Hans Kammler

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Hans Kammler (1932)

Hans Friedrich Karl Franz Kammler (born August 26, 1901 in Stettin ; died May 9, 1945 near Prague ) was a German architect , director of construction and armaments projects in the German Reich , SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen-SS . As the head of SS construction, he was responsible for all concentration camp buildings , including the gas chambers and crematoria . Towards the end of the war he triggered the massacre in the Arnsberg Forest , in which 208 slave laborers were murdered in Warstein from March 21 to 23, 1945 .

Life

Education and life until 1933

His father Franz Kammler was first lieutenant in the army , who later rose to become colonel of the infantry. From 1908 to 1918 Hans Kammler attended school and humanistic grammar schools in Bromberg , Ulm and Danzig , where he passed the school leaving examination in 1919 .

Kammler was very nationally conservative and therefore joined the 2nd Leib-Hussar Regiment "Queen Victoria of Prussia" No. 2 as a volunteer at the beginning of February 1919 . Because of the threat of demobilization of his unit, he moved from the end of May to the end of July 1919 to the Roßbach Freikorps in the border guard . In October 1919, Kammler began studying architecture with a specialization in structural engineering at the TH Danzig . He also studied one semester at the TH Munich . During his studies, Kammler was a member of the striking student association ATV Cimbria. On October 25, 1923, he graduated from the TH Danzig with the academic degree of Diplomingenieur .

As part of his training, he worked from 1924 as a government construction manager in the Prussian state service in building construction. From February 1924 to February 1925 he was in charge of the construction of the large housing estate in Zehlendorf . From 1925 to 1928 he designed and supervised functional buildings for authorities such as garages, workshops and others. He planned settlements and individual settlement houses, took part in competitions for general development plans and carried out large-scale buildings. On February 4, 1928, he passed the state examination and was appointed government master builder. The strength of the young architect was not so much in the design as in the planning and organization of work processes for larger construction projects . After three years of unemployment until March 1931, Kammler became a part-time scientific clerk at the Reich Research Society for Economic Efficiency in Building and Housing.

On June 14, 1930 he married Jutta Horn (born April 12, 1908 in Naumburg ). The couple Kammler had several children, including Jörg Kammler (1940-2018), who was a professor of political science in Kassel and published, among other things, writings about deserters in the Nazi era and Georg Lukács .

From April 1, 1931 to September 1, 1933, Kammler was employed by the Reich Ministry of Labor in the Foundation for the Promotion of Building Research in Berlin . On 29 November 1932 he was at the TH Hannover Doctor of Engineering Sciences PhD .

Engagement with the National Socialists and professional advancement

Kammler's SS ranks
date rank
April 20, 1936 SS-Untersturmführer
August 1, 1940 SS standard leader
June 1, 1941 SS-Oberführer
April 20, 1942 SS Brigadefuhrer and
Major General of the Waffen SS
January 30, 1944 SS group leader and
lieutenant general of the Waffen SS
March 1, 1945 SS-Obergruppenführer and
General of the Waffen SS

Towards the end of the Weimar Republic , Kammler's political views became radicalized. Kammler joined the NSDAP at the beginning of March 1932 ( membership number 1.011.855) and on May 20, 1933 the SS (SS number 113.619).

Kammler's professional advancement began with his involvement with the National Socialists. From 1931 to 1933 he was a volunteer clerk in an engineering department in the Gauleitung Greater Berlin of the NSDAP, was temporarily responsible for Aryan certificates in the SS and headed the housing and settlement department in the Gauleitung Greater Berlin from 1933 to 1936. In 1937 he appeared as a training speaker for the Berlin police. From 1933 on, Kammler led the Reichsbund der allotment gardeners and small settlers in Germany on behalf of his party , which had over a million members.

On October 10th, Kammler was accepted into the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture (RMEL). As a consultant for rural settlements in Department VII, he also headed the Reich Advisory Committee for Building Contracts, was a member of the Senate of the German Academy for Building Research and a liaison officer of the RMEL to all Reich Ministries in the field of building regulations. In August 1934, Kammler was appointed government councilor in the RMEL. On June 1, 1936, Kammler was transferred to the Reich Ministry of Aviation (RLM) as a consultant for construction matters . On November 1, 1936, he was promoted to the government building council and on June 1, 1937 to the regional building council. In 1939 he was promoted to group leader building construction at the RLM.

On August 1, 1940, Kammler became a full-time employee of the SS and was transferred to the SS main office for administration and economics . On June 1, 1941, he switched to the Waffen SS and was appointed head of the SS Main Office for Households and Buildings . After founding the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) in early February 1942, he headed Office Group C (Construction) of the WVHA until the end of the war.

