In his Nuremberg cell, the once all powerful Hermann Göring greeted his Jewish translator with charm and grandiosity.

Stripped of rank, this larger than life Nazi still believed he would be treated as a respected leader:
(🧵) Of all the defendants at Nuremberg, if one were to stand out it was Hermann Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe, and Hitler’s deputy after the flight of Rudolf Hess to Scotland in May 1941. For all his crimes, Göring remained a fascinating figure even in his cell at Nuremberg.

‘Germany had been totally defeated,’ says Howard Triest, ‘and Göring knew he would face the gallows for his crimes, yet still he maintained his innocence. In freedom, Göring was a hunting man. Now the one-time hunter was the hunted.’

For context, Howard Triest was a German-Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany, served as a US Army translator during World War Two, witnessed the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp, and later acted as an interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials where he came face to face with Hermann Göring.

(continued)

During Kristallnacht in November 1938, a 15 year old Jewish boy and his father walked the streets of Munich to avoid the Gestapo.

One small item from World War One may have saved their lives:
(🧵) During the day of 9 November and night of 10 November, the Nazis unleashed Kristallnacht, which translates as ‘the Night of Broken Glass’.

In towns, villages and cities, Stormtroopers and Brownshirts smashed the windows of Jewish businesses, looted Jewish shops, torched their buildings and set fire to synagogues.

More than 1,400 synagogues were destroyed that night in Germany and annexed territories, many left as burnt-out shells of their former glory.

(continued)

On 11 April 1945, a young Jewish American soldier entered Buchenwald concentration camp to liberate it.

Piles of childrens shoes and emaciated survivors greeted him.

The horrors he saw that day would haunt him for life:
(🧵) On 11 April 1945, the American soldiers were given the order to enter Buchenwald. It was the largest concentration camp within Germany’s 1937 borders, located near Weimar, the country’s cultural capital, home of the great artists and intellectuals like Goethe, Liszt and Nietzsche, and situated in the forest where Goethe wrote some of the finest works of German literature, including his famous Faust

A quarter of a million people were taken there, of whom 56,000, mainly Jews, had died from hard labour or starvation.

(continued)

In 1942, a 21 year old woman named Catherine Townshend was suddenly put in charge of one of the most secret sections of British intelligence.

Her job? Supplying hidden microphones and recording equipment to bug Nazi generals across MI19s top secret sites:
(🧵) MI19(e) was the section of MI19 that was responsible for the setting up of M Room sites (whether in Britain or abroad), the technical equipment, accommodation, personnel and gaining security clearance from MI5 for new staff members. The section was headed by Major John Back and run efficiently with the help of Subaltern Winifred Felce.

In 1942, twenty-one-year-old Catherine Townshend was transferred to MI19(e): ‘I was chosen because none of the efficient German-speaking women officers at Trent Park could be spared from the daily pressure of typing reports.’ When Townshend arrived, she was greeted by Lieutenant Colonel Rawlinson (head of MI19) and introduced to his immediate staff: Major John Back, Major Rait, Captain Bellamy and two members of the ATS, Subaltern Dawn Rockingham-Gill and Subaltern Winifred Felce.

(continued)

During WW2, 10,000 German & Austrian refugees many of them Jewish volunteered to fight for Britain against Hitler.

From the Pioneer Corps to secret intelligence roles they risked everything to defeat the regime that had driven them from their homes:
(🧵) Between 1933 and 1939, approximately 75,000 German and Austrian refugees fled to Britain, escaping the rising tide of Nazi persecution

Remarkably, one in seven of these refugees (around 10,000 individuals in total) volunteered to fight for Britain during the Second World War, a contribution that remains largely overlooked in the history books.

These men and women, primarily Jewish intellectuals, Aryan Socialists, and so-called 'degenerate artists' targeted by Hitler’s regime, were classified as stateless under Nazi law but remained German nationals under British law.

(continued)

On 23 February 1944, British intelligence recorded a Nazi officer calmly explaining the mobile gas trucks used to murder Jews.

Victims were tricked into lorries, gassed with exhaust fumes and buried in anti tank ditches.

