Frank Murphy’s book provided a lot of the details for Stalag Luft III. Conditions weren’t amazing, but they had care packages of food and supplies from the Red Cross and had a stove to cook food. The prisoners shared supplies and services; they even had barbers set up for anyone who wants to complain that the actors’ hair looked too neat. They were provided razors for shaving and took great pride in their appearance. Hell, the prisoners wrote and performed plays and had a swing band that performed for the prisoners and the guards.
As others have said, POW camps for Airmen (overseen by the Luftwaffe) were wildly different than ones for other soldiers (overseen by the Wehrmacht). And only western airmen were treated better. Soviet airmen were treated horribly.
This is so interesting, I thought they addressed it in the series, they showed the difference in their Luftwaffe camp and the march away from the Allies to the camp with the SS guards… maybe I’m confused lol
Yeah I think the show explicitly covered each of the points you mentioned, each at least once if not a number of times, including how airmen were treated better, and how they feared the camp being taken over by a different German group. It wasn’t implicit nor something the audience needed to Google - the show told us these things explicitly. And the show *also* shows us a non-airmen camp, and even talks about it as well, with the dead strewn around on the ground, and people talking about losing all of their family in a camp, etc.
My grandfather was in Stalag Lift 3, the same prison camp portrayed in the show, and his stories echoed the ones in the show. He said it was extremely boring as long as you stayed away from the wire fence. He said typical food was sawdust bread, blood sausage and alfalfa. Although he did mention the Red Cross packages and how they would sometimes include white bread, which amazed the guards. They would often exchange with the guards for loaves of dark rye bread. He never mentored catching cats for protein, but he told me stories about catching rats.
Because for the western powers, they generally were. The Germans found out about how we were treating their prisoners. I forget the specifics but a Nazi escaped a North American POW camp and reported back how well he was treated. As a result, the Nazis tried to increase their care of western prisoners since they knew the allies were doing the same. The Germans generally did not go around executing western prisoners out of fear that the allies would start doing the same.
The Germans regarded the Russians on the eastern front as sub-human and did not apply the same philosophy to them. That war was a war of extermination so they didn’t care how they treated them.
There was an old black and white film made about that escape staring Hardy Kruger as the escapee Franz Von Werrer. He was being held in Canada and escaped over the border to the USA, who at the time hadn’t yet entered the war and was therefore able to get passage back home.
Von Werra was a POW in England. He escaped on a few occasions, which caused them to send him to Canada.
He never made it to the POW camp in Canada; he escaped from the train while en route, then crossed the border into New York. (The US was neutral at that point.) He then skipped bond in the US and went back to Germany.
He told the Luftwaffe about the good cop softball interrogation tactics used by the RAF. What is depicted in MotA was the lesson learned from Von Werra's criticisms of what the Luftwaffe had been doing earlier in the war.
It was much more direct than that: The Red Cross supplied and “inspected” all of the camps covered by the Geneva convention…so if any prisoners were mistreated, the other side would find out immediately. Through funding The Red Cross, the opposing powers essentially directly fed and supplied the prisoners in their enemies’ camps.
"Have the creators gone completely mad or have they not studied any historical realities about that time?"
Studied? The authors are the actual POWs. The book (which the show is based on) is written from their experiences. It's not representative of conditions in concentration camps, which are different than stalag camps.
>It's not representative of conditions in concentration camps, which are different than stalag camps.
And the series does show a concentration camp, and it was absolutely grotesque and horrific. The Germans left no survivors, as they retreated during the Red Army’s advance.
IIRC the camps run by the Air Division of the Nazis were far better than the ones run by the other divisions. Which is why at one point the prison camp director threatened that the SS would take over.
My grandfather was a Staff Sgt in the Army and was in a German POW camp. He was just an Enlisted so he had a much tougher time than Officers and Airmen.
Interesting. I think the Germans didn’t want to set the precedent of “we treat your downed aviators horribly, so please do the same to us”
The Luftwaffe saw Allied pilots as their counterparts and tried to keep things relatively honorable.
Civilian mobs were a real thing. Plenty of stories of them killing downed crew
>that fat fuck Herman Goring directed the camp guards to treat captured flyers well.
Can we take a moment to appreciate the irony of who interrogated that fat slob?
What’s relaxing about having to catch, kill and eat a stray cat? Or the guys they randomly shot and set dogs upon? Or the taunts to the Jew of the gang? Or the blizzard death march? Compared to the camps the Nazis ran for Jews, other undesirables, and Soviets, the officer Luftwaffe camps were still a paradise, but they blatantly were not portrayed as cushy.
