Can anyone point me to some url’s that have descriptions of POW break outs? (Preferably WWII) I have scoured the web but only found one decent site.
Thankyou for your time.
Here’s a completely random list of links from a search on http://www.alltheweb.com :
http://stalag.net/
http://www.internauts.ca/susk/internment/pmbtew.html
http://www2.memlane.com/djcarter/notes.html
http://www.pro.gov.uk/leaflets/ri2029.htm
http://www.pro.gov.uk/leaflets/ri2020.htm
http://members.aol.com/angelsape/peace.html
http://www.nara.gov/guide/rg389.html#top
I can recommend a few good books (not websites, but I’m old-fashioned).
-- The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill. The classic, written by someone who was there. Brickhill also wrote the wonderful "The Dam Busters" and a set of thrillers. I read my first copy of Great Escape to pieces, and had to get another.
-- The Wooden Horse by Eric Williams. Another escape from Stalag Luft Drei (same as The Great Escape), but a different compound. The incident is aluded to in Brickhill's book, and is one of the cleverest ways to conceal a tunnel.
-- The Colditz Sory by Pat Reid (actually two or three books amalgamated into one). Despite what the movie "Great Escape" said about Stalag Luft Drei being the "basket into which they put all the rotten eggs", Colditz REALLY was the prison for incorrigibles.They couldn't properly tunnel out of Colditz -- it was built on almost solid rock. The escapes they came up with are truly ingenious.
There are several movies based on these books. The MGM movie "The Great Escape" mostly gets the look correct, because they used former internees as technical advisors. They messed with the story, though, giving too much prominence to Americans. It's not that Americans weren't at Luft Drei, or tha they weren't competant escapees. But a couple of months before the big break the Germans decded that the Americans and the Brits were getting along together too well, and they transferred the Americans to another compound. There was a TV movie based on Brickhill's book, too. It starred Christopher Reeve, and got its facts better, but it was not as exciting a film.
There was a British film based on The Colditz Story. An American TV movie called "The Birdmen" heavily romanticized an incident from Colditz. Surprizingly enough, the gist of the story is true -- a group at Colditz really DID build a glider in the attic, doping the fabric with porridge. It would probably have worked, too, except the Alies liberated Colditz before they had a chance to try it out.
I think there as a British film f "The Wooden Horse", but I've never seen it. An episode of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (of all things) referred to it.
I have several more books on this in my collection, but this is all I can do from memory. I am awed by what the Allied prisoners were able to do with their limited resources.You might find this linkWallace and Grommit has a link for the latest POW movie coming soon to a theater near you. Enjoy. 
While you’re at the library, see if you can also find * The Longest Tunnel * by Alan Burgess. This also tells the story of * The Great Escape*, but Brickhill labored under the handicap of having some material still classified. But read Brickhill’s account first, it’s still much better.
This happens to be a pet interest of mine, since being given a copy of “The Wooden Horse” at age 10.
Warning. Extreme geek/collector mode will engage in five seconds…
I have a link (on my computer at work) to an excellent Colditz site, with photos of the castle and also of some of the brilliant POW-made artifacts in the “escape museum.” (Including a wooden hand-made sewing machine!) I will post it tomorrow. In the meantime:
I was fascinated at an early age by the resourcefulness and ingenuity displayed by Allied POWs in German hands. I devoured any and all non-fiction on the subject I could find, including the excellent books already mentioned. I’ll add some of my favourites, most sadly long out of print.
On Colditz: undoubtedly the earliest book on Oflag IVC is Detour (editied by J.E.R. Wood), a fundraising book published on the presses of the Royal Canadian Engineers in Holland. The book is a collection of artwork and text written by ex-Colditz inmates, and sold to raise money for the International Red Cross, who essentially kept Allied POWs in German camps alive with food parcels. Many of the illustrations are by very accomplished amateur artists, the best being a Lt. John Watton, of the Border Regiment of the British Army.
