ARRIVAL IN THE TUNNEL. To the north of the Kohnstein, in the Zorge valley, there was no room for any major new installations. To the south, on the other hand, it was possible to build a shunting yard with areas for stockpiling as well as an SS camp to the east and the concentration camp in the small valley.
In September 1943 an embryonic version of the camp was first set up near tunnel B’s south exit; it was surrounded with barbed wire and had army tents for the SS and the Prominente. As tunnel A was not yet finished, there was no other access. But it meant entering the tunnel from the wrong side. The work undertaken by the WIFO had started in the north, where lighting and flat ground had existed for some time. In the south, on the other hand, work was still under way on a full-scale work site.
For many months the prisoners’ first sight of the tunnel was an even greater shock than their arrival in Buchenwald had been several weeks earlier. The narratives frequently make reference to a descent into hell—and these are not literary reminiscences.
A few phrases taken from these narratives help reconstitute the scene. “The huge wooden door, which barred the entrance, creaked shut behind us. [. . .] We were suddenly engulfed in darkness. Now and again, however, an acetylene lamp threw its sooty glow on the very high walls. We climbed over piles of sand, catching our feet in cables, bumping into beams or railway ties which were scattered over the floor.” “We went into the tunnel, walked for a long while, then on the right, we entered an excavation that had been dug out to establish a temporarily abandoned hall. The ground was rough, water seeped from the rocks, pools of water lay stagnant.” “Water seeped from everywhere. The ground was sticky and slimy, causing our wooden soles to slip.” “In the tunnels where we suddenly found ourselves, there were heaps of stones piled in stagnant water.” These testimonies, given by Jiri Benès, Léon Bronchart, and Jean Mialet, date from September–October 1943.1 Benès and Bronchart add, regarding conditions when they arrived in September: “There was a pile of half-stuffed straw mattresses. We all took one and tried to stretch out somewhere.” “We spent the night amidst shouts and blows, lying in water, the points of the rocks bruising our bodies.” That was Hall 39.
THE TUNNEL “DORMITORIES.” In October 1943, Halls 43 to 46 were transformed into “dormitories;” Émile Nérot and Jean Rieg recall having taken part in cobbling pallet beds together and moving straw mattresses in.2 This arrangement would last until May 1944, that is, for more than seven months. These four halls were on the right at the very end of tunnel A, the digging of which was just being completed. They were reserved for housing the prisoners, whereas the preceding halls made up the factory. After the dormitories were eliminated in the summer of 1944, V1 production—which had previously been carried out, above all, by the Volkswagen factory in Fallersleben—took their place. Contrary to the others, these halls did not lead to tunnel A; they were dead-ends, which did nothing to improve ventilation. Beyond the entrance to Hall 46 was the digging site. Digging went on twenty-four hours a day, in two twelve-hour shifts. That was also the rhythm of the factory, such that the dormitories were occupied almost permanently. The rear of the digging site, from where the earth was evacuated, was across from the dormitories. The digging site and the dormitories were thus closely associated, and the prisoners, once they left work, were unable to get away from the dust and noise of the drill-hammers, the explosions, and the movements of the stone-filled carts. When the dormitories were evacuated, digging was still unfinished.
During this period there was still no running water in the tunnel. There were of course pipes, but the water in them was not drinkable but rather intended for jobs like making concrete, and the prisoners had no access to the few taps there were. This meant that washing oneself was utterly impossible, which is a serious problem for people working in a mine in the dust or outside in the mud. It also meant that it was impossible to drink anything other than the soup broth. It was always possible to burst the pipes, but that was an act of sabotage and very dangerous. Moreover, consuming undrinkable water was a surefire way of contracting dysentery, the most feared disease at the time.
