From the silver to the small screen, Colditz Castle during the Second World War has captured audiences in the West for over 75 years. Stories of ingenuity (the Colditz Cock, anyone?), bravery and swashbuckling officers with perfectly maintained mustaches playing a cat and mouse game with Nazis all while being held in captivity is worth its weight in Hollywood gold.
Such stories have been firmly mined by historians and screenwriters alike. Or have they?
Author Ben Macintyre recently spoke with HistoryNet about the notorious prison camp, and how, after all these years and countless retellings, there’s still so much to unearth.
YOU HAVE OFTEN WRITTEN THESE INCREDIBLY UNIQUE STORIES ABOUT THESE LARGER-THAN-LIFE CHARACTERS — WHO HAVE BEEN, MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, LOST TO HISTORY. WHAT IN PARTICULAR DREW YOU TO THE POWS AT COLDITZ?
Colditz is the most symbolic, famous, notorious wartime prison camp in history — it’s buried in our national mythology. It’s absolutely central to it. I grew up watching the black-and-white TV series about Colditz. I grew up playing the board game of Colditz.
And so along with that kind of heavy symbolism comes a lot of mythology. There is a very clear legend associated with Colditz. To sort of to simplify it, it’s the legend of brave Brits with mustaches, winning the war in a different way by defying the German captors and digging their way out to freedom. Now, of course, there was a lot of that — there was a tremendous amount of bravery and resilience and a lot of incredible escape attempts. But what I found fascinating about Colditz is that it’s a kind of, it’s a strange, artificial, enclosed world that takes place in the middle of war.
