Army ammunition facility in Siegelsbach

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Siegelsbach train station
Former railway connection Siegelsbach.jpg

The Heeresmunitionsanstalt Siegelsbach was an ammunition plant ( Muna for short ) of the army of the Wehrmacht in the time of National Socialism near Siegelsbach in the district of Heilbronn in northern Baden-Württemberg . It was established in 1939. Like all army ammunition plants, it was initially used to complete artillery shells, but in the final phase of the war it was also an intermediate storage facility for missiles of the type Aggregat 4 ( A4 for short , propaganda designation V2 ). After World War IIFormer forced laborers and later displaced persons were quartered in the area for a short time . From 1950 the US Army used 117 hectares of the site, while the community of Siegelsbach initially settled businesses on the remaining areas, before the German Armed Forces claimed the areas not used by the Americans from 1959 . For decades, equipment and ammunition depots for the US Army and the German Armed Forces were located in the facility, and at times nuclear warheads from the American Pershing missiles were also stored there. After the Americans left in 1993, the German Armed Forces turned the facility, which was now used alone, into the main equipment depot, but has only been using it as a storage facility since 2002 and cleared it completely in 2010. Since then, the site has been privatized and used for commercial purposes. The approximately 208 hectare complex was the largest military facility in the Kraichgau .

history

Army ammunition facility

The forest area between Siegelsbach, Obergimpern and Wagenbach had been of interest to the Wehrmacht since 1938 at the latest . The exact reasons for the choice of location are no longer known today, but like the nearby Neckar-Enz position with the protection against a possible attack from France or like the armaments tunnels of the nearby Neckarelz concentration camp built later in the area with the hidden location have to do in an otherwise little-used military area. The facility was certainly connected with the gypsum tunnel in Neckarzimmern , which was supposed to serve as a store for the ammunition to be produced in Siegelsbach and for which the same location criteria certainly applied.

The Army High Command ordered on 1 December 1938, the establishment of an above-ground army ammunition factory with siding and transfer station at the designated forest area. The communities of Siegelsbach and Obergimpern were informed at the beginning of February 1939 about a planned, unspecified military facility in their districts. The community of Siegelsbach requested 70 hectares of forest for this, and the community of Obergimpern for 115 hectares. Due to some associated buildings erected in the vicinity, the total area increased a little later. The facility was to be developed from Siegelsbach. The community representatives, who were sworn to secrecy, had nothing to oppose the plan despite great doubts. The municipal council of Siegelsbach approved the sale of the required area on March 24, 1939. In Obergimpern, the sale was only made on December 28, 1941, when construction on the Siegelsbach side had long since begun, before the local council, which also approved. In May 1943 the purchase contracts were subsequently concluded. The army's asset management team paid the purchase price of over RM 1 million to the municipalities in part, not in cash, but as Reich loans , which lost their entire value two years later with the collapse of the German Empire.

Construction of the army ammunition facility on the Siegelbach part of the area began in the spring of 1939. The entrance area was built in the north-east of the facility with administration buildings, accommodation and social buildings, as well as the ammunition processing building and various technical buildings, including the boiler house, workshops and garages. Most of the area was needed for the scattered 75 ammunition houses and packaging sheds. In July 1939, the Hanau company W. Franz leased the then fallow Siegelsbach quarry to extract the stones needed to build the building.Much more building material came via the Krebsbachtalbahn , whose previously modest volume of goods multiplied with the start of construction. The plans envisaged setting up the facility in Siegelsbach for 600 employees and creating another 200 jobs in the associated warehouse in Neckarzimmern. The workers should live in the village or in the vicinity. A small housing estate for higher ranks was to be built on the access road from Siegelsbach. Additional accommodation barracks to be built were only to be occupied in the event of mobilization, but in peacetime they were to serve as rest homes for workers from other ammunition plants, as the Siegelsbach plant was officially regarded as the most beautiful ammunition plant in Greater Germany .

The Second World War broke out during the construction work , so the army command pushed for the facility to be completed quickly. In particular, the buildings should no longer be completed in massive form, but rather in quick wood construction, which the local construction management has demonstrably disregarded most of the buildings, which are made of sandstone . The military construction activity in the village of Siegelsbach was viewed critically, as Siegelsbach could now also be a military target.

The Siegelsbacher Bahnhof was massively expanded in 1940 to cope with the large volume of goods and received three additional shunting and sidings. The ammunition plant was given its own siding, and a total of around 18 kilometers of track were laid on its premises - about one kilometer more than the length of the Krebsbachtal main line. The station received two signal boxes in 1942. At the Munawald a stopping point of the branch line was created, which was named after the commander at that time, Captain Thom Thoms Hütten (today: Siegelsbach Wald ).

