Edmund Geilenberg (born 13 January 1906, Witten-Buchholz-Kaempen – died 19 October 1964,

Bassum Bassum (; Northern Low Saxon: ''Bassen'') is a town in the district of Diepholz, Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approximately 35 km northeast of Diepholz, and 25 km south of Bremen. Geography Subdivision Besides Bassum prope ...

) was a German official of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

who headed an emergency 1944 decentralization program, the ''Geilenbergstab'' or ''Geilenbergprogramm'' (Geilenberg Special Staff), to disperse

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

oil production. The program included the Cuckoo project for an underground oil plant to be "carved out of the Himmelsburg" North of the

Mittelwerk Mittelwerk (; German for "Central Works") was a German World War II factory built underground in the Kohnstein to avoid Allied bombing. It used slave labor from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp to produce V-2 ballistic missiles, V-1 flyin ...

, as well as plans for an oil facility at

Ebensee Ebensee am Traunsee (Central Bavarian: ''Emsee'') is a market town in the Traunviertel region of the Austrian state of Upper Austria, located within the Salzkammergut Mountains at the southern end of the Traunsee. The regional capital Linz lies ...

. "Geilenberg used as many as 350,000 men for the repair, rebuilding, and dispersal of the bombed plants and for new underground construction

hich Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...

were incomplete when the war ended". Defenses included a 21 June 1944, order for a minimum number of

flak gun Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It includes surface based, ...

s to be placed at Pölitz (200), Auschwitz (200), Hamburg (200), Brüx (170, Gelsenkirchen (140), Scholven (140), Wesseling (150), Heydebreck (130), Leuna (120), Blechhammer (100), Moosbierbaum (100), and Böhlen (70); Germany and the Second World War and the Ruhland Fischer-Tropsch plant and other synthetic oil plants were upgraded to be "hydrogenation fortresses" (e.g., the plants in the Leipzig area were protected by over 1,000 guns). In addition to increased active defenses, the facilities (german: Hydrierfestungen) incorporated blast walls and concrete "dog houses" around vital machinery. Similar to the technical experts transferred for the V-2 rocket program, 7,000 engineers were released from the German Army to provide technical support for oil facilities.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Geilenberg, Edmund 1906 births 1964 deaths People from Witten People from the Province of Westphalia Nazi Party politicians Officials of Nazi Germany German people of World War II Recipients of the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross

See also

References