Qualla: Arado Flugzeugwerke

Arado Flugzeugwerke: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the end of 1942 Arado Flugzeugwerke employed 9,300 German workers and 17,600 foreign ones. Nine months earlier the ratio had been the other way round - 22,000 Germans to 4,000 foreigners. The word the German record uses for most of that second group is Zwangsarbeiter: forced labourers. This is the arithmetic behind the aircraft Arado is remembered for, and it belongs at the front of the story rather than in a footnote at the end.

Read more: Arado Flugzeugwerke on Qualla

Arado Flugzeugwerke: A Cover Story on the Warnow

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The works began as the Warnemünde factory of Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen, on the Baltic coast where the Warnow meets the sea. Like its parent it shut down after the First World War, when the Treaty of Versailles closed off German aviation. In 1921 Heinrich Lübbe bought the plant ...

Read more: Arado Flugzeugwerke on Qualla

Arado Flugzeugwerke: The Refusal

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Walter Blume, formerly of Albatros, replaced Rethel as chief designer in the early 1930s, and Arado found its market: the Ar 66 became one of the Luftwaffe's standard trainers, and the Ar 65 and Ar 68 were among its first fighters. Then in 1936 the Reich Aviation Ministry told Lü...

Read more: Arado Flugzeugwerke on Qualla

Arado Flugzeugwerke: What Arado Built

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Most of Arado's designs lost their competitions. The firm spent much of the war as a subcontractor, building components and licence versions of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 and serving as primary subcontractor on the Heinkel He 177, the only heavy bomber Germany fielded. Two of its own ...

Read more: Arado Flugzeugwerke on Qualla

Arado Flugzeugwerke: The People Who Built Them

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Arado's peak workforce, 30,670 people on 30 June 1944, was overwhelmingly not there by choice. Dutch, French and Czech workers were brought in as the war went on; the He 177 work was carried out by labourers the German record lists as Balts, Serbs, Spaniards, French, Dutch and Be...

Read more: Arado Flugzeugwerke on Qualla

Arado Flugzeugwerke: Dismantled

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The company did not survive the peace. In 1945 Arado was broken up; under the Potsdam Agreement the plants were dismantled and the machinery shipped east to the Soviet Union as reparations, with the corporate shell not formally wound up until 1961. Over four thousand aircraft had...

Read more: Arado Flugzeugwerke on Qualla