Kill Them (or not) with Kindness

Kill Them (or not) with Kindness

From inflating false tanks to creating doppelgangers of famous generals, it has already been noted the extent to which nations deceived their enemies during World War II.  However, the methods of gathering information, rather than falsely providing it, have yet to be covered.  With this in mind, I would like to introduce Hanns Scharff, a master German interrogator whose techniques, novel at the time, are still in use today.  

Scharff was drafted into the German army as war broke out, and he would have been deployed on the Russian front had his wife not persuaded German officials to take him out of front-line action and put him in a position where his fluency in English would be of some benefit.  The Germans agreed, and Scharff was eventually sent to be an interpreter to aid in the interrogation process.   During his time as an interpreter, Scharff witnessed the brutality of interrogations and vowed to never abuse the prisoners.  

Scharff was never formally trained as an interrogator, and it must have been quite a shock when his higher-ups died in a plane crash, passing on the role of lead interrogator to him.  One might think that the Scharff’s vow to never abuse prisoners would hinder his ability to interrogate effectively, but on the contrary, Scharff’s non-violent technique yielded better results than the traditional, direct approach.

Scharff’s technique can be stripped down to three basic tactics:  be friendly, act like you know everything, and use confirmation/disconfirmation.  

Scharff understood prisoner of war (POW) mentality and how men would put up mental barriers in anticipation for torture and extortion of information.  Thus, Scharff went the opposite route and instead befriended the men he would “interrogate.”  Scharff would first begin this process in a comfortable room decorated with American posters and magazines to make the men feel more at home.  Then, he would make small talk while walking through the woods, swimming in a pool, or while having coffee or tea.  There has even been an account where he allowed a pilot to take a German bomber out for a spin.  All of these acts of kindness served to lower the guard of the prisoners, making it easier to extract the necessary information.

Additionally, Scharff often adopted an omniscient air about him.  Backed by a data-gathering team that provided him with background information on the men he would interrogate, Scharff would list known facts rather than probe the POWs with questions.   Consequently, the POWs would think that any information they disclosed was already known, causing them to let slip information that was necessary and vital to the Germans.  

The third tactic of confirmation/disconfirmation can best be illustrated with an example.  To give some backstory, one of the German’s goals was to understand why Americans shot white tracer bullets during aerial combat.  In order to glean this information, Scharff, during one of his friendly chats, said to a POW that the coloration must have been due to a chemical shortage of red smoke, hence the use of white smoke.  Without realizing it, the POW corrected Scharff’s words and disclosed to him that the Americans used white tracers to indicate when their ammunition was almost empty.  Without laying a hand on the POW, Scharff was able to discover with kindness what no other interrogator had discovered with violence.  

So far, it may seem that Scharff put up a facade of kindness in order to achieve his aims.  However, this could not be further from the truth.  Scharff’s kindness was genuine, and he even remained friends with the people he interrogated after the war came to a conclusion.  After the war, Scharff did not selfishly reserve this technique for the Germans, for he taught his technique to the United States.  To this day, Scharff’s interrogation method is still used by the United States, and his magnanimity has improved both the effectiveness of interrogators as well as the conditions of prisoners worldwide.