Download or read book Hostages of Colditz written by Giles Romilly and published by New York : Praeger. This book was released on 1973 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For two years during World War II, Giles Romilly and Michael Alexander shared a small room in the tower of Colditz Castle, the notorious German punishment camp. During that time, Colditz housed some six hundred prisoners of assorted nationalities and ranks. Most of them were there because they had been especially persistent or imaginative, though unsuccessful, in their attempts to escape from other places of internment; Colditz, in the heart of Germany, was considered virtually escapeproof. Romilly, a war correspondent, had been captures as a suspected spy when the Germans seized the port of Narvik, Norway, in April, 1940. In August, 1942, Alexander, a British commando in North Africa, had been taken prisoner behind German lines, wearing a German uniform. As a newspaperman, Romilly would probably have been released if it had not been known to the Germans that he was a nephew of Winston Churchill, which made him of great potential value as a hostage. Alexander, on the other hand, would probably have been shot as a spy if he had not told his captors, with some exaggeration, that he was a close relative of Field Marshal Alexander, then commander of the British troops in the Middle East.

Download or read book The Colditz Hostages written by Giles Romily and published by . This book was released on 2019-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Giles Romilly and Michael Alexander were amongst a select group of prisoners of war who were segregated from the other prisoners and were labelled the Prominente. The authors recount their varied experiences in captivity. Romilly, a journalist covering the Norway Campaign, was captured at Narvik in April 1940. Alexander was taken in August 1942 when engaged in a raid behind the German lines in North Africa. In due course, because of their family connections to people of influence, both of them ended up in an isolation area of Colditz Castle, where they were joined by several more, including Earl Haig, the son of the C-in-C of the BEF, the commander of the Polish Army in the Warsaw Uprising and, the last to arrive, the son of the US Ambassador to London.In April 1945, in the face of the advancing American armies and on Himmler's instructions, the Prominente were removed from the Castle. In due course they became split up. Romilly managed to escape soon after the removal from Colditz with the assistance of a Dutch officer. The remainder survived to be liberated, despite Hitler's order for them to be executed.The book is beautifully written. Romilly, in particular, shows himself to be an excellent observer: of the character of his fellow prisoners both before and during his time as a Prominente; and of the last, chaotic days of the Third Reich. His description of the scenes he witnessed in the newly liberated Dachau Camp, soon after his arrival in the allied lines, remain extraordinarily powerful.The book received a warm reception from the critics at the time of its first publication in 1954 and was singled out for high praise by, amongst others, Airey Neave MP, assassinated by the INLA in 1979, himself a prisoner and the first successful British escaper from Colditz.

Download or read book Hostages at Colditz written by Giles Romilly and published by . This book was released on 1954 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Colditz written by Henry Chancellor and published by Coronet. This book was released on 2002-04-04 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colditz high security camp contained every persistent escaper, trouble maker and valuable hostage captured by the Germans in World War II. It was considered escape proof but the very opposite proved to be true. The prisoners pooled their collected talents to create the greatest escape academy of the war.

Download or read book Collecting Colditz and Its Secrets written by Michael Booker and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2005-06-19 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fully illustrated with photographs and historical artifacts, this detailed history reveals what life was like inside the infamous Nazi POW camp. During the Second World War, the centuries-old Colditz castle took on an infamous new purpose. It became the site of Oflag IV-C, a prisoner of war camp designated for Allied officers who had escaped from other camps, including such famous names as Douglas Bader, Lorne Welch and Jack Best. This authoritative history reveals the secrets of the Sonderlager—or “Special Camp.” Historian Michael Booker draws on forty years of research into the subject, including interviews with former prisoners, as well as the German commandant Gerhard Prawitt and the head of security Captain Reinhold Eggers. He relates stories of British, Polish, and French prisoners, and their many and varied attempts to escape. These narratives are supported throughout with rare wartime photographs as well as a priceless collection of artifacts and memorabilia from the castle, some of which have never been seen before.

Download or read book Prisoners of the Castle written by Ben Macintyre and published by Crown. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “entertaining [and] often-moving account” (The Wall Street Journal) of the remarkable POWs whose relentlessly creative attempts to escape a notorious Nazi prison embodied the spirit of resistance against fascism, from the author of The Spy and the Traitor “Macintyre has a knack for finding the most fascinating story lines in history.”—David Grann, author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon 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 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. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.

Download or read book Colditz written by P. R. Reid and published by Zenith Press. This book was released on 2015-01-15 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nazis thought escape was impossible. Colditz is the true story of the Allied prisoners held there and their (sometimes successful) efforts to escape, written by one of the POWs.

Download or read book They Shall Not Pass written by Ben Hughes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-10-20 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1937 a group of idealistic British volunteers sailed from England to fight the dark threat of dictatorship in Spain. In the olive groves of Jarama, near Madrid, they achieved the first victory against Franco's army. It was Fascism's first defeat. Hardly remembered today, it proved a crucial military turning point in the fight against Fascism. For the first time, Ben Hughes reconstructs the battle in a vivid blow-by-blow account, and considers its fascinating aftermath.

