Non-Fiction Review: Prisoners of the Castle by Ben Macintyre

Since reading The Spy and the Traitor, I have kept an eye open—wide open—for any new releases by Ben Macintyre. And this year it caught something. Bringing history to life with precise, energetic prose, Prisoners of the Castle (2022) is yet more wonderfully well-written history, this time on upper-class prison life to the Nazi side of the fence.

In a nutshell, Prisoners of the Castle is the story of the prisoners kept by the Germans in Colditz castle throughout WWII. Where Nazi work camps and concentration camps reverberate through history with the all the nastiness and evil humanity can dream of, Colditz was comparatively a place of luxury. While technically a place for persons deemed unfriendly to the Nazi cause, it was predominantly a home for officers, aristocrats, and prisoners of value, a place where some modicum of normality was present—theater productions, care packages from home, alcohol, sport, and other niceties that the prisoners of Auschwitz and other such places could only dream of. Being several hundred years old, the castle was not exactly a modern detention center. The potential for escape was everywhere, something which dozens and dozens of people attempted, some with success.

Using later published journals, diaries, and memoirs, as well as documented history (German and otherwise), Macintyre brings to the imagination's eye the lives of many prisoners of Colditz. He writes of daily life, their mental state, their behaviors, and their ingenious ways of escaping and staying abreast of the outside world. Covering the four+ years of the war, there is also an arc to the book. From the innocent early days when relations between the Germans and prisoners was of a certain level of respect to the later years when Hitler's slow defeat lead to oppressive conditions in the castle prison, Macintyre gives readers a concise look at how the tides of war slowly shifted to affect those locked away.

As with any work of history, the reader must ask: How dry is it? Not in the least. By conveying a lot with a little, Macintyre's style never gets too deep nor does it slow to focus on one thing too long. Containing multiple stories within the overarching story of the castle cum prison, readers come to know some prisoners for a short time before something happens (escape, transfer, death...), while others appear and reappear, their life stories more fleshed out and real.

In the end, Prisoners of the Castle is thankfully more engaging than its title would make it out to be. (My assumption is that Macintyre and his publisher agreed that Macintyre's name, at this stage in his career, was enough.) For those looking for exhausting history, this is not it. It's a taste of dozens of human lives and how they dealt with imprisonment in Nazi Germany, with a relative focus on the ingenious ways they attempted, sometimes successfully, to escape the old castle. And in every case Macintyre provides closure. For each person introduced, the reader learns their fate, for better and worse, bringing satisfaction to the whole.