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Sydney Dowse

DYNAMO FEATURE
DOCUMENTARY SYNOPSIS

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"Dynamo" is a feature-length documentary about F/Lt. Sydney Dowse. Sydney was third in the tunnel during "The Great Escape". Given the moniker "Dynamo" by none other than Roger Bushell himself (played by Richard Attenborough). Sydney warns Roger of his impending doom if he escaped thanks to his friend, a Luftwaffe Guard at the camp called ‘Nicky’ Hesse (played by Robert Graf). 

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Nicky goes above and beyond providing Sydney with intelligence, including the location of Hitler’s vengeance weapons facility at Peenemünde which results in Operation Hydra, the bombing of that facility. As well, Nicky provides Sydney with his ID, camera, and money for the escape. After the escape and weeks on the run, Sydney and his escape partner, Danny (played by Charles Bronson), are captured just a few kilometres short of the Polish border. Danny was one of the 50 executed by the Gestapo. Sydney was one of five survivors hand-picked to be sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp on Hitler’s orders.

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After hearing of the murders of the 50, including his friend Danny, Sydney decided to escape again in their memory. Even going as far as to inscribe the number “18” above their new tunnel in memory of Danny. He teams up with Jimmy James, Wings Day, John Dodge, and a new addition to the group, Commando ‘Mad Jack’ Churchill. They successfully escape Sachsenhausen, only to be recaptured and sent back to the Zellenbau. Where their new jailor, SS-man Kurt Eccarius tortures prisoners to death in whatever way he pleases once their sentence is passed. Using his seemingly imminent death to coerce him, the Nazis (possibly Hitler’s personal translator, Paul-Otto Schmidt himself) offer Sydney his freedom in exchange for delivering a peace message to Prime Minister Churchill. He refuses.

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John Dodge, on the other hand, accepts. This is the premise of the made-for-TV movie “The Great Escape II” starring Superman Christopher Reeves as John Dodge. After the war, Sydney’s testimony is entered into evidence at the Nuremberg Tribunal and aids in the conviction of Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, and Goring for the murders of the 50. After the war, Sydney finds his friend Nicky Hesse in a MI-19 detention facility called the “London Cage”. Determined to save his friend, Sydney writes Hesse a letter which he knows will have to be read by Hesse’s captors giving him credit for everything, including Peenemünde.

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The War Office releases Nicky and gives him a pat on the back, recognizing his work resisting fascism in writing. A parliamentary inquiry later finds the conditions suffered by the witnesses and war criminals in the London Cage to be tantamount to torture. Sydney served as equerry at Buckingham Palace and later had to fight the Foreign Office to be recognized as a victim of Nazi persecution. Foreign Minister George Brown is forced out of government in 1968 after the Foreign Office is found guilty of "gross maladministration" by a parliamentary inquiry in his case. 

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In 1994, when he found out that Her Majesty’s government wasn’t going to lift a finger in remembrance of the worst atrocity committed against Allied airmen in the Second World War, which coincidentally inspired one of the most iconic films in British pop culture, Sydney plans and pays out of his own pocket for the 50th anniversary ceremony of the escape.

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The film ends with Vera Lynn singing "We'll Meet Again" at the ceremony and is bookended with some family home footage.

Stanislaw 'Danny' Krol
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