Colditz

The Full Story

P. R. Reid

• Publisher: Zenith Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780760346518
• eBook ISBN: 9781627885706
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

The Germans thought escape was impossible. These men proved them wrong.

Colditz Castle, located near Leipzig Germany, was the last stop for select Allied prisoners during World War II. It was here, a reportedly impregnable fortress, that the Germans sent all the prisoners who escaped from other prisons. Once within the walls, the Germans reasoned, escaping was impossible. Yet during the four-year period when the castle was used as a prison, over three hundred men escaped, thirty-one through Nazi Germany.

Prisoners from ten different Allied countries worked together to form a truly international escape academy. They created skeleton keys, forged German passes, drafted maps, and constructed all types of tools and machinery out of whatever they could find. The ingenuity of the prisoners knew no bounds: they tried everything from tunneling underneath the castle's walls to hiding in the garbage to disguising themselves as German officers. They even built a glider, which they never used. Resourcefulness and hard work won a few of them their freedom.

Author and former British Army officer, P.R. Reid, was one of the men who escaped from Colditz and made it home to tell the story. This paperback edition, introduced into the Zenith Military Classic series, introduces this thrilling WWII story to a new generation of readers. Four appendices at the end of book provide a full listing of prisoners and staff, all of the attempted escapes, the secret code used to communicate between prisoners and the outside world, and more.

"[T]his book is highly recommended reading."

--The New York Times

1

Yesterday’s Shadows

Autumn 1939

THE STORY OF Colditz Castle in the Second World War begins on the narrow peninsula of Hel. Hel is little more than a very long sandbank on the Baltic coast of the Polish Corridor, directly north of Gdynia.

The story also begins in the person of Lieutenant Jędrzej Giertych, a reserve officer of the Polish Navy—very tall, robust, with a strong, handsome face, brown hair, aged thirty-six, married with four small children.

The day was Thursday, 24 August 1939. Russia and Germany had signed a pact of friendship the day before. The pact could only mean one thing for Poland. She would be attacked very soon, by one or the other, or by both.

Jędrzej was roused from his bed at his home in Warsaw at 7 a.m. by a repeated ringing of the doorbell. A policeman was there. He saluted, handing Jędrzej a paper which stated that he was called up for service, that he was to arrange his private affairs in the next two hours, then to proceed by all speed to the railway station, take the train for Gdynia and report to the naval dockyard at Oksywie. He arrived that evening.

Jędrzej did not see his wife or children again for six years. The youngest child was only two months old.

He was marooned at naval headquarters for two days before being assigned a post. In the meantime, on the Polish political front, general mobilization was delayed at the request of the Western Allies “so as not to increase international tension.” The blindness, culpable and cowardly, of those Allies today seems incredible. When mobilization came it was already too late. Hitler had seized the initiative.

Jędrzej was assigned to the Detachment of Fishing Cutters, centered round the commandeered local tourist passenger ship called Gdynia, acting as a “mother” ship. The captain was Lieutenant-Commander Yougan. Together they hoisted the flag of the Polish Fighting Navy on the Gdynia. Jędrzej was allotted a cabin. He unpacked his portmanteau, taking from it first of all a framed picture, blessed in church, of Our Lady of Swarzewo. Swarzewo is a coastal village containing a shrine dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, which is venerated by the Polish fishermen of the Baltic Sea.

The cutters arrived on Thursday, 31 August, with their owners and crews, the fishermen, in twos and threes and in larger clutches. They mustered soon between seventy and eighty and were immediately divided into groups of six boats. Jędrzej became the proud commander of such a group. On the next day each existing cutter crew would be augmented by two or three army reservists. He would be the officer in charge of about thirty-five men. That night he went to his bunk very late. There had been much to do.

At 4 a.m. he was awakened by the sound of planes overhead, followed at once by the scream of dive bombers. German stukas, in number, were bombing the naval installations all around him. This was the opening bombardment of the Second World War.

The Gdynia was anchored in the naval harbor. The early morning aerial bombardment continued at intervals. Naval shells began to fall on the city. Jędrzej went ashore and managed to collect his reservists—eighty of them—from the naval barracks. These were transported to the Gdynia temporarily before being allocated to their cutters. At this point, at about 2 p.m., the Gdynia received orders to move out of port into the Bay of Puck. The naval airport at Puck had been one of the main targets of the morning aerial bombardment.

He studied the coastal marine charts on the bridge. The town of Puck was at the head of the bay, where, from the mainland, the peninsula of Hel formed a hook, turning sharply from north to south-east, continuing almost in a straight line like a needle, at some points only 200 meters wide. Along this needle lay three fishing villages, Chatupy, Kuznica and Jastarnia, the last with a little harbor, facing south-west into the bay and out towards the mainland.

