Camp King

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The Camp King (also 7707th European Command Intelligence Center or US Military Intelligence Service Center at Oberursel ) was a military base of the United States Army in Oberursel (Taunus) . Before that, it was a POW camp of the Third Reich Air Force . Today there is a residential area on the 15 hectare area.

history

At the end of the 1930s, the so-called Reichssiedlungshof was built on the northern part of the site . Some buildings were erected in 1938 as part of the 1st German Building and Settlement Exhibition in Frankfurt am Main and then rebuilt in Oberursel. The 21 residential and farm buildings served the University of Frankfurt as an imperial settlement school . The buildings, which are still completely preserved today, are now under monument protection .

From 1939 the area was used by the German Air Force as a transit camp for prisoners of war and, in particular, for interrogating British and American pilots. In total , around 40,000 interrogations were carried out in Dulag Luft , as the site was called at the time. During this time, numerous barracks were built on the southern part of the site .

After the end of the war in 1945, the area was initially used as a prisoner of war camp and interrogation center ( interrogation center ) for high-ranking National Socialists, secret service people and military personnel such as General Gehlen , Schacht , Reitsch , Speer , Streicher , Field Marshal Kesselring and Admiral Dönitz . Robert Kempner conducted interrogations of numerous prominent Nazis here , the results of which he later used as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials . In addition to Kempner, Eugen Kogon , who was imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp until 1945 , also spent some time in the camp. He worked as a chronicler of the US Army and began his book The SS State here . Prominent prisoners were quartered in the villa of the confiscated Frankfurt teachers' home (military designation "House Alaska") across from Camp King. They also included Fritz Thyssen , a major industrialist and financier of the NSDAP who had fallen out of favor with the National Socialists, General Adolf Heusinger , later Chief Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin , liberator of hostage prisoners from the hands of the SS in South Tyrol, and Lieutenant General Gerd von Schwerin , most recently commander of a tank division in the west. In long discussions and in writing, they have already devised the basis for a western armed force with German participation to ward off conceivable attacks from the Soviet sphere of influence.

In order to gain knowledge about the organizational structures of the Nazis and about the Soviet Union, around 200 detained former employees of the Schutzstaffel , the security service and the Reichsabwehr were commissioned to make written records. To this end, in many cases the authors were tacitly released and placed on the payroll of the British or American secret service. In 1947 the BdS Friedrich Engel managed to escape from the camp.

On September 19, 1946, the camp was named after Colonel Charles B. King , a senior intelligence officer (Assistant Chief of Staff) of the VII Corps of the US Army, who died in the Allied invasion of France on June 22, 1944 . Camp King was headed first by Colonel William R Philp , later by Colonel Roy M. Thoroughman . In the same year, the US secret service Office of Strategic Services (OSS) began using it . The Gehlen organization , a forerunner of the Federal Intelligence Service , was also active here under his care . Its head, General Reinhard Gehlen, had been entrusted with the development of his intelligence organization at Camp King since July 1946, which was taken over by the Federal Republic of Germany on April 1, 1956 as the Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

During use by the OSS, CIA and US Army, a largely autonomous settlement for around 500 people, including a shopping center, cinema, sports hall and chapel, was created on the site. Since 1986 a memorial on the site below the officers' mess "Taunus Mountain Lodge" has been commemorating Colonel Charles B. King.

Printed in 1993 and current issues

In 1993 the American military left Camp King and the area became the property of the Federal Republic of Germany . In May 1998 the area was acquired by the Stadtentwicklungs- und Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft mbH Oberursel (Taunus) in order to develop a residential area for around 1,200 people. In 2006 the residential area was completed. The development consists primarily of larger buildings with several owner-occupied apartments and of terraced houses.

literature

  • Manfred Kopp: In the labyrinth of guilt. US Army Interrogation Center in Oberursel, 1945–1952. in: Yearbook Hochtaunuskreis 2010. Publisher Hochtaunuskreis - The district committee. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, pp. 232-244, ISBN 978-3-7973-1165-8 .

Web links

Commons : Sach entirety_Reichssiedlungshof  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Annie Jacobsen: What Cold War CIA Interrogators Learned from the Nazis. The Daily Beast, Nov. 2, 2014
  2. ↑ a b Christopher Simpson: Blowback - The first full account of America's recruitment of nazis, and its disastrous effect on our domestic and foreign policy . Collier Books, New York 1989, ISBN 0-02-044995-X , p. 72.
  3. ↑ Hermann Göring, contrary to some assumptions, was not interned in Oberursel. See Manfred Kopp: “In the labyrinth of guilt. US Army Interrogation Center in Oberursel, 1945–1952 ”, in:“ Yearbook Hochtaunuskreis 2010 ”. Publisher Hochtaunuskreis - The district committee. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, p. 240.
  4. ↑ Manfred Kopp: “In the labyrinth of guilt. US Army Interrogation Center in Oberursel, 1945–1952 ”, in:“ Yearbook Hochtaunuskreis 2010 ”. Publisher Hochtaunuskreis - The district committee. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, p. 239.

Coordinates: 50 ° 13 ′ 1 ″  N , 8 ° 33 ′ 13 ″  E