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

NICK COOK 173
"But I never saw him again. When I got back to Berlin after the war, no
one seemed to remember him."
How could this man, this monster, the most powerful individual in
Nazi Germany outside Hitler's inner circle in the last days of the war,
come to be quite so easily forgotten?
It was only outside Nordhausen's giant bombproof doors, as I gazed
again at the single wartime picture that exists of Kammler—in his
general's uniform, striding for the camera, his cap with death's head
badge enough to one side to betray more than a hint of vanity—that I
began to understand. Kammler was fair, as so many Germans are. There
was a gleam of raw intelligence behind those expressionless eyes and a
hint of cruelty about the mouth. But take away the uniform, take away the
job, the jut to the jaw and the energy in the stride, and he could have been
any average 40-year-old European male.
In the chaos of the collapsing Reich, Kammler could have gone anywhere
he wanted, assumed any persona he liked, and no one would have
been the wiser.
On April 11,1945, when the first elements of the Third U.S. Armored
Division of the First Army swept into Nordhausen, Kammler's legacy
would have been plain for the Americans to see.
Clearly, however, his war crimes were not uppermost in their minds.
When Voss was picked up by agents of the U.S. Counter-intelligence
Corps soon after hostilities ended, he told them about the existence of the
Kammlerstab at Skoda. Their reactions surprised him. They appeared so
unmoved by the notion that the special projects group contained a
Pandora's box of exotic military secrets, he concluded that U.S. intelligence
already knew.
When Voss went on to propose that they should spare no effort in
finding Kammler before the Russians got to him, the CIC agents
appeared equally uninterested.
This, from a nation that had mounted the biggest plunder operation of
all time—involving the Army, Navy and Air Force, as well as civilian
agents—to bring advanced German technology back to the United
States.
At first, I wondered if their behavior had to do with the fact that Pilsen
had fallen within the designated Russian zone of occupation. Maybe the
CIC recognized that Kammler was beyond their reach and had simply
abandoned any hope of finding him?
Then I came upon the final piece of the jigsaw.
The rapid eastward push that had brought the Third Armored
Division to Nordhausen did not stop there. Disregarding agreements