Research project traces Austria’s cableway industry to Nazi Germany

A research project in Mittersill is examining the history of Austria’s cableway industry and winter sports, with technical roots reaching back to the National Socialist period, ORF reports. A military research centre operated by Hitler’s Wehrmacht in the Hohe Tauern studied what were then the most advanced methods of cableway construction.

Initial test installations were built in 1939. From 1944, the Mittersill Military Testing Centre was fully operational and directly subordinate to the Wehrmacht High Command in Berlin.

Its main purpose was to support troops fighting the Allies in Italy and to supply the planned Alpine Fortress. The system was intended to provide the German military with supplies across the main Alpine ridge without relying on roads or railways. Mountain defensive positions were also to be supplied quickly with soldiers, ammunition and other resources.

The Wehrmacht and SS also had offensive plans to use the new cableway technology in ongoing and future wars of conquest.

Planned route across the Hohe Tauern

Walter Reifmüller, a former commander of the Mittersill gendarmerie station and former mayor, is helping the research team investigate and document surviving remains. At 89, he remains active in the mountains as an alpinist.

The longest cableway planned for the project was intended to cross the Hohe Tauern. It was to run from Mittersill through the Felbertal valley and over the Nassfeld to the St. Pöltener Hut, before continuing into East Tyrol. Construction reached only as far as the Nassfeld before the war ended, Reifmüller said.

Test facility with 80 metre supports

In Mittersill’s Lend district, a large test installation was built alongside the main project. It had two 80 metre high supports, one made of steel and one of wood, connected by a steel cable spanning more than 1,400 metres.

The installation was designed to simulate cableway operations across large rivers where bridges could not be built, including scenarios for mountain warfare against the Soviet Union in the Caucasus.

Researchers examined how much the carrying cable sagged under different loads, as well as the forces acting on foundations and anchorages. They also studied the effects of wind and weather.

The surviving photographs and documents include construction work in the mountains, soldiers transporting cableway components, a bridge over the Salzach’s marshy floodplain and a residential building for staff of the military testing centre in Mittersill.

After the war, locomotives from the Mittersill Military Testing Centre were loaded onto Pinzgau Railway wagons in Zell am See and taken away for scrapping.