Thanks so much for joining us tonight and thanks to the u. S. Army command and general Staff College. One of our longest, one of our best, one of our favorite programming partners for yet another what i know will be a compelling presentation. These guys are money, as many of you know, and were so fortunate and privileged to be associated with them. Tonight, we welcome david mills of the command general Staff College and kayla westra of the Minnesota West Community and technical college, the coauthors of great wartime escapes and rescues. Ill start by saying they had me in grade school. I was a fourth grader i think when hollywood released the great escape, the classic adventure drama staring Steve Mcqueen, james garner, charles bronson, among others. It pretty quickly became a tv staple, and all of the guys in my class at st. Josephs Elementary School in martingsburg, missouri, fell in love with it and we would play it out at recess. Each one of us would take one of the roles. Of course all of us wanted to be mcqueen. The cooler king. I think i wound up with the atten borero. He was the raf squadron leader, which was fine by me, though i get executed at the end of the movie. Of course mcqueen survives. We didnt realize then and what we probably didnt care about was that the movie was based on a true story, the escape of 76 allied soldiers and officers from germanys stalllog3 in 1944. The film pretty much gave us the real life tragic ending to that story. Only three of those men who escaped stayed escaped. Two norwegian pilot, another pilot from the netherlands, no americans. The other 73 were killed or recaptured more than twothirdses of them were executed. The fact is escaping was hard and it wasnt often tried during world war ii in particular and when it was it often didnt succeed. When it did, it really was an inspiration and it was often hollywood stuff. David and kaylas book details the cias rescue of americans in tehran during the 1979 iran hostage crisis which was the basis for the best picture oscar winner argo. This is, i think, the third time that david has spoken here at the library. The last was a little less than a year ago when he talked about the power pairing of Dwight Eisenhower and george marshal. Hes an assistant professor of military history at the command and general Staff College. Kayla, who is a former kansas city resident, is here from where she now lives in worthington, minnesota, where shes the dean of institutional effectiveness and liberal arts at the Minnesota West Community and technical college. Kayla, thanks so much for making the trip. Please join me in welcoming both of them, david mills and kayla westra. [ applause ] well, good evening, everybody. Thanks for coming out. Looks like the weather has cooperated. If you remember last year we were supposed to have a couple different presentations that eventually got canceled because of the weather. Its great to see everybody. Thanks. Thanks for coming out. Im dave mills and this is my good friend kayla westra. So weve been friends for about ten years. We worked together at Minnesota West Community college up until a few years ago when i took a position down here. About two years ago, kayla and i decided to write this book about p. O. W. Escapes and rescues. Many of you probably remember the bud man who was instrumental in orchestrating many of the discussions and talk about world war ii down here, so when i told the bud man about our book, he asked us to come and talk about a number of these episodes. This evening were going to start off talking about the history of prisoners and their treatment and well talk about why its so hard to make a successful escape and then were going to talk about specific episodes of the prisoners and the escape attempts they made. We have a variety of stories for you tonight. Were going to talk about the great escape in a little more detail. Were going to talk about a prison camp in the philippines where the entire prison camp was rescued and then a number of individual escapes that include american, french, german and british officers. I hope you enjoy it. In 2004 when tom brokaw coined the phrase the greatest generation he was talking about those who grew up in the depression era and served in world war ii or stayed at home and labored for the effort in world war ii. It was at a time when we still had a number of those people in our midst. 15 years later were seeing future afewer and fewer of that generation. We are losing that generation. This is my dad. This is my dad. My dad would have gotten a kick out of that. He had the greatest sense of humor. My dad was part of that greatest generation and he served in world war ii as well. As we talk about these escapes and rescues we focus on a couple episodes. When we were working on this book i purposely did not watch the movies and so i am a movie buff and i know a lot of movies but purposely did not track down the movies on these because as entertaining as they are, they are not always aligned to history as we know. Im not antimovie. I use movies. Im an english teacher by trade so i use movies to get students excited about history and different things, but we must dig beyond what the movie tells us to get at the real story. Because i can tell you from the research we did, theres very little glamour in many of these escapes and rescues and very little victory against all odds, but its really important we tell these stories and retelling them is critical to remembering the people and their efforts as well as all of the untold stories, especially from those who did not get out. Im going to take you back to actually my favorite time period which is the middle ages. Dave has worked me a little bit and brought me over to world war ii. But to understand a little more about p. O. W. S, you should understand where this concept came from. In the middle ages there were very few prisoners of war because unless you were noble you werent worth a whole lot. If you were a commoner, they didnt have much use for you so they would probably either kill you off or enslave you or massacre you. There wasnt meany point in tryg to keep you around. We have the french wars in the 14th century and changes in tactics and weaponry, Army Composition changed. Armies became larger and more lethal and the common soldiers actually became a little more important because they were fighting with pix and long bows and eventually rifles. It was at this point that a commoner could actually kill a noble if they could get close enough to do some damage, so the value of that common soldier increased. And then nobles refined the rules of engagement a little more. In the 16th and 17th centuries armies numbered in the thousands. As you can imagine taking care of prisoners of war became more difficult. By the mid 18th century we went from small, professional armies to more National Armies and soldiers who fought for ideology, in other words for an idea. It became more difficult to get men to switch sides. That was a common tactic in the middle ages. How about you fight for us and we wont kill you was a pretty strong argument. And then, of course, more men were needed if you were keeping these prisoners of war. It became a time where they had to write down rules of engagement and how things