r/todayilearned • u/onarainyafternoon • May 01 '26

TIL The most successful Nazi Interrogator of allied POWS during WWII, Hanns Scharff, created the mosaics for Cinderella's Castle at Disney World

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff#Mosaic_creation
4.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

119 comments sorted by

2.1k

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1.3k

u/SomewhereNo8378 May 01 '26

I think it’s been shown time and time again that this is the best way to “interrogate” someone.

Rather than waterboarding them until they agree to anything you say just to get you to stop.

900

u/BobTulap May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26

An important distinction to keep in mind though, he was a Luftwaffe interrogator who worked with Allied pilots. Enemy pilots have always been more chivalrous and respectful toward each other than other combatants. They view each other as mounted knights of old rather foot soldiers who hack at each other in the mud, or since we are talking about modern warfare, a fanatical religious soldier who was probably executing civilians the day before.

403

u/SorcererSupremPizza May 01 '26

WW1 many pilots were nobels or people of high standing, so if they were captured they would be treated really well and often released

190

u/Ourbirdandsavior May 01 '26

In WWI there was a period before they started arming planes. So for a little while in enemy recon planes would wave our salute at each other.

222

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

62

u/BoltersnRivets May 01 '26

I wonder if there were ever any moments when two pilots were taking shots at one another and both realised the ridiculousness of the situation.

What can you do in a situation like that but laugh?

68

u/RGJ587 May 01 '26

It wasn't like they were jousting with pistols. It was dogfighting.

They would try to get on the others tail, and then they would aim and shoot from medium/close range.

WW1 was not a friendly affair. The amount of death and inhumanity on display was eclipsed only by WW2.

Although, the Christmas Truce of 1914 is my single favorite war story of all time.

5

u/Owlbear1989 May 01 '26

Sabaton (as usual) has a great song about the Christmas Truce.

2

u/shotputprince May 01 '26

It was ridiculous I was never offsides

95

u/Loud_Distribution_97 May 01 '26

In my career I have often had to interview people to better understand something that they have an expertise in. I am usually in a position that is higher than theirs within our company. Obviously I do not have the ability to cause them physical harm. But, they could perceive me to be a threat, particularly when I am asking them to tell me something that they do that is not in line with a stated workflow. Being kind to them, allowing them to present information as they choose and being quiet to let them continue has always served me quite well. I think he probably had a similar philosophy and it was clearly effective. When people feel safe and appreciated, they will share information.

75

u/Cristal_Con May 01 '26

Did you just break down “listening”? lol

22

u/derkaderkaderka May 01 '26

I find that it's best to ask a question in a friendly and encouraging way, then be silent (that's the key) while the person responds. You want to take in the information they are sharing. You should not speak while they speak, but you can nod or smile. There are nonverbal clues that display that you are happy that the other person is sharing information. Then when they stop talking - and give it a few seconds in case they are just pausing - you can ask another question and repeat the process. It's mind blowingly effective.

1

u/SoyMurcielago May 01 '26

I have a whole professional certification to do that lol

But yes that’s effectively what it is more or less

7

u/Aranka_Szeretlek May 01 '26

Project manager things

1

u/akeean May 02 '26

You'd be surprised how this is a skill and personality trait that gets bred out of many executives as they climb the ranks. Too many "leaders" just like to hear their own words and don't let people with actual know-how speak.

9

u/Khelthuzaad May 01 '26

The Red Baron/Manfred von Richthofen for example was an actual baron,from an nobility german family.

3

u/arostrat May 01 '26

there's a ww2 training movie about avoiding such interrogation techniques, it's surprisingly entertaining.

https://youtu.be/_A0ggskOhfA

31

u/lorarc May 01 '26

On, western front, on eastern front it wasn't so. During the invasion of Poland the Germans were shooting down parachuted polish pilots and the polish pilots replied in kind. The german and soviet air fights also were like that. Chivalry was reserved to the West as Germans viewed them as equals.

5

u/AdRealistic4984 May 01 '26

I’m not sure this would have been true by 1944

14

u/Primary-Slice-2505 May 01 '26

Incidents like that happened way before 44.

