114-573: Boelcke-Kaserne concentration camp ( transl. Boelcke Barracks ; also Nordhausen ) was a subcamp of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp complex where prisoners were left to die after they became unable to work. It was located inside a former Luftwaffe barracks complex in Nordhausen , Thuringia , Germany, adjacent to several pre-existing forced labor camps . During its three-month existence, about 6,000 prisoners passed through
228-571: A Luftwaffe barracks complex, named after the World War I flying ace Oswald Boelcke , was constructed in the suburbs of the city of Nordhausen , Thuringia . From 1942, parts of the barracks complex had housed forced laborers for Mabag, a company involved in arms production. Additional prisoners arrived in June 1944 for forced labor with Junkers and in the Mittelwerk tunnel system , mostly for
342-421: A Red Cross symbol. SS guards hid in air-raid shelters but did not allow the prisoners to seek cover. The death toll from the first raid was 450 in the block for tuberculosis sufferers, and the second raid killed about 1,000 people. The SS evacuated from the barracks after the raid, leaving the dead and leaving dying prisoners to fend for themselves. Some prisoners were able to escape during the bombing and hid in
456-517: A barn that was set on fire. Those who were not burned alive were shot by SS, Wehrmacht and men of the Volkssturm . Overall, although no reliable statistics on the number of deaths on these transports exist, estimates put the number of prisoners killed at up to 8,000. As most of the camps of the Mittelbau system were completely evacuated, there were not many prisoners left to be liberated by
570-597: A bombing raid by the Royal Air Force on Peenemünde (" Operation Hydra ") seriously damaged the facilities and ended construction of V-2s there. Other air raids had damaged the other two sites in June and August. As a result, the Nazi leadership accelerated plans to move military construction to areas less threatened by Allied bombers. On 22 August 1943, Adolf Hitler ordered SS leader Heinrich Himmler to use concentration camp workers in future A4/V-2 production. One of
684-552: A doctrine of "precision" bombing in daylight. When the German defences inflicted costly defeats on British raids in late 1939, a switch to night bombing was forced upon the Command. The problems of enemy defences were then replaced with the problems of night navigation and target-finding. In the early years of the war bombers had to rely on dead reckoning navigation supported by radio fixes and astro-navigation. Bomber Command comprised
798-612: A group of elite, specially trained and experienced crews who flew ahead of the main bombing forces and marked the targets with flares and special marker-bombs. No. 8 Group controlled the Pathfinder squadrons. A number of other groups were part of the command, including, in June 1944, No. 26 Group RAF , three operational training groups – No. 91 Group RAF at Morton Hall, Swinderby, which was merged into No. 21 Group RAF , part of RAF Flying Training Command , on 1 May 1947; Nos 92 and 93 Groups ; and No. 100 Group RAF (of which last
912-660: A high casualty rate: 55,573 were killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew, a 44.4% death rate. A further 8,403 men were wounded in action, and 9,838 became prisoners of war. Bomber Command stood at the peak of its post-war military power in the 1960s, the V bombers holding the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent and a supplemental force of Canberra light bombers. In 1968 it was merged with Fighter Command to form Strike Command . A memorial in Green Park in London
1026-411: A number of Groups . It began the war with Nos. 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 and 5 Groups. No. 1 Group was soon sent to France and then returned to Bomber Command control after the evacuation of France. No. 2 Group consisted of light and medium bombers who, although operating both by day and night, remained part of Bomber Command until 1943, when it was removed to the control of Second Tactical Air Force , to form
1140-661: A pace that was kept up until February 1945. On 31 December 1943, construction of the above-ground camp, less than a kilometre from the tunnel B entrance was sufficiently completed for the workers to move in. The underground detainee accommodations ( Schlafstollen or "sleeping tunnels") were dismantled in May 1944. Besides the main camp Dora, housing an average of 15,000 prisoners, the main subcamps were Lager Ellrich (established 2 May 1944, averaging around 8,000 prisoners), Lager Harzungen (1 April 1944, 4,000 prisoners), Lager Rottleberode (13 March 1944, 1,000 prisoners) and
1254-613: A raid got lost due to poor navigation and bombed London. Prime Minister Winston Churchill consequently ordered a retaliatory raid on the German capital of Berlin. The damage caused was minor but the raid sent Hitler into a rage. He ordered the Luftwaffe to level British cities, thus precipitating the Blitz . Like the United States Army Air Forces later in the war, Bomber Command had first concentrated on
SECTION 10
#17327722468471368-575: A standard price per unit, once production reached 5,000 units, of 50,000 Reichsmark per rocket. Especially for Kammler, this became a prestige project. Only ten days after the raid on Peenemünde, on 28 August 1943, the first 107 concentration camp inmates from Buchenwald arrived with their SS guards at the Kohnstein. The official name of the new subcamp of Buchenwald was Arbeitslager Dora . Another 1,223 Buchenwald prisoners followed on 2 September and workers from Peenemünde came in mid-October. Over
1482-466: A total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4 per cent death rate), a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war. This covered all Bomber Command operations. A Bomber Command crew member had a worse chance of survival than an infantry officer in World War I; more people were killed serving in Bomber Command than in the Blitz, or the bombings of Hamburg or Dresden. By comparison,
1596-452: A total of 17,500 slave labourers, almost 2,900 died at Dora. Another 3,000 who were very ill or dying were sent to Lublin-Majdanek and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. Few of them survived. At the end of 1943, the Dora work squads had "the highest death rate in the entire concentration camp system". By late 1943, production had started. On 10 December, Albert Speer and his staff visited
