ZDF - Hitlers Secret Weapons Manager (2020)
When SS General Hans Kammler, a key figure in the Nazis' secret weapons programme, vanished in 1945 he was said to have taken his own life. Yet recently discovered documents cast doubt on this claim. ZDF History shows evidence of this for the first time. A US Air Force Secret Service document dated May 30, 1945 lists a number of high-ranking German prisoners of war who are available for interrogation alongside Albert Speer and Hermann Goering, Hans Kammler is also included – three weeks after his alleged death. In November 1945, the intelligence chief of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe ordered Kammler to be interrogated because of his knowledge of the most important bombproof underground armaments facilities, as knowledge about this could be of importance for future wars waged with rockets and atomic bombs. Other documents demonstrate the SS general's far-reaching responsibilities over the secret projects missiles, nuclear energy, and jet aircraft. He also controlled a network of important underground armaments sites and research facilities. Did the man, described as the “technocrat of death,” a man behind Hitler's secret weapons program survive the war? Was SS General Hans Kammler covertly brought to the USA to safeguard his knowledge? Kammler controlled a widespread network of underground production sites vital to the German war effort. But Kammler was not merely in charge of the latest state of the art weapons technology. The former architect and civil engineer was also one of the key figures behind the construction of concentration camps and the systematic employment of their inmates as forced labourers. In the end, he escaped being charged as a war criminal at the Nuremberg trials. The disappearance and the two lives of Hans Kammler — a story of empty graves and questions that still call for answers. This absorbing documentary investigates the various rumours concerning Kammler's fate, including the possibility that the Allies considered his knowledge of sufficient value to have him covertly spirited away across the Atlantic, behind a convenient smokescreen of mystery and confusion.
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