Top Secrets in Ludwikowice/Ludwigsdorf

[stellung]

I highly doubt Hans Kammler was captured alive. The American Counter-Intelligence Corps was given various books with photos and descriptions of wanted Nazis, including members of the SS. in 1944, OSS reports indicate certain Nazis were in South America making preparations in case things went badly for Germany, preparing for the escape of their comrades. A Ju 390 was reported missing at the end of the war. Some German aircraft flew to Spain.

[paolosilv]

Why? He had a great deal of knowledge of classified information. The other stories are just rumors. The fact that there is so little information available through the National Archives (see Tom Agoston's book, "Blunder" and "Devil or Technocrat?"), that it seems highly unlikely he just committed suicide, otherwise why the secrecy? He had plenty of intel to sell the Allies, and since the US Third Army captured the Peenemunde scientists on May 3, why couldn't Kammler have made a deal with them?

[stellung]

There is every indication that the Nazis were preparing for a possible defeat. Men, equipment and monies were being sent out of Germany. I don't think Kammler died or committed suicide. I have read the book by Mr. Agoston.

I find it unbelievable that Mr. Agoston refers to the V-2 assembly complex being left behind as naive. The Americans and the Russians both had examples of captured V-1s and V-2s, plus auxiliary equipment. The Americans removing completed rockets and parts for a total of about 100 in all before the Russians took over the zone. All the Americans had to do was go to the various underground assembly areas to get what they wanted. Hans Kammler was plenopotentiary/overseer of these projects. He did not actually build the aircraft and rockets, he sifted through the proposals and indicated which would go forward and which would be shelved. The people who actually built them were the prize. I think it is more likely that Kammler left the Prague area with plans and details of things the Allies would not get to see.

In 1946, the Americans determined that a cache of documents remained in Czechoslovakia and staged an illegal incursion. When discovered, it appears they were ready with another set of boxes to hand over to the Czech authorities.

[Simon Gunson]

Monzanite deposits containing Thorium oxides were mined quite close to the tunnel complex at Wüstegiersdorf (now Gluzyca). 120 Danish and Norwegian nuclear scientists were employed at the site and 63 are said to have been executed by the SS at the end of the war to keep secret the research conducted there. One secret project at the complex relates to a new fighter plane called the V-7.

Hi Simon,

any information on the scientists supposedly executed? I'd imagine that the loss of such a huge part of the Scandinavian physics fraternity would have been investigated or at least drawn some attention?

All the best,

Zeb

Zeb I take your point that 120 scientists disappearing at once would create a noticable stir in Norwegian society. Norway is a country comparable in size to New Zealand where I live and is in effect a very small society where everyone knows someone who knows someone. Norway would have been the same.

Having said that Norwegian scientist Rolf Wideroe worked on the Nazi Bell device, though mainly for a plasma physics laboratory in Hamburg. Later in the war he worked with a plasma physics laboratory at Dresden which was headed by Max Steenbeck for Baron Manfred von Ardenne's organisation. When Dresden was destroyed in February 1945, Wideroe evacuated the surviving laboratory equipment south to Kreis Ebermannstadt.

Wideroe worked for NEBB or Norsk Elektrische Brown Boverie along with other electrical engineers and scientists on German projects. It is perhaps possible that scientists is a term being loosely applied to a group comprised of scientists, engineers and technicians working in Germany like Wideroe did as expatriates.

Many Norwegians flocked to join the SS Viking Division and one never hears much about their identities either.

The original claim came from Witkowski's hand transcribed notes copied from Sporrenberg's depositions to Polish authorities whilst he was being interrogated for war crimes. Notably in relation to the Bell execution of 62 or 63 persons described as POWs at Pattig.

Loosely described I understand the SS unit under Sporrenberg's command which carried out these attrocities was known as the Gorlitz Division. It was responsible for policing the Gross Rosen work camps around lower Silesia.

I am in correspondence by snail mail with Prof Moldawa in Poland. He was a civil engineer engaged in the the Reise project and shall ask him if he can clarify. The Professor wrote a book in Polish back in the 1960s which claimed some interesting things about projekt Reise. In particular that the tunnel complex was part of the nazi atomic bomb effort and also produced components for V-2 rockets.

[Simon Gunson]

There is every indication that the Nazis were preparing for a possible defeat. Men, equipment and monies were being sent out of Germany. I don't think Kammler died or committed suicide. I have read the book by Mr. Agoston.

