Henschel aircraft engine construction
| Henschel Flugmotorenbau GmbH | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Company with limited liability |
| founding | July 9, 1936 Commercial listing, November 9, 1937 Foundation stone laid |
| resolution | 5th August 1957 |
| Seat | Kassel - Berlin , Germany |
| management |
|
| Number of employees |
|
| sales | 0.45 billion Reichsmarks (1933–1945) |
| Branch | Aircraft construction |
The Henschel Flugmotorenbau GmbH (HFM) was a subsidiary of Henschel & Sohn for the manufacture and repair of aircraft engines . The company, founded in 1936, was rebuilt in the Lohwald between Altenbauna and Rengershausen . In the Second World War to HFM became one of the most liquid and largest producers of aircraft engines for the Air Force of the Armed Forces . In the course of the war, a large number of prisoners of war as well as foreign and forced labor were used to maintain and increase production . After the HFM was liquidated , the factory premises were sold to Volkswagenwerk GmbH in 1957 , which built the VW factory in Kassel on the premises .
history
Origin and foundation
Under the direction of Oscar Robert Henschel , Henschel & Sohn had become a fixture in locomotive construction at the end of the 1920s . During this time the company expanded its production by entering into truck and bus construction . As part of the poor economic situation during the Great Depression and the secret rearmament in Germany, the company was realigned in the 1930s. This included the rejection of the stake in the Rheinisch-Westfälische coal mines and the Henrichshütte as well as the brief transformation of the company into a stock corporation . Contrary to what was prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles , the company concentrated increasingly on the development and production of military goods.
In addition to the development of tanks, there had been specific plans since 1931 to enter aircraft construction and benefit from further lucrative military contracts. To implement these projects, Henschel & Sohn finally planned to take over an aircraft manufacturer. A special interest was shown in the Junkers aircraft factory , which was able to manufacture aircraft in large numbers and was located close to the company's own headquarters in Kassel. After the negotiations failed in 1932 and there was no participation in other companies such as Focke-Wulf-Flugzeugbau AG , Henschel & Sohn began building their own plant with the help of the experienced aircraft construction director Walter Hormel . Although the Kassel company finally founded Henschel Flugzeug-Werke AG (HFW) in Kassel on March 31, 1933 , the first production facilities were in political proximity to the Reich Ministry of Aviation (RLM) in a former wagon factory in Berlin-Johannisthal . Production of the first military aircraft began on site towards the end of the year, and in October 1934, Henschel Flugzeugwerke expanded with the construction of another plant in Berlin-Schönefeld .
The aircraft engines required were made makeshift in the locomotive factory at the main Kassler plant. In view of these unfavorable circumstances, the management decided to look for suitable locations for aircraft construction near Kassel, which on the one hand would allow a good infrastructure as well as a possible camouflage of the site. The choice finally fell on a 135.37 hectare forest in the Altenbauna community. As early as July 13, 1936, there was a confidential conversation between the district farmer leader and Henschel representatives. For the factory site alone, numerous landowners and shareholders had to cede their land to the aircraft manufacturers. Here the company could rely on the support of the RLM, which was ready to initiate expropriation proceedings. The foundation stone was laid on November 9, 1937 . While the RLM was still skeptical about the construction of the Berlin works, it supported the Baunatal plant from the start. In addition to half of the share capital of 20,000 Reichsmarks , the compensation for the landowners was pre-financed by the Reich Aviation Ministry. State participation in the company increased to 12 million Reichsmarks by 1939, when Henschel & Sohn bought the bonds back in 1941 . The plant received further financial support through loans and pre-financing of government contracts, so that a total of 18 million Reichsmarks were granted as interest-free working capital loans by the end of the war. Exact figures on the volume of production before the start of the war are not known, but there has been a high demand for aircraft engines since the use of airplanes in the Spanish Civil War . Since other manufacturers such as Daimler-Benz did not meet these requirements alone, Henschel helped out as a licensee and produced the Daimler-Benz DB 601 , 603 , 605 and 610 engines from 1937 .
The aircraft engine plant during the Second World War
With the beginning of the Second World War , the demand for aircraft engines increased again. This high demand could only be met by optimizing production and a number of other measures: In February 1941, the company ensured that the factory premises were connected to the Kassel tram network . Furthermore, the weekly working time was increased from 48 to 60 hours after the start of the war and additional special shifts were introduced on Sundays. In addition, there was increased mobilization of the local workforce, and more workers from other regions or from non-war areas were hired. They also tried to win women over to work. For a short time, Henschel & Sohn also had control of an aircraft factory in the Polish city of Rzeszów , which was used to compensate for internal bottlenecks in parts production. However, the use of foreign workers and prisoners of war was decisive for maintaining and increasing production.
