ABSTRACT
Austria was never to know the kind of sustained bombing that Germany underwent, but in 1944 Allied air raids on selected Austrian targets, by USAAF and RAF bombers based in Italy, were considerably increased. Linz was the most natural target, for its Hermann Göring Works (Linz III). There the Allied raid of 25July 1944 was so intensive that it destroyed not only most of the plant but also most of the morale of those prisoners who were left alive. The survivors were so shattered that they reportedly tore one another to pieces, and the attempt to form a resistance network in that Nebenlager was suspended for a long time afterwards. 1 The Hauptlager itself never received more than a random bombing, 2 but certain Nebenlager apart from Linz were also heavily attacked. Floridsdorf was seriously damaged on 8 July 1944. 3 A raid on the Nibelungenwerke in St Valentin followed on 16 October, on which day even Salzburg was bombed. The oil refinery at Schwechat was attacked on 21 January 1945, followed by a raid on Ternberg on 13 March, and multiple raids on 16 March on the refineries at Schwechat and Floridsdorf as well as Wiener-Neustadt in general. 4 The Nebenlager at Melk, Steyr and Gusen were not spared either, while Linz was bombed without respite, the last time on 25 April 1945. As a result of these raids, Juan de Diego, and he alone - the other two Lagerschreiber were never sent on such a mission - was dispatched first to Linz and later to Melk, Steyr and Gusen 5 in order to restore order to the ledgers, because when a Nebenlager's records were destroyed the SS depended entirely on the records maintained by de Diego in the Mutterlager. His assignment then was to determine the number and identity of the prisoners killed in the bombing and those left alive. Travelling in a Wehrmacht sidecar with an SS driver and an escort of four SS motorcyclists behind him, de Diego felt for all the world like a visiting head of state, were it not for his dress, which was his usual striped Drillch. On each trip he did his best to make confusion worse confounded, mislaying a paper here, a paper there, thus saving a prisoner a day or two of labour and each day's work he saved could be a month of life.
