The Prisoner of War Camps

In 1939, the Wehrmacht turned the former SA rally camp into a PoW camp for 30,000 PoWs.

The accessability and infrastructure made Nuremberg-Langwasser an ideal location.

By the end of 1939, 15,000 Polish PoWs had already been interned in the Langwasser camp.

Polish POWS at Stalag XIII A in Nuremberg-Langwasser, 1939/40

Following various campaigns, over 150,000 soldiers from Europe and the USA were interned in the camp through to 1945.

View of Stalag XIII-D for US and British PoWs

The camp, it would appear, after liberation by US forces on April 16th 1945 (there is a US car inisde the camp)

Officers were billeted in their own camp and witnessed the misery of Soviet prisoners whose camp was close by.

A picture taken by a German guard labelled........Russians eating grass

The Russian POW camp in Nuremberg, specifically within Stalag XIII-D at Langwasser, was often regarded as "unofficial" or separate due to the Nazi regime's refusal to grant Soviet prisoners the standard legal protections of the Geneva Convention.

Soviet prisoners working on the March Field guarded by three soldiers

As the Allied forces approached Nuremberg, the German authorities began clearing the camp complexes (including the Soviet camp) and on April 12th, 1945 forced evacuation marches began.
They moved the bulk of the inmates southward toward Stalag VII-A in Moosburg to prevent their liberation by the US Army.

The US forces found roughly 13,000 POWs remaining; these were mostly individuals who were too ill to march or hospital staff.