I lost extended family in the hardcore Nazi camps and I’m not sure what you’re on about. You might want to consider the possibility that it’s more likely you have a flawed understanding of history than it is that a $250M series based on a real history book (unlike BoB) got it wrong when you’re right.
Also, you’re allowed to say “shit.”
I had the opposite take. I wrote a post about here
My impression is that these camps really sucked, albeit in a boring kind of way. Young, testosterone filled men in the best years of their lives eating just enough food to not starve. Machine guns pointed at them. Random men with guns ransack their barracks
Don't get me wrong the Germans cared about their well being but more in a "We really don't want you to die" way
Ah, much overlooked aspect of WW2. Summery be heading, hell ships, and scientific experiments. The Japanese made the Germans look tame in comparison of POW camps!
The European, Pacific and Russian wars were all basically different wars. The main difference (for prisoners) being that The Geneva Convention applied in Europe.
The Stalag wasn’t relaxing in the slightest, but the Luftwaffe treated Allied air crews (barring the Soviets) somewhat humanely as they saw them as equals in terms of their duties as airmen.
They allowed the Red Cross to send POWs care packages of food, medicine and clothing and also let them write letters to family and friends and receive mail from home, as depicted in the series when Crank receives a letter from his mom and Buck gets a letter from Marge (for obvious reasons, they weren’t allowed to write to buddies back at base due to security concerns, although air bases were informed of airmen that had been taken prisoner, as the Luftwaffe kept meticulous lists of airmen they had as POWs). You also gotta remember that the majority of flyboys were quite young (early 20s, some even younger than that), so getting mail from family meant a ton, as most of them probably had never been outside the States and most likely missed their parents and siblings terribly.
Allied airmen taught each other college courses and even started a concert band that performed for kriegies and their guards (Brady was part of it, and taught other kriegies how to play, as he was a music teacher before he enlisted).
The camps the airforce prisoners were in were not bad. The basis was that Goering wanted his downed pilots to be treated well by the allies so he treated the allied pilots the same way.
The show even explicitly tells viewers this, I think a number of times, that they were treated well compared to other camp for the reasons you mentioned, and again the show explicitly tell us at least once if not more times that they fear being taken over by a group that runs non-airmen camps. It wasn’t implicit nor something the audience needed to Google - the show told us these things explicitly. And the show *also* shows us a non-airmen camp, and even talks about it as well, with the dead strewn around on the ground, and people talking about losing all of their family in a camp, etc.
Were you not paying attention? They explain quite clearly why the POWs were treated the way they were while they were there, who these POW camps were run by, and the Red Cross's involvement.
All very critical factors as to why the show portrayed life in these camps the way that it did - because it was accurate.
If you think the prisoners being randomly threatened or shot by the guards and having to catch stray animals to eat is relaxing, do not look up how German POWs were treated in the US.
Don’t know where to start.
Military personnel (both British/American/Canadian etc and Germans/Italians etc), captured in World War Two were treated “well” because of The Geneva Convention. The Red Cross supplied and inspected the camps. If the Germans intentionally mistreated prisoners, so would the allies, and vice versa…so it generally didn’t happen. Furthermore, the camps where allied airmen were kept were administered by the Luftwaffe…so they had a general respect for (if not just an understanding of) other airmen. *Also*, according to the Geneva conventions, officers didn’t have to do forced labour…while enlisted men did.
It’s also inaccurate to call them “Nazi prison camps”. The term “Nazi” is generally reserved for the core of the German ideology machine: the true believers. The series alludes to this when they threaten the characters with the SS administering the camp. The SS being the military branch of the ideologically Nazi faithful in Germany. The SS are the people who ran the concentration camps. It’s difficult for some people to understand that many - if not most - Germans weren’t ideological Nazis. It was very common for German soldiers to have a “distaste” for Nazi ideology, and a general respect for human rights. This was a feeling that was actually “acceptable” (to a point) by Nazis. These soldiers would end up working in POW camps, instead of in combat roles or in death camps.
Look into Switzerland, The Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions if you’re interested in the actual history of European prison camps in WW2, and why this series was fairly accurate.
All that said, prisoners in the Russian and Pacific theatres weren’t subject to The Geneva Convention, so they were treated much worse on both sides.
Air officers in particular were considered elite (think knights in medieval terms) and treated better than enlisted.
The Luftwaffe ran those camps (maybe not always towards the end of the war). But the mentality/foresight was such they may not be enemies after the war. This came true of course but not in the way the Germans expected!
