Daredevil tales of prisoners-of-war escaping from Colditz and other German camps were revealed, as records of over 100,000 soldiers caught by the Nazis were put online.

In what is claimed to be a world first, the records also recount gruesome details of life for Allied soldiers held in Germany, Austria and Poland in World War II, including being forced to extract gold from dead Jews' bodies.

"The unwavering spirit of British prisoners of war was astounding - with many trying to escape their captors at every opportunity in order to rejoin the war effort," said Daniel Jones of Ancestry.co.uk, which put the records online.

The records, which previously have only been available to those prepared to search through mountains of dusty archives, are mostly of British servicemen, along with a few hundred Australian and Canadian soldiers.

They reveal the real-life tales which inspired films including The Great Escape, in which POWs dig tunnels called Tom, Dick and Harry, and Steve McQueen famously roars to freedom on a motorbike over the razor wire.

Among the POWs whose escapades are recounted are: "Jock" Hamilton-Baillie, a serial escaper who found ways out of five separate camps, including the infamous Colditz Castle from which he nearly escaped dressed in a skin-tight black burglar's cat suit; Viscount George Henry Hubert Lascelles, the 7th Earl of Harewood who is 40th in line to the English throne - and was seventh in line at the time he was captured - was imprisoned in Colditz from 1944 until the end of the war and Desmond Wilkinson Llewelyn, the actor who played 'Q' in the James Bond films, who was held for five years in the Oflag IX-A/Z German prison camp.