Description
An interesting and a unit not often seen, Weiss took part in the attack on Poland with Infanterie Regiment 360 as a Machine Gunner likely a MG34.
But he had an issue with his knee and was sent to the WUG (or Wehrmacht Prison) these prisons were not a nice place, many executions took place in such prisons. And according to research Döllershem, and Larger Kirkenholz where he served was the scene of much terror. Please see below for the lists of those executed and the memorial to those that decided to flee as opposed to fighting for Nazi Germany.
Wiess was sent to a rather rare unit, which is responsible for as Tessin puts it, harassed the prisoners under the harshest of circumstances.
Feld Strafgefangenen Abteilung 16 (1. Fallschirmarmee)
https://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/FeldstrafgefangenenAbt/FSGA16.htm
“In the field prisoner departments, convicts whose sentence was suspended until the end of the war were grouped together. The departments were set up by the Wehrmacht prisons. The origin of the prisoner detachments was an order from Adolf Hitler on April 2, 1942, which was implemented by the OKW on April 14, 1942. From May 1942, three prisoner detachments, each with 200 men, were set up in Glatz, Germersheim and Anklam. Field punishment units were formed from this. The soldiers had to be at least kv (fit for war), gvF (fit for garrison in the field) or gvH (fit for garrison at home). From 1943 onwards, members of all parts of the Wehrmacht served in the field prisoner departments.
The following were not used in the field prisoner departments: – members of the Wehrmacht with sentences of less than 3 months – members of foreign national units – officers – soldiers unfit for service – people convicted for the first time, whose act was probably a one-time lapse – “asocial people who were difficult to train” – “homosexuals”
There were until the end of the war 22 prisoner detachments with four to six companies each. On average, an estimated 20,000 men were deployed there.
The unarmed service on the eastern front was required to do “the toughest work under dangerous circumstances”: building bunkers and positions, clearing mines and recovering corpses. The men had to do physical labor 7 days a week. Only in exceptional cases were reliable prisoners allowed to be armed and deployed to fight in intervention companies. It was important that the relatives not degenerate physically and mentally despite the heavy workload, since they were to be assigned to the front-line troops again after they had served their sentence.
This was often contradicted by the behavior of the guards, who, hardly trained, harassed the prisoners. At the end of the war, individual departments were also deployed in the West.”
Weiss was taken POW in 1945, and served with 805 Division under Allied Command. He survived the war.
Comments:
An interesting Soldbuch to an odd unit, they were obviously not nice guards doing horrible work. This is evidence of the many depictions of the forced work of Wehrmacht Prisoners.
