ScienceDirect - Technol Rep Tohoku Univ ... - Garryck Osborne

NICK COOK 169
They could have had little idea that he was planning to bargain them
for his freedom—for his life.
What did Kammler hope to trade? The rockets were gone. The jets
were gone. That left the "other developments" he had told Speer about.
On April 17, the GIs of General Devers' 6th Army Group were just
days—hours, perhaps—from Munich. All Kammler would have to do
was hole up and wait for them.
But what evidence there is suggests he did something quite else.
There is testimony that Kammler moved on from there to Prague, a
journey that would have taken him right past the Skoda Works at Pilsen.
Voss had spoken about nuclear propulsion, highly advanced guided
weapons and lasers. What other secrets resided within the Kammlerstab?
If the witness testimony was accurate, if Kammler did move into
Czechoslovakia, what was so precious about the inner workings of the
"special projects group"—this Pandora's box of advanced weaponry—
that it compelled him to go east, not west? Toward the Russians, of all
people?
Nothing in Kammler's carefully coordinated life happened by chance.
I knew that much. The documentation led nowhere. Even Agoston had
reached the end of the trail.
All that was left, was Kammler's lasting legacy: the underground
factories that riddled his kingdom, built to his carefully exacting
standards, forged by the Holocaust that was also largely of his making.
I requested some time off work and booked myself a fly-drive package
to Hanover. From there, with a good rental car, I would be in the Harz
Mountains less than two hours after the wheels of the aircraft greased the
airport tarmac.