Woeste Hoeve

De Woeste Hoeve is a hamlet in the Netherlands between Apeldoorn and Arnhem, which is remembered for an incident in the Second World War when, during the night of 6 March 1945, Dutch resistance fighters shot the Nazi Chief of Police, SS General Hanns Rauter.

[1] Dressed in German uniforms, the resistance group thought they could hear the truck approaching and went out on the road to halt the vehicle.

As a result, huge reprisals were taken under the command of SS Brigadefuhrer Dr. Karl Eberhard Schöngarth on 8 March.

At Woeste Hoeve itself, 116 men were rounded up and shot on the spot and another 147 prisoners of the Gestapo were executed at a number of other locations.

[2] A German soldier who refused to take part in the Woeste Hoeve massacre was also shot and buried with the Dutch victims.