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Comment by 188201 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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 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"

"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.

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

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

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

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