The Hidden Nazi

The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil

Dean Reuter, Keith Chester, Colm Lowery

• Publisher: Regnery History
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781621577355
• eBook ISBN: 9781621578963
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

He's the worst Nazi war criminal you've never heard of Sidekick to SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and supervisor of Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, General Hans Kammler was responsible for the construction of Hitler's slave labor sites and concentration camps. He personally altered the design of Auschwitz to increase crowding, ensuring that epidemic diseases would complement the work of the gas chambers.Why has the world forgotten this monster? Kammler was declared dead after the war. But the aide who testified to Kammler's supposed "suicide" never produced the general's dog tags or any other proof of death.Dean Reuter, Colm Lowery, and Keith Chester have spent decades on the trail of the elusive Kammler, uncovering documents unseen since the 1940s and visiting the purported site of Kammler's death, now in the Czech Republic.Their astonishing discovery: US government documents prove that Hans Kammler was in American custody for months after the war—well after his officially declared suicide.And what happened to him after that? Kammler was kept out of public view, never indicted or tried, but to what end? Did he cooperate with Nuremberg prosecutors investigating Nazi war crimes? Was he protected so the United States could benefit from his intimate knowledge of the Nazi rocket program and Germany's secret weapons? The Hidden Nazi is true history more harrowing—and shocking—than the most thrilling fiction.

CHAPTER ONE “One of Himmler’s Most Brutal and Most Ruthless Henchmen”

“You said your father was morally compromised. Where do you think he first went wrong?”

“Impossible to say, don’t you think?”

—interview of Jörg Kammler

“I’m thrilled to report I met with Jörg,” my email to Keith and Colm began. “I thought he was going to shut me out, but he didn’t. We talked for over an hour. More to follow.”

I was on the return train from Osnabrück, Germany, home of Jörg Kammler, son of SS general Hans Kammler—the man Nazi armaments minister Albert Speer had called a “most brutal and most ruthless henchman” to SS chief Heinrich Himmler.¹ I had just interviewed Jörg and was headed back to the Radisson Blu Hotel in Hamburg, my base of operations in Germany, which was two hours away. After sending the quick email to my colleagues, I began to furiously type a summary of the extraordinary encounter that had just concluded while all the details were still fresh in my mind. I would share my full notes with Keith Chester and Colm Lowery later. Before I could get three sentences into my summary, though, my computer chimed with an incoming email.

“Well done. You’ve played it just right, obviously. Can’t wait for the details.” It was Colm, emailing me from his home in Northern Ireland. Before I finished reading Colm’s email, I heard another chime—this time an email from Keith: “OMG! You’re killing it!” Then another insistent chime, again from Keith, “TELL US!!” I spent the next two hours writing up the interview—after turning off the notifications on my laptop so I could work in peace.

That morning I had walked to the Hamburg train station, just steps from my hotel, to travel to Osnabrück, which is southwest of Bremen. After having purchased a round-trip ticket at the kiosk, I found myself alone on the platform. I had come to the station not knowing the schedule, and the next train was twenty-five minutes out. I waited. I admit to being on my heels. I hadn’t been in Germany since I was a young child and it felt, well, foreign. I was also planning to show up at Jörg Kammler’s home unannounced—an uncharacteristic move for me, as I tend to be risk-averse. This could be a giant waste of time, or even lead to some sort of ugly confrontation, walking in on the surviving child of a Nazi madman. I had just one shot at interviewing him, so I did everything I could to be prepared. It was nerve-racking carrying my own high expectations and the hopes of my colleagues with me.

Sitting on a bench on the platform, oblivious to those around me, I reviewed what I knew, switching back and forth between a fistful of papers and information logged on my laptop. I was relying on a combined thirty years of research handed over to me by my colleagues—with a couple years of my own spare time thrown in.

“Some of the most heroic and dastardly acts in human reckoning occurred during the war,” Colm, our historian, had reminded me when I first got involved in this venture. “At its end, the geopolitical world had been reshaped, new superpowers had emerged, millions of people had perished, and tens of millions more people were maimed, or homeless, or refugees. Over the course of six years, almost everyone on the globe had their life changed, if not devastated, in some very personal and important way.”

