Munich as an armaments center

Munich is not usually perceived as a industrial center, but rather as a city of art and culture. Nevertheless, by the mid-1930s, the metropolis had already become Bavaria’s biggest industrial location. Quality products manufactured by mid-market companies played a particularly important part in Munich’s economic life. After the Nazi Party’s electoral triumphs, Munich’s economy experienced a boom that was to last until the end of the war, since Nazi rearmament policy gave high priority to armaments production.

Numerous small and medium-sized companies, craft businesses and construction firms also profited from the armaments boom and were able to expand their capacities considerably. The outbreak of war saw air armaments become one of the dominant industrial sectors in Munich’s economy. With its highly specialized craft workshops, industrial companies, and large numbers of highly trained skilled workers, the city boasted the ideal structural requirements for a center of the armaments industry. These were enhanced still further by the close geographical proximity of prominent aircraft and aircraft engine manufacturers. Along with the Junkers plant in Allach, the Dornier plants in Aubing and Oberpfaffenhofen, the Messerschmitt plant in Augsburg, and the aviation research institution in Ottobrunn, companies in the optical and precision engineering industries were also integrated into Munich’s specialized armaments infrastructure: Rodenstock, Steinheil, Perutz, Agfa and others all manufactured components or complete assemblies for the Luftwaffe.

From the end of the 1930s, alarming labor shortages developed as a result of mobilization, ongoing conscription into the Wehrmacht and the war-driven expansion of industrial production. This problem could not be solved by having women do more work and recalling pensioners and retirees to the workforce. Even the rationalization of manufacturing processes was unable to increase productivity to the extent required. Millions of foreign men, women and children were deployed as a result. Without this forced laborers, the German armaments and consumer goods industries would have collapsed. Moreover, infrastructural and supply facilities could not have continued operating and agricultural production could not have been maintained without the large-scale deployment of foreign workers.

The most important private-sector employer, and to some extent the heart of industrial Munich, was Bavarian Motor Works (BMW). The foundations of the BMW success story were laid with the manufacture of aircraft engines during the First World War. During the 1920s, the company was able to build almost seamlessly on its former armaments production capacities. Between the wars, BMW focused on the manufacture of motorcycles (from 1923) and automobiles (from 1928); it did not cease developing and producing engines altogether. The National Socialist rearmament offensives opened up new prospects for the company with regard to aircraft engine construction. BMW was keen to participate in the rearmament program, from which it expected a considerable increase in sales, particularly in the aircraft engine construction sector. During the Third Reich, aircraft engine construction became the BMW Group’s most important and lucrative business sector. During the war years, BMW’s foremost product was an air-cooled, 14-cylinder, twin-row, fuel-injected radial engine based on American designs, which was preferred by the Luftwaffe because of its robustness and above-average performance. After war broke out, a repair and assembly plant built in Allach between 1936 and 1939 was expanded in several phases and turned into a gigantic factory for the large-scale production of this successful engine, thus enabling BMW to meet the supply obligations imposed on it by the Reich Aviation Ministry.

Other industrial companies in Munich, such as Krauss-Maffei and Südbremse, also significantly expanded their production facilities after 1939. The systematic Allied bombing raids from 1943 onwards took a heavy toll on BMW’s production facilities. Since aircraft engine construction was considered highly sensitive, BMW began relocating parts of its business operations to nearby districts in Upper Bavaria, in some cases sending equipment through subterranean tunnel systems to France. The summer of 1944 also saw a number of brewery cellars in the city of Munich appropriated as BMW production facilities.

The long-established, Munich-based company Krauss-Maffei was as important to the army as a munitions manufacturer as BMW was to the Luftwaffe. Founded during the 19th century, the company’s core business was originally the manufacture of locomotives. During the Third Reich, Krauss-Maffei expanded the range of products manufactured at its spacious facilities in the north-west of Munich to include technically simplified, low-maintenance wartime locomotives and heavy all-terrain vehicles. Krauss-Maffei supplied the Wehrmacht with thousands of half-track vehicles. In 1942, the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production placed a large order with Krauss-Maffei for the production of 1400 wartime locomotives. By 1944, the percentage of foreign workers in the company’s workforce had risen to 53 percent.

The German Rail Company also played a key role in establishing Munich as an armaments center. In terms of military strategy, Munich was one of the most important transport nodes in the south of the Third Reich, particularly when transporting cargo to and from Italy and southeastern Europe. The production resources used by Munich’s armaments industry also depended heavily on a functional transport infrastructure. The German Rail Company operated two large rail facilities in Munich for the repair and maintenance of locomotives and railroad cars: one in the north (Munich-Freimann) and one in the west (Munich-Neuaubing). As one of the largest public-sector employers, the German Rail Company deployed several thousand foreign forced laborers in Munich.