Hans Kammler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Hans_Kammler

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

General Dr Ing. Hans (Heinz) Friedrich Karl Franz

Kammler (26 August 1901 – May 1945?[1]) was a civil Hans (Heinz) Friedrich Karl Franz Kammler
engineer and high-ranking officer of the SS. He oversaw SS
construction projects, and towards the end of World War II
was put in charge of the V-2 missile and jet programmes.

He is most commonly referred to as Hans Kammler.

1 Early life
2 World War II
2.1 Role on advanced weapon projects
3 Death
3.1 Preuk statement
3.2 Prague
NSDAP Id photograph, 1932
3.3 Controversy
3.4 Possible last documented independent Born 26 August 1902
testimonies Stettin, Germany
4 In popular culture
Died Unknown
5 See also
6 Notes Allegiance Nazi Germany
7 External links Service/branch Schutzstaffel
Rank Obergruppenführer

Battles/wars World War I

World War II
Kammler was born in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin,
Poland). In 1919, after volunteering for army service, he served in the extreme right Rossbach Freikorps. From
1919 to 1923, he studied civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule der Freien Stadt Danzig and Munich,
and was awarded his Dr. Ing. in November 1932, following some years of practical work in local building
administration.[2]

Kammler joined the NSDAP on 1 March 1932, and held a variety of administrative positions when the Nazi
government came to power in 1933, initially as head of the Aviation Ministry's building department. He joined
the SS (no. 113,619) on 20 May 1933.

In 1934 he was the leader of the Reich's federation of small gardeners and landowners.[3] Also, during this time,
he was a councilor for the Reich's Interior Ministry.

Kammler eventually became Oswald Pohl's deputy at the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt (WVHA), which

1 of 6 1/18/2013 3:43 PM
Hans Kammler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Kammler

oversaw Amtsgruppe D (Amt D), the Administration of the concentration camp system, and was also Chief of
Amt C, which designed and constructed all of the concentration and extermination camps. In this latter capacity
he oversaw the installation of cremation facilities at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as part of the camp's conversion to an
extermination camp.[4][5]

During his term as Pohl's deputy, Kammler was directly involved on resettlement operations related to Jews and
other people.

Following the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, Heinrich Himmler assigned him to oversee the demolition of the
ghetto in retaliation.

At the end of the war he was responsible for the massive tunnel building at Jonastal, a unfinished project with an
unclear purpose till now. This construction cost the lives of many inmates of Buchenwald camp.

Kammler did not stop on simply exploiting concentration camp inmates. At his request, Joachim Mrugowsky
readied a study on how the duration of work influenced the effectiveness of inmates.

Role on advanced weapon projects

Before the beginning of WWII, there are no indications that Kammler was involved in any advanced
engineering projects afar from his educational background. Also, in the early years of the war nothing suggests
his involvement in any weapons projects.

Clear links between Kammler and advanced weapon projects seem to appear only in 1942. An early evidence of
this is a letter from Oswald Pohl to Himmler referring an interdepartmental memorandum on the manufacturing
of modern weapons in concentration camps, having Kammler as one of the participants.

Kammler was also charged with constructing facilities for various secret weapons projects, including
manufacturing plants and test stands for the Messerschmitt Me 262 and V-2. Following the Allied bombing raids
on Peenemünde in Operation Hydra, in August 1943, Kammler assumed the responsibility for the
mass-production of the V-2. He started moving these production facilities underground, which resulted in the
Mittelwerk facility and its attendant concentration camp complex, Mittelbau-Dora, which housed slave labour
for constructing the factory and working on the production lines. The project was pushed ahead under enormous
time pressures despite the consequences for the slave laborers employed on it. Kammler's motto at the time was
reportedly, "Don't worry about the victims. The work must proceed ahead in the shortest time possible".[6]

During this period, Kammler also was involved in the attempt to finish the Blockhaus d'Éperlecques known also
as the Watten Bunker, a rather unsuccessful project to create a fortified V-2 launch base.

