The real history behind the classic war movie and the men who plotted the daring escape from a Nazi POW camp. Between dusk and dawn on the night of March 24th–25th 1944, a small army of Allied soldiers crawled through tunnels in Germany in a covert operation the likes of which the Third Reich had never seen. The prison break from Stalag Luft III in eastern Germany was the largest of its kind in the Second World War. Seventy-nine Allied soldiers and airmen made it outside the wire—but only three made it outside Nazi Germany. Fifty were executed by the Gestapo. In this book Jonathan Vance tells the incredible story that was made famous by the 1963 film The Great Escape. It is a classic tale of prisoners and their wardens in a battle of wits and wills. The brilliantly conceived escape plan is overshadowed only by the colorful, daring (and sometimes very funny) crew who executed it—literally under the noses of German guards. From the men’s first days in Stalag Luft III and the forming of bonds among them, to the tunnel building, amazing escape, and eventual capture, Vance’s history is a vivid, compelling look at one of the greatest “exfiltration” missions of all time. “Shows the variety and depth of the men sent into harm’s way during World War II, something emphasized by the population of Stalag Luft III. Most of the Allied POWs were flyers, with all the technical, tactical and planning skills that profession requires. Such men are independent thinkers, craving open air and wide-open spaces, which meant that an obsession with escape was almost inevitable.” —John D. Gresham

Records the efforts of six hundred British and American officers to escape from a Nazi prison camp.

In March and April of 1944, Gestapo gunmen killed fifty POWs—a brutal act in defiance of international law and the Geneva Convention. This is the true story of the men who hunted them down. The mass breakout of seventy-six Allied airmen from the infamous Stalag Luft III became one of the greatest tales of World War II, immortalized in the film The Great Escape. But where Hollywood’s depiction fades to black, another incredible story begins . . . Not long after the escape, fifty of the recaptured airmen were taken to desolate killing fields throughout Germany and shot on the direct orders of Hitler. When the nature of these killings came to light, Churchill’s government swore to pursue justice at any cost. A revolving team of military police, led by squadron leader Francis P. McKenna, was dispatched to Germany seventeen months after the killings to pick up a trail long gone cold. Amid the chaos of postwar Germany, divided between American, British, French, and Russian occupiers, McKenna and his men brought twenty-one Gestapo killers to justice in a hunt that spanned three years and took them into the darkest realms of Nazi fanaticism. In Human Game, Simon Read tells this harrowing story as never before. Beginning inside Stalag Luft III and the Nazi High Command, through the grueling three-year manhunt, and into the final close of the case more than two decades later, Read delivers a clear-eyed and meticulously researched account of this often-overlooked saga of hard-won justice.

First published in 1990 and based on sources not available for Paul Brickhill's earlier work, the book tells how on the night of March 24, 1944, seventy-six Allied POWs slid through a 350-foot tunnel and out of a high-security German prison camp, into history.

One night in 1944, eighty airmen escaped a German POW compound in Poland. The event became known as "The Great Escape." Ted Barris writes of the planners, task leaders, and key players in the escape attempt, those who got away, those who didn't, and their families at home.

A memoir of the most decorated pilot in Dutch history and one of the World War II POWs who fled Nazi Germany what is known as “The Great Escape.” On the night of 24 March 1944, Bram Vanderstok was the eighteenth of 76 men who crawled out of Stalag Luft III in Zagan, Poland. The 1963 film The Great Escape was largely based on this autobiography but—with Vanderstok's agreement—filmmakers chose to turn his story into an Australian character named Sedgwick, played by James Coburn. His memoir sets down his wartime adventures before being incarcerated in Stalag Luft III and then describes various escape attempts which culminated with the famous March breakout. After escaping, Vanderstok roamed Europe for weeks before making it back to England. Two months after escaping, he returned to the British no. 91 Squadron. In the following months he flew almost every day to France, escorting bombers and knocking down V1 rockets. In August 1944, he finally returned to his home. He learned that his two brothers had been killed in concentration camps after being arrested for resistance work. His father had been tortured and blinded by the Gestapo during interrogation. He had never betrayed his son. “His escapes, his operations as a Spitfire pilot, his experiences as a prisoner of war, and his incredible escape crossing the Pyrenees—all are described in a breathtaking manner which made me read his book through in one sitting.” —Prof. Dr. L de Jong, founder/director of the Dutch Institute for War Documentation “Such a modest man, such a dramatic story—you’ll be pulled into this absorbing account.” —Jonathan Vance, author of The True Story of the Great Escape

The Greatest Escape: A True American Civil War Adventure tells the story of the largest prison breakout in U.S. history. It took place during the Civil War, when more than 1,200 Yankee officers were jammed into Libby, a special prison considered escape-proof, in the Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia. A small group of men, obsessed with escape, mapped out an elaborate plan and one cold and clear night, 109 men dug their way to freedom. Freezing, starving, clad in rags, they still had to travel 50 miles to Yankee lines and safety. They were pursued by all the white people in the area, but every Black person they encountered was their friend. In every instance, slaves risked their lives to help these Yankees, and their journey was aided by a female-led Union spy network. Since all the escapees were officers, they all could read and write well. Over 50 of them would publish riveting accounts of their adventures. This is the first book to weave together these contemporary accounts into a true-to-life narrative. Much like a Ken Burns documentary, this book uses the actual words the prisoners recorded more than 150 years ago, as found in their many diaries and journals.