ABSTRACT
The life of the prisoner of war in Germany has been portrayed in the popular culture of the 1950s as a series of exciting escapes and psychological battles between captive and captor (e.g., Brickhill 1951; Crawley 1956; Williams 1949; and so on—POW literature from the 1950s is extensive); a phenomenon recently dubbed the ‘Colditz myth’ after the famous POW camp Oflag IVC situated in the eponymous town in Saxony (Mackenzie 2004). The central aspect of this myth is the gathering together of a series of like-minded individuals in POW camps across Germany, comprising (mostly) young intelligent men, usually officers, who are intent on turning their intelligence and expertise to the matter of escape. The reality was somewhat different. Most camps were not occupied by officers. In the Stalags (Stammlagern), the main camps holding the majority (the non-officer prisoners known as Other Ranks, or ORs), men were forced to work and as a consequence had limited ‘free time.’ And escape was largely the pastime of the few or the committed.
