(dramatic theme music) (narrator) In March 1944, 76 men tunneled out of a German prison camp in the greatest escape of the Second World War.

Their mission?

To cause mayhem in the heart of the Nazi Fatherland.

(Clare) Each one of those men knew that they were risking their lives.

(narrator) Over three programs, we're using dramatic reconstruction, expert testimony...

The Great Escape was an act of war.

(narrator) ...and never-before-seen photographs and documents... (Pippa) I have here a letter written in code by my father.

(narrator) ...to tell the thrilling true story of ingenuity... (Hugh) Forged documents had to look absolutely realistic.

(narrator) ...bravery... (Guy) If that collapses on me, I'm dead.

(dirt crumbling) (narrator) ...and atrocity.

(Laurie-Anne) They went too far.

Physical violence, threats of death.

♪ (gunshots) ♪ (narrator) Last time, we followed Roger Bushell and his escape organization as they laboriously dug three huge tunnels code-named Tom, Dick, and Harry...

They may discover one and then think there's another, but they're never gonna think there's a third.

(narrator) ...and prepared 200 men for escape.

His plan was breathtaking in its ambition and its scope.

(narrator) But just as Tom was days from completion, it was calamitously discovered by the guards.

(thumping) This time, digging resumes and we count down the final nerve-racking days and hours to the Great Escape itself.

It must have been absolutely horrific, and particularly for those young men who'd not been down in the tunnel.

(narrator) This is the true story of one of the most audacious breakouts of the Second World War.

♪ This is The Great Escape.

♪ (wind howling) (solemn music) ♪ (echoing clangs) ♪ Following the devastating discovery of the tunnel code-named "Tom," despair still hung over the POWs of Stalag Luft III.

♪ (Simon) Roger Bushell, like all the prisoners, reacted badly to the discovery of Tom.

There was huge disappointment.

♪ (Peter) The prisoners thought, "Well, this is it.

We were really close to getting out through Tom, and they've got to it."

That must've been a crushing blow for those men.

(narrator) Bushell was "Big X," head of the escape organization.

They had toiled for six months on the 86-meter-long tunnel Tom.

♪ The strain on Bushell and the despair he felt was captured in this photo taken around the time.

♪ (vibrant music) The opposite was true for the Germans who'd made the discovery.

(Charles) Attached to the camp were personnel known as "ferrets."

♪ Their job was to go around looking for signs of escape.

♪ One of the ferrets was known as "Rubberneck" because he had a long neck, and he was always poking everywhere.

♪ (Peter) He's really, really happy that they've discovered this tunnel.

One of the most famous photographs is of Rubberneck sticking his head out, he's got this sort of inane grin.

♪ (narrator) The Germans now had to somehow destroy the huge, sturdily built tunnel.

♪ (Peter) They actually charged explosives all the way along the tunnel.

Now, they kind of got a little bit too enthusiastic about that.

They overcharged it so much that when they actually exploded it... (flames bellowing) (rumbling explosion) ...it destroyed a significant part of the hut 123, including the roof, including the rooms.

(narrator) The botched destruction wiped the smug grins from the faces of the Germans.

♪ And events in another compound at Stalag Luft III would prove even more of an embarrassment.

♪ (Peter) One thing that's really interesting about Stalag Luft III, it's a camp of many compounds, and at the same time that they're digging the tunnels for the Great Escape, there's another escape attempt.

♪ (narrator) In October 1943, Stalag Luft III was home to over 4,000 Allied airmen.

♪ South and central compounds housed mainly U.S. airmen, the German guards' quarters were in the middle of the camp, while north and east compounds held British and Commonwealth officers.

East compound was where another audacious escape attempt was underway.

The Wooden Horse escape is one of those kind of British ingenuity of escape-mindedness.

♪ (narrator) A film was made in 1950 about this extraordinary escape.

