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

The Wehrmacht established Stalag VII A (map 4f) on September 22, 1939, in Landeshut, Germany, in Defense District (Wehrkreis) VII, and deployed it to Moosburg an der Isar. It was subordinate to the Commander of Prisoners of War in Defense District VII (Kommandeur der Kriegsgefangenen im Wehrkreis VII).¹

The first commandant of the camp was Oberst Hans Nepf. He was succeeded by Oberst Franz Winniwarter on January 5, 1943. The third and final commandant was Oberst Otto Bürger, who took over on October 21, 1943. The camp was guarded by men from the 435th, 436th, 438th, 439th, 440th, 441st, 445th, 506th, 512th, 529th, 530th, and 531st Reserve Battalions (Landesschützenbataillone) as well as personnel from Reserve Battalions VI, XII, and XIX/VII.²

Stalag VII A was originally established to hold Polish prisoners of war (POWs) captured during the invasion of Poland in 1939; until December 1939, it also held a few hundred Polish civilians. British and French POWs began to arrive in 1940, followed by Yugoslav prisoners in the spring of 1941. Soviet prisoners entered the camp in the summer of 1941, Americans in 1942; more American and British prisoners passed through the camp in the fall of 1943, as it became a transit camp for prisoners being transferred from POW camps in Italy to camps in the Reich. Italian, Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Slovakian prisoners also joined the camp population, in addition to small numbers of Brazilians, British Indians, and Hungarians.

Stalag VII A was one of the largest POW camps in Germany; the maximum population was approximately 78,900 prisoners, the majority of whom were French.³ However, the actual number of prisoners in the camp at a given time was much lower than the listed population, as most of the prisoners were sent out to the hundreds of work details (Arbeitskommandos) subordinate to the camp.

The first commandant, Oberst Nepf, was 63 years old when he took charge of the camp. He was a veteran of World War I and not a member of the Nazi Party.⁴ During his [End Page 439] tenure, from 1939 to 1943, he generally treated the prisoners well and tried to prevent mistreatment by his subordinates and other German authorities, including the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst) and Gestapo. Nepf expressed an unfavorable opinion of the final commander of the camp Oberst Bürger. He blamed Bürger for the poor reputation the camp acquired later in the war, although he acknowledged that some of the circumstances Bürger faced (particularly the extreme overcrowding of the camp late in the war) were beyond his control.

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Stalag VII A at Moosburg. Prisoners walking to the camp kitchen, November 1939.

COURTESY OF ICRC.

The conditions faced by Polish POWs in 1939 and 1940 were difficult. In the first months of the camp’s existence, the prisoners lived in tents while they built the camp facilities. Prisoners from the Western Allied nations, as well as Yugoslavia, were generally treated in a manner that followed the protocols laid out by the Geneva Conventions of 1929. They were housed in decent conditions and given sufficient food, and the behavior of the guards toward them was mostly civil. However, late in the war, as the camp became more and more crowded, conditions began to deteriorate. In the final months of the war, when evacuees from the camps in the east and prisoners from the battles on the western front arrived, there was a sharp decline in conditions in the camp, which badly affected the welfare of the prisoners.

The prisoners lived in wooden barracks of various sizes, segregated by nationality into compounds that were separated with barbed wire. The barracks were initially sufficient for the camp’s population, but after the invasion of the Soviet Union, and particularly after the Italian campaign, the camp became overcrowded. The men slept in wooden bunks with straw mattresses; later, as overcrowding in the camp worsened, some prisoners were forced to sleep on piles of straw on the floor, while others were forced to live in tents.⁵ Heat was provided by wood or coal-fired stoves. Despite German attempts to fumigate the barracks, the prisoners’ quarters were usually filled with lice, fleas, and other vermin. Water was supplied by pumps located throughout the camp and was generally adequate in quantity until the last part of the war.

The rations the Western prisoners received were generally sufficient in quality and quantity early in the war. Even in 1943, when American prisoners arrived in the camp, rations were still at an acceptable level. However, by January 1945, the decline in quantity and quality of food threatened the prisoners’ health. American private Herbert Abraham noted that the food he received was insufficient in quantity, consisting of 250 grams (almost 9 ounces) of bread and a cup of soup a day, supplemented with a little bit of cheese or margarine and a little bit of meat once a week.⁶ Malnutrition and intestinal problems related to the poor quality of the food (including moldy bread and sausage) took its toll on the prisoners. American second lieutenant Robin E. Hill testified that he lost about 35 pounds in a span of just over 10 weeks.⁷

The sanitary facilities, like the housing and food situations, were initially adequate for the prisoners in the camp. Enough water was available for them to wash outside their barracks, though lice remained a problem. However, American prisoners arriving at the camp in 1944 and 1945 noted that the water supply at the camp had become so strained that they barely had enough water to drink, much less wash themselves or their clothes.⁸ The prisoners were deloused upon arrival, but the effect was minimal.

