PRISONERS OF THE CASTLE

Macintyre’s latest nonfiction thriller takes us inside a notorious Nazi prison.

World War II buffs know that Colditz was a castle deep inside Germany that housed Allied officer POWs who had tried repeatedly to escape. Numerous fictional portrayals of heroic prisoners outsmarting dastardly Nazis bear little relation to reality, but Macintyre tells an equally entertaining story that sticks to the facts. The author reminds readers that POW camps were run by the Wehrmacht, which mostly abided by the dictates of the Geneva Conventions. Prisoner abuse was rare, and escape attempts were punished by solitary confinement, not execution, although conditions deteriorated in the war’s final year. Guards tended to be older noncombatants or World War I veterans whose enthusiasm for Nazism varied. As for the POWs, assignment to Colditz was a sloppy process; many were not escapees and never joined escape plots. Courage was plentiful, but there were also plenty of negative elements among the prison population. British prisoners, almost all upper class, treated the enlisted men who served them shabbily. Antisemitism was common among the French, many of whom preferred Pétain to de Gaulle. Macintyre emphasizes that Colditz was a titanic castle but a poor prison, replete with passages, drains, cellars, abandoned sections, and locks that could be easily picked. Having set the scene, he devotes most of the narrative to escape attempts in which spectacularly creative prisoners vied with increasingly skilled guards, who learned from their mistakes. At any given time, several tunnels were in progress because prisoners from each nation had their own projects. Although dazzling technical achievements, almost all failed. The only successful operations involved individuals or small groups. Unlike many fictional portrayals, Macintyre chronicles what happened once the men were outside the walls. The Swiss border was 400 miles away, and almost every escapee was caught before reaching it. Perhaps 30 made it out of Germany.

A mixture of derring-do and a vivid, warts-and-all portrayal of the iconic castle.