Escape from Germany

The greatest WWI escape story from Germany's most notorious prisoner-of-war camp.

There have been many accounts of escape during the Second World War -- stories of brave, daring, resourceful prisoners of war desperate to break out of their confines. But what about POWs of the First World War?

Escape attempts did take place in WWI; their stories just haven't been told or have long been forgotten. But now, Escape from Germany tells the story of the greatest POW break-out of the First World War, from Holzminden -- the most escape-proof prison. In terms of both numbers who escaped from the camp and those who crossed the border safely, this was the greatest escape of this period.

This is an era that, in its beliefs and attitudes, seems impossibly remote from the society in which we now live. It was a world where a gentleman's honour was his most prized possession, where class and rank dictated a soldier's status in prison, and where it was considered the duty of POW to escape if he could, though also a cardinal offence in the prison camps to attempt to do so.

In this book, Neil Hanson also takes us through the other escape attempts from the prison, which range from the daring to the eccentric and the downright farcical. These are stories of daring, resourcefulness and persistence. These were men who allowed no obstacle, however huge, to deter them, and who with quick wit and apparently inexhaustible good humour, performed miracles of improvisation, adaptation, courage and endurance.