Prisoners of the Castle
An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison
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4.4 • 22 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor, a definitive and surprising new narrative of one of history's most famous prisons--and the remarkable cast of POWs who tried to relentlessly escape their Nazi captors.
The myth of Colditz, the most infamous prison in history, has stood unchallenged for 70 years: prisoners of war, mustaches firmly set on stiff upper lips, defying the Nazis by tunnelling out of a grim Gothic castle on a German hilltop. Like all legends, that story contains only part of the truth. In Ben Macintyre's brilliant, cliche-smashing new history, he offers a vision of Colditz previously unimagined, a story of much more than an escape, just as the prison's inmates were far more complicated than the cardboard saints depicted in post-war pop culture.
Colditz was a miniature replica of office-class society at the time, only far stranger: a lethal, high stakes boarding school surrounded by barbed wire, initially containing prisoners of all Allied nations, including Canada, but eventually only Britons and Americans, a heavily guarded cage with its own culture, eccentricities, and internal tensions. In intimate and compelling detail, Macintyre explores what happens to people when they are locked up without committing a crime and with no idea when or if they might be liberated. Colditz, then, is a tale of the indomitable human spirit, but also one of snobbery, class conflict, hidden sexuality, bullying, espionage, boredom, insanity, and farce.
With access to declassified archives, private papers, and never-before-seen photos, the author reveals a remarkable cast of characters, previously hidden from history: Indian doctor Birendranath Mazymdar, the only non-white prisoner, whose ill-treatment, hunger-strike and eventual escape reads like fiction; Florimond Duke, America's oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; Christoper Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture escape aids for POWs, from maps hidden in playing cards to a compass secreted inside a walnut; and many others.
Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed stunning new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this riveting history of Nazi Germany's most notorious POW camp, bestseller Macintyre (Agent Sonya) spotlights the indomitable will and creativity of the inmates who tried to escape from it. Colditz, a "grim Gothic castle on a German hilltop," was where the Nazis sent the most "unruly" Allied prisoners, including journalist Giles Romilly, Winston Churchill's nephew, and Birendranath Mazumdar, an Indian doctor who volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps and endured the racism of his fellow POWs until he staged a hunger strike that secured his release. The book's colorful cast also includes Christopher Clayton Hutton, an inventor hired by British intelligence to create "escape equipment" for POWs, who became the inspiration for the fictional character Q in the James Bond novels and movies; Julius Green, a "Jewish dentist from Glasgow" who gathered intelligence from prisoners and guards he treated in POW camps across Germany; and Reinhold Eggers, the "humorless" security chief of Colditz who "treated escape prevention as a branch of logic." Though attempted "home runs," or clean getaways in the lingo of Colditz POWs, provide much of the book's drama, Macintyre also sheds light on how the prisoners relieved their boredom through theatrical productions, reading, and writing poetry. This is another engrossing tale of WWII intrigue from a master of the genre.
