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. The writer and journalist said that the “myth” of Colditz was partly formed in the national psyche by the 1972 BBC series of the same name. Bestselling author Ben Macintyre tells the astonishing true story of one of the Second World War’s most infamous prisoner-of-war camps. 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! Much of the drama in MacIntyre’s account centers on the almost continuous succession of attempted escapes, many of which were extremely elaborate and required months of preparation. One British officer tried eight times, but many others were almost equally persistent. Few were successful. Although there are reports of 174 who made their way outside the castle’s walls, only thirty-two of them reached home. Colditz was 400 kilometers from Switzerland, and the route led through vast expanses of heavily policed Nazi territory.

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."

Renovations and use as a mental hospital

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.

The idea, a brilliant idea if it works, is to try to tell this story in a series of episodes, taking a different vantage point for each episode,” he explained.Capt Charles Upham VC and bar, 20th Battalion, the only fighting soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross twice. 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. There was also the crushing boredom of a daily ritual that remained the same month in, month out; year in, year out. And unlike conventional prison sentences, no one in a POW camp knew how long they would be incarcerated for, or what the endgame would be. At Colditz Castle, the Germans respected the Geneva Convention and treated imprisoned officers in a manner commensurate with their rank. Of course, things changed at the end of the war. Some prominent prisoners were a hair’s breadth away from being executed by the SS as revenge. The surroundings of the castle were the scene of a real battle before it was liberated by American troops. I tend to prefer to read a book before listening to the audiobook but in this case, I think I would have preferred to listen to the audiobook from the outset. The audio sample sounds good and I may return to it some day.