Reinsehlen Camp () is a largely treeless area of around 100 hectares (250 acres) close to the village of Reinsehlen near the town of Schneverdingen in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is known for its calcareous grassland and most of the area is now a nature reserve. In the past, the area served as a military airfield, a Displaced Persons camp and a military training area. From 1950 to 1994 the Canadian and British armed forces used the area as base camp for extensive tank exercises in the Lüneburg Heath — thus the name "Camp".
Ecology
The area's dry and nutrient-poor sandy soil provides a habitat for numerous endangered plants such as the sea thrift, childing pink and wild thyme. The dominant species is sheep fescue. Other rare plants include filago and the hairgrass Corynephorus canescens. The grassland provides nesting for various birds, among them the woodlark, the skylark and the titlark. Leaving the paths is prohibited during the nesting season from April to July, dogs must be kept on a short leash. A herd of Heidschnucken sheep keeps the grass short.
In 1995, the Lower Saxony Landesamt für Ökologie classified the area as worthy of priority protection. It is the largest calcareous grassland in all of Lower Saxony or even northern Germany. The open grassland area is deemed one of the 'natural wonders' of the Lüneburg Heath Nature Reserve.
Aside from those areas put to new uses — see section Today below — various parts of the former DP camp are now private property with some tracts of land used for farming. Woodlands have increased in size since the military departed in the mid-1990s.
History
Military airfield (1938-45)
Establishment After the Nazis came to power in 1933 they soon initiated a policy of re-armament and this involved creating new military facilities. The Lüneburg Heath was of interest to the military due to its low population density and relatively unproductive soil. The Wehrmacht thus established numerous outposts in the region or expanded existing ones. Among those were large-scale training areas. Other installations later became POW camps in the war. One eventually turned into Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In 1938, the Deutsche Luftwaffe claimed a sizeable area near Reinsehlen to establish a military airfield.
The designated airfield measured roughly 250 hectares. Farmers were expropriated without compensation, but those who owned herds of Heidschnucken were allowed to leave them to graze on the grasslands of the airfield. The area originally was slightly hilly and sandy, partially covered by heath as well as oak and birch trees. There was a basin containing the source of the Fintau stream in the middle of the area. Construction started by leveling and deep ploughing the land. As the sandy soil with a layer of hardpan was too infertile for the desired grass-covered airfield, plenty of peat and dung was used as fertilizer.
The airfield was connected to roads, among them the Reichsstrasse 3 (today B3). A concrete ring road surrounded the area. Wooden huts were erected on the airfield, housing air traffic control, crew quarters, a mess hall and a military hospital. For camouflage, the buildings were covered by peaked roofs under mats of reeds. There was even a fake church steeple. Hostile air reconnaissance was supposed to see a simple Heidedorf (heath village). Ammunition bunkers, hangars, repair shops and subterranean fuel tanks were constructed. The largest building was the KdF-Hall of around 840 square metres, which served as cinema and multipurpose hall. Construction materials and supplies for the airfield arrived via a loading station connected to the nearby Heidebahn. An extension linked the airfield's ammunition bunkers to the Heidebahn.
Operations
The airfield was used for both training and operations. Its codename for radio communication was Posemuckel. The first plane landed on 13 September 1939, shortly after World War II had started with the German invasion of Poland. During the war, the Luftwaffe set up several anti-aircraft gun and searchlight emplacements around the perimeter.
Various units of the Luftwaffe used the Reinsehlen airfield for training and to test new equipment. Plane types flying from Reinsehlen included bombers like the Heinkel He 111, transport planes like the Ju 52 which pulled gliders of type Gotha and fighters like the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. After the air war moved to Germany, Messerschmitt Bf 110 were stationed at the airfield. Training involved inter alia bombing runs in which bombs made of concrete were dropped onto heath surfaces east of the railway line. Among those housed on the airfield were forced labourers from Eastern Europe as well as Soviet and Polish POWs. Their labour was used to expand the facilities including road construction in and around the military area. Eventually the military area stretched all the way to the Höpen (a hill) in the southwest, extended beyond the Reichsstrasse 3 in the east and was supposed to be bounded by a new ring road going north from Schneverdingen towards Wintermoor in the west and the Wintermoorer Strasse in the north.
