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

THE PRISONER OF WAR ADMINISTRATION OF THE ARMED FORCES HIGH COMMAND

For the central management of POW administration in these areas, the OKW had already created a command and control structure long before the war began. In September 1938, Major Hans-Joachim Breyer was appointed head of Group V, Prisoner of War Administration and Central Records (Kriegsgefangenenwesen und Zentralnachweis), in the Domestic Department of the General Office of the Armed Forces (Allgemeines Wehrmachtamt, AWA) in the Armed Forces High Command. His job was to organize the scheme of POW administration for future military activities. Then, as of October 1, 1939, the POW administration, under the name “Department of Wehrmacht Casualties and Prisoner of War Administration” (Abteilung Wehrmachtverluste und Kriegsgefangenenwesen), headed by Major Breyer, acquired its organizational structure, geared to wartime deployment:

Group 1: Enemy Prisoners of War in Germany

Group 2: Administrative Affairs

Group 3: German Prisoners of War in Enemy Territory Group 4: Exchange and Internment in Neutral Foreign Territory

Group 5: Wehrmacht Information Office for War Casualties and Prisoners of War (WASt)

Group 6: Liaison with the Red Cross¹⁰

In accordance with the low casualty figures four weeks into the war, POW affairs were the focus of the work. Personnel losses were dealt with in Group 5, which was simultaneously the central office required under the international law of war to provide information about the fate of German soldiers and of enemy POWs in German custody.¹¹

At first glance, the organizational plan may seem logical and useful, but the appearance is deceiving. To begin with, it is noteworthy that the fate of the German POWs in enemy hands and that of the enemy POWs in German custody were organizationally coupled together. As a result, it was repeatedly demonstrated to the department leadership in their daily work how greatly the fate of their own comrades in enemy hands depended on the Germans’ treatment of the foreigners. Such a linkage was by no means a self-evident one. The POW organizations of the Luftwaffe, the Navy, and the Field Army, as well as that of the overall Wehrmacht, which will be further examined later, did not exhibit this linkage. Outside Germany, for example, in the Soviet Union, the administrations for foreign POWs and those for Soviet POWs in other countries were not organizationally tied. In other countries, such as Poland, there did not even exist a unified, national-level POW administration.¹²

A second point must be added: the decision makers had learned from the experiences of World War I that POWs represented an indispensable labor pool. Nonetheless, labor deployment was not a focal point of the organizational structure; instead, from the outset, Wehrmacht leaders envisaged a cooperative arrangement with the Labor Administration.¹³

The schedule of responsibilities outlined above might create the impression that the Department of Wehrmacht Casualties and Prisoner of War Administration possessed comprehensive authorities; however, that was not so. Such a department within the General Office of the Armed Forces had merely the function of a task force. The central decisions were made by Hitler or by the leadership of the OKW and then relayed to the department head via the head of the General Office of the Armed Forces. Although the influence that can be wielded by skillful department leadership with professional expertise should not be underestimated, in the final analysis, and in most cases, central instructions regarding POW administration trace back to decisions made at the highest level, which could at best be modified by the expert bodies.¹⁴

The new department had to pass its first performance test in the first weeks of its existence, when it faced the influx of Polish POWs. The volume of work continued to grow in the spring of 1940 with the capture of French, Dutch, and Belgian soldiers. The French soldiers were transferred into the territory of the Reich for labor deployment.¹⁵

By early 1941, even before the invasion of the Soviet Union, it proved necessary to expand the organization. The area of responsibility referred to as “Casualties” was relocated as of March 1, 1941, along with the Wehrmacht Information Office, to create a new Department of Wehrmacht Casualties. The remaining sections were combined to form the new Department of POW Administration, which continued to be headed by Hans-Joachim Breyer, meanwhile promoted to the rank of Oberstleutnant. Regarding the scope of tasks, there were changes at two points:

1. Communication with the Red Cross was now assigned to the Inspector for Prisoner of War Administration (Inspekteur für das Kriegsgefangenenwesen).

2. The area of responsibility known as “Enemy Prisoners of War” was divided into two groups, “Enemy Prisoners of War in Germany” and “Enemy [End Page 3] Prisoners of War in Occupied Territories” (meaning France rather than the Soviet Union).¹⁶

The next step toward expansion was taken on March 1, 1942. The previous Department of POW Administration was upgraded to the status of an independent office: the Office Group of the Chief of Prisoner of War Administration, usually shortened to Chief of POW Administration. The new office group had two departments, one for general issues and relations with offices outside the Wehrmacht, and the other for the concrete organization of POW administration in the territory of the Reich. Oberst Hans von Graevenitz was appointed to head the new office group.¹⁷

One might suspect that the expansion was attributable to the large number of Soviet POWs captured by the Germans since the invasion of the Soviet Union. That is only partially accurate, however, as the Field Army built up its own POW organization for the Soviet POWs, in the Army’s theater of operations in the east. This organization is discussed at a later point. The area of responsibility of the Chief of POW Administration, therefore, included only those Soviet POWs who were moved outside the operations zone in the East. Nonetheless, the influx of Soviet prisoners brought the number of POWs taken into Reich territory—mostly for the purpose of labor deployment—to a magnitude that necessitated a separate department within the office group to organize the personnel and resources. At the same time, however, this development produced a shift in relative importance: the area of responsibility known as “Foreign Prisoners of War” came to exert greater power than the area concerned with the German POWs in other countries.¹⁸

As aerial attacks made work in Berlin increasingly difficult, the office was moved to Torgau on the River Elbe, around 110 kilometers (68 miles) from Berlin, at the end of 1943 and beginning of 1944. The move entailed a significant change in working conditions and placed a substantial constraint on working capacity, given the rising numbers of breakdowns in the road, rail, and telecommunications networks. A few months later, on April 1, 1944, Oberst Adolf Westhoff took command of the Office Group of the Chief of POW Administration. But probably the most sweeping change occurred as of October 1 with the complete reorganization of the scheme of POW administration, which is examined in a later section of this introduction.¹⁹ the commander of a unit was authorized to issue orders and to control their execution through administrative supervision. He had helpers, of course, in the form of the staff, but characteristically they were permitted to sign orders only with the addition of the words “by order.” This system could be adopted successfully in those units that the respective superior himself was still able to oversee, at least in principle. However, the commanders of the central Wehrmacht staffs, with hundreds of subordinate offices, were unable to meet the requirement that they exercise administrative supervision themselves. For this reason, inspectors were appointed and empowered to perform this task as substitutes for the major commanders.

THE INSPECTORS FOR PRISONER OF WAR ADMINISTRATION

Besides the official leadership of POW administration in the Armed Forces High Command, there existed two other authorities in POW affairs, the inspectors. Readers who are unfamiliar with contemporary organizational principles may be inclined to view this structural parallelism as the typical Nazi opposition of organizations. This was not the case, however; the Wehrmacht was applying a classical tenet of organizational theory: the line staff principle. In this approach, only On August 26, 1939, Generalmajor Winfried von der Schulenburg was appointed General on Special Assignment for POW Administration (General z.b.V. für das Kriegsgefangenenwesen). He was subordinate to and reported to the head of the General Office of the Armed Forces. He looked after foreign delegations visiting the POW camps. In addition, he supervised the camps for POWs and civilian internees run by all branches of the Wehrmacht on the soil of the German Reich, but because he was not in a directly commanding position, he could only report shortcomings.²⁰

As of December 1, 1939, the office was given a new name: Inspector for POW Administration (Inspekteur für das Kriegsgefangenwesen). Additional duties were entrusted to von der Schulenburg in the following years: from the fall of 1940, he supervised the Scapini Mission, and, beginning in the fall of 1941, he examined the labor deployment of the POWs regarding efficiency. As of April 1, 1943, General von der Schulenburg was replaced, and his job was taken over by the Chief of POW Administration, Oberst Hans von Graevenitz. Von Graevenitz retained his previous assignment and held both positions simultaneously. As of April 1, 1944, von Graevenitz was transferred to the front as a division commander. His successor as Chief of POW Administration was Oberst Adolf Westhoff. The position of Inspector for POW Administration, however, remained unfilled until it was assigned a completely new area of responsibility as part of the reorganization on October 1, 1944. During the vacancy period, the duties of the inspector were discharged “alternatively” by the Chief of POW Administration, in consultation with the second inspector in the POW administration, as discussed below.²¹

The main task of the Inspector for POW Administration—at least in the first two years of the war—had been to protect the rights of the POWs and ensure their proper care. In 1943, however, when the number of escapes by POWs rose to the level of an increasingly serious problem, Hitler, in response to Göring’s suggestion, created a new position on July 1, 1943: Inspector General for POW Administration (Generalinspekteur für das Kriegsgefangenenwesen). His central task was to safeguard the interests of the detaining power, that is, to prevent POWs from escaping and boost the efficiency of labor deployment. Appointed to this post was Generalleutnant Otto Roettig, who was directly subordinate to the Chief of the Armed Forces High Command and reported to him. In [End Page 4] the hierarchy, the Inspector General thus ranked above the Inspector for POW Administration and the Chief of POW Administration. As of October 1, 1944, with the restructuring of the system of POW administration, his area of responsibility was dropped, and the position was eliminated.²²

THE PRISONER OF WAR ORGANIZATION OF THE REPLACEMENT ARMY

At the beginning of World War II, the Department of Wehrmacht Casualties and POW Administration existed as the leadership entity and commanded the few POW camps that had been set up in the Home Command for the military campaign in Poland. By the time the invasion of France began, their number had increased to approximately 40, some of them created by converting Dulags into Stalags. As a general rule, there were approximately two Stalags per Defense District (Wehrkreis); only in Defense Districts II (Stettin/Szczecin) and VI (Münster) was the number significantly higher than average, with five and seven camps, respectively.²³

At the outbreak of the war, Ic (enemy situation) departments in the deputy corps headquarters (Stellvertretende Generalkommandos) of the respective Defense Districts acted as regional intermediate authorities between the Department of Wehrmacht Casualties and POW Administration and the camps. The institution of a “commander of prisoners of war” as an intermediate tier in the hierarchy at the level of the Defense Districts was in fact already provided for in the regulations, but, in reality, the post did not yet exist.

For the time being, however, an independent intermediate level in the system of POW administration started to develop not in the Home Command but rather in the conquered territories in the West.²⁴ In the sphere of the Replacement Army, at first, only a new Subject Group for POW Administration was set up in the headquarters of the Defense Districts as of July 1, 1940. Soon, however, the group was upgraded to an independent department: Commander of Prisoners of War (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen). This process, which was far from being a synchronized occurrence in all the Defense Districts, was not concluded until March 1941. A connection to the upcoming attack on the Soviet Union seems tenuous at best, as there were no plans for bringing the Soviet POWs in substantial numbers into the territory of the Reich, thus creating no sizable burden on the administrative structure. The expansion is more likely attributable to the large number of French POWs who had been brought to Germany after the summer of 1940 and had to be integrated into the economic process.²⁵

Essentially, the Commander of Prisoners of War had three areas of responsibility:

• - Command of the German troops under his authority

• - Administration of the enemy POWs

• - Support of the family members of German POWs in foreign countries.

Although the use of the POWs for the German economy was the central motive for bringing them into the territory of the Reich, the commander of POWs had no labor deployment department, as POW deployment was subject to the discretionary power of the civilian Labor Administration.²⁶

If the number of POWs in the Defense District remained below the level of 15,000, the staff of the commander of POWs consisted of seven officers and nine noncommissioned officers (NCOs) or enlisted personnel, and thus was relatively small. If the POW figures exceeded that level, there were 13 officers and 20 supporting staff. In keeping with the low manning level, the range of responsibilities was limited. The Commander of POWs was the immediate—and, most notably, also the functional superior of the camps subordinate to him, that is, of the German camp administration as well as the POWs themselves. He was not responsible for supply, however—this was seen to by other administrative offices in the Defense District.²⁷

The offices under the commander of POWs’ authority can be classified into three groups:

• - Guard units

• - POW camps

• - Labor and supply units

First, the guard units: originally, at least one Reserve Battalion (Landesschützenbataillon) with four companies per Oflag and two battalions per Stalag was scheduled, but, with the increasing occupancy figures, the number of guard units rose to as many as five per Stalag. Up to 240,000 members of these guard units are said to have been deployed in the OKW area. Absent numerical data, it can only be assumed that most of the guard forces were deployed in the Home Command. In addition, an unknown number of civilian workers were used as auxiliary guards.²⁸

Each Defense District had one division for special assignment at its disposal to command the approximately 10–15 Reserve Battalions. These guard units were under the control of their divisions only in terms of service subordination; with respect to their deployment, the Stalag commandants were in charge. Originally, the operational areas of the Reserve Battalions in a Defense District had been scheduled to rotate at regular intervals so that their effectiveness would not be diminished by familiar routines. This arrangement apparently proved unsuccessful, however; if anything, the affiliation between the camp and its guard units became increasingly close as the guard units were assigned to “their” camps. At different points in time, they evidently became more and more closely tied to the Stalag commandants. Over the course of 1942, the divisions for special assignment were also disbanded, so that the Reserve Battalions were now completely subordinate to their respective Stalags.²⁹ A number of guard battalions were permanently classified as Stalag battalions for guarding the camp areas themselves; the others were assigned territorial districts (Bezirke) within which they were responsible for all guard duties. The districts were subdivided into company [End Page 5] districts (Kompaniebezirke), which were further divided into section districts (Abschnittsbezirke). In terms of size, a company district might include two administrative districts (Landkreise). This was the situation at the end of 1942: the guard battalions had become a fixed component of the camp organization. In 1943 they began to take on additional duties, which are considered later.³⁰

The second group of duty stations that were under the authority of the commander of POWs consisted of the POW camps. In the Home Command, in accordance with the objective of holding the POWs in custody over the long term, only Stalags, Oflags, and Ilags were deployed. Dulags were deployed only for a short time, in exceptional cases. These camps were distributed very unevenly throughout the Defense Districts, as the table below shows.³¹

Quantitatively, the lower limit of the range is two Stalags in Defense District XX, and the upper limit is nine Stalags in Defense District VI; for the Oflags, the area of variation is between zero in Defense Districts I and XX and eight in Defense District VIII. On average, four Stalags and three Oflags were stationed in each Defense District. At first glance, it may seem surprising that the number of Oflags (53) was not very much smaller than the number of Stalags (74), as the share of officers in the total number of soldiers for most POW nationalities was only a few percentage points. Here, the differences in capacity between the two types of camps had an effect: an Oflag held at most a few thousand officers, but the number of soldiers confined in a Stalag was in the tens of thousands. Regionally, the distribution, though very uneven, does not reveal a clear tendency of any kind. A case in point: in the two Defense Districts, I and XX, that were located at the eastern edge of the Home Command, there were only eight Stalags and not a single Oflag, far fewer than the average. But the numbers were above average in the other two districts located in the east, VIII and XXI, where there were nine Stalags and eleven Oflags. A slight concentration of camps can be discerned only for the three adjoining Defense Districts (VII, XII, and XV) in the central part of the Home Command, with a total of 33 camps.³²

The main task of the Stalags was to deploy the prisoners as a labor force.³³ For this purpose, each Stalag was assigned a regional area of responsibility, which it had to supply with a workforce of POWs. Admittedly, the Labor Administration, which had a field office in every Stalag, handled the allocation of POW contingents to users, but the implementation of these objectives, that is, the concrete assignment of the POWs to places of employment, was up to the Stalag. The labor detachments (Arbeitskommandos) formed in this way could range in size from a single POW allocated to assist a shoemaker in a village to a massive work detail made up of hundreds or even a few thousand POWs. The total number of labor detachments formed in the Home Command may have been as large as 50,000. Smaller detachments were led by NCOs; larger ones were under the command of an officer.³⁴

During the period of labor deployment, the Stalag commandant remained the superior of the POWs; the employers had no control over the prisoners, apart from professional managerial authority during the work. The commandant’s status as superior officer, however, also implied responsibility. Even if the employer provided housing and rations, it remained the Stalag’s task to verify that matters were properly handled. To this end, the Stalag had control officers, each of whom supervised a district. Nonetheless, the higher the number of deployed POWs and detachments rose, the less able the Stalag was to administer so many detachments by means of control officers. An organizational level below the Stalag and above the individual labor detachments proved increasingly necessary. A starting point for such a development had always existed: officers, as labor detachment commanders, were the disciplinary superiors of their POWs, and, from 1942, control officers, too, were appointed disciplinary superiors of the labor detachments they supervised. In this way, an intermediate level of superiors was created that developed over time.³⁵

In early 1943, a new structure was created, in that the guard battalions no longer just kept watch over the POWs but also assumed personal responsibility for them. Thus, the battalion commander of the Reserve Battalion and, subordinate to him, also the company commanders and section heads became the immediate superiors of the POWs. The guard battalions were now responsible for the guarding, provisioning, and medical care of the POWs as well as their communications with the outside world. Moreover, these battalions had responsibility for the security and maintenance of the wards.³⁶

The control officers, who had increasingly assumed the functions of superiors by the end of 1942, acquired a new range of duties in early 1943 because of reorganization. At the local level, they discharged the functions that the inspector [End Page 6] possessed in the Armed Forces High Command. They were not under the control of the Reserve Battalions but rather directly subordinated to the Stalag commandant; on his behalf, they kept in touch with the labor offices, the police, and the employers. But, only two months later, another change took place: the direct subordination of the control officers to the Stalag commandants was revoked, and these officers were integrated into the Reserve Battalions.³⁷

Even before this change, the regulations for large labor detachments had already provided for a small support unit, consisting of an office, medical facilities, and a paymaster’s office. Now the respective company areas of authority were given a minicamp structure. Clothing storerooms and clothing repair shops, as well as detention rooms, had to be set up in all company sections, and responsibility for the facilities already in existence was transferred to the companies. In this way, an organizational structure that covered day-to-day needs came into being below the Stalag level, making contact between the Stalag and the POWs housed in a labor detachment—a miniature Stalag, to a certain extent—largely superfluous. A POW in the Home Command who was deployed outside the main camp lived not so much in a Stalag as in an environment created by the Reserve Battalion at his deployment site.³⁸

The third, yet unmentioned, group of duty stations that were subordinate to the commander of POWs consisted of German-staffed labor and supply units. Unfortunately, the history of their establishment and the organization and operations of these units are mostly unexplored; thus, the following remarks can be neither thorough nor detailed.

