Trent Park is an English Country House (mansion) in north London.
During World War II, Trent Park was used to hold high-value German prisoners of war under unique conditions,
During the Second World War, Trent Park was used as a means to extract information from captured German officers. During the Battle of Britain in 1940, captured Luftwaffe pilots were held initially at Trent Park. The rooms at Trent Park had been equipped with hidden microphones that allowed the British to listen in to the pilots’ conversations. This provided information about the German pilots’ views on a number of matters, including the relative strengths and weaknesses of German aircraft.
Later in the war it was used as a special prisoner of war camp (the ‘Cockfosters Cage’) for captured German generals and staff officers. They were treated hospitably, provided with special rations of whisky and allowed regular walks on the grounds. The hidden microphones and listening devices allowed the British military (MI19) to gather important information and an intimate insight into the minds of the German military elite. An example of the intelligence gained from Trent Park includes the existence and location of the German rocket development at Peenemünde Army Research Center when General von Thoma discussed what he had seen there. This led to the area being targeted for a heavy bomber attack by the RAF. They also received information about war crimes, political views and a clearer picture of the resistance in Germany that led to the attempt to assassinate Hitler. Eighty-four generals and a number of lower ranking staff officers were brought to Trent Park.
More than 1,300 protocols were written by the time the war ended; a selection of these was published in English in 2007 under the title Tapping Hitler’s Generals. Selected transcripts were dramatised in the 2008 History Channel 5-part series The Wehrmacht. In the episode The Crimes, General Dietrich von Choltitz is quoted as saying in October 1944: “We all share the guilt. We went along with everything, and we half-took the Nazis seriously, instead of saying ‘to hell with you and your stupid nonsense’. I misled my soldiers into believing this rubbish. I feel utterly ashamed of myself. Perhaps we bear even more guilt than these uneducated animals.” (This in apparent reference to Hitler and his supporting Nazi Party members.)