Nor, consequently, were there proper hygienic facilities. Because the prisoners were not outside, the solution of going into the bushes or using makeshift outhouses did not exist. They had recourse to half barrels with a plank on top, installed in tunnel A, in front of the dormitories. They were barrels that the WIFO had used for storing gasoline. Raymond Jacob notes: “I was affected into a Kommando where, using a hammer and a chisel, we were supposed to cut the barrels into two pieces to make latrine buckets.”3
Benès was part of the latrine-bucket Kommando for a while. The half barrels had to be carried to the latrine holes outside, and the SS’s toilets needed to be cleaned. “It was very unpleasant, but also very dangerous work because of the risks of typhus and dysentery.”4
In the first quarter of 1944 the total number of prisoners in the Dora camp was somewhere between 11,500 and 12,000. At least 10,000 were still housed in the tunnel, which means there were permanently some 5,000 prisoners in the four dormitories. Other figures have spread, based on an incorrect reading of the WIFO report of December 31, 1943, according to which 5,500 were allegedly housed in the camp barracks. These numbers, put forth by Bornemann5—which Neufeld relied upon6—greatly surprised the survivors, and an inquiry carried out by the Dora-Ellrich association showed that these statistics were erroneous. The building of the camp began in earnest only in March.
The dormitories were some 400 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 30 feet high. They were comprised of rudimentary wooden partitions at each end, and a three-or four-story double partition in the middle. Movement was possible along the aisles on either side of the central partition. This resulted in a scarcely imaginable cramming together of filthy individuals, at times suffering from dysentery or coughing up their lungs in the dust caused by the blasting at the work site.
In this close and muggy atmosphere, lice ended up in the straw mattresses and then in the clothes. Each day each prisoner would try to kill his own lice without ever really managing to do so. As Paul Butet recalls: “At the beginning, I would only find a few in the folds of my shirt or the seams of my underwear. It was relatively easy to squash them between our thumb nails, but because of the conditions of hygiene, they multiplied so quickly that by the end of February there was nothing more to be done. I had been lucky enough to have a homemade wool sweater. I had to get rid of it in a corner of the tunnel: there were almost as many lice as there were stitches.”7
THE GREAT DISINFECTING CAMPAIGN OF FEBRUARY 29, 1944. The lice began to spread from the prisoners to the SS and the German civilians. The authorities then feared—not without cause—a large typhus epidemic, and the decision was made to carry out a general disinfecting campaign. It began on February 29, 1944, and lasted several days and nights. The ten-thousand-odd prisoners in the tunnel were subjected to it one after the other. The operation has been related at length by Charles Sadron,8 who at the time had only just recently arrived in Dora and, like everyone else, was already covered in vermin. He describes the disinfecting itself, after the long wait that preceded it.
“We were brought shivering into the compound of the sleeping camp, in front of the large shower building. A confused ruckus issued from its lit-up windows. Nearby, the large rolling steam-room periodically gave off a cloud of white steam, which vanished into the darkness. The air smelled of disinfectant. We had to wait in the snow for the group ahead of us to come out. The cold was very keen. We warmed one another up by rubbing our backs together. Fatigue gripped our temples in a merciless vise.
“Finally, it was our turn. There was a fight to get into the large room first, where the warmth penetrated us and livened us up. But we had no time to savor this well-being. We had to quickly undress. Shirts were to be thrown on the right-hand pile, underpants onto the left-hand pile, we hurriedly rolled them up into a ball, and, naked, lined up in front of the unlikely ‘barbers,’ who shaved us from head to foot. At times, a gust of freezing-cold air made us shiver. The odor of three hundred filthy bodies, covered with scabs and sores was nauseating.
“The shearing finished, we entered the shower room in single file, our shoes in hand. Immediately to the right of the entrance was a large cement bathtub, which we got into by climbing three steps. It was full of a solution which smelled strongly like disinfectant. The water may have been clear and hot at the beginning. But a thousand dirty men, with muddy feet had been through it before we arrived. And so it was into a cold and murky liquid that we had to plunge, one after the other, under the surveillance of a brute, who first tore off any bandages and made sure that, in keeping with the rules, we completely disappeared, including the head, into this slop. We emerged almost suffocating, our eyes burning, shivering, and crowded under the showerheads. When we were all there, the shower began. It was a wonderful moment. The very hot water brought on an unimaginable sense of well-being. We rubbed our skin—which was red with ulcers and vermin—with voluptuous frenzy. The men shouted with joy and sang. It was a deafening racket that only came to an end when the showers stopped.
“Then things got less amusing. We went into the room next door, holding our by-now soaking-wet shoes in our hands. It was here that we were to retrieve our disinfected clothing. The room, the same size as the shower room, opened onto the outside through five windows and a door, all of which were wide-open onto the night. A glacial wind blew onto our soaking-wet bodies: there was nothing to dry ourselves with, and we had to wait like that for many long minutes. We rubbed ourselves with our hands and smacked our skin violently and repeatedly, anxious to avoid the pneumonia—that is, the death—that threatened us.
