140 GREAT ESCAPE, THE
regular troops. Offizierlagers were usually located in requisitioned buildings
(e.g., castles, barracks, or hotels), rather than in tents and huts. Officers had more
space per man than other ranks, beds instead of straw- filled paillasses, and din-
ing facilities. They were exempt from work and were allowed recreational activi-
ties like theatricals. Rauffenstein is fairly typical of camp commandants, who
tended to be older, sometimes disabled officers. On the other hand, the movie’s
depiction of the food situation at Offizierlagers is somewhat unrealistic. Even at
these elite camps the diet of the prisoners was inadequate and malnutrition was
widespread. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that Boeldieu and Maréchal would
have ended up at Wintersborn. Per sis tent escapers were usually consigned to
Ingolstadt Fortress in Bavaria (the WWI equivalent to Colditz Castle). Though the
story La grande illusion tells is fictional, Jean Renoir and Charles Spaak always
maintained that it was an embellished version of the war time experiences of
Armand Pinsard. However, after the movie came out, another former aviator and
POW named Jean des Vallières sued Renoir and Spaak for plagiarizing his book,
Kavalier Scharnhorst, Tender Germany (Albin Michel, Paris, 1931). In des Vallières’
book there’s also a scene with cross- dressing prisoners, the same use of the song,
“It Was a Small Ship,” the word “verboten” (forbidden) used as a leitmotif, and
a number of other exact coincidences. The case was settled out of court for an
undisclosed amount.Great Escape, The (1963)
Synopsis
The Great Escape is an American World War II epic produced and directed by John
Sturges. It is loosely based on Paul Brickhill’s 1950 book of the same title: a first-
hand account of the mass escape of British prisoners of war (POWs) from Stalag
Luft III in the province of Lower Silesia, Nazi Germany, in 1944.Background
During the night and early morning hours of 24–25 March 1944, 76 Allied POWs
used a 350- foot tunnel to escape from Stalag Luft III, a German POW camp in
Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan (now Żagań, Poland), 100 miles southeast of
Berlin. Three made it all the way home, but the rest were soon recaptured, and 50
of the 73 escapees were subsequently executed on Hitler’s orders. Paul Brickhill
(1916–1991), an Australian- born Spitfire pi lot shot down in Tunisia and impris-
oned at Stalag Luft III, was involved in the mass escape, but the Germans discov-
ered the tunnel before Brickhill had a chance to make his own attempt— a
happenstance that prob ably saved his life. After the war, Brickhill wrote The Great
Escape (1950), a well- researched account of the large and complex escape opera-
tion and its aftermath that brought the incident to wide public attention. Over the
next de cade, Brickhill received lots of offers to sell the film rights but resisted until
American film director John Sturges (Bad Day at Black Rock) eventually persuaded
Brickhill that he would make a film true to the history. Sturges had trou ble