Synopsis
The true story of one of history's most notorious prisons--and the remarkable cast of POWs who tried relentlessly to escape their captors.
In this narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.
But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre's telling, Colditz's most famous names--like the indomitable Pat Reid--share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America's oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.
Prisoners of the Castle traces the war's arc from within Colditz's stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler's war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis.
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Colditz
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Colditz
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Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle
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Colditz : Prisoners of the Castle
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Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle
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Penguin Books Ltd, United Kingdom, London, 2022
ISBN 10: 0241408539
ISBN 13: 9780241408537
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Paperback. Condition: Very Good. 'A master at setting the pulse racing' Daily Mail 'Macintyre does true-life espionage better than anyone else' John Preston _____________________________ THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF THE MOST INFAMOUS PRISON IN HISTORY -- FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SAS: ROGUE HEROES AND THE SPY AND THE TRAITOR In a forbidding Gothic castle on a hilltop in the heart of Nazi Germany, an unlikely band of British officers spent the Second World War plotting daring escapes from their German captors. Or so the story of Colditz has gone, unchallenged for 70 years. But that tale contains only part of the truth. The astonishing inside story, revealed for the first time in this new book by bestselling historian Ben Macintyre, is a tale of the indomitable human spirit, but also one of snobbery, class conflict, homosexuality, bullying, espionage, boredom, insanity and farce. With access to an astonishing range of material, Macintyre reveals a remarkable cast of characters of multiple nationalities hitherto hidden from history, with captors and prisoners living for years cheek-by-jowl in a thrilling game of cat and mouse. From the elitist members of the Colditz Bullingdon Club to America's oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent, the soldier-prisoners of Colditz were courageous and resilient as well as vulnerable and fearful -- and astonishingly imaginative in their desperate escape attempts. Deeply researched and full of incredible human stories, this is the definitive book on Colditz. _____________________________ 'The best true spy story I have ever read' John le Carre on The Spy and the Traitor 'Impeccably researched, superbly told' Antony Beevor on SAS 'This book is classic Ben Macintyre . . . quirky human details enliven every page' Spectator on Agent Sonya. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR012716176
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