Mittelwerk

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Central Works (German: Mittelwerk) was the underground WWII rocket and aircraft factory in Germany that was operated by the government Central Works Ltd. (German: Mittelwerk GmbH) company. Additional wartime plans for V-2 rocket production at the Southern Works near Friedrichshafen and Eastern Works near Riga were never fulfilled. Mittelwerk GmbH also headed V-2 rocket development sites at Schlier (Project Zement) and Lehesten.

V-2 Rocket production

On October 19, 1943, the German War Office in Berlin (General Emil Leeb, head of the Army Weapons Office) issued War Contract No. 0011-5565/43 to the Mittelwerk companyfor 12,000 A-4 missiles at 40,000 Reichsmarks each. Initially V-2 rockets were shipped to depots for storage prior to use, but faults from short-term aging required 500 partially-defective V-2s to be cannibalised, with parts returned to the Nordhausen plant. One such defect was that the bearing bushings of the servomechanisms swelled during storage due to moisture.

Logistic changes under the code name warme Semmel (English: warm roll) resulted in movement of V-2 trains directly from the Nordhausen plant to firing-unit railheads for field storage until operational batteries needed resupplied. A post-war German claim was made that the V-2 supply trains "were camouflaged so well that no one ever suspected what they were. Throughout the whole war, we never lost an entire load, though we were attacked by fighters that occasionally did some damage. However, in late November 1944, Allied fighters attacked two trains carrying a total of 40 V-2s from the Nordhausen plant, and all 40 rockets were shipped back to Germany as scrap.

Organization and Personnel

Beginning in May 1944, Georg Rickhey was the Mittelwerk general manager and, after returning to Germany from Wright Field in the U.S. on May 19, 1947, was acquitted of war crimes at the 1947 "Andae" trial. Alwin Sawatzki was the Mittelwerk technical director over Arthur Rudolph's Technical Division (with deputy Karl Seidenstuecker) and Hans Lindenberg's 50 engineers of the quality control group in Ilfield. Other Mittelwerk/Ilfield engineers included Magnus von Braun in turbopump production, Guenther Haukohl who supervised V-2 production after helping design the assembly line, Eric Ball (assembly line), Hans Fridrich, Hans Palaoro and Rudolph Schlidt. The facility had a communications staff under Captain Dr Kühle, an Administrative Division run by Börner under Mittelwerk board member Otto Karl Bersch, and a Prisoner Labor Supply office (Brozsat ). Hannelore Bannasch was Sawatzki's secretary.

Wernher von Braun, the Technical Director of the Peenemünde Army Research Center, visited the plant on January 25, 1944.

Other projects

In July of 1944, Hans Kammler ordered the North Works (Nordwerke) to use cross-tunnels 1-20 for a Junkers jet and piston engine factory, leaving cross-tunnels 21-46 for Mittelwerk GmbH. Later in October/November 1944, assembly of the V-1 flying bomb began in the South end of tunnel A.

At the end of 1945 January, 51 V-1 flying bombs were shipped from a dispersed Fieseler factory in Upper Bavaria (code name Cham) to the Nordhausen plant for completion.

During February-April 1945, the Nordhausen plant built Taifun antiaircraft missiles and Heinkel He 162 jet fighters and put into operation a Liquid oxygen plant. The plant was the Eber project and used equipment evacuated from the Éperlecques bunker and elsewhere to build Heylandt Liquid oxygen generators (the 15 generators were nearly complete when the site was captured.) An oil refinery (the 'Cuckoo' project) was also under construction in 1945.

Allied intelligence

In late February 1945, the Allied Chiefs of Staff discussed a proposed attack on the Nordhausen plant with a highly flammable petroleum-soap mixture that had been used in the Pacific theatre to deeply penetrate buried strongpoints and scourge them with intense heat. Instead, the subsequent decision was taken to attack the nearby city of Nordhausen with conventional bombers, and the RAF Bomber Command raid of April 2 & 3 burned down much of the city in two night-time fire raids. Among those killed were 1500 sick prisoners at the Boelcke Kaserne barracks, the camp administration having to order the evacuation of the surviving prisoners on April 4.Contrary to the Hitler order of March 19, 1945 regarding Demolitions on Reich Territory, the Nordhausen plant was not destroyed when the Germans abandoned the site.

Special mission V-2

Having been warned to "expect something a little unusual in the Nordhausen area", and after previously entering the Nordhausen plant from the North through the Junkers Nordwerke, 3rd US Armored and 104th Infantry Divisions reached the city of Nordhausen on April 11, 1945 and discovered the dead and sick of the Boelcke Kaserne barracks at Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp.On May 22, 1945, Special Mission V-2 of the US Army shipped the first trainload of rocket parts destined for White Sands Proving Grounds. On May 26, 1945, Soviet Army officers arrived to tour the Nordhausen plant, which was to be turned over to them as per the Yalta Conference on June 1. In June 1945, the US Army left the Nordhausen plant as required by Joint Chiefs of Staff Order 1067, with parts, machine tools, and documents (including blueprints for the projected A-9/A-10 intercontinental missile) left for the Soviets.

Aftermath

An estimated 20,000 inmates were worked to death at the Mittlewerk; 9000 died from exhaustion and collapse, 350 hanged (including 200 for sabotage), the remainder were shot or died from disease or starvation.(Hunt 72,73,74) 6,000 bodies were found on the ground when American troops liberated Mittelbau-Dora. In comparison, the number of V-2 rocket casualties was 2,541 killed and 5,923 injured. The British Fedden Mission, headed by Roy Fedden, arrived at the site on June 19, 1945 and reported:

The Soviet army occupied the Mittelwerk on July 5, 1945 and in the summer of 1948, demolished both of the entrances of the tunnel system to prevent any further use by the Germans. After a new entrance tunnel had been dug to former rail Tunnel A in 1995, a section of 710 m of the tunnel system was opened for visitors. Large parts of the system are flooded by ground water, 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 not secured until 2004, when the mine went into insolvency.

References

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