Walter Dornberger and Albin Sawatzki

Dr.ing. h.c. Walter Dornberger (right), Major General in the Heereswaffenamt, with Albin Sawatzki, Director of the Production Planning Dept. in the "Mittelwerk", at the missile test site in Blizna, Poland, June 1944. Source: Walter Frentz Collection.

Albin Sawatzki (born October 6, 1909 in Danzig; † May 1, 1945 in Warburg) was a German engineer and was responsible for the series production of the A4 surface-to-surface missile in the underground Mittelwerk during the final phase of the National Socialist German Empire. Sawatzki, a member of the NSDAP since May 1933, was initially operations manager at Henschel & Sohn in Kassel, where he was responsible for tank production. He was responsible for the manufacture of the VI Tiger armored vehicle. In July 1943, Sawatzki was appointed to the A4 Special Committee, which dealt with issues relating to the testing and production of the A4, by Armaments Minister Albert Speer as head of the Series Production Working Committee. Initially he was based in the Peenemünde Army Research Center and, after the bombing of the Peenemünde Army Research Center, in Nordhausen from the beginning of September 1943. From February 1944, Sawatzki finally became a member of the management of Mittelwerk GmbH as director of the planning department. Sawatzki's working committee prepared the mass production of the rocket, including the establishment of underground factories. The most famous production facility, the Mittelwerk in the tunnel system in Kohnstein, was in operation for over a year. There, prisoners from the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp had to drive the tunnels under catastrophic conditions and later, in some cases, also produce rockets. In 1944, Sawatzki also became Technical Director at Henschel. Because of his “services to German armaments”, Sawatzki received a grant of 30,000 RM from Adolf Hitler. Shortly before the end of the war, Sawatzki evaded the evacuation of 450 rocket specialists to the Alpine fortress in Oberammergau, which began on April 6, 1945, and did not implement the destruction of the tunnel in Kohnstein ordered by the SS. On April 11, 1945, the US Army marched into Nordhausen and Niedersachswerfen and discovered the underground tunnels in Kohnstein, in which, in addition to the prisoners of the concentration camp, more than 10,000 people from the area had found refuge. On April 13, 1945, Sawatzki was mistreated by former prisoners and on April 14, 1945, he was interrogated by the US Army. He died under unknown circumstances on May 1, 1945 in Warburg, Westphalia.

Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (born September 6, 1895 in Gießen; † June 27, 1980 in Obersasbach) was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World War I and World War II. He was a leader of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket program and other projects at the Peenemünde Army Research Center. Dornberger was born in Gießen and enlisted in 1914. In October 1918, as an artillery lieutenant Dornberger was captured by United States Marines and spent two years in a French prisoner of war camp, mostly in solitary confinement because of repeated escape attempts. In the late 1920s, Dornberger completed an engineering course with distinction at the Berlin Technical Institute, and in the Spring of 1930, Dornberger graduated after five years with an MS degree in mechanical engineering from the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg in Berlin. In 1935, Dornberger received an honorary doctorate, which Col. Karl Emil Becker arranged as Dean of the new Faculty of Military Technology at the TH Berlin.

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