Building Burma’s Death Railway: Moving Half the Mountain (2014)

Introduction British POWs and their Japanese captors tell the story of what happened on the ‘Death Railway’ built to link Thailand to Burma in 1943, one of the worst atrocities of WWII. Outline The brutal use of British prisoners of war by the Japanese to build a railway linking Thailand to Burma in 1943 was… Read More

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)

Introduction Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Japanese: 戦場のメリークリスマス, Hepburn: Senjō no Merī Kurisumasu, ‘Merry Christmas on the Battlefield’), also known in many European editions as Furyo (俘虜, Japanese for “prisoner of war”), is a 1983 war film co-written and directed by Nagisa Ōshima, co-written by Paul Mayersberg, and produced by Jeremy Thomas. The film is based… Read More

Impossible Escapes: Civil War (2022): S01E03 – Into the Rebel Swamp

Introduction Impossible Escapes: Civil War is a 2022 documentary providing rare first-hand accounts that bring us inside some of the most daring escape stories from the American Civil War. Outline If the POWs of Libby Prison faced “Rat Hell” you could call what Wallace Turnage endured “snake hell”. Turnage was born a slave and by… Read More

Impossible Escapes: Civil War (2022): S01E02 – Rebel Raid in Vermont

Introduction Impossible Escapes: Civil War is a 2022 documentary providing rare first-hand accounts that bring us inside some of the most daring escape stories from the American Civil War. Outline The frontlines of the Civil War lie hundreds of miles from Vermont but Confederate Bennett Young plans to bring the war to the North. He… Read More

Impossible Escapes: Civil War (2022): S01E01 – Breaking Out of Libby Prison

Introduction Impossible Escapes: Civil War is a 2022 documentary providing rare first-hand accounts that bring us inside some of the most daring escape stories from the American Civil War. Outline Colonel Thomas Rose is one of more than 1000 Union officers held in Richmond Virginia’s notorious Libby Prison. It’s an inescapable fortress known for its… Read More

Impossible Escapes: Civil War Documentary Series Overview (2022)

Introduction Impossible Escapes: Civil War is a 2022 documentary providing rare first-hand accounts that bring us inside some of the most daring escape stories from the American Civil War. Outline In this series, told through first-hand accounts, meet an enslaved man who outwits the Confederate navy and steals a steamboat out of Charleston Harbour, an… Read More

Hitler’s Canadians (2007)

Introduction Hitler’s Canadians is a documentary about men thrown together by fate and war. Outline In the spring of 1940 small towns across Canada awakened to the sound of Nazi jackboots. German soldiers, sailors and pilots marched down main streets to hastily constructed camps for some 40,000 German fighters imprisoned as prisoners of war (POWs)… Read More

Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman (2021): S01E05 – Escaping Hitler

Introduction Take a look back at the biggest jailbreaks from some of the most notorious prisons in the world. Outline Allied prisoners used all kinds of forgery and engineering tactics to tunnel out of a German Prisoner of War camp. Almost all were caught, fifty were executed and three made their way to freedom. Great… Read More

In Love and War (1987)

Introduction In Love and War (1987) is a Vietnam war-based thriller/drama television film starring James Woods and Jane Alexander. Refer to In Love and War (1958), (1996), (2001), (2011), and (2018). Outline In Love and War is an account of US Navy Commander James Stockdale’s eight year imprisonment in North Vietnam as a prisoner of… Read More

Colditz (1974): S02E13 – Liberation

Introduction Colditz is a British television drama series co-produced by the BBC and Universal Studios and screened between 1972 and 1974. Outline The most dangerous time for the prisoners begins, as they await the order from the Nazi government that they are to be shot. Fortunately, the Kommandant comes to Colonel Preston with a plea… Read More