Oflag IV-C, generally known as Colditz Castle, was a prominent German Army prisoner-of-war camp for captured Allied officers during World War II. Located in Colditz, Saxony, the camp operated within the medieval Colditz Castle, which overlooks the town. The word "Oflag" is an abbreviation of the German term Offizierslager, meaning "officers' camp". The camp held officers who were deemed escape risks or who had already attempted escape from other prison camps. Known for its seemingly impenetrable structure, Colditz Castle became a site of numerous escape attempts, some of which were successful, earning a reputation for the ingenuity and daring of its prisoners. The camp's history and the elaborate escape plans conceived there have been widely covered in postwar memoirs, books, and media. Today, Colditz Castle has become a popular tourist destination, with guided tours, exhibitions and a museum dedicated to the prisoners' lives.
Colditz Castle
This thousand-year-old fortress was in the heart of Hitler's Reich, from any frontier not under Nazi control. Its outer walls were thick and the cliff on which it was built had a sheer drop of to the River Mulde below."The Story of Colditz"
Timeline In the first half of November 1939, Polish prisoners of war — officers convalescing from wounds sustained in the battles of Kock and Tomaszów Lubelski from the September Campaign — were sent to the camp. In December, generals were transferred from Oflag II-A Prenzlau, and senior officers from Oflag XI-A Osterode. On 13December 1939, the camp held 632 officers and 101 enlisted men. After the French campaign in 1940, Polish officers were relocated from Colditz: generals to Oflag IV-B Königstein, officers to Oflag II-A Prenzlau, and officer cadets to Stalag VI-B Neu Versen.
In October 1940, Donald Middleton, Keith Milne, and Howard Wardle (a Canadian who joined the RAF just before the war) became the first British prisoners at Colditz. On 7November, six British officers, the "Laufen Six", named after the camp (Oflag VII-C) from which they made their first escape, arrived: Harry Elliott, Rupert Barry, Pat Reid, Dick Howe, Peter Allan, and Kenneth Lockwood. They were soon joined by a handful of British Army officers and later by Belgian officers. By Christmas 1940 there were 60 Polish officers, 12 Belgians, 50 French, and 30 British, a total of no more than 200 with their orderlies.Oflag IVC (Colditz) on East Anglia Net, Bygones
200 French officers arrived in February 1941. A number of the French demanded that French Jewish officers be segregated from them and the camp commander obliged; they were moved to the attics. By the end of July 1941, there were more than 500 officers: over 250 French, 150 Polish, 50 British and Commonwealth, 2 Yugoslavian. In April 1941, a French officer, Alain Le Ray, become the first prisoner ever to escape from the Colditz Castle.
On 24 July 1941, 68 Dutch officers arrived, mostly members of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army who had refused to sign a declaration that they would take no part in the war against Germany which most other Dutch prisoners of war had accepted. According to the German Security Officer, Captain Reinhold Eggers, the Dutch officers appeared to be model prisoners at first. Importantly for other internees in the camp, among the 68 Dutch was Hans Larive, with his knowledge of the Singen route. This route into Switzerland was discovered by Larive in 1940 on his first escape attempt from an Oflag in Soest. Larive was caught at the Swiss border near Singen. The interrogating Gestapo officer was so confident the war would soon be won by Germany that he told Larive the safe way across the border near Singen. Larive did not forget and many prisoners later escaped using this route.Larive; the man who came in from Colditz, Leo de hartog; officieren achter prikkeldraad 1940-1945
Within days after their arrival, the Dutch escape officer, Captain Machiel van den Heuvel, planned and executed his first of many escape plans. On 13 August 1941 the first two Dutchmen escaped successfully from the castle, followed by many more of whom six officers made it to England. Afterwards a number of would-be escapees borrowed Dutch greatcoats as their disguise. When the Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands they were short of material for uniforms, so they confiscated anything available. The coats in Dutch field grey in particular remained unchanged in colour, since it was similar to the tone already in use by the Germans, thus these greatcoats were nearly identical with very minor alterations.
In May 1943, the Wehrmacht High Command decided that Colditz should house only Americans and Commonwealth. In June the Dutch were moved out, followed shortly thereafter by the Poles and Belgians. The final French group left 12 July 1943. By the end of July there were a few Free French officers, and 228 Commonwealth officers including Britons, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Irish, and one Indian.
On 23 August 1944 Colditz received its first Americans: 49-year-old Colonel Florimond Duke, Major Alfred Suarez, and Lieutenant Guy Nunn. They were counter-intelligence operatives parachuted into Hungary to prevent it joining forces with Germany. Population was approximately 254 at the start of the early winter that year.
On 19 January 1945 six French Generals — Lieutenant-General Jean Adolphe Louis Robert Flavigny, Major-General Louis Léon Marie André Buisson, Major-General Arsène Marie Paul Vauthier, Brigadier-General Albert Joseph Daine, and Brigadier-General René Jacques Mortemart de Boisse — were brought from the camp at Königstein to Colditz Castle. Major-General Gustave Marie Maurice Mesny was murdered by the Germans on the way from Königstein to Colditz Castle.
On 5 February, Polish General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, deputy commander of the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) and responsible for the Warsaw Uprising, arrived with his entourage.