1710-645: The Advanced Air Striking Force . This action had two aims: to give the British Expeditionary Force some air-striking power and to allow the Battles to operate against German targets, since they lacked the range to do so from British airfields. In May 1940, some of the Advanced Air Striking Force was caught on the ground by German air attacks on their airfields at the opening of the invasion of France. The remainder of
1824-653: The Arbeitseinsatz-Dienststelle which coordinated the use of forced labour. Hans Schurz [ de ] became head of the Politische Abteilung (the local Gestapo office). On 3 and 4 April 1945, Nordhausen was attacked in two waves by several hundred Lancasters and Mosquitos of Nos 1 and 8 Groups of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command. Around 75% of the town was destroyed, the medieval old town
1938-526: The Battle of the Ruhr on Essen. The bombers destroyed 160 acres (65 ha) of the city and hit 53 Krupps buildings. The Battle of Hamburg in mid-1943 was one of the most successful Bomber Command operations, although Harris' extension of the offensive into the Battle of Berlin failed to destroy the capital and cost his force more than 1,000 crews in the winter of 1943–44. In August 1943, Operation Hydra ,
2052-675: The Dora Trial at Dachau for abuses at Boelcke-Kaserne, but they were acquitted for lack of evidence. Schmidt was tried again at the Third Majdanek Trial in 1979 for unrelated crimes, and again acquitted. No one else was tried for crimes committed at the subcamp. According to Michael J. Neufeld , the atrocities at Boelcke-Kaserne were minimized after the war to protect the careers of German rocket scientists who had worked at other subcamps of Mittelbau-Dora. Many of these scientists, including Wernher von Braun , were recruited by
2166-528: The Ruhr , including oil plants and other civilian industrial targets which aided the German war effort, such as blast furnaces (which were visible at night). The first attack took place on the night of 15/16 May, with 96 bombers setting off to attack targets east of the Rhine, 78 of which were against oil targets. Of these, only 24 claimed to have found their targets. Bomber Command itself soon fully joined in
2280-633: The United States Army Air Forces , it played the central role in the strategic bombing of Germany in World War II . From 1942 onward, the British bombing campaign against Germany became less restrictive and increasingly targeted industrial sites and the civilian manpower base essential for German war production. In total 501,536 operational sorties were flown, 2.25 billion pounds (1.02 million tonnes ) of bombs were dropped and 8,325 aircraft lost in action. Bomber Command crews also suffered
2394-454: The V-2 rocket production in nearby underground factories. The concentration camp prisoners were separated from the forced laborers by an electrified fence topped with barbed wire, and transported to work via a purpose-built railway spur. The camp commander was SS-Obersturmführer Heinrich Josten [ de ; pl ; sv ] , who had previously worked at Auschwitz , and the deputy commander
SECTION 20
#17327722468472508-468: The larger British bombs were highly destructive. 15 years after the war's end, Speer was unequivocal about the effect, The real importance of the air war consisted in the fact that it opened a second front long before the invasion in Europe ;... Defence against air attacks required the production of thousands of anti-aircraft guns, the stockpiling of tremendous quantities of ammunition all over
2622-568: The light bomber component of that command. Bomber Command also gained two new groups during the war: the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) squadrons were organised into No. 6 Group and the Pathfinder Force was expanded to form No. 8 (Pathfinder) Group from existing squadrons on 8 January 1943. Many squadrons and personnel from Commonwealth and other European countries flew in Bomber Command. No. 6 Group, which
2736-449: The prisoner functionaries were German " green triangle " prisoners (convicted criminals) whose beatings and cruelty made the situation even worse. On 11 April, advance parties of the US 3rd Armored Division entered Nordhausen with little opposition. They found hundreds of dying prisoners lying amongst more than a thousand corpses, including many children and babies. Some had been dead before
2850-466: The 88 mm gun was an effective AA weapon, it was also a deadly destroyer of tanks, and lethal against advancing infantry. These weapons would have done much to augment German anti-tank defences on the Russian front. Mine laying operations were a major contribution to the disruption of German naval activities. Aerial minelaying was used on the iron ore routes from Scandinavia and U-boat training areas in
2964-517: The Allies. Only some small subcamps, mostly containing Italian POWs, were not evacuated. The SS also left several hundred sick prisoners at Dora and in the Boelcke-Kaserne . They were freed when US troops (consisting of the 3rd Armored Division , the 104th Infantry Division , and the 9th Infantry Division ) reached Nordhausen on 11 April 1945. There were also around 1,300 dead prisoners at
3078-784: The American space program. The Soviets also hired some of the engineers. Like the rocket engineers, many construction engineers at Mittelwerk were able to continue with their careers. Very few were charged in connection with their role in the Nazi slave labour program. After liberation, the US forces and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) turned Dora and Harzungen camps into accommodations for displaced persons (DPs). In mid-May 1945, there were around 14,000 people living at Dora, several hundred liberated concentration camp inmates and many POWs as well as foreign civilian forced labourers. Repatriation
3192-520: The Baltic; in North-West Europe aerial mines sank seven times more ships than naval mines laid from ships. In operations Bomber Command laid 47,278 mines while losing 468 aircraft; Coastal Command contribution was 936 mines. Bomber Command and Coastal Command minelaying is credited with the loss of 759 vessels totalling 1.62 billion pounds (0.73 million tonnes). German production
3306-549: The Battle of the Ruhr marked a turning point in the history of the German war economy .... and that in the first quarter of 1943 steel production fell by 448 million pounds (203,209 tonnes), leading to cuts in the German ammunition production programme and a sub-components crisis ( Zulieferungskrise ). German aircraft output did not increase between July 1943 and March 1944: Bomber command had stopped Speer's armaments miracle in its tracks. The greatest contribution to winning
