Talk:Stalag VII-A

Untitled
Whoever posted the link to the Liberation of Stalag VIIA essay should have noticed that it was liberated by Combat Command A of the 14th Armored Division, not just the 47th Tank Battalion.

Lt. Gen. AP Clark, the American G-2 (Intelligence officer) at both Luft III and later Stalag VIIA concluded in his memoirs that there were 130,000 allied prisoners of war at Moosburg. This number was based on his personal examination of the Camp Commandant's files shortly after liberation.

Endnote Number 4. link was to wrong website. It should be to the website where original essay is published. I changed it, but could not figure out how to restore other endnote links. Sorry. I suggest that the endnotes not be formatted in such a way as to prevent easy correction.

The proper way to refer to the stalag is Stalag VIIA, without a hyphen or space between the roman numeral and the "A" (not "Stalag VII-A"). Someone who knows how should edit the page title accordingly. Otherwise, searches for this page using the correct nomencalture will not find it.


 * Before making changes to articles, be sure of your facts, and learn how to edit. I suggest that you register as an editor. Syrenab 13:08, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * As verified by the ID-tag photo on the page, the German official designation was Stalag VII/A. OK. the WP usage (across many stalags and offlags) is inconsistent with this, but who would want to start an edit war over such a trivial detail? Bjenks (talk) 00:30, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

listing of stalags and oflags
The previous write (unregistered) is incorrect. All oflags and stalags were officially listed WITH the hyphen Stalag VII-A and NOT Stalag VIIA

Syrenab 12:24, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I am the author of "The 14th Armored Division and the Liberation of Stalag VIIA." published in the Fall, 2005 issue of On Point: The Journal of Army History, and republished with endnotes on the official website of the 14th Armored Division Association and Moosburg Online. I suppose you must be right, and I should get my facts straight before editing this page. Any suggestions on how I could learn more about the liberation of Stalag VIIA?

Stalag VIIA was the largest POW camp in Germany because it held a far greater number of prisoners than any other camp. The physical size of the camp is clearly of secondary importance, and remains to be proven.


 * No problem. Whether to have a hyphen or not is not that big an issue. Many references in the literature have a hyphen, others don't.

Why don't you register as an editor? So many of the edits done by anonymous editors turn out to be vanadalism or spam and then have to be corrected.

Syrenab 15:50, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Lightweight content--an insult to unrecorded notables?
The sections on "Escapes" and "Notable prisoners" have almost no significant content of note, and seem to be there merely to record and promote certain personal-interest connections. There were, of course, thousands of attempted escapes from all stalags, many of much greater note than the relative trivia in this article, many resulting in summary execution of absconders. Out of respect for these realities, and for hundreds of genuinely notable personages and heroes who must have transited this huge camp, I think we should kill off the abovementioned sections until such time as someone can come up with properly researched and comprehensive content for them. Any thoughts, please? Cheers, Bjenks (talk) 04:06, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The current version says "At the end of the war there were 27 Soviet generals in the prison." Are none of these 27 generals notable? Of interest, the German language page does not seem to say that these generals were there. Kiore (talk) 05:08, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Liberation details not backed by source
The current version states that 130,000 prisoners (including 30,000 Americans) were liberated from Stalag VII-A. The cited source makes it 110,000, but supplies no source for the figure. The better-documented Moosburg Online reference says "At the end of the war, there were about 80,000 prisoners in the camp; the number of administrative and guarding troops had increased to 2,000. Most of the prisoners came from France (January 1, 1945: approx. 38,000) and from the Soviet Union (14,300), with only about 5,800 Americans. (Sourced to official German figures at January 1945.) The current article tells us "Foremost among the defending units was the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division supported by a few remaining self-propelled guns and 88 mm antitank guns." This is not adequately verified by the cited source, which says the German troops included "remnants of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier and 719th Infantry Divisions. . . The SS had no tanks or antitank guns, and were armed only with small arms, machine guns, mortars, and panzerfausts." I am therefore rewriting the subsection to accord better with the cited sources. Cheers, Bjenks (talk) 06:26, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Barrack restored?
Can anyone verify this? I was on site about 2 years ago but never saw or heard about a hut being restored. Thanks, Taff
 * The Moosburg page here states that some of the old structures survived, but neither that page nor this one makes mention of any restoration. I'll tag that bit as requiring a citation. My guess is that some heritage work has been done, but you're right, Taff, we can't say such things here without verification. Bjenks (talk) 15:25, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Notable prisoners
I am being reverted by a good-faith IP editor who wants an awardee of the Bronze Star Medal to qualify per se as notable for WP purposes. The relevant article is Stalag VII-A. I say that we cannot allow the 'Notable prisoners' section to be swamped with dozens of redlinked medal awardees, which could conceivably happen, since Stalag VII-A was a major transit camp which processed hundreds of thousands of POWs. I would prefer the section to be limited to persons whose notability is established in their own WP article and not just by a local-paper reference. That's not much to ask so, please, can I have some support in this issue to avoid an edit war. Bjenks (talk) 02:13, 20 March 2020 (UTC)