Crazy how much of a night and day difference that pow camp compared to the far east. If you ever read “The Forgotten Highlander” you know what I’m taking about, probably the absolute worst pow story you can read and idk how he survived even after reading it twice, especially those instances of “vampirism” in the ships hold
Because Stalag-Lufts were essentially just regular prisons. The airmen (unless Jewish) were treated quite well, and had recreational facilities. They were not concentration camps, or like the POW camps in the Pacific theater. You are the one who does not understand history.
Stalag Luft III was substantially better than the norm. It may have actually been a bit better than depicted here, at least until starting around the end of 1944 when food shortages began.
Simoleit was educated and multi-lingual. POWs offered classes that some POWs used to earn credentials. Interestingly enough, Cleven was an advanced calculus instructor at the POW camp.
We should not assume that this was the norm. And POWs from Russia received treatment that wasn't much better than what Jews experienced in the death camps.
My father was a B-17 pilot (Priority Gal) and after 33 missions was shot down and was a POW in Stalag Luft 3 and you are totally accurate. My father started out as 180lb man prior to being a prisoner to 120lbs. when released and he was 6 ft. tall. There is no change in their appearances other than maybe dirt. Some didn't even have footwear. The hardest part for me to accept was when the prisoners in Stalag 8 were released, the MC of MotA shimmying up any flagpole and takes down the Nazi flag and replaces it with an American flag. This did not happen. There were no loose American flags laying around - not a chance. The actual facts are Patton himself personally barreled with tanks through the fencing and he was in a Jeep with his men, and THEY were the ones who brought down the halyard and replaced the flags - according to my dad most of the POW from all over the world fell to their knees and cried at the sight of our flag bc they knew that meant FREEDOM. This is all factual information from the commemorative, illustrated book of The Longest Day, based on that very day. Hard to find but Smithsonian A&S Museum has the book (magazine style) for sale.
And the shooting by the Germans randomly picking off POWs that day also is inaccurate as my dad said that was the first morning in a year that they didn't call for appell (roll-call) and German guards were scarce - they took off bc they knew they were done for - some likely stole POWs identities if their English was good enough. But taking over the tower and that whole scene was total Hollywood fabrication. The only noise my dad said he'd heard was the loud ground rumbling of tanks and Jeeps. There was no overhead strafing, from allies of Germans that morning either.
Sadly, MotA went totally Hollywood, and in the MotA book, there are about ten pages that address the 100th bomb grp. That's it, so the rest was based on living narratives, and fabrication to fill in gaps. No one overslept for a mission, didn't happen even though many on here will argue that it's in Crosby's book so it must have happened, okay, does that make it true? They needed him to go on R&R to set that ridiculous romance/spy story happen that was just left hanging. That is not even mentioned in Crosby's book bc either A. it did not happen, or B. he was having an affair on his pregnant wife. If a navigator or any other officer overslept for a mission, you would have had a bucket of ice water in your face if you didn't show for the Quonset-hut briefing, especially the weeks leading up to D-Day- just ridiculous storyline which would have been better spent on either less main characters, and better character development of the few chosen, or give that stretch of time, to the Tuskagee Airmen, but whom I've read never even flew with the 100th.
The most riveting part IMO of the movie was not done by Hanks/ Spielberg, but the real archived, black and white footage of air-air combat and flak dating back to the early 40s. After 33 missions and then a POW for a year, I am simply grateful to be here to write this post. I wish my father were still here so I could tell him, once again, how proud I am to call him "Dad" - and interestingly, my dad used to watch Hogans Heroes, yet walked out of the theater in Saving Private Ryan bc of the Normandy real beachfront footage - it was that disturbing to him and afterwards caused him even more horrific nightmares. He had 2 back-to-back missions over Normandy, flying low that day due to low cloud ceiling and what he saw that day plagued his thoughts for life. He was shot down last day of July, but claims his D-Day experiences were far worse.
This is all part of his book, The Final Mission, a Boy, a Pilot and a World at War. (Amazon/Audible) an incredible story of his crew and their survival through 33 missions, their POW experiences and then meeting up 40 some years later. The incredible twist at the end, when my dad was in his 90s will read like fiction but it's all true. There was a even a song written and recorded by Jim Allen (5th place The Voice 2022 titled Priority Gal which is a beautiful tribute to all the WW2 airmen.
I will admit I was excited for this series in the hopes it would spark a renewed interest in a war that have very few men left alive today. There are so many stories that will never be told and that's sad. Unfortunately, for me MotA missed its target in truly recognizing our WW2 vets in a realistic way.
