Albin Sawatzki

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Albin Sawatzki (born October 6, 1909 in Danzig ; † May 1, 1945 in Warburg ) was a German engineer and was responsible for the series production of the A4 surface-to-surface missile in the underground Mittelwerk during the final phase of the Nazi German Reich .

Life

Sawatzki, a member of the NSDAP since May 1933 , was initially operations manager at Henschel & Sohn in Kassel, where he was responsible for tank production . He was responsible for the manufacture of the VI Tiger armored vehicle . In July 1943, Sawatzki was appointed to the A4 Special Committee , which dealt with issues relating to the testing and manufacture of the A4, by Armaments Minister Albert Speer as head of the Series Production Working Committee. At first he was based in the Peenemünde Army Research Center and, after the bombing of the Peenemünde Army Research Center, in Nordhausen from the beginning of September 1943. From February 1944, Sawatzki finally became a member of the management of Mittelwerk GmbH as director of the planning department . Sawatzki's working committee prepared the mass production of the rocket, including the establishment of underground factories. The most famous production facility, the Mittelwerk in the tunnel system in Kohnstein , was in operation for over a year. There, prisoners from the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp had to drive the tunnels under catastrophic conditions and later also produce some rockets. In 1944, Sawatzki also became Technical Director at Henschel. Because of his “services to German armaments”, Sawatzki received a grant of 30,000 RM from Adolf Hitler .

Shortly before the end of the war, Sawatzki evaded the evacuation of 450 rocket specialists to the Alpine fortress in Oberammergau , which was initiated on April 6, 1945, and did not implement the destruction of the tunnel in Kohnstein ordered by the SS . On April 11, 1945, the US Army marched into Nordhausen and Niedersachswerfen and discovered the underground tunnels in Kohnstein, in which, in addition to the prisoners of the concentration camp, more than 10,000 people from the area had found refuge. On April 13, 1945, Sawatzki was mistreated by former prisoners and on April 14, 1945, he was interrogated by the US Army. Under unknown circumstances, he died on May 1, 1945 in Warburg, Westphalia.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 521
  2. ↑ a b c Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945 , Göttingen, 2007., p. 40
  3. ^ Rainer Eisfeld : Moonstruck. Wernher von Braun and the birth of space travel from the spirit of barbarism. Hamburg, 1996, p. 158.
  4. ^ A b Manfred Bornemann : Secret Project Mittelbau. From the central oil depot of the German Reich to the largest rocket factory in World War II . Bernard & Graefe, 1994, ISBN 978-3-7637-5927-9 (240 pages): “He had received instructions from the SS to blow up the underground facility. He did not carry out this order. He repeatedly expressed the opinion that the facility was something so grand and impressive and unique in the whole world. "
personal data
SURNAME Sawatzki, Albin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German operations manager at the Henschel works
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1945
Place of death Warburg