Great Escapes
In World War II, the basic rights of prisoners to humane treatment, the
limits imposed on interrogations and the duties on which prisoners could
or could not be employed were defined by the Geneva
Convention of 1929. It was agreed by most countries in the world,
but had not been signed by Japan or the Soviet Union.
On the Eastern Front, the terms of the Convention were not observed by the Germans or the Russians, and the same was true of the Japanese in the Far East. However, the Western Allies observed the terms of the Geneva Convention with regard to Axis prisoners, and the Germans and Italians – with some notable exceptions, as we shall see – treated their prisoners correctly.
Early in the war, in December 1939, the British established MI9, a branch of the intelligence service attached to the War Office and run by Norman Crockatt. He later summarised its objectives:
• to facilitate escapes of British prisoners of war, thereby getting back service personnel and containing additional enemy manpower on guard duties
• to facilitate the return to the UK of those who succeeded in evading capture in enemy-occupied territory
• to collect and distribute information
• to assist in the denial of information to the enemy
• to maintain the morale of British prisoners of war in enemy prison camps.
Among MI9's most famous escape-and-evasion aids were the escape maps of Europe printed on silk and carried by aircrew. When the Americans came into the war, they established a parallel organisation – MIS-X.
During World War II, there were hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war – 13,115 from the RAF alone – and quite a few of them escaped. Here are some of their stories.
The one that got away
Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, a Luftwaffe pilot, was shot down over England
in 1940 during the Battle of Britain. After a failed attempt to escape
from the POW camp at Grizedale Hall in Lancashire, he joined a tunnel
break-out from the camp at Swanwick, Derbyshire. His plan was to present
himself at a nearby RAF station at Hucknall in Nottinghamshire and, posing
as Dutch pilot officer Captain Van Lott, steal an aircraft and fly to
Germany. Von Werra successfully bluffed his way into the cockpit of a
parked Hurricane fighter and was on the point of starting the engine when
a pistol was placed to his head by the station's administrative officer,
Squadron Leader Boniface.
Packed off to Canada, von Werra jumped off the train transporting him from port to a new camp. He walked south for a night and a day, a remarkable feat in sub-zero winter weather, crossed the frozen St Lawrence River and gained the safety of the still neutral United States. He returned to a hero's welcome in Germany.
Undoubtedly brave but also something of a braggart, von Werra died in October 1941 when the aircraft he was flying plunged into the North Sea. He was the subject of a book and a film with the same title: The One that Got Away – see Find out more.
Two privates
In March 1942, two British privates of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Macfarlane and Goldie, escaped from Stalag IXC at Bad Sulza in Thuringia. They jemmied their way out of their barrack hut wearing their blue work detail overalls over their battledress. These were boldly marked 'KG' (Kriegsgefangener, prisoner of war) on the back in red.
Throughout their escape bid, both men wore 40lb rucksacks that concealed the markings and which they never took off in public. One of them later recalled, 'We attracted a certain amount of attention on the road because of our large packs but we made a point of keeping ourselves clean and shaven and also cleaned our boots regularly. No one stopped us on the way.'
After enduring a week in a salt wagon bound for Belgium, the two men made contact with an escape line there and, by mid-summer, they were safely back in Scotland.
Bagerov to Blighty
For sheer eccentric British brilliance, the prize must go to Lieutenant D P James of the Royal Navy, who had been captured off the Dutch coast in February 1943 when his gun boat was sunk. Noting the bewildering number of uniforms to be seen in wartime Germany, James decided to escape in full naval uniform, carrying a Bulgarian naval identity card in the name of 'I Bagerov' – 'a trade name that will be remembered long after my own is forgotten'.
James slipped away from a bathing parade at Marlag-Milag Nord in December 1943, his place being taken by a dummy. In a lavatory, he changed into his smartest kit, which his family had sent him, and got as far the dock gates at the Baltic port of Lubeck before being recaptured.
After a spell in solitary, James performed the same trick – this time disguised as a Swedish sailor – and made his way to Danzig, where he was smuggled aboard a Swedish ship that took him to Stockholm, but not without an agonising stop at Lubeck. James could never have made the escape attempt without detailed information on the dockyard layouts supplied by MI9.
James told the story of his escape in his wartime memoir A Prisoner's Progress, and there is a diverting British movie on the theme of his escape, Albert RN – see Find out more.
The charlady from the SAS
Lance-Corporal H G Challenor of 2 SAS parachuted into central Italy in September 1943, later fighting with the partisans in the Apennines. Captured in February 1944, he escaped from prison 50 miles north of Rome disguised as a charwoman and headed for the battle zone. Recaptured on 5 April, his boots were removed pending a more secure hold on him. Undaunted, Challenor took off in his stockinged feet and, within 48 hours, had regained the British lines.