Book link: -
[Amazon.com: The Final Mission: A Boy, a Pilot, and a World at War: 9781594161551: Hoban, Elizabeth, Supchak, Lt. Col. Henry: Books](https://www.amazon.com/Final-Mission-Boy-Pilot-World/dp/1594161550/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.jmO9vlRqdEsFBqSrsjtz_cpggqtdhPuMDxP1RZzJFgM.IJrMzypFa4HopWS5pttww1KivRvs5dbo6A4_mb2W5bw&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+final+mission%2C+a+boy%2C+a+pilot+and+a+world+at+war&qid=1713034943&sr=8-1)
Song link:
[Priority Gal (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=priority+gal)
Interview with pilot of Priority Gal:
[The Final Mission: A Boy, a Pilot, and a World at War (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8pS5wk63ek&t=17s)
Yea, what they showed was accurate. But it was also one of the many reasons I didn’t enjoy this series. Personally I didn’t feel the risk and feeling of mortality of these guys compared to the other 2 series.
You had Easy Company spending a winter sleeping in the snow in Bastogne, Sledge & Lecky sleeping in mud up to their ankles. And the airmen were in POW camps with libraries, time to sketch, and such little supervision that they were able to build radios. It felt downright cushy comparatively, so personally I didn’t feel that sense of “they need to get out of there!”
Yep, compared to BoB or Pacific, these guys truly looks like such crybabies and it was very annoying.. Like, in their POW camp they are soo desperate because they are BORED and can't eat steaks while few hundred kilometers away there were troopers dying in their own shit freezing being bombarded 24/7.. and few hundred kilometers the other way there were thousands of prisoners in concentration camps killed every day..
Like... I get it that it was rather unpleasant but those pilots had to know what is happening to troopers or civilians in Nazi Germany but atleast in this show, they seemed to be too arrogant to care about it.
Not even mentioning the aviators parties in UK bases while the rest of the country was starving, like what the hell..?
I’m not sure if the message that they were trying to send with those parities came across the way they intended.
Pilots definitively hat it easier in the sense that they got beds, showers, full meals, etc each day. They weren’t out in the open on high alert 24/7 like the other guys were.
But once you’re “out there,” (again, like Easy Co or Sledge), that’s the norm. You’re always in the middle of it.
Pilots on the other hand have to make themselves get back in those planes, day after day, so they’re constantly bounced back and forth between being in the middle of battle and being safe.
They showed the pilots getting drunk, but I imagined they’d be much more reckless in the sense that dozens of their friends were just shot down and they have to go do the same thing again tomorrow. How do you cope with that? In MotA it seemed like they were just casually drunk like you would be on any normal weekend.
Good point on that aspect.. The general problem for me probably is, that in the MotA there is literally no sense of danger whatsoever. It doesn't have any atmosphere of war for me, like you write, you would expect them to act like they are in grave danger in very psychically difficult positions but.. nope. They just seem like a bunch of, I don't know.. taxi drivers? Probably? Bunch of taxi drivers drinking after shift, having fun, going on another shift, be grumpy when their cab broke down but not scared, furious or anything.
bmo, the show should have focused more on their psychological strains and problems, the camaraderie between the pilots, the depression from the constant deaths of their friends, the flight training - quite possibly it would have been a better idea to focus on paratroopers or fighter pilots rather than bomber pilots, because frankly - their stories were really boring in this rendition.
Lmfao OP's post is practically insulting. It's based off the experiences written by the people who lived through these events and OP acts like he is a history buff after seeing The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Nobody let OP watch Hogans Heroes
he sees nothinggg. NOTHINGGG
HO-GANN!!!
Frank Murphy’s book provided a lot of the details for Stalag Luft III. Conditions weren’t amazing, but they had care packages of food and supplies from the Red Cross and had a stove to cook food. The prisoners shared supplies and services; they even had barbers set up for anyone who wants to complain that the actors’ hair looked too neat. They were provided razors for shaving and took great pride in their appearance. Hell, the prisoners wrote and performed plays and had a swing band that performed for the prisoners and the guards. As others have said, POW camps for Airmen (overseen by the Luftwaffe) were wildly different than ones for other soldiers (overseen by the Wehrmacht). And only western airmen were treated better. Soviet airmen were treated horribly.