(hammering) (Helen) Prisoners used the plywood from Red Cross parcels to build this sort of gymnasium vault, and during the daytime, it would be wheeled out towards the perimeter fence, and the prisoners would be doing the innocent activity of exercising because what the Germans didn't know was this hollowed wooden horse was actually hiding one of the prisoners, and he would start to dig this tunnel.

At the end of the day, the horse would be wheeled back, but they'd covered over the entrance to the tunnel.

(Charles) The tunnel was one of the meanest ever dug.

It was only a couple of feet below the surface, and it had no lighting, no air pump.

It was like a little rabbit hole.

(tense music) (narrator) On the night of the 19th of October, after three months of digging, three men crawled through the 30-meter tunnel and made it onto trains.

(train rattling) ♪ (Charles) Two of them went to Stettin and the other to Danzig, and they all managed to board ships to get to Sweden.

In January, the prisoners finally heard that all three had made it home.

The news went all over the camp.

And this actually did not look good for Roger Bushell because he was, so far, the only Big X who had failed to get a man home.

And I think this is what motivated him to reopen tunnel Harry.

♪ (digging) (echoing clang) (gentle music) (echoing clangs) ♪ (narrator) On the 7th of January, 1944, the digging of tunnel Harry resumed in hut 104.

♪ Work had been suspended four months earlier to concentrate all efforts on Tom.

♪ Harry's nine-meter shaft had been completed and they'd burrowed out 33 meters.

But this tunnel would need to be over 100 meters long to reach the safety of the forest.

(Peter) That tunnel had to go into what's known as a Vorlager where the Germans had things like the cooler, the punishment cells, and outwards into the forest.

(narrator) Roger Bushell thought this tunnel was so ambitious, its location wouldn't be suspected by the Germans.

♪ (digging echoes) (Peter) Nobody in their right mind would expect the prisoners to tunnel underneath the Germans to get out into the open space.

♪ (narrator) The extreme depth of the tunnel was another attempt to avoid detection.

(Hugh) The Harry tunnel was very deep, it was about ten meters down.

Ten meters, that's the height of a three-story building.

Gosh, that's a long way.

♪ There are little devices which you can put into the ground and it picks up vibration.

(pen scratching) The Germans were using these devices to try and pick up the sound of digging.

The POWs knew about these devices, and that was a good incentive to dig quite deep.

♪ (dark music) (narrator) But Roger Bushell and the escapers had a stroke of luck.

A new compound was being built to house the ever-increasing numbers of downed Allied airmen arriving at the camp.

♪ (Charles) When they started building, they closed down the microphone system.

♪ Bushell received intelligence from his contacts that the microphone system was not actually in use.

The fact that the system was out of service for quite a long time meant that they could dig ahead at quite a fast pace.

♪ (narrator) A trolley system and electric lights had again been installed, and the tunnel was fully shored up with bed boards, but it was still incredibly dangerous for the tunnelers.

♪ (Guy) So you might get crushed to death by 30 foot of sand as you're tunneling, or you also might burn to death if there's a tunnel fire, and what the Germans also liked to do was to drive around the camps in very heavy lorries to collapse any tunnels that they thought was going on.

♪ So every time you heard a rumble, you'd be thinking, "I'm for it."

(narrator) And there were frequent collapses.

(rumbling) (boards falling) ♪ But despite some very close calls, no tunnelers were seriously injured.

(echoing clangs) After seven weeks of digging, Harry extended beyond the wire.

(wind howling) It was more than 70 meters long.

Two larger interchange sections had been built, nicknamed Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, because multiple trolleys were now needed to travel the length of the tunnel, but as it had passed under the cooler, the noise of digging had been overheard.

♪ (Charles) The Germans were absolutely sure that a tunnel was being dug.

♪ And Rubberneck was absolutely determined to find this tunnel.

♪ And sometimes, him and his ferrets went on the rampage.

They would choose a barrack, turf all the prisoners out, and would spend two or three hours going through an entire barrack.