I find it unbelievable that Mr. Agoston refers to the V-2 assembly complex being left behind as naive. The Americans and the Russians both had examples of captured V-1s and V-2s, plus auxiliary equipment. The Americans removing completed rockets and parts for a total of about 100 in all before the Russians took over the zone. All the Americans had to do was go to the various underground assembly areas to get what they wanted. Hans Kammler was plenopotentiary/overseer of these projects. He did not actually build the aircraft and rockets, he sifted through the proposals and indicated which would go forward and which would be shelved. The people who actually built them were the prize. I think it is more likely that Kammler left the Prague area with plans and details of things the Allies would not get to see.

In 1946, the Americans determined that a cache of documents remained in Czechoslovakia and staged an illegal incursion. When discovered, it appears they were ready with another set of boxes to hand over to the Czech authorities.

Some 47 armoured trains evacuated a stash of documents including Luftwaffe archives from lower Silesia in the closing months of WW2. They were transported to Linz Austria where it is known they were found in various sidings by American forces and shipped to Le Havre by Operation LUSTY. These trains or their locomotives are sometimes cited as having disappeared at the end of WW2. I can't recall the source for this at present however I shall dig around to find a source and return to cite it later.

I think there is too great a fixation on Kammler. I do believe Kammler stayed true to the indication he gave Speer when they both met on 13 April 1945. Kammler predicted people were plotting to depose Hitler and when Hitler fell he proposed using the secret technologies at his disposal to buy his freedom from the Americans.

It is worth adding that Kammler freed Werner von Braun and others including Cerny who worked on the Nazi Bell from the military barracks at Oberammergau in an armed confrontation with the barracks commander, then drove them west to Oberjoch. From there his movements and timeline co-incide with those of Boris Pash of ALSOS travelling to the Tyrol where Kammler's wife was sheltering.

I think the secrets of Luwikowice do not depend on discovering the fate of Kammler, no matter how much Kammler may have assisted spiriting away the Nazi Bell from there in 1945. Ardenne, Steenbeck and Soviet plasma physicist Georgi Nikolayev Flyorov all had insights to the project at Ludwikowice and I would probe their personal memoirs.

[phylo_roadking]

Many Norwegians flocked to join the SS Viking Division and one never hears much about their identities either.

To be fair - there's a considerable difference between the footprints left by Njarl the farmer's son and Professor Doctor X from the University of Oslo...

[stellung]

Only recently has a small group undertaken the task of determining what occured in Austria during the war regarding the involvement of scientists there in the German atomic project. There is a puzzle waiting to be assembled but it is hindered by the denialists. Austrian scientists were removed to the United States under the Paperclip project. At least one prominent Austrian scientist ended up at Wright Field and remained in the United States.

A review of OSS documents clearly shows contingency plans going into effect in late 1944 and into 1945 as plans were being implemented to create a Fourth Reich. Although the Germans had the nerve gases Tabun, Soman and Sarin packed in artillery shells and ready to go, with some being found in depots and on trains, they were mysteriously not used. The same with a small number of atomic bombs. The "madman" running the war would certainly have spared nothing to keep his Thousand Year Reich alive, correct?

I now have a copy of Speaking Frankly by Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, "the Chief Architect of our Postwar Foreign Policy," published in 1947. It seems the Americans and Russians missed their prize.

"The President was favorably impressed by Stalin, as I had been at Yalta. In speaking of our visit to Berlin, I asked the Generalissimo his views of how Hitler had died. To my surprise, he said he believed that Hitler was alive and that it was possible he was then either in Spain or Argentina. Some ten days later I asked him if he had changed his views and he said he had not."

A remarkable admission. Apparently the Secretary of State was so shocked that he had to ask Stalin again. It is clear that a portion of the Reich had simply been transferred to Brazil and Argentina to continue some of its work there. Although many documents had been destroyed, many survived in the compact and easy to carry form of microfilm. What happened in Poland, Norway, and for that matter, in Czechoslovakia, have continued to be covered up. The embarrassment and political fallout would, even today, point to omissions and incompetence, not to mention aiding Nazis, including members of the SS, in avoiding being tried as war criminals.

