Economic research society

Economic research company mbH
legal form	GmbH
founding	1934
resolution	1970
Seat	Berlin
Branch	Raw material logistics, fuel production

The Wirtschaftliche Forschungsgesellschaft mbH ( WiFo for short ) was a front company founded by the Reich Ministry of Economics in Berlin in 1934 , which was responsible for the procurement, storage and manufacture of raw materials essential to the war effort and thus ensuring the logistics of the Wehrmacht . Their main task was the establishment of secret big tank farms, moreover, it was for the operation of oil tank cars , tankers responsible, the development of transport routes and operation of plants for chemical raw material manufacturing, such as nitric acid. The WiFo continued to exist after the war and then dissolved itself by 1970, with the successor companies being privatized today.

history

background

An important factor in German rearmament was the supply of a modern and motorized armed force with fuel, which in the event of a war could not be based on imports due to the expected blockade. For this reason, Minister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht intended to build up large fuel stocks, which were to be obtained by importing from the Romanian oil mining areas and producing synthetic gasoline . After both German companies and the Royal Dutch Shell could not be won over for the construction and financing of large tank farms, the Reich government founded its own special purpose vehicle to be able to store fuel reserves.

organization

In order to disguise the armaments preparations, the Wirtschaftliche Forschungsgesellschaft mbH (WiFo), headquartered in Berlin , was founded on August 24, 1934 under a harmless-sounding name . According to the commercial register, the business purpose was "Establishment and maintenance of companies and businesses in industry, trade and handicrafts, in particular the establishment and maintenance of experimental and research facilities for the purpose of promoting the industries mentioned." Officially, the WiFo was a foundation of the German Society for Public Works "Öffa "(80%) and the IG Farben (20%), whereby the public was one hundred percent a subsidiary of the Reich Ministry of Economics. However, as early as 1935, IG Farben sold its share of the business to Deutsche Bau- und Bodenbank AG , 83% of which was owned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs , after the introduction of general conscription largely eliminated the need to cover up preparations for war. The WiFo was thus under the command of the Reich Ministry of Economics, but chroniclers of the successor company VTG assume that the establishment was initiated at the efforts of the Reich Ministry of Defense . In August 1942, all company shares were transferred to the German Reich and the trust relationship with WiFo was dissolved, which from then on worked independently. Only the small army tank farms remained in the property of the Reich, but were managed by WiFo.

In 1942, the WiFo employed almost 10,000 people, for whom mostly separate settlements were built near the tank farms, and had their own barracks for slave labor and prisoners of war at several locations .

Tank farm

Large tank farm

Initially, ten protected and underground large tank farms with a respective capacity between 100,000 and 200,000 cubic meters were planned as national fuel reserves for the army and air force . The locations should be conveniently located on railways and waterways, but not in the vicinity of densely populated conurbations or border areas. The war economic purpose of the large tank farms was clear.

For the most part in 1936, work began on most construction sites at the same time, with a standard construction plan for all tank farms. Since there was no previous experience with the construction of large underground tank farms, their construction was considered a pioneering achievement. The major companies at the time, Philipp Holzmann and Dyckerhoff & Widmann, were the main developers . The tank farms consisted of individual, reinforced concrete jacketed large tanks with 3333 cubic meters each, which were mostly connected in groups of ten by pipelines and were at least two meters underground. At a later stage, the decision was made to combine five containers of 4,000 cubic meters each in one block, which saves concrete and steel while increasing capacity and providing better protection. In addition, a tank farm had an extensive infrastructure such as shunting systems, locomotive sheds, pumping stations, boiler houses, filling plants, workshops, large laboratories, fire brigades, guard stations and administrative buildings, so that each warehouse had a labor requirement of between 300 and 400 men.

The total capacity of the tank farm was 1.5 million cubic meters for fuels and 100,000 cubic meters of lubricants; Some of them were also refined, mixed and filled into barrels and small containers there. At the end of 1938, WiFo's mineral oil reserves were almost 800,000 tons. Most of the ten large tank farms already had considerable capacities in September 1939:

location	Cover name	Total capacity in m³	Remarks
Bremen-Farge	Water mountain	320,000	Active operation until 2015
Staßfurt	Bela	220,000	Blown up after the end of the war
Hniewitz near Raudnitz / Sudetenland	?	200,000	The warehouse was to be connected to the Vienna-Lobau tank farm via a pipeline, but this was no longer implemented. Blown up after the end of the war
Hitzacker	Hellberg	150,000	Badly damaged by air raids in 1945. Blasted and dismantled by 1948.
Vienna-Lobau	?	150,000	Today area is in Austria. Blown up after the end of the war
Bawdy	Löwenberg	120,000	Blown up after the end of the war
Nienburg	Kuhberg	110,000	Bombed in 1945; then used by the British Army, later used by the Bundeswehr. Only a small part of the warehouse still exists, which is used by a private company.
Krailling	Münchberg	110,000	Still in active operation
Oberhausen near Neuburg on the Danube	Buchenberg	106,000	Demolitions ordered by the occupying forces could be averted several times. Tank farm still in active operation .
Drugehnen / Samland in East Prussia	Hegeberg	100,000	Location in today 's Kaliningrad Oblast. Tank farm blown up after the end of the war

At the beginning of the war, Wifo's large tank farms were 80 percent full. By the end of 1941, the total had fallen to just 13 percent. Nevertheless, the camps were very busy, as the high-quality aviation fuels did not come from the refineries, but were mixed together from fuels and additives in all of the ten camps . For this reason, the warehouses had tanks with mixing systems specially developed by Wifo. The air force obtained 90% of its fuel requirements from these camps.

In addition to the main customer, the Air Force, fuel was also processed for the army, so that a large number of petrol was stored due to the different quality characteristics of the oil types supplied. For example, in the Hitzacker u. a. three types of aliphatic gasoline , eight types of low aromatic gasoline , six types of high aromatic gasoline , four types of heavy and three types of light oils. As a result, great importance was attached to the respective on-site laboratory.

Further WiFo tank farms

A reliably documented compilation of all systems managed by WiFo is not available. In addition to the large tank farms, Wifo also operated eleven small, above-ground military tank farms, which had a total capacity of 78,500 cubic meters. A random and incomplete selection of locations is listed below:

• Heeres tank farm in Heiligenstadt ("Heiligau") in Thuringia, construction work lasted from 1937 to 1942.
• Army tank farm Ebrach ("Eberau") near Schweinfurt . In the Schmerber Grund near Ebrach, the Army Tank Farm No. 4 was built from 1935
• Amstetten (Württemberg) ("Ammenau") army tank farm in Baden-Württemberg
• A WiFo fuel and chemicals store in the tunnel in Kohnstein near Nordhausen was closed in 1943 in favor of the establishment of an underground rocket factory (" Mittelwerk ").
• Herbram-Wald tank farm near Lichtenau
• Tank farm near Münchenbernsdorf ("Sonnentau") in Thuringia. The underground tank farm, built from 1938 onwards, was bombed in April 1945. After 1945 to 1992/93, the area was continued to be used by the Red Army.
• Rüthen tank farm near Soest
• Ehmen air tank farm in the west of Wolfsburg

Transports

In addition to the construction of tank farms, another important business area for Wifo developed - initially out of necessity - with the transport of oil and chemical products. At the beginning of this activity in 1936, Wifo borrowed 130 tank wagons from Eisenbahn-Verkehr AG , before using its first own wagons the following year. In the course of time, Wifo produced and rented an ever-growing fleet, so that in 1942, the time of the greatest German expansion of power, it owned over 38,000 rail tank cars and 35 inland tankers. The more and more independent "main transport department" moved its headquarters from bomb-prone Berlin to the administrative building of the large Bavarian tank farm in Neuburg an der Donau , where a central workshop for wagons for the slowly rebuilt transport business was built after the war.

After the end of the war

After the Second World War , most of the large tank farms were razed ; the other temporarily used by the Allies. The headquarters of Wifo in Berlin were closed and an - initially small - makeshift office was set up in the Wifo settlement belonging to the Krailling tank farm , from where an increasingly expanding chemical and fuel transport company developed. Shortly before the currency reform in 1948, Wifo owned 1200 tank cars and had 42 employees. The Wifo management decided to self-liquidate in 1951, so that the company managed under this name was finally dissolved by 1969. From 1951 three successor companies emerged from Wifo:

• Wifo iL: The company called “Wifo in Liquidation”, located in a specially built office building in Munich, managed Wifo's own properties and was finally struck from the commercial register in 1970 after its business activities ended in 1969.

