In the jargon of the U.S. aerospace and defense industry, however, Kammler's "think tank" would have been known by a different term— one that would have been familiar, though, to anyone who had ever been consigned to the black world.
What Kammler had established was a "special projects office," a forerunner of the entity that had been run by the bright young colonels of the USAF's stealth program in the 1970s and 1980s; a place of vision, where imagination could run free, unfettered by the restraints of accountability. Exactly the kind of place, in fact, you'd expect to find antigravity technology, if such an impossible thing existed.
Chapter 16
According to Agoston, Kammler set up his special Stab (staff) for these visionary projects in a highly compartmentalized section of the Skoda Works in the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the vassal Nazi state of Czechoslovakia. Through the brutal administration of Heydrich, the Protector of Bohemia-Moravia until his assassination in June 1942, the SS had come to treat the industry of the entire Czech region as its own private domain. In March 1942, Himmler formally took over the operations of the Skoda Works, a giant industrial complex centered on the Czech towns of Pilsen and Brno, as an SS-run operation. In the process, he managed to bypass Speer, who knew nothing of the arrangement until Hitler told him it was a fait accompli. With the S S in charge of Skoda, Hitler tasked Himmler with evaluation and, where appropriate, duplication of captured enemy weapon systems whose performance outstripped the Germans' own. Under the leadership of Skoda's director general, honorary SS-Standartenführer (colonel) Wilhelm Voss, this project was completed in record time. On May 11, 1942, Voss was able to explain to Himmler what it was that had enabled him to progress the development of these back-engineered weapon systems so successfully—"by concentrating all developments for the Waffen-SS in the liaison staff of Skoda and Bruenn [Brno] weapons plants, and assuring systematic, intense cooperation with the SS Ordnance Office."
In effect, Voss was telling Himmler that he had been able to move as quickly and effectively as he had thanks to the removal of the overweening bureaucracy that went hand in hand with projects administered by Speer's armaments office.
As far as the regular mechanisms of the Reich procurement machine were concerned, then, the Skoda operation was to all intents and purposes beyond oversight. This would set the scene for the Kammler special projects group, which was so deeply buried, so beyond regular control, it was as if it did not exist. Voss, "tall, quietly reserved in manner, graying, upright and elegant," would become Kammler's alter ego in the administration of the special projects group. Seven years older than the SS general and with a reputation as an industrialist that was as solid as a rock, Voss, with his nuts-and-bolts background, was the ideal complement to Kammler's driven bureaucrat. Even better, the two men had a task from Hitler and Himmler to run the special projects group without the least interference from Goering or Speer. Apparently, neither Goering, head of the Luftwaffe, nor Speer, head of all armaments programs, would have the least idea it existed.
But for Tom Agoston, in fact, the reality of the Kammlerstab might never have emerged at all.
Agoston was a Cambridge graduate who had served during the war as an air photo interpreter. After the war, he traveled to Germany to report on the Nuremberg war crimes trials. It was there that he ran into Voss.
Though not indicted by the war crimes tribunal, Voss was so close to the Nazi elite that his name was constantly on the lips of the prosecutors.
"Everyone wanted to interview Voss, but they couldn't find him," Agoston told me over the phone from his home in Germany a half century later, the satisfaction still evident in his voice. "As he was sheltering in my house at the time, this was hardly surprising."
In the course of several extended interviews in 1949, Voss unburdened himself of the whole Skoda story, speaking of his activities there with "unique frankness."
Tired and disillusioned, Voss was patently grateful for Agoston's company and when the subject of the Kammler Group surfaced, he told the reporter everything.
The Kammler special projects office was regarded by the select few who knew about it as the most advanced high-technology research and development center within the Third Reich. It was totally independent of the Skoda Works' own R&D division, but used Skoda for cover.
All funding for the programs at the Kammlerstab was channeled through Voss, who reported alongside Kammler directly to Himmler. The scientists were culled from research institutes all over the Reich, chosen for their acumen as engineers and scientists, not for their allegiance to the party.
"Many scientists, anxious to see their work in print, even if it was kept top secret, prepared papers for a central office of scientific reports, which circulated them to specific recipients. Some of these reports were used as the basis for selecting candidates for employment at Skoda," Agoston wrote.
Once recruited to the special projects group, whether they liked it or not, the scientists set about their work, their activities protected by a triple ring of security provided by SS counter-intelligence specialists assigned specially for the task.
These security rings were established by Himmler around Skoda's sites at Pilsen and Brno and their administrative center in Prague.
Voss described the activities of the scientists at the Kammlerstab as beyond any technology that had appeared by the end of the war— working on weapon systems that made the V-l and the V-2 look pedestrian. Among these were nuclear power plants for rockets and aircraft, highly advanced guided weapons and antiaircraft lasers. The latter were so far ahead of their time that by the end of the 20th century there was still no official confirmation of laser weapons having entered service, despite the best efforts of the Russians and the Americans.
In March 1949, several weeks, after he briefed Agoston, Voss was pulled in for questioning by the U.S. Counter-intelligence Corps.
Shortly afterward, he wrote in secret to Agoston and requested that die heisse angelegenheit—"the hot matter" — they had discussed earlier that year was not for publication.
Voss had told the CIC agents about the range of research activities that had been pursued by the special projects group and they informed him, in no uncertain terms, that he was never to speak about the Kammlerstab or its programs to anyone.
Voss gave them his word, neglecting to tell them, of course, that he had already briefed Agoston.
Agoston duly honored Voss' request to put a lid on the matter, but with Voss' death in 1974 he was absolved of his obligation and began picking up the threads of the story again. Voss' interrogation reports should have been freely available under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, but despite persistent requests, Agoston was told they were unavailable; that there was no record, in fact, of any such interrogations ever having taken place.
I recalled from the Lusty documents I had examined in Washington a report that had been filed by OSS agents, forerunners of the CIA, from Austria in April 1945. Bundled into a collection of unprocessed notes on Nazi high-technology weapons "targets" examined by U.S. intelligence specialists, the report had mentioned a location in Vienna where experiments had supposedly been conducted on "antiaircraft rays" — laser weapons.
"Research activity is conducted in a house at the above address (87, Weimarerstr. Vienna). Research personnel were not allowed to leave house (reported hermetically sealed)."
Funny, I thought, how this much later on in the investigation I saw things through a markedly different prism. At the time, I'd been focused on the technology. Now, the fact that the Germans had been working on directed energy weapons was subordinate to a subtly different observation: that the Nazis had operated a compartmentalized security structure like the one now operated by the black world.