Jędrzej, in the last cutter, followed the Gdynia and the lines of little ships out of the port. In the afternoon the aerial bombardment of Gdynia grew to massive proportions. The whole skyline darkened to a livid mauve as Jędrzej watched, and the thunder of explosions vibrated in the marrow of his spine. Black erupting clouds split open with the lightning strokes of detonation. Whirlwinds twisted the fountains of building ash into gaping red mouths, spewing rubble and debris, the vomit of destruction. The devastation inflicted by Hitler’s onslaught was spread over many Polish cities and military targets on that first day of the war.

The Gdynia was now anchored in shallow water in the bay, about nine miles from the city whose name she bore. Jędrzej reported on board. The eighty reservists were to stay on the ship that night, along with the civilian ship’s crew. The ship’s total crew would be 120.

Dusk had fallen when Lieutenant-Commander Yougan ordered Jędrzej to lead a convoy of the cutters to the shallows around Jastarnia, which was about three miles distant, to disperse and anchor them amongst the sandbanks, and take himself and the fishermen crews off to rest in the port and village for the night. This task completed late into the night, Jędrzej wrapped his overcoat around him, lay down on the cobbles of the jetty and, with his head leaning against a bollard, went sound asleep.

He was awakened, once again, by the sound of planes. They were soon overhead—large formations of heavy bombers and dive bombers from the direction of Königsberg, heading for the Polish mainland. Out of one formation, suddenly, a group of planes divided. Stukas again. One after the other they turned, seemed to drop—then with accelerating, calculated fury, they descended on the Gdynia. The ship seemed to break up like matchwood—into several pieces. She sank within ten minutes. Men were hurled into the sea in large numbers. Then the stukas came again. They machine-gunned the men in the water and dropped anti-personnel bombs as they dived. Some managed, though wounded, to reach the shore, only to die later. Some were dragged from the water by helpers from the land. They also died later. Yougan survived, because he too had been called ashore.

The ship’s secret instruction papers went down with the Gdynia. Jędrzej does not know to this day what purpose the “Cutter Detachment” was scheduled to fulfil. His holy picture of the Virgin of Swarzewo went down with all his other belongings, save a briefcase that he had taken ashore with him.

On Sunday, 3 September, the Detachment was disbanded and the survivors were transformed into a “Yougan Company” of naval marines, soon reinforced by crews of other sunken ships.

Over the radio they heard of the declaration of war by Great Britain and France.

The village of Hel at the head of the peninsula had contained a mainly German population up to 1914; though originally Dutch, they had become German. Between the wars the population became predominantly Polish, and the village grew and became a naval establishment with a naval basin and a commercial port. Polish submarines, as well as surface craft, were based on Hel. It was well defended with artillery, naval guns and anti-aircraft guns.

The peninsula was now invested by the Germans. A German land force advanced from Puck but was halted at the narrowest part between Chalupy and Kuznica, where the front could only take one company of men at a time, facing an enemy company.

Hel, with a garrison of some 3,000 men, was subjected to a most devastating attack. The two German battleships, Schleswig-Holstein and Schliesen, bombarded systematically and incessantly. German aerial bombardment, too, was without respite. The next danger for the defenders was a German landing. Jędrzej was incorporated into a company, which was given the task of organizing the defense against such a danger. They fortified the beach at the most likely place, near Jastarnia, where there was a good depth of water close inshore.

The German land force advanced slowly. The Schleswig-Holstein and the destroyer Leberecht Maas were damaged by Polish artillery, and a German minesweeper was sunk. The German landing did not materialize. But the pressure never relaxed.

A month after the commencement of hostilities, the peninsula of Hel remained the last remnant of Poland’s territory still unconquered; Rear-Admiral Unrug was its commander. In the early hours of 2 October, with his artillery silenced for lack of ammunition, he decided to surrender in order to avoid civilian losses in the peninsula’s fishing villages, which the Germans were about to storm. The whole of Poland was already in German or Soviet hands, with the exception of a Polish Army composed of several battered, numerically reduced divisions still on the move in the neighborhood of Lublin. This Army fought, on 6 October, a last battle against the combined Germans and Russians near the small town of Kock. It was destroyed in this battle, except for a detachment of cavalry under the command of Major Hubal, which survived in the Polish forests until the spring of 1940, when it was destroyed by the Germans and its commander killed.

