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Messerschmitt - Hitler in Power - 1933

The power seizure by Hitler in 1933, meant for Messerschmitt and the BFW that a declared enemy of Messerschmitt was made chief of the Reich's Aviation Ministry (RLM), Erhard Milch, who had previously been the general director of the German Lufthansa. First, he tried to rent the BFW to the strongest competitor Ernst Heinkel but without success, so as to make it impossible for Messerschmitt to continue his development work. After this, he forced the BFW to build Heinkel double-wing aircraft and other aircraft under a license, which were aircraft which had been outmoded. Also, he installed an appointed general director (Schwartzkopf) at BFW, so as to eliminate the influence of Messerschmitt and his associates.

When development contracts were let, Messerschmitt was passed over first by the RLM. He thus helped himself. He was able to obtain a contract for developing a commercial aircraft at the request of the Romanian firm Arico Icar. It was called the M36 and was a high wingaircraft with a mixed construction, and a four hundred fifty hp motor K-14 motor of Gnome et Rhone. The aircraft was designed for a crew of two and six passengers. The prototype was built in Romania and was called the IAR-36.

As a surprise, Messerschmitt obtained an order for the development and construction of six competition aircraft for the European air race in 1934, because the RLM had decided to participate at the last minute. The Bf 108 was then produced in a very short time between September 1933, and June 1934. The aircraft was produced by the BFW, and in the following years developed into the most successful German travel and sport aircraft. The design was so successful that it is still regarded as exceptional today as a travel aircraft.

The prototype, the Bf 108A V 1, was a four-seat, cabin, low wing aircraft with forewings, landing flaps, retractable landing gear, and was the first all metal aircraft using the Messerschmitt shell construction method. It flew for the first time on June 13, 1934. Five additional machines were built, four of which participated in the European air race in August and September of 1934. They were the fastest aircraft in the race with almost 300 km/h. Mass production of the redesigned Mf 108B with the Argus 10C 117 engine (240 hp) started at the end of 1935.

Because of further success in international competition andexceptional individual performances by renowned pilots, this aircraft type soon became a very desired travel aircraft. Later on, the Luftwaffe also ordered this aircraft in large numbers as a communications and training aircraft. About 1,000 Me 108's were built for civilian and military purposes. It flew over four continents and can also be found on airports today.

A further development, Me 208 with a nose landing gear, instrumentrating, and the range extending to 1,300 km, was built in 1941, by the French subsidiary firm SNCAN in Les Mureaux. Several hundred of these airplanes were built between 1945 and 1959, and they were called the Nord 1100-1110.

Mauthausen was one of the most notorious Nazi extermination centers. Companies implicated in the use of slave labor from Mauthausen and its sub­camps include the DEST cartel(Deutsche Erd­und Steinwerke, GmbH) owned by the Schutzstaffel (SS), the Steyr­Daimler­Puch cartel and the Heinkel and Messerschmitt airplane producers, to name only a few. Inmates represented every European nationality and many social categories, including political prisoners,Jews, people of Roma origin, homosexuals, and others. In 1944, Mauthausen received large numbers of Dutch and Hungarian Jews, many of the latter transferred from Auschwitz.

The Mauthausen main camp was constructed in 1938 at a site near the Upper Austrian town of Mauthausen,roughly 20 kilometers east of Linz. A second, nearby camp, known as Gusen I opened in 1940. These two “main camps” were designated“Category III” or extermination camps, designed to eliminate enemies of the German Reich through a combination of overwork, starvation, and violence. Both camps used inmates as slave labor in the granite quarries, the most notorious being the Wiener Graben quarry at Mauthausen. The Mauthausen complex expanded into a “ring” of some 50 Aussenlager (Subsidiary Labor Camps) scattered throughout Austria, making it one of the largest and most profitable labor camp complexes in German­controlled Europe.

By March 1944, in Flossenbuerg near Weiden, the prisoners employed previously in the quarry began working in the fighter plane program for the Messerschmitt corporation, Regensburg, which saw in the availability of stone-mason shops and labor forces after the attack on Regensburg at that time a favorable opportunity for the immediate partial transfer of their production. Altogether 4000 prisoners worked there after the expansion. The camp produced with 2000 men 900 sets of engine cowlings and radiator covers as well as 120,000 single parts of various kinds for the ME 109 fighter. In all, Messerschmitt AG. used slave labor at Augsburg, Haunstetten, Gablingen, Dachau, and Kottern.

Literally translated, Mittelwerk means “middle factory” or “factory located in the middle” (it was located in the middle of Germany). The construction of the factory began in 1942 under the codename Mittelbau (middle construction). This was before the successful launches of the V-2 (A-4) missile. They didn’t need to go extremely deep into the ground.The construction workers successfully used the natural terrain. The wooded hill that locals proudly called Kohnstein Mountain rose up almost 150 meters above the surrounding terrain four kilometers from Nordhausen.The limestone rock forming the interior of the mountain yielded easily to mining work.

Four opened galleries had been cut in the mountain along the diameter of the base, each was a bit longer than three kilometers. Forty-four transverse drifts connected the four galleries. Each gallery was a separate assembly factory. The two galleries on the left side of Mittelwerk were BMW-003 and JUMO-004 aircraft turbojet engine factories. These engines had already been made fit for series production in 1942. And here the Germans had surpassed the Brits, the Americans, and the Soviets. But (luckily for the Allies, of course) as a result of Hitler’s foolishness, they did not use this advantage and did not release into large-scale production the twin-engine jet Me 262 Messerschmitts, which were equipped with these engines.

The apprehension of war crimes suspects, development of evidence, and prosecution of crimes committed within its occupation zone fell to the U.S. Armed Forces in Europe. Under the jurisdiction of the Army’s Deputy Judge Advocate General for War Crimes, U.S. Army military courts tried a total of 1,672 defendants in 489 cases from 1945 to 1949. Sixty­one of these cases, involving over 300 defendants, pertain to Mauthausen and its sub­camps.