298 STALAG 17
(Robert Strauss), and Best Actor. William Holden won for Best Actor—an award
widely thought to compensate for his not having won an Oscar for his brilliant
rendition of Joe Gillis, the doomed gigolo in Wilder’s noir classic, Sunset Boulevard
(1951). Reviews were adulatory, and many de cades later, the film continues to be
held in high esteem— though there are dissenting opinions, such as Mike Mayo’s:
“Billy Wilder’s highly honored adaptation... really does not live up to its reputa-
tion. It’s less a realistic look at life inside a German prison camp than an improbable
suspense tale that depends on some clumsy contrivances. Worse yet, the moments
of comic relief are appalling.” Mayo also astutely notes that “St a lag 17 is really more
a Cold War film than a World War II film. Its questions about in for mants, loyalty,
and the tyranny of the group over the individual are concerns of the 1950s, not the
1940s” (quoted in Nixon and Stafford, n.d.). Unfortunately, St a lag 17 also inspired
the execrable TV 1960s comedy series, Hogan’s Heroes.Reel History Versus Real History
In the movie, the overall look of the American compound is quite au then tic, but
the sign over its entrance reads “Stalag 17- D.” The real camp was designated Stalag
XVII- B (short for Stammlager Luft, or prison camp for airmen, and the Germans
used Roman numerals). The camp’s actual commandant was Oberst Kuhn, a Weh-
rmacht officer— not Luftwaffe— who was every bit as tough as his fictional coun-
terpart, von Scherbach. The bare, muddy ground conditions shown in the film are
inauthentic. There was snow on the ground in Krems, Austria, in December 1943
and it was extremely cold— weather not convincingly replicated in balmy southern
California in the spring of 1952. Indeed, one would expect to see the men exhale
breath vapors outdoors in the freezing air, but none appear in the film. Living
conditions at the real Stalag 17, exacerbated by severe overcrowding, were far
more difficult than those shown in the film; prisoners were often beaten by brutal
guards and a few were shot and killed, while complaints to the commandant fell
on deaf ears. The prisoners did build a radio but it was never confiscated. The
Germans did not plant spies in POW camps, as depicted in the movie. The Price
character was likely inspired by a mysterious inmate— not a German “mole” but
rather much the opposite: Dr. Reuben Rabinovitch (1909–1965), a Jewish Canadian
re sis tance fighter who was given the cover identity of Staff Sgt. Harry Vosic,
USAAF, to keep him out of the gas chambers. The action in St a lag 17 is entirely
fictional but it is based on at least one real incident. Frank Grey (aka “The Grey
Ghost,” 1915–2006), a U.S. Eighth Air Force B-17 tail gunner, pulled off the only
escape from Stalag 17- B in January 1945. Temporarily at the camp on his way to
the Gestapo for repeated escapes and acts of sabotage, Sgt. Grey was hidden by
comrades in a tunnel as soon as he entered the compound. After a fruitless three-
day search by camp guards and the Gestapo, the Germans became convinced
he had escaped. Grey then resurfaced, made it into the adjoining Rus sian POW
compound, escaped from there, and ultimately reached Yugo slavia, where anti- Nazi
partisans assisted him in getting back to England. It was Grey’s seventh escape. On
a previous escape, Grey sabotaged a German freight train headed to the Rus sian
front by disabling anti- aircraft guns and equipment on a flatcar. Grey’s daring