(dramatic music) (narrator) In March 1944, seventy-six 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, testimony from both experts and escapers' families...

There was some brutal interrogation of my dad.

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

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

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

♪ (narrator) ...and atrocity.

(Laurie-Anne) They went too far.

Physical violence, threats of death.

♪ (gunshots) ♪ (narrator) Last time, we followed the prisoners as they tunneled 100 meters under the wire and got 76 men on the run before being discovered.

♪ (gunshot) This 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... (Prof. Peter Doyle) 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.

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

♪ This is The Great Escape.

♪ (whooshing) (moody music) (slamming) ♪ The first Great Escapers out of the tunnel headed through the forest to Sagan Station which was half a mile away.

♪ (Simon) People traveling by train were thought to have the best chance.

Those who had linguistic skills, those who had contacts in Nazi-occupied Europe, so the Norwegians, the Dutch, people like that.

♪ So they gave them the best equipment.

They had the best clothes, they had the best ID cards.

♪ (narrator) The train travelers included the mastermind behind the Great Escape, Roger Bushell.

♪ (Guy) Bushell and his escaping partner, Scheidhauer, were escaping as French workers who were then going back to France on leave.

♪ Bushell spoke French fluently, so, actually, this seemed like a really good disguise.

♪ (tense music) (narrator) Tom Kirby-Green was also heading to the station.

♪ (Simon) Kirby-Green was a really swarthy-looking man and he spoke fluent Spanish, and so he traveled as a Spanish workman.

♪ (Colin) They had to go through the forest and then sort of sneak into the railway station... ♪ ...where there were various other prisoners that got there before them waiting for various trains.

♪ (Guy) The escapers recount how they saw each other in the ticket hall and were all kind of pretending not to recognize each other.

They must have looked so guilty if you'd seen them.

I think that some of them must have really stuck out.

(narrator) But despite Kirby-Green being questioned by a policeman, their fake IDs passed inspection, and more than 30 POWs made it onto trains.

♪ (Guy) Plunkett recalls how Bushell is on the same train as him and, actually, Bushell squeezes Plunkett's hand in the corridor of one of these trains as a little kind of, "Well done, lad," you know, "we're on our way."

♪ It was those men who were linguistically gifted, they would be people who would use the public transport systems.

(soft piano music) The remainder were just people who were daring.

♪ And these were known as the hard-arsers.

♪ And what they were gonna be doing is traveling on foot.

This took them away from the Germans.

♪ Running through forests, keeping low, keeping out of the way.

♪ (Simon) The hard-arsers, they had compasses, they had papers.

They weren't of such a high quality as those who'd gone earlier on the trains.

(Prof. Peter Doyle) All they had was what they stood in and that may be gray coats.

♪ It was atrocious weather.

The men were moving across some slushy mud.

♪ It was the worst possible conditions.

(moody music) Think of The Great Escape movie.

You think of the guys on the run.

It was pleasant, it was warm.

It doesn't look too bad to have a bit of a ramble around the Silesian countryside.

Wrong.

♪ In real life, it was dark, it was cold.

Their clothes are incredibly unsuited for this climate.

♪ (tense music) (slamming) ♪ (narrator) The tunnel was discovered by the Germans as dawn broke, and the hunt for the escapers began.

(Guy) By the time the Germans evaluated it must be in the high seventies who've escaped, we've got to have what's called a großfahndung, the highest level of alert.

That means you've got in the region of 40 different agencies in the Third Reich, all of whom are alerted to your escape.

(pounding footsteps) (Simon) They put on alert the SS, the Gestapo, the Hitler Youth, and then everything from the waterways police to the mountain police.

(whistle blowing) ♪ So, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people were looking for the prisoners.

♪ (slamming) (soft music) (slamming) ♪ (narrator) Seventy-six prisoners of war were on the loose in Germany.

♪ The chosen few were traveling by train... ♪ ...heading to different corners of the German Reich, hoping to cross into neutral countries.