In March, 1200 French prisoners were brought to Colditz Castle, with 600 more being imprisoned in the town below.
As allied forces neared, the prisoners worried that they would be killed to prevent their freedom. Czech RAF pilot "Checko" Chaloupka had a girlfriend in Colditz, Irmagard Wernicke, whose father was anti-Nazi. A guard, Heinz Schmidt, passed messages between Chaloupka and Irmagard. With their help, the prisoners set up an intelligence system in the village. They compiled files on Nazi and anti-Nazi citizens and prepared to, if necessary, violently escape and capture Colditz.
When the final battles of the war approached the area, the prisoners became concerned at the danger, both from the SS in the town who might kill them, or from the approaching Allied forces who might mistakenly attack the castle. They persuaded Eggers and other German officials and guards to surrender to them in secret. After the prisoners erected US, UK, and French flags on the castle walls, on 16 April 1945 Oflag IV C was captured by American soldiers from the 1st US Army.Reid Colditz: The Full Story p294
"Prominente" and notable inmates Among the more notable inmates were British fighter ace Douglas Bader; Pat Reid, the man who brought Colditz to public attention with his post-war books; Airey Neave, the first British officer to escape from Colditz and later a British Member of Parliament; New Zealand Army Captain Charles Upham, the only combat soldier ever to receive the Victoria Cross twice; and Sir David Stirling, founder of the wartime Special Air Service.
There were also prisoners called Prominente (German for 'celebrities'), relatives of Allied VIPs. The first one was Giles Romilly, a civilian journalist who was captured in Narvik, Norway who was also a nephew of Winston Churchill's wife Clementine Churchill. Adolf Hitler himself specified that Romilly was to be treated with the utmost care and that:
The Kommandant and Security Officer answer for Romilly's security with their heads. His security is to be assured by any and every exceptional measure you care to take.
When the end of the war approached, the number of Prominente increased. Eventually there were Lord Lascelles and John Elphinstone, nephews of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth; Captain The Lord Haig, son of World War I Field Marshal Douglas Haig; Lord Hopetoun, son of Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy of India; Lieutenant John Winant Jr., son of John Gilbert Winant, US ambassador to Britain; Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, commander of Armia Krajowa and the Warsaw Uprising; and five other Polish generals. British Commando Michael Alexander claimed to be a nephew of field marshal Harold Alexander in order to escape execution, but was merely a distant cousin.
Micky Burn, another well-known inmate of Colditz, was a British commando captured at Saint-Nazaire. Burn had been a journalist like Romilly before the war, working for The Times. Burn had briefly been an admirer of the Nazi Party and in 1936 had met Adolf Hitler, who signed his copy of Mein Kampf. After war broke out Burn shifted politically to Marxism and gave lectures to prisoners at Colditz, but due to his pre-war interest in Nazi philosophy he was widely regarded with distrust and scorn.
John Arundell, 16th Baron Arundell of Wardour (1907–1944) was an aristocrat held at Colditz who, despite his pedigree, was not awarded Prominente status. Arundell made a habit of exercising in the winter snow; he contracted tuberculosis and died in Chester Military Hospital.
Another officer, not listed as among the Prominente but who became famous after the end of the war, was French military chaplain and Catholic priest Yves Congar, who was captured as a POW and later sent there after repeated attempts to escape. He became a noted theologian and was made cardinal in 1994, at age 90.
At 1:30 a.m. on 13 April 1945, while the final battles of the war approached the area, the Prominente were moved under guard and the cover of darkness, over the protestations of the other prisoners. The Allies were concerned that the Prominente might be used as hostages, bargaining chips and human shields, or that the SS might try to kill them out of spite. But they reached the American lines alive a couple of weeks later, an action aided by the SS head of POW camp administration Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger, which contributed to his lessened sentence after his war crimes verdict in 1949.
German staff and visitors
Keeping the castle running in a secure and efficient manner was a difficult task, and the Germans maintained a larger garrison at the castle than at many of their other prison camps. Between 1939 and 1945 more than 70 German officers and enlisted men worked in a wide variety of staff positions, as well as overseeing prisoners' labour.
There was also a large contingent of civilians and local townspeople who worked on the castle grounds. Some were in maintenance, some in medical roles, some were there in a supervisory role (Nazi Party leaders, Swiss Red Cross observers, etc.). Some family members of the German military officers lived at the camp.
Security officers Captain Paul Priem was the first Security Officer. Pat Reid said he "possessed a rare quality among Germans – a sense of humour".P.R. Reid, MBE, MC, Colditz: The Colditz Story & The Latter Days of Colditz, Coronet, 1985, p. 74 Captain Reinhold Eggers was Security Officer from November 1940 until April 1945, promoted to chief of security in 1944. He was also the only English-speaker among the Germans at Colditz, thus was involved in every interaction with the prisoners or between the Senior Officers and the Kommandant serving as translator. Dutchman Lieutenant Damiaen J. van Doorninck said of him, "This man was our opponent, but nevertheless he earned our respect by his correct attitude, self-control and total lack of rancour despite all the harassment we gave him."
Kommandants Oberst Schmidt 1939 – August 1942 Oberst Glaesche 1 August 1942 – 13 February 1943