Stalag Luft III: The Story of the Great Escape

Richard Attenborough rousing the men, James Garner befriending the German guards, and Steve McQueen riding his stolen motorcycle across the German countryside. These scenes will forever be immortalized as being from the 1963 film "The Great Escape". The riveting story of the men who chose to still fight World War II, even as prisoners. However, in light of the film's popularity and fame, it is vitally important to remember that the events depicted, though details were changed, actually did happen.

Stalag Luft III was a POW camp located just outside the German town of Sagan ( Stalag Luft meaning a prison camp for airmen, overseen by Luftwaffe officers). It was intended to be a camp to group together all of the 'repeat escapees' into one camp so that a better eye could be kept on them. In this act, however, the Germans unwittingly assembled the greatest escape team ever, second only to the prisoners housed in Oflag IV C-Colditz Castle.

The men assembled initially were British, Canadian, Polish, and some Russians, who were kept for labor purposes. Later on in the war, American airmen would be housed in the camp. However, because the men assembled were frequent escapees, they knew what worked and what didn't. One of the overarching lessons learned with tunneling is that tunnels fail because either the sounds of digging are detected by microphones, or more commonly the entrance is discovered before the tunnel is completed. Even if a tunnel was successfully dug out of the camp, the most anyone could hope for was getting a dozen or so men out before the tunnel is discovered. This is why what Roger Bushell, head of the X organization, proposed was so stunning when first heard: dig not one, but three tunnels at once, and once one tunnel gets out, spring 200 men, each with forged documents and faked garments. This level of audacity is why this plan would come to be known as 'the great escape'.

The Plan

The three tunnels were to be nicknamed Tom, Dick, and Harry. tom and Dick would run parallel to each other out of different huts, while Harry would run perpendicular to Tom and Dick from the opposite side of the camp. Each tunnel's entrance was smartly concealed, and the film accurately portrays these, although mixed around. Tom's entrance was in a dark corner of Hut 123, Harry's entrance was hidden beneath a stove in Hut 104, and Dick's entrance was at the bottom of a drain in the showers of Hut 122. Dick's entrance was so well concealed, in fact, that the Germans never found it, and it remained hidden until the early 2000s when archaeologists uncovered it.

Map of the camp and the tunnels

Nevertheless, before anyone could escape, the tunnels had to be dug first. The tunnels themselves were about two feet square, making them a tight fit. Digging the tunnels got even harder because since the camp was built on yellow sand, not only did it make dispersal of the sand difficult on the brown soil, but there were numerous collapses of the tunnels. Thus, wood was stolen from almost every conceivable source, and to disperse the sand, a method was created to stuff the sand in modified tube socks, hide them in their pants, and release the sand in such a way that they could shuffle the sand into the soil surreptitiously. This is why those men relegated to this duty were known as 'penguins', due to their stiff legs from all the sand.

Diagram of Harry

To avoid being detected by underground microphones lining the fences, the move was made to dig the tunnels 30 feet below the surface, to minimize any sound travelling through the ground. However, this did not negate the digger's need to breathe and see. the digger's burned candles to see, but this consumed even more precious oxygen. The solution to get air into the tunnels was a pump and a system of air pipes made out of Klim tins (milk spelled backwards) sent to the prisoners via the Red Cross. Later on in the digging, a clever prisoner was able to steal a good deal of electrical wire from some careless German workers, who were so embarrassed to find the wire missing that they didn't report it! This gave light in the tunnels without burning candles, thus saving oxygen.

The Operation

The forging of the documents was a tricky business, made that much more difficult by the wide variety of papers needed to get anywhere inside, and especially out of Germany. However, the necessary documents were often procured by bribing the German guards with goods that were in short supply in Germany: chocolate, cigarettes, lingerie, and so on. In one case, it was necessary to take pictures of all the escapees, so the prisoners made their own. When one of the guards was able to smuggle a real camera in, the prisoners found their homemade camera worked better! In another case, a prisoner was able to blackmail a guard into smuggling in a typewriter for the forgers! In the end, all 200 of the expected escapees had forged papers in one form or another.

Clothing was made mostly from modifying the prisoner's uniforms. On occasion, German guards were able to smuggle in items that the prisoners couldn't make themselves: buttons, belt buckles, etc. All of these items, the clothing, the papers, building materials, had to be hidden from the guards. Also, there had to be lookouts to alert busy forgers or tunnel diggers of the positions of all the Germans in the camp. So, a system of inconspicuous watchmen and hidden panels were devised to facilitate the work. It worked so well that no German ever walked in on any prisoner 'in the act'.

