Bergen-Hohne Training Area

This article is about the military training area and garrison. For the town in Germany, see Bergen, Lower Saxony.

Emblem of Bergen-Hohne Training Area
Royal Dragoon Guards Recce Troop night firing in the area in 2007

The Bergen-Hohne Training Area (German: NATO-Truppenübungsplatz Bergen or Schießplatz Bergen-Hohne) is a NATO military training area in the southern part of the Lüneburg Heath, in the state of Lower Saxony in northern Germany. It covers an area of 284 square kilometres (70,000 acres), which makes it the largest military training area in Germany.

It was established by the German armed forces, the Wehrmacht, in 1935. At the end of the Second World War it was taken over by British occupying forces and some of its facilities used as a liberation camp for survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which was located on the edge of the training area near the town of Bergen.[1] Under British control, the training area was steadily expanded and, since the 1960s, has also been used by the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) and other NATO troops.

  1. ^ Celinscak, Mark (2015). Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Concentration Camp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442615700.