Prisoners of the Castle Quotes

“The two ghosts had managed to evade detection for a year, successfully missing 1,326 roll calls. Eggers was impressed. “It was a hell of a story.” The army command in Berlin refused to believe it. Rather than admit they had been duped, the authorities arrived at the hilarious conclusion that the two men had escaped back in April 1943, but found it impossible to get out of Germany and had then secretly broken back into the castle. Kommandant Prawitt exploded: “Is this place a damned hotel where people come and go as they wish? It’s nearly as difficult to get in here as it is to get out!”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“The trek across France by Biren Mazumdar and Dariao Singh is one of the great untold stories of the Second World War: two unmistakably Indian soldiers trudged 900 kilometers in six weeks through Nazi-held territory.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“The battle within Colditz was now a two-sided conflict between the British and the Germans. There was no longer a danger that an escape plan secretly mounted by one nation might trip up another. Colditz became a British prison: the hierarchy of rank was more pronounced, as was the control exerted by the escape committee, and the opportunity for one-man ventures was reduced. The Dutch Hawaiian band, the French cuisine, and the Polish choir were gone. The informal cultural osmosis between nationalities was over, as was the fruitful Anglo-Dutch partnership and the daily babble of diverse languages in the inner courtyard. Padre Platt noticed that as an all-Anglo prison, the place seemed more cliquey, with “small friendship groups, complete in themselves and almost exclusive.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“The admixture of British, French, Polish, Belgian, and Dutch inmates had lent the place a peculiarly cosmopolitan atmosphere.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“After two and a half years, the Wehrmacht had reached the belated conclusion that it was a mistake to cram all the most recalcitrant prisoners, of every Allied nation, into one place. Instead of dampening rebellion, the chemistry of international competition and collaboration had made the place even harder to police.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“Even escaping had an internal hierarchy, with veteran escapers at the top.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“One veteran observed that prisoners “roughly divided themselves into five main categories: escapers, creators, administrators, the students, and the sleepers.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“orderlies lived separate, very different lives from the officers they served, with their own quarters, and no opportunity to escape. “We didn’t even know when the escapes were taking place,” said Ross. “They’d never involve us.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“The social divide between officers and their servants was strictly upheld.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“After the war, former inmates tended to portray the Colditz prisoner community as a classless, cohesive band of brothers whose shared determination to escape somehow flattened out the distinctions and dissonances that divided the world outside. Exactly the reverse was true. “The class structure in Colditz was like the class structure of the time,”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“The “old school tie” mentality not only persisted but was exacerbated under captivity, as the inmates sought to build a replica of the lives they had known before the war.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“The famous pilot was treated with elaborate courtesy by his German captors: in an act of bizarre gallantry, they informed the British that Bader’s artificial right leg was no longer fit for purpose and invited the RAF to send a replacement. Sure enough, with Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering’s official approval, the unimaginatively named “Operation Leg” was launched on August 19, when an RAF bomber was given safe conduct over Saint-Omer and dropped a new prosthesis by parachute on the nearest Luftwaffe base in occupied France, along with stump socks, powder, tobacco, and chocolate.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“You are ruining your chances of getting a medal,” the MI5 officer warned. Mazumdar exploded. “Do you think I escaped and went through all these things just to get a bloody medal?” he shouted, and walked out.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“Doubt began to circulate, like a fine poisonous miasma, around a prisoner with unconventional political views, a short temper, and a skin that was not white.—Birendranath Mazumdar never fit in, because he was never allowed to.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“Finally Mazumdar exploded: “The difference between you and me, Colonel, is this: You have lived in my country for twenty-five years and you can’t speak one of its languages. I have lived in your country for fifteen and speak five languages, including yours.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“The wartime history of Colditz is little known in Germany, despite its mythical status among the countries whose prisoners were held there.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“Auntie Christine in Leeds was, in reality, part of a new branch of British intelligence dedicated to aiding POWs and servicemen shot down or lost in enemy territory. It operated under various cover names, including The Lisbon Book Fund, The Welsh Provident Society, The Licensed Victuallers Sports Association, The British Local Ladies’ Comforts Society, and The Jigsaw Puzzle Club. But its official name was MI9, the youngest addition to the Military Intelligence family that already included MI5 and MI6.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“In the full glare of the arc lights, his cap “shone like an emerald.” In seconds he was surrounded by guards. The officer in command was livid: “This is an insult to the German army. You will be shot.” The Germans appeared offended less by the escape bid than the absurd costume it had been attempted in, which they “seemed to regard as an insult to the uniform.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“the first Senior British Officer (SBO) at Colditz, the confusingly named Guy German.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“In the intimate confines of Colditz, that enemy was becoming ever more familiar. On a battlefield, the foe is anonymous. In a prison, he has a face, a name, and a personality.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“The pastor had no intention of escaping: he had a captive flock, and he planned to ensure that whatever trials lay ahead, they did not stray from the path of righteousness. In the boarding school hierarchy emerging at Colditz, Colonel German was Head Boy, Reid the Captain of the First XI, and Platt the school chaplain.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“By the spring of 1941, the British, the Poles, and the French were each working on independent tunnels in different parts of the camp, without informing one another: in the ground beneath Colditz, a secret and undeclared contest was underway.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“Ross, who was permitted to take part in cricket matches, but only when Bader was playing. “I detested the cricket. He’d hit the ball and I’d do the runs.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“runs through British (male) culture like veins through marble. Often absurd in ritual, rigidly hierarchical, and rigorously exclusive, these defining grouplets can be hugely significant to their members, and no one else. A certain sort of clubbable Englishman is happiest when admitting a like-minded person into his club, or blackballing someone who isn’t.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“Clubs were, and remain, a bizarre British preoccupation. Whenever three or more Englishmen are gathered together, a minimum of two will attempt to form a club from which the others are excluded.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“With exceptions, most of the German guards were not brutes, and some, like Eggers, were not even Nazis. There was honor on both sides.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“Running through the very heart of Colditz ran a wide and almost unbridgeable social divide. This was a camp for captured officers, but it also contained a fluctuating population of orderlies, ordinary soldier-prisoners from the “other ranks” employed by the Germans to perform menial tasks and work as servants for their senior officers: cooking, tidying, cleaning, boot polishing, and other chores.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“The first Colditz prisoners were the cream of their nations’ professional armed forces, new graduates from Sandhurst and Saint-Cyr, as well as veterans of the First World War. Marching off to war in 1939, they had been told to expect a swift victory. None had seriously contemplated the possibility of being captured, let alone herded into Germany and locked up indefinitely in a dismal fortress. Laying down their lives for king and country was one thing; risking, and losing, their liberty was quite another, and most were entirely unprepared for captivity.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“The British were settling into their new quarters when they heard a scratching at the door, which swung open to reveal four smiling Polish officers carrying several large bottles of beer. It had taken the Poles less than a week to work out that the ancient locks on the castle’s internal doors could be opened with ease using “a couple of instruments that looked like button hooks.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

“The inmates of Colditz might have lost their freedom but they knew their legal rights, and so did the Germans. The paramilitary SS operated the concentration camps with an inhuman disregard for international law, but in the army-run POW camps most senior German officers saw it as a matter of soldierly pride to uphold the Convention, and took offense at any suggestion they were failing to do so.”
― Ben Macintyre, Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison