Escape Artists

The Escape Artists: A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War- Neal Bascomb
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Release Date: September 18, 2018

Rating:
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Synopsis: In the winter trenches and flak-filled skies of World War I, soldiers and pilots alike might avoid death, only to find themselves imprisoned in Germany’s archipelago of POW camps, often in abominable conditions. The most infamous was Holzminden, a land-locked Alcatraz of sorts that housed the most troublesome, escape-prone prisoners. Its commandant was a boorish, hate-filled tyrant named Karl Niemeyer who swore that none should ever leave.

Desperate to break out of “Hellminden” and return to the fight, a group of Allied prisoners led by ace pilot (and former Army sapper) David Gray hatch an elaborate escape plan. Their plot demands a risky feat of engineering as well as a bevy of disguises, forged documents, fake walls, and steely resolve. Once beyond the watch towers and round-the-clock patrols, Gray and almost a dozen of his half-starved fellow prisoners must then make a heroic 150 mile dash through enemy-occupied territory towards free Holland.

Drawing on never-before-seen memoirs and letters, Neal Bascomb brings this narrative to cinematic life, amid the twilight of the British Empire and the darkest, most savage hours of the fight against Germany. At turns tragic, funny, inspirational, and nail-biting suspenseful, this is the little-known story of the biggest POW breakout of the Great War.  

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The Escape Artists tells the true story of a number of prisoners of war during World War I (mostly British pilots) and their attempts to escape German POW camps and into the safety of neutral Holland.  The book is well-written, well-researched, and thrilling from start to finish.  While most people have at least vaguely heard of the Great Escape of World War II (or at least know it was a movie), how many of us know about the POW camps of the first World War?  Did you know that many of the WW II pilots were taught by their first war counterparts?  Pilots who made it back to England helped prepare young men going into the second war by sharing their experiences in the camps and sharing the methods they used- or knew others used- to break out.

Bascomb's descriptions of the early fighter planes are terrifying- the fragility of these early planes meant it was a brave person willing to go up in them.  The POW camps sound like they would drive even the strongest to insanity.  I was surprised to learn how much of the treatment of POWs in the first war was still being negotiated between countries as the war progressed.  The various escape plans designed by the prisoners were often something you would expect out of a movie- from disguises as German officers or women to chutes out of windows to tunnels under the camps, complete with carefully forged papers.  For every failed escape attempt there was a lesson learned, leading to the final success of the POWs who escaped from Holzminden- considered a land-locked Alcatraz where Germans sent the most escape prone prisoners in the belief that it was escape proof.  

The Escape Artists is by turns humorous and tragic, inspirational and full of edge-of-your-seat suspense.  A wonderful and much needed look into this lesser known aspect of World War I.  A riveting, well-written, carefully researched, must read for history buffs!   

Plots Against Hitler

The Plots Against Hitler- Danny Orbach
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Release Date: October 11, 2016

Rating (Out of 5):
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Synopsis:  In 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. A year later, all parties but the Nazis had been outlawed, freedom of the press was but a memory, and Hitler’s dominance seemed complete. Yet over the next few years, an unlikely clutch of conspirators emerged – soldiers, schoolteachers, politicians, diplomats, theologians, even a carpenter – who would try repeatedly to end the Fuhrer’s genocidal reign. This dramatic and deeply researched book tells the full story of those noble, ingenious, and doomed efforts. This is history at its most suspenseful, as we witness secret midnight meetings, crises of conscience, fierce debates among old friends about whether and how to dismantle Nazism, and the various plots themselves being devised and executed.  Though we know how this story ends, we’ve had no idea until now how close it came – several times – to ending very differently

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The Plots Against Hitler is a well written and well researched new look at the stories of different Germans- both military and civilian- who plotted against Hitler throughout the course of his reign.  Even knowing the end of the story, the book was full of drama, intrigue, and suspense.  I knew very little about any of this before reading Orbach's book and came away from it with a deeper understanding of Germany during World War II.  Although I sometimes had trouble keeping track of individuals and their roles in the resistance, and the book sometimes fell into repeating itself, I enjoyed this informative and suspenseful history.

Plots is a balanced look at German resistance against Hitler from 1933 through 1945 and looks not only at famous attempts like Operation Valkyrie, but other serious attempts as well. I was often amazed at how many of these plots, including attempts by individual civilians, came very close to working and it was only sheer bad luck that kept them from succeeding. 

One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was the end.  After exploring the various conspiracies and attempts from military and practical views, Orbach spends the last few chapters analyzing the motivations and, to a degree, the characters of members of the resistance.  He tries to discover what their motives were in terms of their own morals and ethics, whether that means they were driven by religion, patriotism, or empathy.  And he does this by analyzing everything not through the lens of 21st century hindsight and morals, but from the morals and characters of the men and women in 1930s and 1940s Germany.  The results are thought-provoking and fascinating. The Plots Against Hitler are not the stories of kings and tyrants, but of individuals making hard decisions and struggling to decide what they can live with and what sacrifices they are willing to make for what they saw as the greater good.

A must read for any history lover, especially those interested in World War II history.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review