All, very true, but we're talking about a single case here, not a general policy of torturing everybody from private up.
So, when the next high-ranking officer is caught, he will not be tortured even if he would have a comparable level of knowledge?
And that "comparable level of knowledge" also extends downwards. A corps commander would certainly profit if he knew what the chief of staff of the opposing corps knew, so when he is captured, just bring out the rack. Ooh. don't forget batallion commanders. They could certainly use the information that any enemy officer has.
I don't see how that proves that having advance notice of the enemy plans isn't highly significant.
It doesn't. But it doesn't ensure victory, either, and potential costs of the torture are high enough to make it a bad choice.
Captured generals are not exactly low-profile prisoners. Armies (especially attacking armies) tend to keep rather good track of their generals and the odds are that the enemy knows that you captured him. What you do to him will come out eventually and that will cause political problems (in addition to military problems that come from mistreating prisoners).
As I said we're tlaking about a single case not a general policy. You've captured one high ranking German general with knoelegde of the plans.
I hope that you are aware that the Allies captured German plans a number of times. For example, Germans lost a complete copy of plans of invasion of France in late 1939 when a courier plane got lost and landed in Belgium. Notice how much it helped? Well, actually it hindered because it forced Germans to change their plans while the Allies had already deployed their forces to counter that particular avenue of attack and they didn't see any need to redeploy.
A significant problem about information from captives is that you can't know how reliable it is. It may be good or it may be bad. So you torture the general until he tells you a plan. How do you know this is the right plan? Torture him more? Torture him until he breaks down and invents a new, imaginary plan?
One example for dangers on relying upon POW information happened in July 1944 at Vuosalmi where Soviets managed to capture the defenders who had entrenched in the ruins of Äyräpää church. When the Soviet division commander interrogated the only officer prisoner, Lieutenant Erik Aukio, the POW told him the deployment of the Finnish forces on the North side of River Vuoksi. Except that he told that the weakest defences were where they were really the strongest. The Soviet division attacked the strongest defences and was repulsed. Whether this was because of the POW lie is not known since the reason why the defences were strongest there was that it was a convenient place to cross the river.
There is also the well-known (and possibly apocryphal) story of a Stalingrad captive leading a company of Germans to attack a fortified building directly in front of a heavy machine gun.
Well first of all what you write in a biography and what's actually true are two different things.
Given that I own over 100 memoirs written by WWII soldiers, have read many, many, more, and that I tend to check their facts from history books whenever possible, I think that I have a quite clear picture of general reliability of memoirs. [Meaning that they range from completely worthless to very reliable].
Saying " oh no we didn't torture, doesn't work anyways, nop we just gave them cigarettes and asked whether they'd feel like sharing anything"
Why are you putting words on Chuikov's mouth? He didn't write that. What he wrote was [translated to English by me from the Finnish translation of the original]: "The best way to make a prisoner talk was to give him a cigarette". No denials of torture, no mentions about "feel like sharing". And no need to create strawmen.
That's not to say it couldn't be true, but let's not overestimate the reliability of the source.
Do you have any specific complaints against the reliability of Chuikov in this respect? I wouldn't take his analysis of WWII politics seriously (like claims that Churchill delayed Operation Overlord on purpose so that more Soviets would die) but I don't see any good reason for him to fabricate that bit especially since that sentence was the only hint about the actual interrogation procedure in the whole book and leaving it out wouldn't have caused any distruption in the flow of text.
Additionally, he does admit that a number of Germans were killed just after surrendering (especially after his men went through Majdanek) and he specifically commends one recon patrol leader for not executing captives even though the Germans had murdered his parents.
Still even if it's generally true, that doesn't mean it's always true,
Didn't you read that part of my post where I wrote that "Does this mean that every captured German spilled his guts because he got a cigarette? Of course not. There was a great number of men who didn't tell anything"?
I do it in this case simply because I think it is a very interesting conversation. It is often interesting to change from saying "Its just right" or "Its just wrong" to actually examining all the small parts and trying to determine why we think/feel the way we do.