The Colditz Hostages

Download or read book Hostages of Colditz written by Giles Romilly and published by New York : Praeger. This book was released on 1973 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For two years during World War II, Giles Romilly and Michael Alexander shared a small room in the tower of Colditz Castle, the notorious German punishment camp. During that time, Colditz housed some six hundred prisoners of assorted nationalities and ranks. Most of them were there because they had been especially persistent or imaginative, though unsuccessful, in their attempts to escape from other places of internment; Colditz, in the heart of Germany, was considered virtually escapeproof. Romilly, a war correspondent, had been captures as a suspected spy when the Germans seized the port of Narvik, Norway, in April, 1940. In August, 1942, Alexander, a British commando in North Africa, had been taken prisoner behind German lines, wearing a German uniform. As a newspaperman, Romilly would probably have been released if it had not been known to the Germans that he was a nephew of Winston Churchill, which made him of great potential value as a hostage. Alexander, on the other hand, would probably have been shot as a spy if he had not told his captors, with some exaggeration, that he was a close relative of Field Marshal Alexander, then commander of the British troops in the Middle East.