Das unterirdische Reich. Die geheimen Welten der Nazis (2003) - full transcript
Late in World War II, while Germany sustained relentless bombing by the Allies, the Nazis undertook a bold gambit to turn the war back in their favor. Building an extensive tunnel system deep underground to house armament factor
in the history of mankind,
the Third Reich's bomb-proof factories.
Germany's Wunderwaffen were to bring death
and destruction to its enemies.
Gigantic underground
plants would have kept
the supply chain running
for the Wehrmacht.
Armaments Minister
Albert Speer had devised
the monstrous plan for his Fuhrer.
Today, only few may set
foot in the remnants
of the mammoth project.
Hundreds of millions of
Reichsmarks were spent
in order to hollow out entire mountains.
Production plants for weapons
essential to the war effort
were to be built in
underground tunnel systems.
Hundreds of thousands of
slave laborers had to toil
for the ambitious plans of the Nazis.
The number of those who lost
their lives is uncertain
Up until the last day of the war,
work in the tunnels went on feverishly.
Yet how close had the
Nazis come to accomplishing
their outrageous project?
What would have happened
if the underground armament
production had run successfully?
Would Hitler's war of
annihilation have claimed
millions more victims?
(dramatic music)
A slope close to the Bavarian
town of Oberammergau.
Here, one of the mysterious
tunnel systems laid out
by the Nazis is hidden from
the eyes of the inquisitive.
The only entrance is
blocked with a concrete seal
only the state-appointed
geologist may open it.
Every few years, he has to
make sure that everything
inside is intact.
Heinz Rabe is responsible
for about 20 subterranean
tunnel systems in southern
and eastern Germany.
He has to test whether the installations,
which were built 60 years
ago, are still safe.
After the end of the war,
the Americans went into
the tunnels in Oberammergau
and searched through everything.
Since then the tunnels have stood empty.
The wooden lining is rotten
and stones may come loose
from the roof at any time.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] During the war,
the plant belong to Messerschmitt AG.
It served as a bomb-proof
production and development plant
for the aircraft construction.
According to the plans, there
were three or four portals.
We've opened one.
The others were all blasted
at the end of the war.
Here, we have two parallel tunnels
of about 80 or 90 meters in length
connected by cross sections.
They were used as bomb-proof
production plants.
- [Narrator] The Allies knew of 340
underground construction sites
even before the end of the war.
Over 400 had been given code
names during the Third Reich
and the plans of the Ministry of Armaments
pointed to some 800 plants.
The Nazi leadership had
hesitated for some time
before it decreed the excavation
of subterranean factories.
Only in the summer of
1943, when the air raids
of Allied bomber squadrons
became increasingly destructive,
did Hitler's armament
Minister Albert Speer
give the command to systemically transfer
the war production underground.
Initially, the industry rejected the idea
although the outrageous costs
were borne by the government.
The plans appeared to be incomplete
and their implementation too chaotic.
At first, the Nazis had
existing mines expanded.
One of the first projects was
realized at the end of 1943
on the bank of the Neckar River codenamed
(speaking in foreign language)
120 meters deep under the vineyard slopes,
a gigantic subterranean
tunnel system still lies here
out of sight.
Initially, the mines in Neckarzimmern
had been extracting
gypsum for over 150 years
During World War I, they
housed a dynamite factory
and, from 1937, they were
used to store ammunition.
Whether the workers' latrines
date from World War II
is uncertain as this tunnel
system is one of the few
that are still in use.
The iron gate opens into
a subterranean town.
The mountainside is hollowed
out by a road network
34 kilometers long.
A gigantic arms forge was to be built here
on an area of 130,000 square meters.
It was partly put into
operation in the spring of 1944.
Today, the facility covers a total area
of 170,000 square meters.
Some units of the German armed forces
are stationed in Neckarzimmern.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] Two plants
were transferred here
during World War II, the production
of ammunition casing of a
nearby ammunition factory
and a ball-bearing production
plant for a factory
that was initially situated
in the Schweinfurt.
When the army began to expand
this installation in 1957,
Europe was in the political
crisis of the Cold War
and because of the threat
of possible confrontation,
facilities were sought that
would also be nuclear bomb proof
in order to be able to store
high-grade valuable parts
and to continue the necessary repairs
even under aggravated conditions of war.
- [Narrator] 720 people
work underground here
providing supplies and
repair parts for the army.
The maintenance of the plants cost
the German Ministry of Defense
$1.6 million Euros annually.
- [Translator] Our job these days
in this underground facility
is to repair and store
for safekeeping sensitive materials,
particularly materials which
are worth being guarded.
The greatest advantage here
is that we have special
climatic conditions,
invariable air temperature and humidity,
so that there is little effort involved
in preserving and packaging.
In addition because of
the few access points
and ventilation shafts, the
plant is also very easy to guard
so the number of guards necessary
is comparably small for
this gigantic installation.
- [Narrator] In the same tunnels
where materials are stored
for the German peace missions
in Kosovo and Afghanistan today,
weapons of war were to
be produced 60 years ago.
The expansion of the tunnel
system would have cost
at least 50 million Reichsmarks.
Only half of the project was completed
by the end of the war.