First, the labor units: in the Home Command, they were generally established under the responsibility of local Stalags unless they were new creations and not the result of reorganizations. Because there were no replacement units for these formations, they must have been permanently assigned to Stalags that were responsible for personnel replacement. As soon as their initial organization was complete, the units were transferred to their regions of deployment—frequently to Norway or to the eastern theater of operations. Construction and labor battalions usually remained in the Home Command, and the specialized units—roofer and glazier battalions—always did so.³⁹

If the supply or labor units remained in the command area of the Commander of the Replacement Army (Befehlshaber des Ersatzheeres, BdE), they were subordinate to the commander of POWs in the administrative chain of command—apparently directly subordinate, but on occasion they were also administratively assigned to the Stalags. With respect to deployment, we can distinguish two configurations: long-term construction projects, possibly in the context of air-raid precautions, on the one hand, and short-term repairs in connection with damage sustained in air raids, on the other hand. Responsible for the former group of measures were the commanders of the regional construction troops, who in turn were subordinate to the Inspectorate of Army Fortifications (Inspektion der Festungen des Heeres); for the latter group, the Defense District headquarters (Wehrkreiskommandos) had responsibility. This dilemma—the need to serve two masters—was resolved as of May 1944 by also subordinating the construction staffs, meanwhile renamed “senior regional construction engineer officers” (Höhere Landes-Bau-Pionierführer), to the Defense Districts.⁴⁰

Little is known about the POW supply units of the Army. They do not appear to have been subordinate to a centralized leadership, and the purpose of their establishment was often localized. There, the POWs may have been primarily employed as “handymen.”

That was the point to which the POW organization in the Replacement Army had developed by October 1944. The reorganization undertaken at that time, however, concerned not the lower levels of the hierarchy but primarily the top-level structure.

THE MILITARY ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT

When the war began, the Field Army, like the Replacement Army, lacked a management organization for POW affairs. Coordination between the units of the Field Army with their collected POWs, on the one hand, and the receiving Stalags in the Home Command, on the other hand, was handled by the Department of Wehrmacht Casualties and POW Administration in the OKW. This allocation of responsibilities remained in effect during the “French campaign” (Frankreichfeldzug); it did not change until October 1, 1940. [End Page 7]

The Quartermaster General Department (Abteilung “Generalquartiermeister”) had been in existence in the Army General Staff since August 1939. It also had a Group 2 for Questions of Executive Authority (Fragen der vollziehenden Gewalt), with a focus on POW affairs. Now, however, it was reorganized. The previous Quartermaster General, Generalleutnant Eugen Müller, assumed responsibility for the administration of justice in the Field Army, as General z.b.V. Next, Generalmajor Eduard Wagner was named the new Quartermaster General, a position he retained until his suicide on July 23, 1944. The new Military Administration Department (Abteilung Kriegsverwaltung) now acquired a Group Qu4, which developed into the Field Army’s central executive organ for POW administration. It oversaw two theaters of war: (1) France and Belgium in the west and (2) the theater of operations in the east, whose POW organization is discussed below.⁴³

THE PRISONER OF WAR ORGANIZATION IN THE EAST

For the Military Administration Department, the Army Groups (Heeresgruppen) in the eastern theater of war, as the highest military staffs, should have been the immediate points of contact in the field forces. These staffs, however, were designed as operational commands and had no quartermaster departments at first. Supply issues, therefore, were a subject of negotiation between the Military Administration Department and the armies. Considering that there were 11 armies, which were attacking in an area spanning more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles), this procedure soon proved impractical. As a result, outposts of the Military Administration Department were set up in the army groups to serve as intermediary bodies. Later, in December 1941, they were absorbed into the staffs of the army groups as Departments of the Senior Quartermaster (Oberquartiermeisterabteilungen, OQU-Abteilungen); such departments also had a Group Qu2, which was responsible for POW affairs. The armies, on the other hand, had always had Departments of the Senior Quartermaster—and thus also the subject group known as Qu2. Because the subordinate staffs—corps and divisions—did not possess such specialized departments for POW affairs, the Senior Quartermaster Departments of the army staffs represented the forwardmost expert bodies in the POW administration system; they developed into the key positions that were responsible for the organization of POW administration in the eastern theater of war.⁴⁴

Thus, there did exist a chain of command for administrative concerns in the system of POW administration, but, at the same time, there was a need for functional supervision. In preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht had already begun to set up new POW district commandants’ staffs (Kriegsgefangenenbezirkskommandanten-Stäbe), identified by alphabet letters, for deployment in the east in the summer of 1940. Three of them were created in the summer of 1940, 10 followed in the winter of 1940–1941, and 5 more were added in September and October 1941. In total, there were 18 such commands (Führungsstäbe) that were intended for cooperation with the army staffs or the rear commanders, as had been arranged in the “French campaign” as well.⁴⁵

Just as there were initially no senior quartermaster departments in the army group staffs, there were no POW staffs for this command level either. Beginning with the commander of the Rear Army Area South in January 1942, by July 1942, all the army groups were equipped with commanders of POWs. Thus a differentiation was made that had not existed until then: commanders of POWs were installed at each topmost command level, that is, with the army groups, the commanders of the rear Wehrmacht areas (Wehrmachtgebiete), and the Wehrmacht commanders. Subordinate to them in turn were several POW district commandants, each of whom operated at the level of an army.⁴⁶

Both types of POW commands were utilized flexibly. In some cases, a commander of POWs served as the adviser of the commander of an army group, while at the same time a POW district commandant was integrated into the staff of the army group as head of a subject group for POW administration. Even more frequently, district commandants were incorporated into the army staffs. In the rear areas, however, in some cases the district commandants were dependent on cooperation with individual security divisions, which in turn provided the guards for the camps that were under the authority of the district commandant. The chains of command varied widely. The closer to the front a POW facility was deployed, the more tightly it was incorporated into the command structures of the frontline troops. In rear areas, however, the commanders could, indeed, also be the immediate superiors of their camps. Only the functional oversight was always theirs to perform. The situation thus differed markedly from that in the Home Command, where the commanders were always the immediate superiors of their camps.

An additional point of contrast: in the Home Command, the Commanders of POWs were responsible neither for the evacuation of POWs nor for their labor deployment. In the Army’s theater of operations, however, this was precisely the chief task of the leadership entities (Führungsinstanzen) in the system of POW administration. Important topics were the assignment of POW labor detachments to construction projects of the Organisation Todt, the Luftwaffe, or even the Army itself. Such projects could include repairing roads or rail lines, clearing snow, building fortifications, or the like. At the same time, the forwarding of the POWs from the army prisoner collection points (Armeegefangenensammelstellen) to the camps and their further evacuation to the army rear areas (Armeegebiete) or Army areas (Heeresgebiete), or to the OKW area, had to be arranged.⁴⁷

For carrying out these tasks, that is, both for the transfer of the POWs and for labor deployment, various types of POW camps were allocated to the Field Army, as the table on the following page indicates:⁴⁸ [End Page 8]

In all, 191 camps were activated for deployment in the Soviet Union, 121 of them before the invasion began and the rest later. Seven Oflags and 13 Stalags that originally were also established for the eastern theater of war were kept in the Home Command. The most common type of camp was the Stalag—an indication that the labor deployment of the POWs in the theater of operations played an important role. In addition to the facilities listed above, other camps, originally established for other operational areas, were redeployed to the east. They also included camps with Roman numerals as identifiers; however, within six months they all were reorganized as camps with Arabic numeral identifiers.⁴⁹

In contrast to the Home Command, the commandants had no directly subordinate guard battalions available for guarding these camps. One of the tasks of the POW district commandants, therefore, was always to ensure the guarding of the camps and the transports. This may explain why AGSSts and Dulags, as the forwardmost points, were equipped with a budgeted guard platoon, beginning in 1943. Otherwise, guards who were not subordinate to the camp personnel were provided to the camps in accordance with availability.⁵⁰

The following table may give an impression of the size of the guard forces:⁵¹

Strikingly, the table above reveals that volunteers—Ukrainians, generally—were used for guarding their comrades. In the Home Command, this would not have been possible, but here—with Hitler’s official permission—it could be done. Equally surprising is the small number of guards relative to the total number of prisoners. In early 1940, the prisoner-to-guard ratio was four guards per 100 prisoners. This finding is confirmed by descriptions in reports stating that three soldiers had “guarded” 1,000 POWs on a march.⁵² As the front receded, beginning in approximately 1943, the POW organization also changed.

