the First Officer of the ill-fated
U-570
. In August 1941 the inexperienced commander and crew of the boat had panicked and surrendered to a British aircraft at sea. The first officer was found guilty of cowardice by the Court of Honour for his part in the affair and ostracised by the other prisoners, but he was not beaten. In an effort to regain his good name, he attempted to escape and was shot while on the run in the Lake District. There were two investigations into the Court of Honour but no charges were brought against Kretschmer or any of the other prisoners at the camp. After the war, Otto Kretschmer served as an Admiral in the West German Navy. A more disturbing example of a kangaroo court took place at a POW camp in Scotland in December 1944 when a prisoner called Wolfgang Rosterg was wrongly accused of giving information to the British. He was brutally beaten and hanged by some of the SS prisoners in the camp. Five men were eventually tried and executed for the crime, although many more had played a part.

Camp 020 was MI5’s secret centre at Ham Common, London, where spies were interrogated and broken by the formidable Colonel
Stephens and his team of interrogators. There is no evidence to suggest that physical torture was used by the Security Service but a senior officer in one branch of Military Intelligence [MI 19] who spent time at the camp is known to have used excessive force. A number of secret reports were written by Naval Intelligence, MI5 and Military Intelligence personnel after the war describing their interrogation techniques in some detail and I have made use of these. The memories of the master Luftwaffe interrogator Hanns Joachim Scharff, quoted in
The Interrogator
by Raymond F. Tolliver (Schiffer 1997), were also useful, as were more contemporary British and American police sources. It was not unusual for POWs to be taken to bars and theatres in London in an effort to win their confidence and a special fund existed for this purpose.

The Royal Navy lost a number of escorts like the
Culloden
on convoy duty in the course of the war but particularly shocking was the sinking of HMS
Firedrake
. The destroyer,
Firedrake
, was cut in half by a torpedo while on convoy duty in the Atlantic in December 1942 and all but twenty six of her crew of 194 men were lost. A secret Admiralty report was critical of decisions made by her captain (ADM 199/165). No official Board of Inquiry was held into the loss of the ship. For the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on war veterans, I spoke to both Merchant and Royal Navy seamen and was able to draw on a number of recent medical studies. Of particular valve were J. P. Wilson, B. Droždek, and S. Turkovic: ‘Post-traumatic shame and guilt’,
Trauma, Violence and Abuse
, vol. 7, no. 2, April 2006, 122–141, and R. E. Opp and A. Y. Samson, ‘Taxonomy of guilt for combat veterans’,
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice
, 20, 1989, 159–165.

Of the many books, papers and people I have consulted in researching the story, I would especially like to thank Volmar König for his memories of life behind the wire as a prisoner. Admiral John Adams helped me with his recollections of life aboard an old V and W Class destroyer in the first years of the war and of the dark days of the Liverpool blitz. I am grateful to Sarah Baring for her insight into life in the Citadel and on the home front and to Dr Iain Hamilton of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg for sharing his knowledge of the Naval Intelligence Division. Donald Coombes
spoke to me of the night HMS
Firedrake
was lost. I interviewed Colin McFadyean more than once about his work as an interrogator and the late Sir Charles Wheeler also shared his memories of the Naval Intelligence division with me.

I would also like to acknowledge my debt to the following sources: The Admiralty’s
A Seaman’s Pocket-Book
(June 1943); Patrick Beesley,
Very Special Intelligence – The Story of the Admiralty’s Operational Intelligence Centre 1939–45
and
Very Special Admiral: The Life of Admiral J. H. Godfrey
; Clay Blair,
Hitler’s U-boat Wars 1939–45
(2 vols); Kendal Burt and James Leasor,
The One That Got Away
; Patrick Campbell,
Trent Park: A History
; Simon Crump,
They Call it ‘U-boat Hotel’
; Roderick De Norman,
For Führer and Fatherland: SS Murder and Mayhem in Wartime Britain
; Karl Dönitz,
Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days
; Günther Hessler,
German Naval History of the U-boat War in the Atlantic
(3 vols); Chris Howard,
The Battle of the Atlantic – The Corvettes and Their Crews
; Major H. R. Jordan, unpublished memoir in the Imperial War Museum of Major H. R. Jordan of Military Counter Intelligence; David Kahn,
Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-boat Codes 1939–43
; General Raymond E. Lee,
The Journal of General Raymond E. Lee 1940–41
; Andrew Lycett,
Ian Fleming
; Donald Macintyre,
U-boat Killer
; Donald MacLachlan,
Room 39: Naval Intelligence in Action 1939–45
; Jak P. Mallmann Showell,
German Naval Code Breakers
; Timothy P. Mulligan,
Neither Sharks Nor Wolves: The Men of the Nazi U-boat Arm 1939–45
; Axel Niestlé,
German U-boat Losses During World War II
; James Owen and Guy Walters,
The Voice of War
; Léonce Peillard,
U-boats to the Rescue: The Laconia Incident
; Graham Rhys-Jones, ‘The German System: A Staff Perspective’ in
The Battle of the Atlantic: The 50th Anniversary International Naval Conference
; Phil Richards and John Banigan,
How to Abandon Ship
(1942); Terence Robertson,
The Golden Horseshoe
; Jürgen Rohwer,
Axis Submarine Success of World War II
; Captain S. W. Roskill,
The War at Sea
(4 vols); Stephen Sansom,
Westminster at War
; Hanns Joachim Scharff and Raymond F. Tolliver,
The Interrogator: The Story of Hanns Joachim Scharff – Master Interrogator of the Luftwaffe
; Lt Col A. P. Scotland,
The London Cage
; Simon Sebag Montefiore,
Enigma: The Battle for the Codes
; Lt Col R. W. G.
Stephens and Oliver Hoare,
Camp 020: MI5 and the Nazi Spies
; John Strachey,
Post D
; David Syrett,
The Battle of the Atlantic and Signals Intelligence U-boat Situations and Trends 1941–45
; Eric Topp,
Odyssey of a U-boat Commander
; Colin Warwick,
Really Not Required
; Herbert A. Werner,
Iron Coffins
; Derek M. Whale,
The Liners of Liverpool
; Richard Whittington-Egan,
The Great Liverpool Blitz
; Joan Wyndham,
Love is Blue
and
Love Lessons
.

Finally, I would like to thank my agent Julian Alexander and my editor, Kate Parkin and all those who helped me with advice and encouragement. I hope they find enough of the spirit of the times in the story to forgive the liberties I have taken with the history.