From October 1940, artillery shells were manufactured by 250 workers in the ammunition factory . Explosives , detonating devices , cartridges and powder of the grenades came from other production facilities in Siegelbach carried out the final assembly and shipping container. If the grenades were not immediately delivered to the front, they were temporarily stored in the 75 ammunition houses of the Siegelsbach facility. The planned storage in Neckarzimmern could not be realized because there was no direct rail connection to Neckarzimmern and after the start of war production, the construction of a planned line would no longer have made sense. The ammunition trains left Siegelsbach directly for their destinations. Every day, leaving at least one train, sometimes two trains with 25 to 30 covered freight cars with 15 tons of ammunition facility. Rented heavy steam locomotives from the Reichsbahn were used as locomotives, as the weak locomotives of the Krebsbachtalbahn could not have moved the heavy freight trains. A former Polish PKP Tp 108 freight locomotive was used as a bag locomotive and three class 93 tank locomotives from the holdings of the former Baden State Railways.

During the Second World War, the number of people employed in the Muna rose to around 2000. In addition to the original craftsmen, fireworkers and firefighters as well as the guard company, there were women conscripted for military service, Russian prisoners of war, Italian military internees as well as various conscripted foreigners and Wehrmacht prisoners. A small proportion of the employees lived in the Taubenäckersiedlung on Wagenbacher Weg, which formed the connection between town and Muna . In the Taubenäckersiedlung three houses of a planned housing estate had been completed from 1940 onwards, in which later, in consideration of the village character of Siegelsbach, only a maximum of 30 families of senior officials and officers were to be accommodated. In order to accommodate the many remaining employees, the army administration negotiated with the community of Siegelsbach to designate new building areas, but none of them worked. Finally, various barracks were built inside and outside the Muna site: the women's camp with four living quarters, two laundry and one kitchen barracks on Wagenbacher Weg, seven other barracks within the Muna site and the Russian camp consisting of other barracks between Muna and Wagenbacher Weg .

From 1943 the southern and special camp of the Muna was expanded, in which V2 rockets were temporarily stored from 1944 . The southern camp received its own switch from the Krebsbachtal main line, via which the rocket parts were delivered separately according to warheads and detonators with camouflage trains from the Dora concentration camp . It was hoped that storage in the wooded, secluded and secluded Siegelsbacher Muna would provide better protection against air attacks. In the south camp there were 30 wooden halls, which were connected by lorry tracks and each could hold nine missiles, which were then sent on in the order in which they arrived.

From the summer of 1944, numerous air raids began in the area. On May 27, 1944, the Neckarbischofsheim-Reichsbahn station, where the branch line to the Muna branched off, was attacked by low-level pilots, killing a train driver. Further attacks on the train station occurred in the fall, killing three slave laborers and seriously injuring three railway workers. In the autumn of 1944, production in the Muna also fell significantly, as less and less of the required explosives and other parts reached Siegelsbach. As production fell, the number of staff in the plant was also reduced.

On Sunday, February 25, 1945, a heavy air raid occurred in two waves. Not only the bombs dropped, but also the explosives detonating on the site caused severe damage. Since there was no work that Sunday and there were only guards and a few prisoners of war in the facility, only six fatalities were mourned. Another attack took place on March 2, 1945, but most of the bombs fell on the open area between the village and the Muna . The place was spared bombs during both attacks, but many roofs and windows were destroyed by pressure waves.

Immediately after the first attack, the work in the largely destroyed Muna was largely stopped, at the same time the front was getting closer and closer. Some transportable machines have been outsourced. Some of the employees were still employed in the village with simple work such as cleaning weapons. During Holy Week at the end of March 1945, a demolition squad blew up most of the Muna’s remaining explosives for days . The last soldiers left on Holy Saturday. The Americans reached the neighboring town of Hüffenhardt on Easter Sunday , where bitter fighting broke out over the resistance of an SS unit. The following day the Americans moved into Siegelsbach without a fight.

Use after the Second World War

After the American occupation, the Muna presented a chaotic picture. Above all, the Americans confiscated the remaining V2 parts and quickly transported them away, but initially did not care about the system. Large quantities of explosives and grenade cartridges were left on the site, which was furrowed by bomb craters. Some ammunition houses had remained undamaged and full of ammunition, and in the middle of the facility was a whole freight train with ready-to-fire grenades. Up until July 1945, former Russian prisoners of war still lived in some undamaged barracks on the site. When they started their journey home, the UNRRA occupied the barrack camp with former Polish forced laborers who stayed there until January 1946. The former forced laborers carried out numerous attacks and looting of the civilian population.