“Finally, we were allowed to approach the table where the wash was piling up. Quick, quick, a shirt, some underpants, a sweater, pants and a jacket, and we had to move on a little further to put them on. An SS walked about, speeding up the operation. We had to move more and more quickly. With his cane, he lashed the bare backs of any laggards. It nonetheless took us a bit of time, because we had to wring out the clothes before putting them on, even though they had only been soaked and not washed. God only knows where the shirt I received came from: it was trimmed with wide embroideries. It was dotted with lice specks, and the breast was smudged with black spots. But that was of no consequence: it had been disinfected. I pulled it on quickly. It only went halfway down my stomach. Soaked like the rest, the boxer shorts had only half a right leg, and obviously neither buttons nor trim; but that could be fixed with some thread. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t really complain: the guy next to me pulled on a pair of boxer shorts that must have belonged to someone with dysentery, because there was still a patch stuck to the bottom of them. I nearly threw up; but one day, I too was to be subjected to the same experience.
“The SS guard started getting angry. We quickly pulled on the remnants of sweaters, pants that were too short, vests with the buttons missing, and off we went! At the exit, we were thrown a grimy beret, also wet, and there we were, back outside. It was perhaps three o’clock in the morning. Standing in the snow, we fastened on as best we could the rags which were falling from our bodies. The Kapo called for us to group together. Our wet clothes gave off steam in the cold air. Once again we had to wait. My God, we thought, that pneumonia is sure to get us! After an hour, we were all there. We headed for the dormitory at full speed, where each of us huddled under his blanket, which was also wet.” The author shall confine himself to the following remark: “That night, a few of us friends were there with Charles Sadron.”
HUNGER, RATIONS, AND CARE PACKAGES. The prisoners in Dora suffered a great deal from hunger in the early months, but also, as will be seen, in the final months. Reactions varied, however, as in all the camps, from one individual to another. Marcel Pierrel states: “The most striking memory was the constant hunger that gnawed at us.”9 Others stress different aspects. In this respect, Max Dutillieux’s remark sheds light on these differences in attitude: “Real hunger starts by just tickling the stomach, then twisting it for a few hours; then it doesn’t hurt anymore at all, but it eats away at your reserves, wearing you down, consuming your muscles and ends up killing you.”10 In Dora, as in all the camps, some prisoners would imagine extraordinary menus “for the day when freedom had returned with abundance”; others never thought about it.
The daily ration consisted of a quart of rutabaga-based soup, a piece of bread, a pat of margarine, and one other element, which could be a sort of cottage cheese, a sort of jam, or a sort of sausage, in small quantities. Only the bread didn’t have to be consumed immediately, which led Fliecx to explain the reasons for not keeping the bread for later:
“The first was that we were terribly hungry, which was only stimulated by the soup, far too inconsistent and inadequate; it is really very hard to have hunger in your stomach and bread in your pocket. There is no way to stop thinking about that confounded piece of bread; whereas, if you ate it, there was no more thinking about it. The torture wasn’t worth it in my opinion. In my two years of experience, nibblers were a species that rarely lasted long. The other reason is that there was a good chance that when you woke up, delighted at the idea of sinking your teeth into some bread, your delight quickly turned into useless rage: no more bread! A dexterous thief had relieved you of it during the night.”11
This was one of the serious problems of daily life in the first months of Dora: that of insecurity—and in this regard the contrast with Buchenwald is striking. There are any number of anecdotes regarding provisions. They have to do, in the first place, with the distribution of rations, initially carried out in the “blocks” represented by the tunnel dormitories. The Czech, Otakar Litomisky, became the Schreiber of one of them whose Blockältester, Kurt Kemeter, was a German Red who had fought in Spain. Litomisky relates with pride that the Czechs in his block built a wooden distribution counter with a window for handing out food while checking identity numbers. He adds that in the other blocks it was impossible to do so without the help of the SS.12
The bread still had actually to arrive in the blocks. Fliecx tells the following: “The bread was back-packed in from the outside in sacks, with twenty breads per sack. Thus there was a long column which moved in the tunnels, duly escorted by the Stubendienst, club in hand to ward off those who sought to get too close. If there was an electrical failure, which was not uncommon, you would hear yells, sounds of tearing fabric, and a stampede of feet [. . .]. When the light came back on, there was nothing but ripped-open bags whose content had sometimes completely disappeared.”13
Prisoners who received care packages, distributed in the tunnel blocks, were immediately threatened and were smart to quickly consume the contents, sharing it with their fellow prisoners. In any case, Litomisky points out, “The packages’ contents, even if they arrived in good condition, soon went bad because of the humidity in the Tunnel.”14 Thefts took place in the blocks while prisoners were sleeping: it was better to put bread rations, food from care packages, and shoes in good shape under one’s head as a makeshift pillow. There was never any doubt as to the thieves’ nationality. They were young Ukrainians, organized in gangs, and the stolen objects circulated quickly. Practically no one was ever caught in the act.
Attacks also took place in the camp as was observed by several French prisoners from the barracks of the Revier. Jacob and Fliecx15 witnessed attacks on the rutabaga wagons before they got to the kitchens. The Greens in charge did not get involved when those carrying the soup drums being attacked were, for instance, Italian prisoners of war, who had their own block in the camp.
Soup drums brought near the camp entrance also had to be protected when the day-shift tunnel Kommandos were allowed out for approximately an hour to eat their soup, instead of having to eat it in the dormitories. Fliecx, from the Schonung (rest-period block for prisoners), contemplated the scene. “In groups of five, they were white as sheets for lack of air, light and food, unshaven, filthy, and dressed in blue and gray rags, which made them look even more pitiful.”16
The mere conditions of internment of the Dora prisoners would have been enough to produce a high rate of mortality in the nine months of imprisonment in the tunnel. But they were accompanied by equally detestable working conditions.
In respect of the decisions made at the highest level, after August 18, 1943, the WIFO had to leave its underground installations at Kohnstein to allow the V2 production factory to be set up. The problem thus arose of who was to look after the dismantling and evacuation of the WIFO stockpile, followed by the work required to start up the factory. Following the bombing, the people in Peenemünde lacked the teams needed to deal with this task. Moreover, the Trassenheide camp, which housed the Russian and Polish workers in charge of carrying out work in the camp, had been particularly hard hit. There was, in any case, no further question of using anything but a concentration camp workforce in the tunnel, aside from German civilians.
The WIFO, on the contrary, had experienced German personnel and a certain amount of equipment on location, and was in contact with subcontractors whom they could rely on. Thus the WIFO was put in charge of converting Kohnstein on behalf of Mittelwerk, and under the authority of the Armaments Ministry.
THE WIFO’S ROLE. The contract concluded on September 5, 1943, put the WIFO’s Ni Agency in charge of implementing, for Mittelwerk, a program designated as Bauabschnitt Erweiterung III, that is, it corresponded to the extension of phase three, then underway, of the digging of the Kohnstein tunnels.17 In fact, the program went well beyond this subterranean work. Indeed, it not only included the full-scale conversion of the factory but also, outside, the construction of offices (Bürounterkunft) of the departments of Oberingenieur Sawatzki, the Barackenlager for the German civilians in Ilfeld and in Harzungen, a barracks for the SS (SS-Unterkunft) as well as a concentration camp, referred to as a Häftlings-Erholungslager (prisoners’ rest camp).
There is a long list of a wide variety of categories in the assessment signed on December 31, 1943, by Neu, director of the WIFO.18 His responsibility, at the implementation level, was thus total. It should be noted in passing that the assessment included, along with what was completed (fertiggestellt), categories where work was still under way (“50% der Baracken aufgestellt”) or merely planned (vorgesehen). It is not always perfectly clear.
What, at any rate, is highly revealing is that the concentration camp and the SS barracks formed a whole along with the factory and the Mittelwerk camp administration. Any subsequent attempt at dissociation was ruled out. In this complex there were German civilians (and several soldiers, as will be seen), the prisoners, and the SS, none of whom could be unaware of the others’ presence.
THE FATE OF THE “WIFOS.” In late August 1943, in Niedersachswerfen, a certain number of foreign workers with legal working papers were employed by the WIFO—Frenchmen from the STO and Czechs who had been recruited and given contracts from within the Protectorate as well as three Belgians. They were still working in the north part of the tunnel in October and lived freely outside after their work hours. They had only a very discreet relationship with the prisoners.