• Industrie-Verwaltungs-Gesellschaft (IVG): IVG was established as a state holding company in Bad Godesberg and, after the return of the occupying powers, operated the last three large tank farms in addition to two former Wifo chemical companies. During the Cold War , IVG was responsible for supplying the Bundeswehr with fuel . After reunification, IVG was completely privatized. The three remaining tank farms, some of which are connected to the NATO pipeline system CEPS , are each leased by private investor companies.

• United Tanklager Transportmittel GmbH (VTG): At the moment, Europe's largest fleet of railway wagons was initially a wholly-owned subsidiary of IVG, but was managed according to the rules of the private sector. VTG took over a large part of the tank wagons and tankers and briefly managed the large tank farms for the parent company IVG. In 1962, the company was privatized through the sale of VTG to Preussag .

literature

• Herbert Wilhelm : Freedom to risk - the historical development of the VTG. , Hamburg 1976, printed as a manuscript. Location: University Library Braunschweig, call number 3489 505.
• Hans-Dieter Götz: Secret Reich Matter WiFo. Self-published, Germering 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-027821-1 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rainer Karlsch , Raymond G. Stokes: Factor oil - The mineral economy in Germany 1859-1974. Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50276-8 , pp. 179f.
2. ^ Wilhelm: The historical development of the VTG. P. 26.
3. ^ Wilhelm: The historical development of the VTG. , P. 28.
4. ^ Hans-Dieter Götz: Geheime Reichssache WiFo. ISBN 978-3-00-027821-1 , p. 108.
5. ^ Rainer Karlsch, Raymond G. Stokes: Factor Oil ..., pp. 181/182.
6. ↑ leaflet "About the secret tank farms of the WiFo at Hitzacker", ed. from the Hitzacker local history museum, undated
7. ^ Rainer Karlsch, Raymond G. Stokes: 'Factor Oil' ..., p. 180.
8. ^ Wilhelm: The historical development of the VTG. P. 41.
9. ↑ All information on the capacity according to Rainer Karlsch, Raymond G. Stokes: 'Factor Oil' ..., p. 180 and Hans-Dieter Götz: Geheime Reichssache Wifo. P. 108.
   Note: There are partly inexplicable differences between the two figures
10. ↑ Lisa Boekhoff: Dangerous relic in Farge. Tank farms: answers to key questions. In: The North German. July 1, 2016, accessed September 16, 2017 . 
11. ↑ Mitteilungen der Geologische Gesellschaft in Wien, Volume 57, 1964, Issue 1, p. 158 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed on December 28, 2010; PDF; 651 kB). 
12. ↑ geschichtsspuren.de (formerly lostplaces.de): WiFo Tanklager Hitzacker  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed September 20, 2010) / leaflet “About the secret tank farms of WiFo at Hitzacker”, ed. from the Hitzacker local history museum, undated  
13. ↑ religte.com: Nienburg-Schäferhof ( accessed on September 19, 2010)
14. ^ Wilhelm: The historical development of the VTG. P. 62.
15. ↑ Report on the WIFO Hitzacker tank farm on "geschichtsspuren.de"
16. ↑ for example Cold war (accessed on September 26, 2010) or WIFO tank farm HOKO Melbeck-Embsen
17. ↑ Armaments projects in North Thuringia + http://www.schatzsucher.de/Foren/archive/index.php?t-31183.html schatzsucher ( Memento from December 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on September 17, 2010)
18. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: underground research group: Wifo Ebrach ( accessed on September 18, 2010)
19. ↑ Cold war forum (accessed on September 21, 2010)
20. ↑ Unit 4 (accessed on September 21, 2010)
21. ↑ Railway friends: Wifo Herbram-Wald ( Memento from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on September 21, 2010)
22. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Barteld, Hans-Bernhard Karl: The Niederpöllnitz-Münchenbernsdorf branch line - branch line documentation Volume 56 , Verlag Kenning, Nordhorn 1999, ISBN 3-933613-10-8 , p. 52 ff.
23. ^ Railway friends: Wifo Herbram-Wald ( Memento from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on May 30, 2011)
24. ↑ religte.com: the Ehmen air tank farm ( accessed on April 6, 2014)
25. ↑ forum geschichtsspuren.de (formerly lostplaces.de) ( accessed on August 23, 2010) - H. Wilhelm mentions other figures, however: 14,328 own tank cars + 8134 third-party tank cars = 22,471 tank cars managed by Wifo, two motor tankers and five nitric acid factories (Melbeck , Langelsheim, Sondershausen, Döberitz, Piesteritz) in operation
26. ^ Wilhelm: The historical development of the VTG.