Hunting Dr. Evil - Hans Kammler: Hitler's Secret Weapons Chief

[Music] ss obergruppenfuhrer dr hans kamla was the general who commanded nazi germany's secret weapons program he constructed the underground layers that hid the v2 missile program he oversaw the construction of germany's most advanced jet aircraft and he was responsible for the use of tens of thousands of slave labourers from the concentration camps he was to all intents and purposes the real dr evil but a wars end this very high-ranking nazi official simply disappeared into thin air never to be seen again in this film we will try and establish what became of 43 year old general kamla one of the most wanted fugitives in history hans kamler was a civil engineer he earned his doctorate in 1932. born in stettin germany now in poland in 1901 he had missed service in world war one but in 1919 joined a freikorp one of many private right-wing armies that sprung up in post-world war one germany that fought against communists for control in the weimar republic he joined the nazi party in 1931 and the ss in 1933 well regarded he rose from head of the building department the air ministry to deputy chief of the ss main economic and administration office a vast organization that managed finances supply and business projects for the ss state as well as running the concentration camps in fact kamla oversaw office d the department that administered the concentration camp system and also office c the section that designed and built the camp infrastructure for example kamla oversaw the construction of the crematoria buildings at the expanded auschwitz camp in poland known as birkenau in 1942 kamla began to be involved with the advanced weapons program again in the construction of secret facilities he began by building manufacturing plants and test stands for the v2 and the new messerschmitt me262 jet in august 1943 following a heavy british air raid on the panamunda army research center in northern germany it was decided to shift v1 flying bomb and v-2 missile research development and construction to special underground facilities these were created using vast amounts of slave labor kamla created the enormous middlewerk facility 3 kilometers northwest of the town of nordhausen in turingya plus its attached concentration camp at mitto baldura within the vast subterranean world the v1 and v2 was built under the supervision of nazi scientists like dr arthur rudolph and engineers like magnus von braun verna von braun's brother at middlewerk 2275 v-1 flying bombs were built and used to bombard england as well as 5200 v2 missiles also used to pound targets in england and parts of northwestern europe the facility also manufactured the revolutionary heinkel he-162 fox jaeger or people's fighter a last-ditch emergency fighter that fortunately appeared just too late to pose much of a threat to the allies as well as having a jet fuel production facility underground as well in total of sixty thousand people who passed through the middle baldura concentration camp and its sub-camps some twenty thousand perished including three hundred and fifty hang by the ss general kamla famously said at the time don't worry about the victims the work must proceed ahead in the shortest time possible all this construction meant that kamla was close to albert speer hitler's minister of armaments and war production shpeer appointed kamla his representative for special construction tasks but kamla had a strong streak of self-promotion running through him and in march 1944 he persuaded hermann goering head of the luftwaffe to appoint him head of special buildings under the fighter aircraft program this made kamla a top economic manager and more important in many regards to albert speer incredibly from building v2 production facilities on the 8th of august 1944 kamala was then appointed by heinrich himmler head of the ss to command the operations of the missiles themselves which had been under the auspices of general walter dornberger an army officer officially an overall command of v2 operations on the 31st of january 1945 kamla's command was confirmed when he became head of all missile projects in the crumbling third reich it is notable that kamla was the last officer himmler promoted to the rank of obergruppenfuhrer in 1945. he was also awarded the knights cross of the war merit cross with swords germany's highest non-combat distinguished service medal further promotion followed with hermann goering increasingly disgraced and sidelined kamla was able to further consolidate his power base by being appointed in early april 1945 the fuhrer's general plenipotentiary for jet aircraft with time fast running out kamla ordered the evacuation of vernafon brown and 500 missile technicians to the alps on the 1st of april 1945. the ss missile launching division was re-rolled as infantry kamla disobeyed the armed forces high command which had ordered him to defend the nordhausen area against the advancing americans and instead he abandoned the middleweight facility sending the valuable scientists and technicians into hiding but what about kamla's movements at war's end we know quite a bit because the british had actually targeted him for assassination some months before since february 1945 kamla had been tracked by british intelligence via enigma decrypts of his communications as part of a plan to kill ten senior ss codenamed operation little foxley the original operation foxley had been an ambitious plan to kill hitler using snipers dropped by parachute close to his alpine headquarters on the obersalzberg in southern bavaria this plan was abandoned due to arguments in britain over whether hitler due to his disastrous military decisions was more useful to the allies if left alive little foxley targeted 10 important personalities apart from dr kamla they were ss brigada fura walter schellenberg head of the ss spy service gripenfuhrer otto olendorf deputy director general of the reichs ministry of economic affairs and former head of the einsatzgrupper d death squad on the eastern front ubergruppenfuhrer gottlob berger chief of the ss recruiting office obergruppenfuhrer hans chief of the ss leadership main office obergruppenfuhrer oswald pull kamla's one-time boss at the ss main economic and administration office and also administrator of the concentration camp system ss gruppenfuhrer richard glucks in charge of the concentration camp forced labour and the supervision of medical experimentation in the camps ss gruppenfuhrer hermann feigerline himmler's liaison at fuhrer headquarters and lastly obergruppenfuhrer alfred vunenberg chief of the order police the ordnance police the british found kamla to be a difficult target to track as in the last months of the war he moved about regularly they tried to kill him on the 3rd and 4th of april 1945 when they knew he and his staff were at nordhausen massive air strikes by the raf killed 8 800 people in the nordhausen area but kamla and his staff survived they drove through the burning ruins to safety enigma decrypts revealed that kamla was in munich on the 13th of april attending a meeting with albert speer next he popped up in etto at the lindehoff palace a large castle in southwestern bavaria located near to another large underground ss lair the