[March 24, 2015] The second time I ever saw a show in a movie theater was The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen and many other well-known actors. Like many others of my pre-teenage years, it inspired me to be like those brave men. The Great Escape was more than a movie or an event; it helped boost morale in the Allied effort to defeat Nazi Germany and to expose the evil of the German war machine.
The movie was based on real life events of the escape of prisoners from Stalag Luft III.1 Escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp was dangerous and required detailed planning, hard dangerous work, and bravery. It is no wonder the story and the film were so popular; it aligns closely with the core values of Americans and the world – liberty and freedom, strength and winning, and individual responsibility (see links here, here, and here).
Recently announced was a British archeological excavation of the tunnel used in the Great Escape where it remained untouched behind the Iron Curtain for more than seven decades.2 It has lain hidden for all these years and looks, to the untrained eye, like a building site. But the tunnel, now in western Poland, represents one of the greatest examples of British and Commonwealth wartime heroism.
Our thanks go out to those brave men who were involved in the Great Escape and to their sacrifices.
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[1] Stalag Luft III (German: Stammlager Luft, or main camp for aircrew) was a Luftwaffe-run prisoner-of-war camp during World War II that housed captured air force servicemen. It was in the German province of Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan (now Żagań in Poland), 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Berlin. The site was selected because it would be difficult to escape by tunneling.
[2] http://www.sterlingplacehoa.com/uploads/1/0/4/0/10406115/the_actual_great_escape_revisited.pdf (with photographs)
[Website dedicated to The Great Escape] http://theescapeline.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-great-escape-fact-fiction-part-one.html