Stalag Luft III

Stalag Luft III/the real Great Escape
Sagan, Lower Silesia
Model of the set used to film the movie The Great Escape. It depicts a smaller version of a single compound in Stalag Luft III. The model is now at the museum near where the prison camp was located.
Stalag Luft III/the real Great Escape Sagan, Germany (pre-war borders, 1937)
Coordinates	51°35′55″N 15°18′27″E / 51.5986°N 15.3075°E / 51.5986; 15.3075
Type	Prisoner-of-war camp
Site information
Controlled by	Nazi Germany
Site history
In use	March 1942 – January 1945
Events	The "Great Escape"
Garrison information
Past commanders	Oberst Friedrich Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau
Occupants	Allied air crews

Stalag Luft III (German: Stammlager Luft, or main camp for aircrew) was a Luftwaffe-run prisoner-of-war camp during World War II that housed captured air force servicemen. It was in the German province of Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan (now Żagań in Poland), 160 kilometres (100 miles) southeast of Berlin. The site was selected because it would be difficult to escape by tunnelling through sandy soil.

The camp is best known for two famous prisoner escapes that took place there by tunnelling, which were depicted in the films The Great Escape (1963) and The Wooden Horse (1950), and the books by former prisoners Paul Brickhill and Eric Williams from which these films were adapted.

The camp was very secure. Despite being an officers-only camp, it was referred to as a Stalag camp rather than Oflag (Offizier Lager) as the Luftwaffe had their own nomenclature. Later camp expansions added compounds for non-commissioned officers. Captured Fleet Air Arm (Royal Navy) aircrew were considered to be Air Force by the Luftwaffe and no differentiation was made. At times non-airmen were interned.

The first compound (East Compound) of the camp was completed and opened on 21 March 1942. The first prisoners, or kriegies, as they called themselves (from Kriegsgefangene), to be housed at Stalag Luft III were British and Commonwealth airmen as well as Fleet Air Arm officers, arriving in April 1942. The Centre compound was opened on 11 April 1942, originally for British sergeants but by the end of 1942 replaced by Americans. The North Compound for British airmen, where the "Great Escape" occurred, opened on 29 March 1943. The escape was conceived by Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, and was authorised by the senior British Officer at Stalag Luft III, Herbert Massey. A South Compound for Americans was opened in September 1943 and USAAF prisoners began arriving at the camp in significant numbers the following month and the West Compound was opened in July 1944 for U.S. officers. Each compound consisted of fifteen single story huts. Each 3.0-by-3.7-metre (10-by-12-foot) bunkroom slept fifteen men in five triple deck bunks. Eventually the camp grew to approximately 24 hectares (60 acres) in size and housed about 2,500 Royal Air Force officers, about 7,500 U.S. Army Air Forces, and about 900 officers from other Allied air forces, for a total of 10,949 inmates, including some support officers.