One of the greatest war films ever made was the Great Escape, with the iconic image of
Steve Macqueen performing the famous jump on the motorcycle. However the events of the
film are loosely based upon a true story, an incredible plan to escape from Stalag Luft
III. The Prisoner of War camp was run by the Luftwaffe, and it held members of the Western
Allied Air Forces who had been captured. IT was close to the town of Sagan in Germany,
and became the scene of two incredibly daring escape attempts.
The Second was labelled the Great Escape, and following the incredibly escape attempt,
there were bloody reprisals and executions ordered by Hitler upon the men who dared to
escape. This resulted in the cold blooded murder of 50 prisoners from many different
countries. Join us today as we look at the Brutal Executions Of The Great Escape From
Stalag Luft III. Remember to support, please make sure to subscribe.
Inside of the German Armed Forces, each branch of the military were responsible for looking
after the Prisoners of War from the same branches of foreign forces. For example RAF prisoners
were the responsibility of the Luftwaffe. Stalag Luft III opened on the 21st March 1942,
and the first prisoners there were British and commonwealth officers who arrived in the
following month. Many different compounds at the camp opened as more airmen were captured,
and they were opened for different nations soldiers.
The prison itself had a number of elements that made trying to escape rather tricky.
The Barracks in which the prisoners were housed inside of were around 60 centimetres raised
off the ground. This meant that guards could easily see if tunnelling from a barrack was
going on. Also the camp was built on sandy foundations, which meant if the sand deposit
from a tunnel was dumped somewhere it would easily have been seen. Also allegedly microphones
had been placed around the camp to detect any digging under the surface.
Within Stalag Luft III, the conditions were rather adequate. There was a large library
and school inside, where Prisoners could learn different skills and even obtain degrees.
Some learned languages and eve law, and these courses were provided by the Red Cross. There
was also a theatre built, where performances happened and also radio was allowed inside.
All inmates were vetted by the Germans, and were interrogated heavily. The Germans didn’t
want anyone who wasn’t a legitimate airman inside the camp.
The Guards became known as goons, and the movements of guards were tracked closely by
officers, and the 800 guards based there were too old for service, or had been injured on
duty and were convalescing or were wounded. The prisoners were offered better treatment
that those in other POWs, however food was a slight issue. The rations were reduced,
but they ate better than other prisoners of war, and much was supplied by the Red Cross.
There were many sports fields at the camp too, with prisoners playing basketball, football,
table tennis and other sports.
Most of the men inside the camp despite the treatment wanted to get their freedom and
to return home, and some wanted to get out to continue the fight against the Germans.
A first escape attempt occured in October 1943, where prisoners made a modern day Trojan
horse. They made a gymnastics vaulting horse, and it was used to hide men tools and soil
containers. Each day the horse was taken to a spot near to the fence whilst exercise happened,
and a tunnel was then dug. At the end of the day, a sheet of wood was placed over the tunnel
and covered with soil.
For 3 months, three prisoners took shifts to dig, and they dug over 30 metres of tunnel
using bowls and rods, to create air holes. Under the cover of darkness on the 19th October
1943, the three men made their escape. Two of them reached a port and were stowed on
a Danish Ship and made it to Britain, but another managed to get a train to Danzig and
go via a ship to Stockholm before heading back to Britain.
Before this attempt, escape plans were being drawn up often inside of Stalag Luft III.
In March 1043, RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bushell had created a plan to lead a mass escape from
the north compound which would take place a year later. He was imprisoned with many
other British airmen, and he called a committee to talk about the plan. He said, ‘Everyone
here in this room is living on borrowed time. By rights we should all be dead. The only
reason is that God allowed us this extra ration of life, is so we can make life hell for the
hun. In the north Compound we are concentrating our efforts on completing and escaping through
one master runnel. No private-enterprise tunnels allowed. Three bloody deep, bloody long tunnels
will be dug, tom, dick and harry. One will succeed.
The escape attempt was authorised and it was seen it stood a good chance of working. The
use of three tunnels meant that if one was discovered, it wouldn’t scupper the whole
plan. Bushell planned to get over 200 men out, all in civilian clothes, and many with
forged papers. The attempt would be huge in its size, and because of this it became known
as The Great Escape, and codename Big X. Over 600 prisoners were involved in the tunnel
digging. The three tunnels were dug in complete secrecy, everyone had to refer to them by
their codenames, Tom Dick and Harry. Anyone who used the tunnel was threatened with Court
martial by Bushell and even being left inside.
The tunnels were dug deep, around 9ms below the surface and they were rather small. The
sandy walls were stabilised by wood from the camp, and much of this came from the beds
of prisoners. Other materials were used, and the prisoners even built devices to help including
a pump to push fresh air along the tunnel. Sand was dumped in various places around,
being carried in towels and even underpants. 25,000 trips to dump the sediment was made
throughout the camp, but the Germans knew that something was going on. Many of the suspects
who they believed were responsible for the planning of an escape attempt were transferred
to other camps, but only 6 had been involved in the construction of the tunnels. It became
too risky to dump sand too, and they began to fill up codename Dick tunnel up with sand
and also using it for storage. Some inmates even managed to bribe guards for information
regarding transport and maps.
