For any Americans who might be reading this, I feel it necessary to mention that “electrical valves” to the European are what we Americans would refer to as “vacuum tubes”…

I served with the British Army in Germany in the mid to late 80’s. I used the train a lot in my travels around Germany and I accidentally got off at the Porta Westfalica train station. I had to wait an hour or so for the next train so I thought I would go for a wander. I walked up into the woods behind the station and I found a large steel door opening into the hillside. The next weekend I went back with some mates equipped with torches and we spent a day crawling round inside the immense tunnel complex. We had no idea what the site was used for but soon worked out that on the ground floor was a large train station/platform for loading/unloading goods and the rest of the site was some kind of factory. It was obvious that the site had been partially blown up with collapsed floors but it was possible to crawl through tunnels and shafts up and down the different floors. Over the years I have been to Peenemunde, Dora Mittlebau concentration camp, Watten and La Coupole – all sites connected with the V2 rocket so I am interested that the Porta site built Phillips electronic components for the V2. Last week I was in the Imperial War Museum in London and they have a V2 on display and a guide gave a very good talk on both V1 and V2. My Father was blown off his feet as a young boy in London by a V1. I went back to the Porta tunnel in the mid 90’s and it was impossible to get in – the door was welded shut. Whilst realizing the grim horror of the weapons it is hard not to be impressed by the technological leap that the Nazis made. Strategically, it was a costly mistake as they could have made 10 heavy bombers for the cost of each V1 or pushed forward the jet fighter ME 262. I think that the tunnels should be opened to the public but the cost of making them safe would be prohibitive.

I’m interested in contacting you regarding some information on a system. May I have your email address?

Cathy,

Thank you for the comment. That’s very sad to hear about your great uncle.

I am collecting experiences of the prisoners at the Porta Westfalica camps, and would love to include your great uncle and his nephews’ accounts.

I have quite a lot of documents about the camp, and I’m still in the process of writing up some narrative about it. Let me know if you are interested in any of it, and also check back on the website. There will be lots of updates in the coming months.

Thanks,
Ammon

My father’s Uncle (E. Fussing) was locked up in Porta Westfalica and perished there, leaving 3 young children. I think the man you know might be his nephew who wrote about the experience. His two nephews survived. I would love to discuss more as I write up my family genealogy. Thanks.
Cathy, Maryland, USA

Tony,
Thank you so much for the comment. I would love to see any resources you have regarding the tunnels, concentration camps, inmates, or companies at Porta Westfalica. Feel free to contact me privately if you like ([email protected]). If possible, I would also like to add your resources to this site.

Thanks,
Ammon

Ammon,
I have been investigating and exploring WW2 tunnel systems for over 30 years (!) and my loft and bookcases are creaking under the weight of the books and papers I have accumilated…
Over the years I have made many useful contacts and have managed to access many tunnel systems in Germany (and the now defunct GDR), Poland and CZ.) The tunnels you are interested in are indeed sealed as you say, but I do have a contact there who has a friend […] in the Fire Brigade who has to periodically inspect the tunnels. I am awaiting the green light. I also have the initial rushes of a BBC film made some ten-plus years ago about a lady who was put to work in these tunnels making radio valves (I was told for ITT KB) after being marched westwards from various KZ. If any of this interests you (or, indeed, anyone else who may be reading this) get in touch. I am a Brit, live in Surrey UK and my email address is [email protected]

SYNOPSIS: Other Losses caused an international scandal when first published in 1989 by revealing that Allied Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower’s policies caused the death of some 1,000,000 German captives in American and French internment camps through disease, starvation and exposure from 1944 to 1949, as a direct result of the policies of the western Allies, who, with the Soviets, ruled as the Military Occupation Government over partitioned Germany from May 1945 until 1949. An attempted book-length disputation of Other Losses, was published in 1992, featuring essays by British, American and German revisionist historians (Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood, edited by Ambrose & Gunter). However, that same year Bacque flew to Moscow to examine the newly-opened KGB archives, where he found meticulously and exhaustively documented new proof that almost one million German POWs had indeed died in those Western camps. One of the historians who supports Bacque’s work is Colonel Ernest F. Fisher, 101st Airborne Division, who in 1945 took part in investigations into allegations of misconduct by U.S. troops in Germany and later became a senior historian with the United States Army. In the foreword to the book he states: “Starting in April 1945, the United States Army and the French Army casually annihilated about one million [German] men, most of them in American camps O Eisenhower’s hatred, passed through the lens of a compliant military bureaucracy, produced the horror of death camps unequalled by anything in American military history O How did this enormous war crime come to light? The first clues were uncovered in 1986 by the author James Bacque and his assistant.” This updated third edition of Other Losses exists not to accuse, but to remind us that no country can claim an inherent innocence of or exemption from the cruelties of war.