The True Story of the Great Escape: Stalag Luft III, March 1944

On the night of March 24th–25th, 1944, Allied soldiers escaped through tunnels from Stalag Luft III, a Nazi POW camp in eastern Germany, in what became the largest prison break of its kind during the Second World War. Seventy-nine men made it outside the wire, but only three successfully escaped Nazi Germany. Fifty were executed by the Gestapo. Jonathan F. Vance recounts the true history behind the 1963 film The Great Escape. The book follows the prisoners from their arrival at Stalag Luft III through the formation of bonds among them, the construction of tunnels, the escape itself, and the subsequent captures. Vance presents the escape as a battle of wits between prisoners and their German wardens, detailing both the carefully planned operation and the personalities of those who carried it out. Most of the Allied PO Ws held at Stalag Luft III were flyers, men with technical and tactical skills who possessed the independence and desire for freedom that made escape attempts nearly inevitable.