Built within seven months, it was opened by Adam Opel AG in November 1935 on the re-armament initiative of the Nazi government in order to ensure supplies of Opel Blitz trucks for the Wehrmacht armed forces. Until 1944 more than 130,000 medium-weight trucks were produced at the Brandenburg plant. Devastated by an Allied air raid on 6 August 1944, the facilities were dismantled and shipped east as reparations to the Soviet Union after the war.