Stalag Luft III
German: Stammlager Luft
Part of Luftwaffe
Sagan, Lower Silesia, Nazi Germany (now Żagań, Poland)
Model of the set used to film the movie The Great Escape. It depicts a smaller version of a single compound in Stalag Luft III. The model is now at the museum near where the prison camp was located.
Stalag Luft III Show map of Poland Stalag Luft III Show map of Germany
Coordinates	51°35′55″N 15°18′27″E / 51.5986°N 15.3075°E / 51.5986; 15.3075
Type	Prisoner-of-war camp
Site information
Controlled by	Nazi Germany
Site history
In use	March 1942 – January 1945
Battles/wars	World War II
Events	The "Great Escape"
Garrison information
Past commanders	Oberst Friedrich Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau
Occupants	Allied air crews, including Britons, Canadians, Poles, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Norwegians, Czechs, South Africans, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Belgians, Greeks

Stalag Luft III (German: Stammlager Luft III; literally "Main Camp, Air, III"; SL III) was a Luftwaffe-run prisoner-of-war (POW) camp during the Second World War, which held captured Western Allied air force personnel.

The camp was established in March 1942 near the town of Sagan, Lower Silesia, in what was then Nazi Germany (now Żagań, Poland), 160 kilometres (100 miles) south-east of Berlin. The site was selected because its sandy soil made it difficult for POWs to escape by tunnelling.

It is best known for two escape plots by Allied POWs. One was in 1943 and became the basis of a fictionalised film, The Wooden Horse (1950), based on a book by escapee Eric Williams. The second breakout — the so-called Great Escape — of March 1944, was conceived by Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, and was authorised by the senior British officer at Stalag Luft III, Herbert Massey. A heavily fictionalised version of the escape was depicted in the film The Great Escape (1963), which was based on a book by former prisoner Paul Brickhill. The camp was liberated by Soviet forces in January 1945. The site of the former POW camp is now the 'Stalag Luft III Prisoner Camp Museum'.

Camp life 1942–1944

Kommandant Friedrich Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau, Kommandant of Stalag Luft III.

The German military followed a practice whereby each branch of the military was responsible for the POWs of equivalent branches. Hence the Luftwaffe was normally responsible for any Allied aircrew taken prisoner. That included captured naval aviators, such as members of the British Fleet Air Arm. In a few cases, non-air force personnel were also held at Stalag Luft III.

Stammlager Luft (literally "Main Camp, Air") was Luftwaffe nomenclature for a POW camp. While the camp initially held only POWs who were officers, it was not known by the usual terms for such camps – Offizier Lager or Oflag. Later camp expansions added compounds for non-commissioned officers (NCOs).

The first compound of the camp (East Compound) was completed and opened on 21 March 1942. The first POWs, or kriegies, as they called themselves (from Kriegsgefangene, German for "Prisoner of War"), to be housed at Stalag Luft III were British and other Commonwealth officers, arriving in April 1942. The Centre Compound was opened on 11 April 1942 and originally held British and other Commonwealth NCOs. By the end of 1942, however, they were replaced by USAAF personnel. The North Compound for British airmen, (where the "Great Escape" later occurred) opened on 29 March 1943. A South Compound for Americans was opened in September 1943. USAAF prisoners began arriving at the camp in significant numbers the following month and the West Compound was opened in July 1944 for US officers. Each compound consisted of fifteen single-story huts. Each 3.0-by-3.7-metre (10-by-12-foot) bunkroom slept fifteen men in five triple-deck bunks. Eventually the camp grew to approximately 24 hectares (60 acres) in size and housed about 2,500 Royal Air Force officers, about 7,500 US Army Air Forces, and about 900 officers from other Allied air forces, for a total of 10,949 inmates, including some support officers.^[1][2]

The prison camp had a number of design features that made escape extremely difficult. The digging of escape tunnels, in particular, was made difficult by several factors: the barracks housing the prisoners were raised approximately 60 centimetres (24 in) off the ground to make it easier for guards to detect tunnelling; the camp had been constructed on land that had a very sandy subsoil; the surface soil was dark grey, so it could easily be detected if anyone dumped the brighter, yellow sand found beneath it above ground, or even just had some of it on their clothing. The loose, collapsible sand meant the structural integrity of any tunnel would be very poor. A third defence against tunnelling was the placement of seismograph microphones around the perimeter of the camp, which were expected to detect any sounds of digging.

A substantial library with schooling facilities was available, where many POWs studied for and took exams in subjects such as languages, engineering or law. The exams were supplied by the Red Cross and supervised by academics such as a Master of King's College who was a POW in Luft III. The prisoners also built a theatre and put on high-quality bi-weekly performances featuring all the current West End shows.^[3] The prisoners used the camp amplifier to broadcast a news and music radio station they named Station KRGY, short for Kriegsgefangener (POWs) and also published two newspapers, the Circuit and the Kriegie Times, which were issued four times a week.^[4]

POWs operated a system whereby newcomers to the camp were vetted, to prevent German agents from infiltrating their ranks. Any POW who could not be vouched for by two POWs who knew the prisoner by sight was severely interrogated and afterwards escorted continually by other prisoners, until such time as he was deemed to be a genuine Allied POW. Several infiltrators were discovered by this method and none is known to have escaped detection in Luft III.

