Industriewerke Ludwigsfelde
Description
Industriewerke Ludwigsfelde is an automotive factory in Ludwigsfelde in Brandenburg, just south of Berlin in Germany. The factory is part of Daimler-Benz AG and since 1991 it has made Mercedes-Benz vans.Aero engines for the LuftwaffeDaimler-Benz established the Ludwigsfelde factory in 1936 to make DB 600 aero engines for new Luftwaffe bomber and fighter aircraft. In the course of German re-armament and the Second World War the factory went on to make Daimler-Benz DB 601, DB 603 and DB 605 engines for various Luftwaffe aircraft.During the Second World War the factory used at least 10,000 prisoners of war, forced labourers and concentration camp prisoners to work in the factory. From 1943 to 1944 it used the forced labour of about 1,100 women prisoners from the Ravensbrück concentration camp north of Berlin. Ludwigsfelde is at least from Ravensbrück, so the forced labourers were housed near the factory in a subsidiary concentration camp called the Deutschlandhalle.Early in 1945 the US Army Air Forces bombed the factory. Then, after the surrender of Germany, what remained of the works was dismantled and taken to the Soviet Union as part of the Allies' programme to take reparations from Germany and reduce German industrial capacity.
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