Wesel-Kriegsgräberstätte-Am Breiten Weg

This war cemetery is home to 984 war dead from the First and Second World Wars. World War II. World War I: 270 World War II: 714 World War II: 714 853 Germans 115 former Soviet Union Union 3 Polish 8 Dutch 5 Other war cemeteries and memorials at the municipal cemetery in Wesel A total of 984 war dead rest on two cemeteries. While Wesel was a hospital town during the First World War, the area became a battlefield in the final months of the Second World War. On March 23, 1945, the 2nd British, 1st Canadian and 9th US Army crossed the Rhine in the Wesel area and formed bridgeheads on the east bank. There was fierce fighting on both the German and Allied sides. By the end of the war, 97% of the town had been destroyed.

• Cemetery for 175 bomb victims of the Second World War
• • The men fell as soldiers at the front, succumbed to their wounds on battlefields or died as prisoners of war, while women, children and old people fell victim to the bombs at home. Entire families were wiped out. The Lensing family (mother with three children) and the Schilling family (mother with four children) died in the heavy bombing raids on February 16 and 18, 1945. The siblings Wilma, Dieter and Doris Schluckebier were crushed by rubble. To commemorate the victims of the bombing, the town of Wesel erected the memorial "Mourning Wesalia" by sculptor Eva Brinkmann. The cemetery was inaugurated on February 22, 1953.
• Cemetery for fallen soldiers from both world wars
• • 809 soldiers rest here. They died in Wesel military hospitals during the First World War or fell during the Second World War in the battle for the Wesel bridgehead. 94 of their dead remain unknown. Victims of the battles surrounding the right-wing extremist "Kapp Putsch" in 1920 were also laid to rest among the soldiers' graves.
  The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the North Rhine-Westphalia regional association, took over the development of the war graves in April 1947. It commissioned the Düsseldorf garden architects Roland Weber and Willi Tapp with the design. A massive high cross made of sandstone from the Weser River is the dominant focal point at the end of the cemetery, which was dedicated on October 18, 1953. In the mid-1950s, there was a growing desire among the population to create a memorial for all of Wesel's war victims. The old war memorial on the Grosser Markt - inaugurated on October 21, 1878 - and the peace oak planted behind it had to make way for road traffic in 1936. In close cooperation with the Volksbund, the decision was made to erect a simple memorial stone. The stone was hewn from shell limestone in a quarry in Kirchheim in Lower Franconia. Rubble from the Thiaumont-Verdun intermediate plant is embedded in concrete in the stone's foundation; a symbolic reference to war and destruction. The front of the memorial stone bears the inscription:
  • In memory of all those whom the war took from us! They sacrificed their lives for us all. We will not forget you! The citizens of Wesel
  As it was impossible to list all the names of the war dead, the years of the wars were inscribed on the sides of the memorial stone:
  • 1864 - 1866 1870 - 1871 1914 - 1918 1939 - 1945
  The back of the memorial stone bears the motto:
  • Keep in your conscience the admonition of wars to peace!
  Two doves of peace symbolize this wish. The stone was erected on a small memorial site at the other end of the cemetery facing the High Cross and was dedicated on Remembrance Day 1962. Next to the memorial stone, four sarcophagus slabs commemorate the four regiments of the old Wesel garrison and fortress: 1st Westphalian Field Artillery Regiment No. 7 (since 1813), Cleves Field Artillery Regiment No. 43 (since 1899), Vogel von Falckenstein Infantry Regiment No. 56 (since 1860) and Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick Infantry Regiment No. 57 (since 1860). These regiments lost more than 10,000 soldiers in the heavy defensive battles on the Western Front during the First World War. The garrison memorial erected in 1924 was destroyed during the Second World War.