The German guards were referred to by POWs as "goons" and, unaware of the Allied connotation, willingly accepted the nickname after being told it stood for "German Officer Or Non-Com".^[5] German guards were followed everywhere they went by prisoners, who used an elaborate system of signals to warn others of their location. The guards' movements were then carefully recorded in a logbook kept by a rota of officers. Unable to stop what the prisoners called the "Duty Pilot" system, the Germans allowed it to continue and on one occasion the book was used by Kommandant von Lindeiner to bring charges against two guards who had slunk away from duty several hours early.^[6]

The camp's 800 Luftwaffe guards were either too old for combat duty or young men convalescing after long tours of duty or from wounds. Because the guards were Luftwaffe personnel, the prisoners were accorded far better treatment than that granted to other POWs in Germany.^[4] Deputy Commandant Major Gustav Simoleit, a professor of history, geography and ethnology before the war, spoke several languages, including English, Russian, Polish and Czech. Transferred to Sagan in early 1943, he proved sympathetic to allied airmen. Ignoring the ban against extending military courtesies to POWs, he provided full military honours for Luft III POW funerals, including one for a Jewish airman.^[7]

Food was an ongoing matter of concern for the POWs. The recommended dietary intake for a normal healthy inactive adult male is 2,150 kilocalories (9,000 kilojoules).^[8] Luft III issued "Non-working" German civilian rations which allowed 1,928 kcal (8,070 kJ) per day, with the balance made up from American, Canadian, and British Red Cross parcels and items sent to the POWs by their families.^[4][9] As was customary at most camps, Red Cross and individual parcels were pooled and distributed to the men equally. The camp also had an official internal bartering system called a Foodacco – POWs marketed surplus goods for "points" that could be "spent" on other items.^[10] The Germans paid captured officers the equivalent of their pay in internal camp currency (Lagergeld), which was used to buy what goods were made available by the German administration. Every three months, weak beer was made available in the canteen for sale. As NCOs did not receive any "pay" it was the usual practice in camps for the officers to provide one-third for their use but at Luft III all Lagergeld was pooled for communal purchases. As British government policy was to deduct camp pay from the prisoners' military pay, the communal pool avoided the practice in other camps whereby American officers contributed to British canteen purchases.^[4]

Stalag Luft III had the best-organised recreational program of any POW camp in Germany. Each compound had athletic fields and volleyball courts. The prisoners participated in basketball, softball, boxing, touch football, volleyball, table tennis and fencing, with leagues organised for most. A 6.1 by 6.7 by 1.5 metres (20 by 22 by 5 feet) pool used to store water for firefighting, was occasionally available for swimming.^[4]

As described by J. Frank Diggs, many amenities were made possible by Swedish lawyer Henry Söderberg,^[11] who was the YMCA representative to the area, and frequently brought to its camps not only sports equipment, and religious items supporting the work of chaplains, but also the wherewithal for each camp's band and orchestra, and well-equipped library.^[12]

First escape (1943)

The first escape occurred in October 1943 in the East Compound. Conjuring up a modern Trojan Horse, kriegies (prisoners) constructed a gymnastic vaulting horse largely from plywood from Red Cross parcels. The horse was designed to conceal men, tools and containers of soil. Each day the horse was carried out to the same spot near the perimeter fence and while prisoners conducted gymnastic exercises above, a tunnel was dug. At the end of each working day, a wooden board was placed over the tunnel entrance and covered with surface soil. The gymnastics disguised the real purpose of the vaulting horse and kept the sound of the digging from being detected by the microphones. For three months three prisoners, Lieutenant Michael Codner, Flight Lieutenant Eric Williams and Flight Lieutenant Oliver Philpot, in shifts of one or two diggers at a time, dug over 30 m (100 ft) of tunnel, using bowls as shovels and metal rods to poke through the surface of the ground to create air holes. No shoring was used except near the entrance. On the evening of 19 October 1943, Codner, Williams and Philpot made their escape.^[15] Williams and Codner were able to reach the port of Stettin where they stowed away on a Danish ship and eventually returned to Britain. Philpot, posing as a Norwegian margarine manufacturer, was able to board a train to Danzig (now Gdańsk) and from there stowed away on a Swedish ship headed for Stockholm, from where he was repatriated to Britain. Accounts of this escape were recorded in the book Goon in the Block (later retitled The Wooden Horse) by Williams, the book Stolen Journey by Philpot and the 1950 film The Wooden Horse.^[16]

The "Great Escape" (1944)

Tunnels

Three tunnels, Tom, Dick, and Harry were dug for the escape. The operation was so secretive that everyone was to refer to each tunnel by its name. Bushell took this so seriously that he threatened to court-martial anyone who even uttered the word "tunnel".^[19]

Tom began in a darkened corner next to a stove chimney in hut 123 and extended west into the forest. It was found by the Germans and dynamited.

