Editing Ohrdruf concentration camp (section)

==Operation==
Created in November 1944 near the town of [[Ohrdruf, Thuringia|Ohrdruf]], south of [[Gotha]], in [[Thuringia]], Germany, Ohrdruf was initially a separate forced labour camp directly controlled by the [[SS Main Economic and Administrative Office]] (SS-WVHA) but then became a subcamp of the [[Buchenwald concentration camp]] near [[Weimar]]. It made use of huts originally built in 1940 for Wehrmacht troops<ref>{{cite web |title=The Ohrdruf Subcamp |url=https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/ohrdruf |website=Buchenwald Memorial}}</ref> using the ''Truppenübungsplatz'' nearby as well as other facilities. The camp, code-named ''Außenlager S III'', consisted of a northern and a southern camp; later, a tent camp at Espenfeld and a camp at Crawinkel were added. The camp supplied forced labor in the form of concentration camp prisoners for a planned railway construction project for an immense communications center inside the basement of the Mühlberg castle in Ohrdruf. Inmates had to work to connect the castle to the main railroad line and to dig tunnels in the nearby mountains, which would be used as emergency shelter for the train that contained the "Führerhauptquartier".<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Megargee |editor1-first=Geoffrey P. |editor2-last=White |editor2-first=Joseph R. |editor3-last=Hecker |editor3-first=Mel |title=The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Vol. III: Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany |date=2018 |publisher=Indiana University Press |page=402 |url=https://www.ushmm.org/research/publications/encyclopedia-camps-ghettos |access-date=27 October 2020}}</ref> The proposed communication centre was never completed due to the rapid American advance.<ref name="USHMM-Ohrdruf">{{cite web | title = Ohrdruf | url = https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ohrdruf | access-date = 9 May 2025 | location =United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Holocaust Encyclopedia}}</ref><ref name="Buchenwald1">{{cite web | title = Außenlager Ohrdruf| url =http://www.buchenwald.de/561/| access-date = 6 August 2014 | location =Buchenwald.de}}</ref><ref name="OTZ">{{cite web | title = Spurensuche in der "Hölle von Ohrdruf" (German)| date =9 April 2010| url =http://www.otz.de/web/zgt/politik/detail/-/specific/Spurensuche-in-der-Hoelle-von-Ohrdruf-1216823025| access-date = 6 August 2014 | location =Ostthüringer Zeitung}}</ref>

By late 1944, around 10,000 prisoners were housed here; through March 1945, the total number sent here was around 20,000, mainly Russians, Poles, Hungarian Jews, some French, Czechs, Italians, Belgians, Greeks, Yugoslavians and Germans. Conditions were atrocious: in the huts there were no beds, "only blood-covered straw and lice". Despite the season, not all prisoners were housed in huts—some were accommodated in stables, tents and old bunkers. Work days were initially 10 to 11 hours long, then later 14 hours, involving strenuous physical labor building roads, railways and tunnels. In addition, inmates had to cope with long marches and musterings, total lack of sanitary equipment and medical facilities, and insufficient food and clothing.<ref name="Buchenwald3">{{cite web | title = Außenlager Ohrdruf| url =http://www.buchenwald.de/563/| access-date = 6 August 2014 | location =Buchenwald.de}}</ref>

In January 1945, the SS guards were reinforced by units from [[Auschwitz]].<ref name="Buchenwald3"/> Towards the end of the war, the prisoners were used to construct a subterranean headquarters for the government (''Führerhauptquartier'') to be used following a possible evacuation of Berlin. It was never completed.<ref name="Buchenwald2">{{cite web | title = Außenlager Ohrdruf| url =http://www.buchenwald.de/562/| access-date = 6 August 2014 | location =Buchenwald.de}}</ref>

It is still not clear exactly what projects the prisoners of Ohrdruf were working on. Besides the temporary quarters for the ''Reich'' leadership, the extensive tunneling and other works at [[Jonastal]] point to an armament factory of some kind. There is a theory, advanced by [[Rainer Karlsch]] that the facility was intended as (and used as) a testing site for a German nuclear bomb. Other possibilities are an improved [[V-2 rocket]] or long-range jet-powered bombers, but all of this is speculative.<ref name="OTZ"/>

Those unable to work were moved by the SS to [[Death camp|''Sterbelager'']]: 4,300 sick inmates were moved to [[Bergen-Belsen concentration camp|Bergen-Belsen]], or the ''Kleines Lager'' at Buchenwald. In late March 1945, the camp had a prisoner population of some 11,700 to 13,000. As the American troops advanced towards Ohrdruf, the SS began evacuating almost all prisoners on death marches to Buchenwald on April 1. During these marches, SS, [[Volkssturm]], and members of the [[Hitler Youth]] killed an estimated 1,000 prisoners. Mass graves were re-opened and SS men tried to burn the corpses. The SS guards killed many of the remaining prisoners in the ''Nordlager'' that were deemed too ill to walk to the railcars. After luring them to the parade ground, claiming that they were to be fed, the SS shot them and left their corpses lying in the open.<ref name="USHMM-Ohrdruf"/><ref name="Buchenwald4"/>

In addition to those killed on the death marches, an estimated 3,000 inmates died from exhaustion or were murdered inside the camp.<ref name="Buchenwald3"/> Together with those worked to death here but moved elsewhere to die, estimates of the total number of victims are around 7,000.<ref name="Buchenwald4">{{cite web | title = Außenlager Ohrdruf| url =http://www.buchenwald.de/564/| access-date = 6 August 2014 | location =Buchenwald.de}}</ref>