An SS general seeking to escape the collapse of the Third Reich, and 70 kg of uranium, possibly transferred by the Nazis to the Americans. These facts can turn the history of the atomic bomb.
This is the story of a large suitcase or possibly a box containing 70 kilograms of uranium. At the very beginning of May 1945, the SS general handed him over to an American intelligence official. The inner circle of the Third Reich collapsed, a terrible abyss of concentration camps opened up to the world. Three months later, at 8.15 a.m., Little Boy hits Hiroshima, a mushroom cloud engulfing a Japanese port city. Nothing else on Earth will be the same. Perhaps because of the contents of that very large box. This page of the twentieth century still remains unfinished.
The two main characters in this story are Hans Kammler and Donald "Don" Richardson. The face of the first is as if carved out of stone, the second - with long eyes, a heavy chin, a square face with a massive jaw, a perfect Yankee, albeit black-haired. The first is a war criminal, one of the main accused of organizing the Holocaust; the second is an American agent 007 of the highest level, who, if necessary, displays the due measure of cynicism: two enemies found themselves face to face to agree on a secret subject of bargaining, endowed with tremendous destructive power. On the one hand, Kammler is an SS Obergruppenferrer, a "technocrat of destruction", the creator of gas chambers in German camps, a general who made a rapid career and in a matter of months ousted Goering among Hitler's favorites.
Not as famous as Goebbels or Himmler, in fact, Kammler is a key figure in Hitler's madness: on the direct orders of the Fuehrer, he assumes control over all secret projects of the Third Reich. Including the development of the atomic bomb. On the other hand, Richardson, an OSS (Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA) agent who was nicknamed "the eyes and ears of Eisenhower", was sent to Europe in pursuit of the Nazis, whom the United States had to intercept at all costs to provide a safe haven for knowledge, technology and the people of the German scientific apparatus. There are still photographs in which he is depicted in Yalta in 1945 and looks at Stalin from behind Roosevelt.
Two mysterious personalities are at the center of one of the most important puzzles in history, to which today the son of an American secret agent, John Richardson, a medical doctor, adds a critical detail. It was he, John, who told the Austrian documentary filmmaker Andreas Sulzer two years ago, who has been investigating the secrets of Nazi atomic development for five years, that his father Donald was probably negotiating the extradition of Kammler in Austria and was responsible for sending him to America, where the general was subjected to "ruthless interrogation" and died in 1947 "without ever coming out into the light of day." This is an amazing confession that Agent Richardson himself allegedly made in 1996 on his deathbed in a conversation with his sons John and Doug. To date, no one has officially refuted this admission:neither American sources, nor sources from other countries, nor historians, nor any other witnesses.
Now Richardson Jr. adds a new episode that has remained in the shadows so far: “My father brought with him almost 70 kg of uranium. Uranium, which was probably stored in the underground galleries of the Gusen camp in the Austrian complex called "Bergkristal". Yes, "it was a real hell", the main camp in the Mauthausen system, in the giant underground tunnels of which, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives of deported prisoners, the famous Messerschmitt jet fighters gathered. Here was Kammler's last headquarters. It was here that the possibly defeated Nazism tried to create its atomic bomb. "The general offered us more modern weapons, weapons that have become synonymous with death and destruction."
Richardson Jr.'s words serve as evidence of a terrifying scenario for the development of events: this hypothesis is, in essence, that the bomb in Hiroshima, which completely redistributed the balance of forces between the world powers and their strategic formations, instantly destroyed from 66 to 78 thousand people, not to mention long-term effects of a radioactive tsunami, was created using uranium and partly the scientific development of the Nazis. It is clear, however, that there is no definitive proof of this hypothesis. Only the words of the secret agent's son. However, by comparing the data on the meetings and testimonies, we see that the circumstantial evidence coincides.
Other small details are revealed in this thread, pointed out by journalist Frank Döbert, who attempted to reconstruct Kammler's final weeks before his death in an article published several months ago: “Evidence found in 2006 indicates that Don Richardson flew aboard a B-29 carrying a little over 60 kg of uranium, heading towards the United States and landing at the United States Air Force Base at Wendover. Preparations for the launch of an atomic bomb on Japan were already in full swing here. But not only that. Richardson Jr. claims that his father, along with General Sweeney, the pilot who dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, conducted a "technical" test flight over Nagasaki. Head is spinning.
Promotional video:
Let's take a step back. The exchange of uranium, if indeed it took place, took place on an unspecified date in early May 1945. The Third Reich had already fallen into ruins, Europe was roamed far and wide by Allied intelligence agents in search of scientists, technicians and high-ranking officials who were aware of the most classified information. There were two large-scale operations carried out by the Allies to achieve the desired result: Operation Paperclip and Mission Alsos. It's no surprise that the legendary and equally mysterious General Hans Kammler, about whose death there are at least six different versions, is attracting so much attention. His body was never found.
