The cemetery is maintained and managed by the voluntary German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge).

La Cambe was originally the site of a battlefield cemetery created on 10 June 1944 by the 607th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company during the Battle of Normandy.

Due to the rapid advance of the Allies during the latter stage of the Normandy campaign, German war dead were scattered over a wide area, many of them buried in isolated field graves or small battlefield cemeteries.

After the signing in 1954 of the Franco-German Treaty on War Graves, La Cambe was formally cared for, allowing the remains of 12,000 German soldiers to be moved in from 1,400 locations in the French departments of Manche, Calvados and the Orne.

Layout and landscaping of the site began immediately after formal handover, with a large central tumulus (or kamaradengraben), flanked by two statues and topped by a large dark cross in basalt lava, which marks the resting place for 207 unknown and 89 identified German soldiers, interred together in a mass grave.

They too have found rest in our soil of France.The majority of the German war dead buried at La Cambe fell between June 6 (D-Day landings) and August 20, 1944 (the end of the Battle of Normandy) and their ages range from 16 to 72.

It commemorates the memory of the losses of Operation Overlord, when in summer 1944 more than 100,000 people died: American, British, German, French, Canadian, Poles and members of other nations.