Albert Speer made Kammler his representative for "special construction tasks", expecting that Kammler would
commit himself to working in harmony with the ministry's main construction committee. But in March 1944
Kammler had Göring appoint him as his delegate for "special buildings" under the fighter aircraft programme,
which made him one of the war economy's most important managers, and robbed Speer of much of his
influence.[7]

Generically, after the Reich's failure to attain a victory against USSR, Kammler started to answer for an
ever-growing amount of projects, most of them related to construction and engineering. Concentration camps,
means of mass extermination (ex. crematories at Auschwitz), factories, slave labor management, underground
facilities of various purposes and tank construction, were some of the hallmarks of his early years in the SS
hierarchy. As far as it is known, he also directly supervised several project bureaus and had direct contact with

2 of 6 1/18/2013 3:43 PM
Hans Kammler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Kammler

some of the best engineers of the Reich (ex. Ferdinand Porsche. As a person, he was characterized by one of his
subordinates as intelligent, a pure workaholic, completely given to his work, with a fanatic rhythm and
demanding the same from everyone else. He also was characterized as being highly secretive, purely
authoritarian, with a total lack of morality, frequently using very radical and brutal means to force subordinates
to work under his tempo. After the war, these features led to many tales about his wartime work, but, before
that, they created the path to the top of his career.

In 1944, Himmler convinced Adolf Hitler to put the V-2 project directly under SS control, and on 8 August
Kammler replaced Walter Dornberger as its director. From January 1945, Kammler was appointed head of all
missile projects. During this time he also partially answered for the operational use of the V-2 against the Allies,
till the moment the war front reached Germany's borders. During the retreat, he was directly involved on the
massacre of 208 slave-labourers near Warstein.

In March 1945, partially under the advice of Goebbels, Hitler gradually stripped Goering of several powers on
aircraft support, maintenance and supply, transferring them to Kammler. This culminated, in the very beginning
of April, by Kammler being raised to "Fuehrer's general plenipotentiary for jet aircraft".[7]

In March 1945, as US forces were advancing through Germany, the slave workers housed in the Dora-Mittelbau
concentration camp were to be executed as security risks. It is believed that the order for their murder was
received by Kammler, but he did not comply with it.

There are different accounts of Kammler's death:

That he committed suicide with a cyanide capsule on 7 May 1945.

That he shot himself on 9 May 1945.
That he asked his aide Zeuner to shoot him.
That he was shot by his aide-de-camp in Prague.
That the Soviets executed Kammler along with 200 other SS soldiers
That he escaped to the USA where he died many years after the war.

Preuk statement

On 9 July 1945 Kammler's widow petitioned to have him declared dead as of 9 May 1945, adducing a sworn
statement by Kammler's driver, Kurt Preuk, according to which Preuk had personally seen "the corpse of
Kammler and been present at his burial" on 9 May 1945. The District Court of Berlin-Charlottenburg ruled on
7 September 1948 that his death was officially established as 9 May 1945.

In a later sworn statement on 16 October 1959, Preuk stated that Kammler's date of death was "about 10 May
1945", but that he did not know the cause of death. However, it must be recognised that many ex Nazis made
many sworn statements, to suit many ends. On 7 September 1965, Heinz Zeuner (a wartime aide of Kammler's),
stated that Kammler had died on 7 May 1945 and that his corpse had been observed by Zeuner, Preuk and
others. All the eyewitnesses consulted were certain that the cause of death was cyanide poisoning.[8] In addition
to testifying to Kammler's suicide by cyanide, Zeuner also claimed earlier that Kammler had asked Zeuner to
shoot him. However, doubt has been cast on Zeuner's evidence since he is reported to have told an earlier
denazification hearing in February 1948 that he was already in US custody on 2 May 1945.[citation needed].
Zeuner's evidence in several sworn statements has subsequently been shown to conflict directly with
declassified records.

3 of 6 1/18/2013 3:43 PM
Hans Kammler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Kammler

In their accounts of Kammler's movements Preuk and Zeuner claimed that he left Linderhof near
Oberammergau on 28 April 1945 for a tank conference at Salzburg and then went to Ebensee (where tank tracks
were manufactured). According to Preuk and Zeuner he then travelled back from Ebensee to visit his wife in the
Tyrol region, when he gave her two cyanide tablets. The next day, 5 May, he is said to have departed Tyrol for
Prague.[citation needed]

However, Preuk and Zeuner's testimony clashes with the known movements of US Divisions throughout Austria
in May 1945. By 4 May 1945 the US 103rd Infantry was already at Innsbruck, preventing Kammler from
travelling from Ebensee to Tyrol. The US 88th Infantry division had arrived from Italy cutting off any route to
the Tyrol from the south while the US 44th Infantry Division established a command post at Imst in Tyrol on 4
May 1945 and together with the 103rd entirely controlled the Tyrol region preventing Kammler from visiting his
wife. Preuk is quite clear that they drove everywhere so that it would have been impossible to bypass US
checkpoints.

