Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle

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Macintyre’s Colditz offers an anatomy of prison life that depicts a microcosm of the British class system, subterranean currents of racism, anti-Semitism and homosexuality, and a surprising code of respect exhibited by their German captors. 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.

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. No. I have to tell you that, even if I did. But no, I didn’t.” The hint of a smile appears on his face and he again pauses. “But I was really fascinated by the idea of the double life.” Although this has incredible accounts of those who tried to escape, often successfully, it is also the story of a very unique prisoner of war camp. It held many officers, who could not be forced to work for the Reich, and whom often imposed their own class rules and public school ways onto those inhabitants of the camp. There are theatre shows, tunnels, coded letters, M19, bizarre escape attempts and many wonderfully erratic and eccentric prisoners. Many are well known - such as Airey Neave, Pat Reid and Douglas Bader. I found the incredibly rude and rather unpleasant Bader curiously moving. When he was shot down, the Germans allowed the RAF to deliver a new leg, which seemed an incredible allowance during wartime. Once he had two prosthetics, he immediately hoisted himself out of a window and hobbled off - even the Germans, who he aimed endless venom at, seemed impressed.Colditz, the medieval castle, located in the state of Saxony in Germany, is probably the most famous of the Nazi's POW camps in WWII..........so well known that films have been made about it (although usually fictional). Those Allied prisoners held there were known as "difficult" because they had escaped or attempted to escape from other camps. Colditz was meant to be totally secure and the Nazis were sure that no one would ever break those bonds. Oh, were they wrong! There are two components that dominate Macintyre’s monograph; the replica of the British social class structure that dominated prison life, and the integration of an eclectic and diverse group of prisoners whether British, Dutch, French, Polish, or American. There are other themes that the author introduces that include the Nazi leadership that ran Colditz, the ebbs and flows of the war which prisoners were able to keep up with by building a surreptitious radio, the planning of escapes and what happened to the escapees, the plight of Prominente – a group of influential and famous prisoners whom the Nazis sought to maximize a return, and how Berlin reacted to what was occurring in the prison.

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. Colditz Castle, where Allied prisoners who repeatedly attempted to escape from other German camps during World War II, were sent. Credit: Getty ImagesThere is just SO much here to talk about; so many interesting tidbits and stories and individuals, some slimy, others much more heroic. Eggers started a Colditz Museum with foiled escape souvenirs, complete with photos of reenacted escape attempts. They legitimately caught several prisoners attempting escape (one dressed as the Colditz electrician, another dressed as a woman) and requested they pose for a photo for the museum scrapbook. And these are supplied mid-book, which was fantastic. There is too much I could go on about, so just read the book honestly. 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. Oleg Gordievsky, the ex-KGB spy who defected to the UK in the mid-1980s and has been living in hiding since. Credit: Alamy A few years earlier, while Gordievsky was head of the KGB rezidentura (spy hub) in the Soviet embassy in London, Macintyre recalls, there was the “extraordinary moment when Mikhail Gorbachev, the great new kind of grand hope of the Politburo, arrives in London, and Oleg is briefing both sides. The KGB resident designate is writing a memo for Gorbachev about what he should say to Thatcher but the memo has been dictated by MI6, and you’ve also got him advising MI6 how Gorbachev responds.” 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.