Located near Ohrdruf, Thuringia was located the S-III Führer headquarters. Constructed by approximately 15- to 18,000 inmates of the nearby Ohrdruf, Espenfeld and Crawinkel concentration camps, from autumn 1944 to spring 1945, was a tunnel system over 1,5 miles in length.

Ohrdruf was reached by General Patton about April 11, 1945. Colonel R. Allen accompanying him described the installations extensively in his book.¹

"The underground installations were amazing. They were literally subterranean towns. There were four in and around Ohrdruf: one near the horror camp, one under the Schloss, and two west of the town. Others were reported in near-by villages. None were natural caves or mines. All were man-made military installations. The horror camp had provided the labour. An interesting feature of the construction was the absence of any spoil. It had been carefully scattered in hills miles away. The only communication shelter, which is known, is a two floor deep shelter, with the code "AMT 10".

Over 50 feet underground, the installations consisted of two and three stories several miles in length and extending like the spokes of a wheel. The entire hull structure was of massive reinforced concrete. Purpose of the installations was to house the High Command after it was bombed out of Berlin. This places also had paneled and carpeted offices, scores of large work and store rooms, tiled bathrooms with bath tubs and showers, flush toilets, electrically equipped kitchens, decorated dining rooms and mess halls, giant refrigerators, extensive sleeping quarters, recreation rooms, separate bars for officers and enlisted personnel, a moving picture theatre, and air-conditioning and sewage systems".

1. Sources and Reference Material.

a. The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, High Command) and Luftwaffe war diaries and all copies of them for the period March 1945 have disappeared and are suspected to be in American keeping.

b. On April 7, 1945, the United States Atomic Energy Commission inspected various underground workings at Ohrdruf, and removed technical equipment before dynamiting surface entrances. The US authourities have classified all 1945 documents relating to Ohrdruf for a minimum period of 100 years.

Fortunately for researchers, in 1962 a quasi-judicial tribunal sat at Arnstadt in the then DDR, to take depositions from local residents for an enquiry entitled "Befragung von Buergern zu Ereignissen zur oertlichen Geschichte". The enquiry was principally interested in what went on at the Ohrdruf Truppenuebungsplatz (TUP) in the latter years of the war. The depositions became common property in 1989 upon the reunification of Germany and may be viewed at Arnstadt town hall.

2. The Ohrdruf military training ground.

a. There had been a military training ground at Ohrdruf since imperial times. It was a large, rugged area of upland, nowadays disused and strewn with shells and other military scrap. Its perimeter can be circumnavigated by land rover in about three hours. Through binoculars, small parts of the ruins of Amt 10, described below, can be made out but not visited.

During 1936-1938, an Army underground telephone/telex exchange known as Amt 10 was built in the limestone strata below the Ohrdruf Truppenuebungsplatz. Its entrances were disguised as chalets. The bunker was 50 feet down and measured 70 by 20 metres. Both floors had a central corridor about 3 metres wide with rooms either side, and 2 WCs. End-doors were gas-proofed, the installation had central heating, air was supplied under pressure, water drawn from a spring 600 feet below. A 475 hp ship's diesel was on hand as the emergency electrical generator, and this piece of equipment plays an important role in understanding the Ohrdruf mystery.

One of the three full-time Reichpost maintenance engineers employed there from 1938 to 1945 stated that Amt 10 was never used until the last few months of the war when it was "more than it seemed" and "its clandestine purpose was fairly obvious."

Col Robert S Allen, a Staff officer with General Patton's Third Army described in his book¹ a completed underground reinforced-concrete metropolis 50 feet down "to house the High Command". It was on two or three levels and consisted of galleries several miles in length and "extending like the spokes of a wheel." The location of Hitler's Führer headquarters was not stated and Amt 10 was described misleadingly as "a two-floor deep concrete shelter."

If the structure was built like a wheel, the Führer headquarters would logically be at the hub, and Amt 10 was at the hub. Allen's description of Amt 10 as having two floors on April 1945 conflicts with the evidence of two persons who worked there: one hinted that there were more than two floors, the other testified there were three. The latter witness also stated that Amt 10 was two great bunkers of the same size, each of three floors, but not connected except by underground piping. Each bunker was guarded on each level by an SS sentry and passes for each entrance were not common to both. The most likely explanation is that the second bunker was constructed in 1944 at the same time as a third level was added to the first Amt 10 bunker as the Führer-suite.