At the end of October, for reasons unknown—but doubtless for security-related motives—these foreign workers were all arrested and fitted out in striped prison uniforms with a white triangle bearing the initial W. Their hair wasn’t cut and they initially formed a Kommando all on their own. Their families continued to receive a portion of their pay, but the workers were forbidden to indicate their change of status. Several prisoners—Dunouau, Nérot, Soubirous—refer in their memoirs to these arrests, which they witnessed.19 Gradually the “Wifos” were mixed in with the other prisoners.
THE EVACUATION OF THE WIFO FUEL DEPOT. In order for the factory to be installed in the tunnels, the fuel depot that had been set up there first had to be removed. The underground passages, it must be remembered, had been dug and set up with this in mind. In particular, the shape of the halls was circular in order to house the enormous cylindrical tanks. The latter thus had to be emptied and taken apart, which was a long job, no doubt carried out essentially by the Wifos prior to their arrest. Sermot and Dunouau mention this dismantling work.20 It seems that the fuel was transferred to Bohemia-Moravia.21
There were also stockpiles of gasoline tanks, and Mialet relates their being moved and loaded onto railway cars in insane conditions, under the supervision of a perfectly hysterical German civilian. It was barrels of this kind, cut in two, that served as latrines. Bornemann22 and Neufeld23 also refer to the existence of a stockpile of poison gas; but Neander, after further investigation, does not believe this to be the case.24
Benès, Demuyter, Dutillieux, and Martin refer to all manner of material and objects, in particular copper and chemical products.25 The (Russian) prisoners who drank methyl alcohol died in awful conditions. But there were also cases of tinned goods and even bottles of port wine. Dutillieux notes: “I remember having seen several fellow prisoners, French and Russian, in an inebriated state after having discovered the cases of port!”26 There was thus a full range of the WIFO’s acquisitions, particularly from France, through the black market operations described above.
THE COMPLETION OF TUNNEL A. The task of boring tunnel A through to its southern end was, under the conditions in which it was carried out, one of the most murderous work sites of this whole period. The teams followed one upon the other in twelve-hour shifts, and the “miners” would then sleep, without washing, in the nearby dormitories, full of dust and noise. It was here that Bron-chart’s friends—who had come with him from Sachsenhausen—were transferred. At the time of the Liberation, in Bergen-Belsen, he met again with only one of them, a miner from Sallaumines, near Lens.27
Bronchart testifies to what he saw: “In spite of the risk involved given the chaos, I managed to visit my friends the miners on their work site. My intention was to get back in touch with them, given that for the time being I was alone, mostly to find out if their work was less inhuman. What I saw left me horrified! First off, as I approached the sector, I encountered a layer of dust, which had invaded the tunnel, a half-light due to a defective lighting system, made worse still by this dust; a dreadful din, the explosion of charges, the noisy crash of jackhammers, drills, the grinding of pails and spades; carriages rolling along makeshift, unpinned rails, and a twisted track that could, at any moment, cause a derailing, which gave the Kapos and the Vorarbeiter the pretext, as if they needed one, to hit the men who were exhausting themselves to ‘get it back on track,’ but who were doing so without any suitable means, because they were not given the opportunity.”
He adds: “The carriages were unloaded down below the railway cars, which, in turn, were loaded. Whereas, turning the system the other way round, the carriages could have been unloaded straight into these cars, sparing the men unimaginable pain, as they worked right up against one another, hindering one another, fighting to dig and shovel on the rough ground, white as shrouds from the dust that entirely covered them, grunting from the effort, and the never-ending blows, the massacres.”28
Paul Butet gives his own personal account in identical terms:29 “I was assigned to a Kommando of miners. [. . .] I spent twelve hours a day in the ‘stones,’ as we said amongst ourselves. [. . .] The civilian Meister who directed the work had the holes packed with explosives; a blast of the horn was followed by the explosion, and then right away, in the dust and smoke, with the others, I had to pick up the stones, load them into a carriage on a 24-inch track, then push the carriage further along, where it was hooked onto a work-site locomotive.
