The Great Escape (pub. 1950; rel. 1963)

The Great Escape is one of my favorite movies of all time. When I found the DVD for sale I bought it with the intention of watching it with my son. He was only 3 at time, alas. I waited.

We finally saw it a couple of weeks ago and it definitely holds up and turned out to be a great war movie for an 8 year old -- not too violent or scary but full of adventure and excitement.

Doesn't everyone like escape movies? Escape From Alcatraz is practically required viewing for Northern California residents. People love the Shawshank Redemption but no one really wants to root for criminals, and so Stephen King had to make sure we knew that Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) was an innocent man.

POW movies are totally different. The Nazis are bad guys and the Allies are good guys. No redemption or character study necessary, just set up the situation and get the plot rolling.

Title cards claim that The Great Escape is based on a true story. The basic story of Allied airmen vs. Nazi prison guards is also told as a comedic thriller in Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 and as farcical sitcom on television's Hogan's Heroes. But The Great Escape is the best of the lot and, it turns out, very much the most accurate.

The Great Escape was written by Paul Brickhill, who was shot down in Tunisia in 1943 and brought to Stalag Luft III where the escape took place. He describes his part of the escape organization in the foreword:

I was a cog in the machine, boss of a gang of "stooges" guarding the forgers, who had to work in an exposed position by windows to get enough light....
      And when I finally drew a privileged position for the actual escape, "Big X" debarred me and three or four others on grounds of claustrophobia, a correct, if infuriating, decision. A few weeks later I was deeply grateful. (p. xiv)

As those familiar with the story will recall, his gratitude is because the Gestapo killed 50 men who were part of the escape. Although it was wartime, those killings were murders and prosecuted as such at the end of the war. Brickhill follows the story past the end of the movie as War Crimes officials track down what exactly happened to the escapees and put their murderers on trial.

After the hangman's job was done in 1948 I went through several thousand pages of unpublished reports, getting all the German side of the affair as well as a lot more of our own. And then I searched out the important survivors and filled in the few gaps left.
      So here it is, as nearly the way it happened as I can make it. (p. xv)

The book does not have footnotes, index or other academic apparatus but given the author's place in the story and the short time between event and history, I will assume that this is an accurate memoir, supplemented by research.

What the book does have, though, are photographs of actual men, Allies and prison officials, and maps and sectional drawings of the tunnels and equipment. Many photographs came from sympathetic German interpreters or other captors, and the drawings were from the pen of Ley Kenyon, one of the forgers.

So... how does the movie hold up under fact checking?

Well, many characters and events are amalgamations of reality designed to give more structure to the emotional and narrative arc of the story.

That said, there are many parts of the movie that I felt were a little "too much" but turned out to be absolutely true. For example:

• one of the tunnelers was indeed claustrophobic, like Charles Bronson's character
• they did bribe and befriend German guards, sometime trading information or blackmailing them for supplies and news (rather than a stolen wallet, the real POWs tricked a guard into signing a receipt for a ration of chocolate -- once they had his signature, he was stuck)
• the tunnels were truly hundreds of feet long, lit by electricity and had trolleys and way stations every hundred feet. And yes, they were a little short of the woods.
• a bunch of Americans did distill some alcohol for a Fourth of July celebration
• during the escape, Roger Bartlett (Richard Attenborough) and Mac are tripped up when a German official speaks to them in English and Mac responds in kind; the real "Big X" (the operational planner) Roger Bushell's travelling companion reportedly fell for the same trick
• the movie shows 76 men escaping, 50 shot dead and three escaping (Broson and his buddy get to a Swedish ship and James Cogburn, as an Australian, makes it to Spain); in fact, only 3 did make it to England

Here is some of what is not true to life:

• there was no one like the Steve McQueen character (although there were plenty of men who planned individual escapes and were caught and put in "the cooler" for solitary confinement, and there were those who went stir crazy like McQueen's buddy "Ives" who is shot climbing the barbed wire in broad daylight)
• head forger Tim Walenn, although reportedly as kind and proper as Donald Pleasance's performance, did not become legally blind 
• before the breakout, the Americans were moved into an adjacent camp, away from the Royal Air Force officers and without access to the tunnel; the only American escapee was "The Artful Dodger," Major Johnny Dodge, who was born American but had joined the RAF 
• the escape occurred in March, with snow on the ground

