A story enthralled me so much when I was a child, it stays with me to this day. It was an adventure, a tragedy, a drama, a history lesson, and an inspirational tale. And it is all true.On March 24, 1944, The Great Escape happened in the midst of World War II. The Nazis had captured various British and Commonwealth Airmen over the course of the war, and they had built an "escape proof" Prisoner of War camp to house the most troublesome of the lot. Stalag Luft III was thought to be the answer to these constant, pesky, breaks for freedom. But it did not work out that way. The prisoners banded together and committed the largest break-out ever. And then chaos happened.Paul Brickhill was an Australian prisoner in the camp and participated in the planning. Years after the war, he wrote The Great Escape, chronicling how the deed was performed, and the troubling aftermath. While he is not a renowned wordsmith or have an elegant style, he tells the journey very authentically with much research on even the most minute of details. The sheer volume of topics Brickhill must cover to accurately convey the time and place and thinking is mind-blowing. Brickhill wrote other books about the war (The Dam Busters is another classic) and had a long career as a journalist. He passed away in 1991 at 74 years of age.The book was an instant hit and several years later spawned a massive hollywood film in 1963. While purists take issue the liberties taken with the actual facts, the more realistic parts of the movie still bring chills to historians. The inclusion of Americans in the escape is still a sore point, and Steve McQueen's character is a major irritant. Don't ask devotees about the infamous motorcycle chase, it was painful and awful. But I still have it on dvd and the extras are fabulous.What Brickhill captures so well, and the movie tries somewhat to, is the real story. Stalag Luft III was the place to put these malcontents. And the lead one was Roger Bushell, the genius mastermind behind every aspect of the plan, Big X in the organization. Bushell engineered the social network of the camp towards the one everlasting goal, the mass escape of hundreds of POWs. Teams were assembled, lookouts assigned, systems devised, and scams developed in order to obtain freedom. Passports and identity papers were forged by artists. Makeshift tools were manufactured to dig the tunnels, with the airpump alone being undeniable genius. The trick of getting rid of the tons of excess sands from the tunnels alone necessitated the invention of the famous "trouser bags". Bushell complicated things even more by having three tunnels under construction simultaneously. This was astonishingly difficult to pull off, since escapes were always one tunnel with four men getting out. The tunnels, codenamed Tom, Dick and Harry, were excavated during the year it took to plan The Great Escape. Unfortunately, Tom was discovered by the guards, which cast a gloom over the men for awhile.Finally The Great Escape happened. Everything was ready and the chance of another setback was ever present. The last machination to cause problems was a miscalculation of the tree line. Harry fell short by quite a distance. The plan went ahead but they were discovered partway through.At this point, Hitler becomes directly involved. He was angry beyond words at the POWs actions and decided to retaliate. He ordered all the escapees to be executed. Some aides calmed him down and the order was changed. A massive manhunt through Fortress Europe was enacted. Bushell never planned to get even a handful of Airmen home, it was mostly a contribution to the war effort by tying up valuable resources searching for them. Bushell did not know that D-Day was only months away, heralding the end of the war. Maybe his effort helped to distract them. I certainly think so. But the order was still present. And the men were gradually being caught.Only about eighty men got out of the tunnel that night.Three managed to reclaim their freedom.Fifty were executed.Selected specifically, the men were driven into the countryside and shot. Bushell was among them. The next of kin were told they tried escaping again. No one believed them. The other POWs who were recaptured were sent to other camps, never knowing the fate of the fifty till after the war.One of the more notorious POWs was known as the Artful Dodger, having multiple escapes under his belt. He was placed in charge of the manhunt for the assassins, and over time, found them all. Many officers involved were found guilty and executed at the Nuremberg Trials. The darkness at the finale of the book showing us these events are only matched for me by The Diary of Anne Frank. Very unsettling. This was depicted very well in The Great Escape Part 2, a 1988 TV miniseries starring Christopher Reeve.This story has always brought out an interesting moral dilemma inside me. I have always been against capital punishment. I am immensely happy Canada outlawed it decades ago. The concept that the government would kill a citizen, even one who had committed a heinous crime, struck me as a massive overreach of their powers. What if they were wrong? All parts of it disturbed me.But the fifty are executed. Millions more died in World War II. Anne Frank was killed. This part of me against capital punishment would fall to the wayside, wanting justice for all these deaths, all this tragedy. No reason, no logic, nothing could have been given for this barbaric behavior. I read The Great Escape for the first time when I was ten and it was my initial exposure to the Holocaust. It may have only been fifty murdered, compared to the millions over the course of the war, but it was people I "knew." Someone had to pay. To this day, The Great Escape still reminds me of this moral conundrum. Many stories are meant to disturb, and the ending to this one does still. My feelings about this upheaval were crystallized even more by the thought-provoking 1961 movie Judgement at Nuremberg, starring Spencer Tracy. You will learn alot about yourself by watching this classic. History that will make you think.The adventure and the galvanizing journey these men endure is inspiring. Their remedies to numerous obstacles will uplift you. The historical minutia will fascinate you. And the deaths of the fifty will resonate with you.To The FiftyScooprichesP.S. The Great Escape was written by Paul Brickhill and is 265 pages in Hardcover. It was published in 1951 by Faber and Faber Limited. All images copyright Faber and Faber Limited 2011.P.P.S. The Great Escape movie was released in 1963 and starred Steve McQueen and James Garner.To Read More Reviews, Check out my blog:https://scoopsmentalpropaganda.wordpress...Thank You.
