the real story, in an exhibition in London

In March 1944, more than 70 Allied prisoners of war managed to escape from the Stalag Luft III camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. After the film “The Great Escape” released in 1963, an exhibition in London now tells the true story of these soldiers.

The 1944 escape of prisoners of war from the Stalag Luft III camp was immortalized by Hollywood, in The great Escape. Nearly 80 years later, an exhibition in London reveals the true story of these courageous soldiers, after the publication of archives. On the night of March 23-24, 1944, more than 70 Allied prisoners of war, pilots, escaped from this infamous camp located in Nazi-occupied Poland. The escape was the culmination of months of work for these prisoners, who used ingenious techniques not only to escape, but also to get information out of the camp.

In the 1963 film, the escape results in one of cinema’s most famous scenes, when Steve McQueen jumps on a motorcycle over barbed wire to freedom. The reality was very different, underlines Will Butler, the deputy curator of the exhibition which opens this Friday, February 2, at the National Archives, in London. “76 people got out, (but) 50 of those who were captured later were executed by the Gestapo,” he explains. Only three ultimately managed to reach England.

Coded messages

The exhibition Great Escapes: Remarkable Prisoners of the Second World War explores the techniques used by these inmates to convey information. Among the most popular methods were coded messages. In a letter, pilot Peter Gardner hid vital information inside the photo of a fellow inmate, Guy Griffiths.

When Gardner wrote about Griffiths in a letter to his mother, it was actually a hidden message to MI9, a service created by the British government to aid escapes. He hid his secret message by writing in tiny characters, illegible without magnification, carefully inserted below the image. The clandestine messages were often requests for items to be smuggled into the camp to help the escapees, such as radio parts or, in this case, the making of false documents.

“I had great success with various documents provided to a number of escapees on March 5, but had great difficulty obtaining originals to copy,” he writes. “Requests tracing of the identity card of a foreign worker in Germany. (…) Also requests powdered Indian ink, three very fine nibs”, he added in the secret letter of 1942. Two of the three escapees who managed to reach England had used false papers saying they were Norwegian electricians working in Germany.

“Mental escape”

The secret letters were also used to provide information to MI9 about other detainees, possible candidates for intelligence operations. The exhibition shows equipment that entered the camp to aid the escape. These include a playing card hiding plans, a hairbrush in which a card is hidden and a small saw.

The exhibition also evokes an escape much less known than that of Stalag Luft III: that of 70 German prisoners from a camp in Wales. They had dug tunnels under three rows of barbed wire in March 1945. But all were caught. There are also detainees who “mentally escaped” through activities ranging from theater to drawing, such as British author and playwright PG Wodehouse and artist Ronald Searle.

PG Wodehouse wrote at least one novel while a prisoner. Searle made more than 300 sketches of his fellow prisoners at the Changi camp in Singapore and while working on the Thailand-Burma railway.

The exhibition “Great Escapes: Remarkable Prisoners of the Second World War” at the National Archives, London, from February 2 to July 21, 2024