Dick's entrance was hidden in a drain sump in the washroom of hut 122 and had the most secure trap door. It was to go in the same direction as Tom and the prisoners decided that the hut would not be a suspected tunnel site as it was further from the wire than the others. Dick was abandoned for escape purposes because the area where it would have surfaced was cleared for camp expansion. Dick was used to store soil and supplies and as a workshop.

Harry, which began in hut 104, went under the Vorlager (which contained the German administration area), sick hut and the isolation cells to emerge at the woods on the northern edge of the camp.^[20] The entrance to "Harry" was hidden under a stove. Ultimately used for the escape, it was discovered as the escape was in progress with only 76 of the planned 220 prisoners free. The Germans filled it with sewage and sand and sealed it with cement.

After the escape, the prisoners started digging another tunnel called George, but this was abandoned when the camp was evacuated.

Tunnel construction

The tunnels were very deep – about 9 m (30 ft) below the surface. They were very small, only 0.6 m (2 ft) square, though larger chambers were dug to house an air pump, a workshop and staging posts along each tunnel. The sandy walls were shored up with pieces of wood scavenged from all over the camp, much from the prisoners' beds (of the twenty or so boards originally supporting each mattress, only about eight were left on each bed). Other wooden furniture was also scavenged.^[21]

End of "Harry"

End of "Harry" tunnel showing how close the exit was to the camp fence

"Harry"

Entrance of "Harry" showing outline of building

Other materials were also used, such as Klim tin cans that had held powdered milk supplied by the Red Cross for the prisoners. The metal in the cans could be fashioned into various tools and items such as scoops and lamps, fuelled by fat skimmed off soup served at the camp and collected in tiny tin vessels, with wicks made from worn clothing.^[21] The main use of the Klim tins was for the extensive ventilation ducting in all three tunnels.^[22]

As the tunnels grew longer, a number of technical innovations made the job easier and safer. A pump was built to push fresh air along the ducting, invented by Squadron Leader Bob Nelson of 37 Squadron. The pumps were built of odd items including pieces from the beds, hockey sticks and knapsacks, as well as the Klim tins.^[21]

The usual method of disposing of sand from all the digging was to scatter it discreetly on the surface. Small pouches made of towels or long underpants were attached inside the prisoners' trousers; as they walked around, the sand could be scattered. Sometimes, they would dump sand into the small gardens they were allowed to tend. As one prisoner turned the soil, another would release sand while they both appeared to be in conversation.^[21] The prisoners wore greatcoats to conceal the bulges from the sand, and were referred to as "penguins" because of their supposed resemblance. In sunny months, sand could be carried outside and scattered in blankets used for sun bathing; more than 200 were used to make an estimated 25,000 trips.^[3]

The Germans were aware that something was going on but failed to discover any of the tunnels until much later.^[23] To break up an escape attempt, nineteen of the top suspects were transferred without warning to Stalag VIIIC. Of those, only six had been involved with tunnel construction. One of these, a Canadian called Wally Floody, was actually originally in charge of digging and camouflage before his transfer.

Eventually the prisoners felt they could no longer dump sand above ground because the Germans became too efficient at catching them doing it. After "Dick"'s planned exit point was covered by a new camp expansion, the decision was made to start filling it up. As the tunnel's entrance was very well hidden, "Dick" was also used as a storage room for items such as maps, postage stamps, forged travel permits, compasses, and clothing.^[24] Some guards cooperated by supplying railway timetables, maps and many official papers so that they could be forged. Some genuine civilian clothes were obtained by bribing German staff with cigarettes, coffee or chocolate. These were used by escaping prisoners to travel from the camp more easily, especially by train.^[21]

The prisoners ran out of places to hide sand, and snow cover made it impractical to scatter it undetected.^[3] Under the seats in the theatre there was a large empty space, but when it was built the prisoners had given their word not to misuse the materials; the parole system was regarded as inviolate. Internal "legal advice" was taken and the SBOs (Senior British Officers) decided that the completed building did not fall under the parole system. A seat in the back row was hinged and the sand-dispersal problem was solved.^[25]

German prison camps began to receive larger numbers of American prisoners.^[4] The Germans decided that new camps would be built specifically for US airmen. To allow as many people to escape as possible, including the Americans, efforts on the remaining two tunnels increased. This drew attention from guards and in September 1943 the entrance to "Tom" became the 98th tunnel to be discovered in the camp;^[26] guards in the woods had seen sand being removed from the hut where it was located. Work on "Harry" ceased and did not resume until January 1944.^[3][21]

Murders of escapees

Main article: Stalag Luft III murders

Nationalities of the 50 executed prisoners

20 British

6 Canadian

6 Polish

5 Australian

3 South African

2 New Zealander

2 Norwegian

1 Argentinian[lower-alpha 1]

1 Belgian

1 Czechoslovak

1 French

1 Greek

1 Lithuanian

Following the escape, the Germans made an inventory of the camp and uncovered how extensive the operation had been. Four thousand bed boards had gone missing, as well as 90 complete double bunk beds, 635 mattresses, 192 bed covers, 161 pillow cases, 52 twenty-man tables, 10 single tables, 34 chairs, 76 benches, 1,212 bed bolsters, 1,370 beading battens, 1,219 knives, 478 spoons, 582 forks, 69 lamps, 246 water cans, 30 shovels, 300 m (1,000 ft) of electric wire, 180 m (600 ft) of rope, and 3,424 towels. 1,700 blankets had been used, along with more than 1,400 Klim cans.^[21] Electric cable had been stolen after being left unattended by German workers; because they had not reported the theft, they were executed by the Gestapo.^[29] Thereafter each bed was supplied with only nine bed boards, which were counted regularly by the guards.

