There are some fascinating but brief details of Canadian and American escapes on Wikipedia:
In total there were more than 600 individual escape attempts from Canadian internment camps, including at least two mass escapes using tunnels. Many German prisoners were motivated by von Werra’s earlier success.
On the night of April 18, 1941 28 German prisoners of war escaped through a 150 foot long tunnel from Angler, Ontario. Originally over 80 Germans planned to escape but Canadian guards discovered the breakout in progress.
Most escapes attempted flee to the then neutral United States, though prisoners Karl Heinz-Grund and Horst Liebeck made it as far as Medicine Hat, Alberta before being apprehended by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The two men planned to travel to Vancouver, British Columbia and make it out of Canada courtesy of the Japanese Merchant Marine.
Two of the four German prisoners of war killed in the act of escape from Canadian prison camps during the Second World War were shot in the aftermath of the Angler breakout. Three others were wounded.
The Angler breakout was the single largest successful escape attempt orchestrated by German POWs in North America during the Second World War: the December 23, 1944 breakout of 25 Kriegsmarine and merchant seamen from Papago Park, Arizona was the second largest. In both instances all prisoners were recaptured.
On 23 November 1941 Luftwaffe Oberleutnant Ulrich Steinhilper escaped from Bowmanville, Ontario and managed to make it to Niagara Falls within two days. Steinhilper unknowingly spent 30 minutes in the neutral United States clinging beneath a train car as it sat idle in a Buffalo, New York railyard. In less than three weeks, he escaped again and made it as far as Montreal, Quebec.
Within four months Steinhilper would attempt a third escape. On February 18, 1942 Steinhilper and a friend, disguised as painters, used a ladder to escape over two barbed wire fences. The pair would make it as far as Watertown, New York before being arrested by police. Steinhilper was soon sent to Gravenhurst, Ontario where he attempted two further escapes. Dornier Do 17 bomber pilot Oberleutnant Peter Krug made it as far as San Antonio, Texas after staging an escape from Bowmanville, Ontario POW camp on April 17, 1942. In the aftermath of Krug’s escape, similar to Steinhilper’s, the young Luftwaffe pilot was aided in his flight by Axis sympathizers in United States whose addresses may have been procured from outside Abwehr sources.
Von Werra’s former Swanwick digging partner Luftwaffe Leutnant Walter Manhard successfully escaped from a Gravenhurst, Ontario POW camp while on a swimming excursion. Presumed drowned, he had actually escaped to New York, where he decided to remain. He gave himself up in 1952 (:eek:) and by then he had married an American woman who was an officer in the United States Navy.
19 German POWs escaped through a large drainage pipe from Kingston, Ontario on August 26, 1943. All were soon recaptured.
Karl Rabe of U-35 made four separate escape attempts from Lethbridge, Alberta in 1943 including an attempt using a 24 x 10 foot home-made hot air balloon. Previously he had escaped from a Toronto hospital, subsequently stealing a small row boat with the intention of crossing Lake Ontario to the American shore but beached the craft too soon mistakenly thinking he was already on the American side. He was immediately recaptured by Canadian soldiers.
Afrika Korps soldier Max Weidauer escaped from Medicine Hat, Alberta in the aftermath of the separate murders of fellow DAK prisoners August Plaszek and Karl Lehmann by Nazi elements. After explaining the circumstances of his escape and the fact that he feared for his life, Weidauer was hidden by a local farmer but was soon once again behind barbed wire.
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