In the beginning of the war
Hans Ulrich von Schaffgotsch's detachment of 8,000 imperial cavalrymen surprised
Jindřich Matyáš Thurn's force in the outskirts of
Steinau, taking Thurn and general
Jacob Duwall [
sv] prisoners. Duwall quickly escaped captivity, organizing the defence of
Breslau, where he died from liver failure in April 1634.[1]
Holy Roman general
Federico Savelli was captured by
Bernard of Saxe-Weimar in the aftermath of the Second
Battle of Rheinfelden (3 March 1638). He managed to escape from his cell after the woman tasked with bringing him food, freed him instead. She was later executed along with seven alleged accomplices.[3]
February 9 and 10, 1864 –
Libby Prison escape. More than 100 Union prisoners broke out of
Libby Prison in
Richmond, Virginia. Fifty-nine of them reached freedom, forty-eight were recaptured, and two drowned.
October 1914 – French officer
Henri Giraud was captured by the Germans in August and escaped in October. He also escaped in World War II, this time as a general (see next section).
July 4, 1915 –
Gunther Plüschow escaped from a POW camp at
Donington Park, Leicestershire, England, and made his way back to Germany. This was the only successful escape from Britain in either world war.[6]
September 2 and 12, 1918 –
John Owen Donaldson and another prisoner escaped, but were recaptured. The pair were joined by three others for a second try a few days later. Donaldson reached the Netherlands in October.[7]
February 1917 – October 1918 –
E. H. Jones, a Welsh lieutenant in the Indian Army, and
C. W. Hill, an Australian officer in the Royal Flying Corps, escaped from a Turkish prisoner-of-war camp at
Yozgat. Having first pretended to be psychic, the pair spent over a year conning the camp's commandant. Eventually they persuaded their Turkish captors they were insane and, after being moved to a hospital for the mentally ill in the summer of 1918, the two men played their roles as lunatics so successfully they also fooled the doctors and were returned home.
February 14, 1918 – French fighter pilot
Roland Garros escaped to rejoin the French army after several attempts.
July 23/24, 1918 –
Holzminden officers' prisoner-of-war camp. Ten of 29 British officers made their way to freedom, making this "the most successful escape from a German prison camp during the First World War".[8]
1918 – US Navy Lieutenant
Edouard Izac was taken prisoner aboard the U-boat which sank his ship in May 1918. On the trip to Germany, he learned important information about enemy submarine movements. As a result, he made several attempts to escape, finally succeeding on the night of October 6–7, 1918, with several others. He made his way to Switzerland and then London to pass along the information, though by then the war was nearly over. For his actions, he was awarded the
Medal of Honor.
Polish-Soviet War
Merian C. Cooper, better known as a Hollywood screenwriter, director and producer, formed the
Kościuszko Squadron, composed of American volunteers fighting on the Polish side. A pilot in the fighter squadron, he was shot down on July 13, 1920, and taken prisoner. He escaped just before the war ended in 1921 (on his second attempt) and made his way to Latvia.
Spanish Civil War
On May 22, 1938, 792 or 795
Republican prisoners of war and political prisoners escaped from
Fort San Cristóbal, near
Pamplona, Spain. Only three managed to reach the French border. The
Nationalists recaptured or killed the rest.
January 5, 1942 –
Airey Neave and
Anthony Luteyn successfully escaped from
Colditz Castle, Germany, Neave being the first British officer to accomplish this feat.
April 17, 1942 – French General
Henri Giraud, reprising his World War I escape, got out of the high-security
Königstein Castle by climbing down a 150-foot (46 m) homemade rope. This escape took two years of preparation (versus two months for his World War I escape). He reached Switzerland, then returned to
Vichy France, where he would play a major role during the rest of the war.
June 1942, September 1944 –
Tony Deane-Drummond successfully escaped twice, first from the Italians, then years later from the Germans. He was second-in-command of an airborne raid to destroy an aqueduct in Italy in February 1941. The aqueduct was destroyed, but all the commandoes were captured. Deane-Drummond escaped in December 1941, but was caught. On his second attempt the following June, he managed to reach Switzerland. Returning to England, he later participated in
Operation Market Garden in September 1944. With the British force surrounded in the region of Arnhem, he swam across the Rhine River, but was taken prisoner. He escaped the next day and, along with other hiding soldiers, was rescued in
Operation Pegasus.