Of 76 escapees, 73 were captured. Adolf Hitler initially wanted every recaptured officer to be shot. Hermann Göring, Field Marshal Keitel, Major-General Westhoff and Major-General Hans von Graevenitz (inspector in charge of war prisoners)^[30] pointed out to Hitler that a massacre might bring about reprisals to German pilots in Allied hands. Hitler agreed, but insisted "more than half" were to be shot, eventually ordering SS head Himmler to execute more than half of the escapees. Himmler passed the selection on to General Arthur Nebe, and fifty were executed singly or in pairs.^[3][31] Roger Bushell, the leader of the escape, was shot by Gestapo official Emil Schulz just outside Saarbrücken, Germany. Bob Nelson is said to have been spared by the Gestapo because they may have believed he was related to his namesake Admiral Nelson. His friend Dick Churchill was probably spared because of his surname, shared with the British Prime Minister.^[32]

Seventeen captured escapees were returned to Stalag Luft III.

Two captured escapees were sent to Oflag IV-C at Colditz Castle, and four were sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where one quipped "the only way out of here is up the chimney."^[33] They managed to tunnel out and escape three months later, although they were recaptured and returned;^[3][31]

There were three successful escapees:

• Per Bergsland, Norwegian pilot of No. 332 Squadron RAF, escapee #44
• Jens Müller, Norwegian pilot of No. 331 Squadron RAF, escapee #43
• Bram van der Stok, Dutch pilot of No. 41 Squadron RAF, escapee #18

Bergsland and Müller escaped together, and made it to neutral Sweden by train and boat with the help of friendly Swedish sailors.^[34] Van der Stok, granted one of the first slots by the Escape Committee owing to his language and escape skills, travelled through much of occupied Europe with the help of the French Resistance before finding safety at a British consulate in Spain.^[31]

Aftermath

Memorial to "The Fifty" down the road toward Żagań.

The Gestapo investigated the escape and, whilst this uncovered no significant new information, the camp commandant, von Lindeiner-Wildau, was removed and threatened with court martial. Having feigned mental illness to avoid imprisonment, he was later wounded by Soviet troops advancing toward Berlin, while acting as second in command of an infantry unit. He surrendered to British forces as the war ended, and was a prisoner of war for two years at the prisoner of war camp known as the "London Cage". He testified during the British SIB investigation concerning the Stalag Luft III murders. Originally one of Göring's personal staff, after being refused retirement, von Lindeiner had been posted as Sagan commandant. He had followed the Geneva Accords concerning the treatment of POWs and had won the respect of the senior prisoners.^[7] He was repatriated in 1947 and died in 1963 aged 82.

On April 6, 1944, the new camp commandant Oberstleutnant Erich Cordes informed Massey that he had received official communication from the German High Command that 41 of the escapees had been shot while resisting arrest. Massey was himself repatriated on health grounds a few days later.

Over subsequent days, prisoners collated the names of 47 prisoners they considered to be unaccounted for. On 15 April (17 April in some sources) (The Red Cross paid a visit to the camp on 22 May 1944. The previous visit had taken place on 26 July 1943) the new senior British officer, Group Captain Douglas Wilson (RAAF), surreptitiously passed a list of these names to an official visitor from the Swiss Red Cross.^[35]

Cordes was replaced soon afterwards by Oberst Werner Braune. Braune was appalled that so many escapees had been killed, and allowed the prisoners who remained there to build a memorial, to which he also contributed. (The memorial still stands at its original site.)

The British government learned of the deaths from a routine visit to the camp by Swiss authorities as the protecting power in May; the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden announced the news to the House of Commons on 19 May 1944.^[36][37] Shortly afterwards the repatriated Massey arrived in Britain and briefed the Government regarding the fate of the escapees. Eden updated Parliament on 23 June, promising that, at the end of the war, those responsible would be brought to exemplary justice.^[38]

Liberation in 1945

Just before midnight on 27 January 1945, with Soviet troops only 26 km (16 mi) away, the remaining 11,000 POWs were marched out of camp with the eventual destination of Spremberg.^[62] In freezing temperatures and 15 cm (6 in) of snow, 2,000 prisoners were assigned to clear the road ahead of the main group. After a 55 km (34 mi) march, the POWs arrived in Bad Muskau where they rested for 30 hours, before marching the remaining 26 km (16 mi) to Spremberg. On 31 January, the South Compound prisoners plus 200 men from the West Compound were sent by train to Stalag VII-A at Moosburg followed by the Centre compound prisoners on 7 February. Thirty-two prisoners escaped during the march to Moosburg but all were recaptured.^[63] The North, East and remaining West compound prisoners at Spremberg were sent either to Stalag XIII-D at Nuremberg on 2 February or to Marlag und Milag Nord at Westertimke.^[62]