♪ It was a great relief when they found out that Rubberneck was to go on two weeks' leave.

(narrator) With this key threat removed, it seemed Roger Bushell may now just be able to pull off his spectacular escape.

(engine rumbling) (soft, tense music) But events unfolding 90 miles away meant that this escape, unlike any before, could have fatal consequences.

(bombs exploding) (Clare) The Battle of Berlin was a systematic campaign to destroy Berlin, and there were 16 RAF raids.

(bombs exploding) And they destroyed huge sections of the city.

A quarter of Berlin was reduced to rubble.

About half a million people were made homeless and 40,000 Berliners were killed.

♪ There was increasing concern about internal security.

As we have so many bombers coming over, we're also losing Allied air crews, and that is increasing the pressure inside the prisoner-of-war camps, and we have a greater number of escapes.

(Helen) The German High Command was concerned that if prisoners of war escaped within Germany, that they might actually form resistance groups, that they might actually start acts of sabotage.

(solemn music) (narrator) To deter escapes, Himmler, the head of the SS, took drastic action.

(Laurie-Anne) The "Bullet Decree" was a secret order that came directly from Himmler that prisoners of war who escaped and were recaptured should be executed.

♪ And this was in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention.

Initially, the "Bullet Decree" did not apply to British and American soldiers, but Stalag Luft III held Czech, Polish, French, and they were not excluded from the order to execute escaped prisoners.

♪ (Guy) So you have got, just before the escape, a real change going on inside the security apparatus of Nazi Germany, and Lindeiner and his senior staff, they know how serious this is.

♪ (narrator) Lindeiner, the camp commandant, suspected an escape was being planned and realized the POWs could be in mortal danger.

(Guy) Bushell was informed, both formally and informally, that actually escaping was not a good idea and certainly a mass escape was a really bad idea.

♪ (Simon) Bushell didn't lack imagination.

He'd seen at first hand what the Gestapo and SS were capable of.

So he must've had a very clear idea that things were potentially dangerous.

♪ (Guy) The reason why Bushell ignored the warnings, and why the senior British officer as well, is they felt they'd got too far with the escape, and they felt that now is not a time to give up.

They also may have felt that the Germans were bluffing, but I think there was a lot of hubris and arrogance by Bushell, and this was his big moment.

This is Roger Bushell's great escape.

(narrator) But Bushell wasn't the only man determined to escape.

(Clare) These were extremely courageous men.

They could've sat the war out in a camp with Red Cross supplies with relative security and safety, but 200 of them chose to try and break out, and each one of those men knew that they were risking their lives.

(mellow music) (narrator) Tom Kirby-Green had been a prisoner of war for more than two years.

(Colin) Oh, my father knew it was risky, but then, this is a man who had flown 33 bomber missions before being shot down, so he knew that life was risky, but he had such a love of it, of life.

♪ (Pippa) My father would've found it very difficult being in captivity, probably as anyone would; however, I think that the planning of this escape must've helped all of them hugely in giving them some hope.

♪ (wind howling) (echoing clangs) (light music) (digging) (Charles) While Rubberneck was away, the tunnel forged ahead until it was, so they believed, in the woods.

♪ (narrator) It was absolutely crucial for the tunnel to emerge under the cover of the forest, but stuck inside the wire, they could only estimate the distance to the trees.

♪ They also had to somehow work out if their tunnel was long enough.

So as you're building this through, you could count how many bed boards, you would measure it using tape.

(Hugh) These pilots and navigators were very good at this kind of stuff, so you could imagine that they would've trusted themselves to get that bit right.

But of course, they were up against it for time and they may well have made the decision to, rather than going deep into the forest, stop just into the forest, so they didn't give themselves margin for error.

♪ (narrator) They now dug the exit shaft up to within 20 centimeters of the surface.

(tense music) By the 15th of March, the tunnel was ready for the breakthrough.

♪ But the very same day, Rubberneck returned from leave.

♪ And he suspected something was going on in hut 104.

