Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle

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The adaptation of Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle, by Ben Macintyre, will offer a “21st-century narrative” view of life within its walls. Join Ben Macintyre as he presents the undisclosed story of life inside Colditz, where prisoners lived in close proximity to their captors, participating in a thrilling game of cat and mouse. A remarkable cast of characters from many countries, hitherto hidden from history, will be brought to life in this tale of the indomitable human spirit.

Escape from Colditz - Department of Engineering". www.eng.cam.ac.uk. 6 August 2012 . Retrieved 8 April 2018. The outer courtyard and former German Kommandantur (guard quarters) have been converted into a youth hostel / hotel and the Gesellschaft Schloss Colditz e.V. (the Colditz Castle historical society), founded during 1996, has its offices in a portion of the administration building in the front castle court. Macintyre so seamlessly fuses so many different accounts that their compilation creates something more profound than a simple escape yarn.” ― The Washington PostThe day of freedom is not set by judge or jury, but by events in a distant theater of conflict." There was also the crushing boredom of a daily ritual that remained the same month in, month out; year in, year out. And unlike conventional prison sentences, no one in a POW camp knew how long they would be incarcerated for, or what the endgame would be.

A special intelligence operation in the UK, MI9, came up with dozens of ingenious ways of smuggling contraband and information to the Colditz prisoners. MI9 wisely equipped flyers with many hidden escape aids, in case they were shot down and captured. When you read about some of these bits of spycraft, you won’t be surprised to learn that their inventor inspired the creation of the Q character in the Bond films. Amazingly, Denholm Elliott, who played Q, was a POW of the Germans in WW2 (though not at Colditz). Of the 35,000 Allied troops who made their way to safety from captivity or after being shot down about half were carrying one of Hutton's maps."

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And much more,” added Macintyre, who has written widely about double agents and secret missions during the Nazi era. “I grew up, like most Britons, wrapped up in the Colditz myth. At the age of 14, I watched the 1972 BBC series with David McCallum. I played the board game, created by Pat Reid, [who was] one of the castle’s real escapees. Colditz’s heroes were part of my personal mythology: a story of brave Englishmen and courage. But, as often happens, the story turns out not to be so simple and not so uplifting.”

The writer explained that this escape is remembered because of the savagery with which the prisoners were punished and not because it was ingenious, especially when compared to the various attempts made at Colditz Castle. While the numbers are still in dispute, Macintyre estimates that a total of 32 prisoners managed to escape the castle, including 11 Brits, 12 Frenchmen, seven Dutch, one Polish and one Belgian. Of those who were held at Colditz Castle, none are living – the last former inmate died in 2013. Some escapes were sensational, such as that of French alpine hunter Lieutenant Alain Le Ray, who only spent 46 days in Colditz before escaping to Switzerland. A group of prisoners in Colditz Castle. SBG gGmbH (SBG gGmbH) It was a way of dignifying the prisoner-of-war experience. It was a very familiar myth and, like all myths, it was partly true. The story of the escapes from Colditz are fabulous: the ingenuity, the courage, the lateral thinking that went into them is extraordinary. The astonishing inside story, revealed for the first time by bestselling historian Ben Macintyre, is a tale of the indomitable human spirit, but also one of class conflict, homosexuality, espionage, insanity and farce. Through an astonishing range of material, Macintyre reveals a remarkable cast of characters, wider than previously seen and hitherto hidden from history, taking in prisoners and captors who were living cheek-by-jowl in a thrilling game of cat and mouse. From the elitist members of the Colditz Bullingdon Club to America's oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent, the soldier-prisoners of Colditz were courageous and resilient as well as vulnerable and fearful -- and astonishingly imaginative in their desperate escape attempts.

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There is just SO much here to talk about; so many interesting tidbits and stories and individuals, some slimy, others much more heroic. Eggers started a Colditz Museum with foiled escape souvenirs, complete with photos of reenacted escape attempts. They legitimately caught several prisoners attempting escape (one dressed as the Colditz electrician, another dressed as a woman) and requested they pose for a photo for the museum scrapbook. And these are supplied mid-book, which was fantastic. There is too much I could go on about, so just read the book honestly. In Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes us inside the walls of the most infamous prison in history to meet the real men behind the legends. Heroes and bullies, lovers and spies, captors and prisoners living cheek-by-jowl for years in a thrilling game of cat and mouse - and all determined to escape by any means necessary. The inventiveness that came out of this was remarkable, and one escape attempt followed another. But few were successful in making ‘home runs’. One of only a handful who did was Airey Neave, later a leading Tory politician and supporter of Margaret Thatcher. Divided inmates