were going to be handled. While the term has been used for centuries prisoner of war became a legal status only after the hague peace conference in 1899. The provisions for the treatment of prisoners were extensive but in guaranteed humane treatment and specified what work prisoners could do. The agreement required each prisoner to divulge true name, rank, date of birth and Service Number if they had one. Further refined the treatment and placed responsibility of the protection of prisoners on the leadership of the powers that had captured them. Torture was specifically outlawed as a means of extracting information, but as we know the communist forces in korea and vietnam notoriously violated that provision. So youre going to go ahead and advance my slide for me and point out i was supposed to do that first. Thanks. All right. So escape, right. It just sounds like it ought to be a nobrainer. It sounds like everybody would want to try and escape, but there are a number of problems that you have to consider if youre going to try and escape from a prison. The first one is probably first and foremost, you know you can be shot upon escape or upon recapture. That kind of thing happened. It was not a decision to be taken lightly. Once a prisoner decided that he or she was going to try to escape, there are a number of questions that have to be answered. The first question is, how are you going to get out of prison . Youve got a lot of really smart people who put together a prison in order to keep you inside of it, so there are some considerations that you need to think about, like guards and dogs and electrified barbd wire fences and search lights and watch towers and land mines and a number of obstacles designed to keep you in. Lets assume that you do get out of the prison. Whats the next question that you probable need to ask yourself . How are you going to travel and where are you going to go . So walking takes a lot of time and a lot of energy, and prisoners would probably want to avoid the public where they could attract suspicion and maybe the attention of the police. A prisoner didnt have money to purchase a ticket on an airplane, a train, a ship, or any other kind of mode of transportation. They probably didnt speak the local language, so a number of problems that need to be overcome. The third major issue is one of logistics. For most prisoners the clothes that they would be wearing were out of the ordinary. Most soldiers are captured in their uniforms and the enemy uniforms or enemy personnel walking down the street are undoubtedly going to attract the wrong kind of attention, right. What about identification papers that everybody, at least in europe, was required to carry at this time. How would you eat . You had no money. You want to avoid the local population. You cant just walk into the local dennys and order up some grub. The fourth major issue is, in either germany or japan, is the problem of fitting in. I mean this is particularly obvious with an american in the Pacific Theater where the japanese would have control of the philippines and other islands and iterterritories. I lived in germany and russia for a number of years and nobody ever mistaked me for a local. I dont know how they knew that i was an american but they always did. Then the last question is one of physical limitations. As you can see a whole lot of these guys are not treated particularly well, and so the idea of getting out of a prison camp and putting some distance between themselves and the guards who would probable be looking for them rather quickly is raises some obvious problems. So there are a number of issues that youve got to think through before you can even consider the idea of escape. So one of the things you might want to do is get some help in your escape effort and for these reasons, every escapee had to have the help of other prisoners. Large prison camps would have escape committees. Theyre usually made up of the highest ranking folks in the prison camp itself and if you were if you were a prisoner and you had an idea that you were going to escape from prison you would need to go to the escape committee and present your plan. Remember, this is a military organization. The idea of hierarchy is one thats embraced. If you have a plan, you go to the escape committee, you brief the escape committee on your plan, and the committee can either approve it or disapprove it. So one of the reasons that the escape committee might disapprove of your plan, say nope, you cant escape in that manner at that time in that way that youve described, you need to put your plans on the back burner, one of the reasons that might be the case is you might interfere with another escape plan thats already in the works. You need to coordinate that. The last thing you would want is to mess up one plan because you stumbled into something. Another reason that the escape might be disapproved is that it had little chance of success. So the escape committee might look at this idea and say, you know, all youre going to do is bring a whole lot of scrutiny and attention to the prisoners and the idea of escaping which May Institute new rules and regulations that will make it harder for everybody else and you really did need to have some semblance of or chance of success in getting out. Now, if the Committee Approved your escape plan, that meant that the entire committee and most likely a whole lot of folks within the prison itself were going to help you out and assist in your escape. Theres not a lot that folks could do, but maybe a distraction to draw attention away from whatever area you were going to be focussed on in getting out of the prison. There were also there used to be a number of civilian occupations that would help a prisoner in their escape, like used to be a whole lot of folks who were printers and new ink and paper and were able to make and forge identification papers. Artists were also very good at helping with the more intricate details of faking identification papers. Tailors is another one, where they might be able to take your uniform and make it look more like a civilian suit than an army uniform, especially if it was dyed. So bribing guards is another thing that the prison system would do. Everybody would be checking, so how vulnerable is this new guard. Can i bribe him . Can i buy some things from him . How amenable is this person to making a trade of some sort . So oftentimes the only way that you could get really critical equipment like a typewriter or a camera to take pictures of people to make these fake i. D. Papers was to bribe guards. Lots of folks didnt even know exactly where they were in the prison camp system but information could be had from guards. You could bribe guards to get money so that prisoners once they escaped would actually have some currency maybe if they spoke the language well enough, they could try to purchase a ticket and that sort of thing. So yeah, on one hand escape is pretty difficult, but, you know, you can try and leverage the knowledge and the expertise of folks within the prison. A lot of times you had a pretty good shot at least of getting away a little bit and so with that, im going to advance the slide and turn it back over to kayla. Hes trainable. Thats why were friends. So a lot