Qualla: Stalag Luft III

Stalag Luft III: Introduction

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit vorwerk, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Germans chose the sand on purpose. When the Luftwaffe opened Stalag Luft III in March 1942 near Sagan (now Żagań, Poland), about 160 km southeast of Berlin, the site was picked because the subsoil was a loose, bright yellow sand that collapsed on anyone who tried to dig through it - and, worse for a tunneller, showed up like a stain against the grey topsoil above. Barracks were raised on stilts so guards could see underneath. Seismographs were buried around the wire. Over the next three years, roughly 10,900 Allied air-force officers passed through the camp's 24 hectares, and a good number of them spent their imprisonment doing precisely the thing the sand was supposed to make impossible.

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Image: vorwerk | CC BY-SA 3.0

Stalag Luft III: The Wooden Horse

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit This image was improved or created by the Wikigraphists of the Graphic Lab (fr). You can propose images to clean up, improve, create or translate as well., CC BY-SA 3.0. Their first success came out in the open. Prisoners built a vaulting horse, carried it out into the compound each day and gymnasted over it while, inside its hollow body, men dug straight down. Flight Lieutenant Gordon "Moose" Miller was one of those who lifted it in and out unde...

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Image: This image was improved or created by the Wikigraphists of the Graphic Lab (fr). You can propose images to clean up, improve, create or translate as well. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Stalag Luft III: Tom, Dick and Harry

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CSvBibra, Public domain. The bigger project was already underway. Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, known throughout the camp only as "Big X," organised three tunnels at once on the theory that the Germans would find one, congratulate themselves and stop looking. Harry ran 336 feet at a depth of about nine ...

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Image: CSvBibra | Public domain

Stalag Luft III: The Night of 24 March 1944

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jacques Lahitte, CC BY 3.0. Two hundred men were prepared to go, in forged papers and hand-tailored civilian clothes. Seventy-six got out before a guard spotted the seventy-seventh man emerging and the alarm went up. Three of them made it: the Norwegian pilots Per Bergsland and Jens Müller reached Sweden, a...

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Image: Jacques Lahitte | CC BY 3.0

Stalag Luft III: The Fifty

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Qasinka, CC0. Hitler wanted every recaptured man shot. Told that a massacre on that scale would invite reprisals against German aircrew held by the Allies, he settled on "more than half" and passed the order to Heinrich Himmler, who passed the selection to General Arthur Nebe. Fifty officers w...

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Image: Qasinka | CC0

Stalag Luft III: What Stands There Now

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CSvBibra, Public domain. The camp commandant, Friedrich Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau, had run the place by the Geneva Convention and had the respect of his senior prisoners; he was removed and threatened with court martial. A later commandant, Oberst Werner Braune, was appalled enough by the killings to ...

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Image: CSvBibra | Public domain