German Village (Dugway proving ground)

German Village was the nickname for a range of residential houses constructed in 1943 by the U.S. Army in the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, roughly a hundred kilometers southwest of Salt Lake City.

Dugway was a high-security testing facility for chemical and biological weapons. The purpose of the replicas of German homes, which were repeatedly rebuilt after being intentionally burned down, was to perfect tactics in the fire bombing of German residential areas during World War II.

The US Army employed German émigré architects such as Erich Mendelsohn to create copies as accurate as possible of the dwellings of densely populated poorer quarters of Berlin. The main goal was to find a tactic to achieve a fire storm in the city center. The working-class areas on which the test buildings were based, such as Wedding and Pankow, had been communist strongholds before Nazi repression suppressed dissent.

The architects who worked on the German village and on the Japanese equivalent also included Konrad Wachsmann and Antonin Raymond.

The US Army hired Standard Oil Development Company to assist in the practical testing and construction. Erich Mendelsohn and Konrad Wachsmann advised on construction techniques and materials. Paul Zucker, Hans Knoll and George Hartmueller advised on designing authentic interior furnishings.

The village was authentic down to the smallest details, including authentic German heavy furnishings, clothes hanging in closets and children's toys.

Wood and paint, both for interior and exterior, was selected so it would be authentic both in the German and Japanese village; in the Japanese village there were chopsticks on the tables. The German village cost $575,000 to build.

It was found that it was easier to set fire to Japanese housing, but that German houses were more likely to have uncontrollable fires.