The data recorded by the Chief Trophy Administration of the USSR reads: in the framework of the reparation, the Soviet Union exported 2885 factories from Germany. The post-war Soviet industry, with the help of captured equipment, began to produce products that had not previously been produced in the USSR.
The reparation concerned not only the eastern occupation zone of Germany, but also the Western, controlled by the Allies. From there, the Soviet Union and Poland were supposed to transfer about 300 plants. But our Western partners in various ways put a stick in the wheel to advance this process. Of the 39 enterprises that were of particular importance, by the beginning of the spring of 1948 only 30 plants had been dismantled. The equipment of all German factories for the production of poisonous substances in the zone of occupation of the USSR was exported, and the enterprises themselves were destroyed.
Thanks to the industrial equipment exported from Germany and German technologies, the USSR started manufacturing various synthetic materials: nylon, perlon, artificial silk, more quality than natural, oppanol and many other things that the domestic industry did not produce before the Second World War. For example, before in the USSR, paper twine was not produced, it became possible only after the factories that worked on imported equipment were put into operation.
Expropriation of German factories and equipment was carried out not only and not by industrialists and military experts - they accounted for slightly more than 200 enterprises exported to the USSR for reparation. More than 60 production facilities of publishing activities have been taken away by a specialized Soviet ministry, more than 50 enterprises have departed the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, dozens went to the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education.
For example, the Committee for the Arts has acquired a unique factory of records, located in Babelsberg (a suburb of Berlin). The total weight of the equipment is over 400 tons. The USSR Academy of Sciences observed the astronomical observatory of the Humboldt University, the scientists removed from Germany the university equipment of the Greifswald University, dozens of tons of archival documents stored in the Potsdam Reichsarchiv. Employees of the State Committee for Physical Culture and Sports were engaged in dismantling and transferring to the Union of swimming pools, and employees of the Lenin Library - collecting manuscripts and books.
When they began to export In fact, the USSR began to deal with reparation before the end of the Great Patriotic War - the first parties of the dismantled German equipment were delivered to the Soviet Union in early spring of 1945. Among them were the machines of the carbide plant from Beiten (Upper Silesia) sent to the Stalingrad chemical plant, the equipment of the chemical factory in Ammendorf, including its boiler room and power plant. In the spring of 1945, the USSR received equipment from a German factory producing tank armored hulls. In June, at the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, the installation of machines removed from two Belaux sawmills and a number of Austrian enterprises began. At the STZ was delivered equipment for the production of tanks, self-propelled guns - all this was so much that it required the laying of additional transport communications. It was not possible even in time to fully take into account the number of incoming trophies.
What was the most frequent subject to reparation For machines destroyed by war, machines used in the construction industry, and construction materials themselves were of great importance. All this was exported in considerable quantities from Germany. Woodworking machines and other equipment from German sawmills for the restoration of buildings of the same STZ, technological and power mechanisms of brick factories, machinery needed in the production of cement, bricks, roofing iron and slate. They tried to take out the entire production infrastructure, so that on the spot later it would be possible to assemble the enterprise as a designer. On German equipment in the USSR, carpets were woven after the war, until the 80s the Central Telephone Station of the capital worked. Railroad lines were dismantled and exported, steam locomotives and diesel locomotives, car building and steam locomotive repair plants were sent to the Soviet Union. Even the KGB used German "wiretaps" for its secret activity for a long time.