I have always been perplexed by it—the whole world turned upside down when one of the most highly civilized cultures known to man went screamingly off the rails. All of this is recorded by historians and widely understood. But within this colossal landscape, one man is largely unknown to history, despite his war crimes: SS general Hans Kammler, the target of our investigation. Kammler had avoided scrutiny, apparently because of his death at the end of the war. But we had turned up evidence that Kammler was alive after the date of his supposed suicide—and that American authorities were involved in the cover-up.

Kammler’s character is as irresistible to me as it is loathsome. He became a remarkably powerful man in the Nazi hierarchy, playing a central role in some of the most violent and despicable parts of the Holocaust, ultimately ruling over Germany’s slave labor trade and its ultra-secret weapons programs. Documents compiled by Keith and Colm tell tales of Kammler’s deeds that are, frankly, so horrific that they are hard to absorb. Kammler’s rank, Obergruppenführer, was the highest possible commissioned rank in the SS. From 1942 to 1944, an extremely select group of just seventy-five Nazis was elevated to that honor. And one man alone achieved that distinction in the final year of the war: Hans Kammler. To me, that was striking.

These were my thoughts on the platform, even as the crowd grew around me—a mixture of locals and tourists, I thought. Much of our information on Kammler’s early years and career came from original documents, but some of it was from Kammler’s descendants. Colm had been in touch with various Kammler family members and associates for years, and they had been able to provide useful information, helping paint a full picture of this mysterious man. As the primary author of our book project, I was eager to meet Jörg, Hans Kammler’s son; I felt I had an obligation to hear his story before we published.

I was momentarily distracted as an eastbound train entered the station, idled for a moment, and then carried on, leaving the platform on the far side of the tracks empty of people. I had already been in touch with Jörg by email, introduced by Colm, but he had shown no interest in meeting me. So I had decided to roll the dice and show up unannounced. Jörg could provide a unique angle on his father, but I was also interested in his own story. I had read riveting accounts of the surviving children of infamous Nazis, always wondering how they dealt with the sins of their father, and I admit to some morbid curiosity: What was it like to grow up with a surname like Eichmann, Höss, or Himmler? I was lost in thought when my train pulled into the station. This was my point of no return, I thought, as I boarded and found a seat. It was only a two-hour ride, and I spent most of it with my head buried in documents, furiously scrawling questions I thought I should ask, organizing and reorganizing. I was sitting across the aisle from a young family who broke out an authentic German picnic of pickled fish, potato dishes, and some sort of slaw. The only difference from what I might have been expecting was that they weren’t costumed in Sound of Music garb, but were dressed just like I was. They spoke quietly among themselves as I continued my work, the children well-behaved, smiling at me when I looked up. I felt a little “watched,” or at least pegged as an outsider, and wondered what they were saying with their quiet voices. I wasn’t quite myself; I knew that from the way I couldn’t help asking myself questions about this innocent family. Every person I had met or even seen in Germany—from the hotel clerk, to the waiter, to the train staff and passengers—I had unfairly dropped into my war paradigm: Who were they? Did their fathers fight in the war? Were their ancestors Nazis? SS? Are they sympathizers? I was making everyone a suspect. Could it be that I was too far down the World War II rabbit hole? I needed to settle down.

Then, perhaps from nerves, I waffled a bit, changing plans midstream, using the train’s Wi-Fi to send Jörg an email, though I had planned on arriving completely unannounced. Before I had more time to agonize, we pulled into the station. I exchanged pleasant nods with the German family as I disembarked. They were traveling on. I caught a cab outside the station, amazed to see so many Mercedes taxis. The driver wouldn’t take U.S. dollars, but he would take a credit card. This was the point of no return, I thought, entering the cab—and realized that this was my second self-identified point of no return!

Without the constant distraction of my materials, which I had stowed away, I found myself getting ever more anxious in the cab as I made the final approach to the home of Kammler’s son. This was becoming real: the man I was going to accost was the offspring of a genuine Nazi sociopath. It would be an extraordinary opportunity to meet him, even a privilege to get that close to history. If I could.

