Blue Star Chronicles

The movie The Great Escape was on television tonight. Its one of my favorite World War II movies. I watched it, and even though I knew what was going to happen, I still enjoyed it. Here are some photos and videos that compare the actual historic events to the movie made about them.

The Real Great Escape
Tunnel Harry

The Great Escape is one of the greatest World War II movies of all time. Its a classic and its based on a true story. The escape attempt actually happened. The men, the POW prison camp, all of it is true. Well, its hollywood true. That meaning that all of the characters were based on multiple real characters because they had to keep the focus on a handful of participants as opposed to the hundreds that actually participated in the planning and implementing of the greatest escape attempt during World War II.

Stalag Luft III was a POW camp that housed 10,000 Allied prisoners of war. The camp was for Air Force servicemen of the Allied armies. The camp was about 100 miles southeast of Berlin and designed to be particularly difficult to escape from. Which makes it all the sweeter that one of the most famous escape attempts came from that particular prison camp.

The movie was made from a book of the same name written by Paul Brickhill, one of the POWs who had been imprisoned there and helped with the escape. There are several first hand accounts of the experience that help to put together a good history of what actually happened.

The actually escape occurred during the night of March 24, 1944 and into the morning hours of March 25, 1944. The plan had been for hundreds to escape through the tunnel the men had given the code name ‘Harry’ (other tunnels were named, ‘Tom’ and ‘Dick’). But because of complications, the main of which being that the tunnel fell short of emerging into the forest surrounding the POW camp), only 76 men escaped. The 77th man emerging from the tunnel was spotted by German guards, ending the escape attempt.

Of the 76 men who escaped through the tunnel that night, only three eventually made it to freedom. Fifty of those men were captured and shot, 23 of the men were sent back to Stalag Luft III and four were sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Below are four videos, courtesy of the History Channel, that compares the movie to the history of Stalag Luft III and The Great Escape.

The Real Great Escape - Photos