Timeline for Why try to escape a POW camp?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 10 at 22:53 | answer | added | paul garrett | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jan 23, 2022 at 17:48 | answer | added | Schwern | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jan 20, 2022 at 23:50 | comment | added | Greg | Just because a book did not write about if the conditions were miserable, it didn't mean they were good. The author may have assumptions about the audience and its knowledge about the circumstances. If the audience knows being in a POW camp is generally bad, but not as bad as Japanese POW camps or German concentration camps, there author may not go an extra length to detail the situation. | |
| Jan 12, 2022 at 3:30 | comment | added | TheHonRose | I would add, hatred of the enemy, plus pure bl**day-mindedness. You might not hate a people /nation at the outset of war, but when and if you have lost comrades, relatives, friends, and seen your country blasted, you probably do, and give them as much trouble as you can. OTOH, senior officers saw escape committees as a pressure-release valve for fit restless young men. | |
| Jan 11, 2022 at 17:34 | comment | added | MCW♦ | @MarkJohnson - point taken | |
| Jan 11, 2022 at 17:30 | comment | added | Mark Johnson | @MCW You asked the question: Is there anyone to whom the word "prisoner" is applied who does not seek escape from that condition? If you ask such questions, don't be surprised if they are being answered. Around 94% of the inmates could (or would) not participate in the escape. Stalag Luft III - Wikipedia. | |
| Jan 11, 2022 at 14:14 | vote | accept | nuggethead | ||
| Jan 10, 2022 at 13:46 | answer | added | Ne Mo | timeline score: 8 | |
| Jan 7, 2022 at 20:07 | comment | added | Mark Johnson | @MCW Well, the author of The Great Escape seems to disagree with you. Peaple adapt to circumstances. | |
| Jan 7, 2022 at 19:45 | comment | added | Mark Johnson | @MCW,Santiago By the time the 1963 film was made, fantasy really took over. The airplane scean (2:22:40) shot in Füssen turns east (instead of west to Switzerland) which would have lead them, eventually, to Obersalzberg where Hitler's Berghof was situated. The only realistic scean is the rowboat one. The Oder river is due north of the camp in Sagen and then down the river to Stettin and getting on a ship to Sweden (which actually happened). | |
| Jan 7, 2022 at 19:44 | comment | added | Mark Johnson | @MCW,Santiago Don't mix up the world of fantasy with the real world: [The Great Escape (book): ...,and in the 1946 book Escape to Danger which he [Paul Brickhill] co-wrote with Conrad Norton. By the time of the 1950 book, Brickhill had eliminated some of the less heroic aspects of the story, including the fact that a large proportion of the compound's population had no interest in the escape. | |
| Jan 7, 2022 at 15:11 | comment | added | Santiago | If you don't know how long the war would last, you might wither in the pow camp. | |
| Jan 7, 2022 at 14:50 | answer | added | Mason Wright | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jan 5, 2022 at 15:23 | comment | added | totalMongot | In today's jails in Europe, people are fed, well treated, have access to curses,and can see their wives (privately as well) and children. Still, some escape or try to because they think they could do a lot of things outside | |
| Jan 5, 2022 at 11:14 | comment | added | Lucian | This question can be asked of countless prison breaks, unrelated to any war(s) whatsoever; it's not as if peacetime detainees, arrested or incarcerated for various non-capital offenses, are either left to starve, or otherwise denied medical attention when needed; yet, even in such cases, escapes are not exactly unheard of, to put it mildly. | |
| Jan 5, 2022 at 7:31 | answer | added | GremlinWranger | timeline score: 16 | |
| Jan 5, 2022 at 5:38 | comment | added | Mark Johnson | Relief from boredom with the motive to antagonize the enemy (which both sides considered honourable) would be a major reason. Duty to escape - Wikipedia: The German military courts who tried escaping Allied officers generally accepted the excuse that it was each man's duty to attempt to escape. These escapes didn't actually consume German army resources, since the camp was south east of Berlin and checks were already in place at major transport hubs and done by police/Gestapo inside of Germany. | |
| Jan 5, 2022 at 5:25 | comment | added | Carey Gregory | What does this question have to do with history? | |
| Jan 5, 2022 at 5:19 | comment | added | GremlinWranger | Not an answer because US and 1955 but en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_escape . References rules and principles back to 1891 | |
| Jan 5, 2022 at 4:15 | comment | added | Moishe Kohan | Additionally, to all the comments: Some people value freedom and hate Nazis. I suggest you think about similar questions such as: Why did some east Germans tried to escape? Why did some dissidents in USSR and its satellites struggled against their regimes? Etc. | |
| Jan 5, 2022 at 4:04 | comment | added | rs.29 | Main motivation was simply - patriotism. These were young, highly motivated men, not wanting to spend their prime years languishing in some camp. Of course, we only read about those who tried to escape, there were certainly those who were privately satisfied to live in relative safety and did not attempt anything until the end of the war. | |
| Jan 5, 2022 at 3:47 | comment | added | Jon Custer | Because their job is to fight the enemy not sit around. | |
| Jan 5, 2022 at 3:45 | comment | added | Astor Florida | In the movie, IIRC the idea was to consume German army resources in chasing down the escaped POWs. Not sure if that reflects the real story. | |
| Jan 5, 2022 at 3:02 | history | asked | nuggethead | CC BY-SA 4.0 |