♪ The rest were trudging through frozen forests, attempting to evade the thousands of Germans hunting them.

(Simon) The whole apparatus of the Nazi state was, at that moment, focused on the 76 men who had gotten out of Stalag Luft Three.

♪ (dark music) (narrator) But it wasn't just the escapers who faced the wrath of the Nazi authorities.

The commandant of Stalag Luft Three and his staff were also in their sights.

(Guy) Gunther Absalon turns up and launches this enormous investigation.

♪ And what he doesn't do is, you know, tear through the huts and looks at all that the POWs have been up to.

No, what he tears through are the German guards... ♪ ...'cause he knows that this escape cannot have taken place without the connivance, willing or unwilling, of his fellow Germans.

And so what he finds is in these Germans' quarters, British contraband effectively, you know, cigarettes, chocolate.

He suddenly realizes this bribery and corruption has taken place on a vast scale.

♪ (narrator) The commandant was relieved of duty around 2:00 p.m. the day after the escape.

♪ (Guy) Lindeiner was put under fortress arrest and there was an attempt to court-martial him, but he pleaded ill health effectively, so he was actually pensioned off and retired.

♪ (Simon) It was the end of Lindeiner's career.

♪ (slamming) (soft music) ♪ (narrator) The hard-arsers had been struggling through the bitterly cold forest for two days.

♪ (Simon) They were crossing streams and open fields trying to find shelter, trying to make progress against all the odds.

The one thing that must have boosted them was the fact they were out of the camp, but I think that very quickly that must have turned to some sort of despair.

♪ Most of them tried to find shelter during the day and traveled by night, but not all of them.

♪ Finding shelter at that time was extraordinarily difficult.

♪ (Guy) You may have a blanket if you're lucky.

♪ You may have an overcoat, again, if you're lucky.

♪ And where are you gonna sleep?

♪ (wind howling) ♪ (Prof. Peter Doyle) You're gonna get to a point in hypothermic conditions where you're not thinking straight.

So, can you imagine what it was like for them trying to sleep out in the open and maintain the will to escape?

♪ (Simon) They were scrambling around for any kind of protection they could get, both from the elements and from the local population.

♪ (narrator) And the airmen would not receive a warm welcome from those local Germans.

♪ (plane droning) (Clare) The air war is really reaching its zenith.

(plane droning) And, now, many of the German cities are being pounded into rubble.

(Dr. Lisa Pine) By this stage in the war, there was little or no sympathy for the Allied airmen from the point of view of the German population.

(Clare) Men who might once have been considered as noble opponents were now seen increasingly as "terror flyers" or "murder flyers."

(narrator) The Nazi authorities could not stomach these hated airmen being loose in the Fatherland.

(Guy) So, soon, faces, names are gonna be appearing all over the Third Reich.

"Look out for these guys."

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

(barking) He achieved this beyond even his wildest dreams.

It was a propaganda disaster for the Germans.

People realized they couldn't control even the prisoners in their own back yard.

♪ The Great Escape was not about getting men back to England.

It was about disrupting the Germans.

It was an act of war.

♪ (ominous music) (slamming) ♪ (narrator) News of the escape soon reached the highest echelons of the Nazi regime.

♪ (Guy) When Hitler hears about the escape, he's up in Berchtesgaden up in the mountains, and he goes apoplectic because, actually, he's not a very happy man at this stage of the war.

♪ (Clare) The pressures of the war are really beginning to tell on him.

♪ (Guy) So he's in a very, very vengeful mood and he says, "Well, we should just shoot them all and we should shoot more of them."

And he wanted revenge on the prisoners, but he was persuaded to let some of them survive.

(narrator) It was decided that a nice round number of 50 of the 76 escaped POWs would be murdered following their capture.

♪ A secret order was sent out across the Reich.

(Clare) Sagan order was Himmler's order to the Gestapo to shoot the prisoners that had escaped and been safely detained and, also, to cover it up.

"As a kind of pattern or a gloss of legalism, we'll say they were shot while trying to escape."

