The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

The history of WG Bruchsal dates to the eighteenth century, when a part of the old castle was converted into a prison (1745) and half of the barracks were turned into a detention center (1776).¹ In the Weimar period, this facility housed a psychiatric prison, which held 49 prisoners, a women’s detention center with 60 cells, and a prison complex for 156 female prisoners.² On December 15, 1939, the Wehrmacht took over the compound, where an external unit of WG Germersheim was established. By the beginning of 1940, it had been redesignated as WG Bruchsal (map 4f).

Under the “enforcement plan” of September 10, 1941, WG Bruchsal was responsible for the confinement of Wehrmacht soldiers from Defense District (Wehrkreis) V and VII and Luftwaffe men from Air Defense District (Luftgau) VII who had been sentenced to prison terms of more than six weeks. It also held Wehrmacht soldiers from occupied Western Europe, a responsibility it shared with WG Freiburg and WG Germersheim.³ In the summer of 1944, the military prisons (Kriegswehrmachtgefängnisse, KWGs) in Wilna (today Vilnius, Lithuania) and Dubno were dissolved and their inmates were transferred to Bruchsal.⁴

The capacity of WG Bruchsal increased during the war. A noncommissioned officer (NCO) who was assigned to the prison guard staff between August 1940 and April 1941 estimated the prison’s population during that time to be at least 600.⁵ Heinrich Karl Maria Meybrink, who was brought to Bruchsal as an investigative prisoner in November 1944, said that there were around 1,000 prisoners and at times as many as 1,200–1,300.⁶ The total number of prisoners who passed through Bruchsal is estimated at 12,400.⁷ Bruchsal also held prisoners who were to be sent to the penal camp units [End Page 661] (Straflagerabteilungen). These prisoners were deemed “unable to be improved” by the judgment of a court or the recommendation of a prison commandant. The Bruchsal penal camp unit held at least 110 men as of March 1, 1942.⁸

Alongside the transfer of prisoners to the penal camps, WG Bruchsal was also responsible for the selection of prisoners who were deemed to be candidates for commutation of their sentence to “front probation” in combat zones. Front probation could be served in normal combat units or in a battalion of the separate Probation Unit (Bewährungstruppe) 500.⁹ On February 12, 1942, the OKW ordered WG Bruchsal to “immediately re-evaluate” its prisoners to determine whether they could be recommended “for a commutation of sentence to probation” in combat.¹⁰ The total number of those who were sent to front probation from Bruchsal is unknown. In September 1944, a special transport of around 300 prisoners from WG Bruchsal was sent to SS-Sonderformation Dirlewanger—officially known as the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division, which operated within the Waffen-SS as a “probation unit”—which participated in the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising and Slovak National Uprising and in operations at the front.¹¹

The labor details from WG Bruchsal were mostly deployed outside the city. While officers and NCOs were sent to work on vegetable farms, enlisted inmates were taken by train every day to Ludwigshafen and Oppau, where they worked to repair the IG Farben AG Factory, which had been damaged by air raids, or on the railroads.¹² Other prisoners from Bruchsal unloaded goods in the Rhine ports. An “arrangement for prisoners from WG Bruchsal with [the] state-owned Rhine port” in Karlsruhe from March 18, 1940,¹³ stated that 32 prisoners from Bruchsal would work 12 hours per day (with a half-hour lunch break) in the port, for which the prisoners would be paid 40 Reichspfennig an hour.¹⁴ The hourly rate was supposed to be at a similar level in other locations where Wehrmacht prisoners were used. In the last year of the war, prisoners were also employed scrapping old batteries for raw material.¹⁵

In addition, WG Bruchsal supervised two armed forces prisoner units (Wehrmachtgefangenenabteilungen, WGAs) in Siegelsbach and Neckarzimmern, both near Mosbach am Neckar. In 1942, WGA Neckarzimmern continued to operate along with a new WGA in Wesseling, near Cologne; it was later transferred to WG Germersheim.¹⁶ In Siegelsbach, the prisoners were employed in an army munitions depot, while in Neckarzimmern, they were sent to a munitions storage facility. In Wesseling, they were probably sent to work for the Union Rheinische Braunkohlen Kraftstoff AG.