(Charles) As soon as Rubberneck came back from leave, practically within minutes, he instigated a search of the very hut from which tunnel Harry started.

♪ And over a period of days, his searches got more and more intense.

(narrator) During one search, head mapmaker Desmond Plunkett left a notebook on his bed containing every planned escape route.

Its discovery would've ended the Great Escape.

♪ But a roommate feigning illness managed to smuggle it out at the last minute.

♪ The ferrets' relentless searches convinced Bushell the escape must go ahead as soon as possible.

(Guy) Once you've dug the tunnel what you hope to be the required length, what you can't do is risk just leaving it there and hoping that the Germans aren't gonna discover it.

You're at a stage now where you can't give it more than a week because you never know when one little slip-up, something's gonna happen that's gonna make the Germans discover it and then everything's to naught.

♪ (door clangs shut) (echoing clangs) (solemn music) (narrator) Bushell announced the escape would take place in one week.

♪ The escapers aimed to reach neutral countries such as Switzerland, Sweden, or Spain, using trains or on foot.

For a year, the escape organization had been secretly manufacturing the vast array of equipment the 200 escapers would need, including civilian clothing and documents.

Now they worked day and night to apply the finishing touches.

(Hugh) Forged documents had to look absolutely realistic.

They didn't have a typewriter.

You had to do hand-written typed letters.

Day after day, night after night, people who are really good at forging stuff produce some really amazing documents.

♪ (Peter) As we get towards the Great Escape night, it was an incredibly intense period.

You're getting the men who are making sure that all the escape kit is ready-- high-protein foods, maps, the compasses-- and particularly making sure that all of the paperwork was dated and stamped appropriately.

That is really significant.

The night of the escape, you have to make sure all your tickets and what have you have to be right up to date.

♪ (soft, tense music) ♪ (narrator) The order they would enter the tunnel also now had to be decided.

♪ (Guy) There's a hierarchy of Great Escapers.

(Simon) They give the first places to those most likely to get back to England, those who had linguistic skills, those who had contacts in Nazi-occupied Europe.

(Guy) So they're gonna take trains, they're gonna be given the most currency, they're gonna be given the best passes.

(narrator) The order the train travelers would escape was decided by drawing lots.

♪ They included Roger Bushell who drew number four and Tom Kirby-Green.

(Colin) My father was a good Spanish speaker.

He and his chosen escape companion had forged documents to show that they were Spanish workers, that would permit them to move around in Germany.

(narrator) Kirby-Green drew number 17.

(Guy) You've got the kind of cream of Great Escapers, say, the top 20 to get out, and the rest of them are gonna be what's known as hard-arsers.

(narrator) The hard-arsers who'd be escaping on foot then drew lots.

♪ (Pippa) My father was what they called a hard-arser, which means that he had to just make his own way, he hadn't got any particular language skills or whatever.

It's probably why he was number 60 in the escape plan.

♪ (wind howling) (echoing clangs) (gloomy music) (narrator) On the morning chosen for the escape, the POWs woke up to find heavy snow had fallen in the night.

(Guy) Bushell's unlucky in a way because it was unseasonably cold.

I've got the weather charts that show that it was hitting -2, -3, and it looked like there was gonna be more rain or snow.

Let me assure you that Silesia, in very cold weather, is not a place you want to be.

And it was-- it was just considered, this was not a great idea.

Let's delay for 24 hours.

♪ (wind howling) (echoing clangs) (narrator) The next day, the weather had little improved.

But time was running out.

(Guy) The longer you leave it-- "Let's just wait for some good weather.

I know, let's give it a month."

You can't give it a month.

You can't risk it, you've just gotta go, and if the weather's a bit rubbish, well, you know, nothing's perfect.

(narrator) And all the travel passes had now been dated and were only valid for a few days.

♪ They decided to go that night.

♪ (echoing clangs) (wind howling) (melancholy music) On the day of the breakout, the 200 escapers said goodbye to their friends who'd be staying behind.