Here is a sampling of information that the book provides that is not in the movie:

• the actual tunnel ran directly under the cooler
• one of the men singing in the group that camouflaged the sound of tool making once shouted to the manufacturers to keep their noise down, as he could hardly hear himself sing
• Hitler was directly involved in the kill order
• Churchill received an eyewitness account of the escape

Let me unpack this a bit. First of all, all of the prisoners were airmen -- pilots, mostly -- and as such, all were officers. The prison they were in was established for them and run by their opposite numbers, i.e. German Luftwaffe. There was mutual respect for each other and by all accounts the prison Kommandant was respectful and did not mistreat the men under his care. The Luftwaffe were officers who mostly disassociated themselves from the Gestapo. 

Second, although the movie is three hours long, I don't think it ever fully establishes a chronology. Some of the men were shot down just weeks into the war. Stalag III was established in 1942. Tunnels were dug, and discovered, and blown up (blowing up the hut with the trap door along with it -- not a great day for the Germans). The actual escape occurred in March of 1944; some of the men had been interred in various camps for three or more years. Of course, they had no idea how much longer the war would last (although an illicit radio brought BBC news) and some of them continued to attempt escape until the end, especially when rumors came that, in case of German defeat, prisoners would be shot and killed rather than returned to the Allies.

The orders for more brutal treatment came directly from the top. A month before the breakout, Himmler decreed that recaptured airmen were to be handed over the the Gestapo (p. 145). Weeks later, he ordered that escapees, with the exception of British and American officers, were to be taken to Mauthausen Concentration Camp to be gassed or shot (p. 151). After the breakout, Hitler got involved. Just as Roger Bushell/Bartlett had planned, the escape forced the Nazis to spend a lot of energy and manpower within Germany even as they were fighting on two fronts. Hitler was furious with the escape and issued his decree: "They are all to be shot on recapture." Goering protested, noting that it would be obvious that the men would have been murdered. "In that case," Hitler amended, "more than half of them are to be shot" (p. 209-10).

As depicted in the movie, 50 recaptured men were shot and killed by the Gestapo (General Nebe selected which men were to receive the death sentence). Unlike the movie, these deaths happened in twos and threes and fours, as various men were caught at different borders or train stations and brought to the local Gestapo.

In the aftermath of the escapes, one prisoner, The Dodger, was recaptured and released to England by the Germans. But before his release, he was brought before Dr. Schmidt, Hitler's interpreter and given a message to deliver to Churchill (Dodge was a relation): 1. no unconditional surrender, 2. respect ethnographical boundaries and 3. maintain the balance of power in Europe (spoken with an eye toward Russia) (p. 241). Two days before VE Day, Dodger met with Churchill and told him his story. "When he got the the part about Schmidt and no unconditional surrender, Churchill took the cigar out of his mouth and grinned from ear to ear." (p. 243)

So is the book worth reading? 

Sadly, I have to equivocate. If, like me, you love the movie, Stalag 17, Hogan's Heroes and all the rest, and you want to know what the true story was behind these tales, this book is worth reading, and fascinating in its details and facts. However, if you had never heard of these stories, I would not recommend the book, for many of the same reasons: it's an attempt at proper history. 

Many of the isolated moments are cinematic and exciting, but Brickhill tries to be a conscientious historian and that robs him of a lot of storytelling momentum. For example, he lists the names of dozens of men and their nationalities, thus commemorating their efforts and sacrifice, but oftentimes bogging the story down. 

While reading the book, I kept thinking to myself, Boy, whoever first optioned it must have been thrilled to dramatize some of these events. I also thought to myself, boy, it's nice that they invented the James Garner character to embody so many of the scattered anecdotes.

Bottom line: the book is great for fans, but for a newcomer or casual reader, I would here recommend starting with the film, and know that while many sequences have been condensed, for the most part the tale told on screen holds true to history.