http://www.argo.net.au/andre/greatescapeforwebENFIN.htm
Hitler ordered that they be executed.
By the end of March 1944 everything had been ready for escape: civic clothes, documents, money, food. 270 POWs were ready for a breakthrough. On the night from the 24th to the 25th of March the airmen began to come down the shaft. In the night time the guards of watch towers could not see the exit from the tunnel as the search lights were aimed at the camp barracks. However, the camp was also guarded by patrols, which walked the camp around the fence line. A patrol turned out near the exit every 5-6 minutes, that's why only 10 men per hour instead of planned 50-60 could get out of it and crawl up to the saving forest edge when a patrol was out of sight. Thus, a calculation mistake had led to the point when before the dawn only 76 men had managed to escape from the camp. At 4.55 a.m. it became lighter and a guard finally managed to see the exit from the tunnel. Two POWs who had not managed to get far from the camp, were re-captured almost immediately. Most of the escapees failed to find a railway station in the dark and catch night trains. Time was lost and nearly all of them were re-captured not far from Sagan.
Only three airmen managed to find freedom. They were Norwegians Per Bergsland and Jens Mueller and a Dutchman Bram van der Stock previously of RAF. The first two reached Sweden, the latter managed to have reached Gibraltar via Holland, Belgium, France and Spain.
The news about the Great Escape reached Hitler and drove him mad. He immediately demanded to shoot all re-captured escapees. Goering, Keitel and some other representatives of the German High Command tried to calm him down and called for common sense. The persuasion led to the pint where the head of the Third Reich "calmed down" and ordered to shoot and cremate "more than a half of the re-captured". A Directive with a list of 50 airmen subject to execution signed by Himmler reached the Gestapo. 23 airmen were returned to concentration camps.
Amongst the executed there were 22 British, 6 Canadians, 6 Polish, 3 South Africans, 2 New Zealanders, 2 Frenchmen, 1 Lithuanian, 1 Greek, 1 Czech. There were also 4 Australians amongst them:
76 Airmen escaped, only 4 found freedom, and 50 were executed.
