Great Escape: The Untold Story

The Great Escape: The Untold Story (2001)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Well-produced story of the actual POW escape that is best remembered today for the classic film THE GREAT ESCAPE. Actual survivors Jimmy James, Alex Cassie, Jack Lyon, Colin Kerby-Green and Les Brodrick recall their days at the camp and their memories on the actual escape. Fans of the film as well as history buffs are really going to enjoy this hour-long documentary for a number of reasons. One of the biggest is simply the fact that the story itself is just amazing and something truly heroic. This documentary also goes into great detail about the events after the men were captured and how fifty of them were put to death by orders from Hitler. It's rather shocking to hear how these murders were carried out and just as heartbreaking hearing from some of their children and wives. The documentary certainly doesn't hold any punches and we even get a few reenactments from the interrogation of the German soldiers who shot the escapees. THE GREAT ESCAPE: THE UNTOLD STORY doesn't go into great details about the event but I think it does do a very good job at giving you the basic events that happened and it's certainly all the more impressive getting to hear the stories from those who were involved.

This documentary spends some time talking about what really happened, as it pertains to how things were different in the movie, but I like that it spends more time telling more of the story than the movie was able to, even in its lengthy running time. When the news of the mass escape reaches Hitler, the documentary explains, he flew into a rage and ordered that the men be killed, and it was Himmler, the head of the Gestapo, that chose the number 50 for how many should be shot. Having seen Downfall recently, it's even easier to picture Hitler flying into an uncontrollable rage and ordering people to be shot. MAN that guy was nuts.

So the actual escape happened in freezing temperatures in the middle of winter, one of those things that was changed for the film (I have a theory that it was changed because of location concerns, which are explained in one of the other outstanding featurettes on the Great Escape bonus disc, and in an interview one of the escapees expresses amazement that they weren't caught sooner, since it was so cold outside and so hot inside their tunnel that there was a column of steam rising out of it into the night. This same interviewee goes on to give an account of his escape that is heartbreaking, to say the least.

The story of the 50 men being shot brings up some major questions about how to carry out justice. As one of the German guards who did some of the shooting explains, "I knew what I was told to do was wrong. I said so, and I was told to get on with it. If I had refused, someone else would have done it. If we had all refused, we would all have been shot."

How do you bring justice to a situation like that? When the ultimate fates of the German officers who did the shooting are explained it's hard not to think that they all got what they deserved, but whatever your feeling as to who should have been punished for their crimes, I like that this documentary shows what it may very well have been like for those German soldiers as individuals. It puts a face on the stories of the people on the other side who were following orders and allows you to come to your own conclusion.

James Cochran was arrested right on the Swiss border, within sight of freedom. The sister of one of the men who was shot explains that her brother was on the run for seven days and she wants to know what his life was like during that week, but never will. At the end of the documentary, one of the surviving escapees says that he doesn't think the whole thing was worth it, given how it all panned out, and while the escape was a tremendous, heroic effort, I think he was right, but not because of any fault of the men. If they had just sat in the prison, they would have been disobeying orders to consistently try to escape if captured, but it's probably most likely that they would all have lived to see the end of the war and their families again. Sadly, we'll never know.

"The Great Escape: The Untold Story" is about the real great escape, which the Sturges movie is based on. This 60 minute show gives us the real names, interviews with some of the survivors and the story about the tunnel escape.

Much of the story is the same as the movie, but you can find some differences. The names are changed and it was actually snowing when the 76 prisoners escaped in 1944. Some of the escapers turned them selves in because they would have freezed to death outside.

If you want to know about the real escape, then I can recommend this show. It can be found on the special edition of The Great Escape.

Bringing the Germans involved in this story - The Great Escape - to justice was the number one aim of the Brits looking for war criminals when WWII concluded. Why did this get top priority? .Because 50 British airmen were "murdered in cold blood" by the Gestapo after this famous escape attempt.

Details of that prison break are given in this documentary that accompanies the two-disc Special Edition DVD of "The Great Escape."

Some of those details are very interesting but on the whole, this 51-minute "feature" can get a slow, a little dry, but if you're really into the history of what happened, you should find this intriguing enough to stay with it. Some of it, especially near the end with stories about the murdered men, are heartbreaking.

This documentary includes interviews men who were in the camp at that time and were still alive, obviously, when these interviews took place fairly recently. Relatives are also interviewed and even Germans who were involved in the massacre that followed.

It was the coldest March in 30 years and there was snow on the ground on the night of the escape but they couldn't postpone it because the fake passports were all dated, so they had to go ahead despite the weather. I mention the weather but it played a key role in everything that happened, according to some of the things I learned watching this. The coldness also cost the Allied soldiers after the escape as many had to turn themselves in or face freezing to death in the outside.

How much that cold weather influenced what happened, and a number of other facts, such as why 50 people were killed (orders from Hitler) make this a decent documentary. It's nice to know, too, that much of the movie is not made up, as so often happens in films.

A truly outstanding documentary on the events of The escape from Stalag III in Sagan on the night of March 24th 1944. The documentary goes into great detail with what happened to the 50 men executed by the Nazi's and the post war hunt to track down all those responsible. Using great interviews with POW's from the camp the families of the men who lost their lives in the escape, tells a most emotional tale of what happened to the 50 ! As the previous posted noted, you find this outstanding documentary on the newly released two disc issue of the 1963 movie, "The Great Escape" in DVD! Also along with this, The History Channels version of History vs Hollywood" The Great Escape..another great documentary of how the makers of the 1963 classic made the film , while trying to preserve the original story. Both simply outstanding & a real salute to the men who gave their all in this story from WWII...very moving !