Here he was in charge of all concentration camp construction projects, including the gas chambers and crematoria, which is why he can be regarded as a “technocrat of extermination”. In the late summer of 1942, for example, he ordered the plans for the new crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau to be revised, the cremation of 2,650 corpses per day (80,000 / month) that had been projected up to that point. He also became general advisor for the Führer’s German construction program on Robert Ley's staff .

From August 1943, Kammler was responsible for expanding the underground production facilities for jet engines, jet aircraft , engines and the A4 rocket program . On September 1, 1943, he was appointed "Special Representative of the Reichsführer SS for the A4 program" under SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl by the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler . Under Kammler's direction, rocket production began to be relocated underground to the Kohnstein tunnel system . After the war, Albert Speer praised the construction of the so-called “ Mittelwerk ” near Nordhausen as a “really unique act”.

With B8 Bergkristall , Kammler created one of the largest and most modern underground factories for Me-262 jet fighter planes in St. Georgen an der Gusen not far from Mauthausen from 1944 onwards .

In August 1944 he was assigned responsibility for the deployment of the V2 rocket, which took place under the aegis of the SS. For this purpose, Kammler was subordinated to the SS Division zV (for retaliation), which had several launcher batteries . At the beginning of 1945 the workforce was around 11,000. The rocket positions were in the Netherlands, Belgium and West Germany at the end of 1944. From September 1944 rocket attacks took place on London , Paris and later on Antwerp and Brussels . With the advance of the Allies , the missile positions in Belgium and the Netherlands had to be abandoned; The positions in the west of Germany also had to be evacuated.

From September 1944, the division's headquarters were in Suttrop near Warstein. In March 1945, columns of several hundred forced laborers in retreat passed through nearby Warstein every day . The forced laborers - men, women and children - were completely emaciated and some of them begged the population. They were guarded by the Volkssturm and were locked up in the evening together with local forced labor groups in makeshift camps (including the rifle hall on the Herrenberg) in Warstein. The large number of returnees made the situation very confusing and the local authorities were unable to provide adequate care for the forced laborers. When, shortly before March 20, 1945, Kammler got into a traffic jam with his vehicles from masses of forced laborers flowing back and also came across an unguarded camp of forced laborers who were roasting poultry at the campfire while walking through the woods, he was very upset and exclaimed, this People represent a tremendous threat to the security of the headquarters and to the civilian population. Since the local authorities did not seem to be able to control the situation, Kammler ordered a large number of forced laborers to be shot to restore order. Thereupon, from March 21 to 23, 1945, during the massacre in the Arnsberg Forest, in the absence of Kammler at three locations in the Arnsberg Forest (including in Warstein and Suttrop), on the orders of officers subordinate to him, 208 members of these forced labor groups were shot by soldiers of the division, including women and children.

Kammler's death

On April 3, 1945, Kammler was with Adolf Hitler for the last time and obviously gave him hope. “Kammler does an excellent job and one has high hopes for him.” ( Goebbels' diary April 4, 1945). While Kammler had given the dashing general in the Führerbunker , on April 13th he indicated his plans for the future to Speer. The war was lost, and it would be better to leave now. He wanted to get in touch with the Allies and offer them the latest armaments technology in exchange for his personal freedom.

After April 23, 1945, Kammler first went to Ebensee in Austria , where there was a meeting with SS leaders, and on the morning of May 4 to Prague . To the journalist Gunter d'Alquen , Kammler prophesied “that we will experience something else in Prague”. The Prague uprising began on the evening of May 4th . On May 9, 1945, the Red Army occupied the city.

Kammler died of suicide on the evening of May 9, 1945 . This became apparent in the course of the trial that began on December 9, 1957 in Arnsberg against the subordinates of Kammlers because of the massacre of forced laborers in the Arnsberg Forest committed by his unit from March 20 to 22, 1945. The decision of the regional court stated that Kammler, accompanied by his orderly officer and a driver, was in Prague at the beginning of May 1945 and experienced the Prague uprising and the surrender of the Wehrmacht . It is also reported that Kammler fled the city with two cars on May 9th. After saying on previous days that “it was no longer of any use to him”, he had a stop in a wooded area south of Prague. He asked his companions to make their way to Germany and went into the forest. A short time later he was found dead there by his orderly officer, SS-Untersturmführer Zeuner, and his driver Preuk. He had apparently taken his own life with the help of potassium cyanide . The body was then buried makeshiftly on the spot by those present. In the book Vier Prinzen zu Schaumburg-Lippe, Kammler and von Behr , a letter from the witness Ingeborg Alix Princess zu Schaumburg-Lippe (1901-1996), who was then a leader in the SS helper corps , is quoted to Jutta Kammler, in which the last few days and Kammler's escape from Prague and his intention to commit suicide to avoid capture. She also confirmed the suicide in the letter.