A further complication is that the 80th Infantry Division reached Ebensee on 4 May 1945,[9] and the
concentration camp itself was liberated by two M-18 tank destroyers of the US 80th Division at 2.50 p.m. on 5
May 1945. This would have made it highly likely that Kammler would have been apprehended by US forces.

Prague

Author Bernd Ruland, in his 1969 book Wernher von Braun: Mein Leben für die Raumfahrt, reports an
altogether different account of Kammler's death. According to Ruland, Kammler arrived in Prague by aircraft on
4 May 1945, following which he and 21 SS men defended a bunker against an attack by more than 500 Czech
resistance fighters on 9 May. During the attack, Kammler's aide-de-camp Sturmbannführer Starck shot Kammler
to avoid him falling into enemy hands.[10] This version can reportedly be traced to Walter Dornberger, who in
turn is said to have heard it from eyewitnesses.[11]

Controversy

In recent years Kammler has become associated with apocryphal Nazi super weapons such as "Die Glocke".
The first suggestion along these lines came from author Nick Cook, who in his "The Hunt for Zero Point"
(2001) raised the possibility that Kammler was brought to the United States along with other German scientists
as part of Operation Paperclip as a result of his supposed involvement in secret German projects. Joseph P.
Farrell's "Reich of the Black Sun" (2005) casts further doubt upon the facts surrounding his death,[12] however
Farrell's only source is the book "Blunder! How the U.S. Gave Away Nazi Supersecrets to Russia" (1985) by
self-identified "British intelligence agent" Tom Agoston.[13]

Possible last documented independent testimonies

A purported section of a wartime diary, relating to the surrender of Garmish-Partenkirchen to Allied troops,
mentions Kammler and his staff.[14] According to this account, Kammler and what the author refers to as his
staff arrived in Oberammergau (north of Garmish-Partenkirchen) on April 22, 1945. The diary refers to a "staff"
of some 600 people, with "good quality" cars and trucks. This arrival seems to have been badly received and the
local authorities had several arguments with Kammler himself. These conflicts are mentioned in the entries for
April 23 and 25. The last reference to Kammler, not implicating him directly but his "staff", comes on the night
of April 28 - an Oberleutnant Burger reports that they had gone, on the same night that American forces began
storming Oberammergau, forcing their way to Garmish and Austria. This departure is backed up by a history of
Oberammergau which notes that Kammler's "staff" moved just before the American offensive over the Tirol.[15]

4 of 6 1/18/2013 3:43 PM
Hans Kammler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Kammler

Kammler appears in Philip Kerr's novel A Quiet Flame, the fifth in Kerr's series about the German
policeman/detective Bernie Gunther. In the novel, Kammler escaped Germany and worked on the
American nuclear program. But as a former high-ranking German official, he feared arrest in the US and
fled to Argentina where he became a close friend of president Juan Perón.
Kammler is involved in the backstory of the 2012 Finnish science fiction movie Iron Sky.
Kammler is the obvious inspiration behind the character of Ernst Streicher in Michael Slade's novel
'Swastika'.[16]
Kammler's work, specifically "Die Glocke", forms the inspiration for and backdrop of Scott Mariani's
2010 novel, The Shadow Project.
Kammler and "Die Glocke" also inspire Black Order, by James Rollins.
Hans Kammler and Operation Paperclip appear in a short story Stars Fell on Alabama, by Andrew
McKenna.
Hans Kammler and Operation Paperclip appear in 'The Athena Project' by Brad Thor.
In the Hogan's Heroes episode "The Rise and Fall of Sergeant Schultz", a General and friend of Sgt.
Schultz, who fought with him in World War 1 visits Stalag 13. The general's name is "Hans Kammler".
Kammler plays a role in the thriller "The Novak Legacy" by John Douglas-Gray.
Kammler is one of the characters in Slezský román by the Czech writer Petr Čichoň, a novel about (not
only) the Hlučín Region. While his children live after the World War Two in South America, he works in
Czechoslovakia for some time, given new identity; later he commits suicide.