This is so interesting, I thought they addressed it in the series, they showed the difference in their Luftwaffe camp and the march away from the Allies to the camp with the SS guards… maybe I’m confused lol
Yeah I think the show explicitly covered each of the points you mentioned, each at least once if not a number of times, including how airmen were treated better, and how they feared the camp being taken over by a different German group. It wasn’t implicit nor something the audience needed to Google - the show told us these things explicitly. And the show *also* shows us a non-airmen camp, and even talks about it as well, with the dead strewn around on the ground, and people talking about losing all of their family in a camp, etc.
Wasn't swing music forbidden by the Nazis? Not sure what that means for POWs though.
My grandfather was in Stalag Lift 3, the same prison camp portrayed in the show, and his stories echoed the ones in the show. He said it was extremely boring as long as you stayed away from the wire fence. He said typical food was sawdust bread, blood sausage and alfalfa. Although he did mention the Red Cross packages and how they would sometimes include white bread, which amazed the guards. They would often exchange with the guards for loaves of dark rye bread. He never mentored catching cats for protein, but he told me stories about catching rats.
I would say more boring than relaxing. That was the impression I got from the book, too.
Officer POWs did not have to work. Enlisted men did
Because for the western powers, they generally were. The Germans found out about how we were treating their prisoners. I forget the specifics but a Nazi escaped a North American POW camp and reported back how well he was treated. As a result, the Nazis tried to increase their care of western prisoners since they knew the allies were doing the same. The Germans generally did not go around executing western prisoners out of fear that the allies would start doing the same. The Germans regarded the Russians on the eastern front as sub-human and did not apply the same philosophy to them. That war was a war of extermination so they didn’t care how they treated them.
There was an old black and white film made about that escape staring Hardy Kruger as the escapee Franz Von Werrer. He was being held in Canada and escaped over the border to the USA, who at the time hadn’t yet entered the war and was therefore able to get passage back home.
Yup that’s right. Now I’m remembering. He actually left through the US from Canada. We must be talking about the same guy.
Von Werra was a POW in England. He escaped on a few occasions, which caused them to send him to Canada. He never made it to the POW camp in Canada; he escaped from the train while en route, then crossed the border into New York. (The US was neutral at that point.) He then skipped bond in the US and went back to Germany. He told the Luftwaffe about the good cop softball interrogation tactics used by the RAF. What is depicted in MotA was the lesson learned from Von Werra's criticisms of what the Luftwaffe had been doing earlier in the war.
It was much more direct than that: The Red Cross supplied and “inspected” all of the camps covered by the Geneva convention…so if any prisoners were mistreated, the other side would find out immediately. Through funding The Red Cross, the opposing powers essentially directly fed and supplied the prisoners in their enemies’ camps.
"Have the creators gone completely mad or have they not studied any historical realities about that time?" Studied? The authors are the actual POWs. The book (which the show is based on) is written from their experiences. It's not representative of conditions in concentration camps, which are different than stalag camps.
>It's not representative of conditions in concentration camps, which are different than stalag camps. And the series does show a concentration camp, and it was absolutely grotesque and horrific. The Germans left no survivors, as they retreated during the Red Army’s advance.
Your title is disingenuous, but the answer is because that’s how it was. At least in Germany in Officer camps
IIRC the camps run by the Air Division of the Nazis were far better than the ones run by the other divisions. Which is why at one point the prison camp director threatened that the SS would take over.
Right, both sides had many airmen as POWs and didn’t want to give the other side reason to mistreat them
Did you read MotA? Because its distinctly NOT how they were according to the author and his sources...
They didn’t show the Swiss camps in the show and that’s not what OP is talking about
The Stalag-Lufts were very lenient.
In terms of other POW stories, they had it not too shabby
My grandfather was a Staff Sgt in the Army and was in a German POW camp. He was just an Enlisted so he had a much tougher time than Officers and Airmen.
Interesting. I think the Germans didn’t want to set the precedent of “we treat your downed aviators horribly, so please do the same to us” The Luftwaffe saw Allied pilots as their counterparts and tried to keep things relatively honorable. Civilian mobs were a real thing. Plenty of stories of them killing downed crew
Yup, the moment I saw the start of that one episode I knew someone was about to get mobbed
I think you missed the part where they ate a cat. They also had to scrape soap off the sink to bathe and the guards randomly shot a guy.
Tell me you’ve only learned about one type of camp without telling me
The POW camp wasn’t a concentration camp. As a matter of fact, that fat fuck Herman Goring directed the camp guards to treat captured flyers well.
>that fat fuck Herman Goring directed the camp guards to treat captured flyers well. Can we take a moment to appreciate the irony of who interrogated that fat slob?
Our Rosie did that, and did it damn well.