July 14, 1942 – Eighty-six
Soviet prisoners at
Majdanek concentration camp, who had arrived the year prior, attempted a mass escape by rushing a lightly defended section of fence. Two were shot, but the other 84 got away.[9]
November 6, 1942 – At least sixty Soviet POWs at
Birkenau participated in a mass escape. The escape involved overpowering SS guards and rushing a part of camp still under construction and not yet fenced off.[10] The escape was organized by several people, including Andrey Pogozhev. Several dozen were able to make it out of the camp, though most were recaptured and returned to camp or summarily executed. Pogozhev, along with another POW he traveled with, Viktor Kyznecov, were among those able to escape recapture.[11] Pogozhev survived the war and wrote his memoirs, Escape from Auschwitz.
August 30, 1942 – Two Australian and two British soldiers were recaptured and executed after escaping from
Changi Prison, Singapore, during the
Selarang Barracks incident.
October 30, 1942 – Fourteen Australians and five New Zealanders escaped from
Camp 57 in Italy through a tunnel, but were all recaptured.[12]
November 1942 to March 1944 – Australian flying ace
Nicky Barr was shot down in 1942 in North Africa. A prisoner of the Italians, he escaped and was recaptured three times, but finally led a group to freedom on his fourth try.
March 29, 1943 – Six British and New Zealand officers escaped through a tunnel from Castello di
Vincigliata (Campo 12) near Florence, Italy. Four were recaptured. New Zealand Brigadiers
James Hargest and Reginald Miles escaped to Switzerland.
April 4, 1943 – United States Air Force pilot
Samuel Grashio, United States Air Force Lieutenant
William Dyess, United States Marines
Austin Shofner and
Jack Hawkins, six other Americans and two Filipinos escaped from a work camp in
Davao Region, the
Philippines. This was the only successful mass escape from a Japanese camp. The escape is detailed in the 2010 book Escape from Davao.
October 14, 1943 – Several dozen
Soviet prisoners at
Sobibor Extermination Camp, all Jewish, led by Lieutenant
Alexander Pechersky, who had arrived the month prior, participated in a mass uprising at the camp. Several of the camp staff were killed, and the prisoners fled into the surrounding woods. At least four of Soviet POWs are known to have survived the escape and the ensuing searches, including Pechersky.[13]
October 29, 1943 –
The Wooden Horse escape. Flight Lieutenant
Eric Williams and Lieutenant Richard Michael Codner came up with the idea to construct a
vaulting horse and dig a tunnel underneath it. Pilot Officer
Oliver Philpot was the escape co-ordinator for the hut in which they lived, and joined their escape plot. Once outside of Stalag Luft III, Philpot split off from the other two, as previously agreed upon. All three managed to reach first Sweden, then Britain. Their exploit was the basis of the 1950 film The Wooden Horse, which was written by Williams.
September 1944 – Major
Digby Tatham-Warter was wounded by shrapnel and captured during the
Battle of Arnhem, but escaped from the hospital with his second-in-command, Captain Tony Frank. With the help of the
Dutch Resistance, they joined a large group of escaped soldiers hiding out. On the night of 22–23 October, 138 of them were rescued by
Operation Pegasus, including Tatham-Warter.
August 1944 - Warrant Officer
Gordon Thomson Woodroofe escaped from Ziegenhals, Germany, travelling to Wismar before embarking on a ship bound to Sweden (with the help of a crewman),[14] and from Sweden to Scotland. He is the only known New Zealand airman to successfully escape from a POW camp and return to England.[citation needed]
Captain
Charles Upham, the third and last person to be awarded the
Victoria Cross twice, attempted so many escapes that he was sent to
Oflag IV-C, better known as Colditz Castle, in October 1944.
April 1945 – British Army Lieutenant
Alastair Cram finally succeeded in escaping on his 21st attempt, just one month before the end of the war in Europe.
Axis
Of the hundreds of thousands of POWs shipped to the U.S., only 2,222 tried to escape.[15] There were about 600 escape attempts from Canada during the war,[16] including at least two mass escapes through tunnels. Four German POWs were killed attempting to escape from Canadian prison camps. Three others were wounded. Most escapees tried to reach the United States when it was still neutral, though Karl Heinz-Grund and Horst Liebeck made it as far as
Medicine Hat, Alberta, before being apprehended by the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The two men had planned to travel to
Vancouver,
British Columbia, and leave Canada courtesy of the
Japanesemerchant marine. Only one person ever succeeded in returning to the Axis -
Franz von Werra - though a couple of others settled in the United States under false identities.
The Angler breakout was the single largest escape attempt orchestrated by German POWs (28) in North America during the war. The December 23, 1944, breakout of 25
Kriegsmarine and merchant seamen from
Papago Park,
Arizona, was the second largest. In both instances, all escapees were recaptured or killed.