Thinking I might have the door slammed in my face or that Jörg, who hadn’t responded to my email, might not even be home, I asked the cab driver to wait. The house was a modest two-story in the inner suburbs on a lot that couldn’t have been more than a quarter acre and was overgrown with bushes and foliage to the extent that I couldn’t see the door from the curb. As I approached, I realized the address was one half of a small duplex. Coming up the walk, I saw a woman in the picture window, felt as if I was stepping out of civilization, and regretted not having left a trail of bread crumbs. I admit that I may have looked over my shoulder to confirm the cab was staying. I had a momentary concern that I might never be heard from again. What was I thinking?

I rang the bell on the side door, the main entrance, and waited for what seemed like too long. The woman I had seen in the window, in her sixties or seventies, answered the door, and I identified myself, telling her that I had been in touch with Jörg and had him sent an email that I was nearby and hoping to chat—trying to minimize the intrusion. She disappeared, closing the door firmly behind her. I waited on the doorstep. She returned and asked me for my name again, then disappeared again after holding up one finger—which could mean, please wait one moment, or possibly, I only need one reason not to let you in. She was gone a long time, and I realized she didn’t even need the one reason not to let me in; she just didn’t have to come back. But she did reappear, and cautiously bade me enter. I asked for one minute to dismiss the cab. Back at the curb, I paid the driver and got my overnight bag (I was prepared to spend the night locally, if need be). When I turned around, the woman was right behind me, giving me a start. Like a ghost.

“On second thought, my husband can’t see you. He’s ill. Too ill.” Her English was good. Her thin arms crossed in front of her. “Too ill,” she repeated. So this was Mrs. Kammler. “You must go.”

“Can I just see him? Just a question or two? I’ve come all the way from the United States. Can I just say ‘Hello’?” This was totally out of character for me. As a lawyer, I can be insistent on behalf of a client, to the point of being a perfect ass. Advocating for myself, I do less well.

But I suppose in this moment I thought of myself as representing Keith and Colm. I became insistent. “I’ve come a long way. Just a minute or two, a question or two,” I repeated. Then I waited.

“For a minute or two,” she relented, her arms still crossed.

We went back up the walk and then into the kitchen where, with a silent tilt of her head, without breaking stride or looking back at me, Mrs. Kammler indicated I could leave my bag. I confirmed that Jörg wasn’t well when I saw him lying atop a hospital bed, side rails up, in the darkened parlor, which had been converted to an in-home hospital room. It was very warm and permeated with a heavy, sour odor I could not identify. Jörg had had a stroke, but he was able to sit up without raising the back of the bed, and to speak clearly—English with a heavy German accent.

I said I was sorry to disturb him and thanked him for seeing me, “especially after I had come so far,” I emphasized. “I’m sorry you didn’t see my email.” Or I may have said “emails,” making it sound as if I had given him multiple warnings of my arrival.

The house was simple but functional—austere, with the well-worn look of a lived-in home. Not a stick of new furniture in the place. When Colm told me, much later, that surviving Nazis had stashed stolen money and valuables away in preparation for a planned-for Fourth Reich, I recalled this scene and thought, The hidden money didn’t reach the second generation.

Mrs. Kammler brought in a straight-back chair from the kitchen for me and positioned it at the foot of the bed, at an odd distance, too far away. I scooched a foot or two closer as I sat down. She may have noticed. She sat in an armchair, to my right, now further from Jörg than I was, a bit outside our conversation. After introductions, Jörg seemed much more at ease and open than his wife, who repeatedly interrupted his responses and once or twice spoke to him sharply in German. When I was sure Jörg was about to consent to recording our conversation, she quickly said, “No.”

