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

The Wehrmacht established FStGA 19 in April 1943 by the conversion of Field Penal Camp (Feldstraflager) III—which [End Page 633] had been created by Defense District (Wehrkreis) IV in Armed Forces Prison (Wehrmachtgefängnis, WG) Torgau-Fort Zinna on August 1, 1942—into a FStGA.¹ Prior to this conversion, the 237 remaining prisoners in Feldstraflager III had been transferred to Feldstraflager I. The decision to convert this unit was the result of the increasingly dire shortage of manpower at the front. The transfer of prisoners deemed “incorrigible” from the Field Penal Camp to the front was an attempt to alleviate this shortage.² These prisoners were transferred to the FStGAs with the hope that they could eventually be reformed and sent to “front probation,” where they would serve with a regular combat unit.

FStGA 19 was initially attached to Army Group North (Heeresgruppe Nord) and was deployed near Leningrad, where the prisoners worked on the construction of bunkers and defensive positions as well as retrieving dead and wounded soldiers.³ It operated under the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) guidelines, which are discussed in detail in FStGA 1. The guiding principle of those instructions—that the prisoners were to be kept “under the hardest living and working conditions”—led to a high number of escape attempts, absences without leave, and other types of avoidance of service in FStGA 19.⁴

Thirteen prisoners from FStGA 19 were executed in the period from June to December 1943. Johann Waldmann (b. July 21, 1910), Heinrich Lathan (b. October 6, 1922), and Heinz Mitzner (b. July 23, 1921) were executed for desertion on June 9, 18, and 22, 1943, respectively, after being sentenced to death by the court of the 58th Infantry Division.⁵ On August 10, 1943, Kurt Brichta (b. June 3, 1921) and Kurt Steinert (b. January 30, 1914) were executed by firing squad. The court of the 21st Infantry Division had sentenced both men to death for “collective subversion of fighting power” (Wehrkraftzersetzung) under §5, Abs. 1 (3) of the Special Wartime Military Code (Kriegssonderstrafrechtsverordnung), which dealt with withdrawal from military service “through deceptive, calculated means.”⁶ Adolf Klosa was shot for desertion in Volosovo (Leningradskaia oblast’) on August 18, 1943, after he was sentenced to death by the court of the commander of the Eighteenth Army Rear Area (Kommandeur des rückwärtigen Armeegebiets, Korück, 583).⁷ The next two death sentences came from the court of the 24th Infantry Division. Hans-Joachim Wähling (b. February 5, 1924) and Günther Krautwald (b. November 7, 1920) were sentenced to death for desertion and executed on August 23 and September 13, 1943, respectively.⁸ Three other soldiers were executed as a result of verdicts issued by the court of the I Army Corps (I. Armeekorps): Heinrich Schwarz (b. May 22, 1919) on September 28, 1943, Kurt Lüttich (b. April 24, 1921) on October 29, and Friedolin Haus (b. April 19, 1924) on November 1. Schwarz and Haus had been convicted of desertion, while Lüttich had been convicted of withdrawal from military service “through deceptive, calculated means.”⁹ Christian Sopp was executed on November 5, 1943, for desertion after he was sentenced to death by the court of the 24th Infantry Division. Karl Eichler was convicted of “absence without leave” by the court of the Eighteenth Army and sentenced to death on December 18, 1943.¹⁰

Although FStGA 19 applied a “concept of punishment and deterrence” in the treatment of its prisoners, it also pursued the goal of reforming the prisoners so that they could be used “again as useful, dutiful, honorable soldiers with the fighting troops,”¹¹ which represented a “concept of reform and education.”¹² The application of such a concept was based on an order from the Eighteenth Army High Command (Armeeoberkommando, AOK 18) from May 14, 1943. Under this order, prisoners who exhibited good behavior (referred to as “climbers”) were to be “brought up, equipped, and educated for the so-called ‘deployment groups [or] platoons.’” AOK 18 noted that these prisoners were “intended for combat deployment, for example [in] anti-partisan warfare.”¹³ In FStGA 19, the formation of these “deployment platoons” apparently occurred in the 5th Company. On June 23, 1943, its “provisional strength” was listed as 1 officer, 17 noncommissioned officers, 33 other staff personnel, and 166 prisoners.¹⁴ On July 12, 1943, its “combat strength” included 1 officer, 9 noncommissioned officers, 4 additional staff personnel, and 128 prisoners.¹⁵

Until January 1944, an “intervention company,” which was separated from the “deployment platoons,” was assigned to the 24th Infantry Division for “cleaning up” a “deep breakthrough,”¹⁶ as its temporary commanders Hans von Tettau and Kurt Versock later recorded. “Probationary Company 19, formed out of FStGA 19,” led by Tettau and Versock, was trapped in this counterattack together with the 225th Füsilier-Bataillon. Nevertheless, it was able to “free itself from a constantly attacking enemy in full sight” and, together with the 225th Füsilier-Bataillon, “fight [its way] back,” along with all wounded prisoners, who were transported with them. In February 1944, “climbers” from FStGA 19 were combined with those from FStGA 4 in a temporary “Army Group-Probationary-Battalion I,” which was transferred to “security on Lake Peipus.”¹⁷

The example of a sailor named Fan indicates how the use of prisoners in an “intervention company” was intended to work from the military leadership’s perspective. Fan had been sentenced to three years in prison for violently attacking a superior while drunk. As a member of the “intervention company” of FStGA 19, he was wounded by grenade fragments on July 18, 1944. As a result, on January 5, 1945, the Naval High Command (Oberkommando der Marine, OKM) granted him a conditional suspension of his sentence for “probation on the front” with Probationary Unit (Bewährungstruppe) 500. One of Fan’s accomplices had already been transferred from FStGA 19 to Probationary Unit 500 in November 1944.¹⁸

