I recently came across a group of documents that originally belonged to the same person. One of the documents is a promotional document that piqued my curiosity. It is ink stamped and sent from "Unternehmen Bartold". It's not something I've heard or read about before, so I searched the internet and found the following information:
Unternehmen Barthold (Company Barthold, also spelled Bartold) was the code name for the construction of partial defense lines in the Second World War from August 1944 in the greater Breslau area, Silesia. The focus was on the area around Namslau and Groß Wartenberg.
At best, the line consisted of a five meter wide, three meter deep, wedge-shaped anti-tank ditch, a double Flanders fence (a wire entanglement made of barbed wire) and, about 80 meters behind it, a man-deep trench with machine gun nests.
Since, as eyewitnesses reported, the defensive line was neither defended nor its passages blown up, the Red Army could not be stopped.
At the end of August 1944, HJ-Bann 38 with around 500 boys and a group from the Association of German Girls were committed to the entrenchment and taken by special train to Neumittelwalde, Groß Wartenberg district. Their location was the village of Distelwitz (today: Dzieslawice). Accommodation was in a barn on the von Curland manor. Food was provided by the “Hermann Göring Relief Train”. The chefs were indentured Dutch people. The division into smaller self-catering groups resulted in better food, but also caused problems with the residents because they were robbed. The boys called this “organizing.” The entrenching work over a distance of around 1000 meters was carried out exclusively with spades, shovels and pickaxes.
The name “Barthold” is probably borrowed from the book title “Vogt Bartold”. As the author Hans Venatier writes, it is a fictional character who led settlers to Silesia in the 13th century. Vogt Bartold should only be understood as “… the personification of an idea.”
Always fun to find historical remains that lead to more knowledge.
Unternehmen Barthold (Company Barthold, also spelled Bartold) was the code name for the construction of partial defense lines in the Second World War from August 1944 in the greater Breslau area, Silesia. The focus was on the area around Namslau and Groß Wartenberg.
At best, the line consisted of a five meter wide, three meter deep, wedge-shaped anti-tank ditch, a double Flanders fence (a wire entanglement made of barbed wire) and, about 80 meters behind it, a man-deep trench with machine gun nests.
Since, as eyewitnesses reported, the defensive line was neither defended nor its passages blown up, the Red Army could not be stopped.
At the end of August 1944, HJ-Bann 38 with around 500 boys and a group from the Association of German Girls were committed to the entrenchment and taken by special train to Neumittelwalde, Groß Wartenberg district. Their location was the village of Distelwitz (today: Dzieslawice). Accommodation was in a barn on the von Curland manor. Food was provided by the “Hermann Göring Relief Train”. The chefs were indentured Dutch people. The division into smaller self-catering groups resulted in better food, but also caused problems with the residents because they were robbed. The boys called this “organizing.” The entrenching work over a distance of around 1000 meters was carried out exclusively with spades, shovels and pickaxes.
The name “Barthold” is probably borrowed from the book title “Vogt Bartold”. As the author Hans Venatier writes, it is a fictional character who led settlers to Silesia in the 13th century. Vogt Bartold should only be understood as “… the personification of an idea.”
Always fun to find historical remains that lead to more knowledge.
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