October 7 and December 20, 1940, January 21, 1941 – On his first (solo) attempt from camp
Grizedale Hall,
Franz von Werra was recaptured on October 12. His second involved four others, who were quickly caught. He was recaptured while trying to steal an airplane. He was then shipped from Great Britain to Canada, where, on his third attempt, he jumped out the window of a moving train. Seven others were recaptured. Von Werra made his way first to the United States, still neutral at that time, then to Mexico (before he could be extradited back to Canada), and eventually to
Nazi Germany. He is the only German World War II POW to escape and return to Germany. (However, see below the April 29, 1944, escape to Tibet.)
April 18, 1941 – Twenty-eight Germans
escaped from Angler, Ontario, through a 150-foot-long (46 m) tunnel. Originally over 80 had planned to escape, but Canadian guards discovered the breakout in progress. Two prisoners were killed and the rest recaptured.
November 23, 1941, December 1941 and February 18, 1942 –
Luftwaffe Oberleutnant and ace
Ulrich Steinhilper escaped from
Bowmanville, Ontario, and managed to make it to
Niagara Falls within two days. Steinhilper unknowingly spent 30 minutes in the neutral United States clinging beneath a train car as it sat idle in a
Buffalo, New York, railyard. In less than three weeks, he escaped again and made it as far as Montreal, Quebec. Within four months, Steinhilper would attempt a third escape. On February 18, 1942, Steinhilper and a friend, disguised as painters, used a ladder to escape over two barbed wire fences. The pair would make it as far as
Watertown, New York, before being arrested by police. Steinhilper was soon sent to
Gravenhurst, Ontario, where he attempted two further escapes.
April 17, 1942, and October 1943 –
Dornier Do 17 bomber pilot Oberleutnant Peter Krug made it as far as
San Antonio, Texas, from the
Bowmanville, Ontario, POW camp.[16] The young
Luftwaffe pilot was aided in his flight by Axis sympathizers in the United States whose addresses may have been procured from outside
Abwehr sources. His second escape was from
Gravenhurst, Ontario; he was reported caught after 24 hours in the October 5, 1943 North Bay Nugget.[17]
November 1, 1942 – Four German prisoners – Bruno Dathe, Willy Michel, Hermann Runne and Johannes Grantz –
escaped from Fort Stanton,
New Mexico, and were captured two days later after a brief skirmish with a
posse of ranchers and cattlemen. One escapee was wounded.[18]
January 1943 –
Camp 354, Kenya. Italian POW Felice Benuzzi convinced two of his fellow inmates, Dr. Giovanni Balletto and Enzo Barsotti, to try an unusual escape route: climbing nearby
Mount Kenya.[19] After 18 days, they gave up and sneaked back into camp. After the war, Benuzzi wrote of his experience in No Picnic on Mount Kenya.
January 6, March 13, April 18 and another attempt, all in 1943 – Karl Rabe of U-35 made four separate escape attempts from
Lethbridge,
Alberta, Canada, including one using a 24-by-10-foot (7.3 m × 3.0 m) home-made
hot air balloon.[20] Previously he had escaped from a
Toronto hospital, subsequently stealing a small row boat with the intention of crossing
Lake Ontario to the American shore, but beached the craft too soon, mistakenly thinking he was already on the American side. He was immediately recaptured by Canadian soldiers.
August 26, 1943 – Nineteen German POWs escaped through a large drainage pipe from
Kingston, Ontario, Canada. All were soon recaptured.
1943 –
Bowmanville POW camp, Canada. In
Operation Kiebitz, Admiral
Karl Dönitz sent the submarine U-536 to pick up four
U-boat commanders, including noted ace
Otto Kretschmer, who were to break out at the right time. The Canadians were aware of the attempt, but let it proceed, hoping to lure in the U-boat. However, the plan was aborted when the part of a tunnel collapsed, revealing its exit to the guards.[21] Instead, another U-boat commander,
Wolfgang Heyda, escaped over a barbed wire fence and made his way 1,400 kilometres (870 mi) to the rendezvous point. Here he was captured, while the authorities waited for the U-boat to surface. Despite being spotted by three destroyers, it got away.
On April 29, 1944,
Heinrich Harrer,
Peter Aufschnaiter, Hans Kopp and four others escaped from a British camp in
Dehradun. Harrer and Aufschnaiter reached
Lhasa and stayed with the
Dalai Lama for seven years, finally escaping from Tibet ahead of the
People's Liberation Army in 1950.
Rolf Magener and Heins von Have went east, passing through Burma and across the front line to reach Japanese troops. They reached Japan after four months on the run, but only returned to Germany two years after the end of the war.[22]
August 5, 1944 –
Cowra breakout, Australia. 359 Japanese POWs escaped in one of the largest breakouts of the war. All who were not killed or did not commit suicide were caught.
