A Nazi Interrogator Who Revealed the Value of Kindness (2014) | Hacker News Reader

A Nazi Interrogator Who Revealed the Value of Kindness (2014)

psmag.com

Almost all professional criminals know the antidote for this kind of interrogation. Military must know it too.

You don't talk with the interrogators at all (except name, rank, serial number, and date of birth). If they interrogate you 8 hours per day, you stay mum. No friendly chatter, nothing.

> Almost all professional criminals know the antidote for this kind of interrogation. Military must know it too.

Military interrogation is very different from criminal interrogation. The goals are different on both sides of the table. As a general rule, captives in a military setting are more concerned with the lives of others than their own. The opposite is true in a criminal situation. This changes the tactics dramatically.

Example: your squad is captured behind enemy lines. Two of your guys are severely wounded. Your captor asks you for some information that you know is unclassified in exchange for medical care for your buddies. Do you stay silent?

Before anyone says "they have to give medical care because of Geneva", remember we live in the real world.

Professional criminals in criminal organizations almost always do this.

It's mostly futile to try to interrogate members of Hell's Angles for example. The shut up and do the time.

Most low level criminals are criminals because they have drug/alcohol dependency, neurological problems, etc.. that lead low impulse control. They are easier to deal with.

Not many people can do this for days. Most will start talking after a while.

Easier said than done ...

Point 4 has an intriguing modern analogue: the overwhelming desire many (most?) of us feel to correct someone who makes a factually incorrect statement on the internet. Perhaps the monkey is genetically hard-wired to be a smart-arse.

> Perhaps the monkey is genetically hard-wired to be a smart-arse.

I think it is more about smart people being somehow able to see the pointlessness of the status game with materialistic objects, but somehow not how they're playing the same game with knowledge.

On the other side smart people can be quite insecure about their smartness, that they might not be as smart as they think. So correcting others on the internet might be a way to quieten these insecurities.

My take is that it's simply satisfying and addicting.

I managed to partly wean myself from this only by realising that people are rather interested in reinforcing their opinions than facts.

> addicting

addictive.

... yes, apparently you are right.

Actually, addicting is considered an acceptable form of the word; https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/20327/whats-the-...

...wait a minute.

I think you're correct on both counts, and that status-gaming is the main cause of this behavior. I'd like to pitch another potential contributor, though: correcting each other is how we spread useful knowledge, which helps our group compete against other groups.

Calling out the pointlessness of status games is usually just mocking the now-low-status players for failing to realize that the scoring rubric has changed.

Your flashy BMW is pathetic and sad and destroying the environment, but wait till you hear about how tricky it was to stick to Keto on my 2nd trip to Thailand this year. Worth it, though. Man, people with their fancy cars and big houses are so tacky. Why doesn't everyone just take 20 minutes and walk to work like me?

Or it could be that you sense that humanity is sliding into ignorance and falsehood and you make a heroic keyboard attempt to save it

I think they are revealing the underlying character of how they were educated into ‘smartness.’

> On the other side smart people can be quite insecure about their smartness, that they might not be as smart as they think. So correcting others on the internet might be a way to quieten these insecurities.

I've seen these insecurities and many times they had solid ground. Dunning-Krugger effect is widespread.

>Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

I tried to use this in a blogpost this week.

Somehow people just said "Well, sounds about right"

Hindsight bias is a thing - people tend to overestimate their ability to have known or predicted something they've found out.

This page describes the effect quite well: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WnheMGAka4fL99eae/hindsight-...

There was a hearing about torture (I think it was in the US Senate). An interrogator who was said to be highly effective was answering questions. A senator asked something like:

"Torture has been used since mankind has been around, it must be pretty effective."

His response was something like:

"No it is just EASIER to hit someone, not more effective."

Torture is the best tool if you're trying to get an easy scapegoat.

https://9gag.com/gag/4856078/cia-fbi-kgb-vs-rabbit

Based on studies like the one described in the article, there are much better tools than torture if you're actually trying to extract useful information.

Did you just link 9gag as if KT was a reputable source?

It’s a political cartoon that shows that shows how torture is used. I didn’t cite it as a research paper. The studies I referred to were described in the main article

The most important theme in Dale Carnegie's How to win friends and influence people

If you ever want to influence some one, ever want to hold some one in your spell and have them totally in your control- Please show genuine interest and let them do all the talking. There are anecdotes going back to the life of Abraham Lincoln and other people. If you ever want to get people do things for you, and like you. Let them talk, show genuine interest, and do not correct or interrupt them. Even if they are just plainly speaking wrong things.

