Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle

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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! Of the 35,000 Allied troops who made their way to safety from captivity or after being shot down about half were carrying one of Hutton's maps." One-third of the entire British population watched that TV series and it told a story that was dated in the way we saw the war: a story of brave British men with moustaches digging their way out of this enormous Gothic schloss and, in a way, winning the war by different means.

There were certainly plenty who felt like that, and escaping was very much a minority activity in most camps. But Colditz was for the bad boys – Dutch, Polish French and Belgian as well as British – whose conduct had designated them Deutschefeindlich or “German-unfriendly”. The main manifestation of this attitude was an unquenchable determination to break free. Pat Reid was one of the few prisoners to make a successful escape to freedom from Colditz, in 1942; when he was honoured on This Is Your Life decades later, Eggers was the surprise guest. ‘Myth of Colditz’ At Colditz, there were various nationalities, primarily British, French, Dutch and Polish, and they didn’t always work well together. There were also problems with class conflict, racial prejudice, and anti-Semitism among some of the prisoners. Sadly, there were prisoners who shared many of the same fascist and racist attitudes as the Nazis. Some prisoners were communist sympathizers, which foreshadowed the Cold War conflict. These differences caused problems in themselves, but also served to further divide the prisoners when some suspected that there were moles among them tipping off the Germans to escape plans. He transforms these stories into gripping thrillers by remembering a lesson he learnt from one of the best spy novelists of the 20th century. When you know you have found the motherlode there is nothing quite like it. It's absolute catnip. I love it.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.”

Bader was the most famous prisoner in Colditz. He was the most famous fighting soldier on either side during the war. He was an extraordinary man, remarkably brave; he could inspire courage in others.

I will be doing a bit of very gentle digging around for one or two aspects [while in New Zealand]. I better not say any more than that because I daren't.

There 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.

The definitive and surprising true story of one of history’s most notorious prisons—and the remarkable cast of POWs who tried relentlessly to escape their captors, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor Joan, his widow, had never heard them before. We were both in floods by the end because it is an astonishing first-person account. He was still furious but there was forgiveness,” said Macintyre. 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. One can only wonder what Oleg Gordievsky would make of the reaction to Mikhail Gorbachev’s passing in August 2022. The Soviet leader was venerated as a liberator in the West but held in contempt by many Russians for destroying the Soviet empire. Almost four decades later, realpolitik has turned full circle, with Vladimir Putin trying to resurrect the empire through his brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Oleg Gordievsky, the ex-KGB spy who defected to the UK in the mid-1980s and has been living in hiding since. Credit: Alamy Next week, Macintyre is coming to New Zealand for the first time, speaking in Christchurch on Wednesday and Wellington on Thursday. He will also be conducting some light research in the country for an intriguing potential new book about a Cold War story that spans the globe and involves New Zealand. In a forbidding Gothic castle on a hilltop in the heart of Nazi Germany, a band of British officers spent the Second World War plotting daring escapes from their German captors but that story contains only part of the truth. Ben reveals for the first time a tale of the indomitable human spirit and one of class conflict, homosexuality, espionage, insanity and farce. The idea, a brilliant idea if it works, is to try to tell this story in a series of episodes, taking a different vantage point for each episode,” he explained. The inventiveness that came out of this was remarkable, and one escape attempt followed another. But few were successful in making ‘home runs’. One of only a handful who did was Airey Neave, later a leading Tory politician and supporter of Margaret Thatcher. Divided inmatesMacintyre said that many ex-prisoners had a level of admiration for Eggers, judging that he had retained his humanity during the war.