End of the war
In 1945, during the final phase of the war, newly developed subsonic jet planes like the first jet-powered bomber Arado 234 were stationed at the airfield and the runway was extended by several hundred metres. At that time, many Ju 88 bombers were 'parked' at Reinsehlen, probably due to a lack of fuel and pilots. Isolated strafing attacks aside, the airfield was never attacked or bombed on a large scale, although it was known to British air recon. On 7 April 1945, a US bomber fleet numbering over 1,000 planes entered German airspace to destroy the remaining military targets before the advance of American ground troops. The airfield at Reinsehlen was on the target list, but due to cloud cover the bombers were unable to find it. As a last-ditch attempt to stop the advancing Allies, an anti-tank ditch was begun and farmers from the area were ordered to plow deep furrows into the airfield's manoeuvring area to make it unusable. However, once British troops arrived, there was no resistance due to a lack of weapons and personnel. The Germans handed over the airfield to the British without a fight on 17 April 1945. A few hours before, German soldiers had burned the remaining planes. Damage to the airfield was quickly repaired by the British. It became known as Advanced Landing Ground B-154 Reinsehlen and before the war ended on 8 May (VE Day), Royal Canadian Air Force planes operated from Reinsehlen, including Spitfires of 127 (RCAF) Wing, No 403 (Wolf) Sqn that came to Reinsehlen on 28 April.
Post-war military use (1945-50) Immediately after the end of hostilities in the area, members of the Royal Canadian Air Force occupied the airfield Reinsehlen. In late April 1945, they expelled the families living in five neighbouring farms. Meanwhile, Wehrmacht ammunitions were destroyed, often endangering civilians nearby. In addition, some concrete roads, a runway and other facilities in the northwest were blown up. In the course of 1945 glider pilots started to use the remaining airfield. Reportedly, they were British officers stationed in the Lüneburg area. The Canadians remained in the barracks through the winter of 1945/46. Relations between the occupying forces and the DPs were quite bad, as glider draglines smashed repeatedly into crops and some fields tilled by the DPs were confiscated in 1947 for use by the Allied forces' gliding club. The club also claimed the former ammunitions bunkers as storage space, evicting some of the refugees.
Training exercises by ground forces in the Lüneburg Heath during the early post-war period involved an area of around 48,000 hectares, of which 3,000 were in a designated nature reserve. Until 1949 British and Canadian forces engaged in training exercises right up to the foot of Wilseder Berg, which is today the centre of the Lüneburg Heath Nature Reserve.
Displaced Persons camp (1946-50)
Establishment In February 1946, the British military government in Allied-occupied Germany told the local authorities of the county of Soltau to expect substantial numbers of refugees. Since Allied bombing raids on major cities had caused an acute shortage of housing even for the existing population, the additional influx of people put a massive strain on housing resources in the occupation zones. To accommodate some of these refugees, the military authorities provided the former airfield buildings at Reinsehlen. There was a total of around 60 buildings, including a large number of so-called Protektoratsbaracken, which measured 42 metres long by 12.5 metres wide. Importantly for a potential refugee camp site, Reinsehlen sported a water works and primitive sewage systems leading to a sump some two kilometres from the centre of the camp. However, the buildings had been totally stripped of all furnishings (including windows, doors and wiring) by Canadian and British troops and by German civilians. Local authorities provided a basic supply of ovens, beds and other furniture.
Operations There was not much time for preparations. The first 200 refugees arrived on 10 March 1946. To help feed them, sections of the airfield were transformed into farmland and vegetable gardens. By May, the camp housed 420 people. Then a train arrived with over 1,500 refugees, most of them old people or women and children from Silesia. They came from a camp in Poland, where the food supply had been very inadequate. This influx caused massive overcrowding in the camp. There were not enough jobs in the area, so most of the camp's inmates became dependent on welfare handouts. Paratyphoid fever became a problem.
Over its period of operations from 1946 to 1950 the DP camp housed an average of around 1,500 people, making it one of the largest of its kind in Northern Germany. There was a continuous inflow of around 20 to 50 people per month — soldiers returning from captivity and Germans resettled from Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein. Around 60% of the refugees hailed from Silesia, the others came mainly from Eastern Prussia, the Baltic states, Volhynia, Galicia or the Sudetenland. Initially, there were only around 100 able-bodied men, who mostly worked in agriculture or the timber industry. By 1947, businesses founded in the camp employed more than 300 people. The camp administration and hospital (see below) employed more than 70. A school and kindergarten for 350 children were set up. Church services were held in the former KdF-Hall. The Landkreis Soltau administered the camp, but the inmates elected a camp council and a Lagerleiter (administrator).
Hospital When the DP camp became operational, a 150-bed hospital was established in the former officers' quarters of Reinsehlen airfield. Due to malnutrition and the prevalence of infectious diseases among many of the arriving DPs, medical care was a priority. In 1946, average daily occupancy was around 95 patients. As a result of the camp's overcrowding, typhoid fever, TBC and jaundice remained problems in the camp. Through 1950, care in the hospital was mainly run by around 15 Sisters of Saint Elizabeth, most of them expelled from Silesia. After the camp was closed in November 1950, the hospital continued to operate under its own administration. Eventually it became an outlet of the Kreiskrankenhaus Soltau. When the latter moved to new premises in 1968, the Reinsehlen facility was finally closed.
Dissolution