Mineral oil backup plan
.jpg)
The mineral oil security plan, which was pursued as a secret project during the Second World War in June 1944 , was also called the Geilenberg program after the creator of the program Edmund Geilenberg , the general commissioner for the immediate measures at the Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production .
The aim of the program was to prevent the impending collapse of the fuel supply, which had arisen on the Eastern Front due to the loss of the Romanian oil fields near Ploiesti and in Germany due to the Allied bombing of the fuel production facilities. 350,000 people, including 100,000 concentration camp prisoners, worked to achieve the goals of the mineral oil security plan.
causes
The oil production in Germany was only enough for almost 30% of the domestic demand and was less suitable for the production of light and jet fuel because of a high content of heavy and lubricating oils. The use of the significant coal deposits via the specially developed process of coal liquefaction acquired a certain importance for strategic military reasons before the Second World War . The construction of hydrogenation plants became an essential part of the self-sufficiency efforts of the four-year plan and was politically enforced against initial resistance from industry and widely discussed in public. In addition to Karl Aloys Schenzinger , the non-fiction author Anton Zischka, sponsored by Fritz Todt , was in charge of the popular scientific presentation of the synthetic topic and the associated propaganda efforts .
From the mid-1930s, hydrogenation plants for synthetic gasoline production were built. At the beginning of the war in 1939 there were seven plants with a total annual capacity of 1.2 million tons. The largest were the Leuna Works near Merseburg . The plants covered a large part of the Wehrmacht's fuel requirements and were the sole source of aviation fuel for the Air Force. Until the end of the war, American patents on individual types of fuel were observed and therefore aviation fuel types were produced with a somewhat inferior quality.
The Strategic Bombing Command of the Allied forces had already bombed the hydrogenation plants for the first time in 1941. Due to technical difficulties and strategic considerations, these were postponed in favor of area bombing. In 1944, the fuel industry, which is much less protected than the refinery capacities in Ploieşti (see air raids on Ploieşti ), was recognized as a central weak point in German warfare; targeted bombing had become technically possible through appropriate control systems. They therefore targeted the German oil and fuel industry from April 1944 onwards. In August 1944, Soviet troops were already standing at the borders of Romania, which is why, on the initiative of King Michael I (Romania), there was a putsch that resulted in Romania turning away from the German Empire.
Air strikes and their consequences
On May 12, 1944, the American Eighth Air Force massively bombed the refineries and hydrogenation plants in Leuna , Böhlen , Brüx , Lützkendorf and Zeitz-Tröglitz with 935 bombers . On 28 and 29 May 1944 renewed large-scale attacks followed the plants in Lützkendorf, Magdeburg-Rothensee , Merseburg , Ruhland , Tröglitz and Pölitz and on 16 and 26 June were from the Fifteenth Air Force , the Austrian refineries in Floridsdorf , Kagran , Lobau , Korneuburg and Moosbierbaum bombed. The Deurag-Nerag refinery in Misburg near Hanover was also the target of serious attacks on several occasions. The unprotected facilities were sensitive and mostly completely destroyed because they burned out completely. In addition, metal was scarce during the war and reconstruction was difficult or almost impossible. After the first attacks, numerous more bombs were dropped on fuel production sites and German fuel supplies slackened. This resulted in considerable restrictions in mobility for the German land, sea and, above all, for the air forces and for civilian purposes.
In addition to these attacks on the fuel industry, the collapse of the German Eastern Front in August 1944 had a fatal effect on the Germans' warfare because it led to the loss of the Romanian oil fields near Ploieşti. These oil fields had covered a large part of Germany's oil needs. The collapse of an industry that was important to the war effort was imminent.
After the successful bombing raids by the Allies, the Geilenberg program came into being , which envisaged the underground relocation of the hydrogenation plants , which were important for the war effort, as well as the development and construction of a wide variety of new plants for fuel production in a mineral oil security plan.
The lack of fuel not only led to a significant reduction in the mobility of the armed forces. The lack of kerosene was particularly serious for the new Me 262 jet fighters . The consequence was that the Luftwaffe fighter planes had to stay on the ground temporarily due to a lack of fuel. The German oil industry was thus practically unprotected. The production of the German fighter planes reached its numerical peak in the war year 1944, but because of the lack of fuel they were often no longer used.
