Hans Kammler (26 August 1901 – 9 May 1945) was an SS-Obergruppenführer responsible for Nazi civil engineering projects and its top secret V-weapons program. He oversaw the construction of various Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, before being put in charge of the V-2 rocket and Emergency Fighter Programs towards the end of World War II. Kammler disappeared in May 1945 during the final days of the war, although conjecture about his capture or death remains.
Early life Kammler was born in Stettin, German Empire (now Szczecin, Poland). In 1919, after volunteering for army service, he served in Freikorps Roßbach. From 1919 to 1923, he studied civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule der Freien Stadt Danzig and Munich and was awarded his doctorate of engineering (Dr. Ing.) in November 1932, following some years of practical work in local building administration.
Nazi activist In 1931, Kammler joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP), where he held a variety of administrative positions after the Nazi government came to national power in 1933. Initially, he was head of the Aviation Ministry's building department. He joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) on 20 May 1933. In 1934, he was serving the Reich's Ministry as the leader of the Reichsbund der Kleingärtner und Kleinsiedler (Reich's federation of allotment gardeners and small home owners).
Committed to the Nazi cause, engineers like Kammler "saw no contradiction between notions of blood and soil and the methods of modern organization and technology." Historian Michael Thad Allen argues that Kammler wanted to place "the best means of modern organization" at the Nazis' disposal since he believed that National Socialism was a "necessary catalyst" for modern construction. For Kammler, the concepts of "modern technology, organization, and ideologies of German supremacy" were all interwoven.
Concentration camps and the Holocaust Before joining Oswald Pohl's department at the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (WVHA), Kammler had already been advising the SS Race and Settlement Main Office as a consultant. In June 1941, he joined the Waffen-SS. Due to Himmler's desire to increase the pace and scale of SS construction activities, Kammler was released as an adviser to the Reichskommissariat for the Reinforcement of Germandom, so his technical and managerial competencies could be exploited. In the person of Kammler, Allen writes, "technological competence and extreme Nazi fanaticism coexisted in the same man." Even Albert Speer—Adolf Hitler's chief architect—came to fear Kammler and placed him among "Himmler's most brutal and most ruthless henchmen." Kammler was known to scrutinise the education of his subordinates as well as their ideological commitment to National Socialism, which he factored into their duty assignments and promotions.
Immediately after being assigned to the WVHA, Kammler became Pohl's deputy, where he worked with SS-Gruppenführer Richard Glücks of Office D (Concentration Camps Inspectorate), and was also named Chief of Office C, which designed and constructed all the concentration and extermination camps. On 26 September 1941—just days after the announcement of the plan for Majdanek—Kammler ordered the construction of the largest of the camps at Auschwitz. On 19 December 1941, Kammler updated Himmler about the slow progress at both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek, remarking that construction was delayed due to the freezing weather, lack of materials, and insufficient manpower. By late March 1942, the systematic mass deportation of Jews to Auschwitz had begun.
Historian Nikolaus Wachsmann states that Kammler "was intimately involved in all the major building projects in Auschwitz." For instance, in his capacity within the WVHA, Kammler oversaw the installation of more efficient cremation facilities at Auschwitz-Birkenau when the Nazis converted it into an extermination camp. Under Kammler's supervision, new crematoria were planned during August 1942 at Birkenau to facilitate burning up to one-hundred twenty thousand corpses per month.
Kammler's construction unit Amtsgruppe C was involved in the razing of the Warsaw Ghetto from April 1943 onwards.
Secret weapons projects
After the RAF successfully bombed the rocket production facilities at Peenemünde during August 1943, the head of the Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer, recommended transferring the V-2 rocket production underground. Hitler immediately agreed with Speer, and the two decided that the SS, with its massive supply of slave labour, was best suited for this task. As the SS construction chief, Kammler was selected to oversee the project—along with representatives Gerhard Degenkolb and Karl Maria Hettlage from Speer's ministry—which began at a huge fuel storage facility in Thuringia as Mittelwerk GmbH.
By the end of August 1943, Kammler had a sizable detachment of concentration camp inmates from Buchenwald working at the new underground installation, and before the year was out, there were so many slave labourers that another facility (Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp) had to be established. The secret weapons projects for which Kammler was given responsibility included manufacturing both the Messerschmitt Me 262 and the V-2, which Kammler—in a construction effort of ruthless brutality and speed—had in production before the end of 1943. The tunnels and weapons were built in horrendous conditions by the slave labourers from Mittelbau-Dora. Research has found that of the 60,000 people who passed through Mittelbau-Dora camp, an estimated 10,000 died producing the V2 alone, which is double the estimated 5,000 killed by the weapon system in Britain and Belgium combined. More than 20,000 died at Mittelbau-Dora in total throughout the camp's existence. Kammler's attitude towards the prisoners was utter indifference, having once exclaimed, "Don't worry about the victims. The work must proceed ahead in the shortest time possible."
