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 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 Hostages in the Middle Ages written by Adam J. Kosto and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2012-06-21 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the changing situations in which hostages were used in the Europe and the Mediterranean world from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, touching on a wide range of topics in military, diplomatic, political, social, gender, economic, and legal history.

Download or read book The Colditz Myth written by S. P. MacKenzie and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-09-21 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though only one among hundreds of prison camps in which British servicemen were held between 1939 and 1945, Colditz enjoys unparalleled name recognition both in Britain and in other parts of the English-speaking world. Made famous in print, on film, and through television, Colditz remains a potent symbol of key virtues - including ingenuity and perseverance against apparantly overwhelming odds - that form part of the popular mythology surrounding the British war effort in World War II. Colditz has played a major role in shaping perceptions of the POW experience in Nazi Germany, an experience in which escaping is assumed to be paramount and 'Outwitting the Hun' a universal sport. The story of Colditz has been told often and in a variety of forms but in this book MacKenzie chronicles the development of the Colditz myth and puts what happened inside the castle in the context of British and Commonwealth POW life in Germany as a whole. Being a captive of the Third Reich - from the moment of surrender down to the day of liberation and repatriation - was more complicated and a good deal tougher than the popular myth would suggest. The physical and mental demands of survival far outweighed escaping activity in order of importance in most camps almost all of the time, and even in Colditz the reality was in some respects very different from the almost Boy's Own caricature that developed during the post-war decades. In The Real Colditz MacKenzie seeks, for the first time, to place Colditz - both the camp and the legend - in a wider historical context.

Download or read book The Colditz Story written by Major P R Reid and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2014-12-04 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colditz was the last stop for prisoners of war during WWII. Those who persisted in escaping from other camps were sent to the impregnable fortress of Colditz Castle, situated on a rocky outcrop high above the River Mulde. Once within the walls of the castle, the Germans reasoned, escape was impossible. And yet many prisoners attempted escape and many succeeded Pat Reid was one of those men. Appointed 'Escape Officer' by his fellow inmates, he masterminded many of the attempts. From tunnelling, to hiding in rubbish sacks, disguising themselves as German officers and even leaping from the castle walls, nothing was too dangerous or foolhardy compared to imprisonment by the enemy. Reid's own escape, in 1942, was both one of the most simple and the most daring. First published in 1952, The Colditz Story is a classic escape story in the tradition of The Great Escape and The Wooden Horse.

Download or read book Hostages of Empire written by Sarah Ann Frank and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2022 Heggoy Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society Royal Historical Society's 2022 Gladstone Book Prize Shortlist 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 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 Prisoners of War written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-05 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second World War between the Axis and Allied powers saw over 20 million soldiers taken as prisoners of war. Prisoners of War uses a series of case studies to illuminate the personal and collective histories of those who experienced captivity in Eastern and Western Europe during the war and their repatriation and reintegration afterwards.

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 Escape from Colditz written by Patrick Robert Reid and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A British officer relates his activities in and eventual escape from Colditz Castle, one of the best guarded German prisoner-of-war camps.

Download or read book Betrayed written by Kaylea Cross and published by Kaylea Cross Inc.. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torn apart by lies and a hail of bullets… Georgia Randall is a government-trained killer with nothing left to live for except the burning need for revenge. She’s lost everything she cared about, including the only man she ever loved, and now her past has caught up with her. Shadowy enemies are on the move, determined to silence her before she can kill her remaining targets. But when the man she’s been mourning suddenly turns up to confront her, Georgia must face the consequences of the lies she told to conceal her double life. And even if she wins him back and survives what’s coming, she knows a happy ending isn’t possible for someone like her. Only revealing their darkest secrets can bring them back together. Against all odds, notorious assassin Miguel Bautista clawed his way back from the brink of death. Now he wants answers. For months he’s been tormented by the devastating truth about the one bright spot in his dark and violent past: the woman he fell in love with was nothing but a lie. When he learns she’s in danger and is offered the chance to save her, he signs a deal with the devil to protect her. They already lost each other once. If any of what they shared was real, this time he’s not letting her go. But if they’re going to have a prayer at a future together they must first evade the enemies closing in on them—and fight to stay alive.

Download or read book Men of Colditz written by Patrick Robert Reid and published by . This book was released on 1954 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of Colditz, a prison to which Allied officers were sent after trying to excape from Germany, and of the many attempts by the P.O.W.'s to escape. Written in an historically accurate, yet often hilarious style.

Download or read book Footprints on the Sands of Time written by Oliver Clutton-Brock and published by Grub Street Publishing. This book was released on 2003-08-19 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of RAF Evaders provides a comprehensive reference of the airmen of Bomber Command who were held in German captivity during WWII. This extensive book is divided into two part. The first, which has eighteen chapters, deals with German POW camps as they were opened, in chronological order and to which the Bomber Command POWs were sent. Each chapter includes anecdotes and stories of the men in the camps—capture, escape, illness, and murder—and illustrates the awfulness of captivity even in German hands. Roughly one in every twenty captured airmen never returned home. The first part also covers subjects such as how the POWs were repatriated during the war; how they returned at war’s end; the RAF traitors; the war crimes; and the vital importance of the Red Cross. The style is part reference, part gripping narrative, and the book will correct many historical inaccuracies, and includes previously unpublished photographs. The second part comprises an annotated list of ALL 10, 995 RAF Bomber Command airmen who were taken prisoner, together with an extended introduction. The two parts together are the fruit of exhaustive research and provide an important contribution to our knowledge of the war and a unique reference work not only for the serious RAF historian but for the ex-POWs themselves and their families and anyone with an interest in the RAF in general and captivity in particular.

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 Germans thought escape was impossible. These men proved them wrong. Colditz Castle, located near Leipzig Germany, was the last stop for select Allied prisoners during World War II. It was here, a reportedly impregnable fortress, that the Germans sent all the prisoners who escaped from other prisons. Once within the walls, the Germans reasoned, escaping was impossible. Yet during the four-year period when the castle was used as a prison, over three hundred men escaped, thirty-one through Nazi Germany. Prisoners from ten different Allied countries worked together to form a truly international escape academy. They created skeleton keys, forged German passes, drafted maps, and constructed all types of tools and machinery out of whatever they could find. The ingenuity of the prisoners knew no bounds: they tried everything from tunneling underneath the castle's walls to hiding in the garbage to disguising themselves as German officers. They even built a glider, which they never used. Resourcefulness and hard work won a few of them their freedom. Author and former British Army officer, P.R. Reid, was one of the men who escaped from Colditz and made it home to tell the story. This paperback edition, introduced into the Zenith Military Classic series, introduces this thrilling WWII story to a new generation of readers. Four appendices at the end of book provide a full listing of prisoners and staff, all of the attempted escapes, the secret code used to communicate between prisoners and the outside world, and more. "[T]his book is highly recommended reading." --The New York Times