This is how the killing started:
(🧵) Bugged conversations revealed that the Nazi regime used mobile gas trucks to kill Jews before the gas chambers were constructed in the concentration camps. In 1942, Luftwaffe officer Heimer told his cellmate: They [Jews] were taken right through to Poland, and just before they reached their destination they pumped in some sort of stuff, some sort of gas, cool gas or nitrogen gas – anyway some odourless gas. That put them all to sleep. It was nice and warm. Then they were pulled out and buried. That’s what they did with thousands of Jews! (laughs)

On 12 October 1943, a conversation was recorded between a naval lieutenant and transport officer (of a Panzer Regiment) which provided one of the earliest references to mobile gas trucks amongst lower-rank prisoners. The transport officer had visited a concentration camp and witnessed the mass deportation of Jews from Berlin in 1940.

(continued)

How did Hitler’s rise to power reshape Europe?

Let's explore how a humiliated nation, clever propaganda and ancient hatreds unleashed the Nazi nightmare:
(🧵) The political landscape of Europe was changing. Rather than the Soviet Union, it was Germany that was emerging as a growing threat to peace.

Since the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had struggled with the huge financial reparations and military restrictions imposed by the Allies.

(continued)

In July 1943, British intelligence recorded an SS Lance Corporal describing two separate mutinies by SS guards inside a concentration camp years before the Final Solution.

The guards even fired on each other & tried to free the prisoners...

'Follow' & Repost this thread:
(🧵) The involvement of the SS and death squads in the annihilation of Jews has been well documented; but the M Room material has revealed something previously unknown. In early July 1943, secret listeners at Latimer House recorded a conversation between a British army officer (BAO) and a prisoner in the rank of lance corporal, codenamed M222, who had been captured in Tunisia.

M222 described two separate mutinies amongst SS guards in an unnamed concentration camp prior to 1937. Nothing like this has ever come to light before and, if true, requires a re-evaluation of previous knowledge about the SS and resistance to the atrocities. The two attempted mutinies occurred in the period before Hitler’s formulation of the Final Solution and before the concentration camps in Poland were constructed.

(continued)

On 31 October 1943, a captured SS officer from Hitler's brutal death squad was bugged at Latimer House by the British.

He calmly described seeing Auschwitz from the train and knowing no one came out alive.

Then he recounted mass executions of 5000 Jews in one day:
(🧵) On 31 October 1943, an SS officer was brought to Latimer House after capture in Italy. He was no ordinary SS officer, but from one of Hitler’s infamously brutal and merciless death squads – Einsatz-Kommando 3, Sicherheits-Polizei (Security Police).

Holding a rank equivalent to sergeant major, this SS Hauptscharführer came from one of the highest positions in Hitler’s Secret Police. Special reports generated from the M Room merely give him the codename M320.

(continued)

On 29 August 1944, General von Choltitz confessed to another general that the liquidation of the Jews was the worst job he had ever carried out and that he had done it with great consistency down to the very last detail.

Hitler's own commanders admitted their guilt:
(🧵) In an astonishing turn of events, the generals at Trent Park divulged their own guilt to each other. In a conversation recorded on 29 August 1944, von Choltitz confessed to von Thoma: ‘The worst job I ever carried out – which, however, I carried out with great consistency – was the liquidation of the Jews. I carried out this order down to the very last detail.’

Von Thoma’s reply laid the blame on Hitler for issuing the orders, as he sniggered: ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! It’s a good thing that you can now produce such unimpeachable proofs.’ Even von Thoma’s laughter was written on the transcript of the conversation by 'secret listeners'..

Two months later, the secret listeners picked up another frank admission from von Choltitz: ‘We are also to blame. We have cooperated and have almost taken the Nazis seriously . . . I’ve persuaded my men to believe in this nonsense ... I feel thoroughly ashamed of myself. May be we are far more to blame than those uneducated cattle [the Nazis].’ Von Choltitz appeared only to express remorse after he knew he could face charges of war crimes and the death penalty.

(continued)

On 20 July 1944, the news reached Trent Park that Hitler had survived an assassination attempt.

The bugged conversations of the captured German generals revealed shock, suspicion and even bitter regret that the plot had failed!

