Vogelsang Military Training Area
Vogelsang Military Training Area (German: Truppenübungsplatz Vogelsang) lay in the German North Eifel hills between the villages of Simmerath, Heimbach and Schleiden in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It was established in 1946 and handed back at the end of 2005, and consisted of the grounds of the former Nazi leadership training centre in the fort of Vogelsang (Ordensburg Vogelsang) on the Erpenscheid hill plus additional terrain including the so-called Dreiborn Plateau. In the north and east it was bounded by the Urft Reservoir. The training area had an area of around 45 km2 and since 1 January 2006 has been fully incorporated into the Eifel National Park. Until 1950 the training area was run by the British armed forces and thereafter until 31 December 2005 by the Belgian military.
The basis of the subsequent military training area was the Nazi Ordensburg Vogelsang This training centre is the second largest relic of Nazi infrastructure in Germany by area after their party congress site in Nuremberg and covered an area of some 100 hectares. The buildings under heritage conservation alone cover a gross floor area of more than 50,000 square metres.
After the end of the Second World War, in early 1946, the British Military Government considered for a while tearing down this prominent symbol of Nazism. In September 1946 the British commandeered 42 square kilometres of land around the fort as a military training area, ejecting the populations of the nearby village of Wollseifen in doing so. In 1950 the British handed over the Vogelsang Training Area to the Belgian Armed Forces.
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