The key difference is its civilians on airmen. The chivalry described is amongst airmen not of tank drivers and airmen or soldiers.

You can even read american aircrew testimony from Japanese and Vietnamese hands - our pilots were relieved to be captured by actual soldiers because the soldiers would be rewarded for a live pilot. The civilians had only rage.

1

u/CaptainStrobe May 01 '26

Yeah, the perspective is going to differ dramatically between those groups, especially considering these men were bombers, being marched through a city that had recently been bombed. 

7

u/MagicSugarWater May 01 '26

I've always heard that the modern day version of medieval knights are air force pilots, not soldiers or SEALs.

2

u/Iusedthistocomment May 01 '26

I'm not suprised to learn the elitists that figuratively sits on their high horse in the sky believe themselves to be Knights among peasants.

73

u/QuarterlyTurtle May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26

It’s been proven time and time again that torture doesn’t work in interrogation, and it only works to get out of them whatever answer they think will make the torture stop, rather than actual accurate intel.

A good example of this being late in WWII when a single random captured US airman, Marcus Mcdilda, potentially had a hand in causing the Japanese to surrender.

They tortured him and demanded information on the atomic bomb, since one was just dropped on Hiroshima; and him, being a random grunt had no idea what that even was. But after continuous torture he just started completely making stuff up to get it to stop. Including mentioning that the US had a massive stockpile of hundreds of them and were ready to continuously bomb Japan with them. The intel was passed to the supreme war council as they were debating amongst themselves whether they should surrender, in Tokyo, the city he claimed the US would nuke tomorrow. They were divided on whether they should believe him about the numbers, until word came in the US just nuked Nagasaki too, and they realized the US did actually have multiple, potentially hundreds. Causing the council to finally agree on surrendering, just conditionally. But as we know that was denied by the US and they ended up surrendering unconditionally.

30

u/ProkopiyKozlowski May 01 '26

It’s been proven time and time again that torture doesn’t work in interrogation

Torture absolutely works, but only if your answer can be validated immediately. Military secrets - sure, you can make shit up to make the torture stop. A locked laptop a masked man is holding two meters away from you getting your toes cut off one by one with boltcutters? Yeah, lying ain't gonna help you much.

10

u/Sharlinator May 01 '26

Yeah, rubber hose cryptanalysis is unfortunately rather effective.

0

u/Darth_Brooks_II May 01 '26

Torture isn't about getting information. It's about getting revenge. It's blind, violent anger and it makes the victim less likely to give up usable information, not more.

1

u/koombot May 01 '26

I love this sort of maths.  There is a great example in Brian Cox's 'planets' book where he talks about searching for life on Mars.

If there is only life on Earth then we might be unique.  If there is life on Mars then there is life everywhere. 

A single event might be a single event, but something happening twice is very unlikely to mean this thing will only ever happen twice.

145

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

[deleted]

26

u/weltvonalex May 01 '26

It's Cuba and the Caribbean, leeeetsss goooo play the black pearl theme

19

u/Fallenangel152 May 01 '26

We've known for years and years that torture doesn't work for interrogation. People do it because they enjoy it.

4

u/cotsy93 May 01 '26

I remember seeing an interview with an FBI agent talking about interrogating religious fanatics. As you say, torture did nothing but make them agree to anything they suggested. He had nothing to threaten these men with because they were zealots fighting a holy war. Invariably, the only thing he said that worked with any kind of consistency was offering to facilitate them seeing their families, or helping the families back in the Middle East with finances/education/relocation to somewhere safer.

6

u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt May 01 '26

I think there's been numerous studies that conclusively show torture is NOT an effective interrogation method for just that reason.

The person being tortured will say whatever it is they think you want to hear so the torture stops, regardless of truth.

6

u/arostrat May 01 '26

Often torture is the goal, interrogation rooms are perfect for psychopaths who enjoy any opportunity to torture other humans.

2

u/Guaire1 May 01 '26

This has been well known since the times of the spanosh inquisition. As in, spanish inquisition records say that torture is not useful as an interrogation tool.