On September 7, 1948, at the request of the widow Jutta Kammler, the Charlottenburg District Court had judged that May 9, 1945 was the time of death of Hans Kammler. The judgment was based on the statements of Kammler's former driver Kurt Preuk and his orderly officer Heinz Zeuner.

In 2014, the historian Rainer Karlsch doubted that Kammler died by suicide in 1945. In 1945 he went into the protection of the US secret services . In 2019, Karlsch and the Jena journalist Frank Döbert presented two new documents from US archives for his controversial thesis that Kammler was still alive at least in November 1945 and that the Americans had access to him. Once a report by Colonel Lloyd K. Pepple from the headquarters of the United States Strategic Air Forces (USSTAF) on May 30, 1945, in which he reports on prominent German prisoners and captured military equipment, including Hermann Göring, Albert Speer, Erhard Milch, Karl Koller and Kammler as No. 18 on the list as inspector general of the jet fighter units, together with the Air Force Generals Josef Kammhuber , Karl Bodenschatz and Hubert Weise . The second document is an instruction from Brigadier General George McDonald, who was responsible for the search for and seizure of German military technology for the USAFE's intelligence service , to the chief interrogator of the USAFE intelligence service Major Ernst Englander dated November 2, 1945, Speer, Kammler and Karl Saur asked about underground production facilities.

Fiction

The character of Hans Kammler found literary processing in the novel The Trojan by Eric Verna (2013). Kammler also appears in the novel The General of the Last Battalion (2014) by Dan König .

Kammler also appears in the novel The Last Experiment by Philip Kerr (2009), set in Argentina in 1950. Reiner Merkel claims to be a factual novel.

In the science fiction story Finklbergs Plan by Gerd Bedszent (printed in the anthology Heimkehr. Thüringen - Morgen und Übermorgen , Edition TES, 2015), Kammler's body is found in a previously unknown rocket tunnel in Kohnstein.

literature

  • Michael Thad Allen: The Business of Genocide - The SS, Slave Labor and the Concentration Camps. London 2002.
  • Rainer Fröbe: Hans Kammler, technocrat of destruction. In: Ronald Smelser , Enrico Syring (Ed.): The SS. Elite under the skull. 30 résumés. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000, pp. 305-319.
  • Niels Gutschow: mania for order. Architects plan in the Germanized East 1939–1945. (= Bauwelt Foundations . 115). Birkhäuser, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-7643-6390-8 .
  • Rainer Karlsch : Hitler's bomb. The secret history of the German nuclear weapon tests. DVA, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-421-05809-1 .
  • Rainer Karlsch, Heiko Petermann (ed.): For and against Hitler's bomb. Waxmann Verlag, Münster / New York 2007, ISBN 978-3-8309-1893-6 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
  • Walter Naasner (Hrsg.): SS-Wirtschaft und SS-Verwaltung - The SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt and the economic enterprises under its supervision. (= Publications of the Federal Archives. 45a). Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-7700-1603-3 .
  • Dean Reuter / Colm Lowery / Keith Chester: The hidden Nazi. The untold story of America's deal with the devil , Washington, DC (Regnery History) 2019. ISBN 9781621577355
  • Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Extermination: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-78245-2 . ( Dissertation from the University of Bochum , 1999).
  • Jens-Christian Wagner (ed.): Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp 1943–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent exhibition at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0118-4 .

Movies

  • Hitler's secret weapons chief - on the trail of Hans Kammler. Compilation film, Germany, 2014, 30:20 min., Script and director: Stefan Brauburger, production: ZDF , series: ZDF-History , first broadcast: June 8, 2014 on ZDF, synopsis by ARD .

