Bugging Hitler's Soldiers
In the mess and annihilation of total war, first-class intelligence is as crucial as firepower. MI19 set out to make use of the German prisoners of war in the most enthusiastic surveillance mission ever attempted. Three courtly homes in the British non-urban area were transformed into prison camps and wired for sound. MI19's microphones reached everywhere. Nothing was outside limits.
Cloaked away in cellars and top floors were the listening rooms filled with, what at that time was cutting edge, recording equipment. German prisoners of war were brought to the UK and interrogated. If they were suspicious of having important intelligence the prisoners were then sent to bugged locations where listeners were ready and waiting for them to start talking.
The evidence comes from one of the most aweless operations British intelligence ever attempted. Conversations between captured German soldiers were secretly recorded and then transcribed word for word. In this documentary we hear German soldiers as they'd never been heard before - uncensored and unguarded. Using transcripts buried for decades, these conversations are reconstructed for the first time.
In the aftermath of World War II, ordinary German soldiers claimed they knew nothing about the Holocaust. They blamed all its atrocities on the SS. But these recently publicized transcripts expose the full extent of that lie.
Re DustUp--my thoughts exactly...
No doubt atrocities and too many of them occurred. But even Fritz the defected German Jew admitted they felt good getting back at the nazis. How accurate were their translations, all done by those defected German Jews? Did 3000 Jews shot turn into 30000, etc.? One would have to hear the original recordings rather than just read the translations.
I'm not saying it didn't happen as stated, just saying tough to know since there was propaganda in this account as well, in what they didn't say. Eisenhower hated the Germans, rounded them up behind barbed wire, not allowing them to have food nor water, with a creek nearby; apparently some sort of Eisenhower punishment. Many died. When all they say is he showed some officers the situation at the camps... Which in actuality was partly due to Typhus and starvation, caused by the Allies bombing out the rails which brought supplies to those camps... there is more to the story besides the incidents of German atrocities. Were the German officers going to talk about the things that bothered them or of normal routine drudgery of war?
Moral of the story: War is bad business ...unless you are the ones (Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Warburgs, and European and American companies, etc.; nowadays add in the Israelis, Russians, and Asians) making bank from it. Then what you cause and do is ok because people dying to make you money is just business.
This shows how little mankind as progressed since 13th Century Mongols or 16th Century Ivan the Terrible russia (or 1945 army of USSR in Germany. Why were prosecutions so few post-war? Were millions of German military (Japanese as well) "just following orders"?
Excellent and entertaining doc.
The only reason British intelligence didn't disclose these files when they would have done some good was to prevent the embarassment of admitting that they were snooping. There was nothing new or top secret about the methods they used. Basically, the whole exercise just cost the British taxpayer untold amounts of money with the net result that the Nazi criminals lived through the rest of the war in great comfort, drinking to Hitler's health and being treated like gentlemen instead of scumbags, while the Brits were living on war rations.
PS: Thanks for the docu.
I think they found out a few good snippits,
But in my opinion they should have had the whole bloody lot of them on the rack
Good thing Hitler was in control, had Germany had some sane it could have been a different out come.. Google War is a Racket and read..
I wonder what our soldiers and generals would say about recent world actions if they were placed in a bugged mansions.
Would they be as embarrassing to the future as these Germans?
I think they would be embarrassing to the present.
It does not have to be only recent actions.
During the Boer War, 40 years before the start of the
second world war more Boer children under the age of 16 died in the British Concentration Camps, than soldiers of both sides of the war, following the invasion of the Boer Republics by British soldiers.
Many women also died in these British Concentration camps and the total number of civilians that perished in these British Concentration camps were in excess of 10% of the Boer population. To make matters worse the Boer farms were burned to the ground and their cattle killed
by British soldiers in the scorched earth policy during the war.
Towards the end of the war the British executed Boer
PoW's rather than capturing them.
In contrast to the Nazi's and some others, no one was ever convicted for any of the atrocities committed by the British soldiers against the Boers.
I wonder what bugging these British soldiers would have revealed.
The lesson - if you are going to commit atrocities, do not loose the War, that way you can get away with it.
It may pay for you to study the history of the Boer war with more vigor, as LT Harry Morant was tried and executed for "war crimes" committed in the second Boer war. That being the case I say to you, you're wrong....
Granted! Very interesting about Lt Morant, thanks. I notice some believe he was made a scape goat, which, if true will mean that many others where let of the hook.
Do you know perhaps if anyone was ever convicted for the atrocities committed against the many woman and children?
Mate forgive me on my tardiness, I was going to reply to you some time back however I got distracted and forgot.
I don't believe so. I could no say 100% but to my limited knowledge the Morant case was the only hearing concerning any of the atrocities that to place during that conflict.
There is currently a call for the re-opening of the Morant case by Australia to the British government. I don't know if that will open the way for new inquiries, but I tend to think it wont.