'Invading Hitler's Europe'
An Intelligence Officer with the US Army describes the interrogation techniques he had perfected by November 1944
Roswell K. Doughty served with the 141st Regiment, 36th Infantry Division, the "Texas" Division, as they landed in North Africa in 1943. As an Intelligence Officer, he had an excellent overview of their progress - with regular contact with all ranks from Private through to the Divisional commanding officer. He was far from uncritical of what he saw when he came to write his memoirs, although full of admiration for the front-line soldier.
Although he did not dictate his memoirs until the late 1970s, he could rely on detailed notes and diary entries he made at the time. Invading Hitler's Europe: From Salerno to the Capture of Göring: The Memoir of a US Intelligence Officer was not published until 2020. An absorbing insight into the US Army at the time.
By the Autumn of 1944, he was a very experienced interrogator. In this excerpt, he describes the usual routine - that involved some play-acting:
Shortly after my sortie to the OP, from which the peaks of the Vosges Mountains could be seen, I had occasion to interrogate a German general who had been bagged by our regiment. By that time in the war I had participated in the questioning of thousands of German prisoners. Certain techniques, based on the effective advice of the British major at the NATOUSA Intelligence School, had been worked into a scenario that seldom failed to produce results.
I suspect it is only natural, when exposed to danger at every turn, to limit one’s outlook to the factors which increase or decrease that danger. I know that most infantrymen were concerned primarily with that wedge of the front that angled out from their two eyes to a distance measured by the range of hostile guns that could bear on them.
My own outlook was scarcely wider or longer range than that, except that my responsibility was to keep our regimental command group aware of hostile capabilities along our immediate front. Anything that improved or cut into those capabilities was of concern to me as I prepared intelligence reports daily for use by regimental and division officers.
We wanted to know the state of morale among troops opposing us, the status of their supplies of all kinds, the possibility of reinforcement, normal eating hours (so that we could harass the chow lines), supply routes, new weapons in the offing, battle experience, commanding officers, gun emplacements, supporting weapons to include armor, tactical plans, and on into a full range of activities. My wedge of the front was enlarged by the regimental stance and the need to assess conditions affecting our operations.
When we captured a number of prisoners at any one time it was not difficult to spot the ‘easy marks,’ provided that the capturing group obeyed instructions and kept the prisoners from standing easy until after we had interrogated them at our regimental headquarters. Early in the war, green troops often gave PWs cigarettes and food as soon as the latter were captured, thus easing their minds as to their eventual disposition. We did not stand for prisoners being abused except as the exigencies of any situation caused us to exert unusual psychological pressures on them, but we aimed to capitalize on the German propaganda that promised German soldiers that death was preferable to capture. Quite often prisoners would take for granted that they were going to be shot by us and would ask if they could write letters to their families first, or simply beg for mercy.
It was dirty pool in many ways, but quite often requests to write families would be denied in a brusque manner and since the prisoners would have jumped to the conclusion that we were about to shoot them, the simple denial as to letter writing would reinforce their beliefs that their futures were short. Careful interrogation, while maintaining the tensions created by such an atmosphere, would seldom fail to produce results of benefit to our regiment and highly injurious to the enemy.
One part of our technique would call for a US officer-interrogator, assigned to our regiment to interview a prisoner while a huge sergeant stood by in case of trouble. I would stand out of sight, but within hearing distance, and at an opportune time I would stride in, as belligerent as a wild bull, and berate the interrogator, who would call out ‘Achtung’ and jump to his feet as though frightened of me. If the prisoner failed to scramble to his feet, assuming that he was seated, as was usually the case, the sergeant would help him in no uncertain manner.
On the day that we handled the general, the interrogator was acting somewhat obsequiously, as we had agreed he would, when I walked into the large stone walled barracks hall in which were located a desk and two chairs. The atmosphere was icy and our breathing vaporized as we spoke.
I slammed up to the desk and the interrogator jumped up shouting ‘Achtung’ as always, but the general sat where he was, looking me up and down for the few seconds it took the sergeant to jump to the chair and eject its occupant onto the floor. The look in the general’s eye changed very quickly from arrogance to, what best can be described as, uncertainty.
I knew that the general could understand English, as he had answered some of the questions in that language. I sailed into the interrogator in my best parody of a Prussian martinet, accusing him of mollycoddling Germans and letting them walk all over him. I asked him why he had given the prisoner a cigarette before I’d had a chance to conduct the questioning and, in general, laid it on thick.
While such playacting has always sounded hokey, it worked more often than not with troops who had been trained in an atmosphere full of bluster and rigid formality. During such tirades I quite often accused the interrogator of wasting time asking prisoners questions to which we already knew the answers. In a way, this was backing into the technique known as ‘show of knowledge,’ aimed at convincing prisoners that, if we knew so much already, little harm would come of telling us more. Quite often in parading our knowledge of hostile activities, we would include items of which we were not sure and would have them confirmed by the prisoner, directly or by implication.
The general had some difficulty getting to his feet because of his girth which was well cinched in by a heavy Sam Browne belt. By this time I was fairly boiling with anger! I nodded at the sergeant, who was standing behind the general, and almost immediately the high-billed cap that added inches to the man’s apparent height, went sailing across the hall. Underneath that handsome headpiece was a bald pate that seemed to lessen the austerity of the officer. I yelled at the general, telling him that I was damned sick and tired of German officers calling on the Geneva Conventions (which he had done) to save their own hides when, to my certain knowledge, they had never refrained from torturing our soldiers when interrogating them after capture.
He started to remonstrate by raising his hands toward me and I pushed him down into the chair with considerable vehemence. His feet flipped up as he landed and a look of pain crossed his face. I told him I wanted one question, and one question alone, answered and with no more quibbling.
‘How many troops did you have under your command when you were captured?’ I asked. His silence was punctuated by the sound of a Sam Browne belt being removed from the general by the sergeant. This resulted in a vast sinking of the general’s paunch. Repetition of the one question followed by silence brought similar divestiture of boots, tunic, breeches, shirt, underwear, and socks. It was, then, but a matter of moments before the general answered. In fact, he went on and on as he stood first on one foot and then the other, shaking and shivering in the icebox of a barracks.
I inquired into any information he had as to reserves available to him, having emphasized to him that the Allied armies would soon penetrate Germany and crush it absolutely. It would be, I told him, to Germany’s advantage to get the slaughter over with as soon as possible.
He was fairly well advised of the state of affairs to his immediate rear and as far back as the Rhine River. He gave me to understand that the defensive positions along the flank of the Vosges Mountains were not ready for occupation yet and that he had been warned to hold the Moselle River position for a month longer.
He acknowledged that the penetration of the German front by my regiment had come as a complete surprise and our crossing of the river by wading had caught them unawares. ‘Usually,’ he said, ‘you Americans attack with artillery and jeeps, but you fooled us this time.’
When he was permitted to dress again, it became apparent that his arrogance returned with each article of clothing that he donned until, having again cinched in his flab with the Sam Browne, he jutted his chin toward me and said he would protest ‘to higher authority’ about such mistreatment of a general officer of the Third Reich. I simply asked him if he thought his word would be better than mine, under the circumstances. I never heard of him again, once we sent him back through channels to the higher authorities he was seeking.
©Roswell K. Doughty 2020, ' Invading Hitler's Europe: From Salerno to the Capture of Göring: The Memoir of a US Intelligence Officer'. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.
