Stalag
In Germany, Stalag was a term used for prisoner-of-war camps. Stalag is an abbreviation for "Stammlager", itself a short form of the full name "Mannschaftsstamm und -straflager".
Legal definitions
According to the Third Geneva Convention of 1929 and its predecessor the Hague Convention of 1907, Section IV, Chapter 2, those camps were only for prisoners of war, not civilians. Stalags were operated in both World War I and World War II and intended to be used for non-commissioned personnel (Enlisted ranks in US Army, Other ranks in British Commonwealth forces). Officers were held in separate camps called Oflag. In World War II, the German Air Force operated Stalag Luft in which flying personnel, both officers and non-commissioned officers were held. The German Navy operated Marlag for Navy personnel.
Civilians that were officially attached to military units, such as war correspondents, were provided the same treatment as military personnel by the Conventions.
The Third Geneva Convention, Section III, Article 49, permits non-commissioned personnel of lower ranks to be used for work in agriculture and industry, but not in any industry producing war material. Further articles of Section III detailed conditions under which they should work, be housed and paid. During World War II these latter provisions were consistently breached, in particular for Polish and Yugoslav prisoners.
Prisoners of various nationalities were generally separated from each other by barbed-wire fences subdividing each Stalag into sections. Frequently prisoners speaking the same language, for example British Commonwealth soldiers, were permitted to intermingle.
According to the Nazi ideology, Slavic people were regarded as rassisch minderwertig ("racially inferior"). Because of that, the treatment of Slavic prisoners of war was much worse than the treatment of Anglo-American or French internees. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners died in Stalags as a result of this inhumane treatment.
Arbeitskommandos
At each Stalag the German Army set up sub-camps called Arbeitskommando to hold prisoners in the vicinity of specific work locations, whether factories, coal-mines, quarries, farms or railroad maintenance. These sub-camps sometimes held more than 1,000 prisoners, separated by nationality. The sub-camps were administered by the parent Stalag, which maintained personnel records, collected mail, International Red Cross packages and then delivered to the individual Arbeitskommando. Likewise any individuals that were injured in work, or became ill, were returned to the Lazarett (medical care facilities) at the parent Stalag.
Best known Stalags
Stalag Luft III, a massive camp near Sagan, Silesia, (Now Żagań, Poland), was the site of spectacular escape attempt (later filmed as The Great Escape). On March 24, 1944, 76 Allied prisoners escaped through a 110 m (approx 360 feet) long tunnel. 73 were recaptured within two weeks. 50 of them were executed by order of Hitler.
The largest German World War II POW camp was Stalag VII-A at Moosburg, Germany. Over 110,000 allied soldiers were imprisoned there. It was liberated by the U.S. 14th Armored Division following a short battle with SS soldiers of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division on 29 April, 1945.
In popular culture
The soldiers in the show Hogan's Heroes were imprisoned in fictitious Stalag 13. (An actual Stalag XIII was created in 1939 at Langwasser near Nuremberg from a former SA camp, but closed in 1940 and dispersed as three camps: Stalag XIII-A in Rhineland-Palatinate, and Oflag XIII-B Weiden and Stalag XIII-C in Lower Franconia. OFLAG XIII-B was a camp for officer POWs in which the son-in-law of U.S. General George S. Patton was held and a rescue attempt made by Task Force Baum.)
The 1953 film Stalag 17 is set in Stalag XVII-B (Stalag 17B), located near Krems, Austria.
In the 2002 video game Prisoner of war you play as the POW Captain Lewis Stone who has been captured and sent to work in a Stalag Luft camp. The objective of the game is to escape the camp by any means necessary.