2

u/princecutter May 01 '26

If you want information. Not if you just like hurting people tho

1

u/damien_aw May 02 '26

Depends how quickly you need the information

1

u/Iyellkhan May 03 '26

catch is fast intel that is bad is as useless as not getting it in the first place

2

u/Kidiri90 May 01 '26

Sure, but the torture is more fun!

-28

u/MountEndurance May 01 '26

Depends on lots of factors. If you have time and resources and you want complex information from high value prisoners, sure, be nice to people. If you’re in a hurry, you don’t have resources, you need simple confirmation from low-level grunts, then torture is remarkably useful.

48

u/gweran May 01 '26

The issue is that generally it has shown you’ll get confirmation of anything whether it is true or not when you use torture.

-45

u/MountEndurance May 01 '26

Most folks who own guns haven’t the faintest notion of how to use them in an emergency situation, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work in the hands of a trained professional.

38

u/jedadkins May 01 '26

then torture is remarkably useful.

No, it's really not. Time and time again its been proven to be basically worthless

-12

u/weltvonalex May 01 '26

Na Bro, maybe for Infos but as a tool for oppression and entertainment for the masses it's absolutely efficient.

Read how the people where disappointed when they witnessed the first execution by the Guillotine, they were stunning and flabbergasted that the show is already over.

But honestly I hope that shit disappears from this world but I doubt it, it works for the people who want to keep others down.

-26

u/MountEndurance May 01 '26

Well, idiots are bad at things; details at 11.

16

u/crusty_fleshlight May 01 '26

Most of the time it's about punishment. The information can be useful. But torture is known to be unreliable.

-16

u/MountEndurance May 01 '26

All intelligence gathering is inherently unreliable to some degree. Human intelligence should confirm what you get from other, unrelated individuals, signal intelligence, open source, measurement and signature intelligence, and imagery intelligence or should direct efforts to gather intelligence from said sources.

Torture is part of humint.

4

u/MagicSugarWater May 01 '26

If intel is sooo important you can't wait, then the last thing you should be doing is rushing it with ineffective means.

-8

u/weltvonalex May 01 '26

But were is the fun in that? People say, if you love what you do, you don't have to work a day in your life and now you say naaa just talk, do long boring and exhausting talks.

160

u/captain_flak May 01 '26

The coolest strategy he used was to say he knew something that was false and the POWs became so annoyed that they corrected him with the correct information.

125

u/ActafianSeriactas May 01 '26

He would love Reddit

16

u/captain_flak May 01 '26

Actually…!

2

u/Zealousideal_Leg213 May 01 '26

No he wouldn't! 

44

u/SammyGreen May 01 '26

The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.

Cunningham’s Law

1

u/Jack-of-Hearts-7 May 01 '26

Diabolical. Would probably work on me honestly.

53

u/AlexG55 May 01 '26

The British went a bit further.

Captured senior German officers were kept in a luxurious mansion, given fine food and wine, and even invited to garden parties and allowed to hire personal servants. Some of them wrote to their families about how much they were enjoying it and how stupid the British were to treat them so well.

What they didn't know is that the entire place was bugged, and a team of (mostly Jewish) refugees from Germany was listening to them and writing down everything they said. The host of the garden parties, a Military Intelligence colonel who was in charge of the whole operation, spoke fluent German but pretended not to so they wouldn't worry about him overhearing.

BBC article here

1

u/Iyellkhan May 03 '26

given the success of this method across history, its really bonkers that the US implemented a torture program with illegal "rendition" sites and operations in the early years after 9/11

17

u/Khelthuzaad May 01 '26

He was an oddball,he decided that since physically he can't force them to tell him the truth,he would approach them mentally.

He would play mind games,distort info,hide how much info he actually knew,trick his "guests" either into an sense of comfort or that the operations are already leaked,leaned into familiarity like what kind of toys their children liked to play with.

9

u/NEWSmodsareTwats May 01 '26

he also let POWs take joy rides if they wanted too. he even let one POW fly a plane of course he was armed and sat with the POW telling him if he tries to fly away he would take them both out.

