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Escape from Germany

0/5 ( ratings)

July, 1918. The most heavily guarded POW camp in the world.

Surrounded by steel palisades and barbed-wire fences, patrolled by ferocious dogs and armed guards with orders to shoot to kill, Holzminden was a brutal punishment camp. To escape would take boundless ingenuity and nerves of steel.

Many tried. Prisoners used sardine-tin openers to pick locks, forged documents, sent messages using milk as an invisible ink, and created fake uniforms and elaborate disguises. Every attempt failed, leading only to ever-tighter defences.

But on the night of 23 July 1918, twenty-nine undaunted Allied prisoners achieved the impossible. They had spent nine months using cutlery to move tonnes of earth, clay and stone, digging a tunnel over 150 feet long under the walls and barbed-wire fences, to the farmland beyond.

This is the fascinating story of how they did it – and of the many who had failed before them. Neil Hanson provides a rare insight into the minds of these prisoners of war, revealing their resourcefulness, courage and persistence – and inexhaustible good humour.

‘Neil Hanson is that rare beast – a popular historian who never talks down to his readers’ - Sunday Telegraph

‘Extraordinarily interesting’ - The Times Literary Supplement

‘An absorbing account of human endurance’ - Historical Novel Society

‘This brilliant and dramatic account is a fitting testament to a heroic episode in a war that has for too long been simplified as nothing more than the mud and blood of the trenches’ - The Good Book Guide

Neil Hanson is the author of three acclaimed works of narrative The Custom of the Sea, The Dreadful Judgement and The Confident Hope of a Miracle . He lives in Yorkshire with his family.

Language: English

Pages: 290

Format: Kindle Edition

Release: May 12, 2021

Escape from Germany

0/5 ( ratings)

July, 1918. The most heavily guarded POW camp in the world.

Surrounded by steel palisades and barbed-wire fences, patrolled by ferocious dogs and armed guards with orders to shoot to kill, Holzminden was a brutal punishment camp. To escape would take boundless ingenuity and nerves of steel.

Many tried. Prisoners used sardine-tin openers to pick locks, forged documents, sent messages using milk as an invisible ink, and created fake uniforms and elaborate disguises. Every attempt failed, leading only to ever-tighter defences.

But on the night of 23 July 1918, twenty-nine undaunted Allied prisoners achieved the impossible. They had spent nine months using cutlery to move tonnes of earth, clay and stone, digging a tunnel over 150 feet long under the walls and barbed-wire fences, to the farmland beyond.

This is the fascinating story of how they did it – and of the many who had failed before them. Neil Hanson provides a rare insight into the minds of these prisoners of war, revealing their resourcefulness, courage and persistence – and inexhaustible good humour.

‘Neil Hanson is that rare beast – a popular historian who never talks down to his readers’ - Sunday Telegraph

‘Extraordinarily interesting’ - The Times Literary Supplement

‘An absorbing account of human endurance’ - Historical Novel Society

‘This brilliant and dramatic account is a fitting testament to a heroic episode in a war that has for too long been simplified as nothing more than the mud and blood of the trenches’ - The Good Book Guide

Neil Hanson is the author of three acclaimed works of narrative The Custom of the Sea, The Dreadful Judgement and The Confident Hope of a Miracle . He lives in Yorkshire with his family.

Language: English

Pages: 290

Format: Kindle Edition

Release: May 12, 2021

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