The American Navy came into the Top Secret ALSOS Mission and made discoveries still not admitted today. One document reveals: "8. V-3 and V-4 are about 15 m long and 3 m thick, larger than V-1 and V-2. Propulsion units go into action by groups. After one group has been emptied, it is ejected from the rocket. Steering and ignition are performed by remote control. Hulls for these weapons are said to be built in the Harz mountains and in a factory near Berlin; exact addresses are not available." The document is dated 1 May 1946. NARA RG 38, Chief of Naval Operations, Intelligence Division. Top Secret Reports of Naval Attaches 1944-1947, Box 9, Subject: Germany - Weapons Research.

More material continues to come to light.

[Thranx20]

I am still mixed on this whole thing with advanced German technology that is still secret to this day. Although I am getting to the point where I agree that they probabaly did have a few nukes up their sleeve. One of the books I have read on the subject is "Hitler's Suppressed and Still-Secret Weapons, Science and Technology" by Henry Stevens. Has anyone else read any publications from this author?

[stellung]

I have a copy of his book titled Hitler's Flying Saucers. A highly readable and credible account, with accompanying documents. Wernher von Braun told Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper that very unusual aircraft had been tested at Peenemunde but apparently, they did not survive the war. Mr. Cooper also knew Joachim Kuettner, the head of the Mercury Redstone project. How did he become head of this project? This is a complete mystery as available information indicates he was only a test pilot for glider type aircraft during the war. However, Mr. Kuettner tells Mr. Cooper that he flew a two-man version of the V-1 during the war. This is recounted in the book Leap of Faith by Gordon Cooper.

[Simon Gunson]

I have a contact Professor Meiczyslaw Moldovia in Poland who was an inmate of Gross Rosen at the sub camp in Furstenstein castle. Prof Moldovia was an engineer in the vast complex of tunnels throughout Komplex Reise. He conforms that at Furstenstein Castle, now Ksiaz was the home of an astronaut training program for pilots of the A9 winged rocket and that he witnessed the use of a simulator at the castle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksi%C4%85%C5%BC

In respect of the other matters up until November 1944 the so called Nazi Bell was in a laboratory under an airfield in the outskirts of Breslau. It was first shifted from Breslau to Furstenstein castle to avoid the Soviet advances and the on 18 December 1944 it was shifted to Wenceslas mine (Ludwikowice). It was evacuated from the mine about 17 April 1945, so it's stay in the mine was relatively short.

The following is from a newspaper article in the newspaper Głos Głuszycy (Gluszycy Voice) on 24 April 2008, written by editor Stanisław Michalik taken from an interview with retired Polish army officer Joseph Piszczek from Wroclaw.

http://www.gornictwo.walbrzych.pl/news- ... rzycha.php

Interview with WW2 Soviet Plasma Physicist GN Frolov in 1983.