Another excellent Colditz book is called From Colditz In Code, written by a Scottish dentist in the British Army. Julius Green (who was Jewish) had been taught a simple substitution code before shipping out to France, and was able to send back information of military and political intelligence value from several POW camps (he was often moved from camp to camp to treat POWs’ dental problems).
Prisoners of Fortune, by Giles Romilly is also centred on Colditz, which was considered by the Germans as the “bad boy’s” camp. Any officer who was a persistant escaper, or had prominent connections (Romilly was a close relative of Queen Elizabeth), or who generally caused the Germans a lot of trouble was sent there (probably a mistake on the part of the Germans!)
Being a POW could be very difficult to deal with. A man convicted of a crime knows to the day how much time he has left to serve; the POW must wait months or years, without knowing when he will be released. After the initial shock of capture wore off, many POWs faced sudden depression or feelings of guilt over survival when friends had died, or of having somehow let the side down by being captured.
Experience of everyday POW life varied widely. The Germans generally treated western Allied POWs within the letter of the Geneva Convention (Russian prisoners were treated with inhuman disregard, however). This is not to say that loss of liberty, inadequate (and often inedible) food, boredom, hard physical labour (enlisted POWs were compelled to work), occasional brutality, and even murder were not facts of life in the Stalag or Oflag.
The Gestapo and Waffen-SS were responsible for the execution of hundreds of Allied POWs: some 120 Canadian POWs were murdered by Kurt Meyer’s SS troops in Normandy in the days following the D-Day landings, and 50 recaptured POWs were murdered by the Gestapo after the “Great Escape.” (6 of the 50 were Canadians, another 10 were Poles in the RAF). 168 Allied airmen were sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp after being captured in civilian clothes while being hidden by the French Resistance.
An entire section of British Military Intelligence, MI9, was devoted to secretly sending escape equipment to POWs in German camps, gathering intelligence from them, and also organizing “escape lines” using resistance groups to slip escapers and evaders out of occupied Europe (most often to Spain or parts of Yugoslavia).
They came up with some remarkable “toys:” here are a few examples from my collection.
Miniature Compasses: These quarter-inch compasses could be hidden almost anywhere. Two types of mini-compass. MI9 produced shaving brushes, collar studs, even working tobacco pipes with various sizes of compass hidden inside. One of the most popular was the button-compass. When the Germans discovered the existance of these button-compasses, MI9 simply switched the screw-thread from right to left!
Other compasses were concealed within the shirt-collars of RAF uniforms, or disguised as fly-buttons on battledress pants: like these.
Every British and Commonwealth aircrew member was provided with a wallet of various European currency, and a small plastic box, called the escape kit. This was carried in a trouser pocket, and contained a mini-compass, fishing line, waterproof matches, high-calorie energy food like chocolate, malted milk tablets, etc., a rubber water-bottle that held a pint, water purification tablets, and six benzedrine tablets. This would give enough bare sustainence for three days.
One real “James Bond” device was a miniature telescope (made of brass). This was sent to POW camps hidden in the handle of sports gear like cricket bats or badminton racquets.
Another indispensable escape tool was the silk map. All aircrew carried these high-detail maps of various parts of Europe (they were also made for Africa and the Far East). The advantage to silk (or rayon) maps over paper was that they were waterproof, could be balled up very small, and didn’t rustle like paper. Here’s a closer look
I’ll post more on this subject later (including some URl’s to address the OP), if I haven’t put everyone to sleep!
One you’ve got to read is called “The Long Walk” which is about a group of folks who escaped from a siberian work camp and believe it or not walked across russia, across the Gobi Desert and Himalaya to eventual freedom. Unbelievable, except for that it really happened. It included one American and a female, but I won’t tell anymore than that.
Thankyou to everyone who has posted useful information.
Rod Hill, your post was good, didn’t put ME to sleep. If you have more info like that, please post it!
