"The March" refers to a series of forced marches during the final stages of the Second World War in Europe. From a total of 257,000 western Allied prisoners of war held in German military prison camps, over 80,000 POWs were forced to march westward across Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany in extreme winter conditions, over about four months between January and April 1945. This series of events has been called various names: "The Great March West", "The Long March", "The Long Walk", "The Long Trek", "The Black March", "The Bread March", and "Death March Across Germany", but most survivors just called it "The March". As the Soviet Army was advancing on the Eastern front, German authorities decided to evacuate POW camps, to delay liberation of the prisoners. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of German civilian refugees, most of them women and children, as well as civilians of other nationalities, were also making their way westward on foot. Notorious examples include: from Stalag Luft IV at Gross Tychow in Pomerania the prisoners faced an trek in blizzard conditions across Germany, during which hundreds died, and; a march from Stalag VIII-B, known as the "Lamsdorf Death March", which was similar to the better-known Bataan Death March (1942) in terms of mortality rates. from Stalag Luft III in Silesia to Bavaria Motives On 19 July 1944, Adolf Hitler issued an order from his headquarters, Wolfsschanze, west of Stalag Luft VI, "concerning preparations for the defence of the Reich". It put the German civilian population on a total war footing and issued instructions for preparations for evacuations of "foreign labour" (slave labour) and civilians away from the advancing Soviet Army in the east. Item 6(a) called for "preparations for moving prisoners of war to the rear". This prolonged the war for hundreds of thousands of Allied personnel, as well as causing them severe hardship, starvation, injuries and/or death. In the later stages of the war there were great concerns among POWs over the motives for moving them westward. Many different and conflicting rumours abounded, including suggestions that: They were being moved towards concentration camps to be killed, in revenge for Allied commanders' deliberate targeting of civilians in cities such as Dresden. POWs would be force-marched until their deaths from exhaustion, a practice that had already been made notorious by the Japanese military (see, for instance: Bataan Death March). They would be held hostage