Mittelwerk GmbH

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A4 rocket (V2) of the Mittelwerk in the RAF Museum in London.
Kohnstein near Niedersachswerfen - manufacturing plant for the production of cruise missiles "V 1" and missiles "A4 / V 2" after being captured by the Allies, freight wagons before entering the tunnel

The German Mittelwerk GmbH was founded at the time of National Socialism during the Second World War on September 21, 1943 in the Armaments Ministry as a state and privately organized armaments company and existed until the end of the war. In addition to the Ministry of Armaments, the Army Weapons Office and the SS were involved in Mittelwerk GmbH . The Mittelwerk - also the Mittelbau project - was relocated underground to protect against air raids and was located on the southern slope of the Kohnstein near Niedersachswerfen am Harz . In medieval work as initially were Vergeltungswaffe called A4 rocket (V2) and made from the beginning of 1945, the Fieseler Fi 103 produces (V1). The company was structurally dependent on the deployment of concentration camp prisoners from the Buchenwald labor camp Dora , which later became the Mittelbau concentration camp , and was thus deeply involved in concentration camp crimes.

prehistory

After " Operation Hydra ", the first air raid on the Peenemünde Army Research Center by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the night of August 17-18, 1943, Adolf Hitler , Minister of Armaments Albert Speer and Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler decided to build it of the Dora labor camp to move rocket production underground. A tunnel system in the Kohnstein tunnel system in the Kohnstein story near Nordhausen , built between 1936 and 1942 by the WiFO Wirtschaftliche Forschungsgesellschaft , was selected as the production site. The facility was originally intended as an underground WiFo fuel and chemical storage facility for the Wehrmacht .

Mittelwerk GmbH is founded

Heinz Schmid-Lossberg as a witness during the Nuremberg trials

After preliminary negotiations, the founding of Mittelwerk GmbH was decided on September 21, 1943 under the leadership of Karl Maria Hettlage , who headed the General Department for Economics and Finance in the Ministry of Armaments, together with other representatives of the institutions involved in the missile program. The owner of the facility, the Economic Research Association (Wifo), was commissioned to expand the existing tunnel system into an underground rocket factory in Kohnstein, and Mittelwerk GmbH was given the task of installing the rockets . On September 24, 1943, Heinz Schmid-Lossberg and Friedrich Schulte-Langforth from Armamentskontor GmbH officially founded Mittelwerk GmbH as shareholders with a total of 1,000,000 RM . The company, based in Berlin, was entered in the Berlin commercial register on October 7, 1943, and after the departure of the shareholder Schulte-Langforth on October 11, 1943, it became a fully-owned subsidiary of armaments office GmbH.

On site, after a transitional phase , Mittelwerk GmbH moved into the former Ilfeld convent school , which has been used by a " National Political Educational Institution " (Napola) since 1934 . Further premises in the vicinity of the Kohnstein were confiscated for the administration of Mittelwerk GmbH.

Management bodies of Mittelwerk GmbH

  • Otto Förschner , camp commandant and managing director of Mittelwerk GmbH, after the arrest in April / May 1945

  • Georg Rickhey , General Director of Mittelwerk GmbH. Adhesive sheet photo from June 1947

  • Walter Dornberger , member of the advisory board of Mittelwerk GmbH, after the arrest in 1945

  • Karl Maria Hettlage , member of the advisory board of Mittelwerk GmbH, photo from 1934

  • Arthur Rudolph , Operations Director at Mittelwerk GmbH, photo taken after 1964 with a Saturn V model

  • Hans Kammler , member of the advisory board of Mittelwerk GmbH

The engineer Kurt Kettler , who had previously been the managing director of Borsig-Lokomotiv-Werke GmbH , became managing director on September 24, 1943 . His deputy was the camp leader of the labor camp Dora Otto Förschner , who was appointed as a representative of the SS by Hans Kammler and Oswald Pohl to the board of the company. In December 1943, the military economic leader Otto Karl Bersch , previously managing director of the vehicle and engine works in Breslau , was appointed third managing director .

The company's advisory board was chaired by Gerhard Degenkolb , who headed the A4 committee. His deputy was Karl-Maria Hettlage, the general advisor to the Ministry of Armaments for Economics and Finance and head of the armaments office GmbH. The advisory board also included the commander of the Peenemünde Army Research Center, Walter Dornberger , the head of Office Group C (Construction) of the SS Economic Administration Main Office (WVHA), Hans Kammler, and the manager of the armaments office, Heinz Schmidt-Loßberg from the Berlin GmbH for aviation supplies.

