"In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend. But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape....

Great escape: Over six hundred Allied prisoners dug three highly sophisticated tunnels in Stalag Luft III, allowing seventy-six out of two hundred prisoners to make their escape on the night of March 24, 1944. Nazi prison escape: Details Colditz Castle, a medieval fortress used by the Nazis to house captured Allied officers who had escaped from other prisoner-of-war camps.