Sabotaging the German war effort.

MontyB

All-Blacks Supporter
I am interested in taking the resistance argument a bit further, does anyone have any information on forced labour "sabotage" of the German war effort?
I have read of organisation Todt workers doing things like adding extra sand to the cement during the construction of the Atlantic wall, however, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence of concentration camp prisoners carrying out sabotage but I have yet to see and factual data about what they did or how effective it was.
 
I am interested in taking the resistance argument a bit further, does anyone have any information on forced labour "sabotage" of the German war effort?
I have read of organisation Todt workers doing things like adding extra sand to the cement during the construction of the Atlantic wall, however, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence of concentration camp prisoners carrying out sabotage but I have yet to see and factual data about what they did or how effective it was.

I think it is difficult to find organized "sabotage" by KZ prisoners and POW. I guess they couldn't go all out with the sabotage without being caught. The stories I have read about such things are mostly about making defective munition. It might be a bad idea to use POW and KZ prisoners for making munition and/or other significant war supplies.
 
I think it is difficult to find organized "sabotage" by KZ prisoners and POW. I guess they couldn't go all out with the sabotage without being caught. The stories I have read about such things are mostly about making defective munition. It might be a bad idea to use POW and KZ prisoners for making munition and/or other significant war supplies.

Organised sabotage would have been very difficult to set up and manage "safely" but I guess what I am looking for is verified examples of resistance within the camps.

We have all read and seen movies such as Schindler's list which had examples but they are just movies and I have a feeling that a large number of "heros of the resistance" only emerged in 1946 once the shooting had stopped.
 
Organised sabotage would have been very difficult to set up and manage "safely" but I guess what I am looking for is verified examples of resistance within the camps.

We have all read and seen movies such as Schindler's list which had examples but they are just movies and I have a feeling that a large number of "heros of the resistance" only emerged in 1946 once the shooting had stopped.

The only thing I can think of is; there were cases of insurrections at Auschwitz and Treblinka. The one in Auschwitz occurred at one of the crematoriums and the one in Treblinka made it possible for some of the prisoners' to escape. It might be other "uprisings" at other camps. There was an uprising at the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, but neither of these insurrections had any impact on the German war effort.
 
I heard/read/saw on TV slave workers urinating on V2 guidance systems, even so, quite a few landed on London.
 
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When I began to take a closer look at this, I came across this story, even if it is anecdotal and it must be viewed with critical eyes. If this is true, the resistance by the forced labors saved lives.


https://forum.cartridgecollectors.o...o-sabotaged-by-jewish-slave-labor-story/13997

I found that quite interesting.

If I remember correctly, the site where V2's were sabotaged was Mittelwerk, which was a German factory built underground in the Kohnstein to avoid Allied bombing. It used slave labor from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp to produce V-2 ballistic missiles, V-1 flying bombs, and other weapons.

One act of sabotage I seem to remember was in Singapore. The Japanese wanted a new road built from Tengah airfield to Bukit Timah, to hook up go the main route from the causeway to Singapore City. The workers employed built the road with a adverse camber on a number of bends in the road, apparently the Japanese could not understand why their trucks kept going off the road.
 
When I began to take a closer look at this, I came across this story, even if it is anecdotal and it must be viewed with critical eyes. If this is true, the resistance by the forced labors saved lives.


https://forum.cartridgecollectors.o...o-sabotaged-by-jewish-slave-labor-story/13997

An interesting read but I question the ability of a 20mm AAA round reaching a B-17 at operational height let alone 11 of them hitting the same aircrafts fuel tank with no ignition.
If we assume there is some truth to the story you would have to assume German quality control at that factory to be almost nonexistent, I would believe that sabotaging a few shells in a batch was possible but not all.
Alternatively, most German fighters used 20mm rounds and it is feasible that one of those could have hit an aircraft multiple times.
 
Have read that when the Germans built a new building at the FN plant the concrete floor was secretly re-enforced with Precision Instruments
 
Had to be.

Both the Me-109 and FW-190 carried 20mm cannon so it seems the most likely scenario the Me-262 carried 30mm cannon operationally but had a mix of 20 and 30mm prototypes.

Have read that when the Germans built a new building at the FN plant the concrete floor was secretly re-enforced with Precision Instruments

The problem I have encountered in trying to verify some of these accounts is there appears to be little supporting evidence to help confirm them so it is hard to separate them from urban myth.
 
What kind of work did they do in the Concentration Camps? At the Dora camps where they constructed the V1 and the V2 seems to have used forced labors from West Europe for semi skilled work, whatever that is while the Nazis used Polish and Russians for unskilled works. Jews seem to have been moved to the camp later.

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/wonder-weapons-and-slave-labor

The movie Schindler's List show the use of Jewish labors making pots and cans for the army and later munition.

The Nazis also used prisoners for repairing clothes, collecting jewelries to send it all back to Germany. The Nazis also used Jews for making counterfeit British banknotes in what was called Operation Bernard.

The Germans moved a lot of their industries under ground. I guess they used a lot of forced labors, POWs, and concentration camp prisoners for expanding mines to make room for the industry. The Riese complex in the southern Silesia is pretty big.
 
I was messing around on YouTube earlier and found a video that had some of what I was looking for.

http://youtu.be/3H89Simz_OQ




What kind of work did they do in the Concentration Camps? At the Dora camps where they constructed the V1 and the V2 seems to have used forced labors from West Europe for semi skilled work, whatever that is while the Nazis used Polish and Russians for unskilled works. Jews seem to have been moved to the camp later.

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/wonder-weapons-and-slave-labor

The movie Schindler's List show the use of Jewish labors making pots and cans for the army and later munition.

The Nazis also used prisoners for repairing clothes, collecting jewelries to send it all back to Germany. The Nazis also used Jews for making counterfeit British banknotes in what was called Operation Bernard.

The Germans moved a lot of their industries under ground. I guess they used a lot of forced labors, POWs, and concentration camp prisoners for expanding mines to make room for the industry. The Riese complex in the southern Silesia is pretty big.
 
I can't watch it. The uploader doesn't want Swedes to watch it. Quite annoying. What is the title of the YouTube video?

It is called:
How occupied France worked to sabotage the Nazis.

Essentially it focus's on Peugeot's efforts to hinder vehicle production but it has interesting stats and information about other actions.
 
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