Since the beginning of the war, more and more forced laborers and prisoners of war were used in industry , crafts and agriculture in the “ Third Reich ” . While in the beginning it was still possible to recruit a few voluntary civil workers with numerous promises, these soon turned out to be empty promises and the bad treatment ensured that hardly any voluntary workers could be hired. Of the total of eight to ten million people from the occupied countries, between 20,000 and 25,000 came from Kassel alone, most of whom were employed in industry and agriculture. Numerous forced laborers were also employed in the aircraft engine plant in Altenbauna. In the beginning, foreign workers in the Henschel & Sohn plants were primarily intended to compensate for departing employees. Due to the severe labor shortage, as numerous workers were drafted into the Wehrmacht and at the same time production was to be increased to maintain the war economy, they became a fixed factor in planning as cheap labor during the war, and their number kept increasing.
Foreign workers were accommodated in large barrack camps. These camps were mostly assigned to a specific company, which also provided the camp management. Henschel & Sohn and its subsidiaries managed around ten to eleven such warehouses in and around Kassel. Most of the foreign workers at Flugmotorenbau GmbH were housed in the Mattenberg barracks. With 54 barracks, it is probably the second largest camp in Kassel. Over 6000 people of various origins lived in the camp, including around 400 children. A kindergarten and a separate area for Soviet prisoners of war were part of the camp. Men and women lived separately and barracks were divided according to nationality.
The foreign workers were subject to an extensive system of punishment and discipline, ranging from withholding wages and food rations to protective custody, deportation to a concentration camp, or professional shooting . As part of the German Labor Front , the barracks and the workplace were controlled by the factory charmen. During the war, the crew of the aircraft engine factory consisted of 21 men who lived in the foreign labor camp and were trained as paramilitary . Nevertheless, there were repeated protests, refusal to work and attempts to escape. The foreign workers were either not paid at all or received only a fraction of what German workers earned for their work. They were also exempt from most occupational health and safety measures. These circumstances ensured that Henschel & Sohn also employed foreign workers, which allowed the company to expand rapidly during the war years.
The enormous demand for cheap labor is reflected in the fact that, despite the state allocation of forced laborers, Henschel carried out his own recruitment. A separate office was maintained in Paris for this purpose. In 1943 the number of foreign workers grew to 13,000, which thus made up more than half of all employees of Henschel & Sohn. This development can also be seen in the aircraft engine plant in Altenbauna. While there were only 1,000 employees in 1941, this number had grown to 4,700 foreign workers by 1944.
The plant was repeatedly targeted by bombing raids later in the war, but this rarely affected production figures. Although production halls were hit, the bombs rarely destroyed machines. If so, the company will soon replace them or relocate production. Shortly after the first bombing raids on the plant, the Reich Aviation Ministry had the production facilities completely relocated. In the following years, more and more parts of the production were relocated to the surrounding North Hessian towns of Hersfeld , Holzhausen, Melsungen , Remsfeld , Waldeck , Wega and Ziegenhain . At the beginning of these outsourced production facilities around 2321 workers were employed, at the end of the war around 3537 people were working in the surrounding factories. During the Second World War, a total of over 14,000 aircraft engines were manufactured by HFM GmbH, which corresponds to a share of 11.7%. This made the plant by far the largest manufacturer of aircraft engines during the Second World War, as many of the other manufacturers remained below 6000 engines.
- Development of the production figures
Aircraft engine production at Henschel Flugmotorenbau GmbH from 1939 to 1945:
| year | number of pieces |
|---|---|
| 1939 | about 700 |
| 1940 | 993 |
| 1941 | 1283 |
| 1942 | 1986 |
| 1943 | 3345 |
| 1944 | 5313 |
| 1945 | 1093 |
| total | 14713 |
post war period
With the end of the Second World War, supervision of the plant fell to the American military government. Contrary to the decisions of the Potsdam Agreement on demilitarization , only a few machines and systems from Henschel Flugmotorenbau GmbH were dismantled, while the majority of the other Hessian arms manufacturers were almost completely dismantled. Instead, the company was soon hired to maintain and repair American military vehicles. In the following years, Henschel mainly traded in buses, trucks and heavy machinery. At the end of the 1950s, the economic situation of the family business deteriorated so much that a settlement procedure was opened and the family left the company. An owner consortium (including Fritz-Aurel Goergen ) took over the company, closed various unprofitable divisions and set new priorities. In addition to heavy machinery and machine tools, this also included American license orders. In 1957, the auditor Johannes Semler finally initiated the sale of the former Henschel aircraft engine plant. The company premises were sold on October 5, 1957 for 6.5 million DM to Volkswagenwerk GmbH , which built the Volkswagenwerk Kassel there under the direction of Rudolf Leiding .
literature
- Helmut Bernert: Settlement of the armaments industry as part of the north Hessian economic structural improvement. In: Chronicle of the town of Baunatal. Seven villages become one city. Volume 4, ed. v. Magistrat der Stadt Baunatal, Baunatal 1999, pp. 111–120.