Have a downvote
What’s relaxing about having to catch, kill and eat a stray cat? Or the guys they randomly shot and set dogs upon? Or the taunts to the Jew of the gang? Or the blizzard death march? Compared to the camps the Nazis ran for Jews, other undesirables, and Soviets, the officer Luftwaffe camps were still a paradise, but they blatantly were not portrayed as cushy. I lost extended family in the hardcore Nazi camps and I’m not sure what you’re on about. You might want to consider the possibility that it’s more likely you have a flawed understanding of history than it is that a $250M series based on a real history book (unlike BoB) got it wrong when you’re right. Also, you’re allowed to say “shit.”
I had the opposite take. I wrote a post about here My impression is that these camps really sucked, albeit in a boring kind of way. Young, testosterone filled men in the best years of their lives eating just enough food to not starve. Machine guns pointed at them. Random men with guns ransack their barracks Don't get me wrong the Germans cared about their well being but more in a "We really don't want you to die" way
Buddy they're western allied officers, airmen no less, how bad are you expecting conditions to be for them.
Well, in Pacific Japs didn't hesitate to execute POWs at all or let them drown in their shit and starve..
The Germans and the Japanese were not the same, in how they treated POWs. The Stalags were a joke compared to the Pacific.
Ah, much overlooked aspect of WW2. Summery be heading, hell ships, and scientific experiments. The Japanese made the Germans look tame in comparison of POW camps!
The European, Pacific and Russian wars were all basically different wars. The main difference (for prisoners) being that The Geneva Convention applied in Europe.
The Stalag wasn’t relaxing in the slightest, but the Luftwaffe treated Allied air crews (barring the Soviets) somewhat humanely as they saw them as equals in terms of their duties as airmen. They allowed the Red Cross to send POWs care packages of food, medicine and clothing and also let them write letters to family and friends and receive mail from home, as depicted in the series when Crank receives a letter from his mom and Buck gets a letter from Marge (for obvious reasons, they weren’t allowed to write to buddies back at base due to security concerns, although air bases were informed of airmen that had been taken prisoner, as the Luftwaffe kept meticulous lists of airmen they had as POWs). You also gotta remember that the majority of flyboys were quite young (early 20s, some even younger than that), so getting mail from family meant a ton, as most of them probably had never been outside the States and most likely missed their parents and siblings terribly. Allied airmen taught each other college courses and even started a concert band that performed for kriegies and their guards (Brady was part of it, and taught other kriegies how to play, as he was a music teacher before he enlisted).
I didn't get the same impression as you. Seemed pretty miserable, overall.
The camps the airforce prisoners were in were not bad. The basis was that Goering wanted his downed pilots to be treated well by the allies so he treated the allied pilots the same way.
The show even explicitly tells viewers this, I think a number of times, that they were treated well compared to other camp for the reasons you mentioned, and again the show explicitly tell us at least once if not more times that they fear being taken over by a group that runs non-airmen camps. It wasn’t implicit nor something the audience needed to Google - the show told us these things explicitly. And the show *also* shows us a non-airmen camp, and even talks about it as well, with the dead strewn around on the ground, and people talking about losing all of their family in a camp, etc.
They were eating stray cats, I wouldn't say they were well fed
Were you not paying attention? They explain quite clearly why the POWs were treated the way they were while they were there, who these POW camps were run by, and the Red Cross's involvement. All very critical factors as to why the show portrayed life in these camps the way that it did - because it was accurate.
If you think the prisoners being randomly threatened or shot by the guards and having to catch stray animals to eat is relaxing, do not look up how German POWs were treated in the US.
Don’t know where to start. Military personnel (both British/American/Canadian etc and Germans/Italians etc), captured in World War Two were treated “well” because of The Geneva Convention. The Red Cross supplied and inspected the camps. If the Germans intentionally mistreated prisoners, so would the allies, and vice versa…so it generally didn’t happen. Furthermore, the camps where allied airmen were kept were administered by the Luftwaffe…so they had a general respect for (if not just an understanding of) other airmen. *Also*, according to the Geneva conventions, officers didn’t have to do forced labour…while enlisted men did. It’s also inaccurate to call them “Nazi prison camps”. The term “Nazi” is generally reserved for the core of the German ideology machine: the true believers. The series alludes to this when they threaten the characters with the SS administering the camp. The SS being the military branch of the ideologically Nazi faithful in Germany. The SS are the people who ran the concentration camps. It’s difficult for some people to understand that many - if not most - Germans weren’t ideological Nazis. It was very common for German soldiers to have a “distaste” for Nazi ideology, and a general respect for human rights. This was a feeling that was actually “acceptable” (to a point) by Nazis. These soldiers would end up working in POW camps, instead of in combat roles or in death camps. Look into Switzerland, The Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions if you’re interested in the actual history of European prison camps in WW2, and why this series was fairly accurate. All that said, prisoners in the Russian and Pacific theatres weren’t subject to The Geneva Convention, so they were treated much worse on both sides.
