The Great Escape: A Canadian Story

by Ted Barris

Overview

A unique retelling of WWII’s most dramatic escape, told through first-hand recollections of the soldiers who experienced it.

On the night of March 24, 1944, 80 Commonwealth airmen crawled through a 336-foot-long tunnel and slipped into the forest beyond the wire of Stalag Luft III, a German POW compound near Sagan, Poland. The event became known as &8220;The Great Escape,&8220; an intricate breakout more than a year in the making, involving as many as 2,000 POWs working with extraordinary coordination, intelligence, and daring. Yet within a few days, all but three of the escapees were recaptured. Subsequently, 50 were murdered, cremated, and buried in a remote corner of the prison camp.

But most don’t know the real story behind The Great Escape. Now, on the eve of its 70th anniversary, Ted Barris writes of the key players in the escape attempt, those who got away, those who didn’t, and their families at home.

Barris marshals groundbreaking research into a compelling firsthand account. For the first time, The Great Escape retells one of the most astonishing episodes in WWII directly through the eyes of those who experienced it.

Joint Winner of the Libris Award for Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2014
Globe and Mail Bestseller
Toronto Star Bestseller

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771024754
Publisher:	Dundurn Press
Publication date:	09/16/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	798,562
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Ted Barris is an accomplished author, journalist and broadcaster. As well as hosting stints on CBC Radio and regular contributions to The Globe and Mail, the National Post, and various national magazines, he is a full-time professor of journalism at Centennial College in Toronto. Barris has authored 17 non-fiction books, including the national bestsellers Victory at Vimy and Juno.

Ted Barris is an award-winning author, journalist, and broadcaster. For more than forty years his writing has appeared in the national press, as well as in history, news, and arts magazines, and he has authored seventeen non-fiction books, including the national bestsellers Victory at Vimy, Juno, and The Great Escape. In 2014, The Great Escape received the national Libris Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award. He teaches journalism at Centennial College in Toronto and lives in Uxbridge, Ontario.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction: "Heroes Resurface" 1

1 The King's Regulations 9

2 Bond of Wire 23

3 "Spine-Tingling Sport" 45

4 Escape Season 67

5 Servant to a Hole in the Ground 87

6 "Shysters and Crooks and Con Men" 111

7 The Play's the Thing 135

8 "Through Adversity to the Stars" 159

9 The Hate Campaign 181

10 Long Road Home 203

11 "A Proud, Spectacular Distraction" 233

Notes 257

Photograph Credits 275

Index 277

What People are Saying About This

Lloyd Robertson

With new insights and a fresh perspective, Ted Barris takes us deep inside The Great Escape. In fascinating and meticulous detail, he unravels the plotting and planning, completely befuddling German prison guards, that led to one of the most daring real-life dramas in modern history.

Albert Wallace

A magnificent story. I spent eighteeen months in Stalag Luft III North Compound [as a POW, but] I was unaware of the vast work that went on. . . . So many of the interviews are all news to me. [This book] brings it all to life.

From the Publisher

A magnificent story. I spent eighteeen months in Stalag Luft III North Compound [as a POW, but] I was unaware of the vast work that went on. . . . So many of the interviews are all news to me. [This book] brings it all to life.

As always, Ted Barris, our best writer on Canadians at war, paints small personal stories on the broad canvas of epic conflict, and in The Great Escape, gives us the real truth on a story we thought we knew. Riveting.

With new insights and a fresh perspective, Ted Barris takes us deep inside The Great Escape. In fascinating and meticulous detail, he unravels the plotting and planning, completely befuddling German prison guards, that led to one of the most daring real-life dramas in modern history.

Linwood Barclay

As always, Ted Barris, our best writer on Canadians at war, paints small, personal stories on the broad canvas of epic conflict, and in The Great Escape, gives us the real truth on a story we thought we knew. Riveting.

Editorial Reviews

10/14/2013
Journalist and author Barris, who has written 16 other history books, applies his ample experience as a military historian to the Great Escape, a Second World War prison escape most people may know best, if at all, from the popular but inaccurate 1963 Hollywood movie. While the bare facts are well known—on March 24, 1943, 80 soldiers escaped from Luft Stalag III, only for all but three to be recaptured and no less than 50 executed on the orders of Hitler himself—the film version played up American involvement and downplayed the Commonwealth elements of the escape to make the result more palatable to American viewers. Armed with historical documents and testimony from the prisoners themselves, Barris corrects misapprehensions and distortions made in the name of entertainment and reveals the true world of life in a German POW camp. The author also delves into what happened after the escape, in the increasingly constrained lives of the POWs during the last years of the Third Reich and the desperate forced march as the Nazi regime finally collapsed. With the 70th anniversary of the Allied mass escape from Luft Stalag III fast approaching, Barris's re-examination is both timely and fascinating. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

No one tells these stories better than [Ted Barris].

Matt Galloway

Military historian Ted Barris’s seventeenth book of non-fiction...follows his well-honed and highly successful approach of combining vivid characters with thumping narrative.

Globe and Mail

Military historian Ted Barris’s seventeenth book of non-fiction...follows his well-honed and highly successful approach of combining vivid characters with thumping narrative.

No one tells these stories better than [Ted Barris].

Barris’s re-examination is both timely and fascinating.

From the Publisher

No surprise that when we think of The Great Escape, the true story of hundreds of POWs in Stalag Luft III, we think of the movie and super cool Steve McQueen riding his motorcycle. Turns out many Canadians and other plotters who trained here were involved in the plan. Ted Barris gives them their due, mining interviews, diaries and letters from his entertaining book…

Now magazine

As I read Barris’s engrossing account, what really resonated was the youth of these men, many of them in their early twenties, and the courage and grit they displayed in the face of dire options.

Literary Review of Canada

Barris’ book contains much that is new with a fresh perspective on this oft-told tale. The detail is meticulous, the tension unbearable, the aftermath tragic.

Owen Sound Sun Time

So, the story that everybody thinks they know, this time gets the proper telling - based on ted Barris's many years of interviewing, research and acquisition of diaries, letters, documents and never before seen photography. This is an easy read and highly recommended.

PX Magazine