What happened to Hans Kammler? (English)

Dr. Ing. Hans Friedrich Karl Franz Kammler

SS Obergruppenfuhrer and General of the Waffen-SS

* 26.08.1901 Szczecin

† Unknown

The story is confusing, there are good reasons for cloaking of the actual whereabouts of Hans Kammler. Maybe because nobody should look for him. First, the family and the SS officers who were close to him, and secondly, the Allies who let him escape.

After the disappearance of her husband, Mrs. Kammler and children were alone with no form of income. Only if her husband were dead, would she receive compensation. Even if she knew that her husband was still alive, he certainly would not be able to re-enter Germany. So it was necessary as soon as possible (according to their escape plan?) to declare him dead. And that is exactly what she did.

Two months after the alleged death, on July 9, 1945, Kammler's widow requested that he be declared dead as of  May 9, 1945.

Strange is also the Hans Kammlers file was removed from the Nuremberg court files. Bormann's remained in,  though apparently he was also dead. He was even hanged in his absence. It must have been embarrassing for the Allies to let this man slip away. There were few people in the Third Reich who were familiar with all of the wherabouts of the secret bunker and weapon installations and also directly involved in the secret weapons production, as Hans Kammler was..

As it was after the war, and still is today, disinformation on the part of the Federal Republic of Germany is omnipresent. Covering, obscuring, hiding information by manufactiuring  false reports to blind and prevent any dicussion beyond the official story.  Disapearing people who should not exist, or the existence of certain people is not wanted.

I´ll list the different ways Hans Kammler apparently died, then you will see how contradictory it all is.

On April 23, 1945, Kammler sent a radio message to his office manager in Berlin, instructing him to organize the immediate destruction of the "V-1 equipment near Berlin" and then to go to Munich. At the end of April / beginning of May Kammler was reportedly in Villa Mendelssohn in Ebensee, one of his assigned projects. On May 4, 1945, he ordered the immediate transfer of the Ebensee office to Prague.

The first version of General Hans Kammler's death is told by Albert Speer himself in his last book. In this simple version, Kammler ordered his adjutant to shoot him. The "suicide" allegedly took place in Prague, when Kammler realized that the war was lost and, according to Speer, "acted in elite SS loyalty".

Kurt Preuk: SS-Oberscharführer
Preuk personally admitted that he had seen "the corpse of Kammler" on May 9, 1945 and that he was present at his funeral.
In a later affidavit dated October 16, 1959, Preuk stated that Kammler's death date was "May 10, 1945," but he did not know the cause of death.

Heinz Zeune Surveyor (formerly SS-Sturmführer)
On September 7, 1965, Heinz Zeuner (a personal aid of Kammler) reported that Kammler had died on May 7, 1945 and his body had been observed by Zeuner, Preuk and others.

All eye witnesses were sure that the cause of death was cyanide poisoning. In their reports on Kammler's movements, Preuk and Zeuner claimed that he had left Linderhof near Oberammergau on 28 April 1945 for a tank conference in Salzburg and had then gone to Ebensee (where tank tracks were produced). According to Preuk and Zeuner, he then returned from Ebensee to visit his wife in Tyrol when he gave her two cyanide tablets. The next day, May 5, 1945, at about 4 o'clock in the morning he is said to have departed from Tyrol to Prague.

Walter Dornberger: has two versions
According to Dornberger, the V-2 rocket expert General Walter Dornberger, who was later employed by the American company Bell Aerospace, Kammler's mental and emotional state deteriorated rapidly in the last days of the war, and the general heard that Kammler assigned his assistant to shoot him if things were "hopeless".

On 4 May 1945 Kammler arrived by plane in Prague. On May 9, 1945, he defended a bunker against more than 500 Czech resistance fighters along with 21 SS men. Kammler's assistant, Sturmbannführer Starck, shot him during the attack to save him from enemy hands. Walter Dornberger claims to have heard this from eyewitnesses.

According to Dr. Werner Von Braun's own recollection of a conversation he overheard between Kammler and his aide SS obersturmbannfuhrer Starck. Kammler and Starck  discussed the possibility of eluding American capture, disguising themselves as monks in a nearby abbey. This seems to be more like Kammler, who had no intentions of surrendering himself to any of the Allied powers, but rather, intended to survive, and perhaps independently continuing the of secret weapons development project somewhere else.

Ingeborg Alix Princess zu Schaumburg-Lippe, (SS-Helps Corps)
In a letter to Kammler's wife in 1951 and 1955, she wrote and confirmed that Kammler had said goodbye to her in Prague on May 7, 1945, declaring that the Americans were after him, had made him offers that he rejected and he would not get him "alive".

Why did she not write to Ms. Kammler until 1951 and 1955? Was Kammler's death in doubt at that time? Was she covering up for someone?  Mrs. Kammler or someone else?

On August 13, 1949, a report was submitted by Oskar Packe about Kammler to the US denazification center in Hesse. The report said that Kammler had been arrested on 9 May 1945 at the Messerschmitt works in Oberammergau by US troops. However, Kammler and several other high-ranking SS officers had escaped to Austria or Italy.#

In mid-July 1945 Major Morrisson, head of the CIC office in Gmunden, interviewed an unnamed German on a numbered account associated with construction sites for the production of aircraft and rockets formerly operated by the SS. A report published years later, in late 1947 or early 1948, stated that only Kammler and two others had access to the account. The report also said that "shortly after the occupation, Hans Kammler appeared (at the time of his arrest?) at CIC Gmunden and gave a statement about the operations in Ebensee". The CIC notes to the interview give no name.

In a CIC report of April 1946, Kammler was listed among SS officers who were known to be outside Germany and were considered of particular interest to the CIC.


We do not know what happened to Hans Kammler or where he went. Also, the second-hand information about Donald W. Richardson (1917-1997)  is not credible. He is said to have told his two sons on his deathbed that he brought Kammler to the USA. How did he do this if Hans Kammler had disappeared and was outside Germany?


As with all my writings, you decide for yourself what to think and believe.