An unprocessed draft manuscript being reconstructed ... - WNLibrary

Eavesdropping on Hitler’s Reich
throughout the war C.S.D.I.C.’s Wortlautprotokolle refer only to
the date the information was “received,” not “recorded.”
after italy declared war on Britain in June 1940, a C.S.D.I.C.
Middle East had been established at Cairo, near General Headquarters,
Middle East, capable of processing sixty prisoners at a time.
Its successes were often spectacular. Thus in January 1942 it recorded
private conversations between Rommel’s captured Generals
Ravenstein and Schmitt which provided the British commanderin-chief
General Sir Claude Auchinleck with evidence of General
Erwin Rommel’s severe losses in the recent desert battles, as well
as general mismanagement and rising discontent with Rommel’s
leadership. After the entry of the United States into the war, American
interrogation officers were also attached to C.S.D.I.C (U.K.),
though the British War Office retained control.
Shortly before that time, on December 1, 1941 department
M.I.9 had been split, yielding M.I.9 and a new department, M.I.19,
commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel A.R. Rawlinson; Colonel Kendrick’s
C.S.D.I.C.(U.K.) and the other British prisoner-of-war
processing unit, Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (Home) or
P.W.I.S.(H) were affiliated to M.I.19.
P.W.I.S.(H) was a substantially more brutal interrogating unit
than the sophisticated C.S.D.I.C; its commander was the infamous
Lieutenant-Colonel A.P. Scotland. Scotland had gone to South Africa
in 1902, transferred to Deutsch-Südwestafrika in 1904. become
a Kriegsfreiwillige in the German colonial army (then at war with
the Hottentots); himself taken prisoner in S.W.A. until July 1915,
he had been commissioned by the British for Intelligence work in
France in 1916. He would direct the P.W.I.S. in France and Britain
from 1940 to 1945. There were frequent reports of brutality and
Hinsley, vol.i, 205.
PRO: CAB.105�16, CAB.105�16, No.81. – Eventually the C.S.D.I.C. built up files of biobiographical extracts on Hitler’s generals in Africa, Rommel, Crüwell, Thoma,
and Arnim (W0.208�4199 and �4200).
Kriegstagebuch (KTB) der Abt. MI.19, War Office (PRO: WO.165�41).
WO.165�41).
For Lieutenant-Colonel. A.P. Scotland’s papers see PRO: WO.208�4294.
WO.208�4294.