Buchenwald: Legend and Reality

by Mark Weber

Buchenwald is widely regarded as one of wartime Germany's most notorious "death camps." In fact, though, this carefully cultivated image bears little resemblance to reality. Today, more than forty years after the end of the Second World War, the camp deserves another, more objective look.

History and Function

The Buchenwald concentration camp was located on a wooded hill outside of Weimar, in what is now East Germany. It was opened in July 1937. Until the war years, almost all the inmates were either professional criminals or political prisoners (most of them ardent Communists). Some 2,300 Buchenwald inmates were pardoned in 1939 in honor of Hitler's 50th birthday.
At the outbreak of war in September 1939 the camp population was 5,300. This grew slowly to 12,000 in early 1943, and then increased rapidly as many foreign workers, especially Poles, Ukrainians and Russians, were brought for employment in war production. (note l)

During the war years Buchenwald was expanded into a vast complex of more than a hundred satellite factories, mines and workshops spread across a large portion of Germany. The most important of these was probably the Dora underground plant, which produced V-2 missiles. In October 1944 it became the independent Nordhausen (Mittelbau) camp. (note 2) More