The Überlingen-Aufkirch subcamp was created so that arms production could be moved from factories in Friedrichshafen to tunnels in the villages of Aufkirch and Goldbach, in the municipality of Überlingen.

As a result, starting in 1943 the government began an effort to move arms and weaponry production out of Friedrichshafen.

On May 1, 1944, following a devastating bombing run on Friedrichshafen that occurred 3 days prior and left 67% of the city's built up area destroyed, the Jägerstab, a subdivision of the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production that deals with the production of fighter aircraft ordered the construction of tunnels in Hohenems in Vorarlberg and in Überlingen.

The camp, which had an area of 3600 m,² was surrounded with two parallel, 2,8 meter tall, electrically charged barbed wire fences.

Jež described the relatively mild winter temperatures in the tunnels as a great luck for the poorly fed and clothed prisoners.

On March 21, 1945, two prisoners, Ukrainian Wassili Sklarenko and Austrian Adam Puntschart successfully escaped to Schaffhausen by hiding under overburden in a tipping lorry.

On April 4, Commandant Grünberg had 214 extremely ill prisoners separated and sent out by train to the Saulgau subcamp.

Eyewitnesses described those who arrived in Saulgau as "entirely emaciated, nearly starved, and completely lice-ridden", as "half corpses" and "doomed to die".

Hübsch described the effects of the camp conditions on the prisoners:"The terrible distress, the cold, the hunger, the vermin, the exhaustion, the diseases, the envy towards those receiving packages, all that was almost unbearable, the fear of contagion, the thought of dying just before the soon-to-be-hoped-for liberation troops of General de Gaulle […] – all this drove people mad, hysterical, hard, evil, and uncomradely.

[3][4] A memorial at the location commemorates the dead prisoners with the following inscription:„IN DIESEM WALDSTÜCK WURDEN 97 HÄFTLINGE AUS DEM KZ AUFKIRCH/ÜBERLINGEN IN EINEM MASSENGRAB VERSCHARRT.

"The mass grave began being used in February 1945 after cremations in Constance were stopped, presumably due to a lack of coal..

In April 1946, the French occupationary forces brought interned national socialists and former guards to recover the bodies from the mass grave.

[5] The cemetery, redesigned in 1962 by the German War Graves Commission, was the target of desecration in October 1992, during which all gravestones were overturned and a monument was defaced with swastikas.

Four days prior, all of the prisoners had been evacuated by train to the München-Allach concentration camp which was reached on April 29 by American soldiers.

The Überlingen fire department burned down the barracks on April 23, officially to prevent the spread of epidemics.

No charges were brought since the public prosecutor's office at Munich Regional Court II discontinued the proceedings due to "lack of reasonable suspicion" on December 13, 1965.