Stalag Tags
- Inka
- 13 hours ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 8 minutes ago
In 1941 the German occupants began a gigantic task to fortify the Norwegian coastline with fortresses, bunkers and all sorts of military installations. At the same time they were constructing an inland route, both roads and railroads, which would allow the transfer of soldiers and goods to and from the Reich, and connect Berlin to the planned endstation in the North, Murmansk.
For this they needed manpower, and lots of it. The easiest and cheapest solution was to use slaves. Masses of Red Army POWs were held in large camps, Stammlager, in Poland and soon tens of thousands of these were moved up to Northern Norway where they were going to build, suffer and die.
Each of the POWs that came from all over the Soviet Union, had been issued a small ID tag, made from a square piece of metal when arriving to one of the large Stammlagers. It was the same concept as with the Wehrmacht EKMs.
One part of the tag could be broken off and sent to HQ if the wearer died, while the other half should stay with the body. Stamped on it was the number of the Stalag (Stammlager) camp, and the number given to the prisoner.
The main concentration of these POWs was in the areas I have been so lucky to metal detect. Just in the relatively small valley I grew up, around ten thousand POWs were held in camps along the intended rail road route.
Most of the liberated prisoners of war were happily throwing their slave mark away as soon as they could in the springtime of 1945, and ever so often such a Stalag tag has been the reason my detector rang out some 80 years later.
Below you can see some of the tags I have found, and I have added a few links for those who wants to dive a bit deeper into the Stalag system.
1:
Two broken tags from Stalag II B in Hammerstein / Czarne, Poland. I found these in two different camps in Northern Norway nearly 550km apart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_II-B
2:
M Stammlager II D. The camp was located in Stargard in Poland. It was broken and nicely put back together. The M stands for "Mannschafts".
3:
Tags from Stalag 2H which were located in Barkenbrugge/Barkniewko, Poland.
This tag had broken and the prisoner repaired it.
A very interesting replacement tag with a quite low number. I love how he had decorated the backside of it.
Three more tags from Stalag 2H.
4:
This half-tag is from Stalag III B, and was located in Fûrstenberg (Oder), Germany.
5:
These two tags from Stalag VII/A were found together in a camp near the Polar Circle in Norway. When I posted pics of them on War Relics Forum one of the members kindly sent me these photos from the liberation of that Stammlager which was located in Moosburg in Germany.
6:
The half of this tag was a fun surprise to find as it was adjacent to a camp made famous by Allied POWs that made spectacular escape attempts, the Stalag Luft III.
7:
These two next tags are from camps more local to me than the other Stalags. The Stalag 309 and the Stalag 322. These camps were both run by Einsatz Kommando Finnland, and was pretty much straight up death-camps.
8:
Lastly is this interesting Stalag IV B tag, modified from a Wehrmacht Erkennungsmarke.
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