The camp had a hospital, staffed mostly by prisoner doctors with a German commanding officer. By 1945, the hospital was badly lacking in medical supplies; its pharmacy had fared slightly better and decent stocks of basic medications were maintained, though the doctors were almost entirely dependent on the Red Cross for medications. The hospital barracks were poorly heated, due to a shortage of coal, and the food there was reported by international observers to be even worse than that provided in the main camp. The hospital was badly overcrowded, with 1,150 prisoners present as of January 27, 1945, several times its intended capacity. Nonetheless, the general state of health of the prisoners was reported to be satisfactory, though the pressures of overcrowding, inadequate sanitary conditions, and poor diet were felt; among the most seriously ill were 15 Yugoslav prisoners suffering from tuberculosis.⁹ Separate hospital facilities existed for the men in the work details. These were located at Landshut, Mühldorf, and Munich; more serious cases were taken to the Reserve Hospital (Reserve Lazarett) for POWs in Freising.

Although Allied prisoners were generally treated decently by the Germans, numerous Allied soldiers reported mistreatment by camp personnel at Stalag VII A. Several former prisoners testified that the guards had used police dogs to rouse sleeping prisoners from their beds or to punish them for unruly behavior.¹⁰ Another frequent subject of complaint was the German Sonderführer Krüger, who was in charge of the American camp; he was notorious for allowing his subordinates to beat American prisoners and for taking part in the beatings himself. Other incidents of a more serious nature were also reported. Private William J. Harrington stated that he met an English soldier who had been shot in the back by a [End Page 440] German guard after he had protested the beating of a Soviet prisoner.¹¹

Western Allied prisoners belonging to racial or religious minorities were subject to harsher treatment than their compatriots. Jewish prisoners in the camp were placed in separate barracks; the Germans claimed that their separation from the other prisoners was in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Conventions that prisoners of different races and nationalities be housed in separate areas. This practice was ended, at least in the American sector of the camp, after a complaint by the American man of confidence to the Red Cross. One hundred and fifty French Jews were not as fortunate, as they were sent to Stalag 383 in Hohenfels in late 1944 or early 1945.¹² In March 1945, American 1st lieutenant Stephen H. Wurtz saw a German guard randomly shoot an African American private. The man had been mending the wire in a fence under the supervision of a German guard when another shot him in the back of the head with a rifle at close range.¹³

The prisoners at Stalag VII A were put to work on a variety of tasks by the German authorities. The work to which these men were assigned was frequently very hard, including agricultural labor and unloading supplies from railcars. The men were often beaten and prodded with rifle butts by the German guards if they did not work quickly enough or follow instructions given only in German. Officers who exercised their right, under the Geneva Conventions, not to work were sometimes beaten for this “offense” as well.¹⁴ Furthermore, men in the work details faced hazards not experienced by those prisoners living in the main camp, such as exposure to air raids.

As in other camps, Soviet POWs were treated cruelly, with no regard for the Geneva Conventions. They were subjected to deliberate starvation, given virtually no medical care, and often beaten or shot by German camp personnel for no reason. Many starved, froze to death, or died of diseases such as typhus during the winter of 1941–1942. Even after this most lethal phase of the war for Soviet prisoners, the Soviets in Stalag VII A still faced awful conditions. They lived in unheated, severely overcrowded barracks (300 men in a barrack intended for 65) and were practically starved to death.¹⁵ The inhumane treatment they received resulted in a high mortality rate relative to other prisoners; of the approximately 1,000 prisoners who died at Stalag VII A during the war, 800 of them were Soviets.

The Munich Gestapo was responsible for selecting “undesirable” Soviet prisoners, including Jews, political commissars, and members of the Communist Party. As of November 26, 1941, 3,578 Soviet POWs had been inspected and 455 had been taken out of the camp. Of these, 267 were sent to Dachau and 188 were sent to Buchenwald, where they were executed immediately upon arrival.¹⁶ In late November 1941, Oberst Nepf attempted to have the selections stopped, but the effect was short lived. He testified after the war that the Gestapo may have taken as many as 1,500 Soviet prisoners to Dachau and Buchenwald by the end of the war.¹⁷

Late in the war, Stalag VII A became a “dumping ground” for prisoners of various nationalities whom the Germans had evacuated from other camps farther east. Then, on April 20, 1945, as American forces approached from the west, the Germans began evacuating the prisoners from Stalag VII A. They marched in the direction of Munich in columns of 500 to 600 men; their likely destination was Dachau, along with a number of prisoners who were being marched in that direction from Buchenwald and Flossenbürg.¹⁸ An untold number died along the way. The American 14th Armored Division liberated Stalag VII A on April 29, 1945.