As regards the second bunker, a witness stated that in 1944 there was an installation below the Ohrdruf Truppenuebungsplatz which created an electro-magnetic field capable of stopping the engines of a conventional aircraft at seven miles. During the war, the Allies never photographed Ohrdruf from the air, nor bombed it, even though their spies must have assured them it was crawling with SS and scientific groups. A German electro-magnetic field which interfered with their aircraft at altitudes of up to seven miles is admitted by a 1945 United States Air Force Intelligence document (see sources). The USAF suspected that it was a device to bring down their bombers, but it obviously had some other purpose, or it would have been operating below Berlin.

Many Arnstadt witnesses described occasions when electrical equipment and automobile engines cut out. They always knew when this was about to happen, for the ship's diesel engine at Amt 10 would smoke. A diesel motor is not affected by an electro-magnetic field. In 1980, Russians scientists were still able to measure the field on their equipment, but they were never able to identify the source.

2. The Führer headquarters at Ohrdruf.

The Führer headquarters at Ohrdruf is not admitted by academic historians. The evidence for it, however, is strong:

a. S-III was an SS military factory complex below Jonastal near Ohrdruf where 1,000 Buchenwald inmates began digging in June 1944. No decision had been taken to build a Führer headquarters in Thuringia before 24 August 1944.

b. In September 1944, a geologist consulted by SS-WVHA regarding the suitability of Jonastal for a Führer headquarters suggested theOhrdruf Truppenuebungsplatz instead.

c. In October 1944, General von Gockl, Ohrdruf Truppenuebungsplatz commandant, evacuated all Wehrmacht personnel from the plain. Within a fortnight the notorious Ohrdruf-KZ had been set up while SS-Fuehrungsstab S-III, in charge of the Führer headquarters project, occupied a school at nearby Luisenthal. Firms working on building projects in Poland were ordered immediately to Ohrdruf.

d. At the end of 1944, Hauptsturmfuehrer Karl Sommer, deputy head of WVHA-DH (forced labour) assembled a workforce at Buchenwald to build a secret Führer headquarters named S-III at Ohrdruf. S-III had a fully-equipped telephone-telex exchange before work started, thus identifying it as around Amt 10.

e. Hitler's Luftwaffe aid Nicolaus von Below stated in his memoirs that in early 1945 he visited the location of the new Thuringian Führer headquarters and it was at the Ohrdruf Truppenuebungsplatz.

f. In late January 1945, Hitler spoke openly of evacuating Ministry staff from Berlin "perhaps to Oberhof in Thuringia".

g. In compliance with order 71/45 and the communique from Führer headquarters Berlin issued by Wehrmacht ADC General Burgdorf on 9 March 1945, General Krebs of the Army General Staff reported that between 12 February and 29 March 1945 a substantial proportion of OKW Staff had transferred to the Ohrdruf area.

h. On the nights of 4 and 12 March 1945, "a small explosive of terrific destructive power" was tested on the Ohrdruf Truppenuebungsplatz. 200 KZ inmates and 20 SS guards were scorched to death on the first test due to a miscalculation of the extent of the effect. The bodies were immolated on a common pyre, the ashes being scattered across central-Germany from aircraft. In mid-March, a 30-metre long rocket was reported test fired into the night sky from a weapons site within five miles of the Truppenuebungsplatz. The Amt 10 telephone engineer gave evidence that "200 so-called female signals auxiliaries" arrived to staff the second bunker in this period. Why they were "so-called" is not explained.

i. In early March 1945, Organization Todt began work on the Brandleite railway tunnel at Oberhof to accommodate the special trains of Hitler and Goering, installed a telephone exchange in the station-master's house and positioned flak batteries on surrounding peaks.

j. A witness stated that the Fuehrer-Sperrkreis at Ohrdruf was called Burg and alleged that Hitler spent at least one day there in late March 1945.

k. In late March a Luftwaffe mutiny occurred in which General Barber and over three hundred pilots and air base command personnel were executed for refusing to obey an unknown order (the Luftwaffe War Diaries for March and first part April 1945 have vanished).

l. Upon his arrest in May 1945, Goering told his captors that he had engineered the mutiny thus saving the world by "refusing to deploy bombs that could have destroyed all civilisation". It was freely reported at the time, since nobody knew what he meant.

A further interesting set of depositions from the 1962 Arnstadt DDR enquiry refer to the test of a rocket apparently the size of an A9/10 "Amerika" rocket.

Witness 1 was Claere Werner, throughout the war custodian of the Wachsenburg watch-tower. She stated that a rocket with a huge tail-fire was fired after 21.00 hours on the night of March 16, 1945 while she was looking through binoculars towards Ichtershausen. She had been informed earlier by a friend working for the Reichspost Sonderbauvorhaben at Arnstadt that a tremendous achievement was to be celebrated in the sky that night.

Witness 2 was a former KZ-inmate who gave evidence to the DDR tribunal that he helped erect staging for "an enormously long rocket" at MUNA Rudisleben. From the Wachsenburg watch tower, Rudisleben is close to Ichtershausen.

Witnesses 3 and 4 were a technician and fuel system engineer respectively who all stated that they worked on the construction of a huge rocket over 30 metres in length which was fired on the night of March 16, 1945 at Polte II underground facility, one kilometer from Rudisleben.

The first of the rocket series successfully tested that night may have been intended as the carrier for the mysterious explosive referred to in the opening article of this thread, and intended to bring New York under attack, as had been promised by Hitler in his references to a miracle weapon in "Hitlers Tischgespraeche" (Picker's version). Following this successful launch, at what stage the rocket could have entered series production is an interesting question.

4. The Magnetic Ray.

A similar device to the one operating below Ohrdruf finds a place in declassified literature as follows: On December 6, 1944, the US Military Intelligence Service commenced Research Project 1217 "Investigation into German Possible Use of Rays to Neutralize Allied Aircraft Motors". This resulted from "recent interference phenomena occasionally experienced on operations over Germany in the Frankfurt/Main area." It was usually described as "freakish interference to engines and electrical instruments" over the north bank of the Main River, about ten miles from Führer headquarters Adlerhorst.

In a top secret report entitled "Engine Interference Counter-Measures" addressed to the Director, Air Technical Service Command, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, reference was made to OSS discussions about a German unit somewhere near Frankfurt/Main operating:

"...an influence interfering with conventional aircraft... however incredible it may appear to project from the ground to a height of 30,000 feet sufficient magnetic energy to interfere with the functioning of the ignition system of an airplane, it must be concluded that the enemy not only intends to interfere with our aircraft by some immaterial means, but has also succeeded in accomplishing this intention..."

5. The Miracle Explosive.

The four items of literature appearing to relate to the explosive tested at Ohrdruf in March 1945 are as follows:

a. British Security Coordination (BSC) was the largest integrated intelligence network enterprise in history. Its Director was Sir William Stevenson, a Canadian industrialist. His code-name was "Intrepid". In his autobiography², Stevenson relates: "One of the BSC agents submitted a report, sealed and stamped THIS IS OF PARTICULAR SECRECY which told of "...liquid air bombs being developed in Germany... of terrific destructive effect."

The reader should not be misled into thinking that these were modern common-or-garden "liquid air bombs": Stevenson noted that they were "as powerful as rockets with atomic warheads".

b. The book "German Secret Weapons" was authored by Brian Ford, Barrie Pitt and Capt Sir Basil Liddell Hart.³ At page 28, the text states:

"...The Whirlwind Bomb produced an artificial hurricane of fire and is absolutely authentic even though it may seem improbable. The explosive was developed and tested by Dr. Zippermayr at Lofer, an experimental Luftwaffe institute in the Tyrol. The explosive was pulverzied coal dust and liquid air. Its effect was sufficient to create an artificial typhoon and was intended initially as an anti-aircraft weapon able to destroy aircraft by excessive turbulence. The effective radius of action was 914 metres..."

c. This is a 4-page declassified US Intelligence document of the Zalzburg Detachment of the US Forces Austria Counter-Intelligence Corps, describing Dr. Zippermayr was interrogated at Lofer on August 3, 1945. His laboratories were established at Lofer with head office at Weimarerstrasse 87, Vienna. Staff was 35, work financed by RLM and under direction of Chef der Technischen Luftruestung.

