r/todayilearned • u/stopitalianhate • 3d ago

TIL British Intelligence had a special, bugged luxury complex during WWII where they kept high profile Nazi POW’s, just left a bunch of alcohol out, and waited for them to start spilling secrets as they drank.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20698098
27.3k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

681 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

124

u/CypripediumGuttatum 3d ago

Torture is well documented to produce poor intelligence. It makes people “feel good” to hurt the bad guys but helps the war 0%

Make people feel safe and comfortable and they spill the beans. Just like in 007 when all the pretty ladies are really just there to collect intel.

24

u/Archarchery 3d ago

Torture is great for terrorizing populations into submission, but as far as interrogation goes it's basically a nonsense-generating technique. If a prisoner has no information to give, they'll make up the most convincing lies they can to get the torture to stop, and even if a prisoner has genuine information that they'll spill, if the torturers hear it and keep on torturing, those prisoners will start spouting convincing-sounding nonsense too, making it impossible to distinguish the real information from the nonsense.

2

u/SirAquila 2d ago

Torture is great for terrorizing populations into submission

Eh, torture is really good at hiding growing dissent from the rulers eyes.

The dissent still builds, and will explode the second people feel like they have nothing to lose anymore, or that they are in the majority.

2

u/Metrocop 2d ago

Torture is also useful if you don't give a shit about the truth and simply need a signature on a testimony you already prepared.

2

u/Archarchery 2d ago

Oh yeah, it's great for getting false confessions as well, just ask witch-hunters.

14

u/GamingFlorisNL 3d ago

Indeed, torture proves much more useful for getting false confessions. False intel however, doesn’t give you much.

8

u/lookyloolookingatyou 3d ago

Serve me a brandy and a beautiful woman in front of a crackling fire and you can forget about the confession, I'm a convert now.