With the approach of US forces on 13 April, the American prisoners at XIII-D were marched to Stalag VII-A. While the majority reached VII-A on 20 April, many had dropped out on the way with the German guards making no attempt to stop them. Built to hold 14,000 POWs, Stalag VII-A now held 130,000 from evacuated stalags with 500 living in barracks built for 200. Some chose to live in tents while others slept in air raid slit trenches.^[64] The US 14th Armored Division liberated the prisoners of VII-A on 29 April.^[4] Kenneth W. Simmons's book Kriegie (1960) vividly describes the life of POWs in the American section of Stalag Luft III in the final months of the war, ending with the winter forced-march from the camp, ahead of the advancing Soviet troops and eventually being liberated.

Notable prisoners

Notable military personnel held at Stalag Luft III included:

• Fighter pilot Roland Beamont, later to fly the English Electric Canberra and English Electric Lightning as a test pilot, arrived at Stalag Luft III just after the "Great Escape", having been shot down in his Hawker Tempest by ground fire, while attacking a troop train near Bocholt while on his 492nd operational sortie.
• Australian journalist Paul Brickhill was an inmate at Stalag Luft III from 1943 until release. In 1950 he wrote The Great Escape, the first comprehensive account of the breakout, which was later adapted into the film; and went on to chronicle the life of Douglas Bader in Reach for the Sky and the efforts of 617 "Dam Busters" Squadron.
• Josef Bryks, Czechoslovak RAFVR fighter pilot and serial escaper, was held at Stalag Luft III from August 1943 to July 1944.^[65]
• Col Darr Alkire, Commander of the 449th Bombardment Group. The senior officer in charge of the West Compound from April 1944 to release in April 1945. Future Brigadier General and Silver Star recipient.
• Flying Officer Ray Grayston, RAF, one of the "Dam Busters" who had bombed the Eder Dam, was an inmate at Stalag Luft III from 1943 to 1945.^[66]
• Flight Lieutenant George Harsh of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) was a member of the Great Escape's executive committee and the camp "security officer". He was one of the 19 "suspects" transferred to Belaria compound shortly before the escape. Born in 1910 to a wealthy and prominent family in the US state of Georgia, Harsh, a medical student, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1929 for the self-confessed thrill killing of a grocer. He saved the life of a fellow prisoner by performing an emergency appendectomy, for which Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge released him on parole in November 1940 and finally granted him a full pardon. He then joined the RCAF as a tail gunner and after being shot down in 1942 was sent to Stalag Luft III. In 1971 he published his autobiography which has since been translated into German and Russian.^[67]
• George J. Iles, US Army Air Forces officer and fighter pilot with the 332nd Fighter Group's 99th Fighter Squadron (the Tuskegee Airmen or "Red Tails)^[68] Transferred to Nuremberg-Langwasser, and finally to the 86-acre, multinational prisoner of war camp, Stalag VII-A, the largest POW camp in Nazi Germany.
• Lt Alexander Jefferson of the 332nd Fighter Group, the "Red Tails" of the Tuskegee Airmen based out of Ramitelli Airfield near Foggia, Italy. During his 19th mission over Toulon, southern France on 12 August 1944, while attacking a radar installation he was shot down. Parachuting to safety and landing within a forest, he was immediately captured by Nazi ground troops, and was interred at Stalag Luft III after the Great Escape. He was later transferred to Stalag VII-A, just outside Dachau. After the Russian Army entered Poland, the prisoners were marched to Munich by the Germans, where they were freed by General George Patton's US Third Army.
• David M. Jones, Commander of the 319th Bombardment Group in North Africa, was an inmate at Stalag Luft III for two and a half years. According to his biography he led the digging team on Harry. In early 1942 Jones took part in the Doolittle raid on Japan undertaken in retaliation for the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
• Squadron Leader Phil Lamason of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, who was also the senior officer in charge of 168 Allied airmen initially held at Buchenwald concentration camp.
• Fl Sgt Nathan 'Nat' Leaman, MiD escaper - attempted escape from Stalag Luft III - later transferred to Heydekrug - believed the 'scrounger' character in the film played by James Garner is based on Nat. See article by Martin Sugarman of AJEX, on Jewish Virtual Library and JHSE web page under research articles.
• Flight Lieutenant Geoffrey Douglas Leyland, great-grandson of British shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland, was shot down over and captured in Holland in June 1942. He spent the remainder of the war in Stalag Luft III vetting incoming POWs.
• Major P. P. Kumaramangalam of the British Indian Army, a future Chief of the Indian Army.