The Red Fox
Dubbed 'The Red Fox' by his captors at Colditz Castle (Oflag IVC), Lieutenant Michael Sinclair was a veteran escaper who, on 3 September 1943, disguised himself as the camp's magnificent sergeant-major, complete with beady eye, bristling moustache, immaculate uniform, tricks of speech (Sinclair spoke fluent German) and characteristic gait.
Escorted by two fellow-inmates also disguised as German soldiers, Sinclair marched up to Colditz's main gate as if relieving the guard. However, he could not know that, when crossing the small bridge out of sight of the POW quarters, the real sergeant-major always glanced to his right and left and into the ditch it spanned. This omission was noted by the German guard on the main gate, who challenged Sinclair and then shot him through the chest at point-blank range.
Sinclair survived and emerged from the camp hospital even more fanatically determined to escape. On 10 January 1944, with the aid of one of Colditz's 'ghosts' (officers whom the Germans wrongly believed to have left the camp) he used a complicated system of ropes, bar cutters and split-second timing to get clear of the camp in little more than a minute, even after accidentally setting off an alarm bell. Sinclair and his companion, Jack Best, were captured two days later near the Dutch frontier.
On 25 September, finding imprisonment unendurable, Sinclair made a desperate break to scale the wire that surrounded the exercise park below Colditz Castle. Shot and killed by his captors, his end was both heroic and pathetic.
The Sagan break-out
Stalag Luft III – at Sagan (now Zagan) in Poland near the 1939 German/Polish border – housed RAF officers during the war. By the spring of 1944, three big escape tunnels – nicknamed 'Tom', 'Dick' and 'Harry' – had been completed. The tunnelling had been matched by massive tailoring and forging operations to enable a break-out by more than 200 prisoners.
At 10.15pm on 24 March 1944, 'Harry' was opened and the prisoners began to move through the tunnel. Some 83 had gone through when, at about 4.50am, a shot was heard and the rest of the operation was aborted. Four of the escapers were captured near the exit, but the rest got out of Stalag Luft III.
Just three men (two Norwegians and one Dutchman fighting for the British) made it back to the UK – all the rest were recaptured. Of these, 50 were shot without trial by the Gestapo, on orders from Hitler, and their bodies cremated. The Germans claimed that all the POWs had died while trying to escape. Even Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Third Reich's Main Security Office and a diehard Nazi, observed that the Sagan killings were 'a dirty affair'.
'Wings' the tunneller
One of the minority who survived the Sagan break-out was Wing Commander Harry 'Wings' Day, a veteran member of the camp's escape committee. On being arrested, he was placed in Sonderlager A at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, pending a decision by the Germans on what to do with this resourceful and troublesome prisoner. In characteristic fashion, Day simply got on with the business of escaping, beginning to tunnel out with his companions within 24 hours of his arrival.
On 23 September 1944, they were out, with no papers, money or maps. The home of the black marketeer they hoped would help them had been bombed, and they were soon arrested by the police. Day was returned to Sachsenhausen, this time to Zelle Bau, the death block. Following a number of interrogations, he finally convinced his captors that he was neither a spy nor a saboteur. And after the murder of the 50 Sagan POWs, the Gestapo found it more problematic to execute escapers summarily.
Day and his companions were sent back to close confinement in Sonderlager A, chained in separate cells, before being moved to a camp housing important prisoners – the Prominenten – near the Brenner Pass. They were eventually rescued by an American patrol. 'Wings' Day was the only POW to be awarded the DSO during captivity – in all, he broke out of nine prison camps.
Escape from Camp 198
The UK eventually held 402,200 German prisoners of war, at more than
330 camps and hospitals. By the end of the war in May 1945, 404 Axis prisoners
had attempted to escape (and a further 1,777 tried after that). By the
end of November 1947, 81 had not been recaptured.
Camp 198 was located on Island Farm at Merthyr Mawr, near Bridgend in South Wales. In the dead of night on 10 March 1945, 67 German POWs tunnelled out of the camp and escaped over the sand dunes. A huge manhunt was set underway. Anti-tank officer Hans Harzheim, Oswald Prior, a U-boat commander, Steffi Ehlert, a Luftwaffe pilot, and one other POW stole the local doctor's car. When it wouldn't start, they were given a jump-start by three British soldiers who were guards at the camp. Then, pretending to be Norwegians, they picked up a hitchhiker, who showed them the way to Gloucester. Elsewhere, SS officer Karl Ludwig was urinated on by a drunken man who was unaware that the German was hiding in his garden bushes.
In the end, a combination of soldiers, the Home Guard, dogs, local children and Girl Guides tracked them all down. As the prisoners were rounded up one by one, Inspector May, responsible for 'Police Plan X', tracked the progress of the operation by sticking little swastikas into a map.
