page_title: Gottlob Berger
section_title: Prisoners of war
hierarchical_section_title: Gottlob Berger / Other wartime activities / Prisoners of war
context_page_description: Gottlob Christian Berger was a senior German Nazi official who held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS and was the chief of the SS Main Office responsible for Schutzstaffel recruiting during World War II. After the war, he was convicted as a war criminal and spent six and a half years in prison. While serving in the German Army during World War I, he was wounded four times and awarded the Iron Cross First Class. Immediately after the war, he was a leader of the Einwohnerwehr militia in his native North Württemberg. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922 but lost interest in right-wing politics during the 1920s, training and working as a physical education teacher.
  In the late 1920s, he rejoined the Nazi Party and became a member of the paramilitary Sturmabteilung in 1931. He clashed with other leaders of the SA and joined the Allgemeine-SS in 1936. Initially responsible for physical education in an SS region, he was soon transferred to the staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler as head of the sports office. In 1938, he was appointed as head of the recruiting office of the SS Main Office and took over as chief of the SS-HA the following year.
context_section_description: On 20 July 1944, the responsibility for administration of German prisoner of war (POW) camps was transferred to Berger. This followed the failed attempt on Hitler's life earlier that month, when the Führer turned to his "faithful Heinrich" to head the Replacement Army, and the SS chief quickly delegated the responsibility to Berger. By September, the responsibility had been formally transferred to Himmler, but Berger did not act to integrate his new responsibilities into the SS bureaucracy. Instead, he allowed the camps to continue as they were, with the same staff and procedures.
  After the war, Berger claimed that he had been reluctant to take on this new responsibility, and had told Hitler, resulting in a dressing down. He also claimed that Hitler had told him to destroy stored Red Cross supplies, stop Red Cross inspections, and block the arrival of further Red Cross supplies to the camps. Further, he asserted that Hitler had wanted more shootings of POWs and harsher punishments. According to Berger, he had quietly avoided carrying out these orders, and even countered a plan by the Luftwaffe to establish POW centres in major cities, using the POWs as human shields against air raids. Authors John Nichol and Tony Rennell observed that none of these claims have ever been independently verified, but some testimony has disputed Berger's claims. They concluded that most, if not all, of Berger's claims about his actions to assist POWs are "unbelievable", and noted that he did not raise any of these claims during his trial at Nuremberg after the war, or even in his autobiography. One of the few claims that has been verified to some extent is his work to protect the Prominente, a group of high-ranking or otherwise important POWs that had been held at Colditz Castle until 13 April 1945. There were a total of 21 Prominente, including Viscount Lascelles and the Master of Elphinstone, both nephews of King George VI, and Giles Romilly, a nephew of the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Berger arranged for them to be evacuated from Colditz and transported south and handed over to advancing U.S. Army troops.
caption: Colditz Castle, where the Prominente were kept until transported south and handed over to the Americans on Berger's orders
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