Interrogating Nazism

Behind the front lines of the Second World War raged a different kind of battle. In secret camps across Britain, thousands of enemy spies, soldiers and war criminals were interrogated ifn the effort to defeat Nazi Germany and the ideology that drove it. Drawing on extensive British archival sources, Artemis Photiadou uncovers the methods, motives and moral tensions behind this vast machinery of questioning. Within it, officers, scientists and linguists sought to extract military intelligence, as well as to grasp why individuals fought Hitler’s war and, eventually, to assess their complicity in the regime’s crimes. The resulting interactions expose the complexity of those who were questioned, the assumptions of their interrogators and the ethical contradictions of a liberal state at war. This is a vivid account of how Britain attempted to comprehend the enemy it was fighting. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Artemis Photiadou is Assistant Professor in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on twentieth-century intelligence history, with broad interests in Britain, Germany, Cyprus and Greece.