The existence of the “intervention company” shows that FStGA 19 achieved “successful reforms” and transformed prisoners into useful soldiers. However, this was only true for some prisoners. For example, the case of Kanonier Martin Krammer demonstrates that many prisoners from FStGA 19 were not capable of being successful soldiers after constant [End Page 634] hunger, long hours of physical labor, and other hardships. It was noted that “in January 1944 [he had not taken] the available opportunity to prove himself in the intervention company.”¹⁹ Due to his constant reticence—primarily due to hunger—Krammer was detained and transferred out of the unit and was “deployed to digging work at the front line”²⁰ with FStGA 19. The sentence he received later for subversion of fighting power noted:

He went, however, very slowly, required all of maybe five minutes rest, and explained to the noncommissioned officer: “If it is too slow for you, then order a car. And if you shoot me dead, I’ll go as it suits [me].” … [When] the officer of the court wanted to question [him], he feigned insanity; he indicated that he was the Count of Luxembourg, was born in the year 1400, his father had red hair, and so forth. As his company commander … tried to influence him with benevolent persuasion, [Krammer] interrupted him multiple times and demanded a piece of bread in the interest of public health.²¹

Krammer was declared a “simulator” (Simulant) by an army psychiatrist. The court of the XXXVIII Army Corps of the Eighteenth Army sentenced him to death for subversion of fighting power on August 18, 1944. In the verdict, the court-martial also remarked on the morale of the prisoners in FStGA 19, indicating a general concern about increasing defiance by the prisoners: “In the last few months the propensity of prisoners in the FStGA toward insubordination is increasing in dangerous ways. The delinquent portion of the prisoners take the hard battles on the front as cause to act fresh and act in an insubordinate manner toward the [unit] staff.”²²

Perhaps as a deterrent to this trend, Krammer’s sentence was carried out on the day he was convicted. Nine death sentences for desertion and absence without leave had been handed down against members of FStGA 19 between late April and mid-July 1944. However, six of them were commuted to prison sentences of between 10 and 15 years. Only two, Hans Bergemann and Bruno Arnold, were executed, on May 26, and June 1, 1944, respectively. Meanwhile, Heinz Heitmüller, who had been sentenced to death for desertion on July 14, 1944, had escaped and was still at large.²³

In the fall of 1944, FStGA 19 was among the eight FStGAs that were transferred from the eastern to the western front to build defensive positions against the advancing Western Allied troops in the border area with France and the Benelux countries. Under the command of the Nineteenth Army, FStGA 19 was sent to dig trenches, initially in the Vosges, near St. Dié and La Bresse, and then later in the Upper Rhine region.²⁴

In this final phase, FStGA 19 returned to the concentration camp methods that had been used in its previous iteration as Feldstraflager III. The report of Peter Schilling, who was sent to FStGA 19 for desertion in late 1944, indicates the nature of this change:

Upon reaching [the unit], the commander of the F[St]GA curtly and concisely informed me that I would surely not live a long life in his unit. In F[St] GA 19 the murder of prisoners was a daily occurrence. I witnessed, as one of our prisoner attendants ordered a comrade to go out over a pre-marked line—which we were not allowed to cross—to get a leaflet that had been blown from a propaganda grenade. As the prisoner hesitated and pointed out the restricted line, the watchman threatened to shoot him for failure to follow orders. As the prisoner then moved out, he was gunned down from behind as he crossed the demarcation line; that is, “shot during escape.” Similar things occurred daily. In addition, rations were minimal, such that one could speak of an extermination by hunger.²⁵

The reference to a daily occurrence of such “incidents” may be an exaggeration, especially since Schilling was apparently only “in the F[St]GA a very short time,”²⁶ since he fled after being wounded by a shell fragment. Some court-martial executions have been corroborated, however. On November 17, 1944, Paul Hagenow, Helmut Skott, and Max Glöckner of the 3rd Company of FStGA 19 were shot after having been sentenced to death for cooperative desertion by the court of the 708th Volksgrenadier Division in Allarmont.²⁷ On January 9, 1945, prisoners Werner Mensch (b. October 7, 1926) and Ernst Otto (b. June 24, 1910) were sentenced to death by the court of the Nineteenth Army; they were executed on January 29, 1945.²⁸

Werner Krauss was a convicted resistance fighter of the “Red Chapel” (Rote Kapelle), who had been initially sentenced to death by a court-martial before his sentence was commuted to five years’ imprisonment. He cites FStGA 19 as an example of how the FStGAs on the western front were, “along with the personnel, encircled and overrun by the enemy.” He supports his statement with information in the “Secret Reports on the Disposition of the F[St]GA,” which he was able to look through during his duty as a prison scribe (August 1944 to March 1945) of the 7th Company of WG Torgau-Fort Zinna.²⁹ However, no independent sources confirm the details of Krauss’s imprecisely dated account. It is possible that instead of being overrun, many of the prisoners in FStGA 19 voluntarily surrendered to the Allies during their retreat.

Among the last members of the unit, who built trenches and antitank obstacles in the area of Freiburg im Breisgau, were three Communist resistance fighters who had been sentenced to death by a court-martial. Eduard Czamler, Heinrich Schifer, and Johann Schaubmair of Linz had had their sentences commuted to 10 years in prison by Hitler because they had children at home. A so-called Prison Company (Zuchthauskompanie) had been formed in FStGA 19 in late August or early September 1944.³⁰ The three men were transferred into this company from WG Torgau-Fort Zinna on March 1, 1945. Czamler and Schifer were taken prisoner by the French in late April 1945. Schaubmair also survived; he [End Page 635] indicated April 22, 1945, as the end of his internment in the Wehrmacht penal system.³¹