Rollin drastically retrains his penchant for absurdity here! This does allow for some stretches of dullness, including the long-long-LONG goodbye sequence near the end! Fortunately, Marie's anthropophobia saves the day!

Planning the murders, the machinations of these 76 men have got out; they’ve dispersed to all points of the compass. You know, you can think, you’ve got north, south, east and west. The machinations behind the planning of the murders is far too complex to discuss today, but it can be summarised to rather very much an overview. The German authorities did not have a clear picture of the situation until Sunday 26 March; remember the escape took place on Friday 24 when a conference was held at Berchtesgaden. Amongst those present were Hitler, Himmler, Keitel and possibly Ribbentrop and others. Predictably somewhat, Hitler flew into a rage and demanded the death of all the recaptured escapers. Göring, amongst others, counselled against this and after further discussions the number was fixed at 50.Pre the Great Escape, as I said before, there were a couple of other memorable escape attempts from Stalag Luft III. And if you look at these two men here [shows image], these were part of a delousing party escape. And what happened was, as I said, there were two men in these German Police Gazette photograph, which you just saw them, are these two men here. And they participated in the first mass escape attempt from Stalag Luft III in June 1943. A party of 27 men escorted by two German speaking POWs disguised as guards were led out of the compound for delousing. Once outside, Welch and Morison put on the uniforms of the bogus guards. They were captured at a local air field when trying to start an aeroplane – perhaps the inspiration for the James Garner and Donald Pleasance attempt to get away by aeroplane. But the Germans were very fond of taking photographs of recaptured escapers and the means which they went to escape. So, there was some kind of in a sense, no hard feeling almost you could say but this is one the earlier escape attempts. There had been hand to hand fighting between the prisoners and their escorts, some shot prisoners had died before a doctor reached them, others had died on a way to a hospital. Adding to the subterfuge, these new messages were to be sent quite openly for anyone to read them, an open teleprinter message rather than a state secret teleprinter message. This is to give the impression, we’ve got nothing to hide. In Breslau, on the Tuesday 28 March, Max Wielen instructed senior Gestapo officer Dr Wilhelm Scharpwinkel, a person you will hear of again, to form an execution squad and appoint a leader. The man chosen was Gestapo Kriminal Obersekretaer Lux, L-U-X

Several days after they were handed to Max Wielen at Kripo HQ. Eventually being sent to Stalag Luft III on or about 15 May 1944. After Glenda's death, the following statement was issued by the film’s director,Oliver Parker, on behalf of the filmmakers:Albert Pierrepoint and his two assistants, they hung 13 of the men found guilty of murder and there’s the date there, they were hung in twos. So there is 13 in those but he also on the same day there’s 15, there’s a notice that kind of went up in and around the prison or whatever, there’s another two there which are not related to the Great Escape as such. There’s another two there, so in the morning him and his assistants actually executed 15 of the men. Maher, Kevin (6 October 2023). "The Great Escaper review — this should be a runaway hit". The Times . Retrieved 6 October 2023.