hard times. After 1939, close to 300 were killed, and many more were recruited in 1944 to serve in the Alsatian territory. Troops of the French army arrived on April 25, 1945, and collected all the arms, munitions and weaponry in the city, to be stored in one of the guild houses built in the 15th century. On the night of May 2, a fire destroyed the building and the western side of the market square.
During the period of National Socialism (Third Reich), a subcamp of Dachau was established in the vicinity of �berlingen (KZ Aufkirch). Its 800 detainees worked in �berlingen from October 1944 to April 1945, constructing an extensive underground facility, the Goldbach Stollen (caves, used for the manufacture of military armaments). The underground caves protected the plant from Allied bombing runs. Of the 800, 168 detainees died in either the cave conversion or a misplaced allied bombing raid; 97 are buried in the cemetery in the nearby pilgrim church Birnau. The names of the dead KZ prisoners are listed in the book by Oswald Burger ("Der Stollen") as a memorial. Often, tours through the caves are offered. The Birnau cemetery is near the parking lot by the Cloister church Birnau and the B31 and can be reached on foot. The memorial lies approximately 200 metres (656 ft) east of the church in Birnau.
In 1972, �berlingen became the first city in the German Federal Republic to institute a tax on second homes, which became known as the so-called �berlingen Model. With the administrative reform of 1973, �berlingen was established as the seat of the County of �berlingen, in the Bodensee region. In 1990, the population of the city passed the 20,000 mark and city authorities applied for status as a large county seat, which was granted by the state administration of Baden-W�rttemberg in January 1993.
The city received international attention in July 2002 with the mid-air collision of a Tupolev 154 and a Boeing 757 on July 1, 2002. In this incident, the
