The great escape. The reckoning

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On the 24th of March 1944, 76 allied airmen escaped from Stalag Luft III, a prison camp deep in Nazi Germany . It was the beginning of the most famous escape of the Second World War. Twenty years later, Hollywood called it the Great Escape, mixing fact with the generous helping of fiction. The film showed how all but three of the men were recaptured and 50 of them murdered in a flagrant breach of the rules of war. The true story was more tragic still. The airmen mostly met lonely deaths, singly or in pairs with the bullet on their back. For three grim years the RAF police covered postwar Germany , tracking down the killers one by one. Their crimes received the harshest punishment. Some called the victors justice a "crude revenge". Others reckoning that justice was richly deserved. This is the story beyond the Hollywood legend. The remorseless hunt for the men who murdered the great escapers.