August 8, 1944 – Von Werra's Swanwick digging partner, Luftwaffe Lieutenant Walter Manhard, successfully escaped from a
Gravenhurst, Ontario, POW camp.[23] Presumed drowned, he gave himself up to New York state authorities in 1952.[16] By then, he was married to a
United States Navy officer.
c. August 30, 1944[24] –
Deutsches Afrikakorps (DAK) soldier Max Weidauer escaped from
Medicine Hat, Alberta, after he came under suspicion by Nazi elements controlling the camp and the subsequent murder of fellow DAK prisoner August Plaszek.[25] After explaining the circumstances of his escape and the fact that he feared for his life, Weidauer was hidden by a local farmer, but was soon once again behind barbed wire, though in a different camp.[25]
December 24, 1944 –
Papago Park, United States. Twenty-five prisoners got out through a tunnel, but all were recaptured, U-boat commander
Jürgen Wattenberg being the last on January 28, 1945.
March 10, 1945 –
Island Farm,
Wales. 84 prisoners escaped. All but three were recaptured.
September 22, 1945 – German POW
Georg Gärtner escaped from
Camp Deming, New Mexico, after the war had ended by crawling under two gates and jumping onto a passing freight train. Gaertner, who spoke good English, was able to pass for an American and worked as a ski instructor in the winter and a tennis instructor in the summer and married an American woman. In 1985 he finally turned himself in, after 40 years of freedom. No charges were filed against him, and he was allowed to remain in the United States and become a naturalized citizen.
Korean War
June 14, 2008 – Kim Jin-soo. Captured in 1953 by
North Korea, this
South Korean soldier eventually settled down, married and raised a family. Fifty-five years after his capture, the 74-year-old Kim escaped to China.[26]
Vietnam War
June 29, 1966 –
Dieter Dengler,
Pisidhi Indradat,
Duane W. Martin,
Eugene DeBruin, Prasit Promsuwan (a Thai), Prasit Thanee (a Thai), and Y. C. To (a Nationalist Chinese) escaped from a
Pathet Lao camp in
Laos. U.S. Navy pilot Dengler was rescued on July 20. Martin was killed (according to Dengler) outside of a Laotian village. The others were recaptured. Indradat, a civilian, was freed by Laotian soldiers later; the remaining prisoners were never seen again.
April 10, 1967, and May 10, 1969 – U.S. Air Force Captain
John A. Dramesi bailed out of his stricken aircraft over
North Vietnam on April 2, 1967. Eight days later he eluded his North Vietnamese captors by dismantling the side of his cell. He was recaptured the following day. After a year of planning, Dramesi and another POW aviator escaped again, by slipping through a hole in the roof. After traveling 3 miles in 12 hours, Dramesi and his companion were recaptured. He was released in 1973. Dramesi had plans for a third escape. He wrote a memoir, Code of Honor, telling of his escapes and time held captive.
September 1967 – U.S. Air Force Major
Bud Day was shot down and captured by the local North Vietnamese militia. After days of torture, he escaped, making his way back to South Vietnam. He was however recaptured within sight of an American base camp, and endured five years and seven months more of captivity. Day was awarded the
Medal of Honor for his exploits.
December 25, 1967 – U.S Air Force Lieutenant
Lance Sijan was shot down and evaded capture for 46 days with a fractured skull, a mangled right hand, and a compound fracture of the left leg, no food nor survival kit and little water. He was captured but quickly escaped from an North Vietnamese Army camp after incapacitating a guard. Sijan was captured several hours later and died in
Hỏa Lò Prison from his injuries. He was posthumous awarded the
Medal of Honor and promoted to captain after his death.
December 31, 1968 –
James N. Rowe, a Special Forces second lieutenant, was captured on October 29, 1963. After five years of captivity and torture, he was about to be executed when he overpowered a guard and was picked up by a U.S. helicopter. Rowe was awarded the
Silver Star.
12 October 1967 – Lieutenant Colonel George G. McKnight, a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, "executed an escape from a solitary confinement cell by removing the door bolt brackets from his door. Colonel McKnight knew the outcome of his escape attempt could be severe reprisal or loss of his life. He succeeded in making it through a section of housing, then to the Red River and swam down river all night. The next morning he was recaptured, severely beaten, and put into solitary confinement for two and a half years".[27]
Indo-Pakistani war of 1971
July 1971 - Pakistani office
Ikram Sehgal escaped from the Panagarh POW camp in
India.
See also
Kugel-erlass, a secret Nazi decree regarding the punishment of recaptured Allied POWs
^"Push Search For Prisoner". Lethbridge Herald. September 2, 1944. Police and soldiers are continuing their search today for a German prisoner of war who escaped from the
Medalta Potteries at Medicine Hat, where he was working on Thursday afternoon. The man is believed to be Max Weidauer.