Listening to prisoners

Amidst all the 'INT' terms today I don't recall simply listening to them. Today the BBC has an article on British intelligence (MI6 aka SIS) listening to captured German generals in WW2:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20698098

The author, a historian, refers to:

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British intelligence got the most amazing stuff in bugging the conversations. Churchill said of Trent Park that it afforded a unique insight into the psyche of the enemy. It enabled us to understand the mind-set of the enemy as well as learn military secrets.

"If it wasn't for this bugging operation, we may well have not won the war".

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The records were released in 1999 and:

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...the bugging was the first time the British overheard admissions that the German army had taken part in the atrocities and mass killing of Jews and were guilty of war crimes.

"The army had always denied it and that was believed for the last 65 years. What the transcripts show us now is that the German army - with the SS - was complicit in war crimes.."

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Finally, all the equipment was US-made.

One wonders if this tactic was repeated post-1945, let alone more recently.

Parallel to BP's codebreaking were three country houses, rigged for sound inside and in the grounds, where German generals were held and as they relax talked a lot. A short BBC News report as the last house left has an uncertain future:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35978418

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Nearly 60 captured German generals were held at Trent Park, their conversations secretly monitored and recorded. There were even microphones hidden in trees to catch their exchanges as they strolled through the extensive well-tended park....listeners had to keep an ear across everything the Germans said - from the moment they woke until they went to sleep.....at least 100,000 such conversations were recorded and transcribed in full and have been kept in the National Archives.

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The BBC have relied on Dr Helen Fry, a historian, who has a book on the subject; there are many links including a 2013 PBS documentary:http://www.helen-fry.com/books/the-m-room/

Elsewhere, in London, there was a less genteel interrogation centre and a book is due out next year:http://www.helen-fry.com/books/the-london-cage/

On a historical point, what happened to the captured Italian generals, from Ethiopia and North Africa?

Makes one wonder if similar practices exist today. I do not refer to long-term detention and interrogation - which has been well documented.

A review of Helen Fry's book in The Spectator entitled:

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The British interrogation methods that even Hitler found ‘ingenious; Helen Fry‘s The London Cage centres on master interrogator Alexander Scotland and his ways of making Nazis talk

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Link:https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/09/...und-ingenious/