Fritz Pröll (23 April 1915, in Augsburg – 22 November 1944, in Mittelbau-Dora Nordhausen, Harz) was a resistance fighter against the Nazi régime. Life The 19-year-old metalworker Fritz Pröll joined Augsburg's biggest resistance group in 1934, the Red Help (Rote Hilfe). Owing to a leaflet distribution campaign in 1935, he was denounced. Before the court Fritz frankly admitted his guilt. From 29 August 1935 he found himself serving a three-year sentence at Landsberg prison in "protective custody" for "conspiracy to commit high treason". During his three-year solitary confinement (then the maximum penalty for youths), he was constantly in the penal company. On 25 January 1939 he was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp. There he met his brother Josef, who was likewise interned at Buchenwald. On 14 March 1942 came his transfer to Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. There he fell deeply in love for the first time, with a Jewish internee, who probably later perished. Sometime after 17 December 1943 Fritz Pröll and his brother were brought back to Buchenwald concentration camp. While the resistance managed to keep his brother back in Buchenwald, Fritz was shifted on 1 November 1944 to the notorious Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp near Nordhausen in the Harz. In underground shelters where the water reached the walls, the daylight never came in, and the crashing and dust from constant explosions made life hell, worked tens of thousands from all over Europe in drudgery to produce Hitler's "wonder weapons", the V1 and V2. Wernher von Braun's career began here, before he became a rocket specialist in the United States after the war. There, Pröll also met the resistance fighters Albert Kuntz, Georg Thomas, Ludwig Szymczak, Otto Runki, Christian Behan, Heinz Schneider, the social democrat August Kroneberg, the Czechoslovakian doctor and Communist Dr. Jan Čespiva, the Soviet flight lieutenant Yelovoy from Odessa who was at Dora under the false name Simeon Grinko, and also Polish, French, and Dutch resistance fighters. Sabotage and terror in the camps The unarmed, half-starved prisoners managed to thwart Hitler's wonder weapon plan. In one third of the rockets sent off in 1944, the mechanisms failed. Out of all the 10,800 V2 rockets that were deployed, more than half blew up while still aloft. The SS Oberscharführer Sander and Colonel Eichhorn were specially deployed to arrest the suspected sabotage group. The camp was covered with a system of spies. When on 18 November 1944 the Wehrmacht sent