The Muhldorfer Bow

In the Bavarian landscape, not far from the Austrian border, stands somewhere in the middle of nowhere an enormous bow made of concrete, silent reminder of what would have become a subterranean factory. During the building of this, a lot of Dachau prisoners lost their lives.

An important trophy in the German war machine was the Messerschmidt 262, a jet, unique for that time. The allies were well aware of this and they bombed the 27 large German aircraft factories incessantly. That is why the Germans sought refuge in stone quarries and underground tunnels, where three hundred small workshops were established. But soon, the fact that these places of work were far away from each other became a tremendous handicap. That is why the decision was made to build a number of large underground factories, three in Landsberg and one by Muhldorf on the Inn river. The plan was that by the end of 1942, when everything was ready, nine hundred of Hitler's “Wunderwaffe” (Wonderweapons) would roll off the assembly line each month. The fuselage was to be built in Landsberg, the motors and other accessories in Muhldorf. The organization of this project was in the hands of the Organisation Todt (OT) (Organization Death), which employed a large number of German companies towards this goal.

It was clear that an enormous amount of labor would be necessary for a project of this magnitude, over four thousand people worked on the construction site alone. The OT supplied the engineers, the professionals and the administration. Most of the labor, however, was made up of 10,000 forced laborers, prisoners of war and prisoners of concentration camp Dachau.

The prisoners, both men and women, were exposed to untold dehumanizing hardships at Landsberg, Kaufering and Muhldorf. People who escaped the gas chambers were “destroyed through labor” here.

At first they slept in tents, on some hay. In the fall holes were dug in the ground, which were covered with a roof of sod. Sanitary facilities were limited to a number of trenches and there were weeks when there was not a drop of water available to the prisoners. Under those circumstances, a typhus epidemic is unavoidable.

Mistreatment by the SS, the Kapo's and the OT personnel were a daily occurrence. The number of “factory accidents” was extremely high. The average life expectancy of these prisoners was not higher than eighty days. In the eight months the commando Muhldorf existed, more than four thousand people lost their lives.

The only thing that remains in Muhldorf of all these efforts in one enormous bow made of concrete somewhere in an odd sort of no-mans-land. It remained intact after the Americans blew up the entire construction site in 1945.

Next