This list of prisoner-of-war escapes includes successful and unsuccessful attempts in chronological order, where possible.
Thirty Years' War In the beginning of the war Hans Ulrich von Schaffgotsch's detachment of 8,000 imperial cavalrymen surprised Jindřich Matyáš Thurn's force in the outskirts of Steinau, taking Thurn and general prisoners. Duwall quickly escaped captivity, organizing the defence of Breslau, where he died from liver failure in April 1634. Former Imperial general Johann Philipp Kratz von Scharffenstein was captured at the Battle of Nördlingen and taken to Vienna, where he managed to escape and fled to Silesia. He was seized again and brought back to Vienna where he was convicted of treason and executed on 26 July 1635. Holy Roman general Federico Savelli was captured by Bernard of Saxe-Weimar in the aftermath of the Second Battle of Rheinfelden (3 March 1638). He managed to escape from his cell after the woman tasked with bringing him food, freed him instead. She was later executed along with seven alleged accomplices.
American Revolutionary War 1781 – Continental Navy officer Joshua Barney escaped from Old Mill Prison in Plymouth, England.
American Civil War November 1863 – Confederate General John Hunt Morgan and six of his officers escaped from the Ohio Penitentiary. February 9 and 10, 1864 – Libby Prison escape. More than 100 Union prisoners broke out of Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. Fifty-nine of them reached freedom, forty-eight were recaptured, and two drowned.
Second Boer War December 12, 1899 – Winston Churchill. A war correspondent at the time, the future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was captured by the Boers while accompanying a British scouting expedition. His successful escape made him a minor national celebrity.
World War I October 1914 – French officer Henri Giraud was captured by the Germans in August and escaped in October. He also escaped in World War II, this time as a general (see next section). July 4, 1915 – Gunther Plüschow escaped from a POW camp at Donington Park, Leicestershire, England, and made his way back to Germany. This was the only successful escape from Britain back to Germany in either world war. (During World War II, Franz von Werra escaped from Canada and rejoined the Luftwaffe, while a few others escaped from American camps, but remained in the United States.) September 2 and 12, 1918 – John Owen Donaldson and another prisoner escaped, but were recaptured. The pair were joined by three others for a second try a few days later. Donaldson reached the Netherlands in October. February 1917 – October 1918 – E. H. Jones, a Welsh lieutenant in the Indian Army, and C. W. Hill, an Australian officer in the Royal Flying Corps, escaped from a Turkish prisoner-of-war camp at Yozgat. Having first pretended to be psychic, the pair spent over a year conning the camp's commandant. Eventually they persuaded their Turkish captors they were insane and, after being moved to a hospital for the mentally ill in the summer of 1918, the two men played their roles as lunatics so successfully they also fooled the doctors and were returned home. February 14, 1918 – French fighter pilot Roland Garros escaped to rejoin the French army after several attempts. July 23/24, 1918 – Holzminden officers' prisoner-of-war camp. Ten of 29 British officers made their way to freedom, making this "the most successful escape from a German prison camp during the First World War". 1918 – US Navy Lieutenant Edouard Izac was taken prisoner aboard the U-boat which sank his ship in May 1918. On the trip to Germany, he learned important information about enemy submarine movements. As a result, he made several attempts to escape, finally succeeding on the night of October 6–7, 1918, with several others. He made his way to Switzerland and then London to pass along the information, though by then the war was nearly over. For his actions, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Polish-Soviet War Merian C. Cooper, better known as a Hollywood screenwriter, director and producer, formed the Kościuszko Squadron, composed of American volunteers fighting on the Polish side. A pilot in the fighter squadron, he was shot down on July 13, 1920, and taken prisoner. He escaped just before the war ended in 1921 (on his second attempt) and made his way to Latvia.
Spanish Civil War On May 22, 1938, 792 or 795 Republican prisoners of war and political prisoners escaped from Fort San Cristóbal, near Pamplona, Spain. Only three managed to reach the French border. The Nationalists recaptured or killed the rest.
