Mittelwerk

Eh.

When Mittelwerk was captured, it was in full production mode, and US troops seized enough parts and hardware to build over 100 missiles.

Over in the States, the military started a campaign of test launches using the V2s as what we call sounding rockets.

Now, if you don't know what a sounding rocket is, a sounding rocket is designed to be small, cheap-

In August 1943, the Allied forces bombed Peenemunde, causing disruption and the loss of several months of development.

The main production of V2s was moved to the underground Mittelwerk factory near Nordhausen.

War shortages also had an effect.

Testing had begun in March 1942, but unexplained in-flight disintegrations resulted in an 80% failure rate.

Well, let's rebuild our rocket facility, but this time around let's do it in an underground hellscape staffed by starving slave laborers." And that's what they did.

Production of the A-4/V-2 moved to an underground facility called Mittelwerk, which was part of the Dora concentration camp.

And Wernher was not part of the decision-making process there.

It was not his idea to do this.

Anyway, the surrender went great and some photographers showed up and they did a little photo shoot and everybody looked pretty thrilled.

But As Wernher was voguing all over the place, something important was happening behind the scenes.

The Americans had stumbled onto Mittelwerk, that underground concentration camp where 20,000 people were murdered during the production of his rockets, and the Americans were, like, stepping over bodies and crying and stuff.

And leadership was like, "Pick up as many pieces of the rockets as you can.

Mittelbau-Dore served as a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp until it became independent in 1944.

The slave laborers from Mittelbau Dora were used not only to produce V-weapons, such as the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rockets, which were aimed primarily at London, but also to extend the nearby tunnels in Konstein, which is a hill that served as a natural protection against the Allied bombing for the underground factory named Mittelwerk, in which the V-weapons were produced.

The so-called weapons of retaliation, as the Germans called them, were constructed and stored in the underground facilities and bomb-proof shafts.

The inmates of Mittelbau Dora were treated in a brutal and inhumane manner, working 14-hour days and being denied access to basic hygiene, beds and adequate rations.

But building the thing killed far more.

An estimated 20,000 prisoners, 20,000 prisoners died producing the B-2 in that underground complex, which was called Mittelwerk, fed by a camp called Mittelbau Dora that existed for the single purpose of supplying it with bodies.

And Wernher von Braun was not in an office somewhere insulated from that.

He was there.