First edition.

xvii, 342 pages, [32] pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Includes bibliographical references (pages [325]-328) and index.

Prologue: Franz Josef -- The originals -- Le Ray's run -- The bad boys' camp -- Goon-baiting -- Ballet nonsense -- Le Métro -- Clutty of MI9 -- Seeking for a path -- Dogsbody -- The Prominente club -- Shabash -- The dentist spies -- Madness -- The sparrows -- The red fox -- The Rhine maiden -- Besieged -- Endgame.

"In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend. But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre's telling, Colditz's most famous names--like the indomitable Pat Reid--share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America's oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs. Prisoners of the Castle traces the war's arc from within Colditz's stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler's war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told."-- Provided by publisher.

Oflag IVC (Concentration camp)

World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German.

Schloss Colditz (Colditz, Germany) -- History.

Prisoner-of-war escapes -- Germany -- Colditz -- History.

Prisoners of war -- Germany -- Colditz.

Oflag IVC (Concentration camp)

Schloss Colditz (Colditz, Germany)

Prisoner-of-war escapes.

Prisoners of war.

Germany -- Colditz.

World War (1939-1945)

1939-1945

History.

Online version: Macintyre, Ben. Prisoners of the castle New York : Crown, [2022] 9780593136348 (DLC) 2022026351

9780593136331 (hardcover)

0593136330 (hardcover)