Arthur Rudolph
Jakob Sporrenberg

Also appears in Scott Mariani's The Shadow Project.

1. ^ see Hans Kammler#Death

2. ^ Tooze, J. Adam (2007). The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. Viking.
p. 209. ISBN 978-0-670-03826-8.
3. ^ "Kammler, Dr. Führer des Reichsbundes der Kleingärtner und Kleinsiedler" (http://www.bild.bundesarchiv.de
/cross-search/search/_1351275263/) . http://www.bild.bundesarchiv.de/cross-search/search/_1351275263/.
4. ^ Pelt, Robert Jan (2002). The Case for Auschwitz. Indiana University Press. p. 209. ISBN 978-0-253-34016-0.
5. ^ Post, Bernhard. "80,000 Cremation Capacity Per Month Not Sufficient for Auschwitz - New Document"
(http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/topf/) . The Holocaust History Project. http://www.holocaust-history.org
/auschwitz/topf/. Retrieved 11 June 2011.
6. ^ Bornemann, Manfred; Broszat, Martin (1970). "Das KL Dora-Mittelbau". Studien zur Geschichte der
Konzentrationslager (Stuttgart): 165.
7. ^ a b Kroener, Bernhard R (2003). Wartime Administration, Economy, and Manpower Resources 1942 - 1944/5.
Oxford University Press. pp. 390. ISBN 0-19-820873-1.
8. ^ Naasner, Walter (1998). SS-wirtschaft und SS-verwaltung. Droste. pp. 341. ISBN 3-7700-1603-3.
9. ^ "Holocaust" by Martin Gilbert
10. ^ Ruland, Bernd; Broszat (1969). Wernher von Braun: Mein Leben fur die Raumfahrt. Offenburg: Burda Verlag.
p. 292.
11. ^ Piszkiewicz, Dennis (2007). The Nazi Rocketeers: Dreams of Space and Crimes of War. Stackpole Books.
p. 215. ISBN 978-0-8117-3387-8.

5 of 6 1/18/2013 3:43 PM
Hans Kammler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Kammler

12. ^ Farrell, Joseph P. (2005). Reich of the Black Sun: Nazi Secret Weapons & the Cold War Allied Legend
(http://www.thewebfairy.com/missilegate/rfz/swaz/chapter6.htm) . Adventures Unlimited Press. pp. 107–108.
ISBN 1-931882-39-8. http://www.thewebfairy.com/missilegate/rfz/swaz/chapter6.htm.
13. ^ Agoston, Tom (1985). Blunder!: How the U.S. Gave Away Nazi Supersecrets to Russia. Dodd, Mead.
ISBN 0-396-08556-3.
14. ^ [1] (http://members.gaponline.de/alois.schwarzmueller/ns_zeit_1945_kriegsende_quellen/05_hubert_gais.htm) Ein
Kriegsende - Garmisch-Partenkirchen in den letzten Apriltagen 1945
15. ^ "Rüstungsindustrie in Oberammergau im Zweiten Weltkrieg" (http://herbert-thiess.de/Laber/Ruestungsindustrie
/Ruestungsindustrie.html) . http://herbert-thiess.de/Laber/Ruestungsindustrie/Ruestungsindustrie.html.
16. ^ Story: Iron Sky (http://www.ironsky.net/site/?page_id=10)

Film "Hitler's Bomb" 179,4 MB (http://www.petermann-heiko.de/video/hitlers_bombe_lang.wmv)

Photograph and biography {reference only} (http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=13942)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hans_Kammler&oldid=526527155"

Categories: 1901 births 1945 deaths Suicides by cyanide poisoning People from Szczecin
20th-century Freikorps personnel Holocaust perpetrators SS generals
People from the Province of Pomerania Technical University Munich alumni German engineers

This page was last modified on 5 December 2012 at 15:06.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may
apply. See Terms of Use for details.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

6 of 6 1/18/2013 3:43 PM