German efforts at rocket experimentation began after World War I. In 1936, a major army research installation was developed at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast. The first successful V2 flights occurred in October, 1942. Due to the size of the project, it was decided to create a state monopoly under the name of Mittelwerk AG for the development of the V2. In June, 1943, Hitler signed an order for accelerated development. However, at about the same time, Allied intelligence had located the rocket production site, and in August, 1943, Allied bombing attacks nearly destroyed these facilities. Accordingly, the Germans determined that it was essential to find a new location for these activities.
The site selected was in the Hartz Mountain region near the town of Nordhausen where significant underground facilities already existed. The completion and expansion of these facilities required a large labor force. At the end of August, 1943, the first skilled prisoners arrived from Buchenwald to form a new subcamp with the undercover name of "Dora". All of the Mittelwerk's physical installations were referred to as the "Mittelbau."
By the end of 1943, most of the construction had been completed and production commenced. On October 1, 1944, the subcamp became independent of Buchenwald under the name of Mittelbau. As a result of evacuation transports from Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen at the end of the war in the east, the number of prisoners grew to about 40,000. Evacuation of the camp started on April 6, 1945, when a number of experts and staff, including Werhner von Braun, left for Bayern, Germany. Most of the prisoners were sent on death marches to Bergen-Belsen and Sachsenhausen. The camp was liberated on April 11, 1945.
Below is a photo from the German Archives showing an entrance to one of the tunnels at Mittelbau in which rocket production took place.
Erik Lordahl, German Concentration Camps 1933-1945, History and Inmate Mail (2000). Referred to as Lordahl.
Feig, Hitlers Death Camps (1979)
Copyright © 2002 Edward Victor