bit of my thunder was stolen but i get to talk about the great escape today and i imagine a number of you know the story, but dave was talking about the logistics of getting out of the camp. The men still tried to escape even with all of those issues that they had. In fact, the allied prisoners were notorious for trying to escape from their german captors. The germans put the worst of the offenders in their most secure camps. That camp primarily held allied air force personnel, located in poland about 100 miles southeast of berlin. So as you can see in the image on the left side for you, the barracks were built off the ground, ton tunnelling efforts were pretty difficult, and there was sand underneath the topsoil that had a golden color. As they were trying to tunnel they had to put that sand somewhere and they quite often would put it in socks and take it up above and try to walk around and get rid of it, but when its golden on top its noticeable. The tunnels lds has to be extremely long because the barracks were back from the fence quite a ways. In order to tunnel, they had to hide what they were working on and they actually, again, being a little bit humorous, named the three tunnels, the tom, dick and harry tunnels and the tom tunnel was built in the dark corner of one of the barracks, harry under a stove and the last one, the dick tunnel was in the shower room underneath the drain. Each tunnel went straight down for about 40 feet, which enabled them to avoid the microphones they had in place so they could hear the tunnelling. And then, of course, that sandy soil as we talked about. Eventually they ran out of places to put all of that sand and they decided they would sacrifice one of the tunnels, the dick tunnel, and fill that with sand and all of the supplies they needed for once they got out. But shortly after that, then the germans found the tom tunnel and so two of their tunnels were compromised. So they began working on the last tunnel, the harry tunnel with some renewed enthusiasm. They had heard that they were going to be shipped to a more secure camp because of some of their shenanigans and they wanted to get this moving and get out as soon as they could. They finished this tunnel abds mid march. Took them about 15 months to complete one of the tunnels. They had to wait for a moonless night to get out. The plan was 40 feet down, 300 past the fence, 20 outside the fence and into the woods. The first ones out were the ones that spoke german, probably had escaped before, a little more confidence they could do this. Then they had a lottery for the next 100. They thought they could get about 200 men out in a single night. At 10 30 that night the first man made it through the tunnel and found the tunnel cleared the fence, went under the fence but didnt make it to the woods. This was something they had not really accounted for. The tunnels exit could be seen from the guard tower and greatly slowed down the process of getting the men out. They thought they would be able to send out 60 an hour and were only able to do about ten. At about midnight, they started at 10 30, the air raid sirens went off and those pesky americans had plugged into the electricity system in the tunnel, so when the air raid sirens went off they cut the power. They had to stop. The power came back on, and then one of the tunnel, one of the braces let loose and the tunnel collapsed and they had to dig that part out again. At 5 00 in the morning they had gotten 76 of the 100 men out. The 77th one was caught. So the men who got out all ran into the forest. They thought they would be able to find their way to the rail station with all of their papers. It was not as easy as they thought. There was also quite a bit of snow left. Even just traveling around was pretty difficult. All but three of them as you mentioned were caught and rounded up within two weeks. The germans executed 50 of those 76 within two weeks. The three who made it back to their homelands were two norwegian pilots and one dutch pilot. Some of you know this story, probably parts of it from the great escape. It was a pretty fictionalized account but an entertaining one nonetheless. You mentioned the cooler king. Im glad you did because this is the character that Steve Mcqueen was based upon. He was known as the cooler king because he was captured and escaped several times. He was the basis for Steve Mcqueens character. He was a native texan and had volunteered for the Royal Canadian air force in june of 1940, earned his pilots wings in a commission and gone to britain to fly spit fires. He was shot down on a mission in france. He was one of the most heavily punished prisoners in world war ii spending over six months in solitary confinement. His first stint came after a prank against the german guards. The guards were trying to count the prisoners as they often did, and several of the men including ash started Milling Around so if youve ever tried to count kindergartners you can imagine its very similar, right. The guards didnt find it as funny and ash ended up in the cooler, that was his First Experience in the cooler. He tried to escape. He was caught hiding in the shower room and was hoping they just wouldnt notice he was gone. But they counted prisoners. He got two weeks in the cooler for that. The camp became overcrowded. He was sent to another camp about 150 miles so the northeast in poland. About the day he got there, right, he tried to escape again. He was unloading a train and rolled underneath the train, got the other side and ran and they caught him and put him in the cooler again for a couple weeks. During this time he had actually secured a little nail file, a little file, and was trying to get out of his cell when they caught him a second time, another two weeks for that. You kind of see a pattern here with william ash. He gets out koofrlts and then he tries to cut through the fence with wire cutters. That time he did not get caught but his two compadres did. He also tunnelled out, again was caught. He spent about ten days in the cooler for that one. He did escape from a camp in lithuania and was actually on the loose for a couple weeks. Again, was caught. This time they said they were going to execute him because he was a little bit problematic to try to keep in, but instead they sent him back. While he was in the cooler that time, is when the great escape took place. He couldnt participate in the great escape because he was in the cooler at the time. After they executed those 50 men, he decided his career was over as an escape artist. As he was researching him i couldnt help but think of all the hogans heros i watched as a kid with the prisoners and their guards and the fun rivalry back and forth but there were no charming colonel hogans in the real german p. O. W. Camps, as much fun as they were to watch on tv. It was not what was depicted in real life. So if there was an award for the prisoner demonstrating the greatest amount of cools if under pressure, that award would probably have to go to George Grimson. He was a british Radio Operator on a british bomber. He was shot down july 15th, 1940. The germans transferred him back and forth to a number of different prison camps until he settled permanently. Grimson was a serial escaper like william