World War I 'Great Escape' plot revealed in new exhibition at UK's Imperial War Museum
A little known plot by prisoners of war to tunnel out of a German camp in the First World War is to be told in a new exhibition.
Decades before the escape of 76 Allied prisoners from the Stalag Luft III camp in Nazi Germany, events which became the basis for Hollywood film The Great Escape, 29 officers escaped the clutches of the Germans in a similar feat of engineering and subterfuge.
The exhibition will tell the story of 60 British and Australian prisoners of war who tried to break out of the "inescapable" Holzminden camp in 1918.
The story has long been eclipsed by similar events during the Second World War which inspired films such as The Colditz Story and The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough.
"Everybody's heard of The Great Escape, but it will surprise our visitors to see that similar escape attempts took place in the First World War," said Terry Charman, senior historian at the museum....
*The 'In Memoriam' exhibition runs from 30 September (iwm.org.uk)
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Decades before the escape of 76 Allied prisoners from the Stalag Luft III camp in Nazi Germany, events which became the basis for Hollywood film The Great Escape, 29 officers escaped the clutches of the Germans in a similar feat of engineering and subterfuge.
The exhibition will tell the story of 60 British and Australian prisoners of war who tried to break out of the "inescapable" Holzminden camp in 1918.
The story has long been eclipsed by similar events during the Second World War which inspired films such as The Colditz Story and The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough.
"Everybody's heard of The Great Escape, but it will surprise our visitors to see that similar escape attempts took place in the First World War," said Terry Charman, senior historian at the museum....
*The 'In Memoriam' exhibition runs from 30 September (iwm.org.uk)