Letters From Readers - July 2008 - World War II

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Face-to-face with the Nazis’ Master Interrogator
Please try to understand my surprise when my wife handed me your March issue (“We Have Ways of Making You Talk,” March 2008). “Oh my God,” I exclaimed. “That is the guy that interrogated me at Frankfurt!” And the author, James S. Corum, did his homework well; he described Hanns Scharff’s modus operandi perfectly. I not only remember Scharff’s face but also remember marveling at his command of the English language and how smooth he was with his dialogue. I am rather proud to say that he got nothing from me other than my name, rank, and serial number, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t gain some information from me just from my facial expressions after he spieled off some very accurate facts.

I was a ball turret gunner on a B-17 and we were shot down on our twenty-fifth mission over German-occupied Holland after bombing an oil refinery in central Germany. Later that evening I was interrogated in a farmhouse by a Wehrmacht colonel who was just the opposite of our Mr. Scharff. This was one tough SOB, and I lost track of how many times I rattled off my name, rank, and serial number.

He kept accusing me of being a spy and threatening to shoot me and bury me in the backyard where no one would ever know what happened. I decided it might be time to bargain as I told him, “America does not hire nineteen-year-old spies!” Those were my very words. He jumped from the table and yelled for a guard who escorted me to the barn. Obviously there was no shooting, but I shall never forget the face of that colonel.

So, except for the three days in solitary at Frankfurt, Herr Scharff and his interrogation was like being in a college classroom compared to the colonel and his frontline boys. Thanks very much for the article and for stirring up old memories.

Ramsey Fendall
Vancouver, Wash.

James S. Corum replies:
Solitary confinement was inevitably the hard part at the center for most POWs—meant to psychologically isolate and unnerve the prisoner before being interrogated. A clever technique, and acceptable under Geneva Convention rules. I’ve read the POW interrogation transcripts of German soldiers captured in Italy in 1944 and 1945, and we had some guys who were just as good as Scharff. One way we assessed the bombing campaign against the German transportation net was to select German POWs whose military documents and pay books indicated that they had recently had a leave home. The interrogator got them talking about their families and hometowns and the talk would get around to how the POW took the train home. By the route and number of delays we were able to assess very accurately how long it took the Germans to repair various rail yards, etc.—all very important to scheduling the next attacks on the German transport. It was a lot of detail work, but when it was all put together our interrogators had some very important information to give to our air war planners—all from just getting the Germans to talk. I suspect that the Germans also did not know that they were being carefully interrogated for vital information.

Thanks for the Memories
Thank you, Lewis Lord, for a child’s eye view (“ARGH!” March 2008). This article vividly illustrates how the conflict affected virtually everyone in the country through friends and relatives in uniform, rationing, shortages, recycling, war production, and victory gardens. Having been born in southeastern Michigan one and a half months after Germany invaded Poland, I also remember World War II. My father was exempt from service because of his age and because of working in an essential war industry: he helped build some of the nineteen thousand B-24 Liberator four-engine bombers at Ford’s Willow Run plant west of Detroit. During a period of one and a half years, he worked seven days a week, twelve hours per day, carpooling into the plant with three other men to comply with the gas ration. This also gave three of them a chance to sleep.

A family friend we lovingly called “Uncle Jack” was drafted into the service and sent to Europe. In England and France he repaired the B-24s that my father helped build. Years later, after we moved to Southern California, he would visit from Detroit, and always wanted to see the Queen Mary. On one occasion, I asked him about the fascination. He said that he was onboard Christmas Day in 1943 in the North Atlantic on his way to Scotland from New York City as part of the buildup for the D-Day invasion. The Queen Mary was a part of him.

We kids, of course, played children’s games. Hopscotch was a favorite. If one of us said, “Step on a crack and break your mother’s back, we would diligently evade all cracks. Say “step on a crack and break Hitler’s back,” and we would actively step on every crack we could see, even if we didn’t understand the significance of Hitler.

Charles L. Hand
Fullerton, Calif.

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