Stalag Luft III: The Archaeology of an Escaper’s Camp

Multi-disciplinary investigations at PoW Camp 198, Bridgend, S. Wales: site of a mass escape in March 1945

“…Desk studies of the 1945 camp layout, using existing maps (Figure 2) was particularly useful, as other modern investigations of PoW camps have shown. 39 Luckily, Hut 9 was recognized by the local Borough Council as being an important historical building when the rest of the camp was demolished in 1993; otherwise this investigation would have been made much more difficult as the rest of the camp is now immature woodland (Figure 2) and thus the identification of specific huts would have been problematic, this having been a major issue in the investigation of the Stalag Luft III tunnel Dick. Ground-based LiDAR surveys have also proven to be highly useful for such wartime conflict archaeology investigations as others have shown.…”

“…Metal objects were common components of Red Cross Parcels, in the form of tins and other containers, and are often found in twentieth-century PoW sites. 31 Such items were very often fashioned into useful items, cooking utensils, containers and similar, 32 though obtaining metal tools and other escape aids would have been difficult, if not unknown. 33 In any case, it is likely that the site would contain a variety of mundane metallic objects.…”

“…9 There were generally two types of escape tunnels: (1) relatively short tunnels, excavated quickly to enable small numbers of prisoners to go under camp perimeter fences and escape, and which entailed relatively little work, but which were generally poorly concealed 10 ; and, (2) relatively long tunnels that were meticulously planned, engineered and operated by highly organized and expertly-trained personnel, for example, the well-known WW2 Allied 1944 'Great Escape' 11 and the attempted French escape from Colditz Castle. 12 Whilst there have been a number of multi-disciplinary scientific site investigations undertaken on WW2 Allied PoW escape attempts, 13 there have been few studies of Axis PoW escape attempts (Table 1). Though there have been some recent studies of German PoW camps in Allied countries, 14 in general there has been low level of perception that Axis troops also attempted to escape, with the single most documented example being the escape of Franz von Werra from captivity in Canada.…”

Commentary: Intimate Memories and Coping with World War II Internment

“…Hosken and Tiede (this issue) invoke Silliman's (2001:195) concept of "survivance," the "creative responses to difficult times, or agentive actions through struggle," which is part of the repertoire of coping, together with resistance in its more or less overt forms. Resistance is not a theme emphasized in the articles here, though it is often evoked in internment studies relating to both civilian (Carr 2012; Burton and Farrell 2013) and military (Doyle et al 2013) contexts. This is often placed in opposition to collaboration, another form of coping, but in most cases the situation was much more fluid and nuanced, and perhaps accommodation is an appropriate term, as all-both authorities and internees-adjusted behaviors and attitudes in order to get through this indeterminate, but ultimately finite, period (Henshaw 2012).…”