Why? After watching the documentary The Great Escape: The Canadian
Story,
I was compelled
to do further research and became a fan :-)
Name: Tom, Dick & Harry after the three tunnels, although Harry was
the only tunnel used in the Great Escape.
This is only an extremely brief overview of the massive escape, for more information about the entire escape, check out the links in the extras section. I'm constantly adding more information as time permits.
Escaping was viewed as a sport by many POWs. It was done out of sheer boredom, adventure, and was conceived as a prisoner’s duty to attempt in after they’d been captured. Escaping would disrupt the enemy's attention, and pull its troops into finding the escapees.
Stalag Luft III was supposed to be ‘escape proof’ and was strategically
designed to hold captured Allied airmen. The purpose was to gather all the
escape master-minds together. Airmen were thought to be ‘terror fliers’ by
Adolf Hitler, and they were – they spent many hours working in the solitude
or in small groups, and all that training helped improve their self-reliance
and cooperation skills escaping demanded. They were educated, aggressive,
could work alone, and had the ability to use their knowledge to plan sophisticated
escape attempts.
Squadron Leader Roger 'Big X' Bushell first touched on the idea of enabling
200 men escape. For the next year, nearly 600 men dedicated every second, day,
week and month to contributing to the escape. On March 24, 1944,
they broke out...
In retaliation, Hitler ordered all 76 escapers to be executed, but it was too obvious that it was a mass murder, and so the number was set down to 50. In total, 76 escaped, 50 were executed, 23 were sent back to POW camps, and 3 escaped successfully. This massive attempt and tragic loss of human life has inspired many books, as well as the film The Great Escape (1963).