“We had to lift enormous stones to load them, and there was no question of going about it two or three at a time. Push the carriages at a run, then run back for another load. If only these stupid carriages had been in good shape, but they were forever derailing, and even in a group it was no easy thing to get a loaded carriage back onto its track. [. . .] We managed however, with the help of the Kapo, who would reach out and smack all our taut backs, shouting himself hoarse about what bastards, saboteurs, or even ‘Scheisse Stück’ (pieces of shit) we were. [. . .] The dust from the rock, the smoke from the explosives all went into our lungs, of course, but also stuck to our skin. After two weeks, we had become gray, swarthy, the color of the rock.”
The rubble was transported further along in the tunnel. After the large cylindrical reservoirs were dismantled, it was used to fill in the lower part of the circular-section halls: Halls 25–28, 30–32, 34–37, 39, and 42. Conversely, one hall had to be dug deeper still in order to put the rockets into a vertical position. The concrete-pouring Kommandos, such as the Sievers Kommando, were particularly feared.30 They dealt with the concrete work on the ground but also on the arches at certain places in the southern part of the tunnel, in those places where the layer of anhydrite was cut with fissures that allowed water to leak in—the effects of which were felt by the first prisoners to arrive. At the level of Hall 42, a sinkhole (like those frequently found on karstic plateaus, because of the transformation of the anhydrite into gypsum that had been dissolved) was discovered. Special retaining work had to be carried out.31
“EARTHWORK” FOR THE OUTSIDE KOMMANDOS. For months, Kommandos left the tunnels every day for “earthwork” outside. The survivors have only a vague and indistinct memory of it. They did Strassenbau, road building, and laid ties and rails so that the factory could finally be connected to the outside world from the south and the first rockets be shipped to Blizna.
They all remember the cold and above all the mud, recalled by Benès: “In the soft and sticky earth in the temporary roll-call area, the autumn rains formed a pond between twelve and twenty inches deep. On the unfinished roads, it was worse still. When a truck passed by a column of prisoners, they were all sprayed from head to foot with a deluge of mud. Even good socks wouldn’t have been enough, because the mud came in over the top. This was the state in which people returned to the Block [of the tunnel] to sleep for two or three hours. Most climbed onto their bunks still in their socks, without getting undressed or even taking their shoes off. The straw mattresses turned into mud pies.”32
The worst Kommando appears to have been the “Kabelsir” Kommando, according to the testimony of Auchabie and Alabert, who describe it in few words: “The Kabelsir Kommando, working for the AEG firm, was put in charge of laying a large buried electrical cable to provide Dora with electricity from Nordhausen. It existed for a three-month period: roughly December 1943, January and February 1944, and consisted of digging the trench with spades, laying the cable and filling in the trench. [. . .] Made up of 100 Stücke (units) at the outset, reduced to less than twenty by late December, reinforced to 100 once again, only to be reduced to some fifteen by late January, and ten or so by late February, at the completion of the job. The prisoners having made it through were thus very rare, a mere handful, or even a fingerful.”33 Kabelsir is a gallicized version of Kabelzieher, “cable pullers.” As these jobs were carried out far from the camp, there were attempts at escape, which were ferociously punished by the SS guards.
BUILDING THE BARRACKS. A concentration camp’s history generally starts with the construction of the camp itself, preceded by that of the SS barracks. At Dora, given the absolute priority given to getting the tunnel factory up and running, it seems that the SS were left for some time in their tents alone and that their barracks were first set up by prisoners requisitioned to build the quarters after their work hours in the tunnel or in the earthworks. The SS ultimately obtained the use of special Kommandos, who also built the kitchen and various other camp buildings.
A special Kommando was also sent to build the camp intended for German civilians in Ilfeld. Exceptionally, tension does not appear to have been particularly high in this Kommando, referred to in the narratives of Albert Amate34 and Jean Michel.35
SETTING UP THE FACTORY IN THE TUNNEL. Setting up the V2 production factory in the Dora Tunnel does not seem to have been an easy operation. According to Rudolph’s late narrative, it was only on December 31, 1943, that symbolically the first four or five rockets, actually still imperfect, were loaded onto railway cars.36 But Rudolph makes no reference to the difficulties encountered and the means used to overcome them. Based on the witnesses’ identity numbers, it is known when they arrived. On the basis of their narratives, one can assume that dismantling the WIFO and the basic improvements of the tunnels and halls (concrete work, lighting, and so on) took longer than expected.
