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Out of Colditz: My Father the POW and the who Controlled his Fate Main
Author(s): David Lascelles (Author)
- Publisher: Profile Books
- Publication Date: 27 May 2027
- Edition: Main
- Language: English
- Print length: 320 pages
- ISBN-10: 1805226746
- ISBN-13: 9781805226741
Book Description
'A truly revelatory story of courage, treachery, intrigue, divided loyalties and vengeance' Damien Lewis, author of SAS Great Escapes
'A gripping, unsettling journey into the strange moral fog of the war's last days - and the shadows we inherit long after' Iain MacGregor, author of The Lighthouse of Stalingrad
The nephew of the King. The son of the Viceroy of India. Churchill's nephew.
Thrown together in late 1944 into the notorious prisoner of war camp at Colditz Castle, these men were among the Prominente: a small group of captives who were scions of the British establishment and pawns in the endgame being played by the Nazi leadership.
As German defeat loomed, the head of the POW camps, SS General Gottlob Berger, made a pivotal decision: to disobey direct orders from Hitler to 'kill them all' and grant them safe passage back to the Allied frontline. This Nazi overseer, later convicted of war crimes, held the future of the Prominente in his hands.
George Lascelles, Earl of Harewood, was one of the men who survived. Eighty years later, drawing on archives and family records from Britain and Germany, his son David retraces their extraordinary journey and asks what motivated Berger's fateful choice - remorse? Honour? Or simple self-interest?
Editorial Reviews
Product description
Review
A fascinating story about the fate of the VIP prisoners of Colditz that is grounded in some remarkable family and military history detective work. Beautifully and poignantly told-- Robert Verkaik, author of THE TRAITOR OF COLDITZ
A gripping true story from the heart of Nazi Germany's escape-proof fortress... Out of Colditz positively sizzles -- Damien Lewis, author of SAS GREAT ESCAPES
A remarkable and movingquest to understand contrasting lives and generations cast into each other's paths by the hazards of family, nationality and conflict. Lascelles brings a filmmaker's eye to composition... At once intimate and panoramic, his research discloses unsettling echoes within Europe's most infamous historical epochs -- Professor Jane Caplan, University of Oxford
A son's tender, generous and unaffected account of his father's time at the notorious Second World War prisoner-of-war camp... Lascelles is a natural storyteller
― The Oldie
Utterly enthralling. Not just a little-known wartime story, but a fascinating reflection on the war's legacy for the next generation -- Alwyn Turner, author of A SHELLSHOCKED NATION
Visceral and meticulously researched... a triumph -- John Jay, author of NINETTE'S WAR
