Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle

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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. He was also fascinated by Mazumdar’s experience in Colditz and eventual escape. He refused an offer to leave Colditz and serve in India because it would have broken his pledge to serve Britain. He endured the racism of his fellow POWs, and eventually went on hunger strike.

Apparently not. Ben Macintyre’s book is the second on the subject to appear this year, following Robert Verkaik’s excellent The Traitor of Colditz. Whereas that focussed on a single episode, this is a soup-to-nuts account of everything that happened inside Oflag IV-C from 1940 to 1945, marrying the perspectives of captive and captor alike. Some of the few who did escape gained fame, becoming celebrities in Britain for years after the war. A surprising number kept diaries, as did at least one of the guards, which were among MacIntyre’s principal sources. And several wrote bestselling books about the experience, distorting and contributing to the enduring legend of Colditz in the British imagination. No doubt, it was their skill as writers which had a lot to do with making Colditz the most famous of the many WWII Nazi POW camps. Christopher Clayton Hutton's bizarre achievements prove that war is not solely a matter of bombs, bullets and battlefield bravery. They also serve who work out how to hide a compass inside a walnut." I love the espionage genre because it's about ordinary people having to make very difficult moral decisions in circumstances that are not of their making. Very often they have not done anything to end up in this situation. Douglas Bader may have been a national hero but Macintyre shows him to be a heartless, arrogant bully.That story was recently adapted into a TV series and is among a raft of his books that have made their way onto the screen: a film of Operation Mincemeat is now on Netflix; this year SBS will screen a series based on SAS: Rogue Heroes, his book about the origins of the SAS; and Macintyre says another TV series, about Gordievsky, is in production. His Colditz is a self-proclaimed revisionist exercise, which sets out to re-examine a “myth” which “has stood unchallenged for more than 70 years” of “prisoners of war, with moustaches firmly on stiff upper lips, defying the Nazis by tunnelling out of a grim Gothic castle”. It also invites the reader to ask themselves: “what would you have done?” The adaptation of Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle, by Ben Macintyre, will offer a “21st-century narrative” view of life within its walls.

When you know you have found the motherlode there is nothing quite like it. It's absolute catnip. I love it. So one will be told through the eyes of Mazumdar, one perhaps through Reinhold Eggers. There is a way of taking the mythology that we all remember and playing with it, and creating a quite different 21st-century narrative to look at that story again.”Damien Lewis and Guy Pearce star in the television adaptation of Macintyre’s Cold War book A Spy Among Friends. Much of the drama in MacIntyre’s account centers on the almost continuous succession of attempted escapes, many of which were extremely elaborate and required months of preparation. One British officer tried eight times, but many others were almost equally persistent. Few were successful. Although there are reports of 174 who made their way outside the castle’s walls, only thirty-two of them reached home. Colditz was 400 kilometers from Switzerland, and the route led through vast expanses of heavily policed Nazi territory. 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.

I tend to prefer to read a book before listening to the audiobook but in this case, I think I would have preferred to listen to the audiobook from the outset. The audio sample sounds good and I may return to it some day. The Great Escape is a fairly well-known movie with a star-studded cast. It is set in a POW camp in Poland and portrays the real-life audacious escape attempt of 76 Allied airmen during WWII. A different POW camp in Germany was Colditz Castle. It was supposed to be the most secure German POW camp so was specifically used as the prison of last resort for Allied officers who had previously attempted escape or were otherwise high risk. Despite the designation of "escape proof," Colditz turned out to be the ideal camp for escape-inclined Allied prisoners. With so many escape-prone prisoners housed together it was inevitable that they would plan escapes. They organized and created an "escape committee" which arranged the details of each escape, including who would produce or procure money, tools, maps, disguises or any other required materials. They also organized the dates of escapes so that one group did not interfere with another.

The Sydney Morning Herald

I would recommend this book to history buffs and WW readers alike. It tells quite a few enduring and humbling stories about those poor, brave souls who had to endure the camps for years. 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. Macintyre said that The Great Escape, the 1963 film about a real-life escape from Stalag Luft III, was another example of our desire for history to be turned into an uplifting tale of British heroics. And yet, in some ways, his story is the most heroic of all, in my view. He had nobody to help him. He is being actively discouraged from what he wants to do and looked down on and diminished and generally demeaned. British pilot Douglas “Tin Legs” Bader was one of Colditz’s most famous prisoners. Credit: Getty Images