Stalag XVIII-A Wolfsberg
Wolfsberg, Austria (then part of Nazi Germany's Wehrkreis XVIII)
Stalag XVIII-A was a Wehrmacht-run prisoner-of-war camp sited on a former parade ground south of Wolfsberg in Carinthia, opened on 19 October 1939 as Oflag XVIII-B to hold Polish officers; it was redesignated a Stalag in March 1941 and took in French, Belgian, and British Commonwealth prisoners, with the first British and Commonwealth men arriving in July 1941 from a transit camp at Thessaloniki following the battles of Greece and Crete. At its height the camp and its constellation of Arbeitskommandos (labour detachments scattered across Austria) held up to 48,000 prisoners drawn from more than a dozen nations, including British, Australian, and New Zealand servicemen — among them RAF, RAAF, and RNZAF personnel — alongside French, Belgian, Soviet, Italian, and American prisoners. A severe typhus epidemic broke out in December 1941 and kept the entire camp under quarantine until March 1942, killing a disproportionate number of Soviet prisoners whose rations and conditions fell far below those of Western captives. On 18 December 1944 American aircraft mistakenly bombed the camp, destroying the British and French hospital huts and killing 46 prisoners and several guards. As Allied forces closed in during April 1945 all fit prisoners were marched eastward to Stalag XVIII-C; the camp effectively passed into Allied hands on 8 May 1945 and was formally liberated by elements of the British Eighth Army on 11 May. After the war the site was repurposed as a British detention facility for ex-Nazis, designated Camp 373, and did not close until the late 1940s.
Airmen held here
- F W Baum — Unknown
- N Blair — Unknown
- R Blyth — Unknown
- A R Callender — Unknown
- J M G Cantin — Unknown
- J A Charlton — Unknown
- W C Clark — Unknown
- G A Downton — Unknown
- C Farthing — Unknown
- A E Glover — Unknown
- A E Hall — Unknown
- T E Jones — Unknown
- G Leather — Unknown
- A R G Lennard — Unknown
- G Littler — Unknown
- A F Murrell — Unknown
- J Rayner — Unknown
- J Robinson — Unknown
- M Slor — Unknown
- A Tarnowski — Unknown
- C G Weir — Unknown