ash. He learned to speak german very well with very little accent. But it was his confidence and bluster that were his greatest assets. He twice escaped from prison by dressing as a german officer and simply walking out the front gates until both time he was on a train headed north and attracted the attention of the gu stop po and police and he was quickly sent back to the prison camps. Grimsons most daring escape came when he pretended to be a german electrician so he could get near the electrified fence. He disguised himself by wearing a blue jump suit, dyed his air force cap blue so he would resemble a German Air Force enlisted man, and he carried a leather built with his tools. He had a bag with all these wires dangling out of it. He had a fake electrical meter and fake identity papers hidden in his clothes. He started away from the camp. This is a depiction. You can see right here, so this is a gate. Its not the main gate but this is a german sorry, this is the so this is the prisoner section. This is where the allied prisoners were kept. But this is the german section of the camp. This is where all of the guards slept, right. In order to get out of the prison, you would have to go through this main gate here from the prisoner section into the german section and then right out the main gate here. This is your final objective. What George Grimson did, he started as an electrician, kind of back here, not even close to the main gate so he wouldnt attract the suspicion of the gate guards. Hes dressed up as an electrician. He walks to the back end of the prison and kind of looks up at the watch tower and gets permission from the guard tower to start checking the fence. So hes got this fake electrical meter, checking the barbed wire, the electrified fence. Its a wonder he didnt electrocute himself because i dont know how he was faking it but they bought it. So he begins working his way down the prison fence until he gets right to the watch tower, right under the watch tower right here. Hes right beside the gate. Hes right under the watch tower. Wouldnt you know it, he accidentally drops his electrical meter on the other side of the fence. So he looks up at the watch tower and swears loudly and, you know, the soldier in the guard tower laughs at him, go ahead, go get it. And so he walks right out the main gate. He stops, picks up his electrical meter and keeps going. Nobody really questions him because hes obviously a German Air Force enlisted man. He walks out, he takes off his jump suit and underneath hes gotten a suit from the escape committee. And so hes on the loose for a while anyway. He bluffs his way on to a train headed for the baltic sea and, again, he attracts the attention of the train police or whoever it is, but hes rounded up and sent to another prison camp. And so next after this escape attempt, hes actually sent to 6 up here in lithuania. Its not too long until hes decided hes going to escape again. Now whats interesting about 6 is theyve got whats called the tallyho network which is a series or number of Prison Guards very susceptible to bribes. The prison system, the escape committee has bought a number of prison guard uniforms, a number of identity papers and passes so they can see exactly what the paperwork looks like that they have to recreate. Grimson goes to the escape committee and says, i want to escape and they say, thats good, because we have a job for you. One of the biggest problems, especially as far away as lithuania is, anybody who escapes is almost certainly to be caught without help on the outside. So what the prison escape committee asked grimson to do, is we want you to escape, but we want you to stay in the local area and work with the polish underground so that when other people escape you can help them on their way. And he agrees. He is actually set up outside the prison working with the polish underground for about three months until grimson just disappears. Nobody knows what happens to him. To this day nobody is really sure. Most likely what happened is that the germans figured out that their Prison Guards were corrupted and they were certainly arrested. They would have been executed. But most likely the Prison Guards were tortured before they were executed and most likely told the germans about George Grimson and his operations right outside of the prison walls. Grimson actually helped three soldiers to escape and they made it back to england. Most likely the gu stop po heard about grimson working in the local area, he was arrested and executed, although there is no record of it anywhere. So a great book about grimson is called the sergeants escapers. Its actually about a number of different episodes but his story is in there if youre interested. So the story about George Grimson was one of bluff and courage, and this next episode uses a lot of those same factors. This story is about a german prisoner who made one of the longest escapes ever during world war ii. So the prisoner that were talking about is franz, a german Fighter Pilot shot down over england september 5th, 1940. He was taken prisoner within minutes of crashing, he was interrogated for several weeks and then transferred to a p. O. W. Camp. The great thing about werra is he spoke english very, very well. Slight accent but spoke english very well. On october 7th, 1940, werra makes his first escape attempt. The british used to take prisoners on long hikes through the countryside. Theyre in england, right. I guess you have the atlantic on the left and the English Channel on the right, where are you going to go. Still, its kind of a pain to try to round these fellas up as often as they tried to escape. Werra was absolutely one of those guys. Out on one of these long nature hikes some of his buddies start to a fights to distract the guards. He jumps off a bridge, runs into some woods and hes at large for about six days before they finally track him down to a some of the High Mountain meadows where the sheep are grazing. He was pretty hungry so he and pretty cold so he was didnt really resist too awful much when he was when he was arrested again. But werra was also a serial escaper and that is not the end of our story. Soon werra was at it again. He was transferred to kind of a tougher prison camp at swanwick where werra and four other guys proceeded to tunnel out of their bar ricks, under the fence, even under the road next to the fence until they popped out into some wood not too far away. He and these four guys do their separate ways. Werra is a pilot and he has the idea hes going to sneak on to a Royal Air Force base, steal a plane, and fly it back to germany. Sounds crazy, right . Well nobody ever accused werra of being incredibly sane. He decides to give it the Old Middle School try. We a werra has to get to an raf base follows the sounds of a train whistle until hes comes to a railroad station, comes up to the clerk, with a bit of accent, not around here, tells the clerk hes a dutch Fighter Pilot, shot down the night before and i need to get to my base quickly. The clerk is rather suspicious, listening to this story, i didnt hear anything about a plane being shot down around here, and so he calls the police. But werra is as charming as he is courageous and within a few minutes, hes kind of talked the clerk down off of the ledge and has convinced him that he really is a dutch Fighter Pilot. I got to get back to my base. And so he calls the local raf base and they say, all right, well send a car. Well now you got the police coming, and the air force coming. So you can be sure werra is hoping the air force gets there first. As luck would have it, its the police. Two crusty old detectives show up and start questioning werra. Theyre pretty suspicious as well. That doesnt deter him. He is as charming and as pilot and flattering as he can possibly be and pretty soon hes turned these two detectives. They believe him. And so the air force is on their way, you say. Okay. Well stay here and just kind of chat with our allied Fighter Pilot and just kind of pass the time, right. Eventually the air force does send a car to pick up werra and the police are waiving at him. They Exchange Numbers or addresses i guess and promise to stay in touch maybe. I made that last part up. But you get the idea, right. These two crusty old Police Detectives totally bought this story. So now he goes to this air force base where he walks into the Administration Office and says, yeah, im from the this other base and i would like to borrow a plane to get back to my unit. And the air force guys are not buying it for a second. Theyre like, wait, where are you from again . What did you say your name was . Where were you shot down . No reports of any planes being shot down there. Were going to go ahead and call your unit and check up on you. So theyre trying to get through. They pick up the phone, trying to get through, and at this point werra stands up and walks out of the office. Hes going to look for a plane. Its not too long until he wanders through the gate, bluffs his way through the guard gate, he goes and finds a brand new hawker hurricane airplane sitting next to the runway. He climbs inside, looks at the instruments and has no earthly idea how to start this thing. He gets out of the plane, walks around, finds a mechanic who this German Air Force officer finds a british mechanic to explain to him how to start this british airplane and he does it. The mechanic comes and hes like heres what you got to do, turn this switch and flip that lever. All right. Got it. I understand how to fly the plane. So werra is sitting there, excited moments away from freedom until he realizes you cant just start this thing pressing a button. You have to have an external power supply. Would you get one. Sure. The mechanic leaves to go get this power supply to start up the airplane. Again, moments away from freedom, all he needs is to start the engine until he hears the words, get out. Hes been discovered. So hes arrested. Hes transferred back to another prison camp. But thats not the end of our story. So werra is soon selected to go to a prison camp in canada. Hes put on a ship for halifax, nova scotia. The prisoners get to canada, loaded on trains for their ride to the prison camp, and the guards believe that the train is is escape proof because the windows have all frozen shut. This is in january of 1941. And so with all of those prisoners crammed into this railroad car and each car has a small ineffective and inefficient heater, but its got onings and with werra scraping on the window as persistently as he does, its not long before werra has opened up the window where everybody has assumed that this railcar is escape proof. As soon as this train starts slowing down im going to jump the train slows down, comes in to a small station and pretty soon its starting back up again. As the train pulls away from the station, werra lifts up the window, gets his buddies to give him a boost and jumps out and falls into a snow bank that breaks his fall. The place that is circled, this intersection up here, thats where werra has jumped out of the train and you can see where ive highlighted or placed in google maps the this town of ogdenburg, new york, 30 miles between the point where he jumps out of the plane and crosses over into the United States. So hes pretty cold as you can imagine. Theres a newspaper article up there that shows his bandage and frost bit ears. It takes him a couple days. Hes hoping the Saint Lawrence river between canada and the United States is frozen over. Its not. He has to spend a few more hours. To spend a few more hours. He finds a boat but eventually he gets across the river and into the United States, finds a road and just starts walking down the road until he finds himself in ogdensburg, new york. And so the first thing he does is turn himself into local police officials. He is charged with illegal entry into the United States, but other than that nobody really goes what to do with him so hes allow today roam free. On the previous pagethrust an article how this german pow is seeing the sights in new york city and living it up. What hes not sure of is what are the americans go to do with him, are they going to ship him back to canada. So german intelligence gets into mexico. Once into mexico he makes his way to buenas ares or brazil. This is about april so it takes him about four months to get back to germany. Upon his return in germany of april 41 Adolph Hitler awards some pretty nice awards, innights cross of the iron cross. By july 1941 hitler has invaded the soviet union. On october 5, 1941 he takes off in his brand new fighting and going to test it off over the atlantic. For whatever reason his engine seizes up and hes got to crash land into the atlantic and hes killed. Hes a german, right, but after all of that its kind of a sad story. So he dies but his body is never recovered. But a great book all about his exploits is called the one that got away. It was written in 1957 and there was a movie created in 2002 by the same name. Well, weve had confidence and weve had charm and now weve got longevity. So henry giraud was a french soldier. He was a captain in world war i, and he was captured during a bayonet charge during the battle of st. Quentin in 1914. He escaped and joined the circus. And im not making that up. But then he got the help of edith cavels network. Just fascinating her role in world war i. Just over 25 years later he was 61, he was a fivestar general and he was fighting in france and he got captured again by the germans. So during his long military career he had honed his expertise in the german language. He spoke it very well. He also knew about their tactics quite well, so he wasnt surprised when they took him to a prisoner of war camp on a cliff face with guarded entrances. They had a pretty good idea he was quite the fellow. They didnt think hed be able to escape for two years he looked for ways to escape. He kept learning of germany, memorized the area, stole a map. But being an officer he had certain privileges others were not. So he was allowed to get packages from his wife and he got rope and all the other things he needed. Took him two years, but he did. And he also got to go on a daily walk. Being in england and going on walks, he was allowed that privilege as well because of his rank. In april 17, 1941 giraud crawled down a 150 foot cliff face and escaped. For any man climbing 16 stories is quite a feat but he was 63. He shaved his mustache, put on a hat and coat and basically walked away from the camp. His escape consisted of two parts. Part two of the escape was a little trickier. He got on the train and bluffed his way through the various check points. He crossed the border into occupied france. He made it through all of those check points even though the guards were supposed to stop anyone over 511. Henry giraud was 6 foot tall. Business concluded, stop, excellent health, stop, affectionately anre. This was probably the hardest story for me to tell because it was so moving when i was researching it. One of the most extensive prisoner of war camp escapes happened in 1923 in one of three death camps in poland. Not many documents have survived because the germans tried to erase the history of what happened in sobibor and was built expressly for the purpose of killing jews. The area was remote and the land not good but it did have a rail line. Jews arrived by the train load carrying about 2,000 people and every jew sent there was gassed within the hours. Those arrives their hair was cut before they were sent through the showers which as we know the showers were the gas chambers. Some jews were retained to work and those who worked there knew what they were involved in and this caused them great distress. They had to cleanup the remains after each train load was gassed, bury people in the mass graves. The jewish workers were expected to herd these people through the train, through the camp and to their death and they were told not to speak out. While there were some knowledge about sobibor that reached washington leaders did not intervene. By the spring of 1943 most polisher were dead, by september 1943 there were few if any trains arriving at sobibro. The workers still there were pretty worried about when they were going to be next. In late september 1943 the russian jews arrived. So rumors within sobibor were focused on when the camp was going to close and when that happened all the other jews would be killed. They had to act quickly and they made a plan. About 300 of them escaped making it one of the largest escapes during world war i. It turned into a very chaotic event that night. Some of the escapees were caught right away those who did not escape were shot. Within days of the escape the sf orders the camp taken down because they did not want the world to see what they were doing at sobibor. Approximately 250,000 were murdered at sobibor. Many who escaped spoke widely of their experience at that camp. And he passed away not too long ago. Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the liberation, and so it seems fitting that we talk about this and in particularly one of the escapes from this camp. So at the height of the concentration camp operations in 1944 the germans were executing about 12,000 People Per Day but hardly anyone outside of the camps knew what was going on. So two young men would eventually make their escape and tell the world what was happening at auschwitz and other concentration camps. Rudy was 17 when he was sent to auschwitz. He believed if he could get the truth out about the camps that people would stop getting on trains and stop believing what they were being told. He was determined to tell people what was going on at auschwitz. He turned to a 25yearold man for help. He was from the same town in slovakia that he was from. Wexler was pretty connected in the camp and he got verba a new job, a job in the office where he was writing down the names of the people sent through the showers. He had access to all those german records, all of the pr prisoners that were killed and also had the determination to escape. So in 1944 verba who was now 19 and wexler who was 27 hid inside the hollow of a woodpile, and they covered themselves with gas soaked tobacco leaves so the dogs wouldnt find them. And they knew from past experience it would only take three days before the guards quit looking for them. So they waited for three days in that woodpile, then they walked 15 days through 85 miles of occupied poland to the slovakian border and arrived at the jewish headquarters. Those at the headquarters knew the concentration camps were bad but were so stunned by the stories they werent sure they could believe them. It wasnt until he started reciting the names of hundreds of exterminated jews they finally believed them. They had knowledge of conditions that would only be known to somebody who had been there. Soon afterwards papers around the world picked up these stories. So our last last episode of the night is about the prison rescue. Its actually a rescue not an escape and takes place in the Pacific Theater. So the japanese had taken many prisoners of war through the battles of pacific, but by 1944 theyre losing the war and losing territory. And it appeared many of the prisoners they had taken would be liberated by the advancing allied armies, so japanese officials gave orders that no prisoner is ever to be lost to the allies, they should be executed first. December 1944 allied forces are approaching a camp in the philippines. When the japanese realized how close the allies were they put 150 allied prisoners and put them in a ditch, put gasoline in there, set it on fire, and folks who were trying to jump out, they should be shot. Now 11 out of the 150 actually made it out of the ditch, into the woods and were able to relate this story once they were behind the lines. So the next japanese are prison camp that were likely to be massacred were prisoners at the prison camp and also in the philippines were 500 prisoners were being held. The idea the prison camp was about 30 miles behind friendene lines only added to the complexity of this problem. The Lieutenant Commander were tasked ordered to liberate the camp. 125 rangers left their encampments and on the way they pick up alamo scouts and guerilla fighters. So the plan called for Charlie Company to setup at the front of the camp and fox trot company to go around behind the camp and signal for the start of the attack was when the fox trot company was in place they would initiate the attack. As you can imagine the prisoners were pretty confused, whats going on, are we being executed, confusion ranged. But pretty quickly they figured out these americans in uniform are there to rescue them. Within about 30 minutes from start to finish from the start of the attack until 30 minutes later all 53 allied prisoners of war were outside of the camp and on their way back to friendly lines. As i told you a whole lot of these folks are ippretty rough shape, and so the guerilla fighters, the alamo scouts had coordinated with local villagers to give a hand to get these folks out of the prison camps and back behind friendly leans. So many of the philippine villagers brought their water buffalo hooked up with carts, and for those prisoners that couldnt walk they had to ride 30 miles back to friendly lines. So it took almost a week with folks who were in pretty rough shape to get everybody back, but they did, all 513. And within about a week to getting back to friendly lines the american soldiers were put on ships and were headed back home. So probably the best book ive read on this is called ghost soldiers. Its a great book and goes into a whole lot more detail if youre interested. And so to wrap up thoughts . Always. Always have