World War II Database

The German prisoner of war camp Oflag IV-C, located at the Colditz Castle in Germany, was supposed to be inescapable. Many prisoners, French, Belgian, British, Canadian, Dutch, Polish, and American, attempted to escape, and to the Germans' dismay, many succeeded. In Colditz: Oflag IV-C, author Michael McNally chronicled the escape attempts, successful and otherwise.

While McNally's introduction containing castle's history, construction, and layout was helpful, his telling of the attempts was undoubtedly the main attraction. Concise due to size limitations, his narratives were nevertheless exciting. The 1941 attempt by French Lieutenant E. Boulé was among the memorable ones, during which he, disguised as a young German woman, nearly got away if it was not for a helpful German guard who tried to returned a watch that "she" had accidentally dropped. McNally's narrations were coupled, in a typical Osprey fashion, with many period and modern photographs, as well as with artwork by Peter Dennis, all of which provided good visuals to the text.

Although small in size, I found Colditz: Oflag IV-C to be informative (it had contributed to about 40 entries in the WW2DB Timeline) while also being rather entertaining.