The Great Escape (1963)

Winter, 1944. At the heart of Nazi Germany, 76 pilots – the British, the Canadians, the Norwegian and French, who were held in a prison camp of the Luftwaffe, escaped. The tunnel used for their flight was built in the greatest secrecy, under the nose of the German jailers. This historical epic, immortalised in 1963 by John Sturges’ movie ‘The Great Escape’ with Steve Mac Queen, went round the world. But the real story of these men overtakes by far the fiction imagined by Hollywood. Among the witnesses of this documentary is Jack Lyon, one of the last survivors of this adventure.

Put a fence in front of these men… and they'll climb it! - In 1943, the Germans opened Stalag Luft III, a maximum-security prisoner-of-war camp

The real history behind the classic war movie and the men who plotted the daring escape from a Nazi POW camp.

A Sunday Times bestseller, the real story behind the mastermind of the most famous breakout in history—The Great Escape.