The Last Escape

Colditz is probably the best known prisoner of war camp. Its inmates and their exploits were extraordinary, but its liberation, in April 1945, was straightforward compared with what happened to the vast majority of British, American and Commonwealth prisoners in the last desperate months of the war. This title discusses how World War II ended for a quarter of a million men held in 55 camps and how, in the last months of the war, most of them became caught up in a desperate endgame. The story of their escape is told through the men, now in their 70s and 80s, who lived through this terrible time. Beginning with the D-day landings in June 1944, the text follows them through the closing days of their incarceration and then on their marches across a Europe in chaos. Their experiences are placed in the wider context of the Allied advance and the German retreat, and the increasingly frenzied attempts of those in London and elsewhere to keep track of them.