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Transcription: [00:19:07]
{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
-- let me see, my son was born in March, and I could not go on the train because I got permission to pick my son up in Jena. He just had been born in Jena. He was only a week old or so, --

[00:19:22]
-- and I moved them - with him and with my wife, whom I picked up - and she also worked in Peenemünde.

[00:19:28]
In fact, she was initially Thiel's secretary when I met her, and later on she was also Riedel's secretary, after Thiel had died.

[00:19:37]
And she was therefore also on this list of people who were supposed to come down to Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

[00:19:43]
So I got permission to buy an automobile. I got rations, I think they were rations from the SS - gasoline rations I mean, not food rations - so that I could buy the necessary gas to drive down there, and then I joined the group again in Oberammergau.

[00:19:59]
And the other people had in the meantime moved on by train, a train which transported about 500 people down there, 500 of the key people.

[00:20:09]
And the intent was of course, it was known that the Russians would take over Peenemünde, and the Germans never were too much in favor of Russian contacts, so there was a very great desire to get out of Peenemünde and to join this team. So we really didn't have a lot of a problem to get the people on the train and to ship them down.

[00:20:31]
Of course some people were living in the Peenemünde area. There were farmers initially in that area so they were not too anxious, but I think most people moved down, once they were on this list.

[00:20:42]
And then when the war ended we were located in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the initial intent was even to set up a new design and even production facility in southern Germany. The SS wanted to make a "last stand" in the Alps. Festung Alpen, the Alp Fortress.

[00:21:03]
And of course we all realized that was hopeless. There was no chance to even start the design work.

[00:21:10]
I was still in charge of the design group at that time, so I went around to Messerschmidt who had a plant in that area to borrow some drawing boards and some paper, and we finally got some of these things. But of course we never really got to the point where we really did some meaningful drawings.

[00:21:28]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
So then you never went to Central Germany first, because the initial--

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
-- Well, we drove through central Germany.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
The initial evacuation was from Peenemünde to around the Mittelwerk area.

[00:21:44]
{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
Well, many people moved to that area of course, also partially to support the production down there. They needed skilled labor, skilled people who knew about it, and so many of them were for that purpose moved down to Mittelwerke.

[00:21:58]
I think there was never really a planned move like the one to the south of Germany to go to that area. At least I hadn't heard about it.

[00:22:08]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Well, that's my impression of the way things worked, but it may have seemed different to you at the time.

{SPEAKER name="KONRAD DANNENBERG"}
No, many people moved to that area because they were needed in the Mittelwerke, ja?

[00:22:17]
And also von Braun had - and we have never talked about that yet - he had established a Fertigungsaufsicht, a group of people who went to the companies, who were sure they had the right drawings, they built the right parts, they were responsible basically for the acceptance of these parts and for the shipment to Mittelwerke.

[00:22:37]
And many people were in that group, and they, in most cases, worked finally out of Mittelwerke, so quite a number of people may have been moved down to that area for that reason, for that purpose.