Deportees to build rockets for the Great Reich
Propaganda report - by Walter Frentz, Hitler's official photographer
The leaders of the rocket programme (Von Braun, Dornberger) called upon the SS in response to a shortage of unskilled workers for the mass production of the A4 (V2), in the spring of 1943.
A first group of prisoners from concentration camps (Germans and Soviets) arrived at Peenemünde coming from Buchenwald on the 17th of June. On 11 July, 400 deportees - almost all French - were assigned to the pilot plant. At the same time, other prisoners were sent to various sites related to the A4 (V2) programme: Wiener-Neustadt (from Mauthausen) and the Zeppelin factory in Friedrichshafen.