• Flight Lieutenant Gordon "Moose" Miller RCAF, helped carry the Wooden Horse in and out each day under the German guns without faltering with the weight of two concealed diggers and a day's worth of earth. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for repairing a damaged Vickers Wellington in flight and allowing the crew to parachute to safety.^[69]
• Robert M. Polich Sr., also of the United States Army Air Forces, who received the Distinguished Flying Cross; later featured in the short film Red Leader on Fire which was submitted for the Minnesota's Greatest Generation short film festival in 2008.^[70]
• Col Delmar T. Spivey, who was, for a time, the Senior American Officer (SAO), was captured on 12 August 1943, while flying as an observer on a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress of the 407th Bomb Squadron, 92d Bomb Group.^[71][72][73] As the USAAF expert on aerial gunnery, Spivey was on the mission to evaluate possible improvements to gun turrets.^[74] Spivey assumed command as SAO, in Centre Compound, in August 1943. Amazed by the prisoners' ingenuity, he had a carefully coded history of the camp created, so that future POWs would not have to "re-invent the wheel". This carefully hidden record was retrieved and carried at no little risk when the camp was hastily evacuated in late January 1945, as the Germans marched the prisoners away from the rapidly advancing Russian armies. The documents served as the basis and initial impetus for Stalag Luft III – The Secret Story, a definitive history of the camp, by Col Arthur A. Durand, USAF (Ret.).^[75]
• Wing Commander Robert Stanford Tuck, a British flying ace with 29 victories, was imprisoned at Sagan until shortly before the Great Escape; suspected of being a ringleader, he was transferred to Belaria, which Tuck credited with saving his life. (His mentor, Roger Bushell, was among those shot after the Great Escape). Tuck eventually managed to escape on 1 February 1945, during the evacuation of the camp, with the help of Polish RAF pilot Zbigniew Kustrzyński. Both made it to the Russian lines.^[76]
• Flight Lieutenant Wally Floody, a Canadian shot down flying his Supermarine Spitfire aircraft, was also imprisoned at Sagan until shortly before the Great Escape; he was one of the 19 transferred to Belaria. Floody had been put in charge of Digging and Camouflage by Roger Bushell himself. At the end of the war Floody gave evidence about conditions in POW camps at the Nuremberg trials. In early 1962, Floody received a phone call from director John Sturges. Floody was told about a film he was planning to make based on the book by Paul Brickhill, an Australian flyer who spent time at Stalag Luft III. Floody agreed to be technical adviser on the 1963 feature film The Great Escape. He is popularly considered the real-life counterpart to that film's fictional "Tunnel King", Danny Velinski, played by Charles Bronson. After returning to civilian life, Floody became a businessman and co-founder of the Royal Canadian Air Force Prisoners of War Association. He died in Toronto, Ontario on 25 September 1989.
• Brigadier-General Arthur W. Vanaman, the highest-ranking USAAF officer captured in the European Theatre of Operations. Vanaman, an intelligence officer, succeeded Spivey as SAO in mid-1944. He had (like Spivey) been captured after flying as an observer on a bombing mission. The crew had advised Vanaman to bail out after his aircraft had been hit by flak and filled with smoke. This, ironically, had been caused by the ignition of a harmless smoke marker and the bomber had returned to base safely.
• Colonel Jerry Sage, the guerrilla leader and saboteur known as "Silent Death" who served William "Wild Bill" Donovan's O.S.S. (the forerunner of the C.I.A.) during World War II. He worked for fifteen months on the huge, three-tunnel project known in book and film as "The Great Escape" and was in charge of hiding over 200,000 pounds of golden sand from the German "ferrets". In the 1960s, he served as commander of the US Army 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Bad Toelz in Bavaria.^[77]
• Peter Stevens (RAF officer), the only known German-Jewish bomber pilot in the Royal Air Force. Stevens (born Georg Franz Hein in Hanover) was a refugee living in London at the outbreak of hostilities, and stole the identity of a former London schoolmate in order to enlist. As the pilot of a Handley Page Hampden, he flew 22 combat operations before his plane was hit by flak over Berlin, and he force-landed (out of fuel) near Amsterdam on 8 Sept '41. As a POW, he made nine escape attempts, and was one of only 69 members of the RAF to be awarded the Military Cross in World War 2. Stevens was Head of Contacts (scrounging) for the "X" Organisation in East Compound of Stalag Luft 3 from 22 Apr 1943 until it was evacuated in late Jan 1945.
• Nicholas Alkemade, an English tail gunner in the Royal Air Force who survived a freefall of 18,000 feet (5,490 m) without a parachute.

Some held at Stalag Luft III went on to notable careers in the entertainment and sports industry:

