ABSTRACT

This edited volume offers a comparative and interdisciplinary analysis of interrogation and questioning in war and conflict in the twentieth century.

Despite the current public interest and its military importance, interrogation and questioning in conflict is still a largely under-researched theme. This volume’s methodological thrust is to select historical case studies ranging in time from the Great War to the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, and including the Second World War, decolonization, the Cold War, the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and international justice cases in The Hague, each of which raises interdisciplinary issues about the role of interrogation. These case-studies were selected because they resurface previously unexplored sources on the topic, or revisit known cases which allow us to analyse the role of interrogation and questioning in intelligence, security and military operations.


Written by a group of experts from a range of disciplines including history, intelligence, psychology, law and human rights, Interrogation in War and Conflict provides a study of the main turning points in interrogation and questioning in twentieth-century conflicts, over a wide geographical area. The collection also looks at issues such as the extent of the use of harsh techniques, the value of interrogation to military intelligence, security and international justice, the development of interrogation as a separate profession in intelligence, as well as the relationship between interrogation and questioning and wider society.

This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, counter-terrorism, international justice, history and IR in general.

chapter |17 pages

Introduction

The modem history of interrogation

chapter 1|18 pages

A process of modernization?

Prisoner of war interrogation and human intelligence gathering in the First World War

chapter 2|23 pages

Stalin, the NKVD and the investigation of the Kremlin Case

Prelude to the Great Terror

chapter 4|18 pages

Gestapo interrogations

Myths and realities

chapter 5|17 pages

‘Instructive for the future’

The interrogation of the major war criminals in Germany, 1945

chapter 6|22 pages

Crushing Czechoslovak identity

Stalinist violence and the resistance of Czechoslovak ex-political prisoners from the Communist era

chapter 7|21 pages

Interrogation and ‘psychological intelligence’

The construction of propaganda during the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1958

chapter 9|16 pages

The French military in its last colonial war

Algeria, 1954–1962 – the reign of torture

chapter 10|24 pages

War and interrogation

The Rhodesian bush war

chapter 12|16 pages

A perceived neutrality

An Englishwoman's reflections on working as an interpreter for suspect and witness interviews at the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

chapter |24 pages

Conclusions

Interrogation, interviewing and questioning in the twentieth century