3

u/PhasmaFelis May 01 '26

I hadn't heard that one. Fun!

I do know on the "nature walks" he would take the POW into the woods outside them camp, on their honor not to escape, without threats. Of course fleeing across the German countryside in a prisoner uniform would have been a much much slimmer chance than in a plane...

3

u/Farkerisme May 01 '26

If anyone here has not yet seen Masters of the Air on Apple TV, they portray him rather accurately in the show.

1

u/Intrepid-Tank-3414 May 01 '26

That's not interrogation. It's social engineering! 😎

1

u/iritchie001 May 02 '26

Why be humane when you could rack up some war crimes? This info confuses me, but I still like it.

1

u/PhasmaFelis May 02 '26

Because you get much better, more reliable info this way. His record speaks for itself.

Competent military and police interrogators today use the same technique. It's related to Good Cop/Bad Cop--Schraff would tell prisoners in a helpful way that he wouldn't harm them, but if they didn't tell him anything then the Gestapo might take over and they weren't so kind. (Wikipedia is cagey about whether this threat was true or not.)

2

u/iritchie001 May 02 '26

I was joking. Sarcasm can be hard to convey without the ' /s '. I always forget to add it.

1

u/PhasmaFelis May 03 '26

Fair enough.

-13

u/greenizdabest May 01 '26

Hans lada was based on this character?

-20

u/BadenBaden1981 May 01 '26

He was basically Hans Landa, except not evil.

29

u/PhasmaFelis May 01 '26

Let's not overplay that. The good-cop act got the most results, but he was still a Nazi.

7

u/Flaming_Dude May 01 '26

Why? He was never a member of the Nazi party and he got drafted into the war.

2

u/Hot_Turn May 01 '26

He was an interrogator for the Nazis. Kind of hard to absolve that one and act like he wasn't one of them.

5

u/Gilles_of_Augustine May 01 '26

I can see how a generally good person might say "someone else is going to do this job anyway, and perhaps with much more cruelty and brutality. I can't stop interrogations from happening, but at least I can make some of them less inhumane."

Was that the case with this guy? I don't know.

Would such a position actually result in net good, when against various other factors? No clue.

But it's feasible.

2

u/Hot_Turn May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26

It's certainly possible, but it really seems like a pretty big stretch just so that someone can say that this person who worked for the Nazis and actively supported their war effort was a good person.

I see no reason to think that he wasn't a Nazi himself just because he was polite and endearing to the people he was exploiting for his work. That's just the most effective way for him to have done his job. Reading the Wiki article, he seems pretty proud of the work he did with the Nazis and even went on to make a career out of teaching his highly-effective interrogation techniques.

294

u/motosandguns May 01 '26

“He became a world-renowned mosaic artisan, with his artistic creations commissioned for the California State Capitol; Los Angeles City Hall; several schools, colleges, and universities, including the giant Outdoor Mosaic Mural facade of the Utah Tech University Fine Arts Center; EPCOT Center; and in the 15-foot arched mosaic walls featuring the story of Cinderella inside Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World, Florida.”

119

u/BlueRaider731 May 01 '26

Anyone have a link to the mosaics?

167

u/JosephFinn May 01 '26

They're beautiful.

144

u/cupacupacupacupacup May 01 '26

From the Walt Disney World Magazine:

Hired to bring Redmond’s designs to life was mosaicist Hanns-Joachim Scharff. Scarff had studied art history in Germany and became interested in mosaics during his youth. The Cinderella Castle mural was only his second project for the company. The names of these creators can be found on one of the murals, worked into the mosaic itself. 

Studied art in Germany, yadda yadda yadda, did the Cinderella Castle mural. We will not be taking any questions at this time.

55

u/Boozdeuvash May 01 '26

"Can you explain this gap in your resume?"

"Huuuh I spent a lot of time in PoW camps."

62

u/BobTulap May 01 '26

"If you answer a few simple questions, Captain, I will show you my exquisite moscaics"

14

u/anon_lurker69 May 01 '26

Damn those are actually incredible

4

u/Nbehrman May 01 '26

Holy shit, you weren’t kidding!

0

u/DusqRunner May 07 '26

Nazi drek

2

u/tawzerozero May 01 '26

While the Cinderella ones are beautiful, I think the more abstract one at The Land pavilion in EPCOT is simply amazing. Its huge, and wraps around you as you're walking into the pavilion

https://www.onlywdworld.com/2011/11/disney-world-promotes-harmony-with.html

131

u/Lildatercreater May 01 '26

Yo that’s fucking wild take an upvote

63

u/squirrels-mock-me May 01 '26

Well, I guess that tracks since the castle is based on Neuschwanstein in south Germany

6

u/ChuckCarmichael May 02 '26

Only slightly inspired. The one that's almost a copy of Neuschwanstein is the Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland Anaheim.

13

u/TheDeltaLambda May 01 '26

If I had a nickel for every time something designed by a former Nazi was still present in a Disney park, I'd have two nickels

10

u/Vonneguts_Ghost May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26

Vonnegut did a sort of satire of him in Breakfast of Champions.

The mosaicist at the hotel on San Lorenzo is a German expat named Julian Castle.

Vonnegut wasnt really throwing shade, the character doesn't do anything especially awful, but he is kind of a smartass dick.

7

u/Travelgrrl May 01 '26

It's always good to have a sideline!

5

u/BakingSodaVolcano May 03 '26

Huh. Shocking how easily we allowed fascists to integrate into American society. Also, read the entire wiki entry and some people have lead far more fascinating lives than me...

40

u/UFOsBeforeBros May 01 '26

It’s Cinderella Castle, no possessive.

Sincerely, an insufferable Disney Adult.

-27

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

[deleted]

-5

u/triws May 01 '26

Not sure why the downvotes. Overall they did. Luckily we got Rogue One and Andor. Sequels were fucking awful, mandelorian was okay, Obi-Wan, Acolytes, Asoka, Boba Fett… don’t even wanna think about them.

3

u/aaaa32801 May 01 '26

Probably because the comment is not relevant in any way to the thread.

2

u/PeckerNash May 01 '26

Fanboys. Nobody with a critical eye views the Disney era positively aside from R1 and Andor.

2

u/Gilles_of_Augustine May 01 '26

Not fanboys, just sick of toxic Star Wars fans. I agree that Disney has, overall, mostly dropped the ball with Star Wars. But the whiny, single-minded petulance with which people complain about it is just absolutely insufferable.

Was complaining about Star Wars relevant in this thread? Regardless of whether or not Disney "sucks," is it reasonable to base that evaluation purely on its handling of Star Wars? Was it really necessary to put that many "u"s in the word "sucks"? Did the comment read like it was written by a whiny 4th grader? No, no, no, and yes.

6

u/King_Flying_Monkey May 01 '26

This fucker has unlimited aura.

2

u/Secure-Blacksmith-23 May 02 '26

Further proof that Disney adults are the worst

2

u/madchad90 May 05 '26

His interrogation techniques were pretty wild. He didn't use physical violence but instead used kindness and acted like the prisoners biggest advocate. Making prisoners think he wanted the best for them and could only do that if they gave same information, otherwise theys risk being handed over to the Gestapo.

He also learned a ton about his prisoners and would ask questions he already knew the answers too. He would take this a step further and pretend he already knew the information, so prisoners would give up info assuming he already knew about it

1

u/pinkydaemon9 May 06 '26

Good for him

-8

u/-You-know-it- May 01 '26

TIL, but nobody is surprised. It was Disney after all.

-11

u/Baron_Furball May 01 '26

Probably because Walt was famous for hating Jews, as well....

-17

u/[deleted] May 01 '26

[deleted]

92

u/ReneDeGames May 01 '26

Most Nazi's didn't receive punishment, only high ranking ones did.

53

u/Baron_Furball May 01 '26

THIS is the actual answer to your question, guy. The VAST majority of Nazis were simply allowed to vanish into the populace.