It is likely that merely deciding where to locate the various facilities was the object of multiple orders and counterorders, because all the competent people were still in Peenemünde. As soon as everything was under the same roof, as Dornberger wished, these kinds of problems were quickly resolved. There is, on this topic, a text by Jiri Benès who, as a Czech, sought to demythologize the celebrated German organization in his memoirs.37
“In tunnel B, where the assembly cradles had to be moveable along the line, the prisoners put in rails. Under the supervision of five engineers, the rails were laid on a thick layer of reinforced concrete. Scarcely had the concrete really hardened in our sector of the tunnel than a sixth engineer arrived and ordered that the rails be taken up and moved two and a half feet to the left. This was very hard work because we had a lot of difficulty breaking a mile-and-a-half-long, six-inch-thick layer of reinforced concrete, with chisels and hammers. What, at the time, we found very funny was that while we in the south sector started to rip up the rails, still other prisoners, in the north sector, continued to methodically lay concrete, carrying their job through to the end.
“Finally, the rails were moved thirty inches to the left. Assembly cradles arrived from Wiener Neustadt, but they turned out to be heavy and impractical. So we waited for other assembly cradles from Swinemünde. These cars arrived, but they were for narrow-gauge track. We therefore set rails corresponding to the narrow gauge between the normal gauge rails. We laid them up as far as the switches, but at that point we didn’t know what to do. So we wrote to engineer number 6. He arrived surrounded by his assistants, took all the measurements once again, then decided to eliminate one of the rails of the narrow gauge, which required re-pouring concrete where it had been.
“The two rails of the narrow gauge were finally torn up in the forward (south) section of tunnel B, where only the normal gauge track was left in place. New assembly cradles were ordered for this 400-yard-long segment of track. In the middle part, only one rail of the narrow-gauge track was used. In the rear (north) part, all the rails were finally torn up to facilitate the installation of the airplane-motor factory, separate from that of the V2s.”
Benès deliberately pushed his narrative to the point of caricature, but this type of situation must have been frequent and provoked a good many delays and arguments. Which points to the issue of interpretation problems, raised by a well-known text of Speer’s. In his office’s “chronicle,” one finds the following account: “On the morning of 10 December [1943], the minister traveled to the Harz Mountains to visit a new factory. Carrying out this monumental task had forced those in charge to go to the limit of their energy resources. Some were so exhausted that they had to be forced to take their vacation to rest their nervous systems.”38
Many years later, in his book about the SS, Speer took up this passage once again to point out that the prisoners’ conditions of existence had so shocked the minister’s entourage that some had to be given leave.39 This interpretation is not convincing at all. The chronicle’s text is perfectly explicit—moreover, it is in no way surprising. It is likely that the rocket experts were subjected to a great deal of tension at the time, their reputations and careers being on the line. The consequences of the situation on the prisoners were necessarily dramatic, because the ongoing race against the clock implied an unbearable rhythm. Many testimonies detail the condition in which the machines and various parts of the framework were carried from the cars, unloaded outside the tunnel, to where they were to be installed in the factory. Dutillieux sums up how the machines were moved: “To manipulate them, our tools were planks, beams, jumpers, rolls of steel, ropes. [. . .] We pushed and pulled.”40 But those involved had neither the experience, nor the strength required. Rogerie,41 Douay,42 Benès43 wore themselves out carrying girders. Like the mine, like the earthworks, setting up the factory equipment gave rise to a very large number of victims.
THE AEG KOMMANDO AND THE KOENIG KOMMANDO. It happened that certain tasks required real or more or less real specialists, who thereby escaped the hardest jobs. The electricians, inside the tunnel, were relatively privileged. Several excerpts from the testimonies of French prisoners show how they ended up being fairly numerous in the AEG Kommando. Bronchart tells how it got started:44 “[The Dutch interpreter] asked me: ‘Are you an electrician?’ When I answered that I was, he said: ‘I am signing you up as an electrician in the AEG Kommando, make sure you show up tomorrow at the Arbeitsdienst.’ A group of six Frenchmen thus came together, including Bronchart, his friend Georges Argoux and Koehren, ‘who spoke decent German and was, moreover, a genuine electrician.’ ” “The AEG was reinforced, and we recommended to all the newly arriving Frenchmen that they declare themselves to be electricians.”