Eventually the entrance to Tom tunnel was discovered as guards had seen sand being removed
from the hut where it was being worked on, and then this was closed and dynamited by
the Germans. However Harry was completed. By March 1944 it was ready, and it was ordered
that escapes should go ahead as soon as the tunnel is ready. It’s also claimed that
some of the German guards even helped the escape attempts, providing documents and forgeries.
With the plan, only 200 of those who worked on the tunnels would be allowed to escape.
The prisoners were separated into 2 groups, the first was for serial offenders who were
guaranteed a place, this was made up of 100 soldiers. 30 of these were those who spoke
German well and had tried to escape before. Also those who worked hardest on the tunnel
were included. The Second group was chosen by drawing lots, and they were considered
to have less chance of success.
The escapees waited for a moonless night, and after a week of tense waiting they went
for it on the 25th March. As night fell, those who were given a chance went to Hut 104. However
the exit door of harry tunnel was frozen, and this delayed the escape. It was also realised
that the tunnel then came up short of the forest, and just passed the barbed wire fence.
The first man came out at around 10:30pm just short of the tree line, much closer to the
guard tower than believed. The escaping prisoners were reduced to ten an hour, rather than one
a minute. An air raid even caused the camps electric lighting to be turned off, slowing
the escape, and the tunnel partly collapsed at around 1am.
76 of the men managed to escape to freedom during this, however at 4:55am the 77th man
was spotted by guards. Those in the trees began to run. The guards struggled to find
the tunnel entrance initially, giving valuable time to the disposal of evidence and fake
papers. Hut 104 was one of the last to be searched, and guard dogs couldn’t find the
tunnel, but a German guard who had crawled the other way then revealed the location.
Many of the escapees couldn’t get into a nearby railway station, and because of this
they missed their trains at night. Many then decided to walk across the country, or to
wait on the platform in the day. The intense cold also forced many escapees to stay on
the roads and out of the forests, making them easier to locate.
After the escape, a full inventory of the camp was ordered which showed how huge the
great escape was. Over 4000 boards from beds had gone missing, 300ms of electric cable,
635 mattresses, 52 tables and much more. Much of the electric cable stolen and been left
unattended by Germans working nearby, and because it wasn’t reported they were shot
by the Gestapo, being accused of being accomplices. It took time, but eventually 73 of the 76
who escaped were captured. News had reached Hitler of the attempt, and he was furious
and he wanted every officer who was captured to be shot dead.
However it was made aware that ordering reprisals as bloody as this could cause a massacre of
German pilots who had fallen into Allied hands. It was agreed that more than half were to
be shot, and Himmler was ordered to carry out the shootings. He fixed the number at
50 to be executed. The remains of those executed were then to be created and their ashes then
taken back to Stalag Luft III to act as a deterrent. Himmler organised the logistics
for the executions, and then it was passed to the Gestapo.
The orders said that recaptured officers would be passed to the Criminal Police, and then
5 would be passed over to the Gestapo to be killed. The specific 50 who were chosen to
be executed were chosen by Arthur Nebe, and the selections were done in a number of ways.
Those from Eastern Europe were selected, and the leadership of the escape were also chosen.
Those who had famous surnames for example Churchill were omitted as it was believed
they did not want to execute anyone who may have links to famous Britons, and subsequently
reprisals would be ordered. 5 days after the breakout, 35 escapees were stuck behind bars
in cramped cells at the jail at Gorlitz, South of Sagan.
As the prisoners were recaptured, they were then interrogated by the Gestapo for information.
The executions carried a very familiar pattern, and were performed in this way. The men were
brought for interrogation, and after this they were then taken out of the prison in
a car. They were taken in either pairs or on their own following their interrogation.
The escapees believed that they were just being repatriated back to the camp, as executing
them would be a war crime as they were technically prisoners of war, who were under the care
of those at Stalag Luft III. However, this would not happen, and 50 would never make
their way back into the camp. They were taken in the cars down a country road, and then
the gestapo agents would ask them if they needed to go to the toilet, and the men would
be taken out of the car. As they were preparing to go to the toilet, the men were then approached
from behind by their executioner.
The Gestapo agents would then pull out their pistol and shoot them dead in cold blood.
Sometimes they were mowed down by machine gun fire too. So at the side of the country
roads they were executed in pairs or singularly. The movie the Great Escape portrays this as
being a huge massacre, in which the escapees were brought together and then shot dead,
but this wasn’t the case. After the shootings, the bodies of the men were then left and later
retrieved, and then collected for cremation, with the ashes returning to Stalag Luft III.
As mentioned 50 were executed in this way, 20 British prisoners were executed along with
6 Canadians, 6 polish prisoners, 5 Australians, 3 South Africans, 2 New Zealanders, 2 Norweigans,
1 Argentinian, 1 Belgian, 1 Czech, 1 Frenchman, 1 Greek and 1 Lithuanian. 17 of the captives
were returned to Stalag Luft III and two were sent to Colditz, with 4 being transferred
to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. There were three successful escapees, but there
was much outrage especially in Britain at the executions. A number of former Gestapo
agents were convicted of war crimes for the executions, and a number were executed and
imprisoned for the shootings of the men. The story of the Great Escape is one today which
is still celebrated and seen as a daring attempt to subvert the evils of the Nazi Regime imposed
upon the men housed inside the camp. However the executions of those men who were captured
were played out in a different way to how the film depicts. But the story of the Great
Escape and those men who were shot is definitely worth remembering.
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