US History II - blog on Canadian involement in WWII / the Angler POW escape

Angler Camp

Map of Canada - Lake Superior and Medicine Hat

Angler Pow Camp

Lake Superior

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angler_POW_escape
• http://www.lynximages.com/POW.htm
• http://www.sedai.ca/images/history/3_1.jpg -  picture of the Angler POW camp

FACTS

• during World War II, 35,046 POW's  and Japanese-Americans were kept in Canadian POW camps. 
• In April, 1941, inmates at the Angler POW camp in Ontario, Canada planned and executed the largest escape plan from a Canadian POW camp during World War Two. 
• Lake Superior- 3 main POW camps in the area.
• roughly 80 German POW's planned on escaping, but only 28 eight actually managed to get out - 5 were shot soon after, 2 more were returned to the camp after being found leaving on a train, and the rest were eventually recaptured.
• Horst Liebeck and Karl Heinz-Grund were the only truly successful escaped prisoners; Liebeck and Grund managed to get as far west as Alberta, using trains as a form of transportation. At one point, they were on a train that was stopped 3 times by militia, and still they didn't get caught. They even had to "repose" in a car full of ice for a while, before they sensibly left, avoiding freezing to death. But finally they were captured on the side of a highway after a suspicious guard in Medicine Hat, Alberta alerted the authorities, and they were sent back to the camp for 28 days in solitary confinement. However, the thing that is probably most surprising is the fact that after they were captured, the two German men were treated as Celebrities, and some local Canadians even asked for their autographs! 

PLANNING THE ESCAPE

• For months, 559 German POW's had been planning their escape from the Angler POW camp, and the date for the planned escape was April 20th. 
• makeshift compasses, clothing, maps, and candles had been fashioned out of materials they could find in their cells;    

- compasses - magnetized needles and  razors

- clothing - redesigned prison clothes (disguised to look like civilian clothes)

- maps - drawn and copied 

- candles - tin cans and kitchen fat (the wicks made of underwear drawstrings

They even managed to blackmail a guard into giving them a radio, which they hid inside a model of the German Battleship, Bismarck

• The German POW's dug a tunnel 45 meters long, which led outside the walls of the camp. This tunnel had all sorts of tributary tunnels leading from barrack to barrack so that other prisoners could cover (during role call) for people who were working on the tunnel or other things.
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