This documentary spends some time talking about what really happened, as it pertains to how things were different in the movie, but I like that it spends more time telling more of the story than the movie was able to, even in its lengthy running time. When the news of the mass escape reaches Hitler, the documentary explains, he flew into a rage and ordered that the men be killed, and it was Himmler, the head of the Gestapo, that chose the number 50 for how many should be shot. Having seen Downfall recently, it's even easier to picture Hitler flying into an uncontrollable rage and ordering people to be shot. MAN that guy was nuts.
So the actual escape happened in freezing temperatures in the middle of winter, one of those things that was changed for the film (I have a theory that it was changed because of location concerns, which are explained in one of the other outstanding featurettes on the Great Escape bonus disc, and in an interview one of the escapees expresses amazement that they weren't caught sooner, since it was so cold outside and so hot inside their tunnel that there was a column of steam rising out of it into the night. This same interviewee goes on to give an account of his escape that is heartbreaking, to say the least.
The story of the 50 men being shot brings up some major questions about how to carry out justice. As one of the German guards who did some of the shooting explains, "I knew what I was told to do was wrong. I said so, and I was told to get on with it. If I had refused, someone else would have done it. If we had all refused, we would all have been shot."
How do you bring justice to a situation like that? When the ultimate fates of the German officers who did the shooting are explained it's hard not to think that they all got what they deserved, but whatever your feeling as to who should have been punished for their crimes, I like that this documentary shows what it may very well have been like for those German soldiers as individuals. It puts a face on the stories of the people on the other side who were following orders and allows you to come to your own conclusion.
James Cochran was arrested right on the Swiss border, within sight of freedom. The sister of one of the men who was shot explains that her brother was on the run for seven days and she wants to know what his life was like during that week, but never will. At the end of the documentary, one of the surviving escapees says that he doesn't think the whole thing was worth it, given how it all panned out, and while the escape was a tremendous, heroic effort, I think he was right, but not because of any fault of the men. If they had just sat in the prison, they would have been disobeying orders to consistently try to escape if captured, but it's probably most likely that they would all have lived to see the end of the war and their families again. Sadly, we'll never know.