Description
Book SynopsisDramatic, highly readable, and fresh, The Great Desert Escape brings to light an illuminating and little-known account of how twenty-five determined German U-Boat crewmen tunneled from American POW camp, crossed the unforgiving Arizona desert, and attempted to return battle. It was the only organized, large-scale domestic escape by foreign prisoners in U.S. history.Painstakingly wrung from contemporary newspaper articles, interviews and first-person accounts from escapees and the law enforcement officers who pursued them, The Great Desert Escape brings history alive.From 1942 to 1946, the United States swarmed with captured enemy troops. Nearly 400,000 German soldiers and officers were held in more than 500 POW camps throughout the country.One such camp was the U.S. Army's prisoner of war camp at Papago Park just outside of Phoenix, Arizona, where on December 23, 1944 25 German Kreigsmariners tunneled free, determined to reach Mexico and find sympathizers who would get the back to th
