Dean Reuter - The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America’s Deal with the Devil

Praise for

THE HIDDEN NAZI

Justice delayed is justice denied? Not in this case. At long last, and at the skillful hands of Dean Reuter, a particularly nasty Nazi has been brought before the bar of history for a lasting sort of justicethe measured but stern judgment of a meticulous historian.

GEORGE F. WILL, Pulitzer Prizewinning columnist

The Hidden Nazi is a revelation: a spellbinding, at times harrowing new history of an epoch we thought had been covered from every angle, trained on as ingenious and monstrous a villain as total, global war could produceHans Kammler. With the invaluable scholarship and perseverance of his colleagues Colm Lowery and Keith Chester, Dean Reuter delivers a riveting mix of first-person accounts and expert analysis, from the excruciating depths of the Nazi slave and death camps to the thrilling heights and annihilative aspirations of Nazi rocket science. And of course, the gripping, morally vexing mystery: to deal or not to deal with the devil who has something invaluable to trade?

ANDREW C. MCCARTHY, a former federal prosecutor honored with the Attorney Generals Distinguished Service and Exceptional Service Awards and the bestselling author of Willful Blindness and The Grand Jihad

Reuter, Lowery, and Chester probe one of the enduring mysteries of World War II, the extent to which the United States absorbed and sought to utilize Nazi scientists in the race to develop the atom bomb. This is a riveting look into the awful tradeoff between pragmatism and justice.

AMITY SHLAES, bestselling author ofs Germany: The Empire Within and The Forgotten Man

Werner von Braun called him the greatest rogue and adventurer I have ever seen. Albert Speer damned him as one of Himmlers most brutal and most ruthless henchmen. He engineered the Holocaust, built the concentration camps, and perfected the gas chambers and crematoria. He pioneered slave labor and masterminded rocket, fighter jet, and secret wonder-weapon production. And at the end of World War II he vanished without a trace. Enigmatic SS general Hans Kammler is the most diabolic Nazi youve never heard of. Dean Reuter takes readers on a gripping, exciting, and suspenseful hunt in search of the mysterious war criminal. The Hidden Nazi is a fascinating forensic detective story that reads like a great crime thriller. Did Kammler fake his death and survive the war? How did he escape justice? Did America strike a deal with the Devil in exchange for his secrets? Splendidly written with verve and expertise, The Hidden Nazi is storytelling at its best. Dean Reuter and his co-authors combine superb narrative history with a riveting personal memoir of the harrowing psychological journey into Hans Kammlers heart of darkness.

JAMES L. SWANSON, Edgar Awardwinning New York Timesbestselling author of Manhunt: The 12 Day Chase for Lincolns Killer

Its strange that no one has yet written a biography of SS general Hans Kammler, one of the brutal masterminds of the German military-industrial complex and the Holocaust. But when you read The Hidden Nazi you will realize that until now no one had the knowledge, persistence, and sheer nerve that the authors brought to the job of unlocking the multiple mysteries surrounding this evil genius of the Third Reich. Its a story where Schindlers List meets Doctor Strangelove. Read it, be amazed and shocked by what Kammler did, and outraged by how he escaped final justice; but above all read The Hidden Nazi.

ARTHUR HERMAN, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of How the Scots Invented the Modern World and 1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder

The Hidden Nazi by Dean Reuter is a stunning achievement. This tightly drawn portrait of SS General Hans Kammler takes the reader from his personal life as recalled in interviews with his son through his notorious work supervising construction of underground factories like Mittelwerk-Dora, where Wernher von Brauns V-2 rockets were built, and at Auschwitz where this ruthless Nazi perfected the gas chambers. Throughout the book Reuter tells a riveting tale of horror, ending with Kammlers escape from justice. But where to? Finally, I must compliment the researchers Colm Lowery and Keith Chester for collecting a massive treasure trove of documents that made this excellent book possible.

LINDA HUNT, Investigative Reporters and Editors Awardwinning author of Secret Agenda: The U.S. Government, Nazi Scientists and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1991

Remarkable. For sheer, dogged persistence alone, the authors of this extraordinary investigation deserve widespread recognition. They have shone a powerful and bright light on what may prove to be one of the last great secrets of the war.

NICK COOK, author of The Hunt for Zero Point

The Hidden Nazi is a must-read, especially in this age of increasing Holocaust denial and minimization. The horrors of the Holocaust and their primary perpetrators must be documented so that future generations will have the evidence necessary to defend the truth.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ, legal scholar, high-profile defense attorney, and author of Defending Israel: The Story of My Relationship with My Most Challenging Client

Copyright 2019 by Dean Reuter, Colm Lowery, and Keith Chester

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ISBN 978-1-62157-735-5

ebook ISBN 978-1-62157-896-3

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To my loving family, and to B2247, B2248, B2249.

Dean Reuter

To my loving wife, Angela, and my amazing children, Amy, Conor, Ryan, Owen, and Jack, without whose love and support I could not have accomplished such a monumental task. Thank you to my father, John, for introducing me to World War II history and to my dear mother, Mary, for introducing me to the library!

Colm Lowery

To the late journalist and author, Tom Agoston, whose book Blunder! ignited the trail

Keith Chester

W hat if one of the most secret, fantastic stories of World War II has not yet been told? The question nagged me as I set the cordless phone on my desk, having just concluded one of the more improbable conversations of my life. In this, our initial conversation on the topic of SS general Hans Kammler, Keith Chester had been talking about exposing a major untold story of the war. A tale about a super-powerful, supposedly-dead-but-still-alive Nazi officer, secret German weapons, German nuclear weapons, stolen treasure, missing documents, covert deals with high-ranking American officialseven a coverup that has lasted decades. Absolutely preposterous claims, I thought. The stuff of fiction. But Keith had assured me it was all true; he said he had the proof, or at least most of it. I was beyond incredulous, but mostly held my tongue while he talked. He had reached me at my northern Virginia home office from his house north of Baltimore, having already researched this project for years.