Itter Castle is a small castle standing on a high knoll in Itter

Itter

Itter is a municipality in the Kitzbühel and is located 18.60 km west of Kitzbühel, 5 km southeast of Wörgl and 2.50 km north of Hopfgarten im Brixental. The village lies on a terrace above the Brixental valley and its main source of income is tourism...

, a village in North Tyrol

North Tyrol

North Tyrol, or North Tirol is the main part of the Austrian state of Tyrol, located in the western part of the country. The other part of the state is East Tyrol, which also belongs to Austria, but does not share a border with North Tyrol....

 (Austria), 20 km west of Kitzbühel

Kitzbühel

-Demographic evolution:-Personalities:*Karl Wilhelm von Dalla Torre , entomologist and botanist*Alfons Walde , expressionist painter and architect*Peter Aufschnaiter , mountaineer and geographer...

.

The castle was used from 1943–45, during the Nazi occupation of France, to incarcerate prominent French prisoners. Inmates included the former Prime Ministers Édouard Daladier

Édouard Daladier

Édouard Daladier was a French Radical politician and the Prime Minister of France at the start of the Second World War.-Career:Daladier was born in Carpentras, Vaucluse. Later, he would become known to many as "the bull of Vaucluse" because of his thick neck and large shoulders and determined...

 and Paul Reynaud

Paul Reynaud

Paul Reynaud was a French politician and lawyer prominent in the interwar period, noted for his stances on economic liberalism and militant opposition to Germany. He was the penultimate Prime Minister of the Third Republic and vice-president of the Democratic Republican Alliance center-right...

; Generals Maurice Gamelin

Maurice Gamelin

Maurice Gustave Gamelin was a French general. Gamelin is best remembered for his unsuccessful command of the French military in 1940 during the Battle of France and his steadfast defense of republican values....

 and Maxime Weygand

Maxime Weygand

Maxime Weygand was a French military commander in World War I and World War II.Weygand initially fought against the Germans during the invasion of France in 1940, but then surrendered to and collaborated with the Germans as part of the Vichy France regime.-Early years:Weygand was born in Brussels...

, who had been prominent during the "Phoney war" era; Jean Borotra

Jean Borotra

Jean Robert Borotra was a French champion tennis player. He was one of the famous "Four Musketeers" from his country who dominated tennis in the late 1920s and early 1930s.-Career:...

, a former tennis champion as later General Commissioner of Sports in the Vichy regime

Vichy France

Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...

; Colonel de La Rocque

François de la Rocque

François de La Rocque was leader of the French right-wing league named the Croix de Feu from 1930–1936, before forming the more moderate Parti Social Français , seen as a precursor of Gaullism.- Early life :François de La Rocque was born on 6 October 1885 in Lorient, Brittany, the third son to a...

, the leader of the right-wing Croix de Feu movement; André François-Poncet

André François-Poncet

André François-Poncet was a French politician and diplomat whose post as ambassador to Germany allowed him to witness first-hand the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and the Nazi regime's preparations for war.François-Poncet was the son of a counselor of the Court of Appeals in...

, a politician and diplomat; and Michel Clemenceau, politician and son of Georges Clemenceau

Georges Clemenceau

Georges Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman, physician and journalist. He served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920. For nearly the final year of World War I he led France, and was one of the major voices behind the Treaty of Versailles at the...

. The fomer republic president Albert Lebrun

Albert Lebrun

Albert François Lebrun was a French politician, President of France from 1932 to 1940. He was the last president of the Third Republic. He was a member of the center-right Democratic Republican Alliance .-Biography:...

 was held at Itter for three months in 1943, before being sent back to France for health reasons; Marie-Agnès de Gaulle, Resistance member

French Resistance

The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...

 and sister of General Charles de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....

, was interned in the castle almost at the end of the war, in April 1945.

Administratively, Itter was a subcamp of Dachau concentration camp; the castle's detention conditions were, however, not comparable with those at Dachau.

Itter's prisoners were freed by units of the American 103rd Infantry Division of General Anthony McAuliffe

Anthony McAuliffe

General Anthony Clement "Nuts" McAuliffe was the United States Army general who commanded the 101st Airborne Division troops defending Bastogne, Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II...

on May 5, 1945. The next day, the American units fought alongside the German guards against attacking SS elements until reinforcements arrived, several hours after the end of the war.