It was not solely due to the high wire or the guns. The actual answer is much crueler. The guards used a rule known as collective responsibility.
If one person escaped the Nazis didn’t just hunt that person down. They would pick ten innocent people that were left behind in the camp usually from the same work group and sentence them to death. These ten men were kept in a dark cell in the basement with no food or water. They were left there to starve to death slowly. Think being a prisoner and knowing that if you found freedom ten of your friends would die a slow terrible death because of you. That guilt was a stronger cage than any fence.
There is a famous story about this in 1944. A young man called Edek and a woman called Mala actually fell in love in Auschwitz. They were able to obtain a guard uniform and walk right out the front gate. They were free for two weeks before they were caught near the border and brought back to be killed in front of everyone.
The Nazis wanted to use them to scare the other prisoners but the couple remained brave until the end. Edek didn’t wait for the guards, he kicked the chair away himself to die on his own terms. Mala had a small blade hidden and she cut her own wrists. When a guard tried to stop her she slapped his face with her bloody hand.
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