In the spring of 1944 Mittelwerk GmbH was restructured for business reasons. First of all, Georg Rickhey of the Berlin Demag vehicle works became general director and at the same time operations manager of Mittelwerk GmbH on April 13, 1944 . Förschner was relieved of his position as operator and was now in the position of managing director as "defense officer" responsible for monitoring security, work and confidentiality measures to prevent acts of sabotage. On March 1, 1945, both Förschner and Bersch officially resigned from the company's management. Kettler then took over Bersch's duties and SS-Obersturmführer Schwohn was appointed as the new defense officer for Förschner.

The engineer Albin Sawatzki , who had been head of the "Series Working Committee" of the A4 Special Committee since July 1943, was commissioned in September 1943 to convert the fuel storage facility in Kohnstein into an underground rocket factory. From May 1944, Sawatzki was officially the operations director of the company's planning department and in March 1945 he was also the managing director of Mittelwerk GmbH. Other operations directors were Arthur Rudolph , who was responsible for A4 assembly, and Otto von Bovert , who was responsible for the “Fittings, Shipping and Construction” division.

Dora-Mittelbau and Mittelwerk GmbH

Kohnstein near Lower Saxony. Manufacturing plant for the production of cruise missiles "V 1" and rockets "A4 / V 2" after they were captured by the Allies, fuel tanks, 1,000 gallons (GB: N3800 or US 4,500 l)

The Dora labor camp was established on August 28, 1943 as a subcamp of the Buchenwald am Kohnstein concentration camp . The first 107 prisoners were transferred from the Buchenwald concentration camp to Dora on August 28, 1943. Machines and materials were relocated from the Peenemünde Army Research Center and the Vienna Rax Works to the Mittelwerk by November 1943, and concentration camp prisoners and most of the German specialist staff also arrived from the experimental productions there. By the end of 1943 alone, a total of 11,000 concentration camp prisoners had been taken to the Dora labor camp. In February 1945 the camp SS registered 42,074 prisoners in the main camp and the satellite camps.

Initially, the inmates were temporarily housed in a tent camp on the Kohnstein and later under inhumane conditions in a sleeping tunnel on the Kohnstein. The prisoner camp south of the Kohnstein was only moved into in the summer of 1944. The prisoners first had to expand the tunnel system and then expand it into an underground rocket factory. In addition to the installation of a heating and ventilation system, this expansion also included the construction of a water and power supply, the machines and the establishment of the workshops and business premises. By the time rocket production started at full speed in the spring of 1944, around a third of the prisoners died from the inhumane supply and living conditions. At that time, qualified prisoners from other concentration camps were transferred to Dora and those no longer able to work from the Dora labor camp were transferred to satellite camps.

Due to a lack of space, branch offices were set up from the Mittelwerk in the vicinity of the Kohnstein. In addition to administrative offices, this created depots and decentralized repair companies for defective A4 missiles, for example in the Kleinbodungen subcamp with two branch offices and the Roßla subcamp with one branch in which concentration camp inmates had to do forced labor . The increasing importance of the steadily growing Mittelwerk GmbH was also made clear by the incorporation of further companies and the expansion of the Dora labor camp into the Mittelbau concentration camp in October 1944. On average, around 5,000 inmates from the Mittelbau concentration camp were busy assembling the A4 under the supervision of around 3,000 civilian employees . The majority of the concentration camp prisoners were deployed during the tunnel expansion for the underground relocation of further operations and the construction of additional external camps.

The tunnels in the Kohnstein

The tunnels in the Kohnstein used and expanded by the Mittelwerk consist of the two main tunnels A and B, which were driven roughly in a north-south direction with a slight S-shape at a distance of about 200 meters through the Kohnstein. Main tunnel A is the east of the two. The facility was thus accessed from the north and south with two entrances each. Both main tunnels are connected by 42 cross tunnels. Further tunnels are located at the main tunnel A in its southern area. The first area is viewed from the north to 19 cross passages as North plant called. This is followed that includes Mittelwerk I to. Mittelwerk II is located in the south .

Rocket production of the Mittelwerk

A4 rocket in the Mittelwerk. Photo from July 1945
Assembly tunnel for the "V1" production (reproduction of a photo from 1945)

Initially, the assembly of 1,800 rockets per month was planned, which was reduced to 900 in November 1943. From January 1944, concentration camp prisoners had to assemble A4 rockets from around 200 prefabricated components from the supplier companies in two shifts, under the supervision of German specialists. However, due to technical and logistical problems, a lack of components and reduced productivity due to exhausted prisoners, the target number of 900 rockets a month was never reached. Some of the rockets produced were also inoperable due to sabotage by the prisoners. On January 8th, the management of Mittelwerk GmbH issued a secret instruction to the German specialist staff, according to which every act of sabotage that became apparent had to be reported immediately. During the existence of the Mittelwerk, a total of 200 prisoners were hanged on charges of sabotage. In addition, political and military strategic decisions that were not useful for the project were added. In April 1944, when the Ministry of Armaments intervened, Mittelwerk GmbH had to hand over the northern part of the tunnel to Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG . From mid-1944, the Junkers works had jet engines produced there by forced laborers . This led to a dramatic drop in production when the A4 rockets were being assembled in mid-1944. In June 1944, Hitler also ordered the production of the V2 to be reduced in favor of the V1. This order was withdrawn in August 1944 after the V1 bombardment of London did not have the expected decisive effect on the war. From the summer of 1944, more and more suppliers were relocated to the Kohnstein to protect against air attacks. In addition, between spring and autumn 1944, members of the SS throwing department 500 in civilian clothes were trained in the V2 production facilities for their later service in this firing unit.

From January 1945 the V1 was finally also produced by Mittelwerk GmbH in Kohnstein. In relation to V2 production, however, the production of the V1 in the Mittelwerk was rather insignificant, as the V1, in contrast to the V2, was produced at several locations. In addition, Heinkel had its "Volksjäger" Heinkel He 162 manufactured by Mittelwerk GmbH from autumn 1944 onwards. Mittelwerk GmbH, which was already working to full capacity, was unable to carry out any further projects. Orders for the production of the anti-aircraft missiles " Taifun " and " R4M " did not get beyond the test phase. Until the war-related cessation of rocket production at the end of March 1945, a total of around 6,000 V1 rockets and roughly the same number of V2 weapons were manufactured. Due to the war-related situation, lack of transport, lack of components, technical problems and the ever decreasing fuel reserves and power capacities, rocket production was stopped in March 1945.

End of Mittelwerk

Walter Dornberger , Herbert Axster, Wernher von Braun and Hans Lindenberg (from left) on May 3, 1945 after they had surrendered to the US troops

The Allies had known the existence of the Mittelwerk since the end of 1944 at the latest. A bombing of the underground Mittelwerk, whose access to the tunnel was also secured with camouflage nets and by the military, seemed pointless to the Allies. Therefore, the Allied air raids concentrated on logistical targets such as railroad lines and the supplier companies outside the Kohnstein in order to impair the rocket assembly in the Mittelwerk. After two heavy air raids on Nordhausen on April 3 and 4, 1945, the inmates of the Mittelbau camp complex were "evacuated" by the SS guards to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on death marches . On April 4, 1945 about 13 tons of files and research documents on V-weapons were moved to ore shafts of the Georg-Friedrich mine near Dörnten , where they were later seized by the Americans before the British troops marched in.

Members of the US Air Force during a tour of the Mittelwerk

The technicians and engineers at Mittelwerk GmbH were evacuated to Bavaria and Austria . There they surrendered to the Western Allies, including the leading missile specialist Wernher von Braun . Many of the missile specialists were then recruited for American missile research as part of Operation Overcast and brought to the USA. After the liberation of the Mittelbau concentration camp on April 11, 1945, British and American special forces secured material and machines from the Mittelwerk. After the Americans handed Thuringia over to the Soviet military administration on July 1, 1945 , members of the Red Army dismantled the remaining machines and materials from the medium-sized plant and the suppliers and brought them to the Soviet Union . Arrested German engineers were already reconstructing the A4 on behalf of the Soviet authorities in the summer of 1945.

After the Mittelwerk was completely cannibalized, the Soviets planned to blow up the Kohnstein. However, the demolition carried out in the summer of 1948 failed, so only the tunnel accesses were destroyed.

Balance sheet

Corpses of concentration camp workers on the ground, Dora-Mittelbau barracks, April 11, 1945

At least 20,000 prisoners died as a result of the Mittelwerk project from inhuman living and working conditions, illnesses and abuse. The modern armaments complex was never completed because the tunnel system did not come close to reaching the planned total area of ​​750,000 m². Only a small number of the Mittelbau prisoners were employed in armaments production; the majority were involved in tunneling and on construction sites. The weapons of retaliation did not bring about the desired turnaround in the war. In addition, the specified number of pieces was never reached due to technical and logistical problems. The plan that was worked out at the beginning of 1945 to establish a huge missile center in Kohnstein, in which around 30 missile research companies were to operate as the "Mittelbau development community", could no longer be implemented due to the war and therefore remained an illusion.

The use of the weapon claimed a total of around 8,000 victims, mainly among the civilian population. The V2 was thus the only weapon whose production claimed more victims than its use. “The main product of the Mittelbau project”, according to the historian Jens-Christian Wagner , who headed the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp memorial from 2001 to 2014, “was death”. The only engineer of the “V-Waffenproduktion” and representative of Mittelwerk GmbH who has ever been brought to justice was the Demag managing director and general director of Mittelwerk GmbH Georg Rickhey . Rickhey was indicted and acquitted in the Dachau Dora Trial in 1947 , although during the trial the co-accused former prisoner functionary Josef Kilian had testified that Rickhey had been present at a particularly brutal mass strangulation of 30 inmates on March 21, 1945 in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp .

literature

  • Volker Bode, Christian Thiel: Missile traces - armory and military base Peenemünde. Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-86153-345-6 .
  • Ralf Schabel: The illusion of miracle weapons - jet planes and anti-aircraft missiles in the armaments policy of the Third Reich. Oldenbourg-Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-486-55965-6 . (Contributions to Military History Volume 35)
  • Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann, Reinhard Wolf (ed.): Missile armament and international security from 1942 until today. Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-515-08282-4 . (HMRG supplements 56)
  • Jens-Christian Wagner : Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 7: Niederhagen / Wewelsburg, Lublin-Majdanek, Arbeitsdorf, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Bergen-Belsen, Mittelbau-Dora. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 .
  • Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of Death: The Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-89244-439-0 .
  • Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0118-4 .
  • Erhard Pachaly , Kurt Pelny: Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-320-01488-9 .

Web links

Commons : Mittelwerk  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Production of Death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Göttingen 2001, p. 194ff.
  2. ↑ Ralf Schabel: The illusion of miracle weapons - jet planes and anti-aircraft missiles in the armaments policy of the Third Reich. Oldenbourg-Verlag, Munich 1993, pp. 225f. (Contributions to Military History Volume 35)
  3. ↑ a b Jens-Christian Wagner: concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora 1943-1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Göttingen 2007, p. 32 f.
  4. ↑ Jens-Christian Wagner: Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Göttingen 2007, p. 32f., P. 43.
  5. ^ A b Jens-Christian Wagner: Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror - history of the national socialist concentration camps. Volume 7, Munich 2008, pp. 231f.
  6. ↑ Volker Bode, Christian Thiel: Raketenspuren - Waffenschmiede and military base Peenemünde. Berlin 1995, p. 101.
  7. ↑ Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Göttingen 2007, p. 40.
  8. ↑ Volker Bode, Christian Thiel: Raketenspuren - Waffenschmiede and military base Peenemünde. Berlin 1995, p. 86ff.
  9. ↑ Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Göttingen 2007, p. 45f.
  10. ↑ Volker Bode, Christian Thiel: Raketenspuren - Waffenschmiede and military base Peenemünde. Berlin 1995, pp. 95ff.
  11. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Göttingen 2001, pp. 208f.
  12. ↑ Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Göttingen 2007, p. 49f.
  13. ^ A b Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Göttingen 2001, p. 200ff.
  14. ↑ Volker Bode, Christian Thiel: Raketenspuren - Waffenschmiede and military base Peenemünde. Berlin 1995, p. 100.
  15. ↑ Tracy Dwayne Dungan: V-2: A Combat History of the First Ballistic Missile. Westholme Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1-59416-012-0 , pp. 107 and 146.
  16. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Göttingen 2001, pp. 205ff.
  17. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Göttingen 2001, p. 278f.
  18. ^ Secret project Mittelbau on the private website Harz-Urlaub.de, accessed September 27, 2012, and Dieter K. Huzel: From Peenemünde to Canaveral. 2006, pp. 199-212.
  19. ↑ a b Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition in the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial, Göttingen 2007, p. 152f.
  20. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Göttingen 2001, pp. 287-288.
  21. ^ Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of death: The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Göttingen 2001, pp. 274-275.
  22. ↑ Jan Friedmann: Mittelbau-Dora: The concentration camp next door. In: Der Spiegel online Kultur, 2006
  23. ^ Rainer Eisfeld : Moonstruck. Wernher von Braun and the birth of space travel from the spirit of barbarism. Paperback, 2012, ISBN 9783866741676 , p. 164.