Kudos to super-blogger Andrew Sullivan for discovering the origin of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques – that awful euphemism used by the Bush Administration for torture. It turns out it is a literal translation of "verschärfte Vernehmung" a code phrase for torture used by the Gestapo during the NS-period.
Rob Miller’s Web site on corporal punishment in Germany documents how the Nazi Justice Department was forced to set guidelines for torture verschärfte Vernehmung:
Nachdem Angeklagte im Gerichtssaal Folterspuren trugen und behaupteten, sie seien durch Misshandlung zum Geständnis gebracht worden, musste eine Lösung dafür gefunden werden. "Die Richter waren in solchen Fällen anfangs in arge Verlegenheit gekommen, und der Justizminister konnte diese Eingriffe der Polizei in die Rechtspflege nicht dulden" (Müller, "Furchtbare Juristen", 1987). Aber eine Runde von Spitzenjuristen aus Justizministerium und Geheimen Staatspolizei fand eine für die Justiz akzeptable Lösung: die rechtliche Absicherung der verschärften Vernehmung, um jede Willkür zu unterbinden
There are some striking similarities here to how President Bush used his then White House legal counsel Alberto "Abu" Gonazeles and a minion in the Department of Justice – John "Torture" Yoo – to find a legal basis for circumventing the Geneva Conventions with respect to suspected terrorists. You can read Gonzales’ torture memo legal brief on enhanced interrogation techniques here.
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I went to the Rob Miller webpage and glanced over the piece, and then went to the main page
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/corpungermany/hist.htm
Which, with its picture of a half-naked woman being stared at by what I presume is someone from the inquisition, makes one wonder if the site is just as much about enjoying the verschärften Vernehmung as condemning it. A suspicion which is deepened by the links at the bottom of that page, such as…
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/corpungermany/erziehung/index.html
on the same website…
Just seems a little fishy. The linked article, just glancing it over, seemed serious, but spending a little more time on the page and its associated pages makes me wonder what the real motivation for discussing these punishments is. But maybe the guy’s got a better grip on fatasy vs. reality than I am crediting him, having only galnced over the webpages…
Yes, the guy is a bit bizarre, but the historical references appear to be genuine.
“the guy is a bit bizarre, but the historical references appear to be genuine”
Agreed. I don’t want to get overly ad hominem on his ass: his motives seem perhaps questionable (but then again, I haven’t devoted a lot of time to his website) but his facts seem to be straight, as far as verschärfte Vernehmung’s concerned.