3420-565: The Battles proved to be horrendously vulnerable to enemy fire. Many times, Battles would set out to attack and be almost wiped out in the process. e.g. 10 May 1940 when a significant number of Battles were shot down or damaged. Following the Rotterdam Blitz of 14 May, RAF Bomber Command was authorized to attack German targets east of the Rhine on 15 May; the Air Ministry authorized Air Marshal Charles Portal to attack targets in
3534-722: The British bombing component was intended to be based on Okinawa . Bomber Command groups were re-organised for Operation Downfall but the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred before the force had been transferred to the Pacific. In Europe Bomber Command's final operation was to fly released Allied prisoners of war home to Britain in Operation Exodus . Bomber Command crews suffered an extremely high casualty rate: 55,573 killed out of
Boelcke-Kaserne concentration camp - Misplaced Pages Continue
3648-581: The British survey found that actual arms production decreases were a mere 3 per cent for 1943, and 1 per cent for 1944. However they did find decreases of 46.5 per cent and 39 per cent in the second half of 1943 and 1944 respectively in the metal processing industries. These losses resulted from the devastating series of raids the Command launched on the Ruhr Valley . A contrasting view was offered by Adam Tooze that by referring to contemporary sources rather than post-war accounts: there can be no doubt that
3762-687: The Buchenwald system. With the creation of the Jägerstab (Fighter Staff), led by Speer, as an institution to oversee a boost to fighter plane production and the move of military production underground, facilities for the production of fighter planes for the Junkers company were to be created around Nordhausen – along with the necessary infrastructure. In addition, after the creation of the Geilenbergstab (named after Edmund Geilenberg ), over
3876-581: The French were even more concerned lest Bomber Command operations provoke a German bombing attack on France. Since the Armée de l'Air had few modern fighters and no defence network comparable to the British Chain Home radar stations, this left France powerless before the threat of a German bombing attack. The final problem was lack of adequate aircraft. The Bomber Command workhorses at the start of
3990-500: The Germans. Despite these efforts, at least 59 former prisoners died of starvation and exhaustion. By 14:30 on 13 April, all survivors had been removed from the camp. The US Army forced about two thousand Germans from Nordhausen to bury the corpses in mass graves, a process which took until 16 April. American soldiers photographed and filmed the conditions at the camp, which were widely distributed in international media. Nordhausen "became
4104-548: The June 1945 Fedden Mission investigation of conditions at Dora, the trial "The United States of America versus Arthur Kurt Andrae et al." trial commenced on 7 August 1947 at the Dachau internment camp against 19 defendants. Otto Förschner was not a defendant in the Dora Trial, since he had already been executed after being convicted in the Dachau camp trial . The court convicted 15 Dora SS guards and Kapos (one of them
4218-527: The Mittelbau camps between August 1943 and March 1945. The precise number of people killed is impossible to determine. The SS files counted around 12,000 dead. In addition, an unknown number of unregistered prisoners died or were murdered in the camps. Around 5,000 sick and dying were sent in early 1944 and in March 1945 to Lublin and Bergen-Belsen. Of those killed, around 350 were hanged (including 200 for sabotage). The rate of executions notably accelerated after
4332-583: The Pathfinders, the de Havilland Mosquito , also made its appearance. By 25 July 1943, the Bomber Command headquarters had come to occupy "a substantial set of red brick buildings, hidden in the middle of a forest on top of a hill in the English county of Buckinghamshire". An offensive against the Rhine-Ruhr area ("Happy Valley" to aircrew) began on the night of 5/6 March 1943, with the first raid of
4446-716: The RAF as Boeing Washingtons, to supplement the Avro Lincoln , a development of the Lancaster. The first jet bomber, the English Electric Canberra light bomber, became operational in 1951. Some Canberras remained in RAF service up to 2006 as photo-reconnaissance aircraft. The model proved an extremely successful aircraft; Britain exported it to many countries and licensed it for construction in Australia and
4560-456: The Rhineland, bombed on 16, 17, 18 and 19 February, was bombed again on 23 March, leaving the city "97 percent destroyed". The last raid on Berlin took place on the night of 21/22 April, when 76 Mosquitos made six attacks just before Soviet forces entered the city centre. By this point, most RAF bombing operations were for the purpose of providing tactical support. The last major strategic raid
4674-508: The SS construction units III and IV (totaling around 3,000 prisoners, distributed among several small camps along a newly constructed railway line between Nordhausen and Herzberg am Harz . More subcamps were added once Mittelbau was officially independent. By spring 1945, the number of inmates totaled over 40,000 in around 40 camps. From spring/summer 1944, the camp became the centre of a subcamp system of its own. Originally, these still were part of
Boelcke-Kaserne concentration camp - Misplaced Pages Continue
4788-605: The Soviet Union, Poland or France) died from hunger, thirst, cold and overwork. During the first months, most of the work done was heavy construction and transport. Only in January 1944, when production of the A4/V-2 began, were the first prisoners moved to the new above-ground camp on the south side of the mountain. Many had to sleep in the tunnels until May 1944. In these initial months, from October 1943 to March 1944, out of
4902-666: The US Eighth Air Force , which flew daylight raids over Europe, had 350,000 aircrew during the war and suffered 26,000 killed and 23,000 POWs. Of the RAF Bomber Command personnel killed during the war, 72 per cent were British, 18 per cent were Canadian, 7 per cent were Australian and 3 per cent were New Zealanders. Taking an example of 100 airmen: In total 501,536 operational sorties were flown, 2.25 billion pounds (1.02 million tonnes) of bombs were dropped and 8,325 aircraft lost in action. Harris