The Great Escape is an interesting artifact of the World War II era.You’re probably at least glancingly familiar with this real life account, originally published in the early ‘50s. Author Paul Brickhill, an Australian airman, spent a few years in a German prisoner of war camp, where he abetted one of the most famous prisoner escapes of the war.The Great Escape picks up its story in 1943, when a large number of international POWs (including many Brits and Americans) were ensconced in a new German POW camp near the Polish border. One of the interesting facts that The Great Escape establishes early on was that escaping a German POW camp wasn’t especially uncommon. Many POWs managed, some multiple times, via a wide array of methods (tunneling, sneaking out in a truck, cutting through a wire).The problem wasn’t necessarily escaping a prison. It was getting across a friendly border or stowing away on a ship headed out of Axis territory. Lots of prisoners got out of the camps. Many of them were recaptured and sent back.The Great Escape details a sprawling project to effect a mass breakout from a prison camp in Sagan, Germany, in the latter years of the war. Quarterbacked by Roger Bushell, a charismatic barrister with several previous escapes to his credit, “Project X” involved the construction of three separate tunnels, a meticulous operation to produce counterfeit documents, a mapmaking effort, a garment sweatshop and numerous other activities designed to not only escape the camp, but to improve the escapees’ chances of actually getting out of Nazi-controlled territory.The engineering feat involved in constructing these tunnels was impressive. The project dug down deeply enough to avoid the numerous methods the Germans had devised to detect tunnels closer to the surface. How the prisoners figured out the logistics and then scavenged the materials needed to dig and reinforce a lengthy tunnel demonstrates a lot of inspired genius. The Great Escape details numerous practical elements, like how to conceal a tunnel entrance or the elaborate methods devised to disperse the sandy soil displaced from digging. The methods the prisoners improvised to carry out tasks such as printing, manipulating fabric or crafting compasses are astounding in their creativity.A significant part of The Great Escape is the fraught relationship between the prisoners and the camp guards. A few emerged as nasty, ruthless bastards (nicknamed “ferrets”) who dehumanized the prisoners in various ways. But many of the guards (and the camp’s commandant) showed surprising sympathy for the prisoners. These guards may have been Germans, forced by circumstances into their posts, but they weren’t Nazi supporters and often formed strong attachments to their charges. How the prisoners leveraged those connections to wheedle or barter for supplies, document examples, money, information and other necessaries for the escape effort are fascinating.Brickhill chronicles the ups and downs of Project X. There were numerous setbacks and near misses, where guards nearly discovered various aspects of the operation (which, at its peak, involved hundreds of the camp’s internees). One of the three tunnels was discovered; seeing how the prisoners dealt with that setback and refocused their efforts communicated the determination and level-headedness necessary to pull off such an audacious stunt.Ultimately, only 76 prisoners escaped through the completed tunnel, barely a third of the total number intended. Brickhill’s account of the actual escape is one of the book’s high points, tense and suspenseful. The fates of most of the escapees don’t exactly amount to a happy ending. The final chapter focuses on post-war efforts to get justice for escapees victimized by the Nazis in violation of the Geneva Convention.Brickhill was an able narrator. He had an eye for detail and packed them into his account, sometimes to his detriment. The ingenuity of the prisoners and their inventions is fascinating, but the level of detail can occasionally become distracting. Brickhill had a tendency to wander off into those nitty-gritty technical accounts. The frequent use of slang can be an impediment. And one can only assume that the retention of numerous spelling and grammar errors so many decades after initial publication is a deliberate stylistic choice. But even with those occasional drags, the story Brickhill unfolded was compelling and absorbing, providing a glimpse into a world that most readers thankfully will never experience firsthand.Because of the large cast of characters involved, very few of them get enough time in the spotlight to make a lasting impression. Bushell emerges the most clearly. Brickhill did a nice job of capturing the dynamism and magnetism that were necessary to inspire hundreds of prisoners to pitch in on an effort that ultimately didn’t benefit most of them directly. Brickhill made a convincing case, though, that escapes were the prisoners’ contribution to the fighting. That diverting significant German resources to chasing and recapturing the escapees was as important as any of them actually making their way to freedom. He managed to elicit enough details about the other prisoners to help readers understand the mindset underlying the operation.At its best, The Great Escape provides a firsthand glimpse into a fascinating chapter of WW II that’s captured imaginations for decades. For history fans, it’s definitely worth reading, but the story of this colorful, real life caper can hold the interest of most readers.A version of this review originally appeared on www.thunderalleybcp.com
What do You think about The Great Escape (2000)?
