The forgotten first Great Escape of 1918 It is one of the best-known stories of the Second World War, popularised by the 1963 film starring Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough. But what few people realise is that the 1944 Great Escape was inspired by an even more audacious getaway, orchestrated more than 20 years earlier.
March 20, 2014 at 7:00 am
In 1918 a group of 29 British officers escaped through a tunnel dug under the noses of heavily armed German guards at the Holzminden Prisoner of War Camp, situated south-west of Hanover, Germany.
The men dug for eight months using just cutlery and bowls, before escaping in July 1918. Of the 29 men, 19 were caught and 10 reached Holland on foot.
Their breakout was the subject of a Channel 5 documentary, The First Great Escape, which aired in March 2014. It featured interviews with historians and experts who had uncovered new evidence of what happened during the planning and execution of the escape, as well as rare archive photographs of the camp and the escapees, and dramatic reconstructions.
Here, Saul David, the lead historian behind the programme, tells History Extra how the getaway formed the blueprint for the famous Second World War Great Escape.
Q: What was life like in the Holzminden Prisoner of War (PoW) Camp?
A: It was the biggest camp for officers – it held about 550 officers and 150 orderlies. Interestingly, despite the fact they were being held in a prisoner of war camp, the Germans still felt the men should have privates in charge of them. It was a tough place to be incarcerated. It was a pretty Spartan existence – they slept on small mattresses, and the blankets were almost never changed. There was no heating either. They were pretty grim conditions.
The PoWs called the camp ‘Hellzminden’. And the camp commandant, Karl Niemeyer, had an appalling reputation for cruelty. He was a really vindictive character who made life particularly difficult for the soldiers.
Torture and summary execution were not unknown at the camp.
The soldiers wanted to escape – it’s an unspoken rule that all officers are expected to escape; it’s in their military code. But a lot of people wouldn’t have wanted to escape and go back to the trenches.
Q: So how did the men get out?
A: They started preparing in November 1917, and escaped on the evening of 24 July 1918. They dug using spoons, sharpened cutlery and tools stolen from the camp, and they used bed slats to shore it.
They designed and made an ingenious ventilation system, fake uniforms and official papers.
But the plan was tinged with a lot of bad luck. They initially planned to dig [an underground tunnel] only a short distance, but their plan was scuppered by a guard who got suspicious.
So they then had to dig another, longer tunnel. You could only crawl down it – when you had gone in you could not go back. But they stuck with it, amazingly.
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