The Rise of the Fourth Reich - ThereAreNoSunglasses

NAZI WONDER WEAPONS 77security purposes as it was outside Germany yet within the Greater ThirdReich. Additionally, Kammler spoke fluent Czech.During their journey, Witkowski revealed his access to a formerly classifiedSoviet document detailing the interrogation at the end of the warof a Rudolf Schuster, who had been a member of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt,or Reich Central Security Offce, Nazi Germany’s versionof the Department of Homeland Security. Schuster revealed that in Juneof 1944, he was transferred to a special evacuation Kommando calledGeneral Plan 1945, formed by Martin Bormann to evacuate valuable scienceand technology from the Reich. Schuster, who was not privy to theplan’s overall agenda, nevertheless located much of these evacuation activitiesin the area of the Wenzeslaus Mine.Schuster’s testimony, coupled with other information, convinced Cookthat the Bormann evacuation plan had been one of the Nazis’ greatest secrets.“There has never been any offcial ac knowledgment of the existenceof the special evacuation Kommando,” he wrote. It was this unacknowledgedevacuation operation that saved the Reich’s most precious technology.Once at the mine site, Cook and Witkowski found remnants of whatonce had been a secret SS testing and production facility that may haveeven included a giant early superconductor.In 1931, the Wenzeslaus Mine suffered an accident that caused bankruptcyand a takeover by the Polish government. With the occupation ofPoland, the mine was reconditioned by the Nazis as a gigantic sciencecenter. “The whole area, in the center of which was located the main leftshaft, proved to be the interior of a deep valley, which was accessible onlythrough two ‘mountain passes,’ ” noted Witkowski. “Since the remnantsof watchtowers could be seen in them, it was obvious that the whole areahad been closely guarded, and its configuration caused that in this way thewhole valley was physically cut off [from] the outside world.” This valley,about three hundred yards across, was bisected by rail lines, and linedwith a variety of structures, concrete bunkers, and guard stations, manycovered with dirt and trees to act as camouflage. Today the site is virtuallyruins and overgrown with trees and vegetation.Cook saw that “the Germans had gone to a great deal of trouble to