Due to the combination of his building experts, access to slave labour, and connections to SS facilities, Kammler became an "indispensable figure" in the armaments efforts of the SS, so much so that he was only answerable to Himmler. 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 program, which made him one of the war economy's most important managers. In April 1944, Hitler gave Kammler full control over jet-aircraft production.
In March 1944, Himmler convinced Hitler to put the V-2 project directly under SS control. On 8 August, Kammler replaced Walter Dornberger as the director, taking command and control of V-2 operations. The first rockets were launched from a site near The Hague against London on 8 September 1944. Kammler was also involved in an attempt to finish the Blockhaus d'Éperlecques near Saint-Omer, Pas-de-Calais in Northern France. The fortified bunker was to be used as a V-2 launch base but it was abandoned in September 1944 before it could be finished. On 31 January 1945, Hitler named Kammler head of all missile projects, but by this time the lack of explosives was critical, and the program was winding down. By this time, Kammler answered only to Hitler.
In March 1945, Hitler stripped Göring of his powers over aircraft support, maintenance and supply, and transferred these duties to Kammler. This culminated, in the beginning of April, with Kammler being raised to "Fuehrer's general plenipotentiary for jet aircraft".
A declassified interrogation report by a US Army field intelligence unit, dated 12 April 1945, provides the following details regarding Kammler's involvement in testing experimental rocket artillery: "On or about December 1944, [two artillery battalions] in Luxembourg and Holland were subordinated to Kammler. Both battalions turned in their 10.5 cm howitzers and were issued with new secret weapons, HDP (Hochdruckopompe, code name for a 15 cm rocket weapon), and "Rheinboot" (a 21 cm rocket weapon"). ... [Interrogees] think that Kammler was the guiding spirit, a dilettante in secret weapons, because they recall definitely that Kammler boasted on New Years Eve (1944/45) that both secret weapons had been used against orders from his superiors, "auf meine eigene Verantwortung" [transl.: "at my own risk"]." Arnsberg Forest Massacre
In late March 1945, Kammler's car was held up on a crowded road in the Sauerland by a group of slave labourers and their families, guarded by troops of the ZV Division (V-2 rocket operators). Kammler allegedly felt he was under some "vague threat" from the slave group and ordered the ZV troops to kill them all (200 men, women, and children). The killings coincided with the evacuation of V-2 units due to the Allied advance into Germany.
Disappearance and fate On 1 April 1945, Kammler ordered the evacuation of 500 missile technicians to the Nazis' Alpine Fortress. Since the last V-2 on the western front had been launched in late March, on 5 April, Kammler was charged by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht to command the defence of the Nordhausen area, where Mittelwerk was located. However, rather than defend the missile construction works, he immediately ordered the destruction of all the "special V-1 equipment" at the Syke storage site.
In the final weeks of the war in Europe, Kammler's movements became sketchy and contradictory. Further evidence of Kammler's activities consists of a telegram sent from Kammler to Speer, Himmler and Göring on 16 April, informing them of the creation of a "message centre" at Munich and the appointment of an operations chief for the construction of the Messerschmitt Me 262. On 20 April, he reportedly arrived with a group of technicians at Himmler’s Kommandostelle near Salzburg.
On 22 April, he caught up with Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger, both of whom were reported to have made contact with the Allies, in Oberammergau, Bavaria. He failed to agree on a joint course of action with them.
A wartime diary, relating to the surrender of the mountain resort town Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Allied troops, reports the arrival of Kammler and some 600 staff in a motorised column carrying "high-quality research material" in Oberammergau on 22 April 1945. According to this source, he came into conflict with the local commander, lieutenant Burger, over failing to seek permission to establish his quarters in the area. In Oberammergau, Kammler initially stayed in the hotel of Alois Lang, which he had commandeered for indefinite use on 9 February 1945, and then moved quarters to the Linderhof Palace in nearby Ettal. On 23 April, Kammler sent a radio message to his office manager at Berlin, ordering him to organise the immediate destruction of the "V-1 equipment near Berlin" and then to go to Munich. On 27 April, American tanks were reported in Schongau, 35 km to the northwest of Oberammergau. On the morning of 28 April, anticipating their entry into Oberammergau that day, Kammler left the town with his staff.
His next stop, in late April/early May, was at the Villa Mendelssohn, the headquarters of SS Special Inspection IV, in Ebensee, some 270 km to the east of Oberammergau. Ebensee was the site of a concentration camp and arms factory overseen by him and part of the half-mythical Alpine Fortress complex. On the early morning of 4 May, he ordered the immediate transfer of the Ebensee office to Prague, apparently denounced by his subordinates as a suicide mission.