thoughts. It was a real privilege to work on these stories and research. Im a student of history. Dave is a professor of history. Im the writer and editor, so it was really encouraging for me to read all these wonderful stories of people helping each other. But i think the hardest part for me was all the people who did want make it out. Yeah, i would agree. It was a really rewarding experience to read about the courage of ordinary people and other ordinary people helping ordinary people. Maybe we can go forward and try to exercise that bit in our own lives. We have a couple more presentations coming up in the next six months as part of this world war ii exhibit or series. Were going to talk about iwo jima, death of hitler and whats that about the occupation of germany . Ill be back. Ill be back if youre interested and you can make it. June 9th, shouldnt be a lot of problems with snow but it is kansas. You never know. And then my boss i would be remiss if i didnt mention my boss is coming to talk. So with that we have a couple of microphones that are being placed up here in the aisles. I would ask if anybody has questions to come on up to the microphones and feel free to ask. I will at that point most likely turn it over to my coauthor to try and answer your questions. As a teacher of higsry you can appreciate multiple choice questions. And the third one was anything about Douglas Bader and the onelegged mans escape. So any of those three would be great. What was the first one . About how one got a ticket. I thought it was supposed to be the highest security german camps. Theres a great story in the book about that, not the ones i studied for tonight, but, yes, you could earn a ticket to get in. So they still managed to escape from there which is pretty incredible. And actually it was a number of people if i remember correctly, but yes they did get a ticket to there. They tried to move those pesky americans to a place they would stay put. This is absolutely fascinating and really appreciate it. I just have one question. When i was going to the university of kansas i heard a story that the chapel at the university of kansas was actually constructed by german prisoners of war during i think world war ii, they were transported here. And i was wondering have you heard any stories of any shenanigans of german prisoners of war that came to america or held in america escaping or stirring up trouble when they were here . Actually, ive not heard a lot of stories about prisoners creating problems. In fact, most prisoners had a pretty good idea what life was like at home. By the last year of world war ii the soviet union is overrunning russia and ukraine. Thats the bread basket of europe. And so all of that food had been cut off. And so in order for a german prisoner of war in the United States and there were hundreds of thousands of them all over the United States, those prisoners of war were generally working on farms and got to eat pretty well. So most of them were pretty grateful to be working on families. Theyd literally go live with farm families and do the work every day. And so that is a area wide open for a whole lot more Research Like what is it that prisoners were doing. It wouldnt surprise me they built that chapel you were talking about. I just dont know for sure if they did. But they were engaged in all kinds of work. And a pretty reasonable price. If a farmer wanted to hire a german p. O. W. I think it cost about 10 cents a day. If the government was going to feed them or a farmer could simply feed them out of what he had on hand. You have some thoughts . Not necessarily related to that but ive been doing some work on minnesota history, a lot of the dakota men were sent to davenport, iowa, because of the camp there. And they didnt try to escape because of the threat what would happen to their families. There were other things at play other than just trying to escape. But again they were working and food was good and the promise was their families were taken care of as long as they would stay put. Regarding that topic if you go to fort robinson, nebraska, in the panhandle, it was a eventually a huge p. O. W. Camp, and they put on plays there. Its an interesting place to go to. The other thing is if youre on route 6 in southern nebraska near the Pioneer Village im sure youve all been there theres a historical sign. Im one of these guys my kids will laugh at me, slam on the breaks at a Historical Marker. There was one a big p. O. W. Camp. They were mostly african corp p. O. W. S and they worked on farms and not too bad. The scene from the great escape and i know its fictionalized, the one british officer who escaped is having dinner i guess at a german home and hes passing fine but hes eating and eating in a british way. Hes using a fork with his left hand, poking the meat, carving the meat with his right hand. Thats how my grand parents who were english would eat, how i tend to eat. Even if you spoke perfect german you acted like a brit. Interesting. Thank you. Yes, sir . I want to thank you most of all for putting a german prisoner of war camps in the same lecture with concentration camps. Thats usually dealt with separately, and i think its important to know the difference. With that in mind if youre in a prisoner of war camp, more than likely an air force prisoner war camp and you escape its probably going to be the ss and gestapo that pursues you and takes you into custody. That brings me to my question. If youre at a prisoner of war camp and being treated halfway reasonably well. Not going to say it was good my question is with that in mind that youre in the custody of personnel who are reasonably and i say reasonably humane and youre going to be liberated anyway because were winning the war and thats obvious. And if you escape youre going to have the ss after you, the same people at sobobor wouldnt the case be made it would have been better for them to sit tight. Youre absolutely right which is why the number of folks who even attempted an escape is less than 1 . Most people were perfectly happy to wait out the war. Youre taking your life into your own hands by trying to escape, so you have an excellent point. Thanks for putting those two things together. Thats important. I have a question but also a comment about the german prisoners of war here. I have a very good friend whose father was an ss officer and was imprisoned in i believe it was kansas. Well, he loved the United States so much that as soon as he possibly could he brought his family to the United States, and thats how my friend, deter, you know, became a citizen. And the whole family were you know, became wonderful u. S. Citizens following the war. But my question is this. These serial escapists with considering some of the other terrible things germans did to people why were they allowed to be put back in the cooler and back in the cooler and back in the cooler again . Was it kind of entertaining or did they in a way grudgingly respect them . Or why didnt they just get rid of those because they were always a problem . You werent supposed to execute them, so that changed the game of the great escape most definitely when they shot 50 of them that came back. But part of it was trying to give humane treatment. I had a followup to