Camp Dustbin

Camp Dustbin was a British-American interrogation camp located first at Chesnay, near Versailles, France, and then moved to Kransberg Castle outside Frankfurt, Germany, during World War II. It served as a processing station and interrogation center for senior German scientists, technicians, and administrators captured during the war.

Among them were the following:

the leaders of the V-2 missile project (including chief designer Wernher von Braun);
leaders of the atomic and nerve-gas development projects;
"members of the special research staff of the Reichsforschungsrat (Imperial Research Council)" (including its director, Werner Osenberg);
officials of the German Ministry of Armaments and War Production, including the minister, Albert Spee,r and his associates Karl-Otto Saur, Karl Maria Hettlage [de], Walter Dornberger and Theodor Hupfauer [de];
Abraham Esau, a leading German expert on radar;
directors of the Telefunken radio and TV company;
professor Friedrich Gladenbeck [de];
industrialists like "steel barons Fritz Thyssen and Hermann Röchling, and Volkswagen’s Professor Ferdinand Porsche";
leading figures of I. G. Farben, the developer of nerve gases: Gerhard Schrader, inventor of nerve gases tabun and sarin;
Richard Kuhn, "inventor of the most toxic of the gases", soman;
former Minister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht.

The camp was open for the inmates, who "were free to wander around the castle grounds. The wrought-iron gates remained open. ... They passed the time by giving talks, listening to Schacht’s poetry and by staging a weekly cabaret mounted by the inmates that made light of their fate".

In 1946, interrogations in camp Dustbin "had the aim of finding out about Soviet development projects as well as German wartime achievements"; "scientific workers threatened with kidnapping by agents of other countries, chiefly the USSR, were held there".

A parallel American interrogation camp, Ashcan, was created in Luxembourg for the 86 most prominent surviving Nazi leaders prior to their trial in Nuremberg.

References

1 2 3 Maddrell, Paul (2006). Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945-1961. Oxford University Press. p. 17-21. ISBN 978-0-19-170840-4.
↑ Crim, Brian E. (2021). "Allied Internment Camps in Occupied Germany: Extrajudicial Detention in the Name of Denazification, 1945–1950 by Andrew H. Beattie (review)". German Studies Review. 44 (3): 618–620. doi:10.1353/gsr.2021.0087. ISSN 2164-8646. S2CID 244120927. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
1 2 3 Kitchen, Martin (24 November 2015). "12. Nuremberg". Speer. Yale University Press. p. 283. doi:10.12987/9780300216004-016. ISBN 978-0-300-21600-4. S2CID 246108527. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
1 2 Andrew, Christopher; Tobia, Simona (29 April 2014). Interrogation in War and Conflict: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Analysis. Routledge. pp. 96–97. ISBN 978-1-134-70338-8.

[Spying-1] 1 2 3 Maddrell, Paul (2006). Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945-1961. Oxford University Press. p. 17-21. ISBN 978-0-19-170840-4.

[2] Crim, Brian E. (2021). "Allied Internment Camps in Occupied Germany: Extrajudicial Detention in the Name of Denazification, 1945–1950 by Andrew H. Beattie (review)". German Studies Review. 44 (3): 618–620. doi:10.1353/gsr.2021.0087. ISSN 2164-8646. S2CID 244120927. Retrieved 28 December 2023.

[speer-3] 1 2 3 Kitchen, Martin (24 November 2015). "12. Nuremberg". Speer. Yale University Press. p. 283. doi:10.12987/9780300216004-016. ISBN 978-0-300-21600-4. S2CID 246108527. Retrieved 28 December 2023.

[Andrew-4] 1 2 Andrew, Christopher; Tobia, Simona (29 April 2014). Interrogation in War and Conflict: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Analysis. Routledge. pp. 96–97. ISBN 978-1-134-70338-8.