5016-485: The US as part of Operation Paperclip . Since 1974, there has been a memorial at the site. Notes Citations Bibliography 51°29′30.1″N 10°48′31.0″E / 51.491694°N 10.808611°E / 51.491694; 10.808611 Mittelbau-Dora Mittelbau-Dora (also Dora-Mittelbau and Nordhausen-Dora ) was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia , Germany. It
5130-635: The United States. The joint US-UK Project E was intended to make nuclear weapons available to Bomber Command in an emergency, with the Canberras the first aircraft to benefit. The next jet bomber to enter service was the Vickers Valiant in 1955, the first of the V bombers . The Air Ministry conceived of the V bombers as the replacement for the wartime Lancasters and Halifaxes. Three advanced aircraft were developed from 1946, along with
5244-605: The action; in the Battle of Britain , Bomber Command was assigned to bomb invasion barges and fleets assembling in the Channel ports. This was much less public than the battles of the Spitfires and Hurricanes of RAF Fighter Command but still vital and dangerous work, carried out night after night. Bomber Command was also indirectly responsible, in part at least, for the switch of Luftwaffe attention away from Fighter Command to bombing civilian targets. A German bomber on
5358-480: The air raid; others were burned to death or died after the air raid from neglect. The American soldiers were outraged; one wrote, "No written word can properly convey the atmosphere of such a charnel house, the unbearable stench of decomposing bodies, the sight of live human beings... lying cheek by jowl with the ten-day dead..." A 15 April report describes the camp as "the most horrifying example of Nazi terrorism imaginable". The 3rd Armored Division continued eastward and
5472-557: The approximately 15,000 prisoners from Mittelbau, about half were from the Soviet Union and Poland. Although not in good health, these men were much healthier than most of the prisoners in the Belsen main camp. When the British Army liberated Belsen on 15 April, many of the inmates turned on their former overseers at Mittelbau. About 170 of these " Kapos " were killed that day. Some of the SS personnel who had come from Auschwitz with
5586-462: The area, US specialists began to inspect the rocket works and seized materials, parts and documents. They were later joined by British experts. Eventually the Soviets took over. Apart from Rickhey, Rudolph, and von Braun, several dozen former Mittelwerk engineers and scientists quickly hired on with the US government. They first constructed rocket weapons or jet planes and then mostly went on to join
5700-570: The arrival of 3,500 emaciated and ill prisoners from Gross-Rosen in mid-February, the SS decided to use the barracks compound to house prisoners who were no longer able to work, since Dora had no gas chamber and transports to Bergen-Belsen could not be arranged. Seriously ill prisoners from incoming transports and other subcamps of Mittelbau-Dora were transported to Boelcke-Kaserne to die; some forced laborers were also sent there after becoming unable to work. Daily trains shuttled between Dora and Boelcke-Kaserne, bringing incapacitated prisoners and removing
5814-461: The assembly lines. As a result, new prisoners were brought in from other concentration camps. From March 1944, the others were moved to newly created subcamps in the area around Nordhausen where they continued to be used for digging new tunnels or working at construction sites above ground. By late January, 56 rockets had been produced. By May, monthly output was 400 units. There were still defects, resulting in launch-pad and mid-air explosions. Output
SECTION 50
#17327722468475928-576: The barracks. War correspondents took pictures and made films of the dead and dying prisoners at Dora. Like the documentation of Nazi atrocities at Bergen-Belsen, these were published around the globe and became some of the best-known testimonies of Nazi crimes. Most of those inmates who survived the transports were freed in mid-April at Bergen-Belsen or at other camps. Some, however, remained prisoners until early May and were freed in Mecklenburg or Austria. In total, even conservative estimates put
6042-580: The bombing of the Peenemünde V-2 rocket facility opened the secondary Operation Crossbow campaign against long-range weapons. By April 1944, Harris was forced to reduce his strategic offensive as the bomber force was directed (much to his annoyance) to tactical and transport targets in France in support of the invasion of Normandy . The transport offensive proved highly effective. By late 1944, bombing such as Operation Hurricane (to demonstrate
6156-452: The building under the title Die Blutspur führt nach Bonn ("the blood trail leads to Bonn "), implying a historical continuity between the Nazi concentration camp and the government of West Germany . By contrast with Buchenwald , Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück , the communist government of the GDR never raised Dora to the status of Nationale Mahn- und Gedenkstätte (national memorial). In
6270-474: The camp and almost 3,000 died there under "indescribable" conditions. More than a thousand prisoners were killed during the bombing of Nordhausen by the Royal Air Force on 3–4 April 1945. Their corpses were found by the US Army units that liberated the camp on 11 April. Photographs and newsreel footage of the camp were reported internationally and made Nordhausen notorious in many parts of the world. In 1936,
6384-493: The camp averaged about 5,000. The camp was dissolved in July 1946. After that, the town of Nordhausen had the huts at Dora dismantled and re-erected at other locations in the district as emergency housing for the homeless. Only the camp's crematorium, the fire station and the camp prison remained. Nature reclaimed the area of the camp. The Soviets briefly continued to use parts of the tunnel network for manufacturing rockets. In 1947,
6498-548: The capabilities of the combined British and US bomber forces), competed against the German defences . Bomber Command was now capable of putting 1,000 aircraft over a target without extraordinary efforts. Within 24 hours of Operation Hurricane, the RAF dropped about 22 million pounds (10,000 tonnes) of bombs on Duisburg and Brunswick , the greatest bomb load dropped in a day during the Second World War. Wesel in
