Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle

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Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle

Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle

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Macintyre shows how the mood in the castle prison changed as the war progressed. In 1942, there was hope that victory might be around the corner. By 1943, this had turned to despair that it might instead go on for years to come. Having read many WWII books and memoirs, Prisoners of the Castle is a new and unique addition to my WWII library that helps to broaden my perspective and understanding of the war and lives of those touched by it. 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. There was a theatre in Colditz in which the prisoners staged plays, pantomimes, and choral and orchestral concerts (with the Germans providing the instruments for the latter.) There were also ballets and dances performed by men only: homosexuality was not talked about, but practised, to the dismay of the methodist Padre Ellison Platt, one of the prisoners.

The officers had a British “boarding school mentality.” They tried to recreate the traditions of Eton and other private schools coopting behaviors such as bullying, enslaving individuals on the lower rung of society, “goon-baiting” Germans, and diverse types of entertainment. Those who did not attend a boarding school were rarely included. 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. The day of freedom is not set by judge or jury, but by events in a distant theater of conflict." Food was used as a bartering chip, and they used some of the rations to make drinks. Alcohol production was made using the strangest of ingredients. One of them was a batch flavored with aftershave. It was said to have eaten a hole in the bottom of the plastic container it sat in overnight. Most officers could stomach this variety, but they succumbed to cataclysmic headaches, blurred vision, discolored teeth, and so on. It was not discouraged because it kept morale up, and any prisoner who was inebriated was easier to manage. Deeply researched and full of incredible stories, this is a tale of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances - and will change how you think about Colditz forever.

I don't know if non-fiction thriller is a legitimate genre but if it is, Ben MacIntyre would be the Stephen King of it. In this book MacIntyre takes on the iconic nazi-castle of Colditz, where high ranking Allied prisoners or prisoners that tried repeatedly to escape, were guarded by the Wehrmacht, which mostly abided by the rules of the Geneva Conventions. In one instance, after succesfully escaping to France, the Germans dutifully sent his suitcase after him. Contrary to popular belief, British officers had no specific duty to escape. Of the few who tried, most gave up after their first failed attempt. The tiny number who persisted were driven on by a variety of motives.

With Prisoners of the Castle we learn about the wily World War II prisoners of Colditz, and their ceaseless breakout attempts - told with the adulation and humor only warranted by a vivaciousness such as theirs. Astonishing triumphs of industry and inventiveness are clarified. For example, we learn some of methods this group of clever men utilized to spy on the Allies from prison. In Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle , bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes us inside the walls of the most infamous prison in history to meet the real men behind the legends. Heroes and bullies, lovers and spies, captors and prisoners living cheek-by-jowl for years in a thrilling game of cat and mouse - and all determined to escape by any means necessary. One of Macintyre’s myth-busting achievements is to blow the idea of the Colditz crew as a band of brothers, whose shared misfortune had erased pre-war divisions. The French officer contingent decided to ostracise their Jewish comrades who were forced to take their meals separately. Most of the British prisoners were public school chaps, but this did not mean a community of equals.At the top were the Prominente, prisoners whom the Germans thought were supremely important, such as Churchill’s nephew Giles Romilly, members of the aristocracy, and cousins of the royal family. They were kept under special guard and ate and socialised separately from everyone else. But why were the Germans keeping such men? For some sort of barter after the war? To parade in Berlin on final victory? It was a mystery that remained right until the end. But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre's telling, Colditz's most famous names--like the indomitable Pat Reid--share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America's oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs. War stories are usually about what happened. The story of Colditz, by contrast, is largely a tale of inactivity, a long procession of duplicate days when little of note occurred, punctuated by moments of intense excitement. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. Macintyre’s attention to detail is a strength of the book. He delves into strategies developed and objects needed, i.e.; the “arse keeper,” a cylinder to hide money, small tools and other objects in one’s anatomy was most creative. The prisoners were geniuses in developing tactics to confuse their captors, and instruments that were used to make their escape attempts possible, including a glider that was completely built, but never used.. The author also includes how prisoners tried to keep themselves sane by developing their own entertainment. They set up theater performances, choirs, concerts, bands, jazz ensembles, plays etc. Sanity was a major issue and for those who remained at Colditz for years PTSD was definitely an issue.

Obviously, this is a war story so most of this is pretty bleak. However, there are plenty of moments of humor, touching humanism, and joy. I got legitimately choked up when the men starting building the glider, despite the extreme unlikeliness that it would work. "...It had more to do with mythical escapism and imagination than with a real escape. It was a dream for the prisoner collective: to fly away to freedom." After years of mostly failed escape attempts, increasing loss of hope as rations and other supplies dwindled, and deep fears that the prisoners might all be murdered if Germany was losing and the Allied powers reached the castle....imagine these defeated men pooling their ingenuity to build something so magnificent, such a beautiful dream of freedom. Ugh, it got to me. Since mail was allowed, there was a marriage that took place using photos and vows sent over the wire. MacIntyre’s big reveal in this book is that Colditz was far from the egalitarian place of popular renown where distinctions of nationality, class and creed that bedevilled the outside world were forgotten. This is a comprehensive book about its subject. I can’t imagine any more details could be included. I have to give it 5 stars since it’s such a perfect book about Colditz. A half star off because even though it sometimes read like a thriller and was mostly interesting, at times it read slowly and was close to boring with all the minutiae. 4-1/2 stars The account is given (almost) chronologically and I think doing that was a good choice. In Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes us inside the walls of the most infamous prison in history to meet the real men behind the legends. Heroes and bullies, lovers and spies, captors and prisoners living cheek-by-jowl for years in a thrilling game of cat and mouse - and all determined to escape by any means necessary.Not only the English, but also 140 Polish officers, a few Canadians, Belgians, Frenchmen and Yugoslavs benefitted from the Colditz regime. There were often tensions between the nationalities. Among the French prisoners, there was antagonism between Gaullists and Pétainists, and between some 80 Jewish officers and their antisemitic compatriots who readily persuaded the Germans to move the Jews to a cramped attic. Colditz Castle was used as a Nazi prison for Allied POWs, but not just your run-of-the-mill soldiers. These were high ranking officers and troublesome escapees who were a thorn in the Reich’s side. “…if you put all the naughtiest boys in one class, they pool their resistance, egg one another on, and soon your classroom is on fire.” There were larger-than-life characters, daring escape attempts, plenty of contraband, and no shortage of misery. 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.

In 1944, the generally benign attitude of the Germans came to an end. Hitler had decreed that all prisoners who had been caught while trying to escape should be handed over to the Gestapo and shot. The book focuses partially on the history of the castle during WWII (including some information about the village outside it), the systems the Germans used to spy on the prisoners and the prisoners used to spy on the Germans, the methods by which items & information were smuggled into Colditz and information was smuggled out, and of course the numerous escape attempts. With plenty of humor but also grave sadness, Prisoners of the Castle is not only factual but emotional. Among the prisoners in Colditz were the Prominenten who were related sometimes only distantly, to distinguished individuals in their countries, and who were now held as bargaining chips (for ransom, exchange or to extract concessions from their countries). They were kept under especially tight surveillance. They included Giles Romilly, a communist journalist and a nephew of Winston Churchill., and Michael Alexander who falsely claimed to be the nephew of General Alexander, the commander of the Allied forces in the Middle East.The Red Cross was initially able to send parcels to Colditz, and these included a wide variety of books (their contents carefully vetted, of course). For an annual subscription of three guineas, individual prisoners received a selection of ten books a month. There were many literary discussions and lectures. 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.



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