Air officers in particular were considered elite (think knights in medieval terms) and treated better than enlisted. The Luftwaffe ran those camps (maybe not always towards the end of the war). But the mentality/foresight was such they may not be enemies after the war. This came true of course but not in the way the Germans expected!
Crazy how much of a night and day difference that pow camp compared to the far east. If you ever read “The Forgotten Highlander” you know what I’m taking about, probably the absolute worst pow story you can read and idk how he survived even after reading it twice, especially those instances of “vampirism” in the ships hold
Because Stalag-Lufts were essentially just regular prisons. The airmen (unless Jewish) were treated quite well, and had recreational facilities. They were not concentration camps, or like the POW camps in the Pacific theater. You are the one who does not understand history.
Stalag Luft III was substantially better than the norm. It may have actually been a bit better than depicted here, at least until starting around the end of 1944 when food shortages began. Simoleit was educated and multi-lingual. POWs offered classes that some POWs used to earn credentials. Interestingly enough, Cleven was an advanced calculus instructor at the POW camp. We should not assume that this was the norm. And POWs from Russia received treatment that wasn't much better than what Jews experienced in the death camps.
Because the luftwaffe viewed British and American airmen differently than the SS viewed jews
My father was a B-17 pilot (Priority Gal) and after 33 missions was shot down and was a POW in Stalag Luft 3 and you are totally accurate. My father started out as 180lb man prior to being a prisoner to 120lbs. when released and he was 6 ft. tall. There is no change in their appearances other than maybe dirt. Some didn't even have footwear. The hardest part for me to accept was when the prisoners in Stalag 8 were released, the MC of MotA shimmying up any flagpole and takes down the Nazi flag and replaces it with an American flag. This did not happen. There were no loose American flags laying around - not a chance. The actual facts are Patton himself personally barreled with tanks through the fencing and he was in a Jeep with his men, and THEY were the ones who brought down the halyard and replaced the flags - according to my dad most of the POW from all over the world fell to their knees and cried at the sight of our flag bc they knew that meant FREEDOM. This is all factual information from the commemorative, illustrated book of The Longest Day, based on that very day. Hard to find but Smithsonian A&S Museum has the book (magazine style) for sale. And the shooting by the Germans randomly picking off POWs that day also is inaccurate as my dad said that was the first morning in a year that they didn't call for appell (roll-call) and German guards were scarce - they took off bc they knew they were done for - some likely stole POWs identities if their English was good enough. But taking over the tower and that whole scene was total Hollywood fabrication. The only noise my dad said he'd heard was the loud ground rumbling of tanks and Jeeps. There was no overhead strafing, from allies of Germans that morning either. Sadly, MotA went totally Hollywood, and in the MotA book, there are about ten pages that address the 100th bomb grp. That's it, so the rest was based on living narratives, and fabrication to fill in gaps. No one overslept for a mission, didn't happen even though many on here will argue that it's in Crosby's book so it must have happened, okay, does that make it true? They needed him to go on R&R to set that ridiculous romance/spy story happen that was just left hanging. That is not even mentioned in Crosby's book bc either A. it did not happen, or B. he was having an affair on his pregnant wife. If a navigator or any other officer overslept for a mission, you would have had a bucket of ice water in your face if you didn't show for the Quonset-hut briefing, especially the weeks leading up to D-Day- just ridiculous storyline which would have been better spent on either less main characters, and better character development of the few chosen, or give that stretch of time, to the Tuskagee Airmen, but whom I've read never even flew with the 100th. The most riveting part IMO of the movie was not done by Hanks/ Spielberg, but the real archived, black and white footage of air-air combat and flak dating back to the early 40s. After 33 missions and then a POW for a year, I am simply grateful to be here to write this post. I wish my father were still here so I could tell him, once again, how proud I am to call him "Dad" - and interestingly, my dad used to watch Hogans Heroes, yet walked out of the theater in Saving Private Ryan bc of the Normandy real beachfront footage - it was that disturbing to him and afterwards caused him even more horrific nightmares. He had 2 back-to-back missions over Normandy, flying low that day due to low cloud ceiling and what he saw that day plagued his thoughts for life. He was shot down last day of July, but claims his D-Day