How did German prisoners of war successfully escape from prison during World War II?

During World War II, about 400,000 German prisoners of war were brought to the United States and put into various prison camps. There were more than 2000 prison breaks in the prison camp. But it's nothing compared to the mass prison break in Arizona. Because the prisoners of war were so bored, the idea of playing prison break came into being, and this well-planned, bold and dramatic prison break came into being.

Indian reservation

During the whole World War II, about 400,000 German prisoners of war were brought to the United States and put into various prison camps. The U.S. 84th Security Force is located on an Indian reservation six miles east of Phoenix, Arizona, which is one of more than 500 prisons in the United States holding German prisoners.

1944 65438+ 10, the first batch of German troops arrived in the Indian reservation. They were placed in six concentration camps in crude prison camps. More than 300 captains and crew members of the German navy and merchant ships were detained here.

According to official records, during World War II, there were more than 2,000 prison breaks in prison camps. There are various ways to escape from prison: some climb the fence and run out, some cut barbed wire or dig tunnels under it, some hide in trucks or jeeps and carry them out, some wear prison guards' uniforms and walk out of the prison camp directly, and some use prison working hours to escape. However, none of them can be compared with the bold and dramatic large-scale prison break in the concentration camp in the Arizona Indian reservation 1A area. This triggered the largest hunting activity in Arizona's history, and alarmed local law enforcement agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and even Indian scouts.

This prison break, which happened on the eve of Christmas Eve in 1944, ended in a farce, during which no shooting incident occurred, no one was injured and no one was severely punished.

According to John? Hammond? Moore's record of this escape, Faust's Ball Tunnel, is that the authorities in the prison camp got into trouble because they concentrated the most uncooperative prisoners in the first prison camp. These are troublemakers, ex-prisoners and prisoners with various problems.

Only the military police commander Cecil? Colonel Bashir found a problem in this arrangement. Bashir pointed out that there was a blind spot in the 1A prison camp, and the guard tower could not monitor it. "This group of Germans is a group of high-quality people, very smart. The cleverest of them should not be put in the first concentration camp. I knew they would find this blind spot. 「

Tired of digging tunnels

1A prisoners of war have nothing to do all day. Only about a quarter of the staff are employed to do 80 cents a day, such as picking up cotton balls in the prison cafeteria. The Geneva Convention exempts officers and noncommissioned officers from working in prisons, allows them to sleep late and gives them time to think about how to get out of the fence.

Captain Wolfgang Clarus, who was captured while commanding artillery units on the coast of North Africa, remembers: "We stared at the fence for hours, trying to imagine everything we could do, and finally realized that there were only three possibilities: crossing it, flying over it, or digging a tunnel under it. 」

On the surface, it seems that the Germans have finally adapted to the life of prisoners of war. This is especially true in the concentration camp in 1A area, where the most difficult Nazi submarine captain and crew are held. The mental state of the prisoners of war is very good. They spent a lot of time building a beautiful big flower bed. In fact, while Americans were still happy about the transformation of the Germans at the end of 1944, the prisoners of war were already planning to escape through the tunnel.

The tunnel excavation operation started on a certain day in September 1944, and was commanded by a team including four submarine captains. The tunnel entrance is just in the blind area between the two nearest warning towers warned by Bashir, only 3.5 feet (about 1 m) away from a bathhouse, which is the closest building to the external wall. The tunnel digger dug an entrance and placed a large coal box as a cover. They pretend to go to the bathhouse to take a bath or wash clothes, and then go down to the tunnel from the vertical passage 1.8 meters deep. In the evening, the three of them went down to dig in three rounds, each lasting 90 minutes. One person digs with a coal shovel and a pickaxe, the second puts the soil into a bucket and gives it to him, and the third is responsible for pulling the soil and keeping watch. Another fourth group is responsible for scattering the dug soil everywhere the next day. They take the soil to the bathroom and wash it away, or hide it in the attic, or put it in a pocket with holes and expose it in the newly built flower bed.

