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German prisoner-of-war camps in World War II

Nazi Germany operated around 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps () during World War II (1939-1945).

The most common types of camps were Oflags ("Officer camp") and Stalags ("Base camp" – for enlisted personnel POW camps), although other less common types existed as well.

Legal background

Germany signed the Third Geneva Convention of 1929, which established norms relating to the treatment of prisoners of war.

  • Article 10 required PoWs be lodged in adequately heated and lighted buildings where conditions were the same as for German troops.
  • Articles 27-32 detailed the conditions of labour. Enlisted ranks were required to perform whatever labour they were asked if able to do, so long as it was not dangerous and did not support the German war-effort. Senior non-commissioned officers (sergeants and above) were required to work only in a supervisory role. Commissioned officers were not required to work, although they could volunteer. The work performed was largely agricultural or industrial, ranging from coal- or potash-mining, stone quarrying, or work in saw mills, breweries, factories, railroad yards, and forests. PoWs hired out to military and civilian contractors were supposed to receive pay. The workers were also supposed to get at least one day a week of rest.
  • Article 76 ensured that PoWs who died in captivity were honourably buried in marked graves.

According to some scholars (like Christian Gerlach) Germany largely adhered to the Geneva Convention when it came to other nationalities of prisoners of war. It however disregarded it for the Soviet prisoners of war. Around 3 million of almost 6 million captured died, largely of starvation and disease, but also executions.

Conditions

In the early phases of the war, following German occupation of much of Europe, Germany also found itself unprepared for the number of POWs it held, and released many (particularly enlisted personnel) on parole (as a result, it released all the Dutch, all Flemish Belgian, nine-tenths of the Poles, and nearly a third of the French captives). As the war went on, Germany however refused to release other POWs, seeing them as blackmail material against others (ex. Vichy France). Conditions of soldiers from countries which no longer posed a significant threat to Germany (ex. Poland) were generally worse than those of others; British and American POWs received generally the best treatment.

Conditions in the camp have been described as bad, but (for POWs of Western Allies) improved as the war went on and Germans had to consider that they held significant amount of German POWs and could enact retribution.

Mortality rate

Types of camp

  • Dulag or Durchgangslager (transit camp) – These camps served as a collection point for POWs prior to reassignment. These camps were intelligence collection centers.
  • Dulag Luft or Durchgangslager der Luftwaffe (transit camp of the Luftwaffe) – These were transit camps for Air Force/Air Corps POWs. The main Dulag Luft camp at Frankfurt was the principal collecting point for intelligence derived from Allied POW interrogation
  • Heilag or Heimkehrerlager (repatriation camps) - Camps for the return of prisoners. Quite often these men had suffered disabling injuries.
  • Ilag/Jlag or Internierungslager ("Internment camp") – These were civilian internment camps.
  • Marlag or Marine-Lager ("Marine camp") – These were Navy/Marine personnel POW camps.
  • Milag or Marine-Internierten-Lager ("Marine internment camp") – These were merchant seamen internment camps.
  • Oflag or Offizier-Lager ("Officer camp") – These were POW camps for officers.
  • Stalag or Stammlager ("Base camp") – These were enlisted personnel POW camps.
  • Stalag Luft or Luftwaffe-Stammlager ("Luftwaffe base camp") – These were POW camps administered by the German Air Force for Allied aircrews (including officers, e.g. Stalag Luft I).

Nomenclature

At the start of World War II, the German Army was divided into 17 military districts (Wehrkreise), which were each assigned Roman numerals. The camps were numbered according to the military district. A letter behind the Roman number marked individual Stalags in a military district.

e.g.

Stalag II-D was the fourth Stalag in Military District II (Wehrkreis II).

Sub-camps had a suffix "/Z" (for Zweiglager - sub-camp). The main camp had a suffix of "/H" (for Hauptlager - main camp).

e.g.

Oflag VII-C/H meant this is the main camp.
Oflag VII-C/Z meant this is a sub-camp of a main camp.

Some of these sub-camps were not the traditional POW camps with barbed wire fences and guard towers, but merely accommodation centers.

List of camps by military district

Military District I (Königsberg)

Military District II (Stettin)

Military District III (Berlin)

Military District IV (Dresden)

Military District V (Stuttgart)

Military District VI (Münster)

Military District VII (Munich)

Military District VIII (Breslau)

Military District IX (Kassel)

Military District X (Hamburg)

Military District XI (Hanover)

Military District XII (Wiesbaden)

Military District XIII (Nuremberg)

Military District XVII (Vienna)

Military District XVIII (Salzburg)

Military District XX (Danzig)

Military District XXI (Posen)

Other camps

Luftwaffe camps

The camps for Allied airmen were run by the Luftwaffe independently of the Army.

Kriegsmarine camps

The camp for Allied seamen was run by the Kriegsmarine independently of the Army.

References

External links

Post VE Day sending of German PoWs to Alaska, to dismantle war equipment http://www.sitnews.us/Kiffer/POWCamp/021715_prisoners_of_war.html

Further reading

  • Nichol, John. The Last Escape. (The suffering of Allied POWs in the last months of the war.)
  • Bernd Faulenbach, Andrea Kaltofen (Hg.): 'Hölle im Moor'. Die Emslandlager 1933–1945. Wallstein, Göttingen 2017, .