♪ (Laurie-Anne) Under the Geneva Convention, a guard could fire at someone who attempted to escape, but what couldn't happen is that after you were recaptured or surrendered, that you were taken back and then executed.

(Clare) It was all detailed for the record.

This is efficient, but it's also deeply corrupt and knowingly immoral.

♪ (eerie music) ♪ (narrator) And the net was tightening around the escapers.

♪ Although the snow was now melting... ♪ ...conditions were still tough.

♪ (Guy) It's basically freezing.

Slush, rivers to cross, roads to cross, villages to get through.

Mountains to climb, both literally and metaphorically.

♪ If you spent your night in a forest in Silesia in freezing conditions, you're gonna look like a vagabond.

You're gonna stick out like a sore thumb.

You're gonna look like an escaper.

(barking) The vast majority are captured within 24 to 48 hours.

♪ Some of them even just give themselves up because they're cold, they're hungry, they're wet, they're tired, they're frozen.

♪ (Simon) Many of the prisoners were caught quite local to Stalag Luft Three, within 15 to 30 miles.

♪ (Prof. Peter Doyle) Maybe it was a relief to some of those men to be captured.

♪ (train whistle blowing) (dark music) (narrator) Those escaping by train had managed to get hundreds of miles from Stalag Luft Three.

♪ (Simon) Bushell and his partner, Bernard Scheidhauer, Frenchman, traveled further and faster than any of the other prisoners.

♪ (Guy) They made their way to Saarbrücken, gonna get across hopefully into France where they'll make contact with one of those escape lines which will, hopefully, spirit them all the way down to the Pyrenees.

♪ (Simon) At Saarbrücken Station, they were questioned by a member of the Kripo Criminal Police who seemed to have a problem with one of their ID cards.

A stamp was missing or something.

♪ (Guy) So, when they're questioned a bit more, either Bushell or Scheidhauer answers a question put to him and he answers in English.

♪ For my money, I think it's more likely that someone who speaks English is gonna accidentally respond in English to a question than someone who is French, i.e., Scheidhauer.

So, my concern is actually that it's Roger Bushell.

♪ (Simon) That his escape should come to an end in this manner was... ♪ ...terrible.

♪ It was a cruel and disastrous end for Bushell.

♪ (slamming) (moody music) (narrator) By the third day of the escape, 61 of the 76 POWs had been caught.

♪ (Guy) A lot of the escapers are captured quite near Sagan, then sent to Görlitz.

♪ They're there taken to Gestapo HQ where they're held in cells at the bottom of that building.

(Simon) Small cells.

♪ A bucket in the corner.

Very little light, no ventilation.

The conditions were dreadful.

(sinister music) (narrator) Crammed four or five to a cell, they were only taken out to face interrogation by the Gestapo.

♪ (Guy) And they were brought for questioning.

♪ There's a lot of shouting.

(shouting) And there's an accusation.

"You're not POWs.

How do we know you're a POW?"

♪ You're in plain clothes.

You've got no identity on you proving you're a POW.

This is not what I'm expecting.

I thought I was just gonna be sent back to the camp.

Now I've got a man shouting at me and I'm being accused of being a spy.

Okay, this is a whole different ball game.

♪ (Laurie-Anne) The brutal interrogations were unlawful.

They went too far.

♪ Physical violence, threats of death.

That type of interrogation was not permitted.

♪ (Simon) The Gestapo were absolutely ruthless and frightening.

♪ It was Scharpwinkel who undertook the interrogations at Görlitz.

Von Lindeiner, the commandant at Stalag Luft Three, described him as "unhinged."

(shouting) ♪ He epitomized the evil men at the heart of the SS and the Gestapo.

(Charles) Scharpwinkel was a man with no conscience whatsoever.

I don't think he necessarily was a Nazi.

He was just a sadist.

♪ (moody music) (narrator) The POWs traveling by train were now scattered across the Reich.

♪ But they too were being swept up in the nationwide alert.