• British actor Peter Butterworth and English writer Talbot Rothwell were both inmates; they became friends and later worked together on the Carry On films. Butterworth was one of the vaulters covering for the escapees during the escape portrayed by the book and film The Wooden Horse.^[78] After the war and as an established actor, Butterworth auditioned but "didn't look convincingly heroic or athletic enough" according to the makers of the film.^[79]
• British actor Rupert Davies had many roles in productions at the theatre in the camp; his most famous roles on film and TV may have been Inspector Maigret in the BBC series Maigret that aired over 52 episodes from 1960 to 1963 and George Smiley in the movie The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
• English writer and broadcaster Hugh Falkus was an inmate at Stalag Luft III from around 1943, after his Spitfire was shot down over France. Falkus reportedly worked on 13 escape tunnels during his time as a POW, although never officially listed as an escapee.^[80]
• American novelist and screenwriter Len Giovannitti was held in Stalag Luft III's Center Compound. A navigator with the 742nd Bomb Squadron, 455th Bomb Group of the Fifteenth Air Force, he was on his 50th mission when his Consolidated B-24 Liberator was shot down over Austria on 26 June 1944. A POW for nearly a year, he incorporated his experiences, including the winter march to Germany and liberation in Bavaria, in a novel he wrote between April 1953 and May 1957, The Prisoners of Combine D, published by Henry Holt and Company (ASIN: B0007E6KMG).
• Caribbean/British barrister and entertainer Cy Grant, born in British Guiana, served as a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF and spent two years as a prisoner of war, including time at Stalag Luft III. After the war he qualified as a barrister but went on to be a singer, actor and author. His was the first black face to be regularly seen on British television, singing the news as "topical calypsos" (punning on "tropical") on the BBC Tonight programme.^[81][82]
• Wally Kinnan, one of the first well known US television broadcast meteorologists, was also in the camp.
• Major League Baseball pitcher Phil Marchildon spent nine months in the camp. He resumed his baseball career after the war, winning 19 games for the 1947 Philadelphia Athletics.
• American children's television personality Ray Rayner was a prisoner in the camp.

Stalag Luft III inmates also became involved in politics:

• Justin O'Byrne, who spent more than three years as a POW, represented Tasmania in the Australian Senate for 34 years and served as President of the Senate.^[83]
• Professor Basil Chubb, author and political science lecturer, spent 15 months there after being shot down over Germany.^[84]
• Frederick Irving, later a US diplomat and civil servant.
• Charles W. Sandman Jr., a navigator in the USAAF, spent over seven months in Stalag Luft III. Sandman entered the camp weighing approximately 86 kg (190 lb) and left weighing 57 kg (125 lb). In his diary, Sandman describes the harsh winters and struggles to secure rations sent by the American Red Cross. After the war, he was elected to the US House of Representatives from New Jersey and was criticised for supporting President Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
• Peter Thomas, later created Lord Thomas of Gwydir after a political career as a Welsh Conservative politician and UK cabinet minister under Edward Heath, spent four years as a prisoner of war including being imprisoned at Stalag Luft III.
• Anthony Barber, later Baron Barber, went on to become a British Conservative politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1970 to 1974.

In popular culture

The POW camp was actually officially referred to as Stalag Luft 3 by the Germans in their documentation and on the ID tags issued to inmates, and Paul Brickhill, in his early writings about the escape, also wrote it that way. For his book The Great Escape, his English editors changed it to Stalag Luft III, and such has been its influence on popular culture that Stalag Luft III it has remained.^[85]

Eric Williams was a navigator on a downed bomber who was held at Stalag Luft III. After the war, on the long sea voyage home, Williams wrote Goon in the Block, a short book based on his experience. Four years later, in 1949, he rewrote it as a longer third-person narrative under the title The Wooden Horse,^[86] which was filmed as The Wooden Horse in 1950. He included many details omitted in his first book, but changed his name to "Peter Howard", Michael Codner to "John Clinton" and Oliver Philpot to "Philip Rowe". Williams also wrote a prequel, The Tunnel, an extended study of the mentalities of life as a prisoner of war. Although not an escape novel, it shows the profound urge to escape, and explores the ways that camp life affected men's emotions.

Paul Brickhill was an Australian-born Spitfire pilot, shot down in 1943 over Tunisia to become a prisoner of war. While imprisoned at Stalag Luft III, he was involved in the escape attempt. He did not take part in tunnelling but was in charge of "stooges", the relay teams who would alert prisoners that German search teams had entered the camp. He was originally scheduled to be an early escapee but when it was discovered he suffered from claustrophobia, he was dropped down to the bottom of the list. He later said that this probably saved his life. After the war, Brickhill co-wrote Escape to Danger (with Conrad Norton, and original artwork: London: Faber and Faber, 1946). Later Brickhill wrote a larger study and the first major account of the escape in The Great Escape (1950), bringing the incident to a wide public attention. This book became the basis of the film (1963). The film was based on the real events but with numerous compromises for its commercial appeal, such as including Americans among the escapees (none of whom were actually American). While some characters were fictitious, many were amalgams of and some based on real people. There were no actual escapes by motorcycle or aircraft (the sequence involving an escape in a German trainer may have been inspired by Bob Hoover's escape from Stalag Luft I in a FW 190^[87]), nor were the recaptured prisoners executed in one place at the same time. The film has resulted in the story and the memory of the fifty executed airmen remaining widely known, if in a distorted form.^[88]

The search for those responsible for the murder of the Allied officers, and the subsequent trials, was depicted in a 1988 television film named The Great Escape II: The Untold Story.^[89] The murder of the prisoners in this film is more accurate than in the 1963 original, with the POWs being shot individually or in pairs but other portions of the film are fictional.