- Jens Flemming: The "most extensive commercial establishment" in town. In: Jürgen Nautz (ed.): Henschel and Kassel. Case studies on the history of the company and the Henschel family. Darmstadt 2012, pp. 21–44.
- Neil Gregor: Daimler-Benz in the Third Reich. New Haven, London 1998.
- Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar: Life and work at Henschel from the perspective of foreign forced laborers (1940–1945). In: Jürgen P. Nautz (ed.): Henschel and Kassel. Case studies on the history of the company and the Henschel family. Darmstadt 2012, pp. 114-134.
- Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar: Foreign forced laborers in Kassel - a review. In: Jens Flemming, Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar (Hrsg.): Kassel in der Moderne. Studies and research on the city's history. Marburg 2013, pp. 182–193.
- Gunnar Richter , Wolfgang Ayass, Ralf Löber: Breitenau. On the history of a National Socialist concentration and labor education camp. Kassel 1993.
- Karl-Heinz Roth, Werner Kossin: The Henschel aircraft engine plant Kassel-Altenbauna. A chronicle of the location from 1950 to October 1957. Kassel 2008.
- Thomas Vollmer, Ralf Kulla: Panzer from Kassel - The armaments production of the companies Henschel and Wegmann . Prolog-Verlag, Kassel 1994, ISBN 3-89395-004-4 .
Web links
- University of Kassel Dietfried Krause-Vilmer, figures on the Mattenberg camp:
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jürgen Nautz: Introductory remarks in: Jürgen Nautz (ed.): Henschel and Kassel. Case studies on the history of the company and the Henschel family, Darmstadt 2012 (= publications on Hessian economic and company history, vol. 12), p. 14.
- ^ Panzer from Kassel , p. 84
- ^ Panzer from Kassel , pp. 15, 116, 117.
- ^ Helmut Bernert: Settlement of the armaments industry in the context of the North Hessian economic structural improvement, in: Chronik der Stadt Baunatal. Seven Villages Become One City, Vol. 4, Ed. Magistrate of the City of Baunatal, Baunatal 1999, pp. 116, 117, 118.
- ↑ The company also took over plants in occupied territories in other areas, such as B. the Wiener Lokfabrik. See: Thomas Vollmer, Panzer from Kassel. The armaments production of the companies Henschel and Wegmann, Kassel 1994, p. 86.
- ↑ Gunnar Richter, Wolfgang Ayass, Ralf Löber: Breitenau. On the history of a National Socialist concentration and labor education camp, Kassel 1993, p. 114.
- ↑ Gunnar Richter, Wolfgang Ayass, Ralf Löber: Breitenau. On the history of a National Socialist concentration and labor education camp, Kassel 1993, p. 112.
- ↑ Gunnar Richter, Wolfgang Ayass, Ralf Löber: Breitenau. On the history of a National Socialist concentration and labor education camp. Kassel 1993, p. 116.
- ↑ Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar, https://www.uni-kassel.de/fb01/fileadmin/datas/fb01/Institut_fuer_Erziehungswissenschaft/Dateien/Krause_Vilmar/kassel_lager.pdf
- ↑ Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar: Foreign Forced Laborers in Kassel - A Review, in: Jens Flemming, Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar, (ed.): Kassel in der Moderne. Studies and research on the city's history. Marburg 2013, pp. 191, 192.
- ↑ Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar: Foreign Forced Laborers in Kassel - A Review, in: Jens Flemming, Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar, (ed.): Kassel in der Moderne. Studies and research on the city's history. Marburg 2013, p. 124.
- ^ Panzer from Kassel , pp. 86, 90
- ↑ Dietfried Krause-Vilmar: Life and work at Henschel from the perspective of foreign forced laborers (1940-1945), in: Jürgen Nautz (ed.): Henschel and Kassel. Case studies on the history of the company and the Henschel family, Darmstadt 2012, pp. 114–134.
- ↑ Jens Flemming: The “most extensive commercial establishment” on site, in: Jürgen Nautz (ed.): Henschel and Kassel. Case studies on the history of the company and the Henschel family, Darmstadt 2012, p. 37.
- ^ Thomas Vollmer: Panzer from Kassel. The armaments production of the companies Henschel and Wegmann, Kassel 1994, p. 86. as well as Thomas Vollmer: Armaments center Kassel - an unbroken tradition, in: Jens Flemming and Dietfrid Krause (eds.): Kassel in der Moderne. Studies and research on city history, Marburg 2013, pp. 329–331.
- ^ Panzer from Kassel , p. 85
- ↑ Jürgen Nautz (ed.): Henschel and Kassel. Case studies on the history of the company and the Henschel family, Darmstadt 2012 (= writings on Hessian economic and corporate history, vol. 12), p. 16.
- ^ Panzer from Kassel , p. 95