6612-416: The conditions in the second garage, where prisoners were left to die. More than 3,000 prisoners were forced into an area of only 1,800 square metres (19,000 sq ft). Although there were toilets, they did not work for lack of water, and many prisoners were unable to move. Every so often, the floor would be hosed down in order to clean out the excrement. SS guards barely entered the camp, instead allowing
6726-518: The corpses for cremation at Dora. On 1 April, there were 5,700 prisoners in the camp; the death rate approached one hundred per day. On 2 April, 3,000 prisoners were transported to the Mittelbau main camp and to Ellrich, a subcamp of Mittelbau. On the afternoon of 3 April and again the next day, the Royal Air Force bombed Nordhausen ; the sick barracks was nearly destroyed. The barracks was located near railyards and factories, which were considered military targets; Boelcke-Kaserne had not been marked with
6840-482: The country, and holding in readiness hundreds of thousands of soldiers, who in addition had to stay in position by their guns, often totally inactive, for months at a time ... No one has yet seen that this was the greatest lost battle on the German side. In terms of production decrease resulting from the RAF area attacks, the US survey, based upon limited research, found that in 1943 it amounted to 9 per cent and in 1944 to 17 per cent. Relying on US gathered statistics,
6954-518: The death rate rose: Between January and early April 1945, around 6,000 inmates died, around 3,000 of them at the Boelcke -Kaserne (a former Luftwaffe barracks) at Nordhausen, which had been used by the SS after January 1945 as the main Sterbelager (camp for the dying) for the Mittelbau system. Also from January to April 1945, at least 1,700 V-2 and over 6,000 V-1 rockets were built. Along with
SECTION 60
#17327722468477068-451: The defining image of National Socialist camp terror" in many parts of the world. Some American newspapers drew an explicit connection between the atrocities at Nordhausen and the rocket production nearby. Josten and Kestel were tried at the Auschwitz Trial in Kraków and the Buchenwald Trial at Dachau respectively; both were convicted and executed for crimes committed at other camps. Heinrich Schmidt and an SS guard were tried in 1947 in
7182-489: The dissolution of the so-called Zigeuner-Familienlager (Gypsy family camp) at Auschwitz-Birkenau , the SS transported many Roma and Sinti to Mittelbau between April and August 1944. The prisoners were subject to extreme cruelty. As a result, they often suffered injuries, including permanent disability and disfigurement, and death. Severe beatings were routine, as was deliberate starvation, torture and summary executions . In total, around 60,000 prisoners passed through
7296-401: The early 1970s, the local authorities turned the completely overgrown muster ground into an Ehrenplatz der Nationen with a rostrum, flag poles and an eternal fire. In 1988, an attempt was made to access one of the tunnels inside Kohnstein, but it was abandoned due to a lack of funds that same year. After reunification, the memorial was redesigned. A small portion of the original tunnel system
7410-422: The enemy. These men were subject to debriefing by the Soviet secret service and some of them were imprisoned once more and sent to the Gulag . Once the last forced labourers had left, Dora camp was used from December 1945 by German authorities as a holding camp for Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia . They were then distributed among various municipalities in northern Thuringia. The number of expelled housed in
7524-409: The entrances and some internal parts were blown up in accordance with the Allied agreement to destroy military facilities in Germany. Similar to what happened at Dora, most of the subcamps were soon dismantled and the wood used for heating or new construction. Local authorities decided in 1952 to demolish the Dora camp prison – in the face of protests by former detainees. By the early 1950s, most of
7638-434: The evacuation trains went on to Bergen-Belsen when Mittelbau was itself evacuated. A few of them, notably Franz Hössler , were prosecuted by the British military authorities at the Belsen trial in Lüneburg in September 1945. However, charges at this trial related only to crimes committed either at Auschwitz or at Bergen-Belsen, not at Mittelbau. Hössler was among those found guilty and executed on 13 December 1945. Following
7752-434: The foundation of Mittelwerk GmbH [ de ] (the name referring to the works' location in Mitteldeutschland ). Its board consisted of Hans Kammler , who was head of Amtsgruppe C at the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA) and two of Speer's armaments managers, Karl Maria Hettlage [ de ] and Gerhard Degenkolb [ de ] , the former seconded from Commerzbank . To actually run
7866-426: The inmates from Auschwitz arrived several hundred SS guards who joined the staff at Mittelbau, including Richard Baer , who succeeded Otto Förschner as overall Mittelbau commandant on 1 February 1945. Baer replaced most senior personnel with people from Auschwitz. Franz Hössler became commandant of the Häftlinglager Dora . Eduard Wirths became the new Standortarzt . Max Sell [ de ] became head of
7980-499: The inmates were forced to board box cars. Several trains, each with thousands of prisoners, left the area through 6 April for Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück . Others were forced to walk through the Harz hills towards the northeast. Those unable to keep up with these death marches were summarily shot by the guards. The worst atrocity occurred at Gardelegen, known as the Gardelegen massacre . More than 1,000 prisoners from Mittelbau and Neuengamme subcamps were murdered in
8094-415: The largest subcamp, Lager Ellrich-Juliushütte , that had been cut in half by the inner-German border. RAF Bomber Command 1942: Manchester , Stirling , Halifax , Lancaster , Mosquito . 1945: Lincoln 1950: Washington B.1 1951: Canberra . 1955: Vickers Valiant 1956: Avro Vulcan RAF Bomber Command controlled the Royal Air Force 's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. Along with
8208-402: The late 1930s, this statement was effectively true. Attacking bombers could not be detected early enough to assemble fighters fast enough to prevent them reaching their targets. Some damage might be done to the bombers by anti-aircraft (AA) guns, and by fighters as the bombers returned to base, but that was not as effective as a proper defence. Consequently, the early conception of Bomber Command
