Hans Kammler (26 August 1901 – after October 1945[a]) was an SS-Obergruppenführer responsible for Nazi civil engineering projects and its top secret V-weapons program.

He 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.

[1] Due to Himmler's desire to increase the pace and scale of SS construction activities, Kammler was released as an adviser to the Reichskommissariat for the Reinforcement of Germandom, so his technical and managerial competencies could be exploited.

[12] On 19 December 1941, Kammler updated Himmler about the slow progress at both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek, remarking that construction was delayed due to the freezing weather, lack of materials, and insufficient manpower.

"[15] For instance, in his capacity within the WVHA, Kammler oversaw the installation of more efficient cremation facilities at Auschwitz-Birkenau, when the Nazis converted it into an extermination camp.

[16][17] Under Kammler's supervision, new crematoria were planned during August 1942 at Birkenau to facilitate burning up to one-hundred twenty thousand corpses per month.

[21] As the SS construction chief, Kammler was selected to oversee the project—along with representatives Gerhard Degenkolb and Karl Maria Hettlage from Speer's ministry—which began at a huge fuel storage facility in Thuringia as Mittelwerk GmbH.

[21] The secret weapons projects for which Kammler was given responsibility included manufacturing both the Messerschmitt Me 262 and the V-2, which Kammler—in a construction effort of ruthless brutality and speed—had in production before the end of 1943.

[28] But in March 1944 Kammler had Göring appoint him as his delegate for "special buildings" under the fighter aircraft program, which made him one of the war economy's most important managers.

[32] On 31 January 1945, Hitler named Kammler head of all missile projects, but by this time the lack of explosives was critical and the program was winding down.

[28] In late March 1945, Kammler, ordered the ZV division (in German) (units that operated the V-2 rockets) to execute forced laborers and their families (200 men, women, and children) after his car was held up on a crowded road in the Sauerland.

Since the last V-2 on the western front had been launched in late March, on 5 April Kammler was charged by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht to command the defense of the Nordhausen area, where Mittelwerk was located.

[2] A wartime diary, relating to the surrender of the mountain resort town Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Allied troops, reports the arrival of Kammler and some 600 staff in a motorised column carrying "high-quality research material" in Oberammergau on 22 April 1945.

[39] In Oberammergau, 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 May, British intelligence intercepted a message signed by Kammler asking the SS unit at the Leitmeritz concentration camp, a suspected V-3 production site, to report the arrival of his staff there.

On 2 November 1945, however, Brigadier General George Clement McDonald (1892-1969), the director of intelligence of the US Air Forces in Europe, acting under the authority of the Air Force Intelligence Service chief in Washington, DC, commissioned the interrogation of Kammler to chief investigator Ernst Englander, indicating particular interest in German underground installations.

[1] Both Preuk's and Zeuner's accounts are judged to be "fictitious narratives that ... only served the purpose of obscuring the actual events and supporting the pension claims of Jutta Kammler for which her husband had to be officially declared deceased".

[2] In a 1969 book, Wernher von Braun: Mein Leben für die Raumfahrt, journalist Bernd Ruland [de] claimed Kammler arrived in Prague by aircraft on 4 May 1945, following which, he and 21 SS men defended a bunker against an attack by more than 500 Czech resistance fighters on 9 May.

Some support for this version of events came from letters written by Ingeborg Alix Prinzessin zu Schaumburg-Lippe, a female member of the SS-Helferinnenkorps, to Kammler’s wife in 1951 and 1955.

[1] US occupation forces conducted various inquiries into 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.

Original blueprints of Kammler’s major projects were later found in the personal property of Samuel Goudsmit, the scientific leader of the Alsos Mission.

In mid-July 1945, the head of the Gmunden CIC office, Major Morrisson, interviewed an unnamed German on the issue of a numbered account associated with construction sites for plane and missile production formerly run by the SS.

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