Macintyre’s attention to detail is a strength of the book. He delves into strategies developed and objects needed, i.e.; the “arse keeper,” a cylinder to hide money, small tools and other objects in one’s anatomy was most creative. The prisoners were geniuses in developing tactics to confuse their captors, and instruments that were used to make their escape attempts possible, including a glider that was completely built, but never used.. The author also includes how prisoners tried to keep themselves sane by developing their own entertainment. They set up theater performances, choirs, concerts, bands, jazz ensembles, plays etc. Sanity was a major issue and for those who remained at Colditz for years PTSD was definitely an issue. I listened to the audiobook with Simon. They say that truth is stranger than fiction.... This is an amazing book full of incredible true stories of escape, or many attempted escapes of prisoners of war from the notorious castle prison of Colditz. I'm not sure that Colditz is as well know in the U.S.A. In the U.K. it was entrenched in our culture and truly inspired fear.

A special intelligence operation in the UK, MI9, came up w Obviously, this is a war story so most of this is pretty bleak. However, there are plenty of moments of humor, touching humanism, and joy. I got legitimately choked up when the men starting building the glider, despite the extreme unlikeliness that it would work. "...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." After years of mostly failed escape attempts, increasing loss of hope as rations and other supplies dwindled, and deep fears that the prisoners might all be murdered if Germany was losing and the Allied powers reached the castle....imagine these defeated men pooling their ingenuity to build something so magnificent, such a beautiful dream of freedom. Ugh, it got to me. The only faint criticism I have of this book is that it is, by nature, rather episodic. It does focus on a few of the prisoners, but there are many who come and go - whether by escape, transfer to another POW camp, or death. Still, I had no trouble following the cast of characters and events outside the castle's walls. It certainly made interesting reading after having seen the movie "The Great Escape" any number of times. No motorcycle stunts in this book (or at Stalag Luft III, for that matter), but fascinating nonetheless.In Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes us inside the walls of the most infamous prison in history to meet the real men behind the legends. Heroes and bullies, lovers and spies, captors and prisoners living cheek-by-jowl for years in a thrilling game of cat and mouse - and all determined to escape by any means necessary. One of Macintyre’s myth-busting achievements is to blow the idea of the Colditz crew as a band of brothers, whose shared misfortune had erased pre-war divisions. The French officer contingent decided to ostracise their Jewish comrades who were forced to take their meals separately. Most of the British prisoners were public school chaps, but this did not mean a community of equals.

British pilot Douglas “Tin Legs” Bader was one of Colditz’s most famous prisoners. Credit: Getty Images Colditz, the medieval castle, located in the state of Saxony in Germany, is probably the most famous of the Nazi's POW camps in WWII..........so well known that films have been made about it (although usually fictional). Those Allied prisoners held there were known as "difficult" because they had escaped or attempted to escape from other camps. Colditz was meant to be totally secure and the Nazis were sure that no one would ever break those bonds. Oh, were they wrong! Food was used as a bartering chip, and they used some of the rations to make drinks. Alcohol production was made using the strangest of ingredients. One of them was a batch flavored with aftershave. It was said to have eaten a hole in the bottom of the plastic container it sat in overnight. Most officers could stomach this variety, but they succumbed to cataclysmic headaches, blurred vision, discolored teeth, and so on. It was not discouraged because it kept morale up, and any prisoner who was inebriated was easier to manage. Colditz Castle: a forbidding Gothic tower on a hill in Nazi Germany. You may have heard about the prisoners and their daring and desperate attempts to escape, but that's only part of the real story.Deeply researched and full of incredible stories, this is a tale of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances - and will change how you think about Colditz forever. This is an excellent account of Colditz, a special prisoner of war camp for special prisoners. These included those who had escaped from other camps, as well asthose who could be used as possible bargaining chips (minor members of the Royal Family, Churchill's nephew and others). Colditz was meant to be completely safe, impregnable and impossible to escape from. Of course, this did not quite work out to be the case.

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil. Of the 35,000 Allied troops who made their way to safety from captivity or after being shot down about half were carrying one of Hutton's maps." Among the prisoners in Colditz were the Prominenten who were related sometimes only distantly, to distinguished individuals in their countries, and who were now held as bargaining chips (for ransom, exchange or to extract concessions from their countries). They were kept under especially tight surveillance. They included Giles Romilly, a communist journalist and a nephew of Winston Churchill., and Michael Alexander who falsely claimed to be the nephew of General Alexander, the commander of the Allied forces in the Middle East. Anything related to the sexual exploits or frustrations of the prisoners wasn't really something I was keen on reading, but thankfully, it was kept fairly brief. The author made a bit of a stretch, claiming oh so many of the men engaged in homosexual acts. We know some did from memoirs or whatnot, and I'm not so naïve as to think others didn't and just never came out and admitted it. But the author also claimed that it must have been going on in a fairly large scale, while in the same breath, mentioning that (with the aforementioned exceptions) it was never verified/caught onto by the guards/we don't have proof. Well, then, I guess better to leave it at that.

Retailers:

His Colditz is a self-proclaimed revisionist exercise, which sets out to re-examine a “myth” which “has stood unchallenged for more than 70 years” of “prisoners of war, with moustaches firmly on stiff upper lips, defying the Nazis by tunnelling out of a grim Gothic castle”. It also invites the reader to ask themselves: “what would you have done?” Ben Macintyre is well known for his books on spies and espionage, like Agent Zigzag, Double Cross, and Philby. Earlier this year, one of his other works, Operation Mincemeat, was adapted into a hugely successful movie (see MHM June/July 2022).