♪ Tom Kirby-Green and Gordon Kidder had traveled more than 300 miles, deep into Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

♪ New research has revealed they were caught on foot in the woods west of Vnorovy.

♪ They were taken to the Gestapo HQ in nearby Zlin.

♪ (Colin) There was some brutal interrogation of my dad and his companion... ♪ ...to the point where they could not carry on the pretense of being Spanish workers.

♪ (Dr. Helen Fry) Kirby-Green was actually handcuffed and brutally dragged on his knees.

♪ At least one hand, a wrist was broken as a result of that.

♪ (Colin) The Gestapo enjoyed being brutal with these interrogations.

♪ (narrator) Simultaneously... ♪ ...Arthur Nebe, the head of the Kripo Criminal Police, was dealing with some paperwork in his Berlin office.

♪ (Guy) So he has got the POW identity cards effectively of those who've been recaptured, and he has a choice to make.

"Well, I've got to choose 50."

One deck of cards on his table represents life and the other deck of cards represents death.

♪ And on some occasions, we know that he moved a card from one to the other, and that is the fate of a human being just being decided on this desk in Berlin by this man.

♪ This is literally desk murder by Arthur Nebe and it will have terrible, terrible consequences.

♪ (slamming) (slamming) (dark music) (narrator) Five days after their breakout, only seven Great Escapers still evaded capture.

♪ Most were now crammed into the tiny cells in Görlitz.

♪ (Simon) The prisoners, I think, were gripped by fear.

♪ There must have been some really big alarm bells ringing in some of these young men's heads.

♪ (somber music) (narrator) In Czechoslovakia, in the early hours of the morning, Tom Kirby-Green and Gordon Kidder were taken from their cell by the Gestapo.

♪ (Guy) They are put in these cars.

♪ They're driven.

They think they're being taken back to the camp.

♪ And they're told that they're gonna now have a comfort break.

♪ (clicking) ♪ (gunfire) ♪ And it's just the most disgusting form of death.

♪ It's just so despicable and so unpleasant to imagine that's how your dad would've died.

♪ (Colin) I think the way they died, being murdered like that in this disgusting way... ♪ ...was absolutely despicable.

♪ (Guy) It's illegal, it's murderous, and it's disgusting.

Ultimately because you don't-- they're annoying you.

That's it, they're just annoying you.

♪ (narrator) A few hours later at dawn... ♪ Roger Bushell and Bernard Scheidhauer were driven east from Saarbrücken by two Gestapo officers called Spann and Schulz.

♪ (Simon) Ostensibly, they're being taken to Berlin for further interrogation.

♪ (Guy) And I think Bushell would have had an inkling that something very, very bad was gonna happen.

♪ (Simon) The Germans stopped the car... ♪ ...removed the handcuffs on the two prisoners... ♪ ...and told them to take a walk.

♪ (Guy) What happens next... ♪ ...is truly horrific.

♪ Schulz and Spann look at each other.

♪ And Spann has got Scheidhauer, and Schulz has got Bushell.

♪ (gunshots) ♪ (Simon) Scheidhauer fell.

He died instantly.

♪ Bushell did not.

♪ He was in convulsions.

♪ (Guy) Who knows how long he can live for like this?

And Schulz gets down on the ground.

It's gruesome.

In the crook of his arm rests his forearm... ♪ (gunshot) ♪ ...and he shoots Bushell in the head.

It's just a totally, totally disgusting and horrific murder, and that is the end of Roger Bushell.

♪ (Simon) I don't think Roger Bushell ever thought that this was the way it would end for him.

♪ He always believed that he would succeed, that he had a mission, a destiny, and that, in the end, he would triumph.

♪ (Guy) He believed he'd make it home.

♪ (spirited music) (narrator) Later that same day, two of the escapers did make it home.

♪ (Guy) Müller and Bergsland had a massive head start in the fact that they were Norwegians, and Norwegians could be in the Third Reich because it was part of the Third Reich, so they were easily able to pose as foreign laborers.

