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The Great Escape

A Canadian Story

ebook
5 of 5 copies available
5 of 5 copies available
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
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 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 knownâon 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 himselfâthe 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 Armed with historical documents and testimony from the prisoners themselves, Barris corrects misapprehensions and distortions made in the name of entertainment and reveals the true world of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.

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  • English

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