Bill Robertson
Bill Robertson is a Historian and Teacher based in Aberdeenshire where he lives with his very patient wife and two daughters.
His interest in the Second World War was nurtured by a youthful exposure to war films, Commando comics and Airfix models which eventually led to him studying for a degree in History. An interest in Genealogy led him to discover his own family links to the greatest conflict in human history. The realisation that his own great grandfather had spent part of the war in the famous Stalag Luft III, made famous by The Great Escape led to him becoming immersed in the experiences of Allied prisoners of war.
His research has led to contributions to the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast and a guest appearance on the For You the War is Over podcast. He has written and published two short story collections – “Through The Darkest Door” and “When The Revolution Comes” and was an active member of Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree Writer’s group for many years. The Undefeated is his first full length book.
Bill says:
“My interest in this subject is a personal one. My great grandfather was captured in 1940 and remained a prisoner for the remainder of the war. He worked down salt mines and coal mines and spent a spell working as an orderly for officers. Uncovering his story led me to the realisation that the stories I had grown up with gave a very distorted perspective on what happened. Now, when I went back and watched Colditz or The Great Escape, I noticed a glaring absence. It felt like the other ranks had been quietly erased from the scene. The more I dug into what had happened in the camps over those five terrible years of war, the more I realised was missing from the story. My research brought me into contact with many other relatives of former POWs who all had their own stories to tell. What was surprising was how many of them knew little about the experiences their fathers and grandfathers had endured.
The desire to set the record straight and tell the unvarnished truth about the lives of the men in the Stalags festered in my heart and grew with each new discovery and became the genesis for a book.
The story of Prisoners of War during the Second World War is one that everyone thinks they know. Hollywood movies and countless memoirs written since the end of the war have carved themselves into our consciousness with tales of plucky officers battling to escape from the dastardly Germans.
THE UNDEFEATED is not that story."
The Undefeated: The Untold Lives of Allied Prisoners of War in Europe, 1939-45
They were soldiers, sailors, and airmen who found themselves in enemy hands. But captivity was only the beginning...
The Undefeated strips away romanticised myths of dashing escapes and wartime gallantry to reveal the gritty, often brutal truth of life in German and Italian captivity during the Second World War. Told through the eyes of ordinary servicemen who found themselves behind the wire. Drawing on hundreds of testimonies – from hidden diaries and post-war interviews to war crimes files, rare oral histories, and many previously unpublished photographs – this compelling new study gives voice to those who endured the unendurable.
Through themes of survival, resistance, camaraderie, and betrayal, this ground-breaking account uncovers the daily grind of forced labour, the quiet defiance of men compelled to work for the Nazis, and the moral ambiguities of collaboration and retribution. From the chaos of Dunkirk to the freezing death marches of 1945, these are stories of endurance, rebellion, cruelty, and compassion.