Everyone in the world wants an audience to perform in front of and receive applause. For some its playing piano, sleight of hand, singing, acting and for almost every one its just talking.

I'd like to believe that list includes criminals, and prisoners of wars etc too.

The most important rule of Influencing people. Be presentable, and likable. But remember influencing is about the people you are trying to influence, not yourself. The more you make it about them, and the more you make them feel special the more obligated they feel to help you.

Ah. There is someone I know who when we talk, just listens and acts very interested, but never really engages with what I am saying or argues his own opinion. I think I understand why now.

But while he makes excellent initial impressions, this behavior has become infuriating and very off-putting. Such behavior might work for shallow relationships but it is no good if you want a relationship with depth.

Letting the other people do the talking doesn't mean turning totally mute.

You need to keep the other person busy by providing them topics to talk about themselves.

The thing with torture is that you are trying to influence others than those being tortured.

Take the Guantanamo Bay example. None of the people taken there for interrogation had any connection to the unspeakable taboo events in question, however, their treatment sent a chilling message of terror to everyone and anyone in the whole world.

That message was a simple one - 'you mess with us and you can expect this'.

This technique controls domestic dissent and that is always what concerns an empire more than the real or imagined external threat. Hence nobody proactively took action against the war even if they did grumble amongst themselves about things like the Patriot Act.

It is just part and parcel of statecraft in any era of empire.

For an example of this, see this article about how OPP interrogator Jim Smyth used a non confrontational approach to extract a confession from a Canadian serial killer.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/a-deeper-look-into-the-interrogation-...

There is also a video of the whole interrogation, but I don't recommend watching it, it contains disturbing material, and for me it lingered in my mind for days.

> If we include virtual interactions, the range of people a person interacts with each day continues to grow. This essentially means that the number of opportunities to “simulate” strategies for interacting with others continues to grow. If being nice is the winning strategy in modern society, then the increasing number of interactions will increase the speed at which people “learn” to adopt this strategy.

I'd certainly like this to be true, but the past couple of decades have shown that unmoderated internet fora can tend to get pretty toxic, so it's hard to be so optimistic. Part of this could probably be explained by algorithms promoting contentious content for page views. But such toxicity was also present before the rise of modern algorithmically controlled news and social media, such as USENET newsgroups in the 90's and early 2000's.

The good news is that the toxicity rarely carries over to "real life", where people lose their anonymity and can be held accountable for their interactions. Most people that are toxic in both ecosystems would be toxic in either regardless. Of course, the exceptions become news fodder ("he was a good boy until he learned how to internet", etc.).

I think this technique will work if the victim does not expect interrogated by this approach. So, for example a terrorist group notorious for beheading victim, by contradicting themselves and use a friendly approach, then it will work.

For example for police force, they cannot play too tough due to law restriction, then those really bad guys basically don't give a fuck, so it may not work.

From Wikipedia: "A prisoner was frequently warned that, unless he could produce information beyond name, rank, and serial number, such as the name of his unit and airbase, the Luftwaffe would have no choice but to assume he was a spy and turn him over to the Gestapo for questioning. For Scharff, this technique apparently worked quite well. In addition to initially preying upon his prisoner's fears of the infamous Gestapo, he portrayed himself as their closest ally in their predicament, telling them that while he would like nothing more than to see them safely deposited in a POW camp; his hands, he claimed, were tied unless the prisoner gave him the few details that he requested to help him properly identify the prisoner as a true POW."

So we have a "good cop, bad cop" technique, not just pure kindness.

>For Scharff, this technique apparently worked quite well. In addition to initially preying upon his prisoner's fears of the infamous Gestapo,

Meanwhile in 2019: "Ok, if that's all you know we have no further questions. Next week you'll be transferred to Saudi custody so they can ask you anything they want to ask"

i don't see any kindness, it's just another threat. "tell us or else" basically.

This part is just another threat, yes. Some of the other things he did is (portrayed as) kindness.

"For example for police force, they cannot play too tough due to law restriction, then those really bad guys basically don't give a fuck, so it may not work. "

Isn't the point of Scharffs Method that you do not have to be tough? You can be friendly. Neutral ... in general you are having a conversation - you are not pushing - and therefore the tough guys do not feel pushed and do not block and reveal information without realising it.