In order to deal with the excavated soil, Captain Fritz Guggenberg came up with an idea: "Shouldn't there be a sports ground in our concentration camp? I thought they would definitely encourage us to exercise. 」

To build a volleyball court, the ground of the court needs to be flat just because it is uneven. They get rakes from the guards and level the ground several times a day. The concentration camps have become neat, and Americans attribute these behaviors to typical German efficiency. The prisoners of war scattered the soil dug out of the tunnel on the court. The guard thought it was some kind of old soil, but he didn't expect it to be new soil from underground.

The tunnel advances about 0.9 meters every day. 1944165438+1At the end of October, an inspection team came here to inspect, and one of the colonels declared that there was no need to worry that the prisoners would dig and escape. He said the soil here is as hard as stone. At that time, he was standing near the hidden tunnel entrance, and the prisoners laughed when they heard what he said.

The tunnel diggers worked hard every night until the beginning of 65438+February. They are going to dig two fences and a patrol road around the prison camp, and there is a lamp post in the bush on the other side of the road. Through trigonometric calculation on paper, they calculated that the tunnel length from the bathhouse to the lamppost needs to reach 54 meters. Finally, 15 meter is the most difficult to dig, because the tunnel is dug to a depth of 4.2 meters, under the drainage ditch and next to the subgrade. The digger drew a wire from the socket in the bathhouse and connected it to the light bulb. In some places, the insulation layer of wires is aged and broken, and the tunnel diameter is less than 1 m. Once they accidentally touch the leakage place, they will be electrocuted to death.

By February 20, 65438, the tunnel was exactly 54 meters long. At the vertical exit at the other end, they put a stick with a rag tied at the end out of the ground. This exposed sign is near the lamppost. The prisoners of war hid the exit in two shallow wooden boxes, which were filled with soil and grass.

Other preparatory work

As early as February, Captain Quart-Fassler escaped from the prison camp in a truck full of plywood. Before he was arrested, he had crossed the border and entered Mexico for about 50 kilometers. That experience made him realize that it is very important to store enough food.

German prisoners of war wrapped the bread crumbs tightly with their own waxed paper left in the breakfast box. Captain Klaus said that mixing bread crumbs with milk or water "may become a boring soft dough, but it is also very nutritious and easier to carry."

The escaped prisoner still needs some documents. American photographers took snapshots of prisoners of war so that they could send them home to Germany to prove how well the United States treated prisoners of war. These photos are also very suitable for forging passports and other documents. These forged documents are stamped with official seals, so that they can go to California or the Gulf of Mexico as foreign sailors.

By copying articles of Nazi party members and selling them to guards, prisoners obtained circulating American currency. They made sand molds, melted toothpaste tubes and made German Iron Cross, Eagle Medal and other badges. Then they put polish on black leather shoes and wear them artificially like worn real leather shoes.

Three Germans are planning another novel plan. Captain William Gunter, Wolfgang Crass and Captain Friedrich UZollino will not walk more than 200 kilometers to the Mexican border. After looking at the map of Arizona, they found that they only need to walk about 50 kilometers to the west, and they can meet a river, the Sheila River, which just flows southwest into the Colorado River near the border. They need a boat to go down the river.

The trio-named "Three Crazy Helmsmen" by their prisoner-of-war partners-began to build a gondola big enough to accommodate only the three of them and their equipment. They made a wooden frame from a pile of waste wood. The canvas and tar needed for the hull were obtained from the prison camp-they lied that the roof of the prison camp needed to be repaired, and the prisoners were very happy to do the work. Three helmsmen are responsible for the design and construction, so that the canvas can be easily divided into small pieces less than 50 cm each-the maximum width allowed to pass through the tunnel smoothly. Most of their work is in public: the guards think it's just another job to kill time.

Prison break successful

On Saturday, February 23rd, a fiery party was held in the concentration camp adjacent to1944 1B area. The soldiers drank banned gin, raised a German flag and sang Nazi marches. They seem to be celebrating Hitler's lingering attack in Belgium: the Battle of Ardennes.

