"Great Escape Nationalities" Topic

"I recently watched a series of videos on WW2TV about the escape of 76 prisoners of war from Stalag Luft III in Germany (now Poland) — an event now known as The Great Escape. The story was immortalized in a large-budget Hollywood movie called The Great Escape.

While the movie did a good job of describing the construction of the tunnel, much of the rest of the movie was pure fiction. Watching the movie did motivate me as a boy to read the book of the same name by the Australian author Paul Brickhill, a prisoner at the camp who assisted with the escape, but was not one of the escapers.

One of the great inaccuracies of the movie was in the role of the American prisoners. While some Americans assisted early on with the tunnel operation, none were at the camp at the time of the escape (link). One of The Great Escape segments on WW2TV mentioned that most of the escapees were not British, which motivated me to look at the nationalities of those who escaped. This was a nice little Excel exercise whose results are presented below…"

Math Encounters Blog

link

Armand

The information about no US escapees started appearing some time after the movie. I remember reading it when young. Hollywood thought them necessary to appeal to the US audience. It wasn't, but that's Hollywood. Same with McQueen's whole motorcycle episode. Fun to watch though.

Still a good movie.

I only recall two American characters in that movie (which I have seen multiple times): McQueen and his buddy who keeps tossing him his mitt and baseball. (How he happened to have those with him when he was shot down is never explained.)
James Garner's character was supposedly Canadian, or at least in the RCAF.

James Garner's character was supposedly Canadian, or at least in the RCAF.

James Garner's character, Hendley the scrounger, was an American RAF officer from Eagle Squadron.

Like a lot of these type of movies, the script adds the checklist of national stereotypes:

Brash American? check
Reserved British officer? Check
Cheeky Keelie? Check.
Rough Australian? Check.
Sadstic Nazi? Check. etc

This is not to say that the movie is *not* excellent. The cast of exceptional actors overcomes the stereotypes. The movie, obviously, is a classic.

Thanks

Armand