Gusen Concentration Camp /
Project B-8 "Bergkristall" Tunnel System
Two underground tunnel projects were started in
the area of St. Georgen, east of Linz. Inmates from the nearby Mauthausen camp were moved
to a satellite camp adjacent to the village of Gusen, where they worked in a stone quarry.
Later, a small tunnel system was in place in the hills just north of the Gusen camp. This
was called the "Kellerbau" and was used for the manufacture of machinegun parts
and submachineguns.
A larger underground project was started
adjacent to St. Georgen. This was the "Bergkristall" (Rock-Crystal) Project B-8,
intended for the mass production of Me 262 jet fighters. This would have been a very
extensive project when finished, one of the largest of the German underground
manufacturing facilities, having some planned 50,000 square meters of manufacturing space
(see also the pages on Thüringen/Kahla/REIMAHG,
Nordhausen, and Mühldorf). The B-8
Project was begun in March 1944 and went into production of Me 262 fuselages and parts in
early 1945. By the end of the war almost 1000 Me 262 fuselages had been assembled at B-8.
The slave laborers from the Mauthausen and Gusen camps suffered one of the highest
mortality rates of all concentration camps - nearly 40,000 died there from 1938-45.
The B-8 Bergkristall tunnel system was some 85
percent complete when captured by the U.S. Army at the end of the war. On 5 May 1945, the
41st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron of the 11th Armored Division overran the site and
liberated the remaining prisoners in the Gusen camps. The area was turned over to the
Soviet military in the summer of 1945, and they blew up the main tunnel entrances in 1947.
The site is accessible today, but is located on private property, and the tunnel
openings are closed (although there are sometimes public tours of a part of the
tunnel system near the anniversary of the liberation). The Gusen I camp
crematorium is open as a public memorial, with an adjacent museum. (Google
Maps link - Gusen Memorial / Google
Maps link - Bergkristall tunnel system)

This aerial reconnaissance photo taken
in March 1945 highlights the sites shown below. The main Gusen I concentration
camp was the
block of buildings in the lower center of the photo. The Gusen II camp was the
smaller set of buildings to the left, labeled 19 on the photo.
The numbered red circles show the following sites: 1 - crematorium
memorial, 2 - main gate "Jourhaus", 3 - gate posts, 4 - rock crusher
in quarry,
5 - existing entry to the Kellerbau tunnel system (the tunnel system is under
the wooded hill just to the north). (U.S. Army Air Corps photo)

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Gusen Concentration Camp Memorial,
at the site of the KZ-Gusen I crematorium (No. 1 on the photo above). On the
right, original camp gate posts that still exist at the site (No. 3). |

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The Gusen crematorium oven in
1945, after its capture by the U.S. Army, and the crematorium memorial
today. (U.S. Army Signal Corps photo) |

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The main entry to the camp was
through the so-called Jourhaus, an SS administration building (similar to Dachau)
- No. 2 on the aerial photo. The Jourhaus is today a private residence.
The Jourhaus gate appears on the far left of the period photo, which was taken from
just outside the camp area, near the location of the gate posts shown above (No.
3). (KZ Memorial Mauthausen) |

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SS barracks and administration
buildings were located adjacent to the Jourhaus, and some of these still
exist today (white No. 15 on the aerial photo). |

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The main purpose of the Gusen I
camp was to provide slave labor in the adjacent rock quarry. This huge
rock crusher was positioned over a rail line that carried the gravel and
crushed rock to various construction sites. The rail line was removed
after the war, and the rock crusher fell into ruins. (No. 4 on the aerial
photo) |

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Plan of the Kellerbau tunnel
system, adjacent to the Gusen II camp. The dotted lines show parts that were
either never completed, or destroyed by the Soviets after the war. In 2009
or 2010 the main existing entrance was reconstructed and closed, but there
has been some discussion about opening this tunnel as a memorial, similar
to Ebensee. |
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On the
left - an Allied aerial reconnaissance photo from April 1945, showing the Gusen I and II
camps (# 13 and 19), the quarry site (#21), and the entrance to the Kellerbau tunnels
(#31). On the right - plan of the B-8 Bergkristall tunnel project in nearby
St. Georgen. (from
post-war Allied reports of the Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (CIOS),
Imperial War Museum, London) |

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Two views of the B-8 Bergkristall tunnel
system taken in May 1945, after the U.S. Army overran the area. (U.S. National Archives, RG
111SC-231581) |

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These
photos show the remains of concrete bunkers at one of the entrances to the Bergkristall
system. These bunkers were probably built to protect the tunnel entrances, or for final
assembly of the Me 262 fuselages, in common with other such sites. These
bunkers and tunnel entrances were blown up by the Soviets in 1947. |

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Most of the entrances to the
tunnel system had concrete portals, but the majority of these were removed
in the 1960s, when the hillside was cut back, leaving this large open
field where the tunnel entrances had been. The remaining parts of the
tunnels were buried, except for the entrance below. The view on the left
below shows this entrance ca. 2000, when it was accessible. In the
mid-late 2000s, the Austrian government purchased the site and filled in
most of the tunnels through holes bored from above, in the process putting
in this modern doorway at this tunnel entrance. (Bundesarchiv, 192-003) |
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Tours for the public are sometimes
held in a part of the tunnel system that was not filled in, but has been
sanitized from its 1945 condition. These photos show Tunnel 0 and Tunnel A
(above), a side corridor off Tunnel 0 with machinery mounts (below left),
and a side chamber off Tunnel A with a modern ventilation duct (below
right). The stacked roll-like or log-like structures seen in the photos on
the right above and left below show where corridors have been blocked off
and the tunnels behind filled in from above. |
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These two photos taken after
capture by the U.S. Army show the state of the tunnels in 1945. On the
left are Me 262 aircraft fuselages in one of the tunnels. On the right,
another tunnel was used for workshop space. (U.S. Air Force
Historical Research Agency) |

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On the left above is a hydraulic
press for forming Me 262 fuselage parts, found in the tunnels in 1945. On
the right is a corridor junction in Tunnel A. The ventilation ducting
comes from a modern ventilation shaft drilled in this area. The side
chamber at the end originally housed a transformer. Below is an armored
concrete cover for a ventilation shaft, blown up after the war and left in
ruins today. (above left - U.S. Air Force Historical Research
Agency) |
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Left - One other original entrance
to the Bergkristall system exists today. This is the entrance to Tunnel
G3, but the corridor is blocked shortly inside, and the rest of the tunnel
behind was filled in from above. Right - the St. Georgen shooting club
meets at the original SS shooting range. |
KZ-Lager Gusen webpages -- http://www.gusen-memorial.at/index.php
, http://www.gusen.org/gu20101x.htm
,
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/1325/berg.htm
Other concentration camp sites -- Dachau,
Buchenwald, Dora (Nordhausen), Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg, S/III Jonastal, Ebensee,
Mauthausen (Austria)
Back to the Third Reich in Ruins homepage
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