(Simon) I think many of them had an idea that this was not going to be a walk in the park.

A number of them briefed friends left behind in Stalag Luft III what to do in the event of their death.

♪ (Colin) My father and my mother were so much in love.

In fact, his love for her was one of the things that really sustained him in this really long time of being a prisoner of war.

♪ (narrator) That morning, Tom Kirby-Green wrote a letter to his wife.

♪ (Colin) "My beloved, adored darling, I hope you are well, and Colin too.

My sweetheart, I am thinking so much of you now and long so hard for you with every part of my soul and body.

I live only for the moment when I shall take you in my arms.

One day, I shall be able to make the world a paradise for you with God's help.

God bless you and keep you, Maria.

I love you, darling.

What more can words express?

Kisses to you.

Your Thomas."

♪ (echoing clangs) ♪ (narrator) After the 5 p.m. roll call, the 200 escapers were told to secretly make their way to hut 104.

For many, this was when they first learned of the tunnel's location.

(Simon) The first real challenge facing the prisoners was to get all the potential escapers into the same hut, which they did successfully.

♪ (narrator) Now in their escape outfits, each man was issued with his fake documents.

♪ They were also supplied with rations, including dried fruit and specially prepared oat cakes.

(dramatic music) ♪ At 8:45 p.m., once darkness had fallen, Bushell ordered the tunnel opened.

♪ (Simon) And two men, Johnny Bull and Johnny Marshall, who were the sort of point men at the end of the tunnel, went to the end, and the first problem emerged.

♪ (boards clacking) The board, which they had secured the end of the tunnel with, was frozen and stuck.

Above it was earth which they had to get rid of before anybody could get out.

(creaking) (Guy) You can't just make a great big bash at it because you can't make too much noise.

These are military men and they know, as soon as you start an operation, your original plan goes out the window on minute one, and that happens on the Great Escape in spades.

♪ (Peter) It delayed it quite significantly.

Bushell was anxious they were gonna go, so there was a lot of tension there.

(narrator) An escaper said, "The tension in the room was stomach-churning, almost worse than before any operation."

♪ (wood creaking) It took an hour and a half... (creaking) ...but Bull finally managed to remove the boards.

Now he could break through.

♪ (Simon) Once they had succeeded in getting the opening, a blast of air came right through the tunnel, and Bushell at the other end felt it and knew it was open.

(tense music) ♪ (Guy) Bull pokes his head out... ♪ ...and he realizes that this tunnel is not in the woods.

♪ Have to work out, how much of a problem is this for the escapers, the fact that they're not in the woods and therefore in cover?

Because only about 50 feet away, admittedly pointing back into the camp, is a guard tower.

You know, all it requires is just that guard to walk around the other way for him to see this hole in the ground with condensation from people's breath coming out of it.

♪ (Simon) So Bushell comes down to the end of the tunnel, more delays, and discusses, "What can we do?"

Do we delay?

No, we can't delay because all the papers are dated for today.

♪ (narrator) They came up with a solution.

The first man climbed out of the tunnel and headed across the open ground, pulling a rope with him.

Hiding behind an observation fence built by the ferrets, he could now keep an eye on the guards on the perimeter and tug the rope when all was clear.

(Peter) Of course, it's this moment of tension, literally, of pulling the rope which would mean that the man would have to emerge and run for the forest.

It was challenging because they had to keep a real close eye on what was going on in those goon towers.

♪ (Guy) First guys out are gonna be going by train.

Now, the railway station, the big junction at Sagan, is just over half a mile away, if that.

♪ (narrator) But the delay meant they'd already missed the first three trains leaving that evening.

♪ The fourth escaper was Roger Bushell.

♪ Once safely out, he rushed through the forest, desperate to catch the 11 p.m. train.

(Simon) He was not a doubter.

He was not a pessimist.

He was a man who believed that the outcome would always be successful.

