Table Of ContentCopyright © 2022 by Ben Macintyre
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin
Random House LLC, New York.
CROWN and the CROWN colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House Ltd.,
London, and in Canada by Signal, an imprint of Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin
Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
Photography credits can be found on this page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Macintyre, Ben, 1963– author.
Title: Prisoners of the castle / Ben Macintyre.
Description: New York: Crown, 2022 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022026350 (print) | LCCN 2022026351 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593136331
(hardcover) | ISBN 9780593136348 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Oflag IVC (Concentration camp) |
World War, 1939–1945—Prisoners and prisons, German. | Schloss Colditz (Colditz, Germany)—
History. | Prisoner-of-war escapes—Germany—Colditz—History. | Prisoners of war—Germany—
Colditz.
Classification: LCC D805.5.O37 M22 2022 (print) | LCC D805.5.O37 (ebook) | DDC 940.54/7243—
dc23/eng/20220603
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022026350
Ebook ISBN 9780593136348
randomhousebooks.com
Cover design: Christopher Brand
Cover photographs: Mirrorpix/Getty Images (castle), Johannes Lange (soldiers)
ep_prh_6.0_140983845_c0_r1
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
—“Invictus,” William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)
Preface
The myth of Colditz has stood unchanged and unchallenged for more than
seventy years: prisoners of war, with mustaches firmly set on stiff upper
lips, defying the Nazis by tunneling out of a grim Gothic castle on a
German hilltop, fighting the war by other means. Yet, like all legends, that
tale contains only a part of the truth.
The soldier-prisoners of Colditz were courageous, resilient, and
astonishingly imaginative in the ways they tried to get out of the high-
security camp holding the most troublesome captives of the Third Reich.
There were more attempted escapes from Colditz than any other camp. But
life in Colditz was about more than escaping, just as its inmates were more
complicated, and far more interesting, than the cardboard saints depicted in
popular culture.
Colditz was a miniature replica of pre-war society, only stranger. It was
a close-knit community intensely divided over issues of class, politics,
sexuality, and race. In addition to the resolute warriors, the participants in
the Colditz drama included communists, scientists, homosexuals, women,
aesthetes and philistines, aristocrats, spies, workers, poets, and traitors.
Many of these have hitherto been excluded from history because they did
not fit the traditional mold of the white male Allied officer, dedicated to
escaping. Moreover, roughly half the population of Colditz was German:
the guards and their officers have also tended to be painted in one uniform
color, yet this group also contained a rich cast of characters, including some
men of culture and humanity far removed from the brutal Nazi stereotype.
The inside story of Colditz is a tale of the indomitable human spirit, and
much else besides: bullying, espionage, boredom, insanity, tragedy, and
farce. Colditz Castle was a frightening prison, but it was also frequently
absurd, a place of suffering but also of high comedy, an idiosyncratic and
eccentric crucible that evolved its own culture, cookery, sports, theater, and
even a distinct internal language. But this heavily guarded cage, surrounded
by barbed wire and cut off from the world, changed everyone who entered
it, as life inside the castle evolved, and the war ground on. Some prisoners
were heroic, but they were also human: tough and vulnerable, brave but
terrified, by turns cheerful, determined, and despairing.
This is the core of the real Colditz story: how ordinary people, on both
sides, responded to dramatic and demanding circumstances not of their
making. It asks a simple question: What would you have done?
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Preface
List of Illustrations
Maps
Prologue: Franz Josef
1940
Chapter 1: The Originals
1941
Chapter 2: Le Ray’s Run
Chapter 3: The Bad Boys’ Camp
Chapter 4: Goon-Baiting
Chapter 5: Ballet Nonsense
1942
Chapter 6: Le Métro
Chapter 7: Clutty of Mi9
Chapter 8: Seeking for a Path
Chapter 9: Dogsbody
1943
Chapter 10: The Prominente Club
Chapter 11: Shabash
1944
Chapter 12: The Dentist Spies
Chapter 13: Madness
Chapter 14: The Sparrows
Chapter 15: The Red Fox
1945
Chapter 16: The Rhine Maiden
Chapter 17: Besieged
Chapter 18: Endgame
Aftermath
Appendix: The 5-6-0 Code
Map
Photo Insert
Acknowledgments
A Note on Sources
Index
By Ben Macintyre
About the Author
A Reader’s Guide
