21 Facts About Hans Kammler

Hans Kammler was an SS-Obergruppenfuhrer responsible for Nazi civil engineering projects and its top secret V-weapons program.

Hans Kammler 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.

In 1931, Hans Kammler joined the Nazi Party, where he held a variety of administrative positions after the Nazi government came to national power in 1933.

Hans Kammler joined the Schutzstaffel on 20 May 1933.

Immediately after being assigned to the WVHA, Hans Kammler became Pohl's deputy, where he worked with SS-Gruppenfuhrer Richard Glucks of Office D, and was named Chief of Office C, which designed and constructed all the concentration and extermination camps.

Hans Kammler was involved in an attempt to finish the Blockhaus d'Eperlecques near Saint-Omer, Pas-de-Calais in Northern France.

In late March 1945, Hans Kammler ordered the ZV division to execute forced laborers and their families after his car was held up on a crowded road in the Sauerland.

Hans Kammler allegedly felt he was under some "vague threat" from them, so he had them murdered.

On 1 April 1945, Hans Kammler ordered the evacuation of 500 missile technicians to the Nazis' Alpine Fortress.

Hans Kammler failed to agree on a joint course of action with them.

In Oberammergau, Hans 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 7 September 1965, Heinz Zeuner, stated that Hans Kammler had died on 7 May 1945 and that his corpse had been observed by Zeuner, Preuk and others.

On 9 July 1945, Hans Kammler's wife petitioned to have him declared dead as of 9 May 1945.

Hans Kammler provided a 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.

US occupation forces conducted various inquiries into Hans Kammler's whereabouts, beginning with the headquarters of 12th Army ordering a complete inventory of all personnel involved in missile production on 21 May 1945.

Only in 1948 did the CIOS receive the information that Hans Kammler reportedly fled to Prague and had committed suicide.

The report said that "shortly after the occupation, Hans Kammler appeared at CIC Gmunden and gave a statement on operations at Ebensee".

In 1949 a report written by one Oskar Packe on Hans Kammler was filed by the US Denazification office in Hesse.

The report stated that Hans Kammler had been arrested by US troops on 9 May 1945 at the Messerschmitt works at Oberammergau.

Hans Kammler was supposedly "interned at a place of maximum security, with no hope, no mercy and without seeing the light of day until he hanged himself".

In 2019, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars published evidence that Hans Kammler was indeed captured and interviewed by Americans during May 1945 in Germany; however, none of the evidence substantiated his stay and later suicide in the US, as Richardson originally claimed.