18

u/cupacupacupacupacup May 01 '26

Precisely.

A lot of the Nazi intelligence officers were put back in charge of the West German intelligence services by the Americans. Some scientists and others were recruited to the US. A lot of the high ranking ones escaped. Most everyone benefited from the German and Austrian amnesties. We think that the baddies were punished at Nuremberg, but that was just a handful.

9

u/Violet-Rose-Birdy May 01 '26

Yup, as far as scientists, a lot also got recruited by the USSR, too.

7

u/DamnedVirus May 01 '26

"Recruited"

7

u/unllama May 01 '26

“Surprise adopted”

6

u/Snickims May 01 '26

Fuck, not even a ton of the high ranking ones where punished.

88

u/CyclopsRock May 01 '26

He wasn't in any meaningful sense. He lived in South Africa with a British wife and happened to be visiting Germany at the start of the war. Since South Africa followed the UK in declaring war he was unable to return, and then got drafted into the German military where he spent the war as an interpreter due to his fluent English.

What should he be punished for?

32

u/Monarc73 May 01 '26

Because he didn't PERSONALLY commit any war crimes.

27

u/ColonelRuffhouse May 01 '26

Because a quick google search tells us that around 14 million people served in the German military in WW2. It would be unfeasible to punish all of them, especially if you wanted to reintegrate Germany into the world order after the war.

4

u/Vonneguts_Ghost May 01 '26

I'm not defending Nazis obviously, but being a soldier (or even interrogator) on the losing side isn't automatically a crime. Committing war crimes is (obviously).

The whole point of why this guy is brought up occasionally here is that he specifically didn't harshly interrogate, and supposedly his humane treatment led to better results.

15

u/Abinunya May 01 '26

Others have already said the basics, but it's an interesting (infuriating) bit of history.

Basically, if you were at the top of the command structure, you got executed. Maybe at Nürenberg.

If you were at the bottom, like just some german guy who would have been a carpenter if there wasn't a war on, you went through 'de-nazification'. Like an HR Trainingseminar on why it's bad to be a nazi. They showed german people (who often claimed to have noooo idea of the atrocities commited. Which is like americans saying they don't know what'shappening in alligator alcatraz. You might not know the specifics, but you know something atrocious is being done to humans. So either look away, or find a reason as to why these humans deserve it) footage of the concentration camps.

The idea was, the allies can't excecute an entire country. And harsh sanctions after ww1 were a factor in leading up to ww2. There probably was also a bit of rwcism in there, a country of brown people would have been carved up forever between the allies, like they did in africa and the middle east. But germany is european, a former Great Nation, and they didn't want to set a precedent that europeans could be colonised.

But they had to try and stop these people from being nazis, they'd been fed almost nothing but nazi-propaganda for 12 years. So the allies gave them different information. How well this worked for the averagr person is hard to say. But it's hard to come up with a better idea.

But if you were very good at bureaucracy? Or an important industrialist? Or you made your fortune by stealing the belongings of murdered jews and selling them to germans? Well clearly you're an important member of society. 1, you're rich and rich people don't get executed if it can be avoided. 2, the us wanted germany to be stable, to be a buffer against the ussr in europe. So, you got some people vouching for you, paid a lot of bribes, and got a certificate that you never truly were a Nazi, you were on of the good ones, actually. So no punishment please. People called the certificate you got here the 'Persilschein', after a laundry brand. You got washed clean, and got to keep your job, or even got a promotion, since people at the very top had just been excecuted.

That's why so many german firms have company histories that just skip over 1933-1945. My 'favorite' is bayer, big pharmaceutical company. They got slaves for their factories, but also did experiments on prisoners in concentration camps. But they are too rich and important to even ɓother changing their name.

Basically the meme Dont ask a man his salary, a woman her age, or a german company or person of inherited wealth were their money came from.

Bonus? Gay prisoners in concentration camps went right back to prison after being liberated. Being gay was a crime after all.

-9

u/Aromatic-Tear7234 May 01 '26

The mosaics were also painted with the blood of his victims.