Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. The inspiration for the movie of the same name starring Steve McQueen, 'The Great Escape' chronicles the largest Allied escape attempt-using their bare hands and crude homemade tools to dig their way out-from a German POW camp during World War II.

Made into the classic movie starring Steve McQueen. It demanded the concentrated devotion and vigilance of more than six hundred men-every one of them, every minute, every hour, every day and night for more than a year. It was a split-second operation as delicate and as deadly as a time bomb.

They developed a fantastic security system to protect themselves from German surveillance. With only their bare hands and the crudest of homemade tools, they sank shafts, forged passports, faked weapons, and tailored German uniforms and civilian clothes. They were American and British air force officers in a German prison camp. There was even an Anglo-American production, The Password is Courage, released a year before Sturges’ film, that appears to have stolen a scene from Brickhill. The following year, Brickhill published The Dam Busters, an acclaimed account of pinpoint bombing raids by the 617 Squadron, followed by an anthology of POW stories entitled Escape or Die (1952) and Reach for the Sky (1954) a biography of aviator Douglas Bader.Book Description Paperback. Beyond these direct adaptations of Brickhill’s book, the 1950s saw a strong tradition of POW escape books and movies, some of which directly seem to borrow from The Great Escape. From this, he drew the story of The Great Escape, published four years later. After the war, Brickhill sought to go back to newspapering, but quickly abandoned it to begin work on his first book, entitled Escape to Danger (1946), about his experiences in the POW camp. His instincts as a reporter stuck with him during his incarceration by the Germans, as he collected stories from his fellow prisoners that became the foundation for his later work. Still, the escape remains one of the great heroic stories of World War II.Ī native of Melbourne, Brickhill had begun a career as a newspaper reporter at the Sydney Sun when war was declared in 1939. Of the 76 officers who escaped, only three were successful Hitler himself ordered the execution of 47 of the men who were recaptured. Locked away and bored in Silesia in Luft Stalag III, he and his fellow prisoners concocted an escape plan - a daring idea that would result in a mass escape from the Germans. Brickhill, an Australian, had flown missions against the Germans in Tunisia for the Royal Australian Air Force when he was shot down in 1943. Though The Great Escape is a novel, its basic story is true, and the novel's author Paul Brickhill (1916-91) was a participant in it.

The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill