DACHAU-KZ - SATELLITE CAMPS - PART 16 Alphabetical Order M DACHAU-KZ - SATELLITE CAMPS - PART 16 Dachau KZ Satellite Camps Alphabetical Order M Part 16

                                                   

                                                    

                                                                      

                              

 MUNICH- ALLACH - BMW

As early as 1936, the Reich Ministry of Aviation demanded that the BMW Group of companies set up a second plant for the  assembly and repair of aircraft engines in addition to the production facilities in Munich-Mosach, the reason being, to decentralize the aircraft engine production in the event of a war. The 'Schattenwerk'(Shadow Factory) for BMW should be erected from 1936 to 1939 in Munich-Allach, and here the large-series production of the 80I engine should commence. The factory was located in the Dachauer Strasse. The construction project, however, was delayed several times, so that the production in Allach only began in May 1942. Monthly, 100 BMW engines should be produced here. In March 1943 the Munich factory facilities were badly damaged during an air attack and the production of the 80I engine was completely moved to Allach. In 1944, the Allach factory achieved a maximum production rate of 2,000 engines per month, an enormous output quota.
 
 

 

                               

                                  BMW 801D on display at he War Museum Duxford - UK

   In 1939/1940, the workforce in Allach consisted of about 1,000 employees. At the end of 1941, the first civilian forced laborers were deployed. In the following years, the Bayrische Motorenwerke (BMW) became the most important private employer in Munich with the highest number of civilian forced laborers. By the end of the war, the total workforce in Munich rose to over 17,000. The highest proportion of these were foreign forced laborers, KZ-prisoners and prisoners of war. All around the Allach Factory, barrack tyoe towns (Barackenstädte) had been created for thousands of workers. Also in other places were Dachauer KZ-prisoners at different workplaces engaged for BMW. These inmates came from far flung places including the sub-camps of Blaichach, Kaufbeuren, Stephanskirchen and Trostberg, as well as a working commando in the Süddeutsche Rohrmattenfabrik (Bamboo-Mat-Factory) in Dachau's Rosswachenstrasse, where a part of BMW production from Allach was outsourced 
 
‘Foreign workers at BMW in Allach’
c. 1943
All the foreigners in aircraft engine production had to be visibly identifiable as such. The Soviet prisoners of war had the “SU” symbol on their jackets. Concentration camp inmates could be recognized by their striped uniforms. These photographs were most likely propaganda photos. Munich-Allach, ca. 1943. Source: BMW Group Archiv.
        

'

  In order to protect the plant Allach from allied air raids, the Reichsluftfartministerium (Reich's-Air-Ministeriun) approved on 7 September 1943 the construction of a bunker in Allach. Under the construction supervision of the organization Todt began the shift of the underground production of the Allacher manufacture and thus the employment of KZ-prisoners at the bunker construction site.

The first prisoners were already deployed in Allach in 1942, and they returned to the Stammlager Dachau in the evening. In March 1943, the prisoners had to erect the sub-camp in the immediate vicinity of the plant. In part, these prisoners were accommodated in existing horse stables. The campground which comprised of a total of 30 buildings was surrounded by an electrically charged fence and watchtowers. There was a utility-building with kitchen and laundry facilities, an administration building, accommodation barracks and an assembly ground. In addition, SS accommodation and a camp chancery were built. In the next two years, one of the largest sub-camp complexes of the KZ-Dachau was built, which apart from the sub-camp Allach BMW,  the camps Karlsfeld OT and Rotschweigen were subordinated to Dachau.



The sub-camp BMW Allach was a pure men's camp. It was initially planned for 3,000 to 4,000 prisoners. In July 1944 several barracks were separated and the sub-camp Karlsfeld OT was set up for Jewish prisoners. On 29 November 1944 there were 4,743 prisoners in Allach. However, the demand for labor at BMW rose further, and the occupancy up to February 1945 had increased to about 10,000 prisoners. On 26 April 1945 8,970 prisoners were still registered, including Russians, French, Poles, Yugoslavs, Italians and Germans. At the same time, the sub-camp complex Allach changed in April 1945 to a transit camp for evacuated detainees from other Dachauer sub-camps such as Burgau and Türkheim or from the more northern concentration camps, which could not take up the then overcrowded Stammlager Dachau. At times up to 22,000 prisoners were in the sub-camp Allach BMW.


                           
 

Inmates waving a home-made American flag greet U.S. Seventh Army troops upon their arrival at the Allach concentration camp on April 30, 1945. Photo credit: National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

The first KZ-prisoners were mainly trained with the view to be proficient in the construction of the sub-camp and the skills required in the factory as metal cutters, turners and locksmiths. About half of the detainees worked in the factory, the rest were working on the construction sites for the plant and from September 1943 on the bunker projects. One of the heavy assignments was named after the executing construction company 'Commando Dylerhoff'. Here, the prisoners were driven to work by beatings, because [in some cases,sic] they fell into the mortar containers which was thereby  spilled [probably deliberately,sic]. There was also the fact that the breaking of a masonry drill on the construction site was punished as a sabotage with the threat of the death penalty. For the production, the prisoners worked in two 11.5 hours shifts and were supervised by civilian masters (Meister, a person with a degree in his field of expertise). Many of the civilians were humanly inclined towards the prisoners; others did not hesitate to make reports when they produced too many reject parts or virtual scrap material, this resulted, that the prisoners were subjected to severe penalties for such offenses at the workplace and later on in the camp.
[There were several "executions" due to sabotage, escape attempts or theft of food. The Central Office of the Landesjustizverwaltungen lists 50 murders.sic]
 





The arrival and the living conditions In the camp Allach-BMW the former prisoner Karl A. Gross described: 'We marched through the gates  9'hats off!') What we saw in front of us was a desolate impression To see the huts, which, on closer inspection, turned out to be horse stables, without windows, but with gaps like openings underneath the roof, this was shuddering to us, Dachau was a concentration camp, a clean city against this collection of stables' .(This part of the sub-camp had initially 22 wooden barracks, which had been converted from former horse stables. On average, 3,500 to 5,000 prisoners were in the camp. The barracks were not equipped with locks, the prisoners were sleeping on straw bags as mattresses in three-tier  beds. I lived in one of these barracks after the war, while employed by the US Army and can not criticize the living condition nor the hygienic facilities of this camp. HKS,sic.) 

The deputy kitchen Kapo Erich Kunter described the situation in the prisoner's kitchen in 1947. A large part of the food had already been taken by members of the SS. The food conditions in the sub-camp Allach deteriorated above all towards the end of the war.                                                                                                  
                      Last existing buildings of th camp Allach, Granatstraße 8 and 10.


Camp commander of the sub-camp cpmlexes Allach and at the same time camp leader of the camp Allach-BMW was SS Obersturmführer Josef Jarolin, his deputy SS-Hauptscharführer Sebastian Eberl. A surviving prisoner estimated the overall strength of the SS men in Allach to be on an average of 800. Among them were SS men from Hungary, Romania and Croatia. Above all, camp leader Jarolin was in the camp the most feared because of his cruelty. In Allach, for example, there were beatings as punishment, severe arrest periods and during wintry conditions, in which the prisoners were poured over with water. More than 40 prisoners were hanged. The Crematoria-Capo of the KZ-Dachau Emil Nahl reminded us that during the Christmas season of 1943 he was commissioned to prepare six Russian prisoners at Allach to hang. In the summer of 1943 further prisoners were hanged in Allach; they had been picked up in an escape attempt. In other cases alleged sabotage was the reason for an execution by the rope.

View YouTube: Landsberg's hangings, a total of 288 were hanged by American Occupation Forces, sic.


A number of Functionary Prisoners from camp Allach-BMW are well-known by name, such as the assistant clerk at Stefan Lason, the Revier Kapo (Hospital) Michael Rauch. Kapo of the clothing supp;y room and later block leader of B 3 Gustav Adolf Carl. The Red Spain fighter , Ferdinand Westerbarkey, who had been a warehouse clerk and the German Karl Wagner who was since April 1943 Camp Elder. When Wagner refused to beat a Soviet prisoner on the orders of the commandant Jarolins in July, he was dismissed and transferred after five days to the bunker at the  arrest facilities in Dachau. Incarcerated  for six weeks in the bunker, he was released after the customary beatings were carried out. The French doctor, Henri Laffitte, was especially popular among the prisoners.
Information as to the total number of deaths from the sub-camp Allach-BMW are still very inaccurate to this day. This resulted not least from the fact that the dead were transferred to Dachau and included in the death statistics there. This makes the numbers for the sub-camp distorted and much too low. In 1947/48, corpses were exhumed on the site of the former camp.

On 26 April 1945, 9,000 prisoners left the Stammlager Dachau. The evacuation prisoners marched also through the sub-camp Allach. On the same day all German and Russian prisoners from Allach were put on the same march. They followed the route along the Würm River via Pasing and Gauting to Leutstetten. On the 27th of April, they came upon a marching column from the KZ-Dachau. Until the liberation in Waakirchen on 1 May 1945, the prisoners marched through Starnberg, Wollfahrthausen and towards Bad Tölz.
 In  camp Allach, there were still about 10,000 prisoners left, who were liberated by American troops on the 30th of April 1945.
After the liberation, survivors founded the Comité de Liberatiuon d'Francais d 'Allach, which essentially published publications about this camp.
 
                
 

According to former prisoners, Jarolin had often struck prisoners in the administration building of the Dachau concentration camp to unconsciousness. According to the prisoners, he was also present on July 1, 1942, when twelve prisoners were punished while tied to stakes. Jarolin had ordered the hanging of the prisoners as their shoes touched the ground(Which in fact is a strangulation method of hanging,sic) In a handwritten affidavit, which had arisen before the beginning of the process, Jarolin stated that between May and December 1941 150 prisoners had been imprisoned and beaten with an ox-whip. Between July and September he had been involved in the execution of about 700 Soviet prisoners of war; He had given commands to the execution commando and shot prisoners in 30 to 40 cases. In April 1942, Jarolin was reportedly involved in the selection of prisoners, at which the concentration camp doctor Sigmund Rascher conducted human experiments in Dachau. After that, he had also been present at Rascher's experiments. Jarolin also stated that he had been present in Dachau from December 1942, and also after his transfered to Allach, oversaw there the execution of the beating and the hanging.

 Jarolin was condemned on 13 December 1945 as well as 35 other defendants during the Dachau main process by an American military court because of war crimes sentenced to death by the rope. In the case of jury trials, jailing and kicking of detainees, the killing of three detainees were considered as individual crimes by Jarolin.  The verdict was confirmed by the Commander-in-Chief of the American Armed Forces in Europe on April 5, 1946, who had a corresponding recommendation by a "Review Board" of the army.  Jarolin was hanged on May 28, 1946, in Landsberg's War Crimes Camp.

In 1976, the prosecutor's office in Munich tried his deputy Sebatian Eberl for killing offenses in the Allach-BMW camp. The procedure was discontinued in 1980 due to the poor state of health of Sebastian Eberl.
Emil Mahl, who was involved in Allach's hangs, was condemned to death in the first Dachauer trial. After several court document checks, he was pardoned to ten years of imprisonment.

 After the war, the wooden barracks of the camp Allach-BMW were demolished except for one. In other parts of the camp, refugees and prisoners of war were living. Between 1950 and 1952 the settlement of Ludwigsfeld was built there for Displaced Persons. On 2 May 1997, a memorial plaque dedicated to the victims of the sub-camps Allach and Karlsfeld was erected at the building of the former cafeteria in the Granatstrasse on Initiative of the Cpmite International de Dachau. Together with the MTU Group, the successor company of the Allach plant, and the BMW Group started a few years ago to research the role they played under the rule of National Socialism. Both companies allow historians to access their archives.

Literatur
Amicale des Anciens de Dachau. Allach Kommando de Dachau, Paris 1982 Christian Taege, Allach-Ein Außenlager ders Konzentrationslagers Dachau, in: Landeshauptstadt München (Hersg.), Verdunkeltes Nünchen. Geschichtswettbewerb1985/86, München 1987, S.98-107
.Zdenek Zofka, Allach-Slaven für BMW. Zur Geschichte eines Außenlagers des KZ Dachau,in: achauer Hefte 2 (1986) S.68-78

Authors German Text: Albert Knoll/Sabine Schalm

                                             
                                               BMW headquarters in Munich
 APPENDIX
 luxury automobile maker BMW is celebrating its centennial. The small engine manufacturer rose to a global player with the Nazi era playing a key role in the company's development.
German luxury automobile maker BMW is celebrating its centennial. The small engine manufacturer rose to a global player with the Nazi era playing a key role in the company's development.

BMW - three letters that are instantly recognizable anywhere in the world.The BMW Group is one of the world's most successful automobile manufacturers, a leader among global premium brands. No doubt, the firm founded on March 7, 1916 is a huge success story. For that matter, it's a typical German success story, that is a mix of gloomy chapters and great milestones.

   A lot can be learned about BMW when looking at the annual company books, which - among other accomplishments - list the first commercially successful motorcycle, the BMW R 32, but also mention the fact that beginning in December 1939, prisoners of war, detainees, forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners were put to work making airplane engines at various production sites.Today, BMW no longer keeps under wraps the fact that the firm resorted to forced labor during the Nazi era. "Every tour through our museum and the production site in Munich's Allach district mentions that," says BWM spokesman Stefan Behr. But using forced labor wasn't limited to BMW, he adds: "It was a social phenomenon found all over the entire country." Supplying forced labor
Quite a few German companies in fact used forced labor during the Nazi era, including the country's automobile manufacturers: rival Daimler employed about 40,000 forced laborers, Volkswagen had about 12,000, and at BMW, two out of three of the firm's 56,000 employees were forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners at the time. As the war dragged on, they were "increasingly discriminated against and systematically exploited," according to a 2008 doctoral thesis in the company's archives
   CultureGerman luxury automobile maker BMW is celebrating its centennial. The small engine manufacturer rose to a global player with the Nazi era playing a key role in the company's development.

                                                 

BMW - three letters that are instantly recognizable anywhere in the world.The BMW Group is one of the world's most successful automobile manufacturers, a leader among global premium brands. No doubt, the firm founded on March 7, 1916 is a huge success story. For that matter, it's a typical German success story, that is a mix of gloomy chapters and great milestones.

   A lot can be learned about BMW when looking at the annual company books, which - among other accomplishments - list the first commercially successful motorcycle, the BMW R 32, but also mention the fact that beginning in December 1939, prisoners of war, detainees, forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners were put to work making airplane engines at various production sites.Today, BMW no longer keeps under wraps the fact that the firm resorted to forced labor during the Nazi era. "Every tour through our museum and the production site in Munich's Allach district mentions that," says BWM spokesman Stefan Behr. But using forced labor wasn't limited to BMW, he adds: "It was a social phenomenon found all over the entire country."

Supplying forced labor
Quite a few German companies in fact used forced labor during the Nazi era, including the country's automobile manufacturers: rival Daimler employed about 40,000 forced laborers, Volkswagen had about 12,000, and at BMW, two out of three of the firm's 56,000 employees were forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners at the time. As the war dragged on, they were "increasingly discriminated against and systematically exploited," according to a 2008 doctoral thesis in the company's archives.Other industries also massively relied on forced labor: Krupp, Bosch, Siemens and the IG Farben chemical industry conglomerate - known today as BASF, Bayer and Hoechst. IG Farben - the firm that produced the Zyklon B cyanide gas that killed millions of Jews at the death camps - [still the German version of concentration camps was: 'Arbeitslager und Vernichtungslager (Working CAmps and Extermination Camps), Forced Labour is a misnomer and were recruited in occopied countries by the German Labor Exchange and voluntary choose to work in Germany sic] actually even ran a factory within the Auschwitz concentration and death camp complex.

 Doing business with the Nazis
Even today, many firms argue that, with their skilled workers sent off to war, they were required to fulfill their production quotas using whatever labor they could find. Businesses were told to resort to using forced labor, Behr says.The Nazi regime banned the production of automobiles and severely limited the production of motorcycles, BMW spokesman Behr says. This is not quite correct: 
The BMW R75 is a World War II-era motorcycle and sidecar combination was produced for the German Armed Foorces,In the 1930s BMW were producing a number of popular and highly effective motorcycles. In 1938 development of the R75 actually started in response to a request from the German Army. sic].
.Instead, BMW was forced to produce great numbers of airplane engines - a branch the company had actually moved away from - while relying on concentration camp prisoners. While this is no justification, Behr says that today, "it's difficult to understand the extent of entrepreneurial liberties back then based on nothing but a few documents." However, he concedes, BMW also made money in the deal.
   German historian Lutz Budrass says that many feel the IG Farben factory at Auschwitz-Monowitz was the absolute low point in industrial developments during WWII. But BMW and airplane manufacturer Heinkel, to name just a few, weren't much better, he explains: "The difference is that their factories were in Germany and not in occupied Poland."Beginning in February 1943, BMW and Heinkel became the first companies to profit from slave labor from the subcamps established alongside larger concentration camps.

Post-war fresh start
After 1945, the allies investigated the role of German industry during the war, but according to Budrass, who is also an expert on the aviation industry during the Nazi era, "that didn't include today's leading German enterprises."
Major captains of industry like Bohlen and Halbach's Alfried Krupp, Friedrich Flick and various IG Farben managers stood accused at the Nuremberg Trials - but comperatively smaller players like Daimler, VW, Lufthansa and BMW and their managers did not. However, there were still some stiff consequences:
"After WWII, production was forbidden; some of our factories were disassembled and machines given away as official war reparations," BMW spokesman Behr says. "BMW still exists today despite this era - not because of it."
But there was also growth in unexpected places. Enterprises like BMW profited from their accumulated technical expertise, historian Budrass argues. US forces in Bavaria found that only BMW had the necessary expertise to service its huge motor pool. Budrass says that therefore another question arises: "How much did developments in the 1950s depend on the Nazi era?" he wonders.
 [None whatsoever, as the Karlsfeld factory producing the R75 motorcycles with sidecars,was given as war price to Jugoslaviasic] 

                                                  
                              Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front on BMW Notorcycles, Model R75

The plot thickened by 1959, when Herbert Quandt saved BMW from a takeover by rival Daimler and helped it grow further out of the ruins of World War II. But his father Günther Quandt, a well-known German industrialist, had kept close personal and business ties to the Nazi regime. His ex-wife Magda married Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels while Günther Quandt himself made a fortune arming the German Wehrmacht, manufacturing weapons and batteries while acquiring assets from Jewish company owners.Quandt and BMW may have been separate firms during the war, but in 1959 funds amassed in the Nazi era by his father allowed Herbert Quandt to save BMW.
 [The recovery of German Industrial Enterprises was only possible with the chaange of the monetary system by intruducing the DM (Deutsche Mark) in June 1948 by an American Pfc,by the name of Tannenberg, yes you guessed it, he was a German Jew,
The existung Reichsmark had no value,sic]
Better late than never
Today, the company archives are open to researchers and journalists, which has resulted in two academic dissertations being written about BMW's dealings between 1933 and 1945. Other German brands like Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank, Krupp, Bertelsmann, Bosch, Dr Oetker and the Quandt family have also investigated this dark period in their histories.
   "Many firms have realized that understanding one's past has a positive effect," Budrass says. "It's a sign of honesty," he says. However, it is also a source of great marketing: in publications celebrating its centennial, BMW points to its role as founding member of Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ), a foundation established for the compensation of former forced laborers. It fails to mention, however, just how involved the company was in using forced labor.
On September 30, 1939, BMW purchased an aircraft engine manufacturer based in the Spandau district of Berlin called Brandenburgische Motorenwerke. Today, the company produces motorcycles for worldwide distribution there. However, there is no mention anywhere that the premises subsequently housed the largest camp for forced and foreign laborers in the region. [Not on the premises, but at Munich -Allach sub-camp as puvlished above, herbstolpmann@gmail.com,sic]

Revised March 2nd 2017

Sources/Acknowledgements:                                                   
Wikipedia

Scrapbook Pages Blog
Der Ort des Terrors, Pages 425-430
Vol 2 C.H.Beck, München 2005

Translated from German by:
 Stolpmann,Herbert Karl Walter
 von Waldeck

Design:d-stolpmann@gmail.com     Continued under Part 17