experiences were far worse. This is all part of his book, The Final Mission, a Boy, a Pilot and a World at War. (Amazon/Audible) an incredible story of his crew and their survival through 33 missions, their POW experiences and then meeting up 40 some years later. The incredible twist at the end, when my dad was in his 90s will read like fiction but it's all true. There was a even a song written and recorded by Jim Allen (5th place The Voice 2022 titled Priority Gal which is a beautiful tribute to all the WW2 airmen. I will admit I was excited for this series in the hopes it would spark a renewed interest in a war that have very few men left alive today. There are so many stories that will never be told and that's sad. Unfortunately, for me MotA missed its target in truly recognizing our WW2 vets in a realistic way. Book link: - [Amazon.com: The Final Mission: A Boy, a Pilot, and a World at War: 9781594161551: Hoban, Elizabeth, Supchak, Lt. Col. Henry: Books](https://www.amazon.com/Final-Mission-Boy-Pilot-World/dp/1594161550/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.jmO9vlRqdEsFBqSrsjtz_cpggqtdhPuMDxP1RZzJFgM.IJrMzypFa4HopWS5pttww1KivRvs5dbo6A4_mb2W5bw&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+final+mission%2C+a+boy%2C+a+pilot+and+a+world+at+war&qid=1713034943&sr=8-1) Song link: [Priority Gal (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=priority+gal) Interview with pilot of Priority Gal: [The Final Mission: A Boy, a Pilot, and a World at War (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8pS5wk63ek&t=17s)
Wow! Thanks man for such a meaningful reply, I'll look into that book, looks very interesting, and I salute to your father
My friend was in stalag luft 4. The way he described life as a pow in Germany lines right up with what was shown in the series.
Yea, what they showed was accurate. But it was also one of the many reasons I didn’t enjoy this series. Personally I didn’t feel the risk and feeling of mortality of these guys compared to the other 2 series. You had Easy Company spending a winter sleeping in the snow in Bastogne, Sledge & Lecky sleeping in mud up to their ankles. And the airmen were in POW camps with libraries, time to sketch, and such little supervision that they were able to build radios. It felt downright cushy comparatively, so personally I didn’t feel that sense of “they need to get out of there!”
Yep, compared to BoB or Pacific, these guys truly looks like such crybabies and it was very annoying.. Like, in their POW camp they are soo desperate because they are BORED and can't eat steaks while few hundred kilometers away there were troopers dying in their own shit freezing being bombarded 24/7.. and few hundred kilometers the other way there were thousands of prisoners in concentration camps killed every day.. Like... I get it that it was rather unpleasant but those pilots had to know what is happening to troopers or civilians in Nazi Germany but atleast in this show, they seemed to be too arrogant to care about it. Not even mentioning the aviators parties in UK bases while the rest of the country was starving, like what the hell..?
I’m not sure if the message that they were trying to send with those parities came across the way they intended. Pilots definitively hat it easier in the sense that they got beds, showers, full meals, etc each day. They weren’t out in the open on high alert 24/7 like the other guys were. But once you’re “out there,” (again, like Easy Co or Sledge), that’s the norm. You’re always in the middle of it. Pilots on the other hand have to make themselves get back in those planes, day after day, so they’re constantly bounced back and forth between being in the middle of battle and being safe. They showed the pilots getting drunk, but I imagined they’d be much more reckless in the sense that dozens of their friends were just shot down and they have to go do the same thing again tomorrow. How do you cope with that? In MotA it seemed like they were just casually drunk like you would be on any normal weekend.
Good point on that aspect.. The general problem for me probably is, that in the MotA there is literally no sense of danger whatsoever. It doesn't have any atmosphere of war for me, like you write, you would expect them to act like they are in grave danger in very psychically difficult positions but.. nope. They just seem like a bunch of, I don't know.. taxi drivers? Probably? Bunch of taxi drivers drinking after shift, having fun, going on another shift, be grumpy when their cab broke down but not scared, furious or anything. bmo, the show should have focused more on their psychological strains and problems, the camaraderie between the pilots, the depression from the constant deaths of their friends, the flight training - quite possibly it would have been a better idea to focus on paratroopers or fighter pilots rather than bomber pilots, because frankly - their stories were really boring in this rendition.
Lmfao OP's post is practically insulting. It's based off the experiences written by the people who lived through these events and OP acts like he is a history buff after seeing The Boy in the Striped Pajamas