the gentleman in front of me. The local author wrote about Winston Churchill and his famous escape. Did that kind of lend this kind of romance . I mean obviously his story being a great journalist was out there, his rise in fame. Did that affect when you did your research did that affect the mindset of some of these prisoners . So when Winston Churchill escapes its late 1890, something as i recall we include that episode of Winston Churchill in our book as well he has to walk essentially across the desert and hes nearly killed a number of times, and hes a politician, right . And a writer, a prolific writer. So, yeah, whos he going to write about but himself . So its a great way to gain publicity, and one of the arguments is thats how he gets into politics by playing this veterans card and this hero card to its maximum, and it works pretty well for him, yeah. Yes, sir . How did you go about identifying the sources for all of the research that you did, and then how did you pull that together . Was it from military sources or civilian sources. Yes. Were very fortunate with daves access to military records. Certainly that provided us with access to things we couldnt normally get and. Looking at as many primary sources as we could, things people had written themselves. But certainly we called them the military records that you had access to. This was a pretty big project. I think we had 77 different episodes in the book, each one of them had to be individually researched. So we relied a whole lot on secondary sources as well. If we could find a book where somebody had written it, and there were some we found some military records, but we would have been forever trying to go to the National Archives and research it that way, we usually had 3, 4, 5 different sources for each episode we looked at, make sure things are lining up so we can make it as accurate as we could. So sources came from all over. Yes, maam . I just wanted to say that 75 years today 75 years ago my dad was captured near st. Vif and it was like a month and a half after the battle of the bulge and he was taken to bad orb in stala 9b and my husband and i went there in 2006 and at that time the format of the camp was still somewhat similar to the picture you showed early on. And its a childrens camp now or then anyway, and the buildings were some of the same like barak looking buildings you showed and on the outside of the camp there was a Historical Marker saying this had been stala 9b and there were some graves inside and so on attribute today the war. Then in 2017 we were taking our grandchildren there, and at that time we knew where the camp had been, we passed it, though, because it was totally different. Now it was a very, you know, kind of Elegant School where i think people would come in to study certain things or something. And their attitude towards us asking any questions just to be sure they kind of brushed me off, didnt want to talk me. So i wondered when was the transition in germany where now theyre trying to i can understand its a long time since the war and its probably not a proud history of those camps, but when they started, you know yeah, the history in germany in world war ii is pretty problematic. We get journal officers at the school who have to be very careful. We do a joint staff ride with American Students and german students and we go talk about the battle of the bulge. But they have to be very careful about some of the things they study, some of the things they say because the people, the government, the culture is very cognizant of the nazi past and how problematic that is, so it doesnt surprise me that theyre not kind of amplifying that whole thing, theyre just letting it go. I believe your story. Yes, sir . Very nice presentation. Wonderful. As weve been reminded in this last week and as weve been reminded by some of the people speak of the jewish holocaust were also reminded that nazis killed probably half a million roma, homosexuals, lots of different groups. And sobobor was one of the worst if not the worst. Did you run into research any indications of what other groups were at sobobor when the escapes happened . Mostly russian at the time of that last escape. Just the sheer volume that went through there was overwhelming to research. Yeah, there were a lot of Political Prisoners early on. There were as the germans went east the hungarians, the romanians and different ethnic groups were showing up at different times. But the good news is i dont have it on my list here, but dave cotter is going to be coming and talking about the holocaust in a little more depth. Hes going to give a class called the persistent holocaust which even after the war was over there was persecution against the jews and a number were killed and that sort of thing. But it was anybody who didnt support the reich and for whatever reason was deemed unworthy. Communists, german, french, italian and if you opposed the regime you were probably going to end up in a concentration camp. Americans end up in concentration camps, just Political Prisoners. Anyone considered undesirable and not completely supportive of the third reich and its goals is probably going to end up in a prison camp somewhere. What could possibly be the advantage of Prison Guards taking bribes like that in nazi germany . What exactly would they bribe them with . Food out of red cross packages largely. So there was very dangerous, wouldnt it . Absolutely. Human nature. Yeah, so for the guards i dont have a lot of information about what happened to them other than the best speculation is when they were arrested and they were tortured before their execution thats when they probably gave up George Grimson. So just kind of in passing we know the scheme was uncovered and that they were punished for it. Thank you. Yes, sir. Youre watching American History tv every weekend on cspan 3 explore or nations past. Cspan 3 and brought to you today by your television provider. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight a look at civil war objects. Historians held a series of online talks this summer about artifacts featured in their joint publication the civil war in 50 objects. And a model of abraham lincolns hand. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan 3. American history tv on cspan 3 exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. Coming up this weekend saturday at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on american artifacts, library of congress curator on life in the 1930s and 40s through colored photographs. And sunday at 4 00 p. M. Eastern on reel america three films on 1976 elections produced by the u. S. Information agency for an international audience. Then at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on the presidency acceptance speeches from five president ial nominees. Harry truman, Dwight Eisenhower, john kennedy and richard nixon. Watch American History tv this weekend on cspan 3. On august 25, 1944 u. S. And french soldiers liberated paris after more than four years of german ocpays. Next on American History tv military historian larry layoffer chronicles the allied operation. Hosted by the Kansas City Public Library and the u. S. Army command and general Staff College, this is an hour. Good evening, everyone