History
The United Kingdom systematically interrogated all of its prisoners of war. A "cage" for interrogation of prisoners was established in 1940 in each command area of the UK, manned by officers trained by Alexander Scotland, the head of Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (PWIS) of the Intelligence Corps. The prisoners were sent to prison camps after their interrogation at the cages. Nine cages were established from southern England to Scotland, with the London cage also being "an important transit camp."
The cages varied in facilities. The Doncaster cage used a portion of the town's racecourse as a camp, while the Catterick and Loughborough cages were in bare fields. The London Cage, located in a fashionable part of the city, had space for 60 prisoners, was equipped with five interrogation rooms, and staffed by 10 officers serving under Scotland, plus a dozen noncommissioned officers who served as interrogators and interpreters. Security was provided by soldiers from the Guards regiments selected "for their height rather than their brains." Many of the British NCOs were fluent in German, and were skilled in persuading prisoners to reveal information. Some wore KGB uniforms due to the Germans' fear of the Russians.
After the war, the PWIS became known as the War Crimes Investigation Unit (WCIU), and the London Cage became the headquarters for questionining suspected war criminals. Among the Nazi war criminals confined at the London cage was Fritz Knoechlein, who was in charge of the murder of 100 British prisoners who had surrendered at Le Paradis, France in May 1940. Knoechlein was convicted and hanged in 1949.
Alexander Scotland participated in the interrogation of Gen. Kurt Meyer, who was accused of participating in a massacre of Canadian troops. Meyer was eventually sentenced to death, although the sentence was not carried out. Scotland observed that Meyer received milder treatment after news of the atrocity had grown "cold". He said that Nazi SS and Police Leader Jakob Sporrenberg, who was responsible for the deaths of 46,000 Jews in Poland toward the end of the war, was not prosecuted by Poland despite documentary evidence of his crimes, because of Polish dislike of Jews. (Sporrenberg was in fact sentenced to death by a Polish court in Warsaw in 1950, and executed in December 1952)
Other Nazi war criminals passing through the London Cage after the war included Sepp Dietrich, an SS general accused but never prosecuted for the murder of British prisoners in 1940. Alexander Scotland participated in the investigation of the SS and Gestapo men who murdered 50 escaped prisoners from Stalag Luft III in 1944, in the aftermath of what became known as the "Great Escape". The London Cage closed in 1948.
Read more about this topic: London Cage
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