Behind these entertainments, escape begins in the bathhouse. Fugitives are divided into 10 groups, with two or three people in each group. Bags filled with spare clothes, parcels containing bread crumbs and other foods, medical supplies, maps, fake documents and cigarettes should also be taken out together. Shortly before 9 pm, the first group of people got down from the ladder at the entrance and began to cross the tunnel, pushing their packages in front with their elbows, chests and knees.

The 54-meter journey took about 40 minutes. Guggenberg climbed the ladder at the exit and carefully lifted the lid. It's raining lightly outside. He and his partner walked into a bush and unfortunately fell into a waist-deep cold puddle. By 2: 30 in the morning, all 25 prisoners-12 officers and 13 crew members climbed out of the tunnel and began to flee outside the Indian reservation. The partners behind closed both ends of the tunnel in time.

Their overall plan is to go south and only move after dusk, avoiding trains and cars. Many people have brought the names and addresses of their compatriots or supporters in Mexico, and they are likely to help them return to Germany, although everyone knows that their chances of really returning to their motherland are slim. But at least now, in the hours before Christmas, they are free, get rid of prison life and embark on an adventure. That night, a group of people found a small dry place and rested in a comfortable haystack. They celebrated Christmas Eve with baked bread crumbs and milk, and listened to nearby families singing Christmas carols. Another group stumbled upon an abandoned hut and temporarily lived in it: one of them was holding a harmonica and quietly playing Silent Night.

Chasing and fleeing

On June 23, 2004, German and Italian soldiers commemorated 73 World War II prisoners buried in the United States.

The American authorities found that the accident happened at 4 o'clock on Sunday when they counted the number of people. German officers who stayed in 1A demanded that an American officer should replace a sergeant for the inventory, which greatly delayed the inventory time.

Colonel Bashir confirmed that it was 7 am when a large group of prisoners escaped. He called the FBI and reported the name and characteristics of the escaped prisoner. While he was still on the phone, another phone rang. It turned out that the sheriff of Phoenix reported that he had detained an escaped prisoner of war. Herbert Fuchs, a 22-year-old German submarine crew member, soon got tired of rain, cold and hunger and hitchhiked to the sheriff's office. Soon after, a woman in Tenby called and said that two fugitives knocked on her door and turned themselves in. Then, a man in Tenby also reported that two prisoners of war who were hungry and cold surrendered.

On the eve of Christmas Eve, Tenby Railway Station also called and said that another fugitive had also been arrested. The fugitive named Helmut Guge, a Swiss, was recruited into the German navy. Under the pressure of Americans, Guge revealed the existence of the tunnel.

Six fugitives have been arrested, and 19 people are still at large. The authorities launched what was called "the largest hunt in Arizona's history". Soldiers, FBI agents, sheriff, police, border patrol and customs officers all joined in the search for this 19 German. Farmers and Indian scouts were also attracted by the $25 reward for catching a fugitive, and they searched around with newspaper clippings with photos of the suspect.

Although the FBI director Edgar? Hoover repeatedly warned the public that these German fugitives could be dangerous. In fact, there is no record of any escaped prisoners of war destroying or attacking American citizens. The only crime is stealing: stealing a car or stealing clothes to escape.

Arizona residents quickly ignored the danger brought by the escape, but they were more concerned about the materials found on the arrested fugitives, including rationed or very difficult-to-obtain items: boxes of cigarettes, bags of chocolates, coffee, sugar, and even ten pounds of fat pork. Residents of Phoenix wrote angrily to Arizona: "It doesn't matter that we taxpayers can't eat bacon for weeks. But when we came home after trying to meet the wartime material demand, we saw in the newspaper that the prisoners of war were experiencing such extravagant items, as if they had escaped the disaster brought by the war. 」

After Christmas, most prisoners in 19 go south at night.

1945 65438+ 10/month 1, two escaped officers thought they could not go far. Captain Klaus and his former second lieutenant Helmut Deresjo have walked 16 km overnight. But now Deresjo's feet are swollen and he can only limp with a stick as a crutch. In the morning, they knocked on the door of an isolated low-rise bungalow. A 12-year-old boy led two younger children to open the door. Klaus explained the identity of himself and Drescher, and said that he would surrender to the local police. The boy said that his parents were not at home, but they would come back soon.

