Document discovered by National Archives shows claim made after the war by recaptured RAF officer, but historians are sceptical
It’s one of the most celebrated heroic failures of the second world war – the “great escape” of dozens of allied prisoners of war from a German camp by tunnelling under the wire.
As loosely depicted in The Great Escape, a 1963 film, 76 British and international air force members successfully escaped from the Stalag Luft III camp in March 1944, only for most of them to be recaptured and 50 brutally executed.
Almost exactly 80 years on, historians re-examining wartime documents have uncovered a bombshell claim made by one of the escapers – that the murdered men were betrayed by two English Nazi collaborators.
So the argument is the forger gave them bad documents that led to their capture and execution.
Part of their reasoning is when captured, his life was spared.
The counter argument is that mistakes were made in the forging, it was bound to happen. The executions weren’t coordinated but happened sporadically throughout the region whenever they were captured. Whether or not someone was spared had less to do with orders from above and just dumb luck.
Did I get that right? Seems tenuous to be blackening someone’s name.