With the Allied success in North Africa and the invasion of Italy the prisoners, listening eagerly to the constant updates via their illicit wireless, sat back and waited for the opening of the ‘2nd Front’ in Western Europe. The tide of the war having turned in favour of the Allies the prisoners ran their own books on when the liberation would come. Would it be the Americans from the West or the Russians from the East? Some still dreamt of freedom and making a ‘home run’ to ‘get back in the fight’ while others whiled away the days participating in rackets and making the most of the home made stills. No doubt many men fell between these two camps.

Military men wanted to play a role in the deliverance of freedom to Europe and other theatres of the war but they also wanted to survive. After all, they had come this far. They had to weigh up the chances of reaching a neutral country or ‘home’ without getting re-caught and now the Germans were on the defensive would re-captured prisoners be treated in the same way as they were, i.e. under the terms of the Geneva Convention as they had been earlier in the war? No one was absolutely sure.

The Germans’ treatment of Commandos had already departed from the usual rules of engagement and, along with how this briefly touched the inmates of Oflag IVC, this has been discussed on the Commandos page in the British POW section of this web site.

In 1944 the SBO, Lt.Col. Tod, expressed his view that the men should not attempt escapes but instead should wait. A dangerous businesses in itself given the fact the Wehrmacht may lose control of Colditz to the Gestapo at any time. Some, including the legendary Mike Sinclair and William Millar, disagreed. Both men were subsequently to die. Mike Sinclair was shot dead by the Colditz guards while making a desperate attempt to escape from the ‘Park’ and William Millar, it is believed, was re-caught and executed at Mauthausen Concentration Camp.

The deterioration in treatment of prisoners and the shift in responsibility between the Wehrmacht and the Gestapo has been brilliantly captured by Lt.Col. AP Scotland, a man at the very heart of this subject matter, in his book ‘The London Cage’.

“We were able to appreciate the significance of four major steps which paved the way for the final rejection of international decency concerning the treatment of war prisoners on Germany.

1. The first was known as the IGEL order. This was a High Command decree from Keitel that war prisoners should be chained while being moved from one place to another. It stemmed from the deterioration of Germany’s military and internal position as far back as the summer of 1943. Casualties were then mounting, the armies were weakened, the country was swarming not only with prisoners-of-war but slave labourers fro Russia and elsewhere. Escapes from the POW and labour camps were a daily occurrence. As chief of the German security services, Himmler was finding his work increasingly aggravated, a situation which determined him to gain complete control of security matters affecting war prisoners as well as the rest of the nation. Before long his department was nosing its way into the realm of security control of POW camps, and by the beginning of 1944 they were well on the road towards a policy of more ruthless treatment for troublesome prisoners in general and RAF escapees in particular.

2. A few months after the chaining order, Keitel issued another High Command decree called STUFE ROEMISCH III. This declared that all escaping officers except British and American were to be handed over to the security services, i.e. the Gestapo, on recapture, while British and American prisoners were to be detained for individual consideration. Under this secret Stufe order, escapees were not to be officially reported as having been recaptured.

3. Two weeks later came the KUGEL or (”Bullet”) ORDER, taking the Stufe decision a step further. But this time it was a Gestapo affair, for the Kugel operation was announced by the head of the Gestapo in Berlin, General Mueller. And it provided that recaptured officers other than British or Americans should be taken directly to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, there to be killed. It was a diabolical progression. For when the seventy-six men of Stalag Luft III made their sensational breakout, their number included eighteen officers of Continental origin. These were obvious candidates for murder under the terms of operation “Bullet”. And it was, of course, a mere formality to extend the Kugel decree to provide for the disposal of British escapees as well.

4. Thus it came about that Himmler’s second-in-command, General Kaltenbrunner, issued the instructions which became known as the Sagan Order - that go-ahead signal for the murders, following the conference between Hitler and his chiefs on the morning after the escape from Stalag Luft III.

‘The London Cage’ by Lt.Col. AP Scotland

The famous poster notifying POWs of the ‘new rules’.

The prisoners had an agonising wait for liberation and the SBO, Lt.Co. Todd, played a central role in protecting his men until their liberators came for them. His handling of the very delicate and dangerous situation has been commended by many. The departure of the Prominente a few days before the Americans arrived and the worry of their unknown fate could have led to a volatile situation. How he handled the surrender of the Castle is discussed in detail in the Liberation section of this web site.