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Since 1964, the area above the former KZ (Konzentrationslager— concentration camp) Mittelbau-Dora has been the site of a memorial, and in 1974 a museum was built on the grounds. The barracks, guard towers and barbed wire are gone — only broken concrete foundations, cracked and rutted streets, and the crematorium on the hill that rises above the camp are grim reminders of what happened here. But below the surface, inside the mountain, lies a moment trapped in time. To access that stark, unmitigated evidence of evil and suffering, a reunified Germany completed a new 500-foot tu
It’s December, and outside, the temperature is well below freezing, with snowflakes dancing in the wind. Inside the mountain, the temperature hovers just above freezing. Our breath fogs as we haul our dive equipment deep into the heart of the mountain. We will be among the first to slip beneath the water and explore the flooded depths of Mittelbau-Dora. Our goal is to venture into some of its forgotten rooms and bring back film footage to share with the world.
Our Sea Hunters team is now a close-knit band of brothers in the field, underwater, underground, on the decks of ships and in the studio. Producer and team leader John Davis, chief diver Mike Fletcher, his son Warren, our second underwater cameraman, Marc Pike and soundman John Rosborough make up the core team. Guided by our colleagues Dr. Willi Kramer, Torsten Hess (curator of KZ Mittelbau-Dora) and a mine safety engineer, we find ourselves in a unique situation, diving into the depths of a flooded underground concentration camp to see what untouched evidence remains of Nazi crimes against humanity. Dr. Kramer, who is with Germany’s Department of Monuments and Culture, is the chief underwater archeologist for Northern Germany and the government’s only underwater archeologist to work with Germany’s hydrographic office and the military. That assignment has included diving to explore sunken warships and U-boats, downed aircraft and subterranean chambers. Willi was the first to dive here, and now he leads us into the darkness.
I turn to John Davis and say, “This looks like one of the rings of hell.” He replies, “Dante couldn’t have imagined this.” He’s right. The dark, the cold, the silence and the overwhelming sense of the horrors that took place here engulf us as we travel deeper into the tu
The achievement of the age-old dream of human flight in the early twentieth century spawned a new dream of flight into space. Scientists in various countries experimented to perfect rocket designs through the 1920s and ’30s, with varying levels of success. In 1932, the new Nazi government set up a rocket program. Among the scientists who joined that program was Wernher von Braun, who, with full funding and Wermacht (Army) support, developed a series of rockets: the A1, A2 and A3. The Germans built and tested these first rockets at an artillery range outside Berlin. By 1935, they needed a new facility.
The island of Usedom, on the Baltic coast at the mouth of the Peene River, proved to be the ideal locale. Known as Peenemünde, this new test center, developed by both the Wermacht and the Luftwaffe (Air Force), opened in May 1937. There, in isolation, von Braun and his team began the design and testing of a new rocket, the A4. That weapon, designed to be a long-distance combat rocket, would later become notorious as the feared V-2. But the testing of the A4 was plagued by problems, because its twenty thousand individual parts required meticulous assembly. As the Germans worked to improve the range and targeting of the A4, they also took steps to simplify its construction on an assembly line.
The first successful launch of an A4 rocket came only after Germany lost the Battle of Britain and at Hitler’s urging, as he wanted results after years of costly development and tests. On October 3, 1942, an A4 roared off the pad. The space age had begun, but with a deadly purpose. Hitler demanded that five thousand rockets be built for a mass attack on London. At the same time, the rocket scientists had designed a smaller but also deadly weapon, the Fi 103, later designated the V-1, to attack Britain. These small winged rockets were the world’s first cruise missiles.
The “V” designation came from Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who called the rockets Vergeltungwaffe (vengeance weapons). The V-2, a single-stage rocket, was 46 feet long, weighed 14 tons, carried a one-ton payload (two-thirds of which was the explosive charge) and traveled at a maximum velocity of 3,600 miles per hour, with a range of 200 miles. Facilities for constructing the rockets were built at Peenemünde, using prisoners from concentration camps as workers. The first assembly lines to build V-1 rockets started up in July 1943, and in early August, a new line was added to build V-2s. First fired at Paris in early September 1944, V-2s were also fired at London and Antwerp. In all, out of 4,600 V-2s built, the Nazis fired about 3,200 in anger, most of them, despite popular belief, not at London but at Antwerp. The V-1 and V-2 rocket barrage against the Allies killed about five thousand people. Ironically, four times as many — nearly twenty thousand — died in slave labor camps constructing the rocket facilities and making the weapons themselves.
Located in the middle of Germany near the town of Nordhausen, about 35 miles from the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp, the Dora labor camp (later Mittelbau-Dora) became the primary center for the manufacture of V-1 and V-2 rockets after Allied bombing raids struck Peenemünde in August 1943. The bombers did not cause extensive damage, but Peenemünde’s work was not a secret and it was vulnerable to further attack. Production and assembly of the rockets was taken over by the dreaded SS, which decided to relocate rocket production to underground factories built and ma
While scientific research and testing continued under von Braun at Peenemünde, the underground camp and complex were being hacked out of rock to serve as the primary production facilities for both the V-1 and V-2 rockets. From late August 1943 through to the end of the year, prisoners from Buchenwald lived in the tu
The Kapos [prisoner bosses] and SS drive us on at an infernal speed, shouting and raining blows down on us, threatening us with execution, the demons! The noise bores into the brain and shears the nerves. The demented rhythm lasts for fifteen hours. Arriving at the dormitory [in the tu