The Great Escape is one of the most famous stories of the Second World War. But how much do we really know about the men who took part?
In March 1944, Allied prisoners of war at Stalag Luft III attempted to get 200 men out of the camp through a tunnel they had spent months constructing. Seventy-six men escaped before the tunnel was discovered. Only three reached safety. Fifty were later murdered by the Gestapo.
The story became famous through Paul Brickhill, himself a former prisoner of war and escaper, whose book The Great Escape was published in 1950. Almost two decades later, it became one of the most famous war films ever made.
But behind the familiar story were 76 individual men, each with their own reasons for escaping, experiences on the run and, in many cases, remarkable stories of what happened afterwards.
I’m joined by Dave Robertson from the podcast For You The War Is Over, which tells the stories of men who escaped from German prisoner-of-war camps. Its long-running series on the Great Escape has just concluded after almost 100 episodes, covering every one of the escapees, speaking to their families and interviewing historians.
We talk about the men behind the famous story, what happened to them after they escaped, and what the Great Escape really meant.
