HISTORY

Bloodstained

Messerschmitts

Photo: Flossenbürg Memorial

Bf 109 production

at the Flossenbürg

concentration camp

Text: Jan Bobek

In this 1940 photograph of Flossenbürg, the proximity of the concentration camp quarters to the citizens’ homes is clearly visible.

The war industry in the Third Reich did not function only thanks to corporate employees

and forced labourers from the occupied territories. A huge part of the production work

was provided by prisoners working in slave-like conditions in concentration camps

where they died of starvation, exhaustion, hypothermia, disease or were murdered by

the Nazis. This criminal machine included the production of Messerschmitt Bf 109

fighters and it is a subject that is neglected by most aviation historians. This article does

not aim to cover the entire scope of the Nazi genocide, which gradually targeted political

opponents of Hitler's regime, religious groups, physically or mentally disabled people,

homosexuals, members of the resistance, Jews, Roma and Sinti, Poles, citizens of the

Soviet Union and other Slavs. The article focuses only on the human sacrifices in one

part of the supply chain of an aircraft manufacturing plant. More than 70,000 inmates

perished in the Flossenbürg concentration camp in the Upper Palatinate Forest and its

sub-camps. Their tragic fate was the result of the inhuman exploitation of human beings,

which the Nazis called “Vernichtung durch Arbeit”, or “extermination through labour”.

The first records of the Bavarian village of

Flossenbürg date back to the 10th century. The

castle was probably completed at the beginning

of the 12th century and during the following

two centuries it was in the possession of the

Bohemian kings.

At the end of the 19th century, several

quarries were established in the vicinity of

Flossenbürg, where granite was mined. In 1938,

the SS leadership decided to make economic

use of the concentration camp system, until

then, the camps had been used primarily for

the internment and oppression of political

September 2023

prisoners. Building materials became a priority

for the SS. That is why the Nazis started to build

the concentration camp at Flossenbürg in the

same year. The work was started by prisoners

from the Dachau concentration camp. At the end

of 1938, 1,500 prisoners, mostly Germans, were

forced to work on its preparation, and over the

next two years more than 300 of them died. In

1940, the first Jewish prisoner was assigned

to Flossenbürg. From 1944 large numbers of

Jewish, Polish and Soviet prisoners began

arriving , mainly from the concentration camps

at Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen and Plaszow.

At the beginning of the camp's production

operation, 2,600 prisoners were exploited

in the concentration camp, and the number

of deaths was so great that the Nazis set up

a crematorium on its premises. Twelve-hour

work shifts were held in the quarry, and

prisoners lived in oppression and humiliation

under the constant threat of death by starvation,

exhaustion, cold, injury, illness, or execution.

They were given only one thin soup during their

work shift. In mid-1939, 850 prisoners worked

in the quarry, two years later, the number was

already 2,000. Several dozen German civilian

INFO Eduard

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