If you read news stories about the mueller investigation you can catch glimpses of this as people who have been interviewed tell reporters over and over again that it’s close to wrapping up.

I’m sure everytime everyone is interviewed the agent tells them they’re just wrapping up a few loose ends and they think the whole thing is a big misunderstanding.

Or that the people who are being interviewed individually have no leads so from their vantage point the investigation perpetually seems to be wrapping up (because there seem to never be any new leads) except every now and then they find someone they can nail for the typical process crimes wall street/Washington elite engage in.

Then there's the whole political angle. One side wants this to seem like the investigation is chasing nothing and should have ended a long time ago. The other side wants it to seem like a damning report will come out tomorrow.

There are multitudinous ways to show people kindness that go beyond the interrogation room.

Also, the police force plays tough with people all the time. Then, our prison system is brutal. Then when you leave prison trying to reenter society is made brutal. There are no niceties for suspected criminals in this country.

Yes, there are big differences between interviewing a police suspect and interrogating a prisoner of war. For example, the police suspect may be worried about going to prison if they say the wrong thing, or being murdered if they betray a colleague, while that hardly applies to the prisoner of war. Also, the police suspect is typically speaking in front of several witnesses while being (visibly) recorded.

By the way, if someone working for the Luftwaffe during the second world war is a "Nazi interrogator", then presumably any RAF people being interviewed would be "Tory airmen".

The UK was not a totalitarian state whose most important and well-known characteristic was absolute control by a single political party.

Still, there seems to be no evidence that he was a Nazi. My country was also under the control of a fascist party during that time, yet it was a conspiracy of soldiers and low-rank officers that brought it down.

My point is that “Nazi interrogator” just means he was an interrogator for Nazi Germany, since it’s that country's defining charteristic.

Beware imprecise language: Germany has not had a Nazi state since 1945, and is not anything like that. Also, there were SS officers and German military officers, and they were not the same.

All the more reason that calling this guy a Nazi interrogator is useful and reasonably correct! If you called him a German interrogator you'd have no idea what era he from or what role he might have played. The phrase "Nazi interrogator" tells us immediately that he was an interrogator for the German government somewhere between 1933 and 1945.

How about “Wehrmacht conscript?” That’s extremely precise and accurate.

Seems good as well. The Germans didn’t reuse that name after the war, so it works.

My point was not to defend those working for the Nazis, but you say "[Nazi] is that country's defining characteristic" in your comment, and that has to be 'was' at the very most. You're carelessly suggesting that Germany still is defined by Nazism, hence the suggested correction.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. By "that country" I was specifically referring to Nazi Germany. Modern Germany, having been through occupation, division and reunification, with no continuity in the state, a different constitution, and different borders, is not really the same country.

You can be like Humpty Dumpty and use the word like that if you want, but it seems like highly unhelpful terminology to me and rather insulting to the people concerned.

If you want an example of something that really is Nazi, take a look at the downvoting that's going on here! (That was an attempt at humour; downvote it.)

It seems extremely helpful to me. It immediately tells us that this guy was active somewhere between 1933 and 1945 and not, say, an interrogator of Cold War spies in the 1970s, or someone who worked under an 18th century Prussian king or whatever. It also immediately emphasizes the contrast between "the value of kindness" and the culture brutality that would have been all around him.

Maybe he wasn't actually a member of the NSDAP but if you insist on reading "Nazi interrogator" as implying party membership, I would suggest it is you who are insisting on a weird and unhelpful meaning.

Scharff is normally described as a Luftwaffe interrogator, which not only tells you "this guy was active somewhere between 1933 and 1945", but also "immediately emphasizes the contrast between "the value of kindness" and the culture brutality that would have been all around him" and even in which part of the military forces he worked, which is even more valuable (i.e. Luftwaffe, not SS or Gestapo). Finally it does imply NSDAP membership, and indeed Scharff was never a party member and is unlikely to be a Nazi of conviction.

“Luftwaffe” is also the name of the modern German Air Force created in 1956. If in fact that term conveys the correct time period to the reader, it is only by luck and ignorance.

