Editing Hemer (section)

===Military===
In 1934 Hemer became a garrison town. In January 1934 it was decided to build three barracks in neighboring Iserlohn, which however was unable also to provide enough free land for a training area. At a meeting in June, land around the village of Apricke was selected, of which 3&nbsp;km<sup>2</sup> was bought by the state in autumn of the same year. The hospital was also inspected and later acquired as a military hospital. This was very welcome to Hemer, as the hospital had turned out to be far too big and too expensive for the Amt, and in this way it was possible later to build a new smaller hospital.

In December 1934 temporary barracks for one battalion were also built in Hemer. On October 30, 1936, an official garrison contract between Hemer and the state was signed, which included the building of permanent barracks. Construction was still unfinished when [[World War II]] started in 1939, but was then rushed through and the buildings were reassigned as a [[prisoner of war]] camp, the ''[[Stalag VI-A]]''.

[[File:Duloh Gedaenkstaette.jpg|right|150px|thumb|POW memorial in Hemer]]
The first Polish POWs arrived in October 1939, and had to sleep on the floor as the beds were still not finished. Inadequate equipment remained a problem throughout the whole of the war, both because the material was needed at the front, and also because the camp was permanently overpopulated. At first the inmates were mostly from [[Poland]] and [[France]], but after the beginning of the [[Eastern Front (World War II)|war with the Soviet Union]] in 1941 [[Nazi crimes against Soviet POWs|Soviet POWs]] quickly became the majority.

It is estimated that during the six years of the war more than 200,000 inmates were held in the camp. Those who were capable of forced labour usually lived near their places of work, so the main camp was in a sense a "dying camp" for those who fell ill because of the bad living conditions and the hard labour. At an unconfirmed estimate, about 24,000 POWs were buried in Hemer. The fictional film ''[[Hart's War]]'' is set in the camp in early 1945.

After the war the barracks of the Stalag, renamed to ''Camp Roosevelt'' were at first used as a camp for detaining Nazi prisoners. In 1947, it was renamed  ''Casernes Ardennes'' and were used by the [[Belgian army]]  till 1955. After the establishment of the German [[Bundeswehr]] the barracks became home of a tank battalion in 1957. Originally simply named after its location on the ''Jüberg'' hill, it received its final name, ''Blücher-Kaserne'', in 1964.

In 1953 [[Canadians|Canadian]] troops moved into newly built barracks in Deilinghofen (Forts Macleod and Prince of Wales) as well as two former German barrack complexes in Iserlohn (Forts QuèAppelle and Beausejour). Canadian soldiers and their families resided in two separate locations in Hemer. The main location centered on Berliner Strasse where the school and community center were located. The secondary location centered on Bredde Strasse, the site that was formerly used by the Belgians. In 1970 the Canadian military was transferred to bases in the [[Black Forest]] Region ([[Baden-Baden]] and [[Lahr]]) and most of the former Canadian holdings, including Married Quarters in Hemer, were taken over by British military. In 1994 the British left and the Deilinghofen barracks were converted to civil use with the barracks in Iserlohn either transferred back to the Bundeswehr or also converted to civil use.

Due to the changing duties of the Bundeswehr, tanks are not needed as much as they were during the [[Cold War]]. The closure of the barracks was announced in 2004, and on January 23, 2007, the last soldiers left Hemer, 50 years after the Bundeswehr moved into the barracks.