Detail Aerial Photograph Detail from an aerial photograph of Colditz Castle in Saxony, Germany, on 10 April 1945 just three days before U.S. forces overran the area. Individual prisoners can be seen in the photograph First time @NAM_London today. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Thought the presentation & interpretation made the subject accessible..." PRISONERS OF THE CASTLE AN EPIC STORY OF SURVIVAL AND ESCAPE FROM COLDITZ, THE NAZIS' FORTRESS PRISON The somewhat Monty Python-like atmosphere of Colditz Castle – with its prisoners and eccentric escape artists – clashes with the reality of nearby concentration camps, where the extermination of Jews, Sinti-Roma peoples, Slavs, disabled people, political dissidents and religious minorities was carried out through labor and starvation. “Nobody talked about this in Colditz. The German guards said it was an SS thing; the contrast between both kinds of camps was abysmal. It forces us to relativize the history of the castle and its prisoners.”

World War II prisoner-of-war escapes are a staple of adventure fiction. IMDB lists twenty-one films on the theme, most prominently the 1963 production The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough. In reality, however, successful escapes were rare. Britain’s Imperial War Museum notes that “Of the 170,000 British and Commonwealth prisoners of war in Germany in the Second World War, fewer than 1,200 of them managed to escape successfully and make a ‘home run.'” But the numbers fall far short of conveying the sheer drama in the German camps. And perhaps the most colorful examples have emerged from Colditz, the Nazi camp for Allied officers in Germany’s east from 1939 to 1945. Author Ben MacIntyre brings the drama into high relief in Prisoners of the Castle, a nonfiction rendering of life in the most famous of the nearly one hundred WWII Nazi POW camps. You can then take a stroll up through the Square and into the Castle Courtyard. You can wonder around the courtyard free of charge. If you want to go inside to the Museum the cost is €4. This book covers, not only the successful escapes but also the many unsuccessful attempts (and there were many). The prisoners were determined and some of their efforts were quite daring, inventive, and amazing. The author delves into the lives and personalities of these brave men and those of the Nazis who were in charge of the camp. The treatment of the prisoners was fairly humane except for solitary confinement and boredom was basically the worst part of the experience. The 'Escape from Colditz' board game was based on the real-life escape that Pat Reid made in 1942. (Image by Alamy) During this period the portal at what is known as the church house was created during 1584, made of Rochlitz Porphyr ( rhyolite tuff) and richly decorated in the mannerist style by Andreas Walther II. This dimension stone has been in use in architecture for more than 1,000 years. It was at this time that both the interior and the exterior of "the Holy Trinity" castle chapel that links the cellar and electors' house with one another were redesigned. Soon thereafter the castle became an administrative office for the Office of Colditz and a hunting lodge. During 1694, its then-current owner, King Augustus the Strong of Poland, began to expand it, resulting in a second courtyard and a total of 700 rooms.The story of] the Colditz prisoners is actually the story of a society divided by class, by race, by sexuality. It is also the story of a great suffering, of cruel attitudes, demoralization, boredom (there were those who read a copy of Vanity Fair 12 times), hunger, and psychological and moral collapse,” the author explained.

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. Baybutt, Ron, and Johannes Lange. Colditz: The Great Escapes. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982. ISBN 0316083941

About Ben Macintyre

At Colditz, there were various nationalities, primarily British, French, Dutch and Polish, and they didn’t always work well together. There were also problems with class conflict, racial prejudice, and anti-Semitism among some of the prisoners. Sadly, there were prisoners who shared many of the same fascist and racist attitudes as the Nazis. Some prisoners were communist sympathizers, which foreshadowed the Cold War conflict. These differences caused problems in themselves, but also served to further divide the prisoners when some suspected that there were moles among them tipping off the Germans to escape plans. Colditz Castle in Germany was used as a prison for troublesome Allied Officers who were prisoners of war and many were sent here as they were repeat offenders of escape attempts. I found this account so interesting; The daily lives of these officers (who were treated fairly well, and according to the Geneva Convention and it's international humanitarian law) and particularly their numerous and imaginative escape attempts....many ultimately unsuccessful but a number that were "home runs". Macintyre’s latest nonfiction thriller transports us inside this notorious Nazi prison. He suggests that prisoner boredom partly explains why there were more attempted escapes from Colditz than any other camp. And this helped inspire the supreme levels of ingenuity and invention accompanying those efforts. Ben MaCintyre can be relied upon to write well-researched and very entertaining books about little known aspects of either the Second World War or spies or both. This book is unusual in that his subject is Colditz, something that already feels familiar from films and countless books by the original inmates. However, in this book, he gives us a much more detailed history which covers far more than just the many attempts to escape from the fortress. The astonishing inside story, revealed for the first time in this new book by bestselling historian Ben Macintyre, is a tale of the indomitable human spirit, but also one of snobbery, class conflict, homosexuality, bullying, espionage, boredom, insanity and farce. With access to an astonishing range of material, Macintyre reveals a remarkable cast of characters of multiple nationalities hitherto hidden from history, with captors and prisoners living for years cheek-by-jowl in a thrilling game of cat and mouse.