Web links

Commons : Hans Kammler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Rainer Fröbe: Hans Kammler, technocrat of destruction. In: Ronald Smelser, Enrico Syring (ed.), The SS. Elite under the skull. 30 CVs , Paderborn 2000, p. 306 f.
  2. ↑ Biographical data from Jörg Kammler. In: VSA-Verlag . The evidence of Jörg Kammler as the son of Hans Kammler is in: Alexander vom Hofe, Vier Prinzen zu Schaumburg-Lippe, Kammler and von Behr , Vierprinzen SL, Madrid 2013, p. 67; Review by Klaus Graf .
  3. ↑ Andreas Schulz, Günter Wegmann, Dietrich Zinke: The generals of the Waffen-SS and the police: The military careers of the generals, as well as the doctors, veterinarians, intendants, judges and ministerial officials in the general rank. (= Deutschlands Generale und Admirale , Volume 2.) Edited by Dermot Bradley, Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 2005, ISBN 3-7648-2592-8 , pp. 441-457.
  4. ↑ Hans Kammler: To the evaluation of land development for the metropolitan settlement . Dissertation. TH Hannover, 1932.
  5. ^ A b Walter Naasner (Ed.): SS economy and SS administration. Düsseldorf 1998, p. 338 f.
  6. ^ A b Walter Naasner (Ed.): SS economy and SS administration. Düsseldorf 1998, p. 340 f.
  7. ^ Rainer Fröbe: Hans Kammler, technocrat of destruction. In: Ronald Smelser; Enrico Syring (ed.): The SS. Elite under the skull. 30 résumés. Paderborn 2000.
  8. ↑ note of a telephone call on 08.09.1942 (Kurt tester) Pot & sons with Kammler. (jpg) Retrieved June 11, 2014 (56 kB).
  9. ↑ Heinz Dieter Hölsken: The V-Waffen: Origin - Propaganda - War use. Stuttgart 1984; Michael Neufeld: The rocket and the Reich. Berlin 1995; Volkhard Bode , Gerhard Kaiser : Rocket Traces: Peenemünde 1936–1994. Berlin 1995; Jens-Christian Wagner : Production of Death. The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Wallstein 2001.
  10. ^ Rudolf A. Haunschmied , Jan-Ruth Mills, Siegi Witzany-Durda: St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen - Concentration Camp Mauthausen Reconsidered . BoD, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8334-7440-8 , p. 127 ff.
  11. ↑ According to Reinhard Brahm, the war diaries of the Retaliation Division are in the Federal Archives. see under web links.
  12. ^ Arnsberger Rundschau. January 29, 1959.
  13. ↑ See Albert Speer: Sklavenstaat.
  14. ↑ Conversation note between Jürgen Thorwald and Gunter d'Alquen from 13./14. March 1951, IfZ Munich, ZS 2 / I, Bl. 71.
  15. ↑ See p. 17 in the case 458 because of the murders in the Arnsberg Forest in the collection of decisions for all German Nazi criminal proceedings, Justice and Nazi crimes . There, the decision of the Arnsberg Regional Court 580212 of February 12, 1958 in the proceedings for the murder of 208 forced laborers against several defendants in the crime scenes Langenbachtal, Eversberg and Suttrop is recorded. On page 17 of 87 pages, the detailed circumstances of the suicide are verifiably listed according to the information provided by former orderly officer Kammlers, SS-Untersturmführer Zeuner, and his driver Preuk. Abridged version of the judgment Case No. 458 , Crime Category: Final Phase Crimes: Justice and Nazi Crimes, Vol. XIV, Case No. 438 - 464 (1956 - 1958). In: Justice and Nazi crimes. The German criminal proceedings for Nazi homicidal crimes , no judgment text reproduced, only available on order.
  16. ↑ Alexander vom Hofe: Four princes of Schaumburg-Lippe, Kammler and von Behr. Vierprinzen SL, Madrid 2013. Online file as PDF at the Free University of Berlin.
  17. ↑ Rainer Karlsch: What became of Hans Kammler? In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , June 15, 2014, excerpts .
  18. ^ Rainer Karlsch: A staged suicide. Did Hitler's "last bearer of hope", SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler, survive the war? In: Journal of History . Volume 62, 2014, Issue 6, pp. 485–505.
  19. ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Did the USA hide the chief engineer of the SS? In: Die Welt , June 12, 2014.
  20. ↑ Rainer Karlsch: What became of Hans Kammler? In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , June 15, 2014, No. 24, pp. 52/53, beginning of article and excerpts .
  21. ↑ Ulf von Rauchhaupt : The missing SS-General. In: FAZ . August 18, 2019, accessed August 18, 2019 .
  22. ↑ Döbert, Karlsch, Hans Kammler, Hitler's Last Hope, in American Hands , Cold War International History Project, Wilson Center, August 18, 2019
  23. ↑ ISBN 978-3-8495-7145-0 .
  24. ↑ ISBN 978-3-499-24923-5
  25. ↑ Reiner Merkel: Hans Kammler - manager of death. A “German” career. August von Goethe Literaturverlag, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-8372-0817-7 .
personal data
SURNAME Kammler, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kammler, Hans Friedrich Karl Franz (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect, SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen-SS as well as head of construction and armament projects in the Third Reich
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH May 9, 1945
Place of death near Prague