Coragem é a Senha

Not just very much like The Great Escape - both films shared prisoners using the same techniques for obtaining materials, tunneling, disposal of dirt from the tunnel, hiding the tunnel entrance under stoves & the same slight issue with the tunnel exit.

I'd not seen this Borgarde film before TCM aired it, so it was startling how many plot similarities it shared with it's much more well known compatriot - I understand that both were in production around the same time (though Courage came out first), so neither were remakes of the other, but whether both referenced the same source material (Courage was apparently derived from the memoirs of Sgt Major Charles Coward), I'm not sure.

A side note: Anyone familiar with railways in England in the 60's will quickly notice that all the railway scenes in Courage, while supposed to be in continental Europe, were clearly filmed in England with a few cosmetic tweaks (German signage, smoke deflectors on the steam locomotives) to try to disguise things. The film also originally had a sequence representing events at Auschwitz, that was pulled at some point - presumably for being too dark a subject matter. You can still tell where this sequence was intended to be, as a narrative piece alludes to it, but the film immediately moves on.