In his book "The Blood Intoxication of the Bolsheviks," published in the early 1920s, a certain R. Nilostonsky described a particularly horrific form of torture used in the Russian civil war. A rat was placed into an iron pipe, which was then pressed against the body of a prisoner. When the torturers placed the other end of the pipe against a fire, the panic-stricken rat had only one choice: to eat its way through the prisoner.
When Hitler met with his officers on Feb. 1, 1943, after the defeat at Stalingrad, he told them that he suspected some German prisoners were likely to commit treason. "You have to imagine a prisoner being brought to Moscow, and then imagine the 'rat cage.' That prisoner will sign anything."
Historian Ernst Nolte published an essay in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper on June 6, 1986. In it, he suggested that Hitler's use of the term "rat cage" meant that the Nazi leader had heard of the Soviet form of torture involving a rat and a pipe. For Nolte, this served as evidence of the fear that Hitler and his men had of the Russians, a fear that could have "prompted" them to commit genocide.
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