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Murder in Medicine Hat

Broadcast Date: Nov. 10, 2003

While many PoW camps resembled fenced-in country clubs, a few became breeding grounds for hatred and violence. Camp 132 in Medicine Hat was one of these. The Alberta camp was home to more than 12,000 German PoWs, many of whom were high-ranking officers within the Nazi Party.


Driven by suspicion and paranoia, the Nazi PoWs engineered a makeshift treason trial that resulted in the cold-blooded murder of two of their own. This clip from a Country Canada documentary looks at the murders and the RCMP investigation that followed.
(Warning: this clip contains graphic pictures and violent imagery.)

Murder in Medicine Hat

• The Medicine Hat camp opened July 1, 1943, and quickly became home to a number of Britain's most dangerous wartime prisoners. The Canadian government decided to allow the Nazi Party members to control the power structure within the camp.
• Within days of its opening, Camp 132 became a hotbed of suspicion between the dominant Nazis and German Communists PoWs who opposed their countrymen.

• The accusations came to a head on July 22 when the Nazis convened a kangaroo court for four prisoners who they believed were trying to wrest away control of the camp.
• An angry mob descended on a building where the suspect prisoners were being questioned. One of the suspects, August Plazek, was dragged outside by the mob where he was kicked and beaten with a rock. He was already dead when his body was hung in a nearby exercise hall.

• The guards, who were outnumbered by at least 10 to 1, were ill-equipped to deal with the riot and stayed in their towers.
• The incident sparked an undercover RCMP investigation that attempted to send officers inside the camp to infiltrate the Nazi leadership.
• The investigation was stymied by a strict code of silence enforced by high-ranking Nazi officers.

• On Sept. 10, violence reared its head again when Karl Lehmann, a teacher and committed Communist, was accused of undermining the German government. Lehmann had been translating Canadian newspaper reports about the war in his classroom and had mused about the possibility of Germany losing.
• Concerned about morale, a gang of prisoners lured Lehmann to his classroom after hours under the pretence of signing release papers for some of his students.

• Once there, Lehmann was questioned and then beaten by four men, including a boxing instructor. A rag was stuffed in his mouth and he was hung from his neck from a nearby gas pipe.
• The resulting criminal investigation and trial took more than three years to complete. In December 1946 four German soldiers were convicted of murder in the deaths of Plazek and Lehmann.

• Their hangings, along with a Canadian convicted of an unrelated murder, stand as the largest mass execution in modern Canadian history.

Murder in Medicine Hat

Medium: Television

Program: The National

Broadcast Date: Nov. 10, 2003

Guest(s): David Carter, George Fisher, Howie Millen, Max Weidauer, Bill Westgate

Reporter: Reg Sherren

Duration: 13:08

Last updated:
April 8, 2005