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

The Wehrmacht established Oflag IV B on October 14, 1939, in Königstein, in Defense District (Wehrkreis) IV. The camp was located in the Königstein Fortress (Festung Königstein), just west of the town itself, about 48 kilometers (30 miles) southeast of Dresden along the Elbe River. Oflag IV B was subordinate to the Commander of Prisoners of War in Defense District IV (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen im Wehrkreis IV).¹

The Königstein Fortress, built in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and covering an area of 9.5 hectares (23.475 acres), had previously been used as a prisoner of war camp during both the Franco-Prussian War and World War I. During both world wars, it functioned as an officers’ camp (Oflag). The upper areas of the fortress were reserved for the higher-ranking officers, while the lower-ranking officers and orderlies were kept further down in the casemates. The orderlies slept 14 men to a room, with the high-ranking officers in much less cramped quarters. However, the prisoners (including the orderlies) enjoyed a relatively high level of freedom of movement within the camp and were able to interact with one another readily.² The commandant of the camp between February 1941 and April 1942 was Generalleutnant Friedrich Genthe.

The first prisoners to arrive at Oflag IV B were Polish officers captured during the German invasion of Poland in September 1939; among them were some of the highest-ranking Polish officers in German captivity. By December 1939, there were 213 Polish officers and 59 orderlies in the camp. In the spring of 1940, the Polish officers were transferred out to other camps and replaced by French officers. After that time, the camp’s population consisted of predominantly French officers; however, small numbers of officers of a variety of other nationalities (including Belgian, British, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Serbian, Slovak, and Soviet) were intermittently present in the camp. After the departure of the Polish prisoners in 1940, Oflag IV B remained a very small camp, with the total population of prisoners and orderlies rarely exceeding 200.³ Oflag IV B held some of the highest-ranking Allied officers in German captivity—including French Generals Henri Giraud and René Prioux, and General Otto Ruge, the highest-ranking general in the Norwegian Army. Since officers could not be compelled to work under the Geneva Convention of 1929, there were no work details (Arbeitskommandos) attached to this camp, and the prisoners remained within the main camp.

Conditions in the camp were generally relatively good; housing was adequate and prisoners received sufficient food rations and medical care. A Red Cross report from November 16, 1944, noted that the prisoners had sufficient fuel for heating their quarters and that hygiene and food supplies were good but that some prisoners lacked sufficient clothing.⁴ The prisoners’ recreation activities were somewhat limited by that time, and discipline was considered strict. As French orderly Michel Bernin noted in a September 1942 LIFE magazine article, written after his repatriation from the camp, the prisoners realized soon after their arrival in the camp that they were under constant surveillance through microphones placed throughout the camp by the Germans.⁵ Conditions became harsher after the famous escape of General Giraud—who lowered himself down from a window in the camp on a makeshift rope—on April 17, 1942.⁶

Despite the strict discipline in the camp, there were few reports of abuse by the German guards. One notable exception, however, was the murder of French general Gustave Mesny, who was shot in the back by SS men in Wehrmacht uniforms during a sham transfer to Oflag IV C in Colditz on January 19, 1945. Mesny was allegedly killed in retribution for the death of German general Fritz von Brodowski in French captivity on October 28, 1944.⁷ After Brodowski’s death, [End Page 236] Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, the chief of the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW), declared “we can do that too!” (“So was können wir auch!”) and began drawing up a list of potential victims among the Allied officers in German captivity (ostensibly on a verbal order from Hitler).⁸ The direct order for the killing was given by SS-Oberführer Friedrich Panzinger on behalf of the head of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt), SS-Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, on November 18, 1944.⁹

Oflag IV B was liberated by French forces on May 8, 1945. Some of the prisoners had been transferred to Oflag IV D in Elsterhorst prior to its liberation.¹⁰ Friedrich Panzinger was held in Soviet captivity from 1946 to 1956 and committed suicide in 1959 after being arrested and charged for his involvement in General Mesny’s murder.¹¹ In 1961, SS-Oberführer Hans Jüttner—who had already served four years in prison on war crimes charges—was also investigated by the Baden-Württemberg State Office of Criminal Investigation (Landeskriminalamt Baden-Württemberg) for his role in Mesny’s killing; however, the case was abandoned due to lack of evidence. Jüttner died in 1965.¹²