Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 September 24

= September 24 =

Well of Consort Zhen
How does any human except the most petite person be thrown into the well of Consort Zhen at the Forbidden City? Is this a common well design in Qing Dynasty China? How would one draw water from it? It seem to only to fit a standard size bucket.
 * What the photo shows is the stone "lock" over the borehole. See:  Presumably, that was placed there so that nobdy else could be thrown into the well, yet allows access to water.  --2606:A000:1126:28D:CD60:8A12:D70:9EBA (talk) 04:33, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

The Great Escape: How did they catch the escapers?
During the mass escape of 76 Allied soldiers from the German prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III, how did the Germans manage to catch the prisoners before executing 50 of them while 23 were returned to the camp and only 3 escaped successfully? 86.128.175.117 (talk) 20:36, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Have you read Stalag Luft III? 107.15.157.44 (talk) 23:03, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * A lengthy preview is viewable of The Great Escape: Tunnel to Freedom, which says that the escape triggered a Grossfahndung or state of national emergency:
 * "The manhunt would now involve tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of local and national police, Gestapo, soldiers, civilians, Hitler Youth and Home Guards among others. Which meant that the escape had achieved its primary goal - to impede the Nazi war effort by tying up as many Germans as possible looking for escaped prisoners" (p. 183).
 * A number of the escapees tried to catch trains, so it was an easy matter to search them for anyone who couldn't speak German. Others went on foot where they were conspicuous to local farmers. After years of bombing, there was little sympathy for Allied POWs amongst the local population. 176.227.136.190 (talk) 07:47, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

According to the 1963 film The Great Escape, Dennis Cavendish hitched a ride in a truck but was delivered to the authorities. And while boarding a bus, Roger Bartlett and Andrew MacDonald were recaptured when a Gestapo officer spoke English to them and MacDonald accidentally replied in that language (according to Macdonald, it was an old gag). As for the others (except for Robert Hendley, Colin Blythe and Virgil Hilts), it was never explained how they were captured. Also according to the documentary Great Escape: The Untold Story, Roger Bushell and Bernard Scheidhauer had reached Saarbrücken and while at a Gestapo checkpoint their forged passes got them through but it went wrong when the policeman said "Good luck" in English and Scheidhauer answered in that language. According to the narrator, it was an old trick and it cost them their freedom. Dennis Cochran nearly made it all the way to neutral Switzerland but was arrested right on the Swiss frontier. It was certain that it was his forged pass that gave him away since the Germans had changed the layout of all official passses to catch the escapers. As for the others, I don't know. 81.101.108.252 (talk) 17:25, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * But see The Great Escape (film). Alansplodge (talk) 17:10, 26 September 2020 (UTC)