THE FINAL PHASE OF THE FIELD ARMY’S POW ADMINISTRATION

In 1942, after losing ground in the winter, the Wehrmacht had managed to conquer sizable eastward territories in the spring. Beginning in 1943, however, conquest gave way to retreat. This development compelled changes throughout the POW organization. They began first at the command level: the offices of the POW district commandants and the commanders of POWs were abolished in late 1943 and early 1944. In Army Group Center and Army Group North, their range of duties, in part, continued to be performed at first by “representatives for POW administration” (Beauftragte für das Kriegsgefangenenwesen). Six months later, however, these posts also were axed. The tasks of the commanders or district commandants were assumed by the Qu2 groups of the senior quartermasters. The reason for the cuts—besides the shortage of personnel—was probably the fact that, by the fall of 1944, there was hardly an Army theater of operations outside the territory of the Reich.⁵³

At the level of the camps, too, major changes took place. First, a shortage of auxiliary personnel arose, because the frontline units were bringing in fewer and fewer POWs. Consequently, Italian military prisoners were taken from the Home Command to the eastern front, so that in this sense the flow of POWs was reversed.⁵⁴

In addition, the quartermaster general decided to reorganize the fundamental structure of POW administration. Many Dulags and the Stalags designed for permanence were closed; on the other hand, 20 new AGSSts were established. Now the POWs were supposed to be taken by the AGSSts directly to the Stalags in the territory of the Reich, without having passed through Dulags.

On October 1, 1944, when the POW administration systems of the Armed Forces High Command, the Luftwaffe, and the Navy were reorganized, the POW organization of the Field Army was not affected by these changes—for all practical purposes, it hardly existed anymore. Also, in October 1944, the Quartermaster General Department was restructured, and Subject Group Qu4 in the Military Administration Department, which until then had been in charge, was eliminated. The remaining tasks of POW administration were now discharged by Section Qu2 in the staff of the Quartermaster General. The result was a return to the organizational form of POW administration that had existed in the Field Army up until 1940.⁵⁵

THE PRISONERS OF WAR OF THE LUFTWAFFE

The first group consisted of the members of enemy air forces. It included not only air crews that had been shot down but also all other members of enemy air forces who had been taken into German custody in other ways. They were confined in camps of the “Stalag Luft” type, the POW camps of the Luftwaffe. Quantitatively, this was the smallest group; nonetheless, it was always at the center of public interest.⁵⁷ The second group, beginning in 1941, was made up of POWs—mostly Soviet citizens, but, from 1943, Italians as well—who were deployed in supply and labor units of the Luftwaffe. In the third group were the Soviet POWs who, beginning in 1942, served as “auxiliary personnel” (Behelfspersonal) in regular posts, chiefly in air defense, where they replaced up to 30 percent of the German personnel, who could then be deployed at the front.⁵⁸

Two additional groups deserve mention:

• - Labor detachments of POWs who were detailed from Stalags for specific jobs but fundamentally remained the responsibility of the Stalags. The remarks on the Army’s Stalags provide information about this group.

• - Released, primarily Soviet, POWs who worked in the service of the Wehrmacht in return for payment. This group is not part of the subject area of the present work.⁵⁹

THE TOP-LEVEL STRUCTURE OF THE LUFTWAFFE

When the war began, the Luftwaffe had no POW organization, considering the small number of camps. Initially, the camps were subordinate to the department of the Armed Forces High Command that had responsibility for POW administration. By 1942, however, the expansion of the camp system made it necessary to institute a coordinating office. As a result, in April 1942, the commandant of the newly established Stalag Luft 3, Oberst Freiherr Friedrich-Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau, was simultaneously named commander of the POW camps of the Luftwaffe. In the service chain of command, the camps remained subordinate to the respective Luftwaffe administrative command headquarters (Luftgaukommando), but functionally they were now under the management of von Lindeiner-Wildau. This development was the first step toward establishing an independent POW administration for the Luftwaffe. The very first expansion of the Luftwaffe’s POW organization took the same course as the subsequent ones. The first step was not the establishment of a leadership organization that then guided and gave a particular form to the expansion; rather, the leadership organization developed in reaction to the demands made by practical experience.⁷²

In addition, however, from 1941, and particularly from 1943, the Luftwaffe assumed responsibility for another status group: POWs who were transferred from the Army to the Luftwaffe. Presumably, as a result of this expansion of the scope of duties, the dual function of commandant of Stalag Luft 3 and commander of the Luftwaffe’s POW camps was abolished on October 21, 1942, and the office of the Inspector of POW Administration for the Luftwaffe (Inspizient des Kriegsgefangenenwesens der Luftwaffe) was created.⁷³

The Inspectorate of Luftwaffe Construction Troops (LIn 17) had already been created on June 8, 1942, originally for the construction troops who were not POWs. As POWs were now included in the budgeted personnel strength of the Luftwaffe construction and labor units, and thus were permanently subordinate to the Luftwaffe personnel structure, it made sense also to put LIn 17 in charge of the POWs deployed there. Therefore, on May 1, 1943, the responsibility for all POWs of the Luftwaffe, including the airmen in the Luftwaffe Stalags, was transferred, and the name was accordingly changed to “Luftwaffe Inspectorate for Construction Troops and POWs” (Luftwaffeninspektion für Bautruppen und Kriegsgefangene, LIn 17). Luftwaffe Inspectorate 17, as the managerial authority of the POW administration of the Luftwaffe, was, in principle, on an equal footing with the POW administration in the Armed Forces High Command. The POW camps and units were functionally subordinate to it. With respect to service matters, the camps and labor units were subordinate to the respective territorial command authorities of the Luftwaffe; the labor units received their orders from the local Luftwaffe construction staffs.⁷⁴

A purely nominal change took place as of May 1, 1944: in recognition of their accomplishments, all units, forces, and administrative offices of the Wehrmacht whose names contained the word “construction” (Bau) were awarded in its place the term “engineer” (Pionier). Accordingly, Luftwaffe Inspectorate 17 received a new name: Luftwaffe Inspectorate for Luftwaffe Engineers and Prisoner of War Camps (Luftwaffeninspektion für Luftwaffen-Pioniere und Kriegsgefangenenlager).⁷⁵

Weightier changes appeared in the summer of 1944. As a result of the restructuring of Luftwaffe construction, LIn 17 lost its responsibility for the construction units. The same applied to the POWs deployed as auxiliaries with antiaircraft artillery units; they were subordinated to the General for Foreign Personnel of the Luftwaffe. Thus, Luftwaffe Inspectorate 17 had lost responsibility for a large part of “its” POWs by the summer of 1944. Consequently, LIn 17 received a new name in October 1944: Inspectorate of the Luftwaffe Engineers, Reserve, and Transport Escort Detachments (Inspektion der Luftwaffen-Pioniere, Landesschützen und Transportbegleitkommandos).⁷⁶

At first, LIn 17 still retained responsibility for the Luftwaffe’s POWs in the narrow sense, that is, the airmen in the Stalag Luft camps. Here, the situation had already begun to heat up by the spring of 1944 when the mass escape of 76 Western POWs from Stalag Luft 3 (Sagan/Żagań) reinforced the impression that the Wehrmacht, generally, was unable to cope with guarding the prisoners. In March 1944, Göring proposed to Hitler that all POW administration be made the responsibility of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA). The final precipitating event for the reorganization of the entire system of POW administration, however, was the attempt on Hitler’s life on July 20, 1944. All POW camps—not only those of the Army but also those of the Luftwaffe and the Navy—were made subordinate to the already existing office: Chief of POW Administration, which, in turn, was no longer directly under the control of the OKW but of the commander of the Replacement Army—the [End Page 12] Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. In service-related matters, all the camps were under the authority of the commander of POWs in the respective Army Defense District—and thus, in the final analysis, also under that of Himmler as the commander of the Replacement Army. With that, the phase of independent POW administration by the Luftwaffe had ended.⁷⁷

However, by no means did this imply that all the Luftwaffe’s POWs had now been put under the control of the Army. The POWs deployed in the Luftwaffe units continued to be under the authority of the General of Luftwaffe Construction Troops, Chief of Luftwaffe Construction, or, alternatively, under that of the General for Ostland Personnel of the Luftwaffe. It can only be assumed that the POWs deployed in the supply units were also subordinate to the General for Ostland Personnel.

