NORDHAUSEN CONCENTRATION CAMP Then and Now

Dora–Mittelbau at Nordhausen epitomises the industrialised brutality of Nazi forced labour. Carved into the Kohnstein in the Harz mountains, the Mittelwerk’s underground complex—over 20 kilometres of galleries—served as the principal production site for the V-1 flying bomb, the V-2 rocket and jet engines for the Me 262 and Ar 234. Established in August 1943, the facility became the hub of a network of subsidiary camps that housed some 60,000 prisoners between 1943 and 1945; approximately 20,000 perished under brutal conditions, many dying while excavating and extending the tunnels with rudimentary tools and scant sustenance.
The weapons produced there proved strategically ineffectual and came at appalling human cost: more lives were lost in their manufacture than were killed by their deployment. In the war’s closing weeks, surviving inmates were forced on evacuation marches, culminating in one of the conflict’s most heinous crimes. On 13 April 1945, near Gardelegen, SS guards—assisted by local units and Hitlerjugend—locked over a thousand prisoners in a barn, set it ablaze and massacred those who attempted to escape; 1,016 men died.
Karel Margry’s study reconstructs the history of Nordhausen and the Gardelegen atrocity in meticulous detail, illustrated with unique then-and-now photographic comparisons. The volume reproduces two After the Battle features: Issue 101 (“Nordhausen,” 18,165 words, 118 photographs) and Issue 111 (“The Gardelegen Massacre,” 16,189 words, 78 photographs), a pair of investigations noted for their accuracy and use by the Nordhausen Camp Memorial.

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