Stalag VII-B Memmingen

Stalag VII-B was established by order of the Wehrmacht’s Wehrkreiskommando VII (Munich military district) on 21 June 1940 and opened in July–August 1940 in the former SA sports school buildings on the Hühnerberg, on the western edge of Memmingen in Bavarian Swabia. It was a Wehrmacht-run Mannschaftsstammlager — a camp for other ranks and NCOs, not officers — and operated as a registration and distribution hub rather than a large holding facility, with the bulk of its prisoners dispersed across approximately 800 Arbeitskommandos (labour detachments) throughout the Swabia region; more than 20,000 prisoners passed through by April 1945. The camp’s population at its wartime peak (January 1945) stood at around 8,600, and was predominantly French for most of the war, joined successively by Soviet, Italian, Yugoslav, Hungarian, British, and American prisoners; by April 1944 very few British or American prisoners remained at the main camp, most being stationed in outlying work detachments. A grave episode occurred when 92 Soviet prisoners were transferred to Dachau concentration camp as politically unacceptable and were murdered there. The camp was liberated on 26 April 1945 by the 10th Armored Division of the US Seventh Army, freeing approximately 4,000 Allied prisoners — Americans, British, Australians, and Poles among them.