Un-British no more: torture and interrogation by Britain in Germany, 1945-54

Among the thousands of camps Britain operated in the twentieth century were some that gained a notorious reputation for how they treated prisoners. Such places were often seen as aberrations within their individual contexts. Their recurrence across different places and times – including in Aden, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland – nonetheless renders it difficult to dismiss them as mere anomalies. This article examines one of the first post-war camps to have attracted such attention in Allied-occupied Germany, which was closed down following an investigation into its appalling conditions. Seeking to understand how an establishment ended up departing so drastically from accepted interrogation norms, which saw torture as unproductive and un-British, it finds that prisoners were subject to a combination of neglect due to difficult circumstances and malevolence. Tracing the camp's successors, the article also finds that political considerations ensured future camps in Germany did not step out of line; nevertheless, there was a failure to ensure the same for other cases more generally and to turn this into a one-off affair for Britain. Overall, while the camp existed within a unique post-war context, its history points to conditions and structures that may serve as units of analysis for investigating similar establishments.