FILM · 1970 · IRELAND
The McKenzie Break
16 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (16)
- #001
German prisoners of war escaped from a camp in Wales in March 1945, but none of them made it back to Axis territory. However, one prisoner of war did escape from a POW camp in Canada and returned to Germany.
- #002
The McKenzie Break is one of the few Second World War prisoner-of-war films in which the prisoners are not Allied; in this case they are Germans in a Scottish POW camp. Other rare examples include the Japanese prisoners of war in Australia in The Cowra Breakout (1984) and the German prisoners of war in Italy in The Fifth Day of Peace (1970).
- #003
The meaning and relevance of Wolfpack, one of the film's alternative titles, refers to the large convoys of German Kriegsmarine U-boats used to mount mass attacks on the Allies during the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War. The term Wolfpack, or wolf pack, for U-boats is a comparison to how U-boats hunted Allied submarines, just as a pack of wolves lives, feeds, moves and hunts its prey in groups. Its relevance to the subject is that most of the German prisoners of war in the McKenzie POW camp in the film had been captured by Nazi German submarine crews.
- #004
Although set in Scotland, The McKenzie Break was filmed mainly in Ireland.
- #005
The film's finale on the beach was shot at Bonmahon in County Waterford, Ireland. The scene in which the truck rolls into a hole in the ground was filmed at an old copper mine there.
- #006
The meaning and relevance of McKenzie in the film's title refers to the Second World War McKenzie Prisoner of War Camp in Scotland.
- #007
The real-life Second World War submarine that was to meet the Nazi German prisoners of war was named U-536 (Unterseeboot 536). During the Second World War, U-536 survived attempts by the Royal Canadian Navy to capture it during the Allied counter-operation at Pointe de Maisonnette on 26-27 September 1943, as part of the escape attempt known as Operation Kiebitz. U-536 was sunk about a month later, in October 1943.
- #008
Although the film is based on a work of fiction, its plot reflects a real-life incident at the Cultybraggan (Camp 21) POW camp in Comrie, Perthshire, Scotland, during the Second World War. This remote camp was established to house loyal Nazi POWs who incited revolts and insubordination among German POWs at other camps in Britain. Unlike in the film, however, it was guarded by Polish soldiers who had fled to Britain after the fall of Poland. They harboured an extreme hatred of all Germans and did not befriend or sympathise with the prisoners. At Cultybraggan, a group of conspiring Nazi escapees hanged a fellow prisoner from the roof beams of a hut to stop him revealing the escape plan, and during the escape they killed a Polish guard. All of the escapees were quickly rounded up and severely punished by the guards. Cultybraggan remained unchanged and continued as a Ministry of Defence training camp into the 2000s, and although it is currently closed it is to open as a museum. Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer, is said to have been held at Cultybraggan for one night after his mysterious solo flight from Germany to Scotland early in the war, before being transferred to the Tower of London.
- #009
The real-life rendezvous with the U-boat was planned to take place at Pointe de Maisonnette in New Brunswick, Canada, in the Bay of Chaleur, but in the film the meeting is set off the coast of Scotland (and was filmed on the Irish coast).
- #010
The song sung during the prisoners' game was the melody of Deutschland Über Alles (also known as Germany Above All).
- #011
The song the prisoners of war sing at the beginning is a German marching song titled "Erika", originally written by Herms Niel in the 1930s, though it may also be an old German folk song. The melody of Tammy Wynette's popular "Stand By Your Man" is very similar.
- #012
The McKenzie Break is at least partly based on fact. According to Alun Evans's book Brassey's Guide to War Films, "... there were indeed cases of Nazi POWs killing other prisoners after holding a 'court of honour', and of a U-boat attempting to pick up pre-arranged German escapees." The Fifth Day of Peace, also known as Crime of Defeat (see The Fifth Day of Peace (1970)), likewise features a Nazi German prisoner-of-war court of honour. Interestingly, both films prominently feature German Nazi prisoners of war singing the same Nazi marching song in the camp.
- #013
The McKenzie Break's lead actor, Brian Keith, and much of its supporting cast were experienced in television acting.
- #014
The film details the rivalry between Captain Jack Connor, the grey-haired bastard of a camp commander who is a mercenary, played by Brian Keith, and Kapitänleutnant Willi Schlueter, the leader of a camp of Nazi German prisoners of war, played by Helmut Griem. One of the film's posters played a word game about prisoners of war in huge letters: the abbreviation emphasised that Schlueter was a P-O-W while Keith was an S-O-B.
- #015
The Italian censorship visa #57421 was issued on 23 December 1970.
- #016
The McKenzie Break was also to have been directed by Andre De Toth, but it was ultimately shot by another director.
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