At 6:30 a.m. on 27 January 1945, Col. Friedrich von Lindeiner, the court martialed and exiled “gentleman” ex-Commandant of Stalag Luft III, sat in the waiting room of the Görlitz train station hoping to return to Sagan, Germany, to fight the approaching Russians. The distance from Görlitz to Sagan was 28.5 miles. He arrived fifteen hours later as 10,000 Allied prisoners of war were evacuating his former camp. Like them, he would soon view the war from both inside and outside the barbed wire. Later, as a prisoner of war, he was held by the British for two years before returning to a devastated and divided Germany. 

The advent of the Great Escape, the tunneling out of 76 Allied prisoners, and the later murder of 50, had sealed von Lindeiner’s fate. Shamed by the Nazi hierarchy, von Lindeiner remained loyal, still fighting for the Fatherland, which as he states, did not equate to fighting for Hitler’s causes. He recognized early on the peril to Germany’s future and its eventual demise. And therein lay his dilemma, fighting the Russians who entered Sagan, yet unable to align himself with Adolf Hitler.

Far beyond the Great Escape, von Lindeiner witnessed firsthand the management of the war. Steeped in the chivalric code of conduct, he became a tragic figure misplaced in the mad Hitlerian dream. His story fosters a further understanding of the ravages of war and the lives left broken in its wake. Thoughtfully chronicled, his memoirs leave those who read them to determine his place in history. Analyzing his writings, one can attempt to characterize von Lindeiner as the enemy, a German patriot, anachronistic commandant, enigma, or honorable man. Von Lindeiner claimed he wanted only to explain “his side” of the war for posterity. Seventy years after his tenure as commandant, he finally has his say. =