Bushell certainly believed that he could make a home run.

He spoke the languages, he had the best equipment, he had a good cover story, and he believed he could get home.

♪ (echoing clang) (narrator) One hundred and ninety-six escapers still had to travel along the 102-meter tunnel, a journey that took at least four minutes.

(solemn music) For most, it was their first time in the tunnel.

(Peter) You could imagine what it was like that night.

As you enter the tunnel, you had a sense that, yes, at the end of that was freedom, but in between freedom, it was this really long and very narrow tunnel.

It was dark, it was claustrophobic, there were men stacked up in front of you.

(narrator) Tom Kirby-Green was the 17th escaper.

♪ Around the time he was making his escape, a siren began to wail around the camp.

(siren wailing) (Guy) You got a whole series of cock-ups in the Great Escape.

First one is, you can't open up the tunnel.

Second one, the tunnel's too short.

Third one we can firmly blame on the RAF.

(siren wailing) Why?

Because they mount one of their biggest air raids in the whole of the Second World War on Berlin that very night.

(siren wailing) (gunfire) (dramatic music) (Simon) More than 800 aircraft were sent out to attack Berlin, but they drifted south in very high winds and, as a result, Sagan was blacked out and the camp was blacked out and, as a result, the electric lighting in the tunnel went.

(siren wailing) When the lights went out, it must've been absolutely horrific and particularly for those young men who'd not been down in the tunnel.

(match striking) (Peter) All of this must've built the tension as they lay in that tunnel waiting to understand what was going on.

(Guy) You're gonna start panicking, you're gonna start getting worried, but it's okay, we can light these lamps, okay?

So we light these tallow lamps, these animal fat lamps, and now you've got fire.

You've now got a new danger.

So this is a really, really difficult moment.

♪ (narrator) The escape continued under lamp light until the power was eventually restored.

(tense music) ♪ (echoing clang) (narrator) By 1:20 a.m., 47 men had made it out.

♪ The remainder were all hard-arsers who'd be escaping on foot.

Understandably, they'd prepared for the freezing weather.

(Simon) It'd all been inspected in the days before the escape, but some of them had switched their cases and brought bigger cases.

Some of them had wrapped two blankets rather than one blanket.

(Guy) You've also got chaps trying to get stuff through the tunnel that actually is not gonna fit.

(Peter) About 1:30 in the morning, one of the escapees actually had his bag and hit and broke one of the tunnel supports.

This caused a collapse.

(narrator) Other POWs, overcome by claustrophobia, suffered panic attacks and caused yet more damage to the tunnel and further delays.

♪ And some escapers failed to follow the intricate plan.

(Guy) You had to pull your fellow POW through on a kind of trolley.

Some of the POWs whose job it was to pull the next man through just scarpered out the tunnel.

So you've got a lot of problems going on, and of course, all the time, because it's late March, dawn is coming very quickly.

♪ (echoing clang) (wind howling) (echoing clangs) (dramatic music) ♪ (narrator) As dawn approached, 70 escapers had made it out of the tunnel and were on the run.

♪ (Pippa) My father's job was to hide in the woods, to pull on the rope for a period of about two hours, and then he would've been free to go.

He did this, but the trouble was, because of mishaps in the tunnel and delays, not as many people got out as they would've liked and, of course, it was becoming daylight.

(grim music) (Charles) Roger Bushell had calculated that 200, possibly even 220 men would be able to escape, but because there had been so many delays before sunrise, the man in charge of operations in hut 104 decided that the second 100 should just give up.

They accepted it with a little bit of grumbling, but they probably were a little bit relieved as well.

Unfortunately, as time went on, not even 100 would make it.

♪ (echoing clang) (wind howling) (dark music) ♪ (Guy) Dawn is breaking, a guard is walking the perimeter path in between the wire and the woods, and he notices something going on.

♪ (narrator) Roy Langlois was still manning the rope.

He later gave an account of what happened next.

(Pippa) "By the time the 76th man was coming out, it was 5:15 in the morning."

♪ "I signaled him to flatten out as the guard approached."

♪ "The guard then noticed the track in the snow made by all the crawling bodies, and this directed his gaze to the entrance of the tunnel."

(Guy) He can see that it's an escape.

Of course, the first thing he does was shoot a warning shot in the air.

(gunshot) ♪ (Pippa) "Another man in the woods thought it was aimed at him and called out not to shoot.

This caused me to roll out of my hiding place... ♪ ...and I was captured."

(gun cocking) (Peter) They really thought they were gonna be shot and killed.

It's a real tense moment.

That goon, if he had been jumpy in any way, could easily have killed those men.

My father definitely feared for his life.

(Charles) After the prisoners heard the shot, there was absolute pandemonium.

(commotion) Someone shouted down to the fellows in the tunnel, "Get out, get out, they found the tunnel."

(Guy) You've got Ken Rees, the last man going back into the hut.

He tries to kick it down, and it doesn't collapse.

(narrator) In hut 104, there's chaos.

Some of the 120 remaining officers scrambled to get out of their escape clothes while others tried to burn their forged papers in the stoves.

When the stoves were full, they burned the papers any way they could.

♪ (Guy) The passes, if they're discovered by the Germans, it might give the Germans clues as to what sort of passes the successful escapers have got.

So anything that could give information to the Germans needs to be disposed of very, very quickly.

♪ Also they've got these rations, so they don't want the Germans to take the rations away, I mean, calories are calories, whether you're escaping or not, so they wolf them down as well.

♪ The full might of Lindeiner's men is gonna descend upon not only the tunnel but also all around the camp in minutes.

♪ (echoing clang) (grim music) ♪ (narrator) A ferret was sent down the tunnel exit, but it took the Germans over an hour to identify 104 as the escape hut.

♪ (shouting) Soon after, the commandant stormed in with guards armed with machine guns.

(Helen) The commandant, he was incandescent with rage to discover that these airmen had tunneled out.

Lindeiner goes absolutely insane.

He's storming around the compound and the hut, and he's yelling at people in their faces.

This unflappable, aristocratic, quite elderly, old-school Prussian officer really loses his cool.

(wind howling) (echoing clang) (narrator) The men were taken outside and made to stand in the cold for two hours.

(Guy) You've got this hated corporal, Greise, a man nicknamed Rubberneck, and he's making men strip off in the cold for no real reason, frankly, but there's a lot of vindictiveness and anger.

I think a lot of prisoners are really scared, you know.

When you've got men with guns shouting at you, you just don't know for sure whether they're gonna snap and whether they're gonna get murderous, you just don't know.

(narrator) Of the 80 men who had escaped out of the tunnel, four had already been caught near the exit, including Roy Langlois.

♪ (Pippa) Immediately after his capture, he was marched off to the cooler, what everybody knows as the cooler, and I think he was there for quite a long time.

(solemn music) ♪ (narrator) But 76 men were on the run, including Tom Kirby-Green and Roger Bushell.

(Simon) Bushell had set out to cause absolute mayhem, to make it hell for the Hun.

At a time when the west was preparing for D-Day, the Russians were advancing in the east, Bushell's army was confronting the Nazis in their own backyard.

(narrator) But Lindeiner knew the scale of Bushell's escape would be impossible for the Nazi leadership to ignore, and the consequences could be horrific.

♪ Next time, we continue the story as the escapers scatter across occupied Europe... (Guy) Faces, names are gonna be appearing all over the Third Reich-- look out for these guys.

(narrator) ...struggle through extreme hardship as they attempt to evade capture... (Peter) Can you imagine what it was like for them trying to sleep out in the open and maintain the will to escape?

(narrator) ...and face the wrath of the Nazi regime.

(Charles) I don't think he necessarily was a Nazi.

He was just a sadist.

(dramatic theme music) ♪