One of our more cherished national myths is that we British do not torture prisoners of war and criminal suspects. We support decency and fair play. Ian Cobain’s book proves beyond doubt that we do indeed make use of torture, and sometimes with relish. It shows that the British state has long practised a secret torture policy and continues to do so.
It is easy to predict the fate of this carefully researched and well-written book. It will be ignored, glossed over and quietly rubbished by a political and Whitehall establishment which has persistently covered up or denied the very troubling state crimes that are documented here.
Cobain traces British involvement with torture and prisoner abuse back to the second world war. He has unveiled a network of secret interrogation centres in Britain and continental Europe, showing that their use persisted well beyond the end of the war. One of the worst of these facilities, Bad Nenndorf, west of Hanover, was visited by the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper while working on behalf of British intelligence to prove that Hitler was well and truly dead, the project that turned into the bestselling The Last Days of Hitler.
What happened next might help prove the argument that information produced under duress is rarely accurate. Trevor-Roper obtained testimony from a number of high-ranking officers, among them Nicolaus von Below, Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant. Below, who had been subject to the usual regime of isolation and sleep deprivation, was forced to stand to attention for hours on end while his interrogators shouted questions at him about Hitler’s secret last orders.
According to Below: ‘Since I never received or heard of any such orders, I had to make them up, to get myself out of the bad situation I was in.’
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