Stalag XII-A Limburg

Stalag XII-A stood at Diez, near Limburg an der Lahn in Hesse, and served chiefly as a transit and distribution camp through which large numbers of newly captured Allied prisoners passed before being sorted to permanent camps. British and Commonwealth soldiers and airmen captured in the fighting in France and the Low Countries in 1944 came through it, and after the German Ardennes offensive that winter it received many American prisoners as well. As a transit camp its conditions were rudimentary and overcrowded, and like much of the Limburg area it lay close to a railway junction that made it a target for Allied bombing.