From February 1946, the barracks camp in the Muna was a transit camp for expellees from the eastern regions, who were brought to private quarters in the area as quickly as possible after their registration and medical examination, sometimes in crushing confinement. In 1953, 28 tenants were still living in the three officers' houses on Wagenbacher Strasse.

Immediately after the end of the war, the municipal administration allowed the residents to get the building materials they needed to repair their war-damaged houses, especially bricks, from the Muna . When building the Taubenäckersiedlung , the building materials scattered around in the Muna were also used . In addition to the authorized persons, there were many more unauthorized persons in the whole of the second half of 1945 who managed to get everything usable out of the Muna , from non-ferrous metal to tools, machines, coal and wood to leftover powder boxes and some of the railroad tracks. It was not until December 1945 that the district administrator in Sinsheim forbade civilians from entering the Muna. The Poles living in the camp were put in black uniforms as guards, to which those authorized had to identify themselves. However, this measure hardly changed the hustle and bustle within the facility. When the Poles had withdrawn in January 1946, the community of Siegelsbach was commissioned to set up a 25-person security service, and later also to set up around 80 people for clean-up work, for which applicants from the surrounding towns were also accepted.

On April 13, 1946, there was a serious explosion. First there was a serious explosion around 3 p.m. and a fire broke out, which set a train laden with powder on fire, the wagons of which then also exploded one after the other. Two young men from Babstadt who were doing woodwork in the Munawald died in the accident . The cause of the accident is unclear. One of the two men could have caused the explosion by careless handling of an open fire, or a controlled demolition planned for later that day could have been triggered too early and improperly.

As a result of the accident, the camp on the Muna site was closed at the beginning of May 1946 for security reasons. The priority clearing-up work on the site was now the removal of the remaining quantities of powder, for which demolition and disarmament experts were called in, who moved into the barracks on the site. In May and June 1946, 2,100 tons of powder from Siegelsbach went to France as reparations , and then the evacuation of the powder intensified. In the summer of 1947, 10 to 12 wagons loaded with powder left the site every day. To remove the ammunition that had been scattered around the area, collecting teams were set up and blasting sites were set up at Obergimpern and in the Wimpfen forest, where the collected ammunition was still being blown up every day in autumn 1948.

In the summer of 1946, the State Collection Society for Public Goods GmbH ( Steg ) took over the collection and utilization of the goods located in the Muna . Wood and bricks mostly went to the people in the area, the railroad parts came and the like. a. benefit the reconstruction of the Mannheim harbor , the Albtalbahn in Ettlingen and the Filderbahn in Stuttgart.

After the aboveground powder and ammunition had been collected, the search for and rendering harmless of the duds remaining in the ground of the bombing raids, which were brought to the area of ​​Pforzheim and blown up there, followed until 1951. The work proceeded without dangerous incidents. The search for duds was also necessary because in the late 1940s, the first industrial companies were using the existing buildings in the northeastern area of ​​the Muna and as a result of this use there was also little construction activity on the site. The first companies in 1948 included the Rosenberg canning factory and the Roderburg drugstore processing, which did not exist for long, as well as the more successful electrical appliance company Naujocks and Stolle and the Perkuhn glove factory. After the blocking ordinance was repealed in autumn 1951, the community of Siegelsbach began to recruit further industrial companies. Even the Bundesdruckerei in Frankfurt am Main showed an interest in the use of part of the area in the Munawald in 1952 .

Business development experienced an upswing until the mid-1950s. Nevertheless, rumors soon circulated that the entire Muna area was to be used for military purposes again, especially since the Americans had occupied around 117 hectares of the 208 hectares of the facility since 1950, namely the areas of the ammunition houses and the special camp, and in 1955 with the establishment The Bundeswehr also began rearming the Federal Republic.

Equipment and ammunition depot for the German armed forces and the US armed forces

In October 1956 there was a discussion between representatives of the municipality, the companies, the district office and the district council, as well as representatives of the surrounding municipalities, in which the municipality and the companies insisted that the established trade should remain. After the first companies had already left the site in 1956, the remaining companies were given notice in February 1957 and had completely cleared the site by 1961. As early as 1959, before the last factories left, the Bundeswehr began building a depot on the part not used by the Americans.

The US Army blew up the ammunition houses on the 117 hectares it had used since 1950 and removed the remains. In 1953, light storage sheds were initially built in their place, but in 1954 these were also demolished and instead numerous bunkers of various sizes were built, including 53 so-called safe bunkers, which could hold 15,500 tons of NATO combat ammunition . Numerous companies from the area were involved in the construction of the bunkers. Accommodation for the guards as well as sports and leisure facilities were also built.

