[3][4] During World War I, Germany operated a special prisoner-of-war camp for ethnic Poles from the Russian Army, with the aim of subjecting them to propaganda and conscripting them into a planned German-controlled Polish army to fight against Russia (Poland was partitioned between Germany, Russia and Austria at the time).

[5] During the final stages of World War II, on 15 March 1945, 52 people lost their lives during an air raid.

[6] On 13 April 1945, the Isenschnibbe Barn at Gardelegen was the site of a massacre of more than 1,000 concentration camp inmates, many of them from Poland, the Soviet Union, France and from other countries, perpetrated by members of the SS, the Wehrmacht, the Volkssturm, other Nazi Organisations and local civilians.

[8] At the height of the Cold War, a USAF RB-66 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down by Soviet fighters near the town on 10 March 1964.

The aircraft's crew bailed out and was rescued and eventually handed back to West Berlin by Soviet forces.

[9] After having incorporated 5 former municipalities in 2009,[10] 6 in 2010,[11] and 18 in 2011,[12] Gardelegen is now Germany's third largest city by area, trailing only Berlin and Hamburg.

There are various well-preserved half-timbered houses in Main Street (Ernst-Thälmann-Straße) and Nicolaistraße as well as a part of the medieval city wall which deserve a visit.

[16] In the Middle Ages, the hospital was outside the town, which was surrounded by moats and walls, as people with infectious diseases were treated there.