Let's explore:
(🧵) At 1800 hours on 20 July 1944, a British army officer sent for Sponeck and gave him the news that an attempt had been made on Hitler’s life, but he had survived with minor injuries. The assassination attempt ‘caused a stir at No.11 Camp,’ the intelligence report said. MI19 prepared a special report on the generals’ reactions (housed at Trent Park) to the news. The failed putsch came as a shock to Sponeck who told the British officer that it was a put-up job by the Nazis as an excuse for a purge of the anti-Nazi generals.

The bungled plot, led by German army officer Claus von Stauffenberg, an aristocrat, became widely known as Operation Valkyrie. He had smuggled a small bomb in a briefcase into a meeting room with the Führer at his Wolf’s Lair field headquarters in East Prussia. Von Stauffenberg placed the briefcase between Hitler’s legs, then made an excuse to leave. Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff of the German army, had called out ‘Stay here!’, but von Stauffenberg simply made an excuse that he had an urgent phone call to make and hadn’t had breakfast.

(continued)

On 17 Dec 1942, the British Parliament fell silent as they learned the full horror of the Nazi extermination programme.

Britain's 'Secret Listeners' had captured chilling eyewitness evidence.

What they overheard stunned even the most hardened intelligence officers:
(🧵) On 17 December 1942, concern about the fate of Jews in Poland and other Nazi-occupied countries received the full attention of the British parliament when Anthony Eden read the Allied Declaration to the House of Commons.

The declaration included words of condemnation from other nations, including the United States, Soviet Union and various governments-in-exile: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Yugoslavia.

(continued)

On 18 October 1943, a captured German parachutist stunned his British interrogator with detailed eyewitness accounts of Nazi concentration camps and something far darker...

He calmly described Hitler's secret stud farms where SS officers bred the 'master race':
(🧵) German parachutist Hauptmann, who was captured in Italy on 18 October 1943, provided the most information from a single prisoner about the extent of the Nazi genocide.

Many transcripts survive of his conversations with a British army officer who was a fluent German speaker. Hauptmann was given the codename M350 by MI19.

All that was noted about him was his claim to have been a fugitive after shooting a Nazi official in Hamburg. MI19 was not sure what to make of some of his statements in interrogation and, unusually, added to his transcripts: ‘He has given a certain amount of information, some of which appears to be accurate and some highly improbable. His statements should therefore be treated with reserve.’

(continued)

In 1944, one of Hitler’s most decorated paratroop generals was captured in Brest and secretly brought to a grand English country house.

Hidden microphones recorded every word he said about the German war effort.

What he revealed still surprises historians today:
(🧵) One of the most interesting and high-ranking German officers to be held at Trent Park was General der Fallschirmtruppe Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke, a highly decorated and battle-hardened paratroop commander who had earned a formidable reputation within the Wehrmacht for his leadership and determination.

(continued)

In 1941, bugged German pilots at Trent Park revealed a towed 5,000kg “Max” bomb with detachable wings – and Britain’s first warnings of Hitler’s build-up for the invasion of Russia.

Morale was cracking and Hitler worship was fading...
(🧵) Trent Park, North London:

Naval prisoners from two Kondor aircraft discussed the new German 109 fighter and the long-distance bomber HE177. Further discussions on navigation and communication on aircraft provided extremely useful information to MI9. Prisoners continued to mention Knickebein, Elecktra and X-Gerät, and Britain’s interference with navigational beams.

One of the most significant pieces of intelligence in this period related to the new heavy bomb termed ‘Max’ (2,500kg), mine-laying techniques and ‘the introduction of 1lb incendiaries with a small explosive charge’.

(continued)

Britain’s 'Secret Listeners' sat in the M Room at Trent Park surrounded by 15 hidden pressure microphones, acetate discs and old-fashioned switchboards.

They recorded every word from bugged German POWs.

This was WW2's most sophisticated eavesdropping operation:
(🧵)
During WW2, the new intelligence site Trent Park was kitted out with fifteen type 88A pressure microphones, nine portable disc recorders, five high quality headphones, one amplifier for loudspeaker monitoring, four switchboard assemblies, one mainframe assembly and a transformer.

The operators were supplied with 525 12-inch double-sided acetate recording discs for recording conversations, and 58 steel recording styli, 10 sapphire recording styli and spare parts.

Very little is known about the microphones that were used, except from a report which stated: ‘It was proved in practice, as was anticipated in laboratory work, that the moving coil type of microphone was the only practicable type for concealing purposes. Firstly, its size and shape were suitable, and secondly, it could be fitted and forgotten; only 2 failures were experienced over a period of three years.’

