The Last Escape: The Untold Story of Allied Prisoners of War in Germany 1944-1945 Paperback – 4 September 2003

It’s hard to read without crying. My father was one of the bombardier soldiers in WWII. His bomber was shot down. He almost starved to death in Nazi Captivity. He escaped from the Nazis and was saved by Russian soldiers. A true story of goulash barbaric Nazi Evil. Don’t read on a full stomach.

This is a eye opener of a book ! A part of the 2nd World war that has not been covered much at all! A dark period and some of which leaves a lot of questions ! This is a series of tales of unbelievable endurance and how they survived. I wonder if there was some suppression on the possibility that some prisoners ended up in Soviet work camps after the war never to return and to be list as dead/missing. There is a film or two to be made out of this>

An excellent book. If ever you thought that the life of a POW, particularly that of NCO's and other ranks, was a life of leisure and safety, this book should dispel any such nonsense. My complements to the authors and publishers for this important and long overdue work.

Sehr gute QualitätLiefrung wahr Schnell und zuverlassig genau so muss seinwürde weiter geben an bekannten die hier in Deutschland wohnenes ist schoin dass diese möglichkeit gibt buche aus Deutschland in English direkt zubestellen

Nichol's project here is ambitious. Arthur Durand wrote about 400 pages on Luft 3 alone. Here Nichol covers all the Stalag and Stalag Luft camps in as much detail as he can in a limited 400 page space. There is good defintion in the differences between each of the marches of Stalags that were put on the road, January,1945, in Germany's worst winter in a century, in order to prevent POWs from falling into Soviet control. A fairly limited number of interviewees are relied on for each story, however, many vets are rapidly passing now. Nichol really does a good job of getting at the politics of the Soviets gaining control of Poland, and gaining the return of their POWS and citizens (so they could further punish and execute their own people) in exchange for releasing the Allied POWs. It was a closely run thing. Nichol shows that the Soviets were capable of sending all the POWs to the Gulag. Nichol also goes into some detail on how, if the Gestapo or SS, instead of the Wehmacht and Luftwaffe, had gained control of the Stalags right at the end of the war, the survival of the Allied POWS may have been a much darker story than it was. Nichol points out Germany had signed the Geneva Convention 1929 allowing third country (US then Swiss) oversight of the camps and the delivery of Red Cross parcels to the POW camps. Without the parcels POW attrition would have been many times greater. Amidst Total War there was co-operation on repatriations of severely wounded and medical/clergy personnel. The differences in the way the British and US POWs were treated compared to Slavic "Untermenschen" POWs and Concentration Camp prisoners is extremely stark and horrible, about 30% of 750,000 fatality rates in these groups on the marches..Aryan racial theories work to the advantage of UK and US POWs is another theme touched on here, and this theme is also explored in Arieh J. Kochavi's fine work,"Confronting Captivity".