NAVAL PRISONERS OF WAR AND CIVILIAN INTERNEES

When World War II began, there were no guidelines from the Navy leadership for dealing with POWs and selecting the places of confinement for POWs in Navy custody. Such instructions were not issued until one month later, in early October 1939. In them, the Navy made it clear that it was not planning to set up POW camps of its own.⁸⁰

With respect to the procedures for dealing with the prisoners, differences developed between Station Command North Sea and Station Command Baltic. In the sphere of the former—albeit not until February 1, 1940—one accommodation facility in each of the nine section commands (Abschnittskommandos) was named as a temporary holding site for POWs. Station Command Baltic firmly declined to name collection points.⁸¹

The interim accommodations were not incorporated into the budget as permanent establishments for the administration of POWs but rather were improvised installations. They were used not only to house but also to interrogate the POWs, and, thus, they had an additional role as evaluation and interrogation centers. Once the questioning was at an end, the prisoners were transferred to Army POW camps as their destination.

As the number of POWs who were naval personnel was small, in the Navy’s view it presumably was not worth the effort to create a POW organization of its own. Nonetheless it is astonishing that the naval POWs, after the temporary accommodation period, were taken to three different Oflags and three different Stalags. These facilities even included one located in Bavaria, Stalag VII A (Moosburg). This form of [End Page 13] organization was far from convenient, should the Navy at some point be inclined to retrieve “its” POWs. Even so, five months after the onset of the war—and, thus, belatedly—the Navy now had, for its sphere, a fixed procedure. As in the case of the Luftwaffe, labor deployment of the POWs was not envisaged.⁸²

From mid-1940, the expansion of the war to Western Europe meant that the Navy had ports abroad, particularly along France’s Atlantic coast, where German warships could dock and bring captured naval personnel and civilian ships’ crews, possibly passengers as well, on land. Orders regarding their treatment and transport to Germany are not known but reports by former POWs and internees provide a clear picture. The first sizable group of this kind consisted of the approximately 400 members of civilian ships’ crews who arrived in Bordeaux aboard the supply ship Rio Grande in mid-December 1940. They were accommodated in Frontstalag 221 (St. Médard), an Army camp, near Bordeaux. A similar collection point, presumably for prisoners who had been brought on land in Lorient or Saint-Nazaire, was in Vannes, in Frontstalag 183. POWs arriving in Brest, however, were housed in a makeshift camp, guarded by the Army. After a stopover in one of the Frontstalags (111, 112, or 220 near Paris) they were transported from their respective collection sites into the territory of the Reich. Similar transport routes developed for prisoner groups from Norway via Dulag Gotenhafen (today Gdynia, Poland) and from Greece via Thessaloniki. In this interrogation and transit arrangement, the Navy appears merely to have supplied the interrogation teams; regarding the camp infrastructure of the transportation system, however, it relied heavily on the Army.⁸³

The Navy did not have a POW camp system of its own until the beginning of 1941. First, in February 1941, Marlag Milag Sandbostel was established. It was followed, in May 1941, in the west by Marine Dulag Nord, and, in June 1941, in the east by Marine Dulag Gotenhafen for Soviet naval personnel. The reason for this development may have been the growing number of naval POWs and civilian internees. Presumably, however, intelligence-related considerations also played a role. Indeed, at first the temporary accommodation sites on the Baltic and North Sea coasts had been designed as evaluation and interrogation centers. Over the course of 1940, additional collection sites had arisen in foreign countries, thus increasing the need to concentrate the capacities for evaluation and interrogation. While the Army used Dulags primarily as transit facilities, the Navy’s two Dulags had the same function as the Dulags run by the Luftwaffe. The prisoners were not sent elsewhere until the questioning had been concluded. From mid-1941, however, their final destination, the place where they were to spend the remainder of their captivity in Germany, was no longer an Army POW camp; rather, it was Marlag Milag Sandbostel, which very soon was relocated to Westertimke, not far from Sandbostel.⁸⁴

In the service chain of command, the earliest camp, Marlag Milag Sandbostel, was under the control of the Commander of Prisoners of War in Defense District X (Hamburg), that is, an Army administrative office, during the entire period of its existence, until its closure in the fall of 1942. In fact, the camp was merely a subdivision of Army Stalag X B. Only from late 1941, with the relocation from Sandbostel to Westertimke, did the Navy emancipate itself from the Army to the extent that Station Command North Sea now assumed responsibility for the camp. In any case, from the time of their initial organization, the two Dulags had already been under the control of Station Command North Sea or Station Command Baltic. The Navy’s POW administration thus consisted of one Dulag in the west and one in the east as well as a main camp as the “final destination” for all naval POWs. Thus, it had reached its final stage of development, which continued unchanged until the termination of the Navy’s administration of POWs in the fall of 1944.

In service-related matters, the camps were directly subordinate to Station Command North Sea or Station Command Baltic. Functional management was evidently in the hands of the Naval Defense Office (Marinewehramt), though this entity seems to have had no central responsibility and no department or group for POW affairs. Orders of the Chief of POW Administration in the OKW were passed on—generally, with no change in content—to the camps by the functionally responsible departments of the Station Commands. Not even a centralized, Navy-wide personnel management function is identifiable. In general, the Navy seems to have been anxious to keep its own administrative spending for the POWs as low as possible, in part, by repeatedly calling on the Army for support.⁸⁵

In only one area does the Navy appear to have had a prerogative of its own, one that was respected by the other organizations concerned with POW affairs: the Navy was always brought in when the capture or release of naval POWs and civilian internees was at issue.⁸⁶

NONNAVAL PRISONERS OF WAR

Unfortunately, the evolution of the labor deployment of POWs within the Navy can be only sketchily illustrated here. Regarding the Luftwaffe, we know that POWs permanently assigned to the Luftwaffe began to be deployed in that branch as early as 1941. It is unclear when such transfers to the Navy began, as the fundamental provisions for that development are not known. Orders of the Armed Forces High Command dated October 1, 1942, and October 29, 1942, containing standard operating procedures for requesting the services of POWs are available to us, however, and they refer to a practice already in existence: the deployment of Soviet Army POWs with the Luftwaffe and the Navy. Presumably, therefore, the Navy began at some point in 1942, if not earlier, to deploy Soviet POWs as auxiliaries for the Navy.⁸⁷

As in the case of POWs who were naval personnel, there seems to have been no office with central responsibility for auxiliary personnel. The workforce requests submitted by the administrative offices were sent through the Station Commands to the Naval Defense Office/Naval Defense [End Page 14] Department/Section af (Marinewehramt/Marinewehrabteilung/Referat af) and forwarded from there to the Chief of POW Administration. Then “Section af” also undertook the distribution of the assigned POWs to the Station Commands.⁸⁸

The allocated POWs were duly registered by the Station Commands, but this was done only for counterintelligence and propaganda purposes. Initially, there seems to have been no centralized personnel administration function within the Navy. Such a function also may not have been necessary at the outset, because the responsibility for personnel, including the POWs transferred to the Navy, remained in the Army’s hands. In other words, the Stalags that assigned the POWs continued to perform partial functions of both a parent unit and a replacement unit. Accordingly, changes in personal data were reported to the Wehrmacht Information Office by the “home” Stalags rather than the Navy. In addition, once the current deployment of a POW was at an end, he returned to “his” Stalag rather than “his” Navy unit.⁸⁹

From the spring of 1942, however, tendencies toward a greater centralization of the personnel administration system can be discerned. For the entities under its operational control, Station Command North Sea required the submission of reports listing the POW camps and labor detachments in the area and stating whose control they were under, what their composition was in terms of nationality, and what the occupancy figures were. Then, from May 1943, card files for the auxiliary personnel were created in the offices of the Second Admirals of the command areas. In the fall of 1943, these offices also began to control deployment.⁹⁰

To perform the task, Station Command Baltic—meanwhile renamed Navy High Command East (Marineoberkommando Ost)—employed a parent company established for this purpose. For the Soviet POWs deployed in Norway as auxiliary personnel, Dulag Gotenhafen carried out this task. For the area of Navy High Command West (Marineoberkommando West), no distributing point of this kind is known.⁹¹

At first, the POWs were deployed primarily in logistic installations and state-owned enterprises. Then, in April 1943, Soviet POWs also began to be used as auxiliary personnel in naval antiaircraft warfare. Toward the end of 1944, POWs worked for the Navy in AAA units, artillery units, stand-by construction detachments, motor transport battalions, and fortress engineer headquarters and units. They also served as workmen for Navy organizations and ration supply offices.⁹²