You don't have to be locked up to feel like a prisoner. Two weeks ago, I decided to watch The Great Escape (1963). The reason why I saw it has everything to do with serendipity, but regardless of the uneventful reason for watching it when I did, I was astonished, entertained and blown away. All my life I've heard of how great a piece of cinema it is, and that I had to see it. Though there are many other films that harbor a similar reputation, I must admit-confidently-that this film lives up to the hype. I was so taken back by it that I craved more information. Paul Brickhill's "The Great Escape" is exactly what I was searching for. It is the most detailed account of what really happened to those men in the German prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III. Brickhill's clear writing comes from his journalism background, and although it is a piece of non-fiction, it reads very smoothly from page to page. The descriptions of the characters, the accounts of the many escape attempts, all vividly come to life through Paul's writing. I listened to the audiobook version, and Paul's prose meshed very well with the british accented voice actor. For the past two weeks, I've been listening to the story of these POW's. Their clever antics and audacious escape plans were very entertaining if not awe inspiring for the amount of creativity and work ethic that it took to pull something like this off. Perhaps the biggest reason why I love this story so much (the book and the film) is because of the metaphor of escaping. We all have things we wish to escape from in our lives. Maybe it's a certain unfavorable situation we are in, or it might be a strong addiction that we seek to let go. Whatever it is, escaping our troubles sometimes seems unlikely, and just like the POW's who are trapped in the German prison camp, flashes of dread, fear, and hopelessness kick in. This is especially true with addictions to drugs or alcohol; escape seems absolutely impossible to some. "There is something demoralizing about being taken a prisoner of war. At first it stuns the mind, and one is overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness and hope is only a dim, dim shadow. The new prisoner is tempted to sit back quietly, cooperate with his captors. and thus make life comparatively easy for himself" (Brickhill). The Great Escape is among many stories that harbors the universal metaphor of escape, and it presents it to us in an emotional and sometimes comical way. It fills us with hope, and even bravado, that perhaps we too can escape our own internal imprisonment, and although escape is half the battle it is always better to be attempting the escape than to give up and submit to the horrible indefiniteness of prison life.For serendipitous reasons, I stumbled upon The Great Escape (1963) movie and was enthralled with it. Shortly after, I frantically began reading this book. The film was good. The book was good. They were both good texts to lose myself in for a few hours at a time. But I feel like they were more than just a nice way to pass the time. The story of The Great Escape has something essential in it for everyone. It has an idea that is stubborn and powerful enough to inspire anyone who doubt's their own aspirations to escape their inner imprisonments and to get up and try anyway. For the brave 50 men who escaped, the word impossible loomed over them perpetually like a persistent vulcher. However, as impossible as it might have seemd to escape a Nazi prison camp, only to find a faint chance of escaping the entire German country while simultaneously dodging the German Secret Police (Gestapo) during the height of World War II, they still managed to get a good laugh out of it, shrug off their insecurities, and get to work. Perhaps they were crazy. Just a bunch of madmen with shovels and dreams. All I know is that I agree with the following passage from Brickhil's introduction to the book, and it puts into words that which I have tried hard to express in this review, but have fallen short in my attempt. "There is nothing that can stop a group of men, regardless of race, creed, color or nationality, from achieving a goal once they agree as to what that goal is. The aftermath may be sheer, stark tragedy-that lies with the gods-but the point is, men coming together can accomplish anything. This book, and the episode about which this book is written, proves it."Watch the film. Read the book (it doesn't matter what order you do this in btw). You won't be disappointed.-JAR
—Jorge Rodriguez
First saw the film based off of the book when I was about seven years old and it devastated me because at the time, I knew that the actors portraying the characters did not actually die, but I also knew that the events were based off of a real escape from Stalag Luft III. It took me nearly fifteen years to find out that one of my favorite films was based off of an actual book, so my friend bought it for me for my birthday and I finished it inside of two days.It's a quick read, but there's a LOT of detail. I realized how much Hollywood had changed the film for audience purposes. The living conditions were much bleaker for the POW's than the film shows, the traveling conditions much harsher, and the situation much more serious. I tried to match the film's character adaptation to the book and real-life counterparts, but I was only able to place a few like Roger Bushell to Roger Bartlett played by Richard Attenborough and Group Captain Massey to Group Captain Ramsey played by James Donald. Brickhill mentions so many people involved in the escape process that it's hard to keep track of some of them, so I went and watched a few documentaries to help.It's still a fantastic book and I know I'll reread it in the future multiple times.
—Alyssa
A gripping account of the escape from a German prison camp during WWII, from someone who was there. This book formed the basis of the Steve McQueen movie that bears its name. I felt absolutely torn about this book, and the whole story: I was simultaneously impressed by the daring and brilliance of the men in the camp, and horrified by the sheer waste of human life the escape eventually caused. (Spoiler alert: of the 76 men who got out, 73 were captured; 50 of those men were executed in cold blood.) Some of these men must have been absolute geniuses: could you make working compasses out of vinyl records, glass from a broken window, and sewing needles (without Googling?) Or forge a picture-perfect typewritten document using only a pen and ink? Me neither.Highly recommended, especially if you also read Simon Read's "Human Game," which takes up the story of the hunt for the Gestapo men who executed the escapees.
—Mary Ann