8322-478: The nearby woods. Housing conditions were particularly bad, because there were no bunks; prisoners had to sleep in a thin layer of straw. One of the garages held four blocks of prisoners still able to work, for whom conditions were slightly better, but for all prisoners, rations were grossly insufficient to sustain life. According to the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos , "it is difficult to describe in words"
8436-528: The next months, many more prisoners were brought to the area in almost daily transports from Buchenwald. By late September, the number of workers had risen to over 3,000, by late October to 6,800 and by Christmas 1943 to more than 10,500. Since there were initially no huts, the prisoners were housed inside the tunnels – in specially designated Schlafstollen with four levels of beds stacked over each other. There were no sanitary facilities except for barrels that served as latrines. Inmates (the majority of them from
8550-405: The number of people who did not survive being sent to Mittelbau-Dora at over 20,000. Thus, around one in three of those confined here did not survive. Transports from Mittelbau arrived at Bergen-Belsen between 8 and 11 April 1945. Several thousand men were housed in the so-called Kasernenlager around 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) north of the main camp, which was already overflowing with prisoners. Of
8664-504: The order of the previous year instructing Bomber Command to conserve its forces; this resulted in a large campaign of area bombardment against the Ruhr area. Professor Frederick Lindemann 's "de-housing" paper of March identified the expected effectiveness of attacks on residential and general industrial areas of cities. The aerial bombing of cities such as the Operation Millennium raid on Cologne continued throughout
8778-519: The personnel from Auschwitz arrived: in February and March 1945, the SS on some days hanged 30, on one occasion even 50 prisoners. On 1 January 1944, the Mittelwerk delivered its first three rockets, all of which suffered from serious production defects. The SS considered those prisoners who had expanded the tunnels in autumn and winter of 1943/44 as unusable in actual production work, because they were either too weakened or not qualified for work on
8892-458: The plant, Albin Sawatzki [ de ] , who had earlier been in charge of producing the " Tiger I " tank at Henschel , was appointed. Operational security for the project was overseen by SS-Oberstürmbannfuhrer Helmut Bischoff , a former Gestapo official and a member of Kammler's staff. The initial contract for Mittelwerk was for 12,000 rockets, valued at 750 million Reichsmark for
9006-448: The prisoners to die from neglect. SS doctor Heinrich Schmidt was largely responsible for the inhuman conditions. The conditions were used to motivate prisoners in other subcamps to work hard lest they be sent to die at Boelcke-Kaserne. Prisoners called it a "living crematorium" ( German : lebendes Krematorium ). The death rate was so high that a special work detail was formed to move the corpses. Prisoners assigned to this duty could draw
9120-542: The production of V-1 and V-2 rockets. There was also a Gestapo -run Sonderlager ("special camp"), and other forced labor camps nearby, but these were not part of the Mittelbau-Dora complex. On 8 January 1945, the SS-Totenkopfverbände , which ran the concentration camp system, took over two two-storey garages of the Luftwaffe barracks to use as housing for 6,000 prisoners who were forced to work in
9234-479: The rations of the dead. Boelcke-Kaserne housed the largest percentage of Jews in the Mittelbau-Dora complex, except for one labor subcamp for Jewish women. Forty percent of the prisoners were Polish, of whom most were thought to be Jews. The other main national groups were Russians, Frenchmen, and Hungarian Jews. Some were not concentration camp prisoners, but forced laborers who could no longer work. Most of
9348-548: The rest of the war, culminating in the controversial bombing of Dresden in 1945. In 1942, the main workhorse-aircraft of the later part of the war came into service: the four-engined heavies. The Halifax and Lancaster made up the backbone of the Command; they had a longer range, higher speed and much greater bomb load than earlier aircraft. The older four-engined Short Stirling and twin-engined Vickers Wellington bombers were not taken out of service, but moved to less demanding tasks such as mine-laying. The classic aircraft of
9462-489: The sextant was sufficient. ) The fourth problem was the limited accuracy of bombing, especially from high level. When the war began on 1 September 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt , President of the neutral United States, issued an appeal to the major belligerents to confine their air raids to military targets. The French and British agreed to abide by the request, provided "that these same rules of warfare will be scrupulously observed by all of their opponents". British policy
9576-819: The site hosts a memorial and museum. In early summer 1943, mass production of the A4 (later better known as V-2, V standing for Vergeltung or retribution) ballistic rocket started at the Heeresanstalt Peenemünde on the Baltic island of Usedom as well as at the Raxwerke in Wiener Neustadt , Austria and at the Zeppelin works in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance . On 18 August 1943,
9690-643: The sites selected was at the mountain known as Kohnstein, near Nordhausen in Thuringia. Since 1936, the Wirtschaftliche Forschungsgesellschaft (WIFO) (English: Economic Research Company ) had been building a subterranean fuel depot for the Wehrmacht there. By late summer 1943, this was almost finished. To oversee the creation and operation of the new construction facility, Albert Speer , Himmler and Karl Saur agreed on
9804-483: The summer of 1944 more underground construction was requested for the German petroleum industry. Demand for workers for these projects was satisfied with concentration camp prisoners, but also with foreign forced labourers, POWs and drafted Germans. The SS administration separated Mittelbau-Dora from Buchenwald at the end of September 1944 and Dora became the center of it. In effect, the new camp became officially operational on 1 November 1944 with 32,471 prisoners. By