Zippermayr worked on three projects of which one was the Enzian/Schmetterling anti-aircraft rockets "charged with a coal dust explosive so strong that the concussion could break the wings of a bomber." This item "was proved successful by August 1943, but orders for its production were not issued until March 9, 1945..."

d. This item is an extract from BIOS (British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee) Final Report 142(g) "Information Obtained from Targets of Opportunity in the Sonthofen Area, (HMSO London).

The report states that during 1944, an explosive mixture of 60% liquid air and 40% finely powdered coal dust invented by Dr. Mario Zippermayr was tested at Doeberitz explosives ground near Berlin, and was found to be very destructive over a radius of up to 600 metres.

Waffen-SS scientists then became involved and added some kind of waxy substance to the explosive. The bombs had to be filled immediately prior to the aircraft taking off. Bombs of 25 and 50 kgs were dropped on Starnberger See and photos taken. Standartenfuehrer Klemm showed these to Brandt (Himmler's scientific adviser). The intensive explosion covered an area up to 4.5 kms radius.

This waxy substance was a reagent of some kind which was said to interact with air during the development of the explosion, causing it to change its composition and so create meteorological change in the atmosphere. A lightning storm at ground level consumes all the available oxygen. Goering's statement upon his arrest in May 1945 is significant: he claimed to have led a revolt against Luftwaffe use of a bomb "which could have destroyed all civilisation." The bomb was not a nuclear weapon, and it appears to have been a conventional explosive which used a reagent or catalyst produced by Tesla methodology or similar for its inexplicable effect.

6. Conclusion.

The suggestion at this point is that by late 1944, Waffen-SS scientists in Germany had developed a catalyst or reagent, apparently a waxy substance, maybe a plasmoid of some kind, which when added to a conventional explosive containing liquid air vastly magnified the effect, killing everything within a three mile radius by blast, tremendous heat and suffocation. It appears also to have had undesirable meteorological effects.

On April 16, 1945 the Type XB submarine U-234 (KL Fehler) departed Kristiansand, Norway for Japan direct. She had loaded at Kiel in January and February, and besides a strategic cargo in the region of 260 tonnes carried ten German and two Japanese passengers, all of whom were specialists in the military field or scientists.

On May 17, 1945, against his express orders, Kptlt. Fehler decided to surrender his submarine to the US Navy, and arrived two days later at Portsmouth Navy Yard, New Hampshire.

What is principally of interest is the cargo, and in particular ten cases of "uranium oxide" of 560 kilograms weight, and several items which were not included on the Unloading Manifest.

The Unloading Manifest (US NAT Arch, College Park MD, Box RG38, Box 13, Document OP-20-3-G1-A (Unloading Manifest) dated May 24, 1945) is a falsified document purporting to show the entire cargo aboard U-234. The true Manifests, both American and German, have never been declassified. In the normal course of events, a Manifest upon declassification would bear the censor's deletions where it was intended that certain items should not be displayed. The USN alleged Unloading Manifest is clean of any deletions and purports to be the true Unloading Manifest. From a declassified cable, it is evident that 80 cases of Uranium Powder have been omitted, as was also, from the statements of the U-boat crew members and Kptlt. Fehler, a two-seater Me 262 bomber aircraft brought from Rechlin and stowed in its component parts.

Germany had 1,200 tonnes of uranium oxide on hand at Oolen in Belgium throughout the war, but made no strides towards making an atom bomb. Nevertheless, many commentators fantasize an embryonic atom bomb in the 560 kilos of "uranium oxide" aboard U-234. It is a fantasy, for such evidence as exists points to this being a cover word for something else.

Two official documents address the ten cases of "uranium oxide" directly.

a. A report headed "Regarding 'URANIUM OXIDE' and other CARGO aboard U-234" on the interrogation of Geschwaderrichter Kay Nieschling, U-234 passenger by USN Intelligence Officer Lt Best states that "Lt Pfaff was the man responsible for loading the U-boat" and that "the meaning behind the ore" - peculiar phrase suggesting that the ore was not the ore - would be known by Kptlt. Falk (or Falck) who took some secret courses before he boarded the U-boat. Kptlt. Fehler should also know something about the ore."