After September 1943, another group of POWs, Italian military prisoners, was added. Again, little is known about the particulars of their deployment; it probably differed only slightly from that of the Soviet POWs, however. In the course of 1944, the Italians who were deployed as auxiliaries were given an opportunity (of unknown extent) to be released from captivity by switching to the status of auxiliary volunteer (Hilfswilliger, Hiwi) or Italian soldier in the Wehrmacht. If they refused to resume the fight on the German side, they were sent back to Stalag X B (Sandbostel). The Soviets and the Italians are the only nationalities known to have been deployed with the Navy.⁹³

The POWs who were deployed as auxiliaries constituted only a part, often a small one, of the personnel; hence, these were not POW units featured in this volume. However, because of either reading too much into existing orders or receiving new orders not available to us, a few Navy POW labor units were formed and thus could be included here.⁹⁴

THE END OF THE NAVY’S PRISONER OF WAR ADMINISTRATION

From mid-1944, significant changes began in the Navy, and they also affected the POWs. The Navy Construction Office (Marinebauwesen), like its Luftwaffe counterpart, was made accountable to Organisation Todt. The effect of this development on the reporting lines of the POWs working in these units is not known. Then, on the effective date of October 1, 1944, the POW administration system of the entire Wehrmacht was reorganized, and, as a result, all the Navy’s POW camps came under the control of the respective commanders of POWs in the Defense Districts.⁹⁵

In conclusion, if one compares the Navy’s POW administration with the corresponding organizations of the Luftwaffe and the Field Army, on the one hand, and with the organization of the Armed Forces High Command, on the other hand, several parallels between the POW organizations of the Luftwaffe and the Navy become discernible. They include:

• - In the case of both the Luftwaffe and the Navy, the administrative offices concerned with POW affairs dealt solely with foreign POWs in German custody; they were not responsible for the corresponding group, the German POWs in enemy hands. The POW administration of the OKW, however, was always concerned with both groups at the same time.

• - The Navy and the Luftwaffe had no permanent POW camps outside the territory of the Reich.

• - Neither the Navy nor the Luftwaffe viewed the “own-branch” POWs, that is, the members of hostile naval or air forces, respectively, as a significant labor reserve. For such purposes, POWs were transferred by the Army to both other branches of the Wehrmacht.

There are specific distinguishing features also, however:

• - Labor units that, apart from the supervisory personnel, consisted exclusively of POWs were a rare exception in the Navy.

• - In handling the tasks associated with the POWs, the Navy relied to some extent on the Army, in an apparently amicable collaboration, which was not the case with the Luftwaffe, where the relationship was characterized by competition. [End Page 15]

• - The Navy was the only organizational sector in which there was no centralized responsibility for the enemy POWs.

Thus, among the comparable organizations, the POW administration of the Navy was probably the least clearly developed. Overall, however, it must be said that at the same time it is probably the part of the POW administration system that remains most in need of further research.

GROUPS OF PERSONS IN WEHRMACHT CUSTODY

The POW camps of the Wehrmacht contained not only soldiers but also various groups of civilians held in captivity for a variety of reasons. Without discussing in full the legal differences among these groups, we will indicate below which of these prisoner categories are considered in the present work and to what extent.

Prisoners of War (POWs)

Neither the Hague Land Warfare Convention nor the Geneva Conventions offer a legal definition of the term “prisoner of war”; these agreements merely enumerate the groups they cover. According to international law during World War II, soldiers were the principal group, but members of militia forces were also included if they met the conditions of the international law of war. The central criterion in every respect was the uniform the prisoner wore. The deciding factor in assignment to a home country was not the nationality or citizenship, but the uniform. For this reason, Poles, Norwegians, and others who continued to fight under the British flag after the occupation of their homelands were classified by the Wehrmacht as British, not as Poles or Norwegians.¹¹⁰

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Captured Soviet soldiers being searched and questioned upon their arrival at the POW camp in Lida, July 1941.

USHMM WS #81525, COURTESY OF NARA.

In addition, there were the civilians who took up arms during the occupation process and fought against the enemy: the levée en masse, or mass uprising. The status of “prisoner of war” was also accorded to the civilian members of armed forces, such as the employees of the military administrations or even accredited war correspondents.¹¹¹

Under the Geneva Convention of 1929, captive partisans were not classified as POWs, because they did not satisfy the conditions for this status. The same was true for soldiers serving governments that were not recognized under international law, such as the Free French (Comité national français) under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle. During the war, however, several groups previously classified as partisans were recognized as de facto combatants by the German government and, hence, granted the status of POWs.

On a large scale, the status of POWs changed even as the war progressed. If they were not released permanently—as, most notably, many French soldiers were—but merely temporarily, on various terms, the Wehrmacht’s POW administration continued to keep records on them.¹¹²

Other POWs—especially Soviets and Italians—were indeed released from captivity, but nonetheless they did not acquire civilian status. Rather, they remained under Wehrmacht authority to serve as auxiliary volunteers (Hiwis) in exchange for payment or as soldiers in collaborationist units. These groups and the administrative offices that kept records on them are not considered in the present work, because these individuals were no longer POWs, and these organizational units were not under the control of the POW administration.

The approach taken in the present volume is a pragmatic one: all those who were classified and registered by the Wehrmacht as POWs are included, with no attempt made to evaluate this classification.

CHAINS OF COMMAND

In the Wehrmacht, a superior authority was inherently both authorized to give instructions to the units subordinate to it and responsible for their supply. For example, a division not only led its subordinate forces (Verbände) but also supplied them. Nonetheless, the Wehrmacht was simultaneously organized on a basis of division of labor as well, and parallel to the fundamental subordination there also existed specific, function-related powers to issue instructions. Among the entities to which this applied were the counterintelligence stations, which were responsible for protection against espionage and sabotage at all duty stations within the area of their territorial authority, and the medical service, with its responsibility for health-related matters.

As a result of the war and the associated deployment of units over great distances, a division—to stay with the example cited above—sometimes was no longer able to supply all its units, because the distances between the various sites had become too great. Ultimately, the increasing complexity of these organizational relationships produced a multitude of chains of command, associated with various forms of subordination, such as:

service-related

military

disciplinary

operational

strategic

tactical

military judicial

local or regional

medical

administrative

economic

function-related

technical

individual

Initially, the system of subordinate relationships was so obvious to the members of the Wehrmacht that it apparently was deemed unnecessary to define the term “subordination” (Unterstellung). Then, in December 1941, the Navy endeavored to define the various subordinate relationships, or chains of command. The Armed Forces High Command aligned itself with this course of action in March 1943, so that a uniform arrangement now prevailed throughout the Wehrmacht. The following types of subordination were distinguishable:

• - “Subordination” without any restrictive adjective meant a subordination in every respect, apart from specific function-related authorities and responsibilities, such as those of the counterintelligence service or the medical service. [End Page 19]

• - General subordination could be—and often was—split up into partially subordinate relationships. That pertained particularly to the following:

  • Service-related subordination (truppendienstliche Unterstellung), that is, responsibility for training, education, support, personnel management

  • Operational subordination (einsatzmässige Unterstellung), that is, the specific military use of the respective unit

  • Function-related subordination (fachliche Unterstellung), that is, guidance of the subordinate unit by a professional organization in its specialized military activity

  • Territorial subordination (territoriale Unterstellung), that is, support in matters of supply or administration, etc.

• - Attachment (Angliederung), that is, the subordination of a unit to an “outside” organization regarding special functions, such as administration.

Even at the time the orders were issued, however, it was pointed out that the new arrangements were by no means to be regarded as fixed and inflexible. Consequently, variations, particularly additional splitting up of the chains of command, remained possible.¹¹⁵

Regarding the duty stations of the POW administration, two additional aspects contributed to an unusually pronounced differentiation of the subordinate relationships. Within the POW administration, subordinate relationships did not exist in all respects: the superior authorities under no circumstances had the capability to supply the subordinate duty stations. In addition, as special troops, the units of the POW administration usually were not permanently assigned to a larger military grouping (Verband), and the subordinate relationships changed in accordance with the circumstances. Therefore, typical forms of subordination in the POW administration that are important for the purposes of the present account were as follows:

• - POW camps in the theater of war generally were functionally under the control of a POW district commandant (Kriegsgefangenenbezirkskommandant); for service-related and operational purposes, they were subordinate to a combat unit (Kampfverband); and economically they were dependent on a duty station that was located in physical proximity to the camp.

• - Camps in the territory of the Reich were subordinate to the respective Commander of Prisoners of War (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen) in ordinary service-related matters as well as operationally and functionally. For supply, they were dependent on duty stations tasked by the Defense District (Wehrkreis).

• - The intermediate authorities in the POW administration, that is, the Commanders of POWs or POW district commandants, were subordinate to a command or headquarters (Kommandobehörde) in every respect, with the exception of function-related matters of the treatment of POWs.

Even though the great number of dependent relationships may be difficult for the layperson to grasp, the statement made at the beginning should be repeated here: The Wehrmacht was an organization based on the division of labor, and the offices for POW administration were able to deal with the plethora of persons in charge.