World War II
Allied
List of attempts to escape Oflag IV-C (better known as Colditz Castle). Fifty-four prisoners reached freedom. January 5, 1942 – Airey Neave and Anthony Luteyn successfully escaped from Colditz Castle, Germany, Neave being the first British officer to accomplish this feat. April 17, 1942 – French General Henri Giraud, reprising his World War I escape, got out of the high-security Königstein Castle by climbing down a homemade rope. This escape took two years of preparation (versus two months for his World War I escape). He reached Switzerland, then returned to Vichy France, where he would play a major role during the rest of the war. June 1942, September 1944 – Tony Deane-Drummond successfully escaped twice, first from the Italians, then years later from the Germans. He was second-in-command of an airborne raid to destroy an aqueduct in Italy in February 1941. The aqueduct was destroyed, but all the commandoes were captured. Deane-Drummond escaped in December 1941, but was caught. On his second attempt the following June, he managed to reach Switzerland. Returning to England, he later participated in Operation Market Garden in September 1944. With the British force surrounded in the region of Arnhem, he swam across the Rhine River, but was taken prisoner. He escaped the next day and, along with other hiding soldiers, was rescued in Operation Pegasus. July 14, 1942 – Eighty-six Soviet prisoners at Majdanek concentration camp, who had arrived the year prior, attempted a mass escape by rushing a lightly defended section of fence. Two were shot, but the other 84 got away. November 6, 1942 – At least sixty Soviet POWs at Birkenau participated in a mass escape. The escape involved overpowering SS guards and rushing a part of camp still under construction and not yet fenced off. The escape was organized by several people, including Andrey Pogozhev. Several dozen were able to make it out of the camp, though most were recaptured and returned to camp or summarily executed. Pogozhev, along with another POW he traveled with, Viktor Kyznecov, were among those able to escape recapture. Pogozhev survived the war and wrote his memoirs, Escape from Auschwitz. August 30, 1942 – Two Australian and two British soldiers were recaptured and executed after escaping from Changi Prison, Singapore, during the Selarang Barracks incident. October 30, 1942 – Fourteen Australians and five New Zealanders escaped from Camp 57 in Italy through a tunnel, but were all recaptured. November 1942 to March 1944 – Australian flying ace Nicky Barr was shot down in 1942 in North Africa. A prisoner of the Italians, he escaped and was recaptured three times, but finally led a group to freedom on his fourth try. March 29, 1943 – Six British and New Zealand officers escaped through a tunnel from Castello di Vincigliata (Campo 12) near Florence, Italy. Four were recaptured. New Zealand Brigadiers James Hargest and Reginald Miles escaped to Switzerland. April 4, 1943 – United States Air Force pilot Samuel Grashio, United States Air Force Lieutenant William Dyess, United States Marines Austin Shofner and Jack Hawkins, six other Americans and two Filipinos escaped from a work camp in Davao Region, the Philippines. This was the only successful mass escape from a Japanese camp. The escape is detailed in the 2010 book Escape from Davao. September 8, 1943 – As a youth, Australian author Clive Barry, held in northern Italy, slipped the guards of Campo 106, scaled an eight-foot square barbed wire apron under gunfire, endured near starvation on a four hundred mile trek over the Alps, then was shot and wounded on the French border before making it to Switzerland. Twenty-two years later he would win the inaugural Guardian Fiction Prize for Crumb Borne; a darkly comic novella about an absurd prisoner of war escape. October 14, 1943 – Several dozen Soviet prisoners at Sobibor Extermination Camp, all Jewish, led by Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky, who had arrived the month prior, participated in a mass uprising at the camp. Several of the camp staff were killed, and the prisoners fled into the surrounding woods. At least four of Soviet POWs are known to have survived the escape and the ensuing searches, including Pechersky. October 29, 1943 – The Wooden Horse escape. Flight Lieutenant Eric Williams and Lieutenant Richard Michael Codner came up with the idea to construct a vaulting horse and dig a tunnel underneath it. Pilot Officer Oliver Philpot was the escape co-ordinator for the hut in which they lived, and joined their escape plot. Once outside of Stalag Luft III, Philpot split off from the other two, as previously agreed upon. All three managed to reach first Sweden, then Britain. Their exploit was the basis of the 1950 film The Wooden Horse, which was written by Williams. February 29th, 1944 - RAF Medical Officer, Flight Lieutenant Tom Cullen MBE, and Quartermaster Sergeant John Greig RAMC, escaped from the island Fortress XIV of Stalag XX-A, in Torun. With the help of members of the Polish Home Army, they were later smuggled on to a Swedish coal ship, in the port of Gdynia. While the ship was at sea, they gave themselves up to the crew, and were later handed over to the Swedish authorities in Malmo. They returned to the UK on March 19th 1944, thus completing a successful 'Home Run'. When Tom Cullen died in 2019, at the age of 102 years, he was probably the last surviving Allied airman to have successfully escaped from a German POW camp, and returned to the UK. September 1944 – Major Digby Tatham-Warter was wounded by shrapnel and captured during the Battle of Arnhem, but escaped from the hospital with his second-in-command, Captain Tony Frank. With the help of the Dutch Resistance, they joined a large group of escaped soldiers hiding out. On the night of 22–23 October, 138 of them were rescued by Operation Pegasus, including Tatham-Warter. August 1944 - Warrant Officer Gordon Thomson Woodroofe escaped from Ziegenhals, Germany, travelling to Wismar before embarking on a ship bound to Sweden (with the help of a crewman), and from Sweden to Scotland. He is the only known New Zealand airman to successfully escape from a POW camp and return to England. Captain Charles Upham, the third and last person to be awarded the Victoria Cross twice, attempted so many escapes that he was sent to Oflag IV-C, better known as Colditz Castle, in October 1944. April 1945 – British Army Lieutenant Alastair Cram finally succeeded in escaping on his 21st attempt, just one month before the end of the war in Europe.
Axis Of the hundreds of thousands of POWs shipped to the United States, only 2,222 tried to escape. There were about 600 escape attempts from Canada during the war, including at least two mass escapes through tunnels. The Angler breakout was the single largest escape attempt orchestrated by German POWs (28) in North America during the war. The December 23, 1944, breakout of 25 Kriegsmarine and merchant seamen from Papago Park, Arizona, was the second largest. In both instances, all escapees were recaptured or killed.