WWII Alsace Memorial Sights Private Tour

Witness the Complex History of a Disputed Land

This tour explores Alsace's darkest period, revealing how this French region became part of the Third Reich. Through museums and memorial sites, discover how the war transformed local lives and shaped modern European values.

Morning: Alsace-Moselle Memorial

Your journey begins with pickup from your Colmar accommodation. At the Alsace-Moselle Memorial, modern exhibits reveal the region's wartime transformation. Between 1940 and 1945, Alsace and Moselle became the only French territories annexed directly into the Third Reich. The Nazi regime attempted to erase French identity, changing 100,000 French place names and family names to German equivalents. 

The memorial documents how 130,000 Alsatians were forcibly drafted into the German army, while secret resistance networks operated despite severe repression. Through personal stories and artifacts, visitors gain an understanding of how local families maintained their French identity despite intense pressure to conform to Nazi ideology.

Lunch at a Local Village 

Your guide will recommend local establishments in the area for lunch. 

Afternoon: Natzweiler-Struthof Concentration Camp

The haunting Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp rises starkly against the Alsatian sky, marking France's only Nazi concentration camp on its occupied territory. Established in the annexed region of Alsace, this mountain-top facility became the center of a vast network of 70 subcamps stretching across both sides of the Rhine. The camp's isolation and harsh climate made it particularly brutal for the 52,000 prisoners who passed through the KL-Natzwiller system between 1941 and 1945.

While 17,000 prisoners endured life in the main camp, another 35,000 suffered in its satellite facilities. Beyond serving as a forced labor camp supporting the Nazi war industry, Natzweiler-Struthof gained additional infamy as a site of medical atrocities, where professors from the Reich University of Strasbourg conducted horrific experiments on living prisoners.

When Allied forces reached the camp on November 23, 1944, they found it deserted - the Nazi guards had fled two months earlier. Yet the horror continued for many prisoners from the subcamps, forced to endure the infamous "Death Marches" in the spring of 1945. By the time of liberation, KL-Natzwiller had proven one of the Nazi system's deadliest installations, claiming nearly 22,000 lives through execution, experimentation, disease, and brutal working conditions.

After this touching tour, you will return back to Colmar.

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