ABSTRACT
Secret intelligence organisations are shrouded in myth and mystery, often self-created, and this attracts a certain public curiosity, fuelling speculation, rumour and conspiracy theories. The story of the German generals at the hands of British intelligence has dispelled that myth. The gadgets were dispatched in special parcels to Allied prisoners in camps in Germany and Italy from MI9’s headquarters at Wilton Park in Buckinghamshire. British intelligence may have intended to send a double of Hess back to Germany to penetrate the Nazi high command. Giving fifty-nine German generals and nearly forty senior German officers a life of relative luxury in the mansion house at Trent Park arguably led to one of the greatest intelligence coups of the war. Prisoners of war are often overlooked in mainstream studies on the Second World War because they are seen as unglamorous and uninteresting; yet, British intelligence believed that they were one of the most important sources of intelligence.
