Great Escape: The Justice

n the spring of 1943, a group of Air Force officers began work on an ambitious plan to tunnel their way out of a German POW camp called Stalag Luft Three. A year later the tunnel was ready and seventy-six made their escape. All but three were recaptured, but fifty were then systematically executed on orders from German High Command. This much was made internationally famous by Hollywood in the film The Great Escape, which mixes a meticulous depiction of the tunnelling plan with highly fictionalised American characters on motorbikes. But there is a stranger part of the story which starts where the film leaves off, and reveals the real history behind the nation-building legend. The British Government vowed to avenge the murders, and within weeks of the war's end, sent RAF investigators into the ruins of Germany, with orders to track down the killers, and bring them to exemplary justice. Award-winning dramatist Robin Brooks and internationally best-selling novelist Robert Radcliffe tell the extraordinary story of the escape, the murders, and the postwar manhunt in the chaos of divided Germany, through the eyes of one of the senior investigating officers: a straightforward by-the-book detective from Blackpool CID.