Prisoners of the Castle
An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison
New York : Random House Large Print, [2022]
Format: Large Print
Edition: First large print edition.
Description: xxi, 509 pages (large print), 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become a legend. But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre's telling, Colditz's most famous names - like the indomitable Pat Reid - share glory with lesser-known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar, whose ill treatment, hunger strike and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America's oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs. Prisoners of the Castle traces the war's arc from within Colditz's stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler's war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis.
Contents:
Prologue: Franz Josef -- The originals -- Le Ray's run -- The bad boys' camp -- Goon-baiting -- Ballet nonsense -- Le Métro -- Clutty of MI9 -- Seeking for a path -- Dogsbody -- The Prominente club -- Shabash -- The dentist spies -- Madness -- The sparrows -- The red fox -- The Rhine maiden -- Besieged -- Endgame.
Subjects:
Oflag IVC (Concentration camp)
Schloss Colditz (Colditz, Germany) -- History.
Prisoner-of-war escapes -- Germany -- Colditz -- History -- 20th century.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Germany -- Colditz.
Large type books.
Oflag IVC (Concentration camp)
Schloss Colditz (Colditz, Germany) -- History.
Prisoner-of-war escapes -- Germany -- Colditz -- History -- 20th century.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Germany -- Colditz.
Large type books.
ISBN:
0593632079
Availability | |||
---|---|---|---|
Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
LP HISTORY Mac | Sandhills Indoors | Large Print Nonfiction | Out (Due: 5/1/2024) |
More Formats
Includes bibliographical references (pages 476-479) and index.