The Siegelsbach 9th Ordonance Battalion was under the American command in Neckarsulm, where a direct telephone line was laid in 1955. In 1958 a helipad was built inside the depot, which was later expanded.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the entire Muna facility was already being used for military purposes, it became known, due to the large number of missile transporters arriving and departing, that the Americans also stored missiles with warheads in Siegelsbach. The US Army never gave information about the type of weapons stored.

In the 1970s there were a few small peace demonstrations at the US depot, but the facility did not attract the general public. Only in the course of the retrofitting and the stationing of Pershing II missiles on the Waldheide in Heilbronn did the media and the peace movement show greater interest. The Monitor broadcast reported on February 18, 1986 on not insignificant amounts of nuclear warheads in Siegelsbach. There was also speculation about biological and chemical weapons. On April 19, 1987, the Easter March of the Heilbronn peace movement led from Heilbronn to Siegelsbach. Heinz Günther claimed in the Deutsches Allgemeine Sonntagsblatt of October 4, 1987 that around 1000 nuclear warheads with an explosive force of 10 million tons of TNT were being stored in Siegelsbach. The last guard unit stationed in Siegelsbach was the 556th MP Company. The US troops were withdrawn from September 1992. The withdrawal should last until August 1993, but surprisingly the US depot was cleared in May 1993. The Bundeswehr officially took it over on October 1, 1993.

On the Bundeswehr side, the first buildings for a main material depot had already been built in 1959. An advance command moved into the renovated former workhouses, began building eleven warehouses and put the siding to the Krebsbachtalbahn back into operation. The storage of vehicles began at the end of June 1959. At the Taubenäckersiedlung, blocks of flats and terraced houses were built for the Bundeswehr employees, especially since an entire depot handling battalion was stored in the depot. There were plans to expand the housing estate like a barracks.

At the end of the 1960s, the German Armed Forces converted the main material depot for all types of weapons into an army equipment depot. With that, the handling battalion withdrew, the plans for a barracks became obsolete and in addition to the remaining 120 to 150 soldiers, there were also many civilian workers, including car mechanics, locksmiths, carpenters and other craftsmen. Numerous workshops and halls were built on the Bundeswehr site, where intact army equipment, especially chain mail and other armored vehicles, was stored and serviced and, if necessary, delivered to the army, mostly by rail. The SWEG as operator of Krebsbachtal benefited immensely from the material transport within the depot took its own diesel incoming freight cars. In addition, there was a large preservation and packaging facility for weapons of the Bundeswehr in Siegelsbach, which from there covered the whole of southern Germany.

The community benefited above all from the use of the armed forces, especially since there were many civilian jobs in the depot and grants for road construction, maintenance of the sewer system and other cost-intensive items were granted because of the depot.

When the Americans withdrew in 1993, only the Bundeswehr remained in the facility. The equipment depot in Siegelsbach became the main equipment depot to which the depots in Huchenfeld and Kirrlach were subordinate. In the course of the downsizing of the Bundeswehr from 1995, the decision was made to gradually close the facility, which Defense Minister Volker Rühe announced on May 22, 1996. The municipal council and the ÖTV tried unsuccessfully to maintain the depot in Siegelsbach. At that time there were still just under 100 employees. In 1998 the full-time fire protection group, which had also supported the voluntary fire brigades in the surrounding areas, was relocated to the Bundeswehr depot in Neckarzimmern. In 2002, the main equipment depot was converted into a depository and looked after by only around 20 employees. At the end of 2010, the facility was abandoned by the Bundeswehr.

Todays use

Kommunalentwicklung GmbH from Stuttgart, which looked after the system during the withdrawal of the Bundeswehr, wanted to build an industrial park for environmental technology with systems for solar power generation, biomass and wind power in the Munawald and built a solar system in the former US part from 2008 . The hoped-for EU funding did not materialize, however, so that the plans of the Stuttgart company fell through. The Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks then took over the marketing of the space. The Heilbronn police department uses part for exercises, another part is used by the Siegelsbach cosmetics and drugstore company Mann & Schröder , and a sawmill has also moved into storage space on the site. The company Pakufol , previously located in Sinsheim , was able to be won as a new settlement, which has moved to the old Muna site with its production of garbage bags.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Decree of December 1, 1938 No. 31 47/38 g V 2 d
  2. ↑ USAAF 320th Bomb Group, February 25, 1945: aerial photo ; Bomb ploot ; Final report (en.) (PDF; 852 kB)
  3. ↑ Petzold 2003, p. 322 (with ill.).
  4. ^ Solar power from the military area , Heilbronner Voice, February 27, 2008

literature

Coordinates: 49 ° 16 ′ 5.6 "  N , 9 ° 3 ′ 34.1"  E