The camp was the basis for a single-player mission and multi-player map in the first Call of Duty video game. Most of the buildings and guard towers were identical to the camp and the single-player mission involved rescuing a British officer from a prison cell that closely resembled the camp's solitary confinement building. Stalag Luft is also a playable POW camp in the computer and Xbox game The Escapists, but with a slightly different name of "Stalag Flucht".

The Great Escape is a video game which shares a title and similar plot to the movie. for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer published by Ocean Software in 1986,^[90] and later ported for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and DOS computers. The game surroundings were similar to the actual camp but the supposed location was in Northern Germany, and one side of the camp overlooked the North Sea. The Spectrum version of The Great Escape was placed at number 23 in the Your Sinclair official top 100,^[91]

The Great Escape also was a game for Xbox and PlayStation 2 released in 2003. The plot-line follows that of the 1963 film, except there are also levels featuring some of the character's first captures and early escape attempts, as well as a changed ending.

A DVD of a 1983 reunion held in Chicago includes a reenactment of an interrogation between Hanns Scharff, master Luftwaffe interrogator known for his subtle approach, and American flying ace Francis Gabreski. This segment is hosted by Ray Tolliver, author of The Interrogator. Also included are short interviews with some of the former POWs.

See also

• Christopher Hutton
• Cowra breakout—at least 545 Japanese POWs escaped
• Hogan's Heroes, WW II-setting television sitcom (partly set near Hammelburg)
• Island Farm and "The German Great Escape"
• MI9
• MIS-X
• Stalag 17, 1953 film
• Stalag Luft I
• Stalag VIII-B, a notorious camp
• Oflag

Notes

References

• Ash, William (2005). Under the Wire. Bantam. ISBN 0-593-05408-3.
• Barris, Ted (2013). The Great Escape: A Canadian Story. Thomas Allen. ISBN 978-1-77102-272-9.
• Brickhill, Paul (1950). The Great Escape. New York: Norton. ISBN 9780393325799.
• Burgess, Alan (1990). The Longest Tunnel. New York: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1591140978.
• Carroll, Tim (2004). The Great Escapers. Mainstream Publishers. ISBN 1-84018-904-5.
• Clark, Albert Patton (2005). 33 Months as a POW in Stalag Luft III: A World War II Airman Tells His Story. Golden, CO: Fulcrum. ISBN 978-1-55591-536-0.
• Dando-Collins, Stephen (2016). The Hero Maker, A Biography of Paul Brickhill. Sydney: Penguin Random House. ISBN 978-0-85798-812-6.
• Durand, Arthur A (1989). Stalag Luft III. Patrick Stephens Ltd. ISBN 1-85260-248-1.
• Foot, MRD; Langley, James (1979). MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945. London: The Bodley Head. ISBN 978-0-316-28840-8.
• James, BA "Jimmy" (1983). Moonless Night. London: William Kimber. Available in a later ed. OCLC 19469692
• Kozak-Holland, Mark. Project Lessons from the Great Escape (Stalag Luft III). Archived from the original on 1 January 2008. The prisoners formally structured their work as a project. This book analyses their efforts using modern project management methods.
• Millar, George (1947). Horned Pigeon. London: Heinemann. Available in a later ed. OCLC 51108963
• Nichol, John; Rennell, Tony (2002). The Last Escape. London: Penguin. Archived from the original on 20 February 2014.
• Rees, Ken; Arrandale, Karen (2004). Lie in the Dark and Listen: The Remarkable Exploits of a WWII Bomber Pilot and Great Escaper. Grub Street. ISBN 978-1-904010-77-7.
• Walters, Guy (2013). The Real Great Escape. London: Bantam Press. ISBN 978-0-593-07190-8.
• Younger, Calton (1956). No Flight from the Cage. Frederick Muller. ISBN 0-352-30828-1.

Further reading

• Doyle, Peter; Pringle, Jamie; Babits, Lawrence E. (2013). "Stalag Luft III: The Archaeology of an Escaper's Camp". Prisoners of War: Archaeology, Memory, and Heritage of 19th- and 20th-Century Mass Internment. Springer. pp. 129–144. ISBN 978-1-4614-4166-3.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stalag Luft III.

• Żagań Museum web site
• StalagLuft3.com - Major resource for information on Stalag Luft III, The Great Escape and The Long March
• "The Great Escape From Stalag Luft 3". 392nd Bomber Group Association.
• Wooden horse escape kit Archived 12 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine presented to Imperial War Museum
• Interactive Map of the Tunnel "Harry" from website accompanying Nova documentary "Great Escape" first airing on PBS, 5 June 2007
• B24.net
• StalagLuftIII.net
• The Story of Cy Eaton
• Oral history interview with Richard Andrews, a private in the US Army that was held at Stalag Luft III from the Veterans History Project at Central Connecticut State University
• First hand account of Stalag Luft III by Wing Commander Ken Rees
• Great Escape (PBS Nova)
• "Shot After Escape"; the names of those executed as reported in a May 1944 issue of Flight
• New publication with private photos of the shooting of the film "The Great Escape" & documents of 2nd unit cameraman Walter Riml
• Article about the escape in Popular Science October 1945 (page 82)
• Stalag Luft 3 at the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive.