101 Nordhausen, After the Battle, After the Battle(1)
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
//-->NORDHAUSENSINKINGOFTHEBLÜCHERNumber 101NUMBER 101Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. RamseyEditor: Karel MargryPublished byBattle of Britain International Ltd.,Church House, Church Street,London E15 3JA, EnglandTelephone: 0181-534 8833Fax: 0181-555 7567E-mail: afterthebattle@mcmail.comPrinted in Great Britain byTrafford Print Colour Ltd.,Shaw Wood Way, Doncaster DN2 5TB.© Copyright 1998After the Battleis published quarterly onthe 15th of February, May, August andNovember.United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution:Seymour Press Ltd., Windsor House, 1270 LondonRoad, Norbury, London SW16 4DH.Telephone: 0181-679 1899United States Distribution and Subscriptions:RZM Imports, PO Box 995, Southbury, CT, 06488Telephone: 1-203-264-0774Canadian Distribution and Subscriptions:Vanwell Publishing Ltd., 1 Northrup Crescent,St. Catharines, Ontario L2M 6P5.Telephone: (905) 937 3100 Fax: (905) 937 1760Australian Subscriptions and Back Issues:Technical Book and Magazine Company, Pty, Ltd.,289-299 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000.Telephone: 663 3951New Zealand Distribution:South Pacific Books (Imports) Ltd., 6 King Street,Grey Lynn, Auckland 2. Telephone: 762-142Italian Distribution:Tuttostoria, Casella Postale 395, 1-43100 Parma.Telephone: 0521 290 387, Telex 532274 EDIALB IDutch Language Edition:Quo Vadis, Postbus 3121, 3760 DC Soest.Telephone: 035 6018641In the history of Nazi concentrationcamps, and particularly labour camps,there is probably no place that bears thesame stigma of wretchedness as ‘Dora-Mittelbau’ at Nordhausen. Nordhausenlies in the southern Harz mountains incentral Germany. From 1943, when theAllied bombing offensive threatened tobring Germany’s above-ground industrialproduction to a standstill, it became thecentre of a whole complex of under-ground factories, the most important ofwhich was the Mittelwerk in the Kohn-stein mountain, which produced three ofGermany’s best-known secret weapons:the V1 flying bomb, the V2 rocket and jetengines for the Me 262 and Ar 234 fighter.With over 20 kilometres of undergroundgalleries, it was the largest undergroundfactory in the world. Some 20,000 slaveworkers were driven to extinction here toimplement some of Germany’s greatestwartime scientific experiments, but theylaboured late and in vain, for the productsthey yielded had little impact on the war.The V1 and V2 are the only weaponswhich cost more lives in production thanin deployment. Captured intact by theAmericans in April 1945, the undergroundfactory was handed over to the Sovietswho proceeded to strip it clean and then,in 1948, sealed it by blowing up theentrances. After the war, former camp‘Dora’ became an East German memorialsite, but for nearly 50 years the under-ground galleries in the Kohnsteinremained inaccessible. Now, withGermany re-unified, the Gedenkstätte hasfound a new life, and visitors can actuallyenter the tunnel system.CONTENTSNORDHAUSENIT HAPPENED HEREThe Sinking of theBlücherUNITED KINGDOMRoyal Gunpowder Factory SequelFROM YOUR NEW EDITOR2444952DORA CAMPKOHNSTEINFront Cover:The former underground V2facility at Nordhausen reveals its secrets.(Deutsches Technik-Museum, Berlin)Centre Pages:Left:The sealed-up entranceto Tunnel A.Right top:The ‘Dora’ campcrematorium;Bottom:Camp hut recon-structed from parts of three survivingoriginal buildings. (Karel Margry)Back Cover:After the Battleauthors, con-tributors and guests at the celebration tomark the publication of the 100th issue.(Steve Casely)Acknowledgements:For help with the Nord-hausen story, Karel Margry would like tothank Dr. Cornelia Klose, director; HerrTorsten Hess, historian; and Frau ChristineJanischefski, archivist, of the GedenkstätteMittelbau-Dora; Manfred Bornemann andFred Dittmann for permission to use theexcellent maps drawn by them; and PercyUpton for the loan of photographs. Ourvery special thanks go to Alvin Gilens forallowing us to use the pictures he tookinside the Kohnstein mountain.Photo Credits:BA — Bundesarchiv. GSMD —Gedenkstätte Mittelbau-Dora. IWM —Imperial War Museum, London. RIOD —Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie,Amsterdam. USNA — US NationalArchives.BOELCKE BARRACKS2NORDHAUSENThe Kohnstein lies just north-west of Nordhausen, and is actu-ally closer to the village of Niedersachswerfen, which lies alongits eastern face. A gypsum quarry was established here in thelate 19th century, and decades of open-air mining had alreadyradically altered the shape of the mountain by the time thesecret underground factory moved in in 1943. This is how theWhen in August 1943, the German rocketdevelopment centre at Peenemünde on theBaltic coast was destroyed by Britishbombers (seeAfter the BattleNo. 74), thetransfer of V2 rocket series production tounderground factories became acute. How-ever, the decision to go underground hadalready been taken earlier.Ten months before, on October 3, 1942,mountain looked from the south in early 1945. Niedersachs-werfen is on the right, and the southern entrances to the tun-nel system and camp ‘Dora’ can be seen below the tree line onthe far left. (This picture was taken by the British scientificresearch team which surveyed the Mittelwerk after its captureby the Allies in April 1945.) (BA)the V2 (also known as Aggregat 4, or A4)had made its first successful launch at theHeeresversuchsanstalt (HVA — ArmyExperimental Station) Peenemünde. OnDecember 22, Hitler approved a plan sub-mitted by Albert Speer, his Minister forArmament and Ammunition, for the settingup of an experimental series production of500 V2s to be produced at Peenemünde andBy Karel Margryat the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen. OnJanuary 15, 1943, Speer appointed GerdDegenkolb, an energetic manager who hadproved his mettle in locomotive production,to head a Sonder-Ausschuss A4 (A4 SpecialCommittee) to carry out this order.The photographer stood just outside the hamlet ofKrimderode, about halfway between Nordhausen and themountain, near where the village road crosses the Harz-Quer-bahn (the narrow-gauge railway which runs right across theHarz mountains from Nordhausen 60 kilometres north toWernigerode). Note that the mountain has seen spectacularfurther changes in the decades since 1945, the entire eastern(right) half having now fallen victim to continued quarrying.3Within his Special Committee, Degenkolbcreated several ‘working committees’ eachcharged with taking care of a specific part ofthe task at hand, and coordinating the effortsof the Peenemünde technicians and the sup-ply industry. There were seven logistical andsupply committees: Raw Materials, Oxygen,Workforce, Deliveries, Transport, BuildingProjects, and Installations & Assets; tworocket technical committees: Fuselages andElectrical Equipment; and one ProductionPlanning committee. The latter, led by Det-mar Stahlknecht, was based at Peenemünde,Raw Materials was in the Ruhr area, allothers had their headquarters in Berlin.Oberst Walter Dornberger, the chief ofthe Rocket Development Section in theHeereswaffenamt (Army Ordnance Depart-ment) who had led the Army’s rocket pro-gramme since 1933, soon grew unhappy withthe new set-up as he thought the rocket pro-duction could best remain under completeArmy control and, furthermore, could onlysucceed if given a top priority status. But hehad no choice but to go along.In April, Degenkolb raised the V2 produc-tion target from 600 a month at two produc-tion sites (Stahlknecht Programme) to 900 amonth in three places: at Peenemünde, atFriedrichshafen, and at the Rax locomotivefactories in Wiener-Neustadt (DegenkolbProgramme). The reason for spreading pro-duction was to make it less vulnerable to airattacks, but Degenkolb already realised thatthe best solution was to create undergroundfactories. Feverishly, his Special Committee,the Heereswaffenamt and the HVA Peen-emünde began scouting Germany and occu-pied Europe for a suitable site for such afactory. The risk of above-ground productionwas brought home on June 22, when theRAF bombed the Friedrichshafen works,paralysing V2 production there.4What later became the V-weapon underground factory was initially designed as asecret storage facility for Germany’s strategic oil and lubricants reserve. Planning onthe ladder-shaped complex was begun in 1934 by a state-controlled company namedthe Wirtschaftliche Forschungsgesellschaft (Wifo), and tunnelling proceeded in threephases. The first phase (1936-37) saw completion of the first 18 galleries; the second(1937-40) brought it as deep as Gallery 42; and the third (1941-43) had only reachedGallery 45 when, in July 1943, the Wifo was forced to evacuate the fuel depot tomake room for production of the V2. (Map drawn by Manfred Bornemann.)Two days before, on June 20, Hitler hadstipulated to Speer that the V2 programmewas now more urgent than all other arma-ment programmes, a top priority which wasconfirmed after Dornberger (newly pro-moted to Generalmajor) and his chief engin-eer, Wernher von Braun, had presented thenew weapon in a personal interview withHitler at the Wolfsschanze on July 7. Finally,all industrial resources of the Reich wouldbecome available for rocket production.Until now, rockets had been a concern ofthe armed forces and the armaments min-istry. However, on July 10, Reichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler, who for a long time hadbeen looking for an opportunity to get a fin-ger into the rocket programme, convincedHitler that he should be put in charge ofsecurity against espionage and sabotage ofthe V2 project. It was the first step in a devel-opment that would eventually give the SScomplete control of the whole rocket pro-gramme.Meanwhile, the search for undergroundfacilities continued. Then, around the middleof July, Paul Figge, chief of the DeliveriesCommittee, heard in Kassel about a giantunderground oil depot in the Kohnsteinmountain at Niedersachswerfen near Nord-hausen in the southern Harz region in centralGermany. Figge at once travelled to Nord-hausen to inspect the facilities, and immed-iately saw that it was exactly what the rocketplanners had been looking for.Lying north-west of Nordhausen and westof Niedersachswerfen and rising steeply fromthe countryside, the Kohnstein is composedalmost entirely of limestone (anhydride) andgypsum (calcium sulphite), soft stone whichlends itself to mining easily. On its northernand eastern sides, vertical white cliffs rise 120metres high. On top of the limestone lies athin layer of the harder dolomite, which inturn is covered by loam. Several forest-cov-ered tops crown the mountain: the Kohn-steinkopf (332m), Hoher Kopf (348m),Gängerkopf (316m) and Birkenkopf (300m).Three valleys — the Höllental, Gängertaland Siebental — cut it steep flanks.Quarrying at the Kohnstein had begun asearly as the 1870s. Gypsum is a prime com-ponent for the production of syntheticammonia, which itself is a prime componentfor the production of nitrogenous fertilizerand, more important in wartime, nitrogenousexplosive. In 1916-17, the Badische Anilin- &Soda-Fabrik established a gypsum factory atNiedersachswerfen to supply its newly-builtammonia factory at Merseburg. Open-castmining was begun, deliveries being some32,000 tons in 1918, rising to 82,000 the fol-lowing year.After World War I, with the completefusion of the eight major paint-producingfactories in Germany into the huge IG Far-ben GmbH in 1925, the Gipswerk Nieder-sachswerfen factory became part of that con-cern. Production rose steadily, reaching1,244,000 tons in 1928, but dropping dramati-cally after 1930 to about a third of that as aresult of the economic depression. Thequarry never regained the high productionvolumes of the 1920s, for ammonia-basedfertilizers were increasingly replaced byother types of fertilizers. By 1935, some 11million tons of lime and gypsum, and 2 mil-lion tons of waste, had been mined, repres-enting a total of 4.3 million cubic metres ofearth moved. The waste had been dumped inthe Gängertal, completely filling up the val-ley and changing the north-eastern face ofthe Kohnstein massif.In 1934, one year after the Nazis came topower, the IG Farben and the DeutscheGesellschaft für öffentliche Arbeiten(German Company for Public Works — anorganisation of the Ministry of Economics)jointly founded the WirtschaftlicheForschungsgesellschaft (Economic ResearchCompany — Wifo) as an organisation tosecure the supply of strategic raw materialsin case of war. One of its projects was thecreation of an underground central fueldepot (Zentrales Kraftstoff-Lager). Lookingfor a suitable site, the IG Farben proposed tothe Wifo to dig tunnels into the Kohnstein.The geological conditions made tunnellingeasy, the site was well connected to theGerman traffic system, and the project wasfinancially advantageous to both parties:sharing the cost of tunnelling, the Merseburgfactory would get its lime cheap, and theWifo its underground depot at a lower cost.The new depot was named the Wifo-Aussen-stelle (sub-works) Niedersachswerfen.All that existed at that time at the Kohn-stein quarry was an emergency gallery (Not-Stollen) and a boundary gallery (Grenz-Stollen) further east. Initial Wifo plans calledfor two galleries to be dug parallel, with asingle storage gallery to connect the two. InAugust 1936, the Wifo engineer appointed todirect the project, Karl Wilhelm Neu, pro-posed a much larger scheme: to deepen thetwo parallel tunnels enough to create 18 con-necting galleries — the tunnels would serveas transport roads, the galleries as the fuelstorage rooms. Digging would proceed fromtwo directions, both from the tunnelentrances and from the deep end of theemergency gallery.Work began in June 1936. Using a work-force of 400 miners, it progressed smoothly,the eastern main gallery (Tunnel A) beingshot through on March 13, 1937, and thewestern one (Tunnel B) on May 5. Lateralgalleries were blown through as the tunnelsproceeded. All galleries were rectangular, 9metres wide and 7 metres high. In all, 260,000cubic metres of stone (780,000 tons of lime-stone) were removed.To preclude condensation, it proved nec-essary to install ventilation equipment. Freshair from three ventilation shafts was firstdried in a six-furnace central heatinginstalled in Gallery 1 before being blown intothe tunnels. An air outlet shaft was installedat the deep end. On completion, Galleries2-18 soon became filled with thousands of oildrums containing the fuel reserve of theThird Reich.A double-track railway was built into thetunnels to connect the fuel depot with themain rail system. To create office space andhousing for its personnel, the Wifo built asmall settlement of two office blocks and, by1943, 20 houses just outside Niedersachs-werfen. Another Wifo project at Niedersachs-werfen was a cement factory, built in 1940 onthe east side of the Kohnstein, between themountain and the main railway.Even before the drum depot (Wifo I) wasready, plans were made to extend the tunnelcomplex right through to the southern end ofthe mountain. The two parallel main tunnels,both some 1,800 metres long and running in asoft ‘S’ form, would have a total of 50 lateralgalleries, each between 150-200 metres long.Above:Because today the memory of Dora-Mittelbau is kept alive at the southernend of the Kohnstein, people tend to forget that the tunnel complex was initiallybegun at the northern side. This is the northern entrance to Tunnel A.Below:Some200 metres further west lay the entrance to Tunnel B. (GSMD)Today, both northern tunnel entrances have completely disappeared under a wall ofwaste stone dumped here by the Niedersachswerfen gypsum quarry.5
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]