My English speaking 2 hour tour was with Alex who was excellent. Some Yorkshire bikers, who had not booked, turned up after about 20 minutes but Alex was able to accommodate them. They loved it. Macintyre’s attention to detail is a strength of the book. He delves into strategies developed and objects needed, i.e.; the “arse keeper,” a cylinder to hide money, small tools and other objects in one’s anatomy was most creative. The prisoners were geniuses in developing tactics to confuse their captors, and instruments that were used to make their escape attempts possible, including a glider that was completely built, but never used.. The author also includes how prisoners tried to keep themselves sane by developing their own entertainment. They set up theater performances, choirs, concerts, bands, jazz ensembles, plays etc. Sanity was a major issue and for those who remained at Colditz for years PTSD was definitely an issue.

The only faint criticism I have of this book is that it is, by nature, rather episodic. It does focus on a few of the prisoners, but there are many who come and go - whether by escape, transfer to another POW camp, or death. Still, I had no trouble following the cast of characters and events outside the castle's walls. It certainly made interesting reading after having seen the movie "The Great Escape" any number of times. No motorcycle stunts in this book (or at Stalag Luft III, for that matter), but fascinating nonetheless. Enlisted men received harsher treatment even at Colditz, which included forced labor as batmen to the officers. Elsewhere, Soviet POWs experienced far, far worse. According to Wikipedia, “It is estimated that at least 3.3 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi custody, out of 5.7 million. This figure represents a total of 57% of all Soviet POWs and it may be contrasted with 8,300 out of 231,000 British and U.S. prisoners, or 3.6%.” Most of the Soviet soldiers who died in German custody were among the 2.8 million taken in 1941-42 as the Nazi juggernaut raged across Russian land toward Moscow and Leningrad. Bestselling author Ben Macintyre tells the astonishing true story of one of the Second World War’s most infamous prisoner-of-war camps. A pretty terrifying one. It’s a vast, 700-room Gothic schloss on top of a cliff, overlooking the town of Colditz: a very dominating, domineering piece of architecture. The castle was built in the 11th century by the electors of Saxony, effectively as a demonstration of power. And it was also used, from its very earliest times, to incarcerate people who did not fit in with the existing power regime. Over the years, it had been a psychiatric hospital, a prison, a place where the electors would put their unwanted and dangerous siblings. So it’s always had a history of being somewhere people were held against their will. The book isn’t just about the escape attempts, though. A closed community tends to have intensified social dynamics. On the positive side, the prisoners threw themselves into cultural pursuits, including putting on concerts, skits and plays. Hilariously, the British chaplain was appalled at prisoners dressing up as women for some of the plays and skits they acted out in the castle’s theater, thinking that even these ridiculously ersatz women would stir the men’s passions.

Obviously, this is a war story so most of this is pretty bleak. However, there are plenty of moments of humor, touching humanism, and joy. I got legitimately choked up when the men starting building the glider, despite the extreme unlikeliness that it would work. "...It had more to do with mythical escapism and imagination than with a real escape. It was a dream for the prisoner collective: to fly away to freedom." After years of mostly failed escape attempts, increasing loss of hope as rations and other supplies dwindled, and deep fears that the prisoners might all be murdered if Germany was losing and the Allied powers reached the castle....imagine these defeated men pooling their ingenuity to build something so magnificent, such a beautiful dream of freedom. Ugh, it got to me. Because ultimately, this is the story of captivity. I had to read it in small doses because reading about POWs’ imprisonment does not make for a happy subject. Sure, I was rooting for the guys who, few and far between, actually succeeded in escaping. But every prisoner is a bored, angry, sexually frustrated captive and additionally there was plenty of elitism and racism.

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This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by 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. Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil. Another of Colditz’s famous prisoners was David Stirling – known as “the ghost commander” – who was the famous creator of the Special Air Service (SAS): a special forces unit within the British Army. He described the castle as “the best-guarded pension (hotel) of the Third Reich.” Stirling was captured in one of his famous raids against the airfields and bases of the Afrika Korps in January of 1943. After several escape attempts from various POW camps, he ended up in Colditz. How did this bold, determined, slippery guy not manage escape? “The problem was that he was very tall,” Macintyre said.