“Our first job in the AEG was to install lighting in the main hall. [. . .] We finished the lighting installations in the two lateral tunnels. In the constructed halls the lighting was then abundant and harsh. The ground was leveled. We began installing the machines on their cradles. We dug the trenches for the high-tension cables.”
Méfret describes his experience: “Arriving in the Dora tunnel on 3 November 1943, I was immediately affected to the AEG service [. . .] with Marcel Berthet, who was a professional, and who taught at the watchmaking school in Besançon. [. . .] Our job was to fix the lines for the light as the boring of the tunnel moved forward. We worked on the main cables of the two tunnels to service the perpendicular halls.”45
Jacob got himself into the group when coming out of the Revier. “I met someone I knew, a ‘20,000’ like myself, who boasted up all the advantages of being an electrician in the AEG. Replying that I had a paper to return from whence I came, he offered to falsify it for the AEG, and introduced me to the Kapo who accepted me.”46 Vagnon also indicates: “I was affected to the Transportkolonne, and then to the AEG Kommando (which allowed me to survive).”47 Bronchart’s influence, even on the Kapo, was thus determinant.
There was also another Kommando of electricians, the Koenig Kommando, whose Kapo was initially a Frenchman, but he lacked authority. Very amateur electricians, such as Georges Soubirous48 and Raymond de Miribel, who were poorly supervised, were unable to stay in the group and the Kapo was replaced. On the contrary, the Vorarbeiter Berthereau, who had come from Peenemünde with his friend Choquet, spent the winter of 1943–44 there, “in less horrible conditions than the others.”49
LÉON BRONCHART. In September 1943, Bronchart was forty-seven years old. He was born in Bapaume, in the Somme region in the north of France. His father, of Belgian origin, was a stonecutter and trade unionist. He himself started working in a glassworks when he was eleven. In 1914 he signed up as a soldier in a mountain brigade and was quickly taken prisoner. He passed through different camps, including Ohrdruf,50 attempting escape several times, unsuccessfully. In November 1917, released as a member of the medical corps, he returned to France through Switzerland. He joined up as a stretcher-bearer in the Foreign Legion and was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille Militaire. He joined the Orléans railway company in 1919, working first of all as a stoker, then as a locomotive engineer out of the Tours depot in 1931. He was active as a socialist and above all as a trade unionist, becoming general secretary of his network’s section of engineers and stokers.
He took part in the war in 1940 as part of the railway corps and was then transferred to Brive. He joined the Resistance and was arrested, after being denounced in January 1943 with a variety of fellow Resistance fighters, including his eldest son. The group was transferred to Compiègne, then to Sachsenhausen. From there, with his son, he went into the Staaken Kommando that built the Falkensee camp, then on to Falkensee. On September 11, 1943, he was brought back to Oranienburg for interrogations, in the wake of further arrests in France. He made it out but was sent to Dora, via Buchenwald, with a group of miners, as mentioned above. He had several advantages. He had spent three years in prisoners’ camps in Germany from 1914 to 1917. He spoke German. He was an experienced manual laborer in different fields. He was a seasoned activist. At Staaken and then at Falkensee he got on with his block leader, a German communist. In Dora he skillfully maneuvered the Kapo and the Meister. Very proud of his military past, he particularly supported the young, particularly those from the officers’ school of Saint-Cyr.
After he retired in 1947, he remained active and in 1969 published his memoirs, with the appropriate title Ouvrier et Soldat (Worker and Soldier).
GROWING NEEDS FOR LABOR. It seems that, as of December 1943, the engineers in charge of V2 production were concerned about training the team that would be needed to assemble the rockets under the orders of the Meister—ordinary German civilians—most of whom were from Peenemünde and supposed to be competent. It was then that, little by little, Kommandos of “specialists” came together; they would remain fairly stable, reinforcements notwithstanding, right up until the final weeks. We shall return to this organization in chapter 9. What must be emphasized is that the members of these Kommandos, generally advantaged in terms of work, were subjected to the common condition of being housed in the tunnel right up until May 1944. Charles Sadron’s delousing narrative is that of one of these so-called specialists.
There were also specialists in outside activities, such as the painter Jacques Vern, who tells the following; “They asked for painters, I raised my hand and was taken. First, we did camouflage work on the stones which came out of the Tunnel, then camouflaged the Tunnel entrance, then the buildings intended for the prisoners.”51