5:45PM, Oct 30, 2009
The Great Escape is one of the most inspiring wartime movies around.
So it's a shocker to hear the events on which it was based didn't end quite so merrily.
While 76 allied airmen managed to tunnel, plot and plan their way out the Stalag Luft III POW camp deep within Nazi Germany, all but three of those were recaptured.
And while the movie made sure to show the moment 50 of the 76 were brutally murdered as punishment, the story of what happened next is just as dramatic as any fictionalised account.
Interviews with World War II experts, escape survivors and even relatives of those senior Nazi soldiers who ordered the illegal murders are interspersed with dramatic reconstructions of the extraordinary escapes themselves.
The hook however, comes through the story of Britain's response to the mass culling, which was in flagrant breach of the Geneva Convention. The government set up a RAF Special Investigation Branch Team which aimed to hunt down the soldiers responsible and bring justice to the families and friends of those left behind.
Like any good historical documentary, this is proof that the shocking facts hidden deep within the history books are more than a match for even the most elaborate fiction.
Find out when The Great Escape: The Reckoning is next on TV.