While "Luftwaffe" alone does not reveal much about the timeframe, "Luftwaffe interrogator" gives a strong clue. The need for air force interrogators likely decreased a lot since WWII for a country like Germany

I'd prefer "Nazi's interrogator", but I'm also sorry for contributing to this offtopic thread :/

The idea that the German military was somehow separate and therefore immune from the moral fallout of Nazi atrocities is a right-wing myth. The separation of party and state was porous at best, and later dissolved completely. The military regularly cooperated in, for example, the holocaust, and often took the lead in other war crimes, such as multiple massacres in Italy, Greece, the balkans, and the Baltics.

> The idea that the German military was somehow separate and therefore immune from the moral fallout of Nazi atrocities is a right-wing myth.

Yes. It's a carefully devised myth and it even has a name: "the myth of the clean Wehrmacht" [1]. As if this wasn't bad enough, a particularly pernicious sub-myth of the "clean Wehrmacht" is the romantic rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS in popular culture, seen as elite professional soldiers fighting for the freedom of Europe or some garbage like that, often emphasizing and exaggerating their military exploits at the expense of their ideology and war crimes. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Wehrmacht

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS_in_popular_culture

Kindness and caring is probably more effective than anything else, no matter what you want to achieve. And ethically way superior.

It is however of course considered devious to use it with any ulterior motive in mind - especially when directed against the interests of the object of kindness.

Warfare characteristically leaves many ingrained moral truths in the dust.

> Kindness and caring is probably more effective than anything else, no matter what you want to achieve

How so?

It's not exactly clear what you're asking, but the quoted statement is just one of those things I find probable, as illustrated by this article for example.

Granted, it is (sadly) not conventional wisdom.

Well, I can easily imagine that it could be literally impossible to break a sufficiently determined person, if someone doesn't want to speak then they will endure incredible amounts of torture without breaking. History is full of examples like this. But if you spend the same time befriending them and making them feel like they are on the same side as you....then it's hard to imagine it couldn't lead to a positive outcome.

> I can easily imagine that it could be literally impossible to break a sufficiently determined person

Yes I agree and the recent report on the CIA shows some evidence for that [1].

> But if you spend the same time befriending them and making them feel like they are on the same side as you....then it's hard to imagine it couldn't lead to a positive outcome.

This I have a harder time believing, and besides this article, I didn't know of any evidence.

[1] https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/sscistudy1.pdf

Post WWII, Scharff emigrated to the US and worked as an interrogation instructor with the USAF, due to the respect US Army Air Force aircrew exposed to him had for Scharff during the war when Scharff interrogated them.

In the last decade plus of conflict, within military circles, Scharff’s book has been consistently brought up whenever the topic has covered things like waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques.

Scharff’s book is excellent and plays to our natural human need for compassionate and empathetic human connection.

It’s worth mentioning that while Scharff’s techniques have been proven to be very effective and useful for long-term interrogation there is still a place for “shock of capture” tactical questioning.

By that I mean in the period immediately following the capture of an enemy combatant there is an opportunity to apply psychological pressure(fear of implied threats, etc) and attempt to extract useful information without violence(they are now captured so the duty of care for them is on their captors), before they transition into longer-term incarceration and professional interrogation.

This gives me the idea for an "escape room" type of game, which would involve the subject taking a vacation for up to 2 weeks to participate in the game.

The business gets them into a room and interrogates them about a pre-arranged secret. Something awkward or embarrassing (but obviously not criminal or dangerous/harmful, etc).

If they give up the secret, intentionally or inadvertently, then the business gets their money (a lot).

If not, the subject walks away having paid a nominal fee, with a certificate and bragging rights, and can use the remaining days to enjoy their vacation or go back to work.

The title should more accurately be “A Wehrmacht Interrogator..” There was no evidence that Scharff was ever a member of the Nazi Party. In fact, he was a conscript as well as married to a British South African and his father was a decorated Prussian officer (the old Prussian military tradition secretly despised the Nazis.)

> Participants in the experiment were given a story...The interrogations were done by phone...

Interesting concept, but far from a realistic interrogation environment.

Matthew Alexander employed similar methods and was able to track down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

https://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133497869/one-man-says-no-to-...

I see this often: journalists use the word "Nazi" when they should have said "German". "Nazi Germany" refers to the period of time when Germany was ruled by the Nazi party. A Nazi was someone who belonged to the Nazi party. Many germans, including soldiers, did not. I see no evidence that Scharff was a Nazi, so why label him one?

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