The Last Escape: The Untold Story of Allied Prisoners of War in Germany 1944-45

by John Nichol (Author), Tony Rennell (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $3.47

  Colditz is probably the best known prisoner of war camp. Its inmates and their exploits were extraordinary, but its liberation, in April 1945, was straightforward compared with what happened to the vast majority of British, American and Commonwealth prisoners in the last desperate months of the war. This title discusses how World War II ended for a quarter of a million men held in 55 camps and how, in the last months of the war, most of them became caught up in a desperate endgame. The story of their escape is told through the men, now in their 70s and 80s, who lived through this terrible time. Beginning with the D-day landings in June 1944, the text follows them through the closing days of their incarceration and then on their marches across a Europe in chaos. Their experiences are placed in the wider context of the Allied advance and the German retreat, and the increasingly frenzied attempts of those in London and elsewhere to keep track of them.

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $4.48

  The Last Escape by Tony Rennell and John Nichol is an extraordinary look at the final days of World War II. As WW2 drew to a close, hundreds of thousands of British and American prisoners of war, held in camps in Nazi-occupied Europe, faced the prospect that they would never get home alive. In the depths of winter, their guards harried them on marches out of their camps and away from the armies advancing into the heart of Hitler's defeated Germany. Hundreds died from exhaustion, disease and starvation. The Last Escape is told through the testimony of those heroic men, now in their seventies and eighties and telling their stories publicly for the first time. Gripping, moving and thoughtful. The excellent team of Nichol and Rennell have done it again . (Patrick Bishop, author of Fighter Boys ). John Nichol is a former RAF flight lieutenant whose Tornado bomber was shot down on a mission over Iraq during the first Gulf War. He was captured and made a prisoner of war. Tony Rennell is a writer for the Daily Mail and a former deputy editor of the Sunday Times . Their previous books include The Last Escape , Tail-End Charlies and Medic .