(continued)

After the murder of 50 escapees from the Great Escape, MI9 issued the controversial ‘Stay Put Order’ telling Allied airmen and soldiers to stop escaping and remain hidden after D-Day.

But one man fiercely disagreed and the row reached top command:
(🧵) At the beginning of 1944, IS9 was in discussion with the Air Ministry and other departments about the security of Allied personnel after D-Day. The discussion raised the issue of the ‘Stay Put Order’ and whether personnel should return to the lines rather than remain in hiding.

It was advocated that lessons should be learnt from North Africa (Western Desert) including that, in spite of capture, immediate escape was possible during the confusion of battle and counter-orders within enemy ranks.

(continued)

Captured WW2 German General Hermann Ramcke arrived in Britain with a stash of brandy... and refused to talk.

So the British gave him a fake Iron Cross, plied him with drink, and let the hidden microphones roll.

What he revealed next was pure gold for Allied Intelligence:
(🧵) On 19 September 1944, General Hermann Ramcke was captured in his bunker at Brest and found to be in possession of a large quantity of French brandy and liqueurs, a French mistress, an Irish setter, at least twenty uniforms, and a whole dinner service.

Major General Hans von der Mosel was captured with him. They were taken to an airfield near the coast and separated. Ramcke was taken to barracks, surrounded by half a dozen guards and held in isolation.

He recalled later: ‘An officer with a pistol lying within reach kept watch over me in a room where the walls were covered with pictures of German aircraft. I was kept there for two days completely isolated.’

Ramcke was brought to Wilton Park just two days after capture and housed in a cottage on site, along with Lieutenant Generals Heyking and Heim, and Vice Admiral Weber.

(continued)

At just 14, Alex Klein fled to Cologne after Kristallnacht.

Stopped by Nazi officers, they laughed at the small boy trying to reach the border and turned him back.

In June 1943 he volunteered for the RAF and flew against the regime that had tried to destroy him:
(🧵) Alex Klein served under his original name.

Born in Vienna in October 1924, his family fled to Cologne after Kristallnacht in an attempt to reach the Belgian border.

Alex decided, against his parent’s wishes, to try to reach the German/Belgian border on his own.

He left Cologne, aged fourteen, with a rucksack on his back, but was stopped and interrogated by Nazi officers en route.

They laughed at such a small boy trying to reach the border alone and turned him back. It was his youth which, in the end, saved his life.

He continued his journey, avoiding the Belgian border control, making his way through woods and lanes until he reached the main road to Verviers, always avoiding the border guards. The 45km journey on foot took him 8 hours and he finally stumbled into a café in Verviers.

He found refuge in a hostel in Brussels until May 1939 when he came to England with the Kindertransport. His parents eventually escaped Germany into Belgium and to England.

Alex found work in a sweat shop until his enlistment in the British Forces.

(continued)

German POWs went silent when a man interrogated them... but they couldn’t stop talking when a young woman entered the room.

MI9 discovered that the “right type of woman” made the perfect interrogator.

The true WW2 story of those recruited by the author of James Bond:
(🧵) An MI9 file states that ‘the right type of woman is as good an interrogator as a man.’

The use of women as interrogators is borne out by declassified naval intelligence files and is supported by fascinating psychology. It underpins an understanding of how German prisoners might give up information. Interrogation was a role traditionally assigned solely to men, but the use of female interrogators by MI9 demonstrates how women’s roles within intelligence were expanding beyond the customary duties of typing and translation.

The use of women as interrogators underlined a principle within British intelligence of using the right person for the job, irrespective of gender.

(continued)

While the world celebrated the liberation of Paris and Belgium, a secret Allied unit was still fighting behind the lines.

They were rescuing thousands of POWs and sending Retrievers into enemy territory.

This is the story of MI9 & IS9(WEA) in 1944-45:
(🧵) Over the summer of 1944 the Allied armies made progress through France, including the liberation of Paris in August, and continued on to the liberation of Belgium.

MI9’s work with POWs was far from over and continued until the end of the war in May 1945. Much of the practical work would be carried out in Western Europe in recently liberated areas of France and Belgium, and shortly Holland.

(continued)