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Mittelbau-Dora
Mittelbau-Dora (also Dora-Mittelbau and Nordhausen-Dora) was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It 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 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- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Förschner
Otto Förschner (4 November 1902 – 28 May 1946) was a German ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) officer and a Nazi concentration camp commander. After serving with the ''Waffen-SS'' on the Eastern Front, Förschner worked as a senior official at the Buchenwald concentration camp (1942–1943) and later served as the commandant of Mittelbau-Dora (1943–1945) and Kaufering (1945). Following the German defeat, he was convicted of war crimes by US occupation authorities at the Dachau trials and was hanged in May 1946. Early life Förschner was born in the town of Dürrenzimmern (today part of Nördlingen), Bavaria on 4 November 1902, and was raised on a farm owned by his family. In 1922, he enlisted in the ''Reichswehr'', and would remain a soldier for the next twelve years. Following his departure from the army in 1934, he became a member of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS), and was assigned to its military-wing, the ''SS-Verfügungstruppe'', the organization that would eventually become the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Baer
Richard Baer (9 September 1911 – 17 June 1963) was a German SS officer who, among other assignments, was the final commandant of Auschwitz I concentration camp from May 1944 to January 1945, and right after, from February to April 1945, commandant of Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Following the war, Baer lived under an assumed name to avoid prosecution but was recognized and arrested in December 1960. He died in detention before he could stand trial. Life Born in Floss, Bavaria in 1911, Baer grew up in a Protestant family. In 1925, he moved to Weiden in der Oberpfalz, where he performed a three-year apprenticeship to become a pastry chef. After completing his vocational training, Baer toured Bavaria for several years as a journeyman. Eventually, in the winter of 1932, he returned to the pastry company of his apprenticeship and worked there until he resigned in March 1933. Baer joined the Nazi Party in 1930, and on 1 July 1932, he became a member of the Allgemeine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Nazi Germany, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (pre-1938 Nazi Germany), Altreich (Old Reich) territories. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees. Prisoners came from all over Europe and the Soviet Union, and included Jews, Polish people, Poles, and other Slavs, the mentally ill, and physically disabled, political prisoners, Romani people, Roma, Freemasonry, Freemasons, and prisoners of war. There were also ordinary criminals and those perceived as sexual deviants by the Nazi regime. All prisoners worked primarily as forced labor in local armaments factories. The insufficient food and poor conditions, as well as deliberate executions, led to 56,545 deaths at Buchenwald of the 280,000 prisoners who passed through the camp and its List of subcamps of Buchenwald, 139 sub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nordhausen, Thuringia
Nordhausen () is a city in Thuringia, Germany. It is the capital of the Nordhausen (district), Nordhausen district and the urban centre of northern Thuringia and the southern Harz region; its population is 42,000. Nordhausen is located approximately north of Erfurt, west of Halle (Saale), Halle, south of Braunschweig and east of Göttingen. Nordhausen was first mentioned in records in the year 927 and became one of the most important cities in central Germany during the later Middle Ages. The city is situated on the Zorge (river), Zorge river, a tributary of the Helme (river), Helme within the fertile region of Goldene Aue ''(golden floodplain)'' at the southern edge of the Harz mountains. In the early 13th century, it became a free imperial city, so that it was an independent and republican self-ruled member of the Holy Roman Empire. Due to its long-distance trade, Nordhausen was prosperous and influential, with a population of 8,000 around 1500. It was the third-largest cit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kohnstein
The Kohnstein is a hill in Thuringia, Germany, 2 kilometres southwest of the village of Niedersachswerfen and 3 kilometres northwest of the centre of the town of Nordhausen. Gypsum mining created tunnels in the hill that were later used as a fuel/chemical depot and for Nazi Germany factories, including the Mittelwerk V-2 rocket factory that used Mittelbau-Dora slave labour. Chronology 1917–1934: The Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik (BASF) purchased the property and mined anhydrite for gypsum. 1935 summer: At the suggestion of IG Farben, the '' Wirtschaftliche Forschungsgesellschaft (WIFO)'' () investigated the mine to centralize a fuel and chemical depot. 1936: Wifo took over the mines to create a highly secret central petroleum reserve. The Government's ''Industrial Research Association'' invested some effort in adapting the tunnels and galleries for the storage of critical chemicals like tetra-ethyl-lead (petroleum anti-knock). 1937–1940: Wifo phases I and II t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Kammler
