By G.H.Smith and C. Watts. This is the story of the special British prison camps used to interrogate Britons and well as Germans during and after the Second World War.
The account begins in 1940 when the government began arresting and imprisoning people without charge or trial. They consisted of over 1,000 men and women whom the government thought may impede the war effort by their support for a negotiated peace with Germany. It is now known that the government held a list of about 10,000 people who would have been imprisoned had the war situation deteriorated further. How the selections were actually made remains a mystery. This is because the victims were never informed as to what evidence was held against them. If they had been guilty of any crime they could have been charged. Sometimes it was because they had been or were members of the BUF. Sometimes it was due to a letter they had had published in a newspaper. It could have been because they had visited Germany or had a pen-pal there – or even because a hostile neighbour had fabricated a story about them. Some of these prisoners were selected for special treatment, and consequently sent to Latchmere House. Here they were harshly treated in a manner that can be most accurately described as torture. Such a victim was Charlie Watts and here he tells of his experiences.
The second part of the booklet describes how the same organisation (MI5) was later responsible for running similar establishments in Germany when the war was over. Here, prisoners were tortured, often to death. What the interrogators wanted was affidavits for the war-crime trials. Having obtained these, possibly innocent, men were sent to the gallows. No cross examination of witnesses was allowed and hearsay evidence was admitted.