9918-468: The surviving inmates were sent on death marches or crammed in trains of box-cars by the SS . On 11 April 1945, US troops freed the remaining prisoners. The inmates at Dora-Mittelbau were treated in a brutal and inhumane manner, working 14-hour days and being denied access to basic hygiene, beds, and adequate rations. Around one in three of the roughly 60,000 prisoners who were sent to Dora-Mittelbau died. Today,
10032-514: The time Dora became operational in November 1944, the decline of Mittelbau-Dora was already beginning. With the subcamps overcrowded and the weather turning colder, conditions in all camps deteriorated and the death rate rose significantly. After peaking in March 1944 at 750, this had declined to 100 to 150 per month by the summer. From November it picked up and in December 1944 the official tally
10146-457: The traces of the central Dora camp had disappeared. Whilst the prison was being demolished, some people from Nordhausen began to turn the area around the crematorium into a memorial and cemetery. In 1964, the local district SED created the Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Dora and had a sculpture by the artist Jürgen von Woyski erected in front of the crematorium. In 1966, a permanent exhibition opened inside
10260-842: The tunnels, observing the terrible conditions and finding them littered with corpses. Some members of Speer's staff were so shocked that they had to take an extra period of leave. A week later, Speer wrote to Kammler, congratulating him on his success "in transforming the underground installation ... from its raw condition two months ago into a factory, which has no equal in Europe and which is unsurpassed even when measured against American standards. I take this opportunity to express my appreciation for this really unique achievement and to ask you also in future to support Herr Degenkolb in this wonderful way." Inmates came from almost all countries of Europe; many of them had been arrested for political reasons. After May 1944, Jews were also brought to Mittelbau. With
10374-499: The war made by Bomber Command was in the huge diversion of German resources into defending the homeland. By January 1943 some 1,000 Luftwaffe night fighters were committed to the defence of the Reich; mostly twin engined Messerschmitt Bf 110 and Junkers Ju 88 . Most critically, by September 1943, 8,876 of the deadly, dual purpose 88 mm guns were also defending the homeland with a further 25,000 light flak guns, 20/37 mm. Though
10488-615: The war, the Vickers Wellington , Armstrong Whitworth Whitley and Handley Page Hampden/Hereford , had been designed as tactical-support medium bombers and none of them had enough range or ordnance capacity for anything more than a limited strategic offensive. Of these the Wellington had the longest range at 2,550 miles (4,100 km). Bomber Command became even smaller after the declaration of war. No. 1 Group , with its squadrons of Fairey Battles , left for France to form
10602-461: Was SS-Hauptscharführer Josef Kestel [ ja ; de ; pl ; sv ] , previously a functionary at the Dora camp. Beginning in late January, many Jewish prisoners in poor physical condition arrived at the Mittelbau-Dora complex from Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen . Some prisoners, weakened from their ordeal at other concentration camps, never recovered from the stress of transport, often in open railway cars, with inadequate food and water. After
10716-440: Was 570, of whom 500 died at Lager Ellrich . At the end of 1944, the SS began to evacuate the inmates of Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen before the advancing Red Army . Many of them were transported to the Mittelbau. Through March 1945, up to 16,000 prisoners arrived, including women and children. Although many died in transit, this raised the number of Jews at Mittelbau. Those who survived were often extremely weak or sick. Once again,
10830-581: Was activated on 1 January 1943, was unique among Bomber Command groups, in that it was not an RAF unit; it was a Canadian unit attached to Bomber Command. At its peak strength, 6 Group consisted of 14 operational RCAF bomber squadrons and 15 squadrons served with the group. No. 8 Group, also known as the Pathfinder Force, was activated on 15 August 1942. It was a critical part of solving the navigational and aiming problems experienced. Bomber Command solved its navigational problems using two methods. One
10944-439: Was advised by an Operational Research Section (ORS-BC) under a civilian, Basil Dickins, supported by a small team of mathematicians and scientists. ORS-BC (under Reuben Smeed ) was concerned with analysing bomber losses. They were able to influence operations by identifying successful defensive tactics and equipment, though some of their more controversial advice (such as removing ineffectual turrets from bombers to increase speed)
11058-467: Was as an entity that threatened the enemy with utter destruction. The Italian general Giulio Douhet , author of The Command of the Air , was of that view. In 1936, Germany's increasing air power was feared by British government planners who commonly overestimated its size, reach and hitting power. Planners used estimates of up to 72 British deaths per tonne (2,200 lb) of bombs dropped, though this figure
11172-422: Was diverted into construction and manning of minesweepers and the deployment of flak batteries to protect ports and estuaries. Around 100 vessels, mostly cargo types and around 11 million pounds (5,080 tonnes), were converted to Sperrbrecher mine barrage breakers to sail ahead of ships leaving harbour and of these about half of were lost to mines. Bomber Command acquired B-29 Superfortresses , known to
11286-571: Was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp , supplying slave labour from many Eastern countries occupied by Germany (including evacuated survivors of eastern extermination camps), for extending the nearby tunnels in the Kohnstein and for manufacturing the V-2 rocket and the V-1 flying bomb . In the summer of 1944, Mittelbau became an independent concentration camp with numerous subcamps of its own. In 1945, most of
11400-469: Was executed), four defendants were acquitted. The trial also addressed the question of liability of the engineers and scientists — former Generaldirektor of Mittelwerk Georg Rickhey was acquitted. Arthur Rudolph (recruited in 1945 under Operation Paperclip and later exiled from the US in 1984) was not even charged. A related trial was also held 1959–1961 in Essen . Immediately after taking control of