GNFrołow - Why you are interested in the German nuclear research?
JR - I am sometimes with us in the south of the Polish Owl Mountains, near Walbrzych, there are underground tunnels during the war and legend circulating that the Germans began there any scientific research, and yet I know that they did not have a nuclear bomb. These rumors, however, occur so often that the topic interested me, and Mr. Szymanski said that Grigory Nikolayevich you know about everything.
GNF - (laughter) - No one knows everything, because the Germans had a lot of documents and materials poniszczyli experimental, and it took a lot of allies, the Americans. And where were you in the mountains near Waldenburg?
JR - I think everywhere in Głuszyca in Walim,
GNF - Wait, wait, use the German names. I just remember I do not know Polish.
JR - That I remember them: Wüstegiersdorf, Ludwigsdorf, Wüstewaltersdorf, Dörnau,
GNF - A Rudolfswald you were in?
JR - Rudolfswald, it's probably Sierpnica. Of course, I
GNF - Sierpnica? I do not know. In the documents then I think I saw a different Polish name, something from a tree - unless Larch. Tell me what was it like?
JR - To the southeast of the village, not far, about a mile of such a rock-hewn tunnels built by prisoners.
GNF - That's right. (That's actually - in 1945, this village was called Modrzewki-JR) In 1945, our army was there. Interesting things from there they brought.
JR - What are the military, the army has gone away yet?
GNF - Army, yes, but we had such special units (varies).
JR - SMERSH?
GNF-No, SMERSH - a lot of you know (smiling) - Szymanski spoke well of you. In Rudolfswaldu and elsewhere was an interview-no scientific researchers in uniform, but not subordinated to NKMD.
JR-Współpracowaliście Grigory Nikolayevich with them?
GNF - No, not with them, until I read the reports in Moscow.
JF - As it is only in Moscow, then you have not been in Lower Silesia after the war?
GNF - In Lower Silesia, no, I was not (varies), I was only in Waldenbergu.
JR - Can you tell me what ye are ye doing there best Soviet nuclear physicist?
GNF - (laughs) Such compliments I do not say, I'm not a girl. A lot better than I was. And with us, even Igor Kurchatov, AIU Germans, as it turned out.
JR - How are the Germans? So it's true of the German atomic bomb?
GNF - True and false - it's always mixed up with each other (silent a long moment.) How many years have passed, thirty-eight think, well, well - I'll tell you, ask.
JR - I must admit I do not know what I have to ask. I know too little. How was the Rudolfswaldu that there were too interesting things that you said?
GNF - Rudolfswald is another story. There he studied the military and talk about it I can not.
JR - A Walbrzych were you?
GNF - In Waldenbergu I was, but before returning from Germany to Moscow.
JR - What jechaliście to Germany, can you tell?
GNF - me there and Kurchatov Stalin sent. Reports are that Germany will keep atomic research. I went there as a representative of the Ministry of Light Machines. It turned out the place that the Germans were more advanced in these studies than you could imagine.
JR - Communication of information to you?
GNF - Information and test results showed the different places, and therefore in Waldenbergu be found.
JR - They showed something in Walbrzych?
GNF - No, Waldenbergu not, but I learned that the interview held in Dresden, German scientist, physicist who told me about secret trials in Waldenburgu, it took him and went, but he knew too little.
JR - How to - too little?
GNF - You see, the Germans had a lot of research groups. My German Dresden worked at the institute under the Ministry of Post, only once was Waldenbergu install the device, because that center subject to the SS.
JR - Whoa, whoa,'ve lost track. SS could do research, but the Ministry of Post? What Mail has to do with scientific research?
GNF - (laughs) That the times were, after all I said. No one would not expect an atom in the Ministry of Posts and (laughs) in the Ministry of Light Machines like us too.
JR - But your German is a physicist working in Walbrzych.
GNF - His institute has it some of the equipment for the SS and he only helped in the installation, I wanted the laboratory must see, but nothing came of it.
JR - Germans blew up?
GNF - Blow up probably did not blow up because it's the same city it was, but he could not hit.
JR -?
GNF - was there only once. The car which he drove from the station a long ride around the city and a German way is lost. Later, they entered into the mine and succinct it into the ground. Two days of sitting there, worked, ate and slept under the earth. As he finished, then again it powoził car around town, before it reached the station. And so with me in Germany could not find anything.
JR - But mine in Walbrzych is not so much not - have to know the environment, buildings?
GNF-skated with him a long time, I urged, threatened, nothing could. He said that when it was first feared. He said that people everywhere watched SS, described them as "sharp", he said that had such strange characters in uniform, you've never seen before.
JR - Did he say anything about what was mine?
GNF - Yes, he said that his colleagues he took a cyclotron, but it turned out that this second, because one was already there. They are they installed the second. He told me that mine was specially adapted. There were carts, tables, all necessary equipment, and the entrance locks and guards. He could not go, because he had a special pass.
JR - you talked about the underground nuclear laboratory, Grigory Nikolayevich believe him?
GNF - I believed. He talked about the little things that he knew our interview. There they were in the mine underground telephone connection to the whole Germany. She was reportedly television. Yes, I believed him, he had no need to lie, for it was then a bullet.
JF-not looking for more of this mine?
GNF - What do you mean we were looking for? How could not look? I no longer, but our long sought. They were German plans for the mine, went with the Polish miners. For nothing was. Not found, and several were killed.
JR-attack was some kind of mine?
GNF - Do not attack, only the Germans and Poles working in the mine secretly overs mines. That, and stopped to look.
JR - I, Germany had the atomic bomb?
GNF - I have this question, you do not answer, but history may give an answer. They had a lot more than we expected.

Therefore the mine was home to plasma physics apparatus according to Prof Baron Manfred von Ardenne.

At Farm Hall in August 1945 Heisenberg was recorded telling Dr Karl Wirtz that there were three methods for obtaining an atomic bomb.

