A Brief History
On April 8, 1945, in the waning weeks of World War II, a German train transporting about 4,000 concentration camp inmates, including Ukrainians, Poles, Russians, Dutch, and French nationals, was accidentally bombed by an Allied air raid targeting German military rail traffic.
Digging Deeper
By April of 1945, Allied air forces ruled the skies over Germany and a favorite target was railroad trains. On the fateful day cited here, the prison train was next to an ammunition train in a rail yard at Celle, in Prussian Hanover. The ammo train was hit, and the explosions killed many of the unlucky prisoners.
Prisoners that had been blasted out of the box cars were quickly gunned down by SS guards, so that less than 500 of the emaciated prisoners escaped to be rescued by Scottish troops on April 10, 1945.
After the war, 14 Germans were charged with war crimes for the incident, with seven convictions and three executions.
Question for students (and subscribers): What is the worst friendly fire incident? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on Facebook and becoming one of our patrons!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Stone, Dan. The Holocaust: An Unfinished History. Mariner Books, 2024.
Taylor, Elfie. Allied Bombing in World War II and the Politics of Memory in Post-War Germany. CreateSpace, 2017.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Torbenbrinker of an information board in Triftanlagen Park in Celle (2022), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