TYPES OF POW CAMPS

In Nazi Germany there existed a great many camps and camp organizations for foreigners, including the POW camps of the Wehrmacht. SS-run concentration camps were designed to be stationary; if they were shut down at their original location, their existence ended. The Wehrmacht’s camp system, in contrast, was characterized by its mobility. When a Wehrmacht camp was relocated from one place to another, it retained its identifier and all its personnel, and the POWs generally were transferred to the new location along with the camp’s organization. In such cases, POWs who were away from a Stalag as part of an outside work detachment generally stayed at their work site, but, in organizational terms, they continued to be assigned to that Stalag. Only when a camp was relocated from one theater of war to another, often far away, did the POWs stay behind. Then they became organizationally affiliated with other camps.¹¹⁶

This principle of mobility affected the naming of the camps as well. POW camps, as a rule, were not named for the place where they were initially organized or stationed; instead, they had numerical identifiers.¹¹⁷ They kept these “names” unless their mission changed. If it did, the camp received a new identifier. The present section also adheres to this organizational principle: it is organized not by location but rather by the military designation of the camp in question.¹¹⁸

At the same time, the term “camp,” as used in the present volume, needs to be defined more precisely. It includes only facilities that were initially organized “in accordance with the budget” (etatmässig) and thus had a Table of Organization, meaning that they were designed to exist on a permanent basis.¹¹⁹ To be clearly distinguished from these permanent camps is a second group: the temporary camps. These were facilities created ad hoc on-site, by entrusting some unit that happened to be available with the running of such a camp. The following three types of temporary camps are distinguishable, based on their intended purpose:

Collection Camp (Sammellager)

Enemy soldiers, after their capture, were taken to improvised collection points by combat elements. The next stop may have been the collection site of a division, from which they were then sent on to the [End Page 20] collection site of the corps. Not until they were handed over to an army prisoner collection point (Armee-Gefangenensammelstelle, AGSSt) did they reach a POW facility in the sense of the present section, that is, a unit of the POW administration that was anchored in the budget. The camps through which the soldier had passed before were improvised facilities—collection camps. According to regulations, they were supposed to exist only if they were needed in the specific situation, but in individual cases it could even take months to close them down. One example is the camps on Crete after the Wehrmacht took control of the island in May 1941. Because the enemy’s command of the sea made it impossible for the time being to transport the Allied POWs, however, the camps remained in existence until December 1941. The transit camp in the port of Piraeus existed for a corresponding length of time, as it had been set up for forwarding the prisoners to Germany.

Forwarding Camp (Weiterleitungslager)

Only the Army had such a dense network of permanent camps that no separate facilities were needed for the regional redistribution of prisoner groups. That was not true for the Luftwaffe and the Navy, whose few camps were reserved for members of enemy air or naval forces, respectively. If these two branches of the Wehrmacht wanted to distribute the POWs given to them as a workforce by the Army and allocate them to the designated “receiver” duty stations, they needed camps as intermediate stops where they could house the prisoners. For the Navy, no such intermediate detention sites are known to have existed; presumably, this branch relied on the Army’s support. The Luftwaffe, however, established its own forwarding camps for this purpose, including those in Büchen, Kaiserslautern, Lechfeld, and Olgeste.

Labor Camp (Arbeitslager)

Because the Army had an extensive network of POW camps and the Navy deployed its POW workforce in a highly decentralized manner, these two Wehrmacht branches needed no camps of this kind. In addition to the decentralized distribution of POWs, the Luftwaffe also handled its POW labor force flexibly, deploying large contingents at varying locations. For this purpose, it set up labor camps, that is, improvised camps, from which the distribution to work sites was managed. These camps were semipermanent structures, representing a middle position between a classical permanent camp and a temporary detention center.

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Soviet POWs captured in battle east of Kiev under German guard in an internment camp, September 1942.

USHMM WS #70192.

These three types of temporary camps are not classified as part of the POW administration in the present section, because they were not permanent, budgeted facilities and were not subordinate to the POW administration.

In organizational terms, at the level below the labor camps—or, for the Army and the Navy, below the Stalag level—were the accommodations of the labor detachments, where the prisoners slept when they were deployed outside the POW camp, which applied to the majority of them. These quarters might be a room diverted from its original use for a small number of POWs, or even an accommodation facility with infrastructure for many occupants. The number of these residential sites—with reference to the territory of the German Reich alone—is estimated to be in the tens of thousands. Given the futility of trying to list even an appreciable part of them, it was decided not to provide information on these sites in the present section.¹²⁰

Improvised camps and housing areas for labor detachments—especially if the facilities were sizable—were indeed called “POW camps” and, where applicable, “Stalags” in the spoken and written language of the Wehrmacht, and in the common parlance of the civilian world as well, although the term was properly applied only to the permanent camps. In individual cases, therefore, it can be difficult to distinguish an “improvised” POW camp from an “authentic” POW camp.¹²¹

But let us return to the permanent camps, the focus of the present consideration. In this context, several terms employed by the Wehrmacht or in the relevant literature need clarification:

Main Camp/Subcamp/Branch Camp

Essentially, a camp had a single camp area (Lagerbereich), in which all the facilities of the camp were situated. If a part of it was separated off for special purposes, perhaps for the housing of officers in a camp for enlisted personnel, this section was known as the “subcamp” (Teillager, TL), while the core area was referred to as the “main camp” (Hauptlager). If the subcamp was located at a physical distance from the central area but remained under the administration of the main camp, it was termed a “branch camp” (Zweiglager, ZL).¹²² [End Page 21]

Satellite Camp (Nebenlager)

This term was initially used as a synonym for “branch camp” but later officially deleted from Wehrmacht usage.¹²³

Entrance Camp; Recruitment Camp (Vorlager)

In the Wehrmacht, this term was employed for two different situations. First, it designated the space occupied by a specific part of a POW camp.¹²⁴ Second, the term referred to special camps for POWs who were candidates for deployment in non-German volunteer units. They were assembled in recruitment camps before being released from war captivity and transferred to the camps for the “eastern legions” and other “volunteer” troops (Legionärslager). Organizationally, they generally were subcamps or branch camps of Stalags subordinate to the POW administration.

German Camp (deutsches Lager)

This term refers to the part of the camp’s territory that was reserved for the German administration.

Shadow Camp (Schattenlager)

This term was used for POW camps that lacked a housing area of their own but merely managed POWs, who were not centralized but rather accommodated in various labor detachments.

General Officer Camp (Generalslager)

This term was in common use, although it was not part of official Wehrmacht terminology. Primarily, general officers, from the Wehrmacht’s perspective, did not constitute a distinct status group; they were merely high-ranking officers whose ranks entitled them to privileged treatment. Only two camps—Oflag IV B and Oflag 64/Z—were set aside explicitly for general officers. Eight other camps also were used to imprison generals for shorter or longer periods of time.¹²⁵

Special Camp (Sonderlager)

This was an official term for regular camps or for sections of such a camp in which special groups were consolidated, such as the French officers from Corsica who hoped to win the support of the Italian government for their Corsica plans, or the anti-German and/or Jewish French officers, whom the POW administration wanted to have concentrated at one place.¹²⁶

Non-German Volunteers Camp (Legionärslager)

These were camps for volunteers (Freiwillige) recruited for service in collaborationist units. They were under the authority of the offices responsible for organizing such units, rather than the POW administration.

Penal Camp (Straflager)

POW camps that had especially harsh living conditions were known as penal, or punishment, camps, both among the POWs and in the academic literature. The terminology of the Wehrmacht did not contain such a term; however, punishment facilities existed in every POW camp.¹²⁷

SS POW Camp (SS-Kriegsgefangenenlager)

The SS had no POW organization of its own, nor did it have permanent (budgeted) POW camps. Labor camps of POWs who had been made available to the SS for projects, such as the Beisfjord camp (Norway) and the sectors for “labor Russians” (Arbeitsrussen) in the concentration camps, were erroneously known colloquially as SS POW camps, for the reasons given above.¹²⁸

In the following remarks, the various types of permanent POW camps are described in greater detail while entries in this volume provide information about each individual camp. One problem must be pointed out in advance: the naming of the camps and the dates of their organization and closure obviously follow rules. Unfortunately, in almost no case do documents exist that address the underlying decision-making. Therefore, in the following, the rules usually had to be inferred from the known data by a process of inductive reasoning.

The order in which the camps are presented is determined by the sequence in which a POW might have experienced them:

Camp for temporary stay (Transitlager):

• - Reception camp (Auffanglager)

• - Army prisoner collection point (AGSSt)

• - Transit camp (Dulag)

Camp for permanent stay:

• - Camp for enlisted personnel and NCOs (Stalag), also forward camp of this type (Frontstalag)

• - Officer camp (Oflag)

• - Internment camp (Ilag)

• - Special camp: repatriation camp (Heilag)

The Stalags and the Oflags are the basic types of Wehrmacht camps; this section’s “Stalag” entry also contains a description of the internal organization of a Stalag, which can be applied to some degree to the other types of camps.

