Kapen Army Ammunition Plant

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The Kapen army ammunition plant , named after a forest area west of Oranienbaum , was an army ammunition plant for the manufacture of grenades and chemical weapons during World War II . After the war, part of the plant was used as a Soviet military base, the other part of the armaments company VEB Chemiewerk Kapen . With the German reunification , the military base closed and the chemical plant was converted into the Dessora industrial park.

In October 1935 an army ammunition facility was built on 200 hectares . Initially, ammunition and cartridges for large-caliber guns were produced. The required explosives came from the nearby explosives plant in Schönebeck (Elbe) . In 1938 the plant was expanded to include a bunker with eight tanks for around 8,000 tons of liquid warfare agents and a filling plant . The army ammunition plant then began producing chemical weapons in the form of grenades and aerial bombs . The warfare agents came mainly from the chemical company Orgacid . The army ammunition plant continued to grow and in February 1943 it employed 1,150 people, 300 of whom were slave laborers . It survived the Second World War unscathed and was occupied by the United States Army in April 1945 .

post war period

The Americans captured documents on chemical weapons production there before they withdrew in May of that year and the Red Army occupied the area. Until 1947 the chemicals found were filled into empty-storey shells; these were transported by rail to the Baltic Sea , where they were sunk. Some of the warfare agents were burned on site, and some were brought to the Soviet Union . The plants were also dismantled and also transferred to the Soviet Union. The warfare bunkers were blown up. The manpower for the removal was mainly provided by former members of the army ammunition facility. From 1952 to 1956, warfare agents found from all parts of the GDR were burned in a specially built incinerator .

Later, the group of Soviet armed forces in Germany used part of the site as a military base. The part with the filling plant that was not affected by this was taken over by the newly founded VEB Chemiewerk Kapen, which was sarcastically called the pudding factory . Armaments such as hand grenades , fuses and land mines were produced , including the PPM-2 infantry mine and the SM-70 self-firing system . Both weapons were used on the inner-German border . At the end of 1970, the Kapen chemical plant with the mechanical workshops in Königswartha, VEB equipment and tool construction Wiesa , the Spreewerk Lübben u. a. merged to form the device construction combine Königswartha.

After German reunification in 1990, the Kapen chemical plant was wound up . The Dessora industrial park was built on the site. In September 1992 the last Soviet soldiers left the military base.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Willy Schilling: Saxony-Anhalt 1933 - 1945: the historical travel guide , Ch. Links Verlag , 2013, ISBN 9783861537168 , pp. 77–78 [1]
  2. ↑ Answer of the Federal Government to the minor question from the MPs Ulrike Höfken, Steffi Lemke, Dr. Jürgen Rochlitz and the parliamentary group BÜNDNIS 90 / DIE GRÜNEN - printed matter 13/2348 October 24, 1995
  3. ↑ a b Hans-Peter Berth: Devil's stuff from the "pudding factory" in: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , August 13, 2007 [2]
  4. ↑ Thomas Kemnitz, Robert Conrad, Michael Täger: Closed: 100 Abandoned Places in Germany and Europe , MairDumont Verlag , 2016, ISBN 9783616470177 , p. 59 [3]
  5. ↑ Lump in the throat , DER SPIEGEL issue 30/1991, July 22, 1991
  6. ↑ Jochen Staadt : You damn pigs. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from August 14, 2017 [4]
  7. ↑ Rainer Karlsch : The armaments industry of the GDR at a glance in: Military, State and Society in the GDR: Research fields, results, perspectives , Ch. Links Verlag , 2004, ISBN 9783861533290 , p. 180 [5]

Coordinates: 51 ° 48 ′ 14.8 "  N , 12 ° 20 ′ 40.2"  E