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Stalag Luft III ((ドイツ語: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), southeast of Berlin. The site was selected because it would be difficult to escape by tunnelling. 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 ドイツ語:''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. 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 bunkroom slept fifteen men in five triple deck bunks. Eventually the camp grew to approximately 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. The prison camp had a number of design features that made escape extremely difficult. The digging of escape tunnels, in particular, was discouraged by several factors, the barracks housing the prisoners were raised approximately off the ground to make it easier for guards to detect tunnelling, the camp had been constructed on land that had a very sandy subsoil. The sand was bright yellow, so it could easily be detected if anyone dumped it on the surface (which consisted of grey dust) or even just had some of it on their clothing. The loose, collapsible sand meant the structural integrity of any tunnel would be very poor. A third defence against tunnelling was the placement of seismograph microphones around the perimeter of the camp, which were expected to detect any sounds of digging. The first escape occurred in October 1943 in the East Compound. Conjuring up a modern Trojan Horse, the ドイツ語:''kriegies'' constructed a gymnastic vaulting horse largely from plywood from Red Cross parcels. The horse was designed to conceal men, tools and containers of soil. Each day the horse was carried out to the same spot near the perimeter fence and while prisoners conducted gymnastic exercises above, a tunnel was dug. At the end of each working day, a wooden board was placed over the tunnel entrance and covered with surface soil. The gymnastics disguised the real purpose of the vaulting horse and kept the sound of the digging from being detected by the microphones. For three months three prisoners, Lieutenant Michael Codner, Flight Lieutenant Eric Williams and Flight Lieutenant Oliver Philpot, in shifts of one or two diggers at a time, dug over of tunnel, using bowls as shovels and metal rods to poke through the surface of the ground to create air holes. No shoring was used except near the entrance. On the evening of 19 October 1943, Codner, Williams and Philpot made their escape.〔AIR40/2645 Part I – Official Camp History – SLIII(E)〕 Williams and Codner were able to reach the port of Stettin where they stowed away on a Danish ship and eventually returned to Britain. Philpot, posing as a Norwegian margarine manufacturer, was able to board a train to Danzig (now Gdansk) and from there stowed away on a Swedish ship headed for Stockholm, from where he was repatriated to Britain. Accounts of this escape were recorded in the book ''Goon in the Block'' (later retitled ''The Wooden Horse'') by Williams, the book ''Stolen Journey'' by Philpot and the 1950 film ''The Wooden Horse''.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm ) 〕 Compared with "The Great Escape" the result was the same – three men got home. The earlier escape involved a small investment in effort and resources, and no loss of life. The later one involved significantly greater quantities of labour and contraband, and resulted in 50 deaths. Fifty years later a handful of survivors of the Great Escape who were interviewed for a television programme agreed that their escape had not been worth it.〔Channel 4 "The Great Escape" 1994〕 Other internees, however, believe that the escapes were justified by the morale boost they provided.〔http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2579916/Failure-The-Great-Escape-worth-human-cost-boosted-morale-Nazi-prison-camps-say-survivors.html〕 〔http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/10693186/The-Great-Escape-failed-but-it-was-worth-it-say-veterans-70-years-on.html〕 ==Camp life== The recommended dietary intake for a normal healthy inactive man is . Luft III issued "Non-working" German civilian rations which allowed per day, with the balance made up from American, Canadian, and British Red Cross parcels and items sent to the POWs by their families.〔〔The German guards were not much better fed than the prisoners and also used the Red Cross parcels to supplement their diet.〕 As was customary at most camps, Red Cross and individual parcels were pooled and distributed to the men equally. The camp also had an official internal bartering system called a ''Foodacco'' – POWs marketed surplus goods for "points" that could be "spent" on other items.〔AIR40/2645 Official Camp History – Part I Para 2(e)〕 The Germans paid captured officers the equivalent of their pay in internal camp currency (lagergeld), which was used to buy what goods were made available by the German administration. Every three months, a weak beer was made available in the canteen for sale. As NCOs did not receive any "pay" it was the usual practice in camps for the officers to provide one-third for their use but at Luft III all ''lagergeld'' was pooled for communal purchases. As British government policy was to deduct camp pay from the prisoners' military pay, the communal pool avoided the practice in other camps whereby American officers contributed to British canteen purchases.〔 〕 Stalag Luft III had the best-organised recreational program of any POW camp in Germany. Each compound had athletic fields and volleyball courts. The prisoners participated in basketball, softball, boxing, touch football, volleyball, table tennis and fencing, with leagues organised for most. A pool used to store water for firefighting, was occasionally available for swimming.〔 A substantial library with schooling facilities was available, where many POWs earned degrees such as languages, engineering or law. The exams were supplied by the Red Cross and supervised by academics such as a Master of King's College who was a POW in Luft III. The prisoners also built a theatre and put on high-quality bi-weekly performances featuring all the current West End shows.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url = http://www.pegasusarchive.org/pow/jimmy_james.htm )〕 The prisoners used the camp amplifier to broadcast a news and music radio station they named ''Station KRGY'', short for ''Kriegsgefangener'' (POWs) and also published two newspapers, the ''Circuit'' and the ''Kriegie Times'', which were issued four times a week.〔 To prevent Germans from infiltrating the prisoner population, newcomers to the camp had to be vouched for by two POWs who knew the prisoner by sight. Anyone who failed this requirement was severely interrogated and assigned a rota of POWs who had to escort him at all times until he was deemed to be genuine. Several infiltrators were discovered by this method and none are known to have escaped detection in Luft III. The German guards were referred to as "Goons" and, unaware of the western connotation, willingly accepted the nickname after being told it stood for "German Officer Or Non-Com".〔https://books.google.com/books?id=_L_0BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA77〕 German guards were followed everywhere they went by prisoners, who used an elaborate system of signals to warn others of their location. The guards' movements were then carefully recorded in a logbook kept by a rota of officers. Unable to stop what the prisoners called the "Duty Pilot" system, the Germans allowed it to continue and on one occasion the book was used by Kommandant von Lindeiner to bring charges against two guards who had slunk away from duty several hours early. The camp's 800 Luftwaffe guards were either too old for combat duty or young men convalescing after long tours of duty or from wounds. Because the guards were Luftwaffe personnel, the prisoners were accorded far better treatment than that granted to other POWs in Germany.〔 Deputy Commandant Major Gustav Simoleit, a professor of history, geography and ethnology before the war, spoke several languages, including English, Russian, Polish and Czech. Transferred to Sagan in early 1943, he proved sympathetic to allied airmen. Ignoring the ban against extending military courtesies to POWs, he provided full military honours for Luft III POW funerals, including one for a Jewish airman. The camp had many amenities brought by Swedish attorney Henry Söderberg,〔(www.comstation.com )〕 who was the YMCA representative to the area, and frequently brought to its camps not only sports equipment, and religious items supporting the work of chaplains, but also the wherewithal for each camp's band and orchestra, and well-equipped library.〔(www.amazon.com )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Stalag Luft III」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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