Download or read book Colditz Myth C written by and published by . This book was released on with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through first-hand accounts of hundreds of ordinary prisoners of war, Paul MacKenzie strips away the mythology and presents the real picture of what it was like to be captured and interrogated and to endure the physical and mental hardships of captivity. Colditz is placed in a wider historical context.

Download or read book Hostages of Empire written by Sarah Ann Frank and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-07 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hostages of Empire combines a social history of colonial prisoner-of-war experiences with a broader analysis of their role in Vichy’s political tensions with the country’s German occupiers. The colonial prisoners of war came from across the French Empire, they fought in the Battle for France in 1940, and they were captured by the German Army. Unlike their French counterparts, who were taken to Germany, the colonial POWs were interned in camps called Frontstalags throughout occupied France. This decision to keep colonial POWs in France defined not only their experience of captivity but also how the French and German authorities reacted to them. Hostages of Empire examines how the entanglement of French national pride after the 1940 defeat and the need for increased imperial control shaped the experiences of 85,000 soldiers in German captivity. Sarah Ann Frank analyzes the nature of Vichy’s imperial commitments and collaboration with its German occupiers and argues that the Vichy regime actively improved conditions of captivity for colonial prisoners in an attempt to secure their present and future loyalty. This French “magnanimity” toward the colonial prisoners was part of a broader framework of racial difference and hierarchy. As such, the relatively dignified treatment of colonial prisoners must be viewed as a paradox in light of Vichy and Free French racism in the colonies and the Vichy regime’s complicity in the Holocaust. Hostages of Empire seeks to reconcile two previously rather distinct histories: that of metropolitan France and that of the French colonies during World War II.

Download or read book Library of Congress Catalog written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Traitor of Colditz written by Robert Verkaik and published by Headline Welbeck Non-Fiction. This book was released on 2022-07-07 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A vastly entertaining tale, bursting with astonishing stories and extraordinary characters ... A fascinating read' Sunday Telegraph 'Brilliant ... An amazing story, one I hadn't heard too much about' Dan Snow IT IS THE DEPTHS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. The Germans like to boast that there is 'no escape' from the infamous fortress that is Colditz. The elite British officers imprisoned there are determined to prove the Nazis wrong and get back into the war. As the war heats up and the stakes are raised, the Gestapo plant a double-agent inside the prison in a bid to uncover the secrets of the British prisoners. Captain Julius Green of the Army Dental Corps and Sergeant John 'Busty' Brown must risk their lives in a bid to save the lives of hundreds of Allied servicemen and protect the secrets of MI9. Drawn from unseen records, The Traitor of Colditz brings to light an extraordinary, never-before-told story from the Second World War, an epic tale of how MI9 took on the Nazis and exposed the traitors in their midst.

Download or read book New Zealand Bookworld written by and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Army Lawyer written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Decca written by Jessica Mitford and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Decca” Mitford lived a larger-than-life life: born into the British aristocracy—one of the famous (and sometimes infamous) Mitford sisters—she ran away to Spain during the Spanish Civil War with her cousin Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew, then came to America, became a tireless political activist and a member of the Communist Party, and embarked on a brilliant career as a memoirist and muckraking journalist (her funeral-industry exposé, The American Way of Death, became an instant classic). She was a celebrated wit, a charmer, and throughout her life a prolific and passionate writer of letters—now gathered here. Decca’s correspondence crackles with irreverent humor and mischief, and with acute insight into human behavior (and misbehavior) that attests to her generous experience of the worlds of politics, the arts, journalism, publishing, and high and low society. Here is correspondence with everyone from Katharine Graham and George Jackson, Betty Friedan, Miss Manners, Julie Andrews, Maya Angelou, Harry Truman, and Hillary Rodham Clinton to Decca’s sisters the Duchess of Devonshire and the novelist Nancy Mitford, her parents, her husbands, her children, and her grandchildren. In a profile of J.K. Rowling, The Daily Telegraph (UK), said, “Her favorite drink is gin and tonic, her least favorite food, trip. Her heroine is Jessica Mitford.”

Download or read book Library of Congress Catalogs written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Himmler s Hostages written by Tom Wall and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-01-18 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notorious Nazi leader’s attempt to take war prisoners hostage at the end of WWII is revealed in this lively and expertly researched history. During the final weeks of the Second World War, Heinrich Himmler assembled the most famous and noteworthy SS prisoners be taken hostage. Himmler’s plan was to use these individuals as bargaining chips to save the Reich—or, failing that, himself. Known as the Prominenten, this group included European politicians and former heads of state, five British survivors of the ‘Great Escape,’ two MI5 agents, and Irish born POWs. This meticulously researched study sheds new light on how the British prisoners came to be integrated with a multinational group of VIPs in Dachau concentration camp, including German family groups of men, women and children; relatives of those implicated in plot to kill Hitler. The lively narrative describes kidnapping, escape attempts, interpersonal conflict, betrayal and comradeship. It also reveals intrigues and love affairs among the prisoners, culminating in their dramatic attempt to free themselves from the SS.