Before any thought is given to the construction of armaments and the structure of the concentration camps, the focus must always be on the memory of the victims. The figures are not absolutely certain, but there must have been over 8,000 prisoners in the Muehldorf camps between August 1944 and May 1945, working in the armaments bunker or in special commandos. It is assumed that 47% did not survive this work. Those who worked in the armaments bunker had a life expectancy of less than two months, often less. The prisoners were a mixture of experienced prisoners who had often already worked in Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto and who came to the Mühldorfer Hart via Dachau. The majority were from Hungary, with smaller groups also coming from Lithuania, Italy, France and Greece.
The background for
the construction of armament bunkers
In 1944, the Allies were already bombing armaments facilities in northern Germany more frequently. Attempts were therefore made either to relocate production underground, as with the Mittelbau Dora project in the Harz Mountains, or to move the armaments facilities to the south-east and try to hide them in wooded areas and ultimately camouflage them.
Why did the NS leadership
choose this area for the armament bunker
Similar reasons were decisive for the choice of location in the Muehldorfer Hart. The gravel plain of the inner terrace had a broad gravel foundation. The groundwater table was sufficiently deep at 25–30 meters. The surrounding gravel pits provided additional building material. The forest surroundings of the Muehldorfer Hart provided camouflage. The Muehldorf railroad junction provided a good connection to the transport system for the delivery of materials and the intended removal of finished products.
The Todt organization
and the subcontractors during construction
The Todt Organization was named after its head Fritz Todt and was tasked with organizing the construction projects of the Third Reich. This also included the construction of freeways and the manufacture of armaments facilities. By the time the armaments project for a production facility for the Me 262, the world’s first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, was started in Muehldorfer Hart, Todt had already crashed an airplane and died. The project in Muehldorfer Hart was called “Weingut I”.
The Todt organization commissioned subcontractors:
Polensky & Zöllner (also based in Muehldorf)
Leonhard Moll
Wayss & Freytag
Plans for the armaments bunker
First a gravel mound was piled up, then a lean concrete layer was applied to maintain the shape of the gravel mound and then the first concrete layer with reinforcement was concreted on top. (A second layer should have followed, so that the outer shell would have been about 5 meters thick). The gravel was then removed via a gravel removal tunnel in which a train with wagons could travel. The interior construction would have provided six levels for industrial facilities for the construction of the Me 262 fighter-bomber. However, this extension could no longer be carried out. By the end of the war, only the gravel mound under the first six elements of the concrete structure had been removed.
A picture of the building
Given the size of the structure and the mass of concrete that was being used, it was not possible to work with scaffolding. Instead, concrete was poured over a mountain of gravel, which was then transported away again with the help of a gravel removal tunnel and a train.
The bunker system is blown up
After the war, the armaments bunker was blown up by American explosives experts.
The work of the prisoners
The prisoners’ work during the construction of the armaments bunker consisted of carrying cement and bending iron for the concrete reinforcement. The prisoners worked in 12-hour shifts and at walking pace. They dragged the sacks up to a platform on the side of the gravel hill, where they were either tipped onto conveyor belts or into concrete mixing machines.
