An unprocessed draft manuscript being reconstructed ... - WNLibrary

Eavesdropping on Hitler’s Reich
with electrical connections to an indicator watched by an NCO in
the orderly room. The interrogating officer would press a button at
each check point “so that his whereabouts were always known.”
The British officer would display an ever greater confidence
in victory, leading his prisoner to protestations, and eventually to
boasts, in which the prisoner would accidentally betray far more
than he had intended. “Some British officers, related Grondona,
“were able successfully to pose as Germans.” More likely, these
“British” officers were recent German immigrants. Initially in 1940
there were four solche Spitzel (stool pigeons), who had to be closely
briefed on the military background of the character they were to
adopt.
For political reasons some of the recently captured German
prisoners were also willing to betray their Fatherland. Professor
Sir Frank Hinsley, official British historian, relates that most of the
German prisoners who did co-operate with the Vernehmungsoffizieren
did so after a “softening period” of only two to nine days.
By 1945 no less than forty-nine German prisoners had been turned
round and trained to work as Spitzel, to work against their former
comrades. Their real names are still closely protected by the British
government. One of them, Herbert Cleff, living in Essen, protested
bitterly to the British authorities when David Irving printed his
name in The Mares Nest in 1965.
It is not easy to identify the Spitzel from the transcripts. They
can usually be recognised, however, by the frequency with which
they ask leading and damning questions for their cellmates to answer
and – occasionally – the manner in which the same Geheimnummer
(z.B., A.773) is assigned to several different “names”.
Moreover, while normal prisoners rarely stayed at C.S.D.I.C. more
than two or three weeks, the stool pigeon figured in transcripts over
six or even twelve months!
The stool pigeon would be introduced to difficult newcomers
as, for example, Unteroffizier Hesse, Beobachter eines abgeschossenen
Junker 88. The newcomer might eventually mention TO
Hinsley, Bd.1, S.283