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. The officers had a British “boarding school mentality.” They tried to recreate the traditions of Eton and other private schools coopting behaviors such as bullying, enslaving individuals on the lower rung of society, “goon-baiting” Germans, and diverse types of entertainment. Those who did not attend a boarding school were rarely included. Another important contrast is the treatment of Jews vs POWs. The Jews and other "undesirables" sent to concentration camps like Auschwitz had it much, much worse than the prisoners of Colditz. But the POWs still faced hunger & food shortages, near-constant supervision, and of course the danger of being powerless in enemy hands. Yet prisoners of Colditz were among the better-treated POWs - the main men in charge of the camp actually (mostly) adhered to the Geneva Convention of 1929. Which naturally didn't stop the prisoners from attempting to escape. Some of the most comedic bits of this book are during escapes. Their creativity and courage was indomitable. Baybutt, Ron; Lange, Johannes (1982). Colditz: The Great Escapes. Little, Brown. p. 8. ISBN 0316083941. But Macintyre also makes it clear that Colditz was unlike most POW camps. Firstly, its extraordinary location made escape appear impossible. And then there was the fact that everyone housed there was classed as deutschfeindlich, ‘German-unfriendly’, and had been sent there because they had tried to escape from other camps. It was like a school where all the bad boys had been gathered together under one roof.

Years ago, you could see a replica of a glider that was clandestinely built at Colditz Castle, on the top floor of the Imperial War Museum in London. Crazily enough, some of the officers attempted to escape by plane. “I’m not very convinced that they could have managed to fly.I think it had more to do with mythical escapism and imagination than with a real escape. It was a dream for the prisoner collective: to fly away to freedom,” said Macintyre. The [attempt] by the Frenchman – Pierre Mairesse-Lebrun – seems magnificent to me; he fled while being shot at and then asked for the clothes to be sent to him. I love it,” Macintyre joked. “The failed attempts are also very interesting. The costumes reveal the love that the British have for the theater.” Emil Boulé, disguised as a woman, in his attempt to escape from Colditz Castle. SBG gGmbH (SBG gGmbH)Bestselling author Ben Macintyre tells the astonishing true story of one of the Second World War’s most infamous prisoner-of-war camps. The outer courtyard and former German Kommandantur (guard quarters) have been converted into a youth hostel / hotel and the Gesellschaft Schloss Colditz e.V. (the Colditz Castle historical society), founded during 1996, has its offices in a portion of the administration building in the front castle court. I would recommend this book to history buffs and WW readers alike. It tells quite a few enduring and humbling stories about those poor, brave souls who had to endure the camps for years. It was a way of dignifying the prisoner-of-war experience. It was a very familiar myth and, like all myths, it was partly true. The story of the escapes from Colditz are fabulous: the ingenuity, the courage, the lateral thinking that went into them is extraordinary. As 1944 became 1945, serious hunger stalked the prison camp. The Red Cross parcels ceased to arrive, but the inmates still fared better than their guards, who had no extra supplies to add to their now-miserable diet.

War stories are usually about what happened. The story of Colditz, by contrast, is largely a tale of inactivity, a long procession of duplicate days when little of note occurred, punctuated by moments of intense excitement. The book focuses partially on the history of the castle during WWII (including some information about the village outside it), the systems the Germans used to spy on the prisoners and the prisoners used to spy on the Germans, the methods by which items & information were smuggled into Colditz and information was smuggled out, and of course the numerous escape attempts. With plenty of humor but also grave sadness, Prisoners of the Castle is not only factual but emotional.

The Holy Roman Empire and the construction of Colditz Castle

Mazumdar eventually became a GP in Somerset and married an Englishwoman. He rarely spoke of his wartime experiences but recorded his experiences on microcassettes around 10 years before his death, which Macintyre used as research material. Having read many WWII books and memoirs, Prisoners of the Castle is a new and unique addition to my WWII library that helps to broaden my perspective and understanding of the war and lives of those touched by it. Macintyre so seamlessly fuses so many different accounts that their compilation creates something more profound than a simple escape yarn.” ― The Washington Post One of the most demystifying cases that appears in the book is that of Douglas Bader, one of the most legendary pilots of World War II. Bader was a Royal Air Force flying ace credited with 22 aerial victories. He had both his legs amputated after an accident and continued to fly with prostheses (which he filled with ping pong balls to be able to float if he crashed into the water). Not since Ian Fleming and John le Carré has a spy writer so captivated readers.” — The Hollywood Reporter

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.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. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Most of the POW’s had skills to contribute to the daily escape attempts. There were magicians, card sharks, pole vaulters, theater actors, famous ace pilots, electricians, rugby players, charmers, and more. In retelling the story of Colditz, [Macintyre] makes it his own. [An]entertaining yet objectiveandoften-moving account.” — The Wall Street Journal As the only Indian in Colditz, he was shunned by fellow British Army officers. Macintyre said: “He suffered terribly in a way that was shaming, really. He was treated with appalling racism. He was regarded as a second class citizen… told he had to make curry for everyone. Even for the time, it was pretty brutal, racist behaviour.”