The “Reichswerke AG Hermann Göring”, an iron ore mining and metallurgical plant, was founded on 15 July 1937. Preparations for the pending war required iron ore to be mined in the Salzgitter region and be processed into armaments on a massive scale. In order to construct the industrial facilities for this, many thousands of workers were drawn from all over Germany and abroad and provisionally accommodated in camp barracks. No more than two years after building began, the first pair of furnaces went into operation; soon the “Reichswerke” were considered the largest and most modern armaments factories in the Third Reich.

As the centrepiece for this new industrial region, urban planners designed a “model National Socialist city”. But a lack of labour and materials prevented this enormous urban project being fully realized. Even after 28 municipalities were merged to create the city of Salzgitter on 1 April 1942, the town never became anything more than an appendage of the “Reichswerke”, unable to discard its temporary character.

Once war broke out, the “Reichswerke” began to recruit prisoners of war and deportees from occupied territories in order to maintain armaments production. From 1942 onwards, the SS constructed satellite camps of the major concentration camps near essential war industries; as a result, three satellite camps connected to Neuengamme concentration camp outside Hamburg were also built in the Salzgitter region. This measure was coined “elimination through work” by the Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels.

In April 1945 the Allies liberated about 40 000 prisoners of war, concentration camp inmates, slave labourers and foreign workers in the Salzgitter area - more than half the entire workforce of the “Reichswerke”.

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