Qualla: Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp

Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp: Introduction

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On 28 August 1943, one hundred and seven prisoners were unloaded at the foot of the Kohnstein, a gypsum hill outside Nordhausen in Thuringia. They had come from Buchenwald, about sixty-five kilometres to the south, and they had been sent to dig. There were no barracks waiting, no huts, no washhouse. For the next eight months the prisoners of Dora lived inside the tunnels they were cutting, in side galleries fitted with bunks stacked four high, breathing the dust of their own blasting. Many of them never saw daylight again.

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp: Ten Days After Peenemünde

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vincent van Zeijst, CC BY-SA 3.0. The reason for their arrival lay on the Baltic coast. On 18 August 1943, RAF Bomber Command struck the army research centre at Peenemünde in Operation Hydra and wrecked the plant where the A4 ballistic rocket - soon renamed the V-2, from Vergeltung, retribution - was being readie...

Image: Vincent van Zeijst | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp: Inside the Mountain

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thank you to indicate this credit line next to the image in case of reuse: Credit: Polymagou - CC BY-SA I'd appreciate if you could send a message on my user talk page if you use this picture out of the Wikimedia project scope ., CC BY-SA 4.0. The population climbed fast: more than 3,000 by late September 1943, 6,800 by late October, over 10,500 by Christmas. Shifts ran fourteen hours. There was no adequate food, no proper sanitation, no clean water, no relief from the cold and the noise and the ammonia stink of the sl...

Image: Thank you to indicate this credit line next to the image in case of reuse: Credit: Polymagou - CC BY-SA I'd appreciate if you could send a message on my user talk page if you use this picture out of the Wikimedia project scope . | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp: The Arithmetic of the Rocket

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scanned by Radzuweit, Public domain. Around 60,000 prisoners passed through the Mittelbau camps between August 1943 and March 1945. The SS files recorded roughly 12,000 dead, and an unknown number of unregistered prisoners died or were murdered on top of that; historians place the true figure far higher, at roughly ...

Image: Scanned by Radzuweit | Public domain

Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp: April 1945

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JesterWr, CC BY-SA 3.0 de. The end came violently for everyone in the valley. On 3 and 4 April 1945, RAF Lancasters and Mosquitos attacked Nordhausen in two waves and destroyed around three-quarters of the town, hitting the medieval centre hardest; of 40,000 inhabitants, roughly 8,800 died and 20,000 lost ...

Image: JesterWr | CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp: Two Kinds of Reckoning

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Siarhei Besarab, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Dora Trial opened at Dachau on 7 August 1947 against nineteen defendants; fifteen SS men and Kapos were convicted, one of them executed, and four were acquitted. Georg Rickhey, who had run the Mittelwerk, was acquitted. The engineers took a different road. Arthur Rudolph, the...

Image: Siarhei Besarab | CC BY-SA 4.0