The decision to surrender the peninsula of Hel was, for Unrug, a painful one; but the continuation of resistance by this isolated redoubt no longer served a useful purpose. Jędrzej, learning of the impending surrender, asked and was granted leave to escape. Five officers and men joined him; a stout rowing boat was purchased, and at nightfall it was launched into heavy seas off the beach at Jastarnia. Men waded breast-high in the surf to help it over the breakers. They rowed a long way into the night in the direction of Sweden. High seas breaking over sandbanks in shallow waters were their undoing. The boat was overturned by a freak wave. They all swam for their lives, reaching the main shore safely.

The next morning Jędrzej went to the seashore to see if anything had been washed up. They had loaded the boat with heavily packed suitcases. He had only taken his briefcase. It was the only thing washed up.

Jędrzej reports that some men succeeded in reaching Sweden in motor launches from Hel. He declined a generous offer of concealment by a local fisherman, and eventually went into captivity, a prisoner of war.

First of all, he was incarcerated in the Oflag at Nienburg near Bremen. At the beginning of November 1939 he was moved by train to an unknown destination, and in the middle of the night he, with others, was able to escape from the train. He traveled by another train to Berlin, was arrested there, and spent two weeks in the central Gestapo prison at Alexandraplatz. His briefcase was now in the Gestapo’s possession. Later in November, he was handed over to the military authorities. They had the courtesy to inform him that he would shortly be incarcerated in a prison called Oflag IVC, situated in a town called Colditz.

On 31 October 1938, the German Oberkommando der Wehrmacht—which can be translated as the Overall Command of the Defense Power of Germany—had commandeered Colditz Castle. It was given the military title of Oflag IVC. Oflag is an abbreviation of Offizierlager meaning “Officers’ place of detention.” The Roman numerals and the letters denoted districts.

The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) had laid plans, in advance of 1939, for a special camp, known as a Sonderlager, for enemy officers, prisoners of war, who for some reason merited strict treatment and a more careful watch than was kept on others. Among them were to be those who escaped but were recaught and suspected of intending to escape again.

Colditz Castle was designated to be this camp.

At first, however, as no “special” prisoners were yet picked out, the German military authorities did not consider it wise to keep such an expensive establishment empty and began to use it as a transit camp for Polish officers.

Jędrzej Giertych was escorted to Colditz in November 1939. A German cavalry captain (Rittmeister), accompanied by a dozen soldiers, awaited him at the station. He told Jędrzej that Colditz was a place from which it was not possible to escape: “Do not try to escape from here; Sie beissen hier auf Granit [here you will bite into granite].” He was led to the Castle in a curious way: all the soldiers had bayonets on their rifles, which they pointed into him. He walked in the middle of the street and the soldiers marched awkwardly, their rifles forming a star around him. Two sergeants marched beside the soldiers on the roadway. The captain walked on the pavement. This strange procession attracted the attention of passers-by, who stopped and gaped. An elderly man looked out at him from a window, laughed and pointed with his finger to his forehead. He thought the spectacle crazy.

When Jędrzej entered the Castle, he was immediately locked in a “solitary” cell near the gate. (Later this cell was abolished, but a whole corridor of cells was built nearby.) He spent two weeks there, in bad conditions, in great cold, on a bed of boards with a couple of blankets but without even a straw mattress. For furniture there was a stool, a washing bowl and a stove with a basket of coal. He was not allowed matches. The stove always went out at night. He saw, through a little window, that the camp was full of Polish officers, several hundreds of them. He had no contact with them. Food was brought to him by a Polish orderly underguard from the main prison kitchen. He was not allowed to talk to him. Sometimes he received notes hidden in the food. In one of these he was asked if it were true that he murdered a German when escaping from a prison camp, and had been condemned to death and was awaiting execution. For the first week he was really completely alone. Food and washing water were brought to him in silence. Removal of the toilet bucket was done in silence. Dirty water was poured through a hole in the ground.

During the second week, a Lieutenant Priem became a regular visitor to his cell. He sat on the stool and conducted long conversations with Jędrzej, who sat on the edge of his bed. He said that Jędrzej was, in reality, the first inmate of Colditz Castle as it was designated to be—a Sonderlager or special camp. All the prisoners of war milling around in the courtyard were in temporary occupation. Priem visited sometimes two or three times a day. He would not discuss the situation on the war fronts, nor did he allow the prisoner any newspapers. But history, yes—he would discuss European history at length, candidly, without prejudice; and he was unearthing the history of Colditz and its Castle.

So Jędrzej learned that about the middle of the sixth century the region was invaded by Slavs, the Sorben tribe, who came from Serbia, Dalmatia and Croatia. The Sorben were good farmers. They gave the region a new look: cut-down forests, dried-up marshes and built villages. The Serbian influence was evident in the names of the villages all ending in “tz”—Podelwitz, Meuselwitz, Raschitz, Zollwitz, Terpitzsch, Zeitlitz, Colditz (early spelling Koldyeze). Colditz in Serbian means “Dark Forest.”