Enterprise Desert was thecode name of one of the secret objects of the SS-owned industrial complex of the National Socialists as part of the Geilenberg program to extract urgently needed fuel from oil shale . In ten production facilities of the Desert Company in Württemberg , 15,000 concentration camp prisoners had to setup and operate the facilitiesfrom seven satellite camps of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp under sometimes grueling conditions.
reaction
When the German army command recognized this, it was too late for protective measures, as only an underground relocation of the production facilities could have provided protection against air attacks. This had not been prepared for a long time. The previous head of the main committee for ammunition in the Reich Ministry of Armaments, the Braunschweig steel industrialist Edmund Geilenberg, was personally appointed by Hitler on May 30, 1944 as "General Commissioner for the Immediate Measures at the Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production". The Geilenberg program was launched with the aim of securing fuel production for the Wehrmacht. In June 1944, Geilenberg drew up the mineral oil security plan with Carl Krauch , chairman of the IG Farben board and “general agent for special issues in chemical production” .
The plan provided for the provision of basic fuel supplies. Existing steam boilers were converted into the simplest distillation systems , entire refineries were relocated underground, and numerous small distillation systems were built. A wide variety of types of systems were planned, such as processing systems for lubricating and waste oils , a wide variety of distillation systems, isooctane and polymerization systems for the production of aviation fuel, systems for raw diesel and gasoline production, hydrogenation systems for coal liquefaction , oil shale melting , cracking systems and a further 80 systems were designed to to stabilize the fuel industry and thus the weakest point of the German armaments industry, which ultimately did not succeed. The concepts were given an alias and were kept strictly confidential.
Underground relocation
Particular attention was paid to the underground relocation, the so-called U-relocation , of the facilities. The term U-relocation refers to objects in which armaments factories and other companies of strategic military importance were relocated underground in a bomb-proof manner during the Second World War . It was not possible to protect the previously existing fuel production plants from the bombing with splinter protection or concrete covers.
To build the underground facilities, workers were needed that were scarce towards the end of the war, so concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers in particular were brought in to set up the underground and technical facilities, with numerous new concentration camps being built . 350,000 people, including around 100,000 prisoners, were deployed in the Geilenberg program under brutal conditions for clearing and construction work in fuel plants damaged by bombings and for relocating hydrogenation plants underground. The focus of the underground facilities for the production of synthetic gasoline was in Baden , Württemberg , North Rhine-Westphalia and the Harz region .
The End
In 1943 there were twelve producing hydrogenation plants for fuels and in the spring of 1944 fifteen. Towards the end of the war, in March 1945, the capacity of the hydrogenation works was three percent of the high from 1943. The plans to secure Germany's mineral oil supply had failed.
See also
literature
- Rainer Karlsch, Raymond G. Stokes: Factor Oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859–1974. Verlag CH Beck, Munich, 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 .
Web links
- Description of the consequences of a bombing raid and list of aliases
- Graphic overview of alternative fuels
- The remains of a tunnel system from the Geilenberg program
- several reports on former underground Geilenberg programs
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Rainer Karlsch and Raymond G. Stokes: Factor oil. The mineral oil industry in Germany 1859–1974.
- ↑ Heike Weber: Concepts of technology in the popular non-fiction literature of National Socialism. The works of Anton Zischka. In: History of Technology. Vol. 66, Issue 3/1999, pp. 205-236.
- ^ Markus Schmitzberger: Austrian fuel and lubricating oil industry in World War II. ( Memento of the original from January 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 3.
- ↑ to which, among other things, John Kenneth Galbraith belonged.
- ↑ Relocation of fuel production underground. me-262.de, accessed on December 10, 2017.
- ^ Markus Schmitzberger: Austrian fuel and lubricating oil industry in World War II. ( Memento of the original from January 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 6.
- ^ Christine Wolters: 10th workshop on the history of the concentration camps. A conference report. eForum ZeitGeschichte, 1/2 2003.
