Escape from Colditz with Ben Macintyre
Warfare
History Hit
4.5 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In World War Two the ancient fortress of Colditz Castle was used by the German Army to hold its most defiant prisoners of war. Located near Leipzig, deep in Germany, it was almost impossible to escape.
If an Allied escapee did manage to make it out of the castle walls, they’d face a journey home of hundreds of miles in enemy territory, with no guarantee of safety or help. But the men of Colditz were no ordinary prisoners, and their captors were about to find out why.
In this episode James is joined by bestselling author Ben Macintyre as he reveals the characters who became legends of World War Two due to their daring escapes.
Ben's new book Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle is available here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | During the Second World War, the German army used the ancient towering cold its castle near Leipzig to hold its most defiant prisoners. |
| 0:09.0 | Nestle deep within the German heartland, it became almost impossible to escape. |
| 0:14.9 | And once you made it out of the castle walls, if you got that far, you had to travel hundreds |
| 0:19.4 | of miles across Germany to try and get to safety. But it wasn't totally impossible. |
| 0:25.7 | I'm your host James Rogers. This is the Warfare Podcast and in this episode I'm joined |
| 0:30.8 | by best-selling author Ben McIntyre. |
| 0:33.0 | Now you'll know Ben from his books on Operation Minstme, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes, |
| 0:38.0 | which has just been turned into a new hit BBC series, |
| 0:41.0 | and I can only expect Ben's new book will have the same success as the |
| 0:45.6 | characters he reveals became legends due to their daring escapes. So here is |
| 0:51.1 | Ben McIntyre on escaping from coldets. Enjoy. Hi Ben welcome to the Warfare Podcast how you doing today. I'm fine you. Well, it's great to have you on and congratulations on the new book about a topic that has fascinated me and I'm sure all of our listeners since we were very young and that is cold it's one of history's most notorious |
| 1:24.8 | prisons now off the back of operation mincemeat your latest smash-hit book what |
| 1:30.6 | made you want to focus on cold it's? |
| 1:33.0 | I guess cold it's a little like mincemeat is one of those stories that we think we know. |
| 1:37.0 | I've lost count of the number of people who said to me of Operation Mintzmeat. |
| 1:40.0 | That's the man who never was. |
| 1:42.0 | Well the truth is if you only have a new mincemeat through the man who never was well the truth is if you only |
| 1:43.0 | ever knew mincemeat through the man who never was you knew about one tenth of it and |
| 1:46.6 | the same is probably true of cold it's we have a very clear |
| 1:50.6 | mythologized idea of what cold it's was about and it's actually part of our sort of national mythology |
| 1:56.6 | really I mean the very word cold it has been absorbed into the language and it sort of almost always |
| 2:02.3 | tells the same story the the traditional story. And that's the story of a sort of white moustacheoed British officer with a stiff upper lip, tunneling his way out of a gothic castle and defying the Germans and of course that is a |
... |
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