Colditz town probably began to be built in the year 892 by a Christian settlement. In 928 the German King Henry I won the battle of Gana, beating the Dalemincier (Dalmatians), a sub-tribe or sect of the Sorben, and the whole area became a German province. Eventually the town came under the rule of Count Wiprecht von Groitsch, who in 1080 began the building of a castle on a great rock promontory overlooking the River Mulde.

On one occasion Priem recounted the story of the first Colditz escaper. He said that in 1294, the Castle of Colditz was a garrison for the troops of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Adolph, Count of Nassau. In that year, war broke out between the emperor and the two sons of the Margrave of Meissen, Albert II. Albert’s wife Margaretha had been given the Castle as her dowry in 1257; her two sons (whose names were Frederick and Dietzmann) were almost certainly born there, and probably lived in the Castle from birth. Although the Castle returned to the possession of the then emperor, Rudolph, in 1282, the two boys remained there, holding it with their troops until March 1289 when, presumably under duress, they relinquished it to Rudolph at Erfurt. But in 1294 they were at war with the new emperor, Adolph. In due course they forcibly took possession of the towns surrounding Colditz, such as Rochlitz, Grimma, Leisnig and Borna. The Castle and its garrison, however, remained true to the emperor, resisted attack and became a rallying point and refuge for his supporters.

Count Philip of Nassau, a nephew of the emperor, was defeated in a battle at Luckau in 1294. He was captured in flight, sent first to Leipzig, then imprisoned in Rochlitz. One night, due to the laxity of the guards, he was able to escape. He made his way successfully to Colditz Castle, some fifteen miles away, where he was welcomed with open arms by the defenders.

“Count Philip was therefore,” Priem said, “the first historically recorded escaper of Colditz; albeit that he escaped into Colditz rather than out of it! This kind of escape,” he added wryly, “is the only kind that will be permitted during the present hostilities!”

During the fifteenth century the town and Castle became the property of the electors of Saxony. In 1430 the Castle was fired by Hussites and razed to the ground. It was rebuilt many years later, in the form of forward and rear castles, each consisting of several buildings. Priem discovered there had been another great fire in 1504—only a few buildings of the front castle survived. The town likewise was almost destroyed. Rebuilding began in 1506.

Electors ruled in succession until the inheritance passed in 1553 to Duke August. August was especially attracted by the position of the Castle and the hunting grounds around; he showed a marked preference for Colditz and continued the beautifying of it in 1554. His wife was a Danish princess, and their coat of arms remains today over the main gateway. Also in this year (1554) the laying-out of the park began, the elector encircling an area with plank...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Chapter 1: Yesterday’s Shadows: Autumn 1939
• Chapter 2: Poland Leads the Way: 1940
• Chapter 3: The Challenge: Christmas 1940 to Early Spring 1941
• Chapter 4: Restless Captives: Spring 1941
• Chapter 5: Tameless and Proud: Early Summer 1941
• Chapter 6: Sixty-Eight Dutchmen: Summer 1941
• Chapter 7: A Bolt from the Blue: Late Summer 1941
• Chapter 8: The Incorrigibles: Autumn and Winter 1941
• Chapter 9: A Voice in Every Wind: Winter 1941–1942
• Chapter 10: ’Tis All a Checker Board: Winter to Spring 1942
• Chapter 11: Physician Heal Thyself: Spring 1942
• Chapter 12: Never a Dull Moment: Late Spring and Early Summer 1942
• Chapter 13: No Coward Souls: Summer and Early Autumn 1942
• Chapter 14: Swift Be Thy Flight: Late Autumn 1942
• Chapter 15: Of Whom Each Strives: Winter and Early Spring 1943
• Chapter 16: A Measure of Sliding Sand: Spring and Summer 1943
• Chapter 17: That Dares Send a Challenge: Autumn and Winter 1943–1944
• Chapter 18: Ashes and Snow: Spring 1944
• Chapter 19: A Vision of Freedom: Summer and Autumn 1944
• Chapter 20: They Mingled in the Fray: Autumn and Winter 1944–1945
• Chapter 21: Firm to Their Mark: Winter 1944–1945
• Chapter 22: Let the Hawk Fly Wild: Early Spring 1945
• Chapter 23: In Spite of Darkness: April 1945
• Chapter 24: A Grand Finale: April 1945
• Epilogue: After Colditz
• Appendix 1: Colditz Prisoners and Staff
• Appendix 2: Escapes
• Appendix 3: The Code
• Appendix 4: An Exchange of Letters between the Author and Professor R. V. Jones, Author of Most Secret War
• Appendix 5: Prisoners of War in the Western Theaters of the Second World War
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Copyright