At the same time, there is a document of the Counterintelligence Corps, designated Nnd 785009, declassified by the United States authorities in 1978 and first published in the Repubblica newspaper on April 25, 2014. It states in black and white that "some time after the beginning of the occupation (the arrival of the allies), Hans Kammler appeared in the Counterintelligence Corps in Gmunden and made a detailed statement." In other words, he surrendered to the Americans, as Richardson says. This version, among others, is shared by the German historian Rainer Karlsch. It is difficult to imagine that the man in Kammler's position was not immediately apprehended and placed under guard. After which the general responsible, among other things, for the massacre in Warstein, during which 208 forced laborers were shot,will never be in the dock at the Nuremberg trials. Isn't it weird?
However, there could be no doubt about the role of Kammler. Among the secret projects of the Third Reich, led by the general, were the development of the Wunderwaffe (miracle weapon), which would determine the outcome of the war. “Every day in these last days, Hitler asked about the news from Gusen: he wanted to be aware of the details of what was happening in this corner of Austria,” local historian Rudolf Haunschmied told us two years ago. However, the issue of the alleged transfer of uranium from the hands of the SS general to the hands of the American intelligence officer was also connected with this Austrian camp, equipped with a huge network of tunnels, which, according to the testimonies and evidence collected by Sulzer and his team, under the leadership of Kammler was supposed to turn into a kind of underground a military plant where large-scale nuclear tests were to be carried out:perhaps the Nazis were closer to creating the atomic bomb than previously thought.
Of course, this is a controversial assumption about the "Hitler bomb", but today it finds more and more justification thanks to discoveries made on the ground and "top secret" documents. Among this circumstantial evidence, for Gusen, radioactivity was recorded "26 times higher than normal", these observations were made three years ago: such radioactivity can be "correlated," as the geologist at the University of Vienna Franz Josef Maringer (Franz Josef Maringer), "With the nuclear activities of the Nazis." And one more thing: numerous geophysical reliefs are said to indicate the existence of many more galleries than the "known", an anomalous octagonal tunnel was discovered near the camp, "a platform for launching rockets," says Sulzer, as well as a fragment of the accelerator particles.
Historian Stefan Karner, director of the prestigious Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, argues that "there is evidence of research on chain reactions: if this were true, it would mean there was work leading to the atomic bomb." And something else. The program on the second channel of German television (Zdf) reported on several dossiers of the Soviet special services (GRU), dated March 1945, which openly talk about two nuclear tests carried out in Thuringia: “The Germans organized two big explosions … prisoners of war who were in the perimeter of the explosion, died, no trace of them remained. In addition, there was a significant increase in the level of radioactivity. " The factories in Thuringia, as in Gusen, were at the disposal of Kammler.
Now the documentary filmmaker Sulzer has presented what, in his opinion, can become a new axis of this plot: he filmed (but still has not shown) the story of the son of one of the commanders of the Austrian camp, Karl Chmielewski, nicknamed the "Gusen devil." 87-year-old Walter Chmielewski was still a teenager at that time, today he retains an incredible sobriety, remembers with accuracy everything that happened in the last months of the war in that corner of Austria: “Then they said that the network of underground galleries reached 30 40 km … They also said that at the end of 1944 the Fuehrer's decree came that it was necessary to immediately stop the production of Messerschmitts and develop an atomic bomb … ".
From the Nazi atomic bomb to the American one: a series of historical stages that must be restored step by step, and the protagonist of which is Kammler. The general may have made the decision at the last meeting with Hitler. It took place on April 3, 1945. Joseph Goebbels, the most influential propaganda minister, said: "We have high hopes for him." However, on April 13, Kammler told Albert Speer of his intention to contact the Allies and offer them weapons and development. Shortly before this, on March 31, 1945, Goebbels wrote in his diary: "If the generals of the Luftwaffe follow the instructions of Kammler, the Fuehrer intends to proceed to the further execution of the sentences of military tribunals and executions." In other words, the general was untouchable. Perhaps he was considered the last hope of the Third Reich. The answer is found in Gusen's underground galleries, and it is painted in the silvery white of uranium.
So Hiroshima became inextricably linked with the history of uranium. Many believe that shortly before the Little Boy bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay plane, the United States did not have enough uranium to complete the production of its bomb. For the first nuclear explosion in history, the Trinity Test, conducted on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert, the Americans used a plutonium charge. As in Nagasaki. The only terrifying "test" of the uranium bomb took place in Hiroshima: the origin of this uranium, which was exactly 64.13 kg in the bomb, later called a "weapon of mass destruction", has always been the subject of speculation, which no one was able to refute. One thing is certain: we are talking about a subject that must be approached with extreme caution. Perhaps there is too much mystery in this story,buried with an American intelligence agent and an SS general.
