Georg Johannes Rickhey (25 August 1898,

Hildesheim Hildesheim (; or ; ) is a city in Lower Saxony, in north-central Germany with 101,693 inhabitants. It is in the district of Hildesheim (district), Hildesheim, about southeast of Hanover on the banks of the Innerste River, a small tributary of t ...

– 21 November 1970,

Essen Essen () is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as ...

) was a German engineer and the general director of

Mittelwerk Mittelwerk (; German for "Central Works") was a German World War II factory built underground in the Kohnstein to avoid Allied bombing. It used slave labor from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp to produce V-2 ballistic missiles, V-1 flyin ...

GmbH in

Dora-Mittelbau Mittelbau-Dora (also Dora-Mittelbau and Nordhausen-Dora) was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen, Thuringia, Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, su ...

. Rickhey, a doctor of engineering, joined the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

in October 1931 as member number 664,050. From 1940, he guided Gauamt Technik in Essen and was promoted in 1942 to the leader of NSDAP Gau

and was also at the same time authorized officer in an Essen mining company. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

he held a number of positions with the ''Reichsministerium für Bewaffnung und Munition'' (Reich Ministry for Armament and Munitions) before becoming manager of

Demag Demag (In German ''Deutsche Maschinenbau-Aktiengesellschaft'') was a German heavy equipment industrial group whose individual companies are now scattered. The Demag name can be today found for example as the Demag Cranes and Components and Sum ...

, a tank production company, in 1942. He became head of

GmbH in

from April 1944, overseeing production of the

V-1 flying bomb The V-1 flying bomb ( "Vengeance Weapon 1") was an early cruise missile. Its official Reich Aviation Ministry () name was Fieseler Fi 103 and its suggestive name was (hellhound). It was also known to the Allies as the buzz bomb or doodlebug a ...

and V-2 rocket. His work on these weapons saw him awarded the Knights Cross of the

War Merit Cross The War Merit Cross () was a state decoration of Nazi Germany during World War II. By the end of the conflict it was issued in four degrees and had an equivalent civil award. A " de-Nazified" version of the War Merit Cross was reissued in 1957 ...

along with

Walter Dornberger Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (6 September 1895 – 26 June 1980) was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World War I and World War II. He was a leader of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket programme and other projects a ...

and

Wernher von Braun Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( ; ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German–American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and '' Allgemeine SS'', the leading figure in the development of ...

. Arrested in 1945, he was taken by the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...

to live at

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) is a United States Air Force base and census-designated place just east of Dayton, Ohio, in Greene County, Ohio, Greene and Montgomery County, Ohio, Montgomery counties. It includes both Wright and Patte ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

where he worked under the terms of

Operation Paperclip The Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the US for government employment after the end of World War I ...

. While at Wright Field Rickhey helped establish a smuggling operation, based on knowledge of black markets that he had gained in Nazi Germany. He was subsequently indicted as part of the

Dachau Trials The Dachau trials, also known as the Dachau Military Tribunal, handled the prosecution of almost every war criminal captured in the U.S. military zones in Allied-occupied Germany and in Allied-occupied Austria, and the prosecutions of military ...

of 1947 under accusations that he had worked closely with the SS and

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

and witnessed executions. According to fellow scientists in Paperclip, Rickhey had bragged about killing slave laborers at Mittelwerk. In one instance, Rickhey was accused of helping hang 12 prisoners from a crane, after the laborers were accused of sabotaging rocket production. American Air Force colonel Donald L. Putt was aware of the allegations against Rickhey but sought to suppress them, since they were potentially damaging to Rickhey's ongoing research in the United States and to Operation Paperclip. At trial, Rickhey was acquitted due to a lack of evidence. Rickhey returned to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base after the trial ended. He did not return to his work in Operation Paperclip. Rickey built Hitler's underground bunker in Berlin and drew up the initial plans for "Site R" -- the Alternate National Military Command Center at the

Raven Rock Mountain Complex The Raven Rock Mountain Complex (RRMC), also known as Site R and simply The Rock, is a U.S. military installation with an underground nuclear bunker near Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, at Raven Rock Mountain that has been called an "undergro ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

References

1898 births 1970 deaths People from Hildesheim German military engineers Recipients of the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross People indicted for war crimes People acquitted of international crimes Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp personnel Operation Paperclip Engineers from Lower Saxony V-weapons people {{Nazi-stub Nazi Party members Prisoners and detainees of the United States military

See also

References