Hans Kammler (26 August 1901 – after October 1945) was an SS-''Obergruppenführer'' responsible for Nazi civil engineering projects and its top secret V-weapons program. He oversaw the construction of various Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, before being put in charge of the V-2 rocket and Emergency Fighter Programs towards the end of World War II. Kammler disappeared in May 1945 during the final days of the war, although conjecture about his capture or death remains. Early life Kammler was born in Stettin, German Empire (now Szczecin, Poland). In 1919, after volunteering for army service, he served in the Rossbach ''Freikorps''. From 1919 to 1923, he studied civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule der Freien Stadt Danzig and Munich and was awarded his doctorate of engineering (Dr. Ing.) in November 1932, following some years of practical work in local building administration. Nazi activist In 1931, Kammler joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP), where he held a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Speer
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production, Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close friend and ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison. An architect by training, Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party, and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler commissioned him to design and construct structures, including the Reich Chancellery and the Nazi Party Rally Grounds, Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg. In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for Berlin. In this capacity he was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement that Nazi persecution of Jews, evicted Jewish tenants from their homes in Berlin. In February 1942, Speer was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subcamp (SS)
Subcamps were outlying detention centres (''Haftstätten'') that came under the command of a main concentration camp run by the SS in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. The Nazis distinguished between the main camps (or ''Stammlager'') and the subcamps (''Außenlager'' or ''Außenkommandos'') subordinated to them. Survival conditions in the subcamps were, in many cases, poorer for the prisoners than those in the main camps. Emergence of the concept Within a concentration camp, prisoners were forced to carry out various tasks. The work could even be pointless and vexatious, without any useful output. Based on military language the SS designated such prisoner task forces as "details" or ''Kommandos''; the generic term being the "works details" (''Arbeitskommandos'') of a camp. For example, in Dachau concentration camp there was a "Crematorium Works Detail" (''Arbeitskommando Krematorium''), which was put together from a group of concentration camp prisoners; they were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Concentration Camp
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Following the Night of Long Knives, 1934 purge of the Sturmabteilung, SA, the concentration camps were run exclusively by the Schutzstaffel, SS via the Concentration Camps Inspectorate and later the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Initially, most prisoners were members of the Communist Party of Germany, but as time went on different groups were arrested, including "habitual criminals", "Black triangle (badge), asocials", and Jews. After the beginning of World War II, people from German-occupied Europe were imprisoned in the concentration camps. About 1.65 million people were registered prisoners in the camps, of whom about Holocaust victims, a million died during their imprisonment. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friedrichshafen
Friedrichshafen ( or ; Low Alemannic: ''Hafe'' or ''Fridrichshafe'') is a city on the northern shoreline of Lake Constance (the ''Bodensee'') in Southern Germany, near the borders of both Switzerland and Austria. It is the district capital (''Kreisstadt'') of the Bodensee district in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. Friedrichshafen has a population of about 63,000. History 19th and early 20th century Friedrichshafen was established in 1811 as part of the new Kingdom of Württemberg, an ally of France during the Napoleonic Wars. It was named for King Frederick I of Württemberg, who privileged it as a free port and transshipment point for the kingdom's Swiss trade. Friedrichshafen was created from the former city of Buchhorn, whose coat of arms it adopted. The new city also incorporated the former village of Hofen, whose monastery was refurbished to serve as the summer residence of the Württemberger kings. King William I continued improving the city, including the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
V-2 Rocket
The V2 (), with the technical name ''Aggregat (rocket family), Aggregat-4'' (A4), was the world's first long-range missile guidance, guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany as a "V-weapons, vengeance weapon" and assigned to attack Allies of World War II, Allied cities as retaliation for the Strategic bombing during World War II#The British later in the war, Allied bombings of German cities. The rocket also became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line (edge of space) with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944. Research of military use of long-range rockets began when the graduate studies of Wernher von Braun were noticed by the German Army. A series of prototypes culminated in the A4, which went to war as the . Beginning in September 1944, more than 3,000 were launched by the Wehrmacht against Allied targets, first London and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming Chancellor of Germany#Nazi Germany (1933–1945), the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of in 1934. His invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the start of the Second World War. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of Holocaust victims, about six million Jews and millions of other victims. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and moved to German Empire, Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in the First World War, receiving the Iron Cross. In 1919 he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and in 1921 was app ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
