8. Some camps were built to support specific Nazi goals with labor forces
Before the war began many of the camps were constructed along the same lines as would be used later for prisoner-of-war camps, with barracks, separate latrines and washrooms, store rooms, and so forth. Later, as camps grew in size during the war, only the most rudimentary construction techniques for new barracks were used. Some camps did not erect barracks at all. The camp at Dora kept prisoners underground for a time, in tunnels constructed to house and feed them, and worked underground as well. The Dora prisoners lived as moles for months at a time, beginning when the camp was built in 1943.
Dora housed prisoners who worked at the facilities in Germany where the production lines for the components of the V-2 rockets were built. They were moved underground as a means of protecting themselves from the American and British bombing. The Nazis were concerned about the production rate, but not the workers who came from the concentration camp. By mid-1944 the death rate for prisoners at Dora was one in three. It worsened before the war ended. The workers at Dora supported the work of Werner von Braun, who later claimed to have been unaware of the appalling conditions among the forced laborers who built the facility that built his rockets.