In 1935, the Germans constructed a large military training area on the Lüneburger Heide, near the city of Bergen. On an area of 280 square kilometres, the German army exercised with the ‘Panzertruppe’ armoured corps. It was part of the German rearmament. Barracks were built that could accommodate 15,000 soldiers.
The people building the camp lived in barracks near Belsen, to the south of the training grounds. After the 1940 German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, six hundred French and Belgian prisoners of war were housed in these barracks.