messerschmitt 262 jet aircraft factory at orba ramagal kamla and his immediate staff reached the castle on the 22nd of april 1945. tons of research documents were hidden nearby kamla didn't hang around for long on the 28th of april he and his staff moved to abense austria and the villa mendelssohn close by to cumla's location was avens a concentration camp its inmates being used to construct an underground armament storage facility the night of the 3rd to 4th of may 1945 just four days before the final german surrender kamla gathered his staff and announced that they would be moving to prague the capital of czechoslovakia and still under german occupation although not a popular decision the small convoy set out nonetheless kamla travelled in a vehicle with his driver ss obershafira friedrich baum his adjutant stumban fura arter struck following with second driver kurt preuk and a handful of trucks and field cars with the remaining small staff on the 4th of may following a route map marked up by prick the convoy passed through lince austria interestingly the annotations on the map ended at friesthat austria and not prague czechoslovakia also during the movement kamla and his driver baum became separated from the main convoy at this point the trail of kamla runs cold kamla had definitely been covering his tracks on the 4th of may 1945 a british unit had captured a bunker near lubeck in northern germany investigators found some ss vehicles that records showed belong to cummler's close entourage floating in the bunker's water tank was a badly decomposed corpse that carried hans kumbler's identity papers the british didn't think it was kamla the british last heard of kamla on the 7th of may 1945 when they intercepted an order he sent to the ss signal school at leitmeretz kamla's location when he sent the message is unknown the story is that kamla and baum made it to prague but they were caught up in the czech uprising against the german occupation baum was apparently shot in the left knee taken to hospital and then killed by czech partisans when the hospital was overrun interestingly records show that an oberfeld vabel friedrich baum not ss obershafira friedrich baum was admitted to the military hospital at gumunten austria on the 23rd of may 1945 after having been shot in the knee in prague on the 4th of may the ranks are a similar grade one army one ss as is the name and type of injury many ss personnel changed into regular army uniform at war's end to avoid arrest anyway army senior sergeant baum died of an infection at gumunten on the 29th of may 1945 and was buried locally a further search of army records reveals that there was never an oberfeld verbal friedrich baum army driver was this kamla's ss driver hospital records show that baum had been shot in the right knee not the left as reported in the original story many have surmised that the baum in germanton was actually a wounded kamla who had changed into an army uniform and adopted his dead driver's name escaping from prague until his infected wound caused him to seek medical attention but it was too late to save his life and he died of blood poisoning but there is a twist in this scenario in 1967 austrian authorities emptied several small cemeteries of german wartime dead and reinterred them in one large cemetery when baum's grave was opened it was found to be empty had kamla faked his own death in late may 1945 perhaps with some help another story long reported has been that kamla killed himself while on the run some of his staff who were later captured by the allies reported that kamla and some of his staff left prague on the 9th of may 1945. kamla had left in the midst of a german army convoy near to the town of pisac in southern czechoslovakia kamla had pulled over and either shot or poisoned himself then been buried by loyal staff in an unmarked grave the location of which they couldn't remember or wouldn't divulge in 1949 kamla's roadside suicide was refuted by a u.s counterintelligence corps agent working on denatification in hessen this man stated that kamla had in fact been captured by the americans in may 1945 but had escaped and was then working for the soviets in east germany had kamla actually fallen into u.s hands on or about the 9th of may 1945 at obaramagal and the entire prague story been fabricated to provide a plausible death scenario for kamla in the soon-to-be soviet occupation zone where no proper investigation could ever be made the seeming lack of urgency with which the allies searched for kamla immediately after the war suggests that they already had him in secret custody and didn't want the soviets to know for example his name was kept out of the nuremberg trials in 35 000 pages of testimony and evidence kamla who oversaw the concentration camps was mentioned a grand total of only 26 times he was also declared dead fairly quickly as well in september 1949 kamla's widow petitioned to have a husband declared legally dead this was approved without any fuss conveniently halting any official interest by intelligence organizations in searching for him at war's end kamla had only been 43 years old so it may be assumed that he would have lived on for decades after the war considering the lack of any evidence for his death apart from contradictory stories from loyal ss staff the decision seemed suspect and pointed to a very alive kamla in allied hands he had some use to the western intelligence services he knew where certain people and documents were hidden and so on though he was not a scientist like fenovon brown and the thousands of nazis the americans shipped to the states after the war in operation paperclip to populate nasa and other government agencies with the third reich's best brains a hint of a possible fate for kamla was the story of an oss officer who claimed decades later that kamla was sent to the united states and held in captivity until 1947 but that he then committed suicide two reports have emerged from declassified u.s files that seemed to show that kamla was in american hands the first dated may 30 1945 originally from the headquarters the u.s strategic air forces in europe lists kamla on a list of senior german air force personnel in u.s custody top of the list was hermann goering kamla's name appears at number 18 listed as inspector of all jet fighter units of the luftwaffe kamla's capture is noted on another document dated july 10 1945 an organizational structure of the luftwaffe in the final stages of the war kamla is listed as one of the prisoners held for interrogation what became of kamla thereafter remains a mystery did he as reported by the oss kill himself while in u.s captivity in 1947 we may never know but i think it is clear that kamla survived the war and never faced justice for his considerable crimes [Music] thanks for watching please subscribe and share and also visit my audiobook channel war stories with mark felton you can also help to support both of my channels at paypal and patreon details in the description box below you

Channel: Mark Felton Productions

Views: 348,249

Rating: 4.9422755 out of 5

Keywords: Mark Felton Productions, Hans Sammler, V-2, Messerschmitt 262, Mittelwerk, Himmler

Id: kc1bay7I3L0

Length: 18min 4sec (1084 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020