It does not appear that Kptlt. Falk or Falck survived his interrogation, for there is no record of his return to Germany, and the US authorities have not been able to account for his movements in their custody after interrogating him on May 26, 1945. There are other indications that the "uranium ore" was extraordinary. Lt. Col. John Lansdale, chief of security for the Manhattan Project, wrote in a 1996 newspaper article published in Britain and Germany that he had personally handled the disposal of the ten cases. He stated that the American military authorities "reacted with panic" when they learned what the cases contained.

b. The second document was found by researcher Joseph Mark Scalia, a former 12-year US Navy man, during a rummage through old boxes at the Portsmouth Navy Yard. It is a secret cable from CNO to NYPORT on the subject "MINE TUBES, UNLOADING OF" and states:

"Interrogation Lt. Pfaff IIWO U-234 discloses he was in charge of cargo and personally supervised loading all mine tubes. Pfaff prepared Manifest List and knows kind cargo in each tube. Uranium Oxide loaded in gold-lined cylinders and as long as cylinders not opened can be handled like crude TNT. These containers should not be opened as substance will become sensitive and dangerous..."

The so-called "Uranium Oxide" would become sensitive and dangerous if exposed to air. The so-called "Uranium Oxide" was perfectly safe in its cylinders provided one respected it as one would dynamite. The so-called "Uranium Oxide" was sealed in a cylinder lined with gold.

In nuclear physics gold is used to absorb fission fragments plus gamma rays in containers, and is particularly efficient at capturing neutron radiation as well. From this it is evident that the material in the ten cylinders was not just highly radioactive - it was extraordinarily dangerous and behaving as if it were itself a nuclear reactor. No atomic physicist who has examined the evidence about these ten cases has been able to deliver an opinion as to what substance kept within a lead case might have required these extraordinary precautions.

On May 24, 1945, when the US Navy began to unload U-234, it is clear from the US State papers that no decision regarding the atom bomb had been taken by the US government. On May 30, 1945, both Secretary of State Stimson and President Truman were agreed that no alternative existed to deploying America's atomic arsenal against Japan.

They had no alternative to using the atom bomb, and no satisfactory reason has ever been forthcoming why that decision was made. So what could have caused these two decent men to decide that such a course of action was unavoidable?

What was aboard U-234 might also be aboard other Japan-bound U-boats. The Japanese had at least two submarines with a range of 30,000 miles, that were capable of being used as aircraft launchers. The Japanese had a plan of mixing the uranium from U-234 with standard explosives, and loading them in bombs or planes which were to take off the submarines and attack San Francisco. The target date was August 1945; they were ready, only waiting for the shipment of uranium to arrive.

That would make no sense unless the "uranium" from U-234 was the waxy substance which when mixed with conventional explosives turned the material into the miracle weapon. These two Japanese submarines would be very close to San Francisco, and the pilots of the bomber aircraft would have to be kamikazes, for proximity to the waxy substance meant certain death.

If the Japanese were indeed in the process of being supplied with this material by German U-boats for use against the United States west coast, then this was the reason for the nuclear attacks against Japan.

The miracle explosive known nowadays as R-Waffe was not based on uranium, although uranium was used in the creation of the plasmoid. The plasmoid worked as a catalyst on a conventional coal-dust/liquid air mixture to vastly expand the explosion.

¹ Lucky Forward: The History of Patton's 3rd US Army, Col. Robert S. Allen, published by Vanguard Press, New York, 1947, ² A Man Called Intrepid, Sphere Books, 1977, page 414, ³ German Secret Weapons, Ballantyne Press, UK, also Libr. Edit. San Martin, Madrid, 1975, authored by Brian Ford (military scientist), Barrie Pitt (academic historian) and Capt Sir Basil Liddell Hart (military historian), º US Forces Austria Counter-Intelligence Corps, Salzburg Detachment, Zell am See report 4 August 1945, Case No S/Z/55 Dr Mario Zippermayr; NARA RG 319 Entry 82a Reports and messages, ALSOS Mission.

Additional sources: US Nat Archive NARA/US Strategic Air Forces in Europe - Air Intelligence Summaries, January 1945 et seq. 6 February 1945, Subject: Engine Interference Counter-measures. To: The Director, Air Technical Service Command, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, Engineering Division. From: Taylor Drysdale, Director Technical Services, HQ European Theatre of Operations, PoW and X Detachment, Military Intelligence Service, US Army.

Originally published under "Ohrdruf" by Geoffrey Brooks at the Axis History forums.