11514-436: Was fairly quick for those from Western Europe, but many from Eastern Europe had to wait months before they were able to return home. In early July, Thuringia passed from American to Soviet control. The Red Army now used Dora as a repatriation camp for former Polish and Soviet slave labourers. The Soviet authorities treated their citizens who had been forced to work for the Germans with suspicion, blaming them for collaborating with
11628-509: Was grossly exaggerated. As well, the planners did not know that German bombing aircraft of the day (not quite 300 Junkers Ju 52 medium bombers) did not have the range to reach the UK with a load of bombs and return to the mainland. British air officers did nothing to correct these perceptions because they could see the usefulness of having a strong bombing arm. At the start of the Second World War in 1939, Bomber Command faced four problems. The first
11742-461: Was hit particularly hard. Out of 40,000 inhabitants, roughly 8,800 people died, 20,000 lost their homes. Among the dead were also an estimated 1,300-1,500 Mittelbau prisoners, who were confined at the Boelcke-Kaserne at the time. In early April 1945, as US troops were advancing towards the Harz , the SS decided to evacuate most of the Mittelbau camps. In great haste and with considerable brutality,
11856-515: Was ignored. The very high casualties suffered give testimony to the dedication and courage of Bomber Command aircrew in carrying out their orders. The overall loss rate for Bomber Command operations was 2.2 per cent, but loss rates over Germany were significantly higher; from November 1943 – March 1944, losses averaged 5.1 per cent. The highest loss rate (11.8 per cent) was incurred on the Nuremberg raid (30 March 1944). The disparity in loss rates
11970-546: Was lack of size; Bomber Command was not large enough effectively to operate as an independent strategic force. The second was rules of engagement; at the start of the war, the targets allocated to Bomber Command were not wide enough in scope. The third problem was the Command's lack of technology; specifically radio or radar derived navigational aids to allow accurate target location at night or through cloud. (In 1938, E. G. "Taffy" Bowen proposed using ASV radar for navigation, only to have Bomber Command disclaim need for it, saying
12084-716: Was reflected in that, at times, Bomber Command considered making sorties over France only count as a third of an op towards the "tour" total and crews derisively referred to officers who only chose to fly on the less dangerous ops to France as "François". The loss rates excluded aircraft crashing in the UK on return, even if the machine was a write-off and there were crew casualties, which amounted to at least another 15 percent. Losses in training were significant and some courses lost 25 per cent of their intake before graduation; 5,327 men were killed in training from 1939 to 1945. RAF Bomber Command had 19 Victoria Cross recipients . Albert Speer , Hitler's Minister of Armaments, noted that
12198-641: Was reopened and has been accessible to visitors since 1995. Since 2000, the Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora runs the memorial, financed by the Thuringian state and the federal government. The GDR era memorial installations were left intact as a documentation of the way the Communist regime treated the Nazi past. A new permanent exhibition opened in a new museum building in 2006. Some work has also been done at
12312-478: Was replaced on the morning of 12 April by the 104th Infantry Division . According to some accounts, soldiers of the 104th Infantry Division killed German civilians in Nordhausen who denied knowledge of the atrocities, believing that they were partially responsible . The prisoners in the worst critical condition were taken to the 51st Field Hospital. Other survivors were cared for in apartments confiscated from
12426-516: Was responsible for development, operational trial and use of electronic warfare and countermeasures equipment). In 1941, the Butt Report revealed the extent of bombing inaccuracy: Churchill noted that "this is a very serious paper and seems to require urgent attention". The Area Bombing Directive of 14 February 1942 ordered Bomber Command to target German industrial areas and the "morale of...the industrial workers". The directive also reversed
12540-421: Was still far below the goal of 1,000 units per month. Wernher von Braun visited the Nordhausen plant on 25 January 1944 and again on 6 May 1944, when he met Walter Dornberger , Arthur Rudolph and Albin Sawatzki, discussing the need to enslave another 1,800 skilled French workers. On 8 September 1944, the first V-2 built at Mittelbau was successfully launched at London. That month, production hit 600 units,
12654-434: Was the destruction of the oil refinery at Vallø (Tønsberg) in southern Norway by 107 Lancasters, on the night of 25/26 April 1945. Once the surrender of Germany had occurred, plans were made to send a "Very Long Range Bomber Force" known as Tiger Force to participate in the Pacific war against Japan. Made up of about 30 British Commonwealth heavy bomber squadrons, a reduction of the original plan of about 1,000 aircraft,
12768-406: Was the use of a range of increasingly sophisticated electronic aids to navigation and the other was the use of specialist Pathfinders . The technical aids to navigation took two forms. One was external radio navigation aids, as exemplified by Gee and the later highly accurate Oboe systems. The other was the centimetric navigation equipment H2S radar carried in the bombers. The Pathfinders were
12882-438: Was to restrict bombing to military targets and infrastructure , such as ports and railways which were of military importance. While acknowledging that bombing Germany would cause civilian casualties, the British government renounced deliberate bombing of civilian property (outside combat zones) as a military tactic. The British government did not want to violate its agreement by attacking civilian targets outside combat zones and
12996-464: Was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 June 2012 to commemorate the high casualty rate among the aircrews. In April 2018 The International Bomber Command Centre was opened in Lincoln. At the time of the formation of Bomber Command in 1936, Giulio Douhet 's slogan " the bomber will always get through " was popular, and figures like Stanley Baldwin cited it. Until advances in radar technology in
#846153