Officer Camp (Offizierlager, Oflag)

Because the Army was the only branch that did not put officers into the Stalags, it was also the only branch that set up special camps for officers—the Oflags, 80 of which were activated during the war. In principle, their structure was the same as that of the Stalags, but they had no department for labor deployment, because officers were not required to perform labor that would benefit the enemy. In addition, the authorized size of the camps was only 1,000 officers, a tenth of the standard occupancy for a Stalag, although this limit was exceeded with increasing frequency and to an increasing extent over the course of the war. Correspondingly, the German permanent staff consisted of only 79 persons, 12 of them officers. Once the POW strength reached a level of 500 officers, at least one guard company was considered necessary. In addition, there were the orderlies for the officers and workers for the camp’s maintenance—in all, around 10 to 20 percent of the officer personnel strength. For the auxiliary personnel, the regulations of a Stalag were in force; for the officers, those of the Oflag applied.¹⁴⁶

The history of the activations took a course like that of the Stalags. At first, Oflags were established only in Reich [End Page 26] territory and were named in accordance with the combination described above: “Defense District number + alphabet letter.” In the first wave were 24 camps, some of which were set up even before the war began, with most established by the end of 1939.¹⁴⁷ They were unevenly distributed across the territory of the Reich: in the Defense Districts located farthest to the east, districts I, XX, and XXI, not a single Oflag was deployed.

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Allied POWs cheer as tanks from the American 6th armored division arrive to liberate them, Bad Sulza, April 1945.

USHMM WS #46518, COURTESY OF NARA.

Then, in a second wave in May and June 1940, immediately after the occupation of Belgium and the Netherlands, the Army established officer camps in a foreign country for the first time: Oflag Holland A and Oflag Holland B. After that, letters of the alphabet were no longer used to identify the Oflags, presumably for the same reasons as in the case of the Stalags.

In the third deployment wave, between May and September 1940, another 25 Oflags were added to house the large number of French, Belgian, and Dutch officers who were taken to Germany after the fighting ended. In the remaining years, only four more Oflags were activated in the territory of the Reich.

The fourth wave saw the creation of 12 Oflags, created in preparation for the operation in the east. Like the corresponding Stalags, they received an Arabic number as an identifier, beginning at 52, skipping a few numbers, and ending at 78. Three of them remained in Reich territory and were given the Defense District/alphabet letter combination as a supplement; however, most of them—one of them later shifted back into Reich territory—did not receive the add-on.¹⁴⁸

All the Oflags of 1941 were new organizations. Half of them, however, were not used for housing officers; instead, they held NCOs and enlisted ranks, apparently because the Wehrmacht granted the appropriate treatment to far fewer officers than it originally had planned. In this respect, it was logical that these Oflags, from October 1941, were either converted into Stalags or closed.

In 1943, four more “Arabic” Oflags came into being, including three with numbers from 6 to 10, skipping some numbers; they did not follow the count that had been customary until then. These camps were established for special purposes, such as housing Polish POWs from the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.¹⁴⁹

The sixth wave consisted of eight “Arabic” Oflags, initially organized in 1944 and interlocking with the old counting system, starting at 52. Thus, in the result, around one-third of all Oflags with Arabic numerals were not established until 1944—an unusually large share, in comparison with the activation history of other camp types.

Considering the history of the closure figures, it is striking that around a third of all Oflags were closed or reorganized in 1942—presumably, the result of a process of adapting the system to altered circumstances. Another third of the camps were closed in 1943 and 1944. The final third of them remained in operation until the end of the war.

Repatriation Camp (Heimkehrerlager, Heilag)

As the regulations for the repatriation camps, Army Manual (Heeresdienstvorschrift, H.Dv.) 38/8a explained the purpose of this facility, “The Heilag is the receiving center for German repatriates and the distributing center for enemy repatriates.” For German returnees, however, a Heilag was not only a place of welcome but also a screening site, for it was “to be anticipated that undesirable elements will also try to come to Germany via the Heilag.”¹⁵⁶

The following were candidates for repatriation even before the end of the hostilities:

• - Seriously ill and wounded men who had been proposed for repatriation by medical commissions

• - Protected personnel, that is, physicians, medical orderlies, and clergymen

• - Civilians whose retention was no longer of interest.

The repatriation camps in the territory of the Reich were subordinate to the Defense Districts, and those in occupied territory to the military commanders. No such camps existed in the Army’s zone of operations or in the Luftwaffe and Navy.¹⁵⁷

During the hostilities, Heilags were supposed to have a capacity of 150 persons per transit direction, that is, 300 in total. After the end of the fighting, the transit number was supposed to increase to 1,000 persons per direction. In exceptional cases, civilian internees were also supposed to be exchanged through these camps. In terms of their equipment, repatriation camps were not designed to accommodate people waiting for exchange for a lengthy period; their stay was [End Page 28] intended to be as short as possible. The number of personnel at a Heilag was correspondingly small: 30 people, including 9 officers.¹⁵⁸ In addition, Heilags were, if at all possible, supposed to be stationed near the border with a neutral state through which the exchange could then be handled.

As the repatriation camps are presumably the group of POW camps on which the least research has been done thus far, the level of knowledge about them is rudimentary at best. The author is not even aware of a complete list of all the Heilags—only those in which foreign POWs were housed could be verified. The following remarks, in accordance with the basic approach of the present section, confine themselves to the repatriation camps that were used for the transit of foreign POWs. Camps for German repatriates are taken into consideration only if they are important for the understanding of systematic relationships.

Empirical findings suggest that the reality did not correspond to the standards of the regulations, which preserved the spirit of World War I, during which exchanges of small contingents of POWs had repeatedly been carried out. The camps were indeed planned for transit in both directions; however, that seems to have hardly ever been the case. The progress of events also served as an obstacle to transit of that kind. After the capitulations or ceasefires in Poland in September and October 1939, and in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in May and June 1940, the German POWs had to be immediately set free by their detaining powers. Heilags did not yet exist at this time; they were not activated until June 1940. For this reason, most of the Polish POWs were released into their homeland even before the beginning of the invasion of France, without being channeled through repatriation camps.

The first Heilags were organized in June and July 1940 in Defense District V, at the border with France, for the repatriation of the French POWs who were permitted to return home after only a few months of captivity.¹⁵⁹ The same is true for Heilag XVII A, in the southeastern part of the Reich, with respect to the Yugoslav POWs. For naming the camps, the tried-and-true pattern of “Defense District + alphabet letter” was employed.¹⁶⁰ After only a few months, the Heilags in Defense District V were shut down again, and camps in occupied France for transfer into the unoccupied zone were created instead—named for towns, because these were camps in a foreign country.¹⁶¹

As of 1942, camps were activated for foreign POWs in transit only in Defense Districts IV, VIII, and XXI. Some received Roman numerals as identifiers, while others were named for the deployment site. No reasons for the differences in naming methods are known.

The first camps organized still tended to comply with the demand that Heilags should be located near the border—they had a spatial link to the departing POWs’ country of destination. However, the subsequent camps, beginning in 1942, were established in the eastern and southeastern parts of the Reich without any geographic connection to an exchange route. Only one Heilag was stationed in a port city.¹⁶²

Because the Heilags were sparsely manned—with too few personnel to handle the regular camp operations alone—they generally had organizational support from other POW camps, although they retained their independence in terms of management. In addition, there were Heilags that were designated as subcamps or branch camps and, hence, were not independent. The question why they were not all run as subcamps, given their small scale, remains unanswered.¹⁶³

Besides the 12 independent repatriation camps for foreign POWs, there existed other Heilags that were subcamps:

• - Heilag Lissa (Leszno), Grune subcamp of Oflag XXI C, Schildberg (Ostrzeszów)

• - Heilag Mühlberg, subcamp of Stalag IV B, Mühlberg

• - Heilag Schildberg, subcamp Heilag XXI of Oflag XXI C, Schildberg.

For the few Heilags below, documents indicate that they were used for transit in both directions:

• - Heilag Lissa

• - Heilag V B, Strasbourg

For the sake of completeness, mention is made here of the following repatriation camps for German soldiers, verified during the research:

• - Heilag II A, Güstrow

• - Heilag VII/2, Traunstein

• - Heilag Heilbronn

• - Heilag Stettin (Szcecin)

Finally, it should be pointed out once again that a considerable amount of research remains to be done on the topic of repatriation camps.

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Allied POWs, imprisoned in a camp near Hammelburg, cheer as an American tank crashes through the barbed wire enclosure of the prison camp, April 8, 1945.

USHMM WS #83801, COURTESY OF NARA.