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Attempts to escape Oflag IV- CPrisoners made numerous attempts to escape from Oflag IV- C, one of the most famous German Armyprisoner- of- war camps for officers in World War II. Between 3. 0–3. 6 (German/Allied figures) men succeeded in their attempts. The camp was in Colditz Castle, perched on a cliff overlooking the town of Colditz in Saxony. The German Army made Colditz a Sonderlager (high- security prison camp), the only one of its type within Germany. Field Marshal Hermann Göring even declared Colditz "escape- proof." Yet despite this audacious claim, there were multiple escapes by British, Canadian, French, Polish, Dutch, and Belgian inmates. Despite some misapprehensions to the contrary, Colditz Castle was not used as a prisoner of war camp in World War I.

Methods and equipment[edit]Prisoners contrived a number of methods to escape. They duplicated keys to doors, made copies of maps, forged Ausweise (identity papers), and manufactured their own tools. MI9, a department of the British War Office which specialized in escape equipment, communicated with the prisoners in code and smuggled to them new escape aids disguised in care packages from family or from non- existent charities, although they never tampered with Red Cross care packages for fear it would force the Germans to stop their delivery to all camps. The Germans became skilled at intercepting packages containing contraband material. There was also a form of black market subterfuge whereby the prisoners used items from their Red Cross parcels to buy information and tools from cooperative guards and townsfolk.

Since the Germans allowed Douglas Bader to visit the town, he took chocolate and other luxuries with him for trading. Flight Lieutenant Cenek Chaloupka traded goods for information and even had a girlfriend in the town.

David Stirling later took control of the black market operations. The Singen route[edit]Once escaping from captivity, POWs still faced the considerable challenge of negotiating their way to non- hostile territory.

With David McCallum, Richard Heffer, Paul Chapman, Jack Hedley. This grim and claustrophobic drama chronicles the lives of the prisoners in Colditz Castle from the.

The Singen route into Switzerland was discovered by Dutch naval lieutenant Hans Larive in 1. Oflag VI- A in Soest. Larive was caught near Singen close to the Swiss border. The interrogating Gestapo officer was so confident that the war would soon be won by Germany that he told Larive of a safe way across the border.

Larive memorized it and many prisoners later escaped using this route. This includes Larive himself, Francis Steinmetz, Anthony Luteyn, Airey Neave, Pat Reid, and Howard Wardle in their escapes from Colditz.[1]Unsuccessful attempts[edit]Most escape attempts failed. Pat Reid, who later wrote about his experiences in Colditz, failed to escape at first and then became an "escape officer," charged with coordinating the various national groups so they would not ruin each other's escape attempts. Escape officers were generally not themselves permitted to escape. Many tried unsuccessfully to escape in disguise: Airey Neave twice dressed as a guard, French Lieutenant Boulé disguised in drag, British Lieutenant Michael Sinclair even dressed as German Sergeant Major Rothenberger [an NCO in the camp garrison], when he tried to organize a mass escape, and French Lieutenant Perodeau disguised himself as camp electrician Willi Pöhnert ("Little Willi"): On the night of 2.

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2. The lives of a close-knit group of brothers growing up in Iowa during the days of the Great Depression and of World War II and their eventual deaths in action in the.

December 1. 94. 2, one of the French officers deliberately blew out the fuse on the lights in the courtyard. As they had anticipated Pöhnert was summoned, and while he was fixing the lights, Lieutenant Perodeau, dressed almost identically to Pöhnert and carrying a tool box, walked casually out of the courtyard gate. He passed the first guard without incident, but the guard at the main gate asked for his token — tokens were issued to each guard and staff member at the camp guardhouse specifically to avoid this type of escape — with no hope of bluffing his way out of this, Perodeau surrendered. Dutch sculptors made two clay heads to stand in for escaping officers at roll call. Later, "ghosts", officers who had faked a successful escape and hidden in the castle, took the place of escaping prisoners at roll call in order to delay discovery for as long as possible. Camp guards collected so much escape equipment that they established a "Kommandant's Escape Museum".

Local photographer. Johannes Lange took photographs of the would- be escapers in their disguises or re- enacting their attempts for the camera. Along with the Lange photographs, one of the two sculpted clay heads was displayed proudly in the museum. Security officer Reinhold Eggers made them a regular part of Das Abwehrblatt, a weekly magazine for German POW camps. The death of Michael Sinclair[edit]There was only one confirmed fatality during the escape attempts: British Lieutenant Michael Sinclair in September 1. Sinclair attempted a repeat of the 1. Watch I`M With Lucy Putlocker. French over the wire escape.

Security officer Eggers warned him after which Sinclair was fired upon by guards. A bullet hit Sinclair on the elbow and ricocheted through his heart.[2]The Germans buried Sinclair in Colditz cemetery with full military honours — his casket was draped with a Union Jack flag made by the German guards, and he received a seven- gun salute. Watch Crimson Peak Online (2017) there. Post- war he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, the only man to receive it for escaping during World War II.

He is currently buried in grave number 1. Berlin War Cemetery in the Charlottenburg- Wilmersdorf district of Berlin.

The Red Cross tea chest[edit]Because of his very small stature, Flight Lieutenant Dominic Bruce was known ironically as the "medium- sized man". He arrived at Colditz in 1. Watch Halloween H20: 20 Years Later Streaming.

Spangenberg Castle disguised as a Red Cross doctor). When a new commandant arrived at Colditz in the summer of the same year, he enforced rules restricting prisoners' personal belongings.

On 8 September, POWs were told to pack up all excess belongings and an assortment of boxes was delivered to carry them into storage. Dominic Bruce immediately seized his chance and was packed inside a Red Cross packing case, three feet square, with just a file and a 4. Bruce was taken to a storeroom on the third floor of the German Kommandantur and that night made his escape. When the German guards discovered the bed rope dangling from the window the following morning and entered the storeroom they found the empty box on which Bruce had inscribed Die Luft in Colditz gefällt mir nicht mehr. Auf Wiedersehen! — "The air in Colditz no longer agrees with me. See you later!" Bruce was recaptured a week later trying to stow aboard a Swedish ship in Danzig.

The mattress[edit]In late 1. British officer "Peter" Allan (real name, Anthony Murray Allan) found out that the Germans were moving several mattresses from the castle to another camp and decided that it would be his way out. He let the French officers moving the mattresses know that one would be a little bit heavier. Allan, a fluent German speaker thanks to his schooling in Germany before the war, prior to attending Tonbridge School, dressed himself up in a Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) uniform, stuffed Reichsmarks in his pockets, and had himself sewn into one of the mattresses. He managed to get himself loaded onto the truck, and unloaded into an empty house within the town. Cutting himself out of the mattress several hours later, when all he could hear was silence, he climbed out of the window into the garden and walked down the road towards his freedom.

Along the 1. 61 km (1. Vienna via Stuttgart he got a lift with a senior SS officer. Allan recalled that ride as the scariest moment of his life, "To be vulgar, I nearly needed a new pair of trousers." Allan had been aiming to reach Poland, but soon after reaching Vienna he found he was out of money.

At this time the Americans had not yet entered the war, so Allan decided to ask the American consulate for assistance. He was refused. Allan's stepmother, Lois Allan (founder of Fuzzy Felt toys in the UK), was a US citizen and he felt that they would provide sanctuary because of this.