The tunnels were all progressing, but not as quickly as they'd wanted them to. The decision was made, therefore, to concentrate all efforts on Tom. The effort worked splendidly, but unfortunately Tom was not to be the prisoner's ticket out. A lucky German guard (called 'ferrets' by the prisoners) discovered the entrance to Tom. One of the guards volunteered to go down the tunnel, and discovered that Tom was just over 20 feet from going into the woods. Obviously, the Germans needed to destroy Tom, but they were unsure of exactly how to do that. their first attempt involved filling the tunnel with explosives, but when detonated, the shock wave traveled up the tunnel and blew a hole in the roof of the hut, leaving the tunnel virtually unscathed. finally, Tom was filled with concrete, and the prisoners were left with only two tunnels.

The decision was made to finish Harry, but winter had set in and there was nowhere to disperse the sand. The idea came out that since the camp had expanded outside of Dick's intended endpoint, the excess soil should be put in Dick. This was a brilliant move, because not only did Dick serve as a dumping ground for Harry's sand, but also a convenient storage space for forged documents and other tools. Also, the seats underneath the camp theater served as a convenient dumping ground for sand. Finally, in early March 1944, Harry had been finished. The escape was on.

The Escape

The escape was planned for March 24, a new moon night. All 200 escapees were assigned a number, with the first ones out of the tunnel those who could speak German well, had experience escaping and who had worked hard on the tunnel. Those who were later in the escape had little chance of actually escaping, because most spoke no German at all, and coudn't take any trains, resorting to going cross country. These people were known as 'hard-arsers'.

When the time came, the last three feet of the exit shaft were dug out, but to the prisoner's dismay the exit hole was twenty feet short! Not willing to call the escape off, the decision was made to set up a relay system for the escapees to exit the tunnel when the guard was at the far end of the compound. It worked, but it meant that instead of the planned two or three prisoners a minute escaping, only about ten prisoners an hour could exit the tunnel. The announcement was made that anyone with a number above 100 should go to bed, because their turn wouldn't come before daybreak. During this time, 76 prisoners made it to the woods. It was the 77th man, however, that gave up the whole operation.

He was spotted by a German guard, which caused the alarm to sound, and every guard was immediately alerted. However, since they didn't find the tunnel exit right off, they were forced to search the huts for the entrance, giving the prisoners time to burn their forged documents and clothing. Hut 104, interestingly enough, was one of the last huts searched, uncovering the intended escapees. The entrance wasn't found until a German volunteer found the exit, crawled up the tunnel, but couldn't find the entrance, and his cries for help forced the prisoners to open Harry up for the last time.

The Aftermath

Out of the 76 men who escaped, most had been rounded up within a day. More of them were eventually rounded up after a week or so. Importantly, in the film two of the prisoners are seen stealing a plane. Although this was attempted by escaped prisoners from Stalag Luft III, it didn't work and they weren't from the great escape. In the end, only three of the 76 men made it back to the Allies; two made it to Sweden aboard a cargo ship, and one was able to get to the British embassy in Spain.

When the escapees were rounded up, Hitler ordered all of them shot. However, at the behest of his advisers, the number was dropped to fifty. In the end, seventeen were returned to Stalag Luft III, three were sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, two were sent to Oflag IV C, and the remaining fifty were shot. Their bodies were cremated, and today a memorial containing their ashes and the names of the fifty can be found just outside where the camp once stood.

The legacy of the great escape, though, is the ingenuity of the POWs to escape. When the Germans found out that 76 men had escaped, an inventory was taken to see what was missing. In this inventory, the Germans found that 4000 bed boards had been stolen, as well as 90 double-bunk beds, 635 mattresses, 192 bed covers, 161 pillow cases, 52 20-man tables, 10 single tables, 34 chairs, 76 benches, 1212 bed bolsters, 1370 beading battens, 1219 knives, 478 spoons, 582 forks, 69 lamps, 246 water cans, 30 shovels, 1000 feet of electrical wire, 600 feet of rope, and 3424 towels. It just goes to show how clever these men really were.


 In fact, there was actually a fourth tunnel, George, under construction underneath the camp theater, but was never completed because the prisoners were relocated near the end of the war. This also goes to show that even when their friends had been murdered, and they had been warned that any future escapees caught would be shot, their spirit couldn't be dampened. Today, although many have passed on, there are still many veterans alive who participated in one way or another in the mass escape from Stalag Luft III, the Great Escape. For a more comprehensive account of these events, I recommend the book "The Great Escape" by Paul Brickhill, an POW held in Stalag Luft III, of watch the film of the same name. Until next time, tke care, and thank you.