In the late 1920s the German AEG company and the Salzburg state government developed plans for a Hohe Tauern hydroelectricity power plant, including two reservoirs in the Kaprun Valley. Planning discontinued during the Great Depression and was not resumed until the Austrian Anschluss to Nazi Germany in 1938. At the behest of Hermann Göring, construction began during World War II by Jewish forced labourers and prisoners of war from Belgium and other occupied countries.