Sofa King,
I checked your links, but what I am actually looking for is information on POW ESCAPES and BREAKOUTS. Not POW camps themselves. But thanks anyway.
Thanks, Dippy. It’s easy to get carried away by one’s hobby, and forget that other people’s eyes are glazing over with boredom. (No wonder I’m not married!)
Back to Colditz. Here’s a link to a page specifically about the famous glider, including the only known photo of the real thing in situ. I was lucky enough to handle the original plan drawings for the glider, in the research collection of the Imperial War Museum. The collection also holds some very neat escape tools, like fake rubber stamps for franking false travel papers. These were painstakingly produced by cutting a piece of floor linoleum out, and then carving with a sliver of razor blade embedded in a wooden handle. The stamp had to be carved as a mirror image, and the difficulty of doing this in the German gothic typeface is mind-boggling!
Another link to the Escape Museum at Colditz shows some of the other ingenious devices created to aid escape, like the wooden sewing-machine used to make fake German army uniforms.
Here’s an excellent page by a British fellow who has travelled to the castle, and produced an interactive map of the castle, and outlines some of the more famous escape attempts. He even has a link to the kids’ game “Escape From Colditz,” which I had as a teenager. The game was designed by P.R. Reid, author of the most well-known books on Colditz.
Here’s a good link with details of books about Colditz. I’m delighted to see that Julie Green’s book, “From Colditz In Code” was reprinted in 1989, and might still be found.
The pride and joy of my POW collection is without doubt two YMCA-produced diaries that were actually in the castle, and were used by POWs to record Colditz life in pastel, water-colour, and ink drawings. These diaries came my way in the mid-1970s. The man who edited the book “Detour” was a Canadian Engineer officer from Vancouver. He had been a hard rock miner in northern Ontario before the war, and so was a valued member of several tunnelling teams! Many quite skilled watercolours by Lt. John Watton, of the British Army, are reproduced in the book, and I am lucky enough to have several of the originals in my collection, done in Colditz in 1944-45.
Here’s some sketches that weren’t reproduced in “Detour:”
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John Watton’s humourous sketch of a German sentry picking up a cigarette butt discarded by a POW;
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Another Watton, this time showing British cooks at work.
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Yet another Watton, this time showing thecourtyard inside the castle.
One last book recommendation: it is the very best single-volume account of British RAF POW life in WWII: it is actually an official report commissioned by the RAF after the war, and written by an ex-POW, who had been a journalist before the war. “Escape From Germany” covers all aspects of escape, from obtaining maps, forging papers and passes, making fake German uniforms (including producing a wooden rifle, with working bolt!), tunnelling, wire-cutting, etc. It also gives a camp-by-camp rundown of escape attempts, and a very thorough account of the “Great Escape” from Stalag Luft III. There are also many humourous and horrendous anecdotes. Seek this book out–you won’t be disappointed!
Here’s a German dogtag worn by POWs. Based on the German military dogtag, it has two halves: if a POW died, the tag was snapped in half. One half was buried with the body, the other sent to the International Red Cross in Geneva to inform the next-of-kin.
This is an excellent page on POW life, German guards, and in particular, the “Great Escape,” including names and photos of the 50 POWs who were murdered by the Gestapo after recapture, and also the war crimes trials of several of those responsible. It also has lots of info on the 1963 movie, even linking characters in the movie to real-life POWs in Sagan.
KEEP GOING RODD…
That link on ‘The Great Escape’ was fantastic… do you have any other links describing POW breakouts?
Does anyone know about any escapes involving ingenious, daring German prisoners?
I suspect that it would be from the USSR, since things were pretty cushy in the camps in the USA and they did not bother to escape!
I only know two anecdotes:
There was an escape from a Phoenix, AZ camp, but the desert proved to be a pretty good fence. The Germans turned themselves in to a very surprised farmer after a few days without water.
My grandfather, a farmer in the Central Valley, CA, was still angry in the 1970’s that German prisoners were paid to work on the farms. (They might have made more than he did!)