Prisoners of the Castle

July 11, 2022
In this riveting history of Nazi Germany’s most notorious POW camp, bestseller Macintyre (Agent Sonya) spotlights the indomitable will and creativity of the inmates who tried to escape from it. Colditz, a “grim Gothic castle on a German hilltop,” was where the Nazis sent the most “unruly” Allied prisoners, including journalist Giles Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew, and Birendranath Mazumdar, an Indian doctor who volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps and endured the racism of his fellow POWs until he staged a hunger strike that secured his release. The book’s colorful cast also includes Christopher Clayton Hutton, an inventor hired by British intelligence to create “escape equipment” for POWs, who became the inspiration for the fictional character Q in the James Bond novels and movies; Julius Green, a “Jewish dentist from Glasgow” who gathered intelligence from prisoners and guards he treated in POW camps across Germany; and Reinhold Eggers, the “humorless” security chief of Colditz who “treated escape prevention as a branch of logic.” Though attempted “home runs,” or clean getaways in the lingo of Colditz POWs, provide much of the book’s drama, Macintyre also sheds light on how the prisoners relieved their boredom through theatrical productions, reading, and writing poetry. This is another engrossing tale of WWII intrigue from a master of the genre.