Hard labor alone did not meet the standard for the recommended “toughness” of the regime in WG Bruchsal; military drill and meager rations also played a role. As in the other WGs, a “Führer Order” required strong disciplinary measures constituting “strict arrest.” The “strict arrest” was practiced, as in all other units, with “intensified arrest” with “hard conditions” and “bread and water,” while additional intensified measures included “daily outdoor exercise” and “darkened arrest cells.”¹⁷ In Bruchsal, the cells were located in the dungeon of the old castle.¹⁸

In April 1942, the “majority of the punishment” of military prisoners was moved from the WGs and their penal camp units to the front area, in the field penal battalions (Feldstrafgefangenen-Abteilungen, FStGAs) and field penal camps (Feldstraflager). The goal of this measure was to create a greater deterrent effect on the fighting troops by placing the military prisoners in dangerous tasks such as the construction of frontline fortifications. In addition, overcrowding in the WGs could be reduced. On April 13, 1942, WG Bruchsal was ordered to send 110 prisoners to WG Torgau-Brückenkopf, where Feldstraflager II, with a planned strength of 600 men, was being organized. From June 1, 1942, all prisoners destined for the penal camps were to be sent via WG Torgau-Fort Zinna, which was thereafter given the responsibility for “collecting all those to be held in the penal camps” and held sole responsibility for the field penal camps.¹⁹

On April 14, 1942, the order was given for the establishment of FStGA 1, 2, and 3. WG Bruchsal was ordered to send 50 prisoners to WG Germersheim, where FStGA 2 was being formed. Thereafter, WG Bruchsal was to send monthly reports on “the number of military prisoners sent to the FSt-GAs” to the OKW.²⁰ These reports were used by the general at the OKW who was responsible for the FStGAs to determine the organization of special transports for the prisoners assigned to the FStGAs and the creation of new FStGAs. No field penal units were formed in WG Bruchsal itself, but there were regular transports to other WGs for the formation of FStGAs.²¹

To create additional reserves for the front, in September 1944, in a major departure from previous practice, prisoners declared to be “unworthy of the military” who had been sentenced to prison were sent to the penal camps of the Reich Justice Administration (Reichjustizverwaltung). A large number of these men were to be deemed “conditionally unworthy of the military” and enrolled in the prison companies, which were later integrated into the FStGAs.²² These measures also affected the March 1942 “Reclassification of the Wehrmacht Penal Facilities” in labor and training companies, which experienced an expansion.

Unlike the other WGs within the Reich, there were, for a long time, no executions under military justice at WG Bruchsal. Apparently, there was no shooting range or another area usable for executions, such as a gravel pit or quarry, available. However, cells at Bruchsal held prisoners sentenced to death, beginning at the latest in late 1941. They were then taken to one of the larger surrounding garrisons at Stuttgart, Ludwigsburg, or Karlsruhe for execution. On January 21, 1942, Max Bender was executed at the Dornhalde shooting range in Stuttgart.²³ In June 1942, at least three deserters, former prisoners of Bruchsal, were shot: on June 3, Otto Janikowski,²⁴ on June 10, Hans Meisel, and on June 17, Karl Seifert.²⁵ Helmut Nickel, another prisoner from WG Bruchsal, was executed on October 14, 1942, at a shooting range in Karlsruhe.²⁶ One [End Page 662] further execution was carried out in the subordinate WGA Wesseling: Martin Reichhart was sentenced to death for desertion and shot on March 11, 1943.²⁷

As of mid-April 1943, military executions were to be carried out by beheading or hanging rather than shooting. One of those affected by this decision was Bruchsal prisoner Herbert Hosters, who was sentenced to death for desertion. On July 26, 1943, he was taken to the investigative prison in Stuttgart, where he was beheaded.²⁸ It is not known if other Bruchsal prisoners died under the guillotine in Stuttgart, but additional prisoners from Bruchsal were executed in the following period (after the preferred execution method reverted to firing squad) at the Poppenweiler shooting range near Ludwigsburg, including Leonhard Maier on January 18, 1944, and Josef Blöchinger, on June 23, 1944.²⁹ To relieve the executioner at Stuttgart, an additional guillotine was installed at Bruchsal in the early summer of 1944.³⁰

On March 1, 1945, Bruchsal was the target of an American bombing raid that killed nearly 1,000 people in the city. The WG was hit by conventional and incendiary bombs and completely destroyed. The number of victims among the prisoners was comparatively low because the thick prison walls protected them and the cells were quickly evacuated. Those sentenced to death and prison terms were thereafter held in the undamaged civilian jail on the Schönbornstrasse.

On March 11, 1945, the five companies of the destroyed WG Bruchsal were taken by foot and then by train in the direction of Neuburg an der Donau, where the transport arrived five days later. There, the 1st, 2nd, and 5th Companies were housed in a barn surrounded by barbed wire at a Wehrmacht detention center—probably the former WGA Neu-burg—which was already overcrowded. The 3rd and 4th Companies were taken to the Wehrmacht investigative prison in Ingolstadt. Shortly thereafter, the prisoners from Neuburg and Ingolstadt were taken to the SS barracks at the Dachau concentration camp, where they formed a Wehrmacht probationary battalion. The designation “Bewährungsregiment VII, Einheit Bender”³¹ probably indicated that it was considered to be part of Probationary Unit 500, whose last battalions were denoted with Roman numerals and the name of the commander.³² On April 28, 1945, the former Bruchsal inmates in the probationary unit received ammunition. They were marched to the south to meet the American troops, however, they do not seem to have been involved in any significant fighting.