The 1963 World War 2 traditional is a closely fictionalised model of the real-life British POW escape from a German focus camp in 1942. Three American characters, like Steve McQueen’s Cooler King Captain Virgil Hilts, had been thrown in for industrial enchantment. Widely thought of his greatest and most memorable movie, it seems McQueen had a run-in with the police when filming The Great Escape in Bavaria.
https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/films/2150709/Steve-McQueen-arrested-The-Great-Escape