The two Germans made coffee, shared their leftover chocolate with the children, and then told the children the story of their submarine. At about 1 1 in the morning, their parents saw such a happy scene when they came back. Father took out a newspaper with a picture of the escaped prisoner from his pocket, picked up a pencil, looked at Klaus and Deresjo, and drew a big cross on their picture.

On the same day, an Indian found two other prisoners sleeping less than 50 kilometers from the Mexican border.

Four days later, the Indians chasing the bounty captured two other fugitives in the same area, and the army patrol from the Florence prison camp also captured three others.

On October 6th, 65438/KLOC-0, the first two captains who climbed out of the tunnel-Quart-Fassler and Guggenberg-were awakened by a group of Indian scouts. "Captain Quetta Fassler," one of them asked, "did you sleep well? Quié Fassler was surprised to find that this was the Indian who caught him in Mexico 1 1 months ago. Plus the other two Germans captured two days later, 65438+10.8, only six prisoners of war-two three-person teams-have not been captured yet.

One group is the "three crazy helmsmen"-Clarus, Ghent and Zollino. On the first day of their freedom, they used the canvas on the boat to shelter from the rain. But when they arrived at the Sheila River four days later and began to assemble their boat, they found that their canvas had shrunk in the rain. When they shortened the wooden poles to fit the shrinking canvas, they found that the Silla River, which looked so wide and charming on their map, contained more sediments than water. When they put the transmission into the water, the ship immediately sank into the mud. "We should know that the Sheila River is not a river in a sense," Clarus later said. "Of course, people who live in Arizona know this. 」

In the next two nights, they successfully floated in the river for a short distance. Finally, the "trio" gave up the plan that once made them full of confidence and let them prepare in the prison camp for several weeks. They destroyed the scaffolding and began to walk.

About a week later, one of them was washing underwear by the irrigation canal and was found by the shepherd.

For the next two weeks, the last three fugitives were still missing. This group includes the captain Juergen Wartenberg and his two crew members, Walter Kozul and John Kramer. Wattenberg is an old officer in a prison camp. He submitted many complaints to the authorities about food, entertainment and other things in the camp, which won everyone's respect and soon became the leader of this group of troublemakers. The commander of the Indian reservation called him "the number one Nazi in this concentration camp."

After escaping, wattenberg didn't go south immediately. The three of them have been hiding in a shallow hole on a slope in the north of the prison camp, and these mountains can be seen almost on Indian reservations. One night, Kozul and Kramer even ventured to Phoenix, played bowling once and drank a lot of beer.

Kramer also performed the weirdest prank in the whole prison break. Every few days, he went to meet prisoners on Indian reservations working abroad. He switched places with a friend who slept in the cave at night, and he returned to the concentration camp with the exiled prisoners. He collected information and food in the prison camp. Then he either managed to leave the camp with the prisoners who had emigrated, or asked others to send information and food and stay in the camp himself.

On June 23, 65438, a month after they fled, a surprise inspection exposed Kramer's presence in the camp. The next night, Kozul left the cave where he lived. He found an abandoned car and his friends used it to hide food for them. There was no food, only three American soldiers aimed rifles at his head.

Today, only Wartenberg is still at large.

1On October 27th, Wartenberg ate the last piece of food, shaved his face, put on a clean shirt and walked to Phoenix. He ate a meal in the restaurant with the last 75 cents in his pocket, and then slept in a chair in the hotel lobby for a while. He walked into the street at night and asked a street cleaner for directions. The cleaner thought the accent was suspicious and informed the police. At 9 o'clock in the morning, Wartenberg was also sent back to the Indian reservation.

No one was severely punished for this major prison break. Although there are loopholes in security, no American officers or guards have been prosecuted in military courts.

Many years later, Clarus said of the tunnel: "conceive, dig, escape, come back, tell our adventures, and learn what happened to others ... why?" It lasted for more than a year and became our greatest entertainment and pastime. When we were defeated in Germany and worried about our parents and family, it kept us in a good mood. 」