Mittelwerk GmbH

Mittelwerk
Nordhausen, Thuringia
US soldier and captured Mittelwerk V-2 rocket motor
Type	Subterranean bunker
Site information
Open to the public	Museum in the southern part of Tunnel A
Site history
Built	Completed 1943
Built by	Mittelwerk GmbH
In use	1943-1945

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 flying bombs, and other weapons.

On the night of 17/18 August 1943, RAF bombers carried out Operation Hydra against the Peenemünde Army Research Center where V-2 development and production was being carried out.

On 19 October 1943, the German limited company was issued War Contract No. 0011-5565/43 by General Emil Leeb, head of the Army Weapons Office, for 12,000 A-4 missiles at 40,000 Reichsmarks each.

Mittelwerk GmbH also headed sites for V-2 rocket development and testing at Schlier (Project Zement) and Lehesten. Beginning in May 1944, Georg Rickhey was the Mittelwerk general manager, Albin Sawatzki was the Mittelwerk technical director over both Arthur Rudolph's Technical Division (with deputy Karl Seidenstuecker) and Hans Lindenberg's 50 engineers of the quality control group located at Ilfeld. Other Mittelwerk/Ilfield engineers included Magnus von Braun in turbopump production, Guenther Haukohl who supervised V-2 production after helping design the assembly line, Eric Ball (assembly line), Hans Fridrich, Hans Palaoro and Rudolph Schlidt. The facility had a communications staff under Captain Dr Kühle, an Administrative Division run by Börner under Mittelwerk board member Otto Karl Bersch, and a Prisoner Labor Supply office (Brozsat). Hannelore Bannasch was Sawatzki's secretary.

In July 1944, Hans Kammler ordered the North Works (Nordwerke) to use cross-tunnels 1-20 for a Junkers jet and piston engine factory, leaving cross-tunnels 21-46 for Mittelwerk GmbH. During February–April 1945, the Nordhausen plant built Taifun anti-aircraft missiles and Heinkel He 162 jet fighters and put into operation a liquid oxygen plant. The plant was the Eber project and used equipment evacuated from the Watten bunker and elsewhere to build Heylandt liquid oxygen generators; the 15 generators were nearly complete when the site was captured. The Mittelwerk also contained equipment for producing jet fuel, and in an emergency 1944 decentralization program (named Geilenbergprogramm after Edmund Geilenberg) started the "Cuckoo" project, an underground oil plant to be "carved out of the " North of the Mittelwerk.