“No recording”—a short statement, punctuated by a single arched eyebrow. She repeatedly tried to call the interview to a close along the way. Again, it was unlike me, but I essentially subtly ignored her, asking “Just one more question” several times—moving forward in my chair as if I were about to rise, or just sitting mum for what seemed like too long (an old investigator’s trick) until Jörg, unable to bear the prolonged silence, began speaking again. It was positively exhilarating, like back in my government days when I was interviewing someone suspected of embezzling or outright theft. Not that Jörg or his wife had done anything remotely improper, I just saw him as a challenge—quarry, even. I thought Mrs. Kammler might be trying to protect the reputation of Hans Kammler, the family patriarch, but then wondered whether Jörg might want to publish his own book, so that she didn’t want him to share any of his exclusive information with me, at least not without something in return. In my summary later to Keith and Colm, I said, “I wonder whether his wife, and not Jörg, had been responding to all my emails over the past several months. Perhaps Jörg knew about me for the first time when I walked into his parlor. She was definitely the gatekeeper.”

I had a long list of questions, carefully sequenced, that I had planned to put to Jörg. But given the tension his wife created, I decided to rely on my memory. I have done interviews of all sorts over my career, but this one was different—an absolute rush. It felt as if I were sitting with a living relic, a talking piece of history, a true unvarnished (if not unbiased) original source. It was as if I was able to reach out and touch history directly—like holding tattered, musty documents, but being able to pose questions and expect and receive answers. Oh, how I wished it were just the two of us in the room.

To begin, Jörg confirmed for me that his father, Hans Friedrich Karl Franz Kammler, was born the son of Franz and Marie Kammler on August 26, 1901, in Stettin, in what is now northwest Poland—less than a two-hour drive from Berlin. Stettin, more a city than a town, was a major seaport at the time of Kammler’s birth with a population of just over two hundred thousand. All but a small handful of its citizens were Protestants, with fewer than 5 percent Catholics and Jews. Hans Kammler had the good fortune to be born into the majority.

“Your grandparents’ choice of name for your father is interesting: Hans Friedrich Karl Franz Kammler. Franz obviously follows from your grandfather’s name. Does the “Friedrich Karl” refer to Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the famous German architect?”

“No,” Jörg said firmly and quickly, as if he had anticipated the question, “that is a mere coincidence.” He seemed mildly offended by the question, though I don’t know why. No one but Colm could have been so thoroughly immersed in our materials as to catch this possible Kammler-Schinkel connection. Schinkel’s most noteworthy buildings, found in Berlin, were created in the early 1800s. He had also famously been commissioned by Frederick William III of Prussia to design the original Iron Cross—evoking the cross borne by the Teutonic Knights of the fourteenth century. Created in 1813, Schinkel’s Iron Cross was adopted as the symbol of the German army from 1871 to early 1918, then reintroduced in 1939 with a Swastika in the center. Issued in two grades, First Class and Second Class, the Iron Cross was awarded for bravery in battle. Hans Kammler would distinguish himself by earning both.

“Your father’s earliest years are something of a mystery to us,” I said next, “a problem for us in our book.”

“Unfortunately, I have no personal memories of my father.” Jörg was himself born in February 1940, so he was just five years old when the war ended and his father vanished. “Times were certainly hard growing up without a father. The hardest part for the Kammler family,” Jörg said, almost as if he weren’t a member, “was not knowing whether or not your father was dead. It was truly a mystery. There were many rumors that the Americans had him, that the Russians had him.” I knew Jörg was speaking of rumors of then, not now. For more than seventy years the world has believed that Kammler died at the end of the war.

“We constantly sought out soldiers and other people returning from America or Russia to get information. Other people came to us and said he was alive.” It sounded to me as if the Kammler family had sought and received information on his fate well beyond the 1948 adjudication of his death—indicatin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Introduction: Incredible
• Chapter One: “One of Himmler’s Most Brutal and Most Ruthless Henchmen”
• Chapter Two: Evil Deeds
• Chapter Three: Vengeance
• Chapter Four: On the Battlefield
• Chapter Five: Saving the Technology for the Americans
• Chapter Six: The Reveal
• Chapter Seven: The Final Days
• Chapter Eight: Nuclear Secrets
• Chapter Nine: Think Tank Kammler
• Chapter Ten: A Parallel Case
• Chapter Eleven: The Kammler Deal
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright