Mittelbau-Dora

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Supervised by American soldiers, German civilians from the town of Nordhausen bury corpses of prisoners found at Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in mass graves. Rare colour photograph taken in 1945. Photo credit: USHMM

German civilians preparing a mass grave for camp victims after liberation by the U.S. Army

Tunnel entrance to V-2 storage at the Mittelbau-Dora complex

Mittelbau-Dora, or Mittelbau concentration camp complex was established on August 28, 1943 near Nordhausen in Thüringen/Germany, in the Kohnstein south of the Harz mountains as a sub camp of the already existing Buchenwald camp. Eventually it comprised more than 40 camps^[1]^[2]. The main goal of the complex was to establish the underground production of armaments, notably the V-2 rocket. During its 18 months of activity, approximately 60,000 prisoners from 21 nations passed through; an estimated 20,000 of those died in this prison.

1 Construction
2 Weapons production
3 The situation of the prisoners
4 Liberation of the camp
5 After the war
6 See also
7 Further reading
8 Notes
9 External links

[edit] Construction

Due to heavy air attacks by the Royal Air Force on the night of August 18, 1943 the manufacture of the A4 in Peenemünde came to an abrupt halt. As the two other production sites in Friedrichshafen and Vienna were also affected by Allied air raids Nazi authorities decided to move production facilities underground. The Kohnstein was chosen because of its already existing tunnel system which was started in 1936 by the Wirtschaftliche Forschungsgesellschaft (Wifo) as an underground fuel depot for the Wehrmacht. On August 28, 1943 107 inmates came with a transport from Buchenwald, followed by 1,223 on September 2. On October 13, 1943 transports from Peenemünde started. Inmates were used for construction works, which where nearly completed in late summer of 1943.

With a total length of about 20 km, a tunnel height up to 30 m and an area of 250.000 m² the tunnel system in the Kohnstein was one of the largest built by the Germans. The system consists of two parallel rail tunnels (Tunnels A and B) with a length of about 1.8 km each, which were at the beginning connected by 17 and later by 46 transverse tunnels.^[3]^[4]

[edit] Weapons production

Production of the V-2 rocket was started in January 1944. Arthur Rudolph, Chief Production Engineer of the Peenemünde V-2 assembly, used concentration camp labor (mostly Russians, Poles, and French) for production of the V-2. Inmates had to live in the tunnel full time until shack camps were completed in spring 1943 above ground. From January 1944 to April 1945 about 6,000 V-2 rockets were built at Mittelbau-Dora. ^[5] In August 1944 production of the V-1 rocket was also started. Other companies with production facilities in Mittelbau-Dora were Junkers (aircraft engines) and Heinkel (aircraft).

[edit] The situation of the prisoners

Stamp

Although most of the prisoners were men, a few women were held in the Dora Mittelbau camp and in the Groß Werther subcamp. Only one woman guard is now known to have served in Dora, Lagerführerin Erna Petermann. Regardless of gender, all prisoners were treated with extreme cruelty, which caused illness, injuries and deaths. Examples of the cruelty routinely inflicted on prisoners include: severe beatings that could permanently disable and/or disfigure the victims, deliberate and life-threatening starvation, physical and mental torture as well as summary execution under the smallest pretext.

Of 60,000 inmates from 21 nations, 12,000 were officially listed as dead by the Nazis. The total death toll is estimated at around 20,000, and includes deaths from air raids throughout the war and the evacuation "death marches" in 1945.

A first-person account of the extreme brutality endured by the inmates who laboured to produce and assemble the V-1 and V-2 rocket components in the huge underground tunnel complex is detailed in Planet Dora: A Memoir of the Holocaust and the Origins of the Space Age by Yves Beon^[6]. Of note in this book is the role played at Dora by Wernher von Braun, who became a top director at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) after having been smuggled into the United States. A reviewer of Planet Dora at the NASA headquarters library wrote, ...the greatest technological achievement of the twentieth century had its origins in the enslavement and murder of thousands of innocent people, the down-payment of a Faustian bargain that still tarnishes our reach for the stars.

[edit] Liberation of the camp

Mittelbau Dora was liberated on April 11 1945 by the U.S. Army's 104th Infantry Division, after Pfc. John M. Galione discovered the camp on April 10 and alerted liberating troops. At that time most inmates were already sent on death marches to concentration camps Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen and to the Lübecker Bucht (see Cap Arcona). Only inmates sick or dying were left behind by the Nazis.

[edit] After the war

In 1948 the Russian army blew up both of the entrances of the tunnel system to prevent any further use by the Germans. In 1966 the "Mittelbau-Dora Mahn- und Gedenkstätte" went into operation on the initiative of the SED. The former crematorium, one of the two buildings still intact, had been altered into a museum. In 1970 the muster ground was restored and an administration building erected. With the help of a new entrance tunnel which had been dug to former rail Tunnel A in 1995, a section of 710 m of the tunnel system is open for visitors today. Large parts of the system are flooded by ground water today, while other parts have collapsed.

After the reunification of Germany the tunnels were frequently looted by treasure seekers who gained access via the private mine in the north of the Kohnstein. Willi Kramer, a German archaeologist and scientist, who dived in the tunnel system in 1992 and 1998 estimated that 70 tons of material was stolen. Access through these entrances was secured not until 2004, when the mine went into insolvency.^[7]