Earthworm camp
The earthworm camp was an extensive barracks complex of the German Wehrmacht built in 1938 on the earthworm brook near the town of Meseritz on the border with Poland . He was assigned to the fortress front Oder-Warthe-Bogen .
During the Second World War , the earthworm camp served as a training facility for several special units subordinate to the Abwehr office for use against the British colonial power in the Middle East , such as the Free India Legion , the German-Arab Legion and individual companies made up of Iranians and Afghans . Visitors included Subhash Chandra Bose and Mohammed Amin al-Husseini . Defense chief Wilhelm Canaris used the defense school as a reception unit for individual critics of the regime. After the dissolution of the Nightingale battalion , it became the place of activity of Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz .
In January 1945, during the Vistula-Oder operation, the Red Army's 11th Armored Guard Corps surprisingly broke through the inadequately manned fortification system in the Meseritz area. The undestroyed earthworm camp complex became the quarters of the Polish army, later the Soviet army .
Web links
- The earthworm camp near Kainscht . Information from the home district of Meseritz
- The earthworm camp . Pre-publication from Philatelie magazine, No. 426, December 2012
- Historia. Powstanie miejscowości Earthworm Camp (Koszary dżdżownic) . Polish information on the history of the earthworm camp and the military units trained there.
Individual evidence
- ^ Susanne Meinl : National Socialists against Hitler. The national revolutionary opposition around Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz . Siedler, Berlin 2000, ISBN 978-3-88680-703-1 , p. 319 f.
- ↑ Manfred Zeidler : End of the war in the east - The Red Army and the occupation of Germany east of Oder and Neisse 1944/45. Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-56187-1 , pp. 83, 86.