Out of Colditz: My Father the POW and the Nazi who Controlled his Fate - By David Lascelles

Pre-Sale - Books will be despatched in line with publication 24/09/2026

The astonishing true story of the high-profile hostages who survived Colditz - and the man who spared their lives

The nephew of the King. The son of the Viceroy of India. Churchill's nephew.

Thrown together in late 1944 into the notorious prisoner of war camp at Colditz Castle, these men were among the Prominente: a small group of captives who were scions of the British establishment and pawns in the endgame being played by the Nazi leadership.

As German defeat loomed, the head of the POW camps, SS General Gottlob Berger, made a pivotal decision: to disobey direct orders from Hitler to 'kill them all' and grant them safe passage back to the Allied frontline. This Nazi overseer, later convicted of war crimes, held the future of the Prominente in his hands.

George Lascelles, Earl of Harewood, was one of the men who survived. Eighty years later, drawing on archives and family records from Britain and Germany, his son David retraces their extraordinary journey and asks what motivated Berger's fateful choice - remorse? Honour? Or simple self-interest?

David Lascelles is a BAFTA-winning film and television producer. He is the 8th Earl of Harewood, a trustee of Harewood House Trust, the honorary president of Leeds United FC, and a co-founder of Heirs of Slavery, a campaign group that seeks to redress the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. Out of Colditz is his second book.