(1) Separating Uranium 235
(2) Uranium machine (reactor) for Plutonium
(3) Proactinium

At Harnack Haus in February and again in July 1942 Heisenberg pushed for an effort to develop what he termed a Protoactinium Atomic Bomb. (Heisenberg and the Nazi atomic bomb project: a study in German culture. 1998, Rose, Paul Lawrence. page 20)

Protoactinium 233 (aka Proactinium) is not a naturally occurring element. Why would Heisenberg see this as an obvious path to the Atomic Bomb?

Proactinium has to be created artificially by bombardment of Thorium 232 with X-ray neutrons. During WW2 the nazis first developed 5MeV van der Graff generators to create artificial x-ray energies. Then Wideroe in Hamburg and Dallenbach in Bisingen developed what Heisenberg termed a super-klystron to generate 15 MeV X-ray energy.

Why so much effort to create powerful X-rays?
We know that resources were scarce in Germany by 1943-44 when these projects were underway. Edicts were issued limiting production to weapons or systems that gave results in the shortest time frames for the war effort. The nazi regime was not merely indulging this huge effort to build X-ray machines for pure science.

The answer is blindingly obvious. Protoactinium 233 decays over 27 days into pure bomb grade Uranium 233.

[LWD]

...Proactinium has to be created artificially by bombardment of Thorium 232 with X-ray neutrons.

X-ray Neutrons??? Pa -233 is indeed a decay product of Thorium 233 but "X-ray Neutrons"?

.... Protoactinium 233 decays over 27 days into pure bomb grade Uranium 233.

Of course you still have to be able to procure and purify the necessary quantitties. This hardly looks to be an efficient route to securing enough bomb grade material to make any difference.

[Helmut0815]

X-ray Neutrons??? Pa -233 is indeed a decay product of Thorium 233 but "X-ray Neutrons"?

Neutrons can be released from Beryllium atoms by treatment with hard X-Rays, I'm sure this is meant here.

Original article: Auslösung von Neutronen aus Beryllium durch harte Röntgenstrahlen. Erzeugung radioaktiver Elemente

A. Brasch, F. Lange, A. Waly, T. E. Banks, T. A. Chalmers, L. Szilard, F. L. Hopwood, Naturwissenschaften, 1934,Volume 22, Number 50, p. 839

[LWD]

X-ray Neutrons??? Pa -233 is indeed a decay product of Thorium 233 but "X-ray Neutrons"?

Neutrons can be released from Beryllium atoms by treatment with hard X-Rays, I'm sure this is meant here.

Well according to wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryllium

Beryllium is also transparent to most wavelengths of X-rays

So it's got to be specific wavelengths and are the energy levels of the neutrons emitted correct for this purpose.

Original article: Auslösung von Neutronen aus Beryllium durch harte Röntgenstrahlen. Erzeugung radioaktiver Elemente
...

Can you post an English translation or relevant quote?
Then there's the question of energy levels and efficiencies and such.

[Helmut0815]

Can you post an English translation or relevant quote?

Here's an abstract: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v1 ... 880a0.html

Liberation of Neutrons from Beryllium by X-Rays: Radioactivity Induced by Means of Electron Tubes

It has been recently reported[1] that neutrons are liberated from beryllium by -rays of radium and that these are able to induce radioactivity in iodine. Following up this work, we have attempted to liberate neutrons from beryllium by means of hard X-rays, produced by high-voltage electron tubes. An electron tube, which could conveniently be operated by a high-voltage impulse generator at several million volts[2], is at present in use in the High Tension Laboratory of the A.E.G. in Berlin, and has served in the present experiment for the production of X-rays.

[1] Szilard and Chalmers, NATURE, 134 494, Sept. 29, 1934.
[2] Brasch and Lange, Z. Phy., 70, H. 1/2.

Then there's the question of energy levels and efficiencies and such.

Ooops, you better have to ask a nuclear physicist for this.

[LWD]

Thanks for the quotes. So it sounds like it is possible to use x-rays in the energy range mentioned to knock neutrons out of Beryllium atoms. It's not clear of those neutrons are in the range of energies needed to convert Thorium 232 to Thorium 233. Furthermore it's not clear if said conversion process if possible is at all practical. Looks very questonable to me at best. Certainly not "blindingly obvious" as some have stated.