(train whizzing) ♪ They get the train up to Stettin where they make contact in a brothel with a contact they've been given effectively by MI9 and they then get on a ship, a Swedish ship, to Gothenburg.

♪ (horn blaring) (narrator) In neutral Sweden, they headed to the British Embassy and so freedom.

It's brilliant.

♪ (slamming) (dark music) ♪ (narrator) For two days, the prisoners in Görlitz watched their friends being taken from the cells, never to return.

♪ (Simon) One of them managed to look out the window and see small groups of prisoners being taken away by men in leather coats.

They were terrified.

♪ (Charles) Most of the prisoners were actually shot either singly... ♪ ...or in pairs.

♪ But at Görlitz, on the 31st of March, two groups were taken out and shot.

One consisting of ten of the escapers and then, later on, a group of seven.

These mass shootings were overseen by Scharpwinkel.

♪ When he was questioned, Scharpwinkel said, "I was surprised at how calmly they took it when I told them they were going to be shot."

(soft piano music) ♪ (slamming) ♪ (Simon) In the beginning, the prisoners who remained at Stalag Luft Three heard nothing.

And as a result of that, they harbored some hopes that perhaps their friends had got away.

♪ But, then, it changed.

♪ (Guy) The replacement commandant summons in the senior British officer and he tells him that over 40 men have been shot while trying to escape.

(Simon) He was asked, "How many are wounded?"

♪ The answer was "none."

♪ Then, the terrible reality dawned.

♪ There was anger and revulsion and despair.

♪ (Pippa) It must have been absolutely devastating for my father to find out that Tom Kirby-Green and the others, of course, had been murdered.

♪ Tom Kirby-Green was his closest friend, and it affected him very, very badly.

♪ The impact was... ♪ ...something that lasted the rest of his life.

♪ (narrator) The same day the POWs were told of the deaths, another seven escapers were murdered.

(dark music) ♪ (slamming) ♪ (Guy) As a mark of respect, they snip the end off their ties.

♪ They make a diamond shape... ♪ ...and they stitch it onto their sleeve as a sign of mourning.

♪ And there's a huge service for Easter, and the Germans are really worried that this service is going to turn into a mutiny.

They can see this very, very angry, restive population.

(violin music) ♪ (Simon) It was extraordinarily moving.

♪ The discipline of all the British prisoners... ♪ ...in their uniforms, erect, a striking sight... ♪ ...that I think disturbed the Germans.

♪ (narrator) Soon after, urns containing their friends' ashes began arriving back at Stalag Luft Three.

(Guy) They left as men, they come back as ash.

It's that simple.

♪ (melancholy music) (slamming) ♪ (narrator) Families at home only learned of the shootings a month later when they were reported to the British government by the Red Cross.

♪ (Colin) My mother was devastated.

I'm sure that's the only word I can think of really.

♪ I was at boarding school.

And when she came to tell me about it, she just couldn't bring herself to do it.

She saw how happy I was to see her, and she knew that I thought my dad was safe and that I would see him again one day.

♪ I went to the headmaster, and he said, "Sit down, Kirby-Green.

♪ I'm sorry I have to tell you that your father's been killed."

Just like that.

I wept my heart out, and I was in a terrible state for several days.

♪ (dark music) (narrator) The British government was outraged by the murders.

♪ (Laurie-Anne) Anthony Eden in Parliament vowed to get exemplary justice for the murdered prisoners.

♪ It meant that they would pursue the perpetrators and they would be tried, and they would be punished.

♪ (Dr. Helen Fry) Senior SS officers got a little bit concerned about the evidence and that they would be done for war crimes.

And that's when we start to see them tampering with the evidence and changing some of the reports.

♪ You also have the typical behavior of the SS blaming each other and passing the buck.

♪ (narrator) The murderers knew that soon they would lose the war and the British would seek retribution.

♪ (slamming) (piano music) (slamming) ♪ In the summer of 1944, in the forests next to Stalag Luft Three, the prisoners were allowed to build a mausoleum to hold the ashes of their murdered friends.

(Prof. Peter Doyle) All of the names on that memorial, each one of those carved or cast by the prisoners themselves.

♪ And it's a moving place even today.

♪ (narrator) But the POWs did receive some good news that summer.

♪ Dutchman Bram van der Stok had been on the run for months.

♪ But he'd made it across France, over the Pyrenees, and into neutral Spain.

♪ On the 10th of July, he landed in Britain.

A third Great Escaper had made a home run.

♪ (melancholy music) ♪ The prisoners also received a coded letter from MI9 saying escape was no longer a duty.

The war was almost won, and the risk was too high.

♪ (slamming) (somber music) ♪ (Simon) Stalag Luft Three was evacuated on January the 27th, 1945, with the Russians just 25 miles away.

The prisoners, 11,000 of them, were marched westward.

♪ (Clare) It's freezing conditions.

♪ There's deep snowfall.

♪ (Pippa) They marched... ♪ ...and they lost many, many people on the way.

And eventually, my father was liberated by the 9th Armored Division and flew back to the UK.

♪ (soft music) (narrator) With the German surrender, the Luftwaffe guards became POWs themselves.

♪ But many of the Gestapo killers evaded capture.

♪ (Laurie-Anne) The perpetrators were provided with false papers, false documents, and given false identities, and they were told to run.

♪ (Dr. Helen Fry) The British were adamant that these war criminals would be brought to justice.

The team of RAF investigators were sent to post-war Germany to find the location of some of those SS commanders who had carried out the atrocity.

♪ (Laurie-Anne) The British military did a brilliant job of tracking down and finding about 70 of them.

♪ (narrator) One of those captured was Erich Zacharias, who oversaw the shooting of Tom Kirby-Green.

Initially, he denied everything.

♪ (Dr. Helen Fry) They re-enacted Kirby-Green's interrogation, and Zacharias was made to kneel as Kirby-Green had been.

♪ It must have flashed through his mind in that moment quite possibly that he was about to face the same fate as his victim.

And Zacharias broke at that point and he confessed.

♪ (moody music) (narrator) In July 1947, eighteen men accused of the Great Escape atrocity were put on trial in Hamburg.

♪ (Laurie-Anne) Many of the defendants in the trial said that had they not carried out the orders to murder, they themselves and their families would be murdered.

But the defense could not provide a single example of an SS officer who themselves or their family members had been killed because they had failed to carry out the orders of their commanding officers.

♪ (Guy) Ultimately, you do have a kind of watershed day, if you like, in which you have Emil Schulz, the murderer of Roger Bushell, and 12 of his fellow murderers are all hanged one day at Hamelin Prison.

And that is a huge act of retribution.

Unfortunately, the British never brought Scharpwinkel to justice.

He was held by the Soviets, and what the Soviets say a couple of years down the line is that he died in their hands.

The irony, of course, is if he's met the same fate that he's meted out to the 30 of the 50.

♪ (somber music) ♪ (narrator) While there was retribution for the horrific killing of the 50 young men, it was little consolation to their families and friends.

♪ (Pippa) My father was devastated at the loss of his great friend, Tom Kirby-Green.

He didn't know what he could do to make things better, so he decided that after the war, if he got back in one piece, he would actually look up Tom Kirby-Green's widow.

♪ (Colin) Roy was one of several, well, many POWs who called on my mother, and he persisted perhaps longer than some because he was falling in love with her.

♪ And eventually, my mother and he told me that they were going to get married.

(uplifting music) ♪ And by this time, I'd come to love this man.

(Pippa) Eventually, I was born.

♪ We are half brother and sister, probably quite a unique combination to have two fathers that both were Great Escapers.

♪ (Colin) My father's death was terrible and will remain so with me, but I have this lovely, loving sister, and we've been friends, apart from half brother and sister, all this time.

(Pippa) Well, aren't I lucky to have a big brother?

A bit bossy sometimes, but still wonderful.

(chuckling) (dramatic music) ♪ (bright music)