Where to find a list of Stalag Luft camps?

[MIflyer]

A friend of mine is looking for info on the camp where his uncle was in the ETO. His uncle flew P-51's and went down in France not long after D-Day.

 

[pb43]

A friend of mine is looking for info on the camp where his uncle was in the ETO. His uncle flew P-51's and went down in France not long after D-Day.

The main camps, also lots of sub-camps:-

Stalag II-D Stargard Stalag III-A Luckenwalde Stalag IV-B Mühlberg Stalag VII-A Moosburg Stalag VIII-A Görlitz Stalag 344 Lamsdorf Stalag VIII-B Teschen Stalag IX-C Bad Sulza Stalag X-B Sandbostel Marlag und Milag Nord, Westertimke Stalag XI-A Altengrabow Stalag XI-B Fallingbostel Stalag XIII-C Hammelburg Stalag XIII-D Nürnberg Stalag XX-A Thorn Stalag XX-B Marienburg Stalag XXI-D Posen
POW camps for air force personnel	Stalag Luft I Barth Stalag Luft II Litzmannstadt Stalag Luft III Sagan Stalag Luft IV Gross Tychow Stalag Luft VI Heydekrug Stalag Luft 7 Bankau
POW camps for officers	Oflag IV-C Colditz Castle Oflag VII-B Eichstätt Oflag 79 Brunswick

 

[Snautzer01]

A friend of mine is looking for info on the camp where his uncle was in the ETO. His uncle flew P-51's and went down in France not long after D-Day.

Asumming the man in question is dead try Find a Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records
Or fold3.com or get the marc number

 

[MIflyer]

Thank you! I did find an list on line, and boy, did the Germans have a lot of POW camps! I believe that in the town my friend mentioned as being the one where his uncle was kept they actually had three Stalag Luft camps.

 

[Barrett]

Just occurred to me: since the Luftwaffe controlled aircrew POWs, what about naval? Did the Kriegsmarine have any Stalags? Probably not much potential there...

 

[MIflyer]

Did the Kriegsmarine have any Stalags? Probably not much potential there...

Good question. But on the other hand, how many opportunities were there for the Kriegsmarine to capture enemy troops? There were some U-Boats that took on survivors of Allied ships but that was comparatively rare, I would think. Things were crowded enough on those tubs. And I think their surface ships were always too heavily engaged to bother with rescues of enemy sailors

An exception to the Stalag Luft versus Stalag camps was Colditz. I have been reading the book by the RAF pilot who owns the cooler record, Peter Tunstall, The Last Escaper, and Colditz had a whole variety of Allied officers, including a larger group of Dutch officers who refused to sign an agreement refusing to fight the Germans after the country surrendered (they were by far the best dressed POWs). Of course, Colditz was the camp of for the hard cases that could not be deterred from escaping, so it was a special case, and its first commandant was a comparatively gentle officer who regarded the POWs under his charge as a university president might view an unusually troublesome fraternity.

I am surprised at how much the Germans put up with. After one failed escape Tunstall was given a warning by a German who had been a POW under the British in WW1 that his time was up. After that two troops with MP-38's marched him out into the woods and he turned and lectured them on how they would be hung after the war if they killed him, and they marched him back inside.

And I am surprised how the Germans would hold courts martials for prisoners who had been too naughty. Did they think that would transfer over to the Allied services postwar or was that merely Teutonic thoroghness?

I do strongly recommend the Tunstall book, too.