The ball-bearing factories
in Schweinfurt in particular
were the target of the
Allied bomber raids.
In spite of heavy losses,
the Americans succeeded
in razing the factories to the ground.
Their main goal, however, namely
to paralyze the production
of supplies for Hitler's Wehrmacht
was not achieved at that stage.
(explosion booming)
Up to 80% of the key war industries
were to be moved underground.
Along with the ball-bearing factories,
these were the production
plants for aircraft engines,
fuel tanks and the secret
missile program of the SS.
Only about 20% of these projects
were put into operation.
(dramatic music)
Installations that were
considered essential
for the war effort were well camouflaged
in order to become invisible
to the Allied reconnaissance planes.
For instance, the gigantic
fuel tanks of Nazi Germany
were bunkered underground from
as early as the mid 1930s.
One such tank near Bremen
is still in operation
over 60 years later.
The state-owned installations
must be maintained regularly.
Only trained personnel can
descend into the tanks.
Each of the 80 gigantic tanks
holds 4,000 cubic meters of fuel.
They are made of 12-millimeter
thick shipbuilding steel
with a one-meter thick concrete jacket.
Everywhere in the Third Reich,
the underground construction work
was given the highest priority.
- [Narrator] This propaganda film
is called Weapons, Hands, Hearts.
It contains rare footage
of the subterranean construction sites.
These scenes were shot
in Kahla in Turinnia
where an aircraft factory was
to be built codenamed Lax.
It was mostly foreign slave laborers
who had to do the dirty
work in the tunnels
under inhuman conditions.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] On our first day,
we were divided into groups.
A German officer made
his speech and told us
you will work until you drop dead.
Three people had to drill
holes in the tunnels,
another three shoveled and
one took out the full tippers.
We stood on a scaffold and
drilled huge holes into the roof
2.5 to three meters deep which
were filled with dynamite.
Then they blasted it and
we had to get back to work
and start shoveling
immediately afterwards.
We could not even see one another
in all the dust and gases,
but they were merciless.
We had to carry on.
- [Narrator] After their
grueling 12-hour shift,
the tens of thousands of slave laborers
were given a frugal food ration.
At the beginning of February
1945, even 14 to 16-year-olds
were assigned to Kahla in order to help
with the construction.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] From a technical viewpoint,
the concept was rationally
thought-out and essential
considering the air supremacy
of the Allies over Germany,
but the means to realize it
was sheer madness, of course.
The engine had to be kept
running at full steam
although it was foreseeably
speeding towards disaster,
namely the end of the thousand-year Reich
and the cruelties that
took place was something
that is beyond the understanding
of a normal thinking
and feeling human being.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] One of the most
closely-guarded new weapons
of the Luftwaffe was
manufactured in Kahla,
the jet fighter Me-262.
The first aircraft was ready for takeoff
in mid-February 1945.
- [Translator] The jet
fighter looked like a fish.
It was ultra-modern, very
slim and presumably very fast.
We'd heard some rumors that the plan
was to build 1,200
fighters here every month.
We just couldn't believe that,
but it happened before our eyes.
We were all terrified
because it was obvious
that if the war lasted any
longer we would not survive.
- [Narrator] These aerial
photos of Kahla were taken
by the US Air Force in 1945.
The bunkered entrances
and the freight lift
at the side of the mountain
are clearly discernible.
Inside the mountain, the
Nazis planned to build
a total of 30 kilometers of passageways.
At the end of the war,
almost half this distance
had been blasted through the rock.
The tunnels that were not lined
led into the actual heart of the plant,
four gigantic subterranean halls
covering 27,000 square meters,
where the manufacturing was to take place.
- [Translator] We are
in one of the huge halls
which they were planning
to use for the assembly
of the jet fighters, the Me-262.
Here, the fighter was put together
and then transported above ground
through this large cross
section of a tunnel.
Then it was hoisted up the
mountain by means of an elevator
and, from there, it would take off.
- [Narrator] Above the totally
excavated mountain ridge,
the Germans had apparently
laid out a runway
for this purpose.
The serial production of the jet planes
was only a question of time.
As it happened, only few of
them ever took off from there.
- [Translator] I remember
two take offs of Me-262s.
We were working outside
and were able to see
the sloping elevator as
well as what was happening
above ground.
We all looked up and some
were already pointing
at the horizon and then we
saw this strange aircraft
flying incredibly fast.
One could really say that the Me-262
was another wonder weapon.
- [Narrator] The Nazi leadership
had placed great hopes
on the potential of the new wonder weapon.
Ultimately, however, even the
state-of-the-art jet fighter
was largely ineffective
against the superiority
of the Allied air combat forces.
Up until the end of the war,
hundreds of thousands of
internees were transferred
from the concentration camps
in the east to the Reich
in order to build new aircraft factories
within a few months.
Max Mannheimer came from
Auschwitz to Muhldorf,
a town by the Inn River in February 1945.
- [Translator] We knew
that a subterranean factory
was to be built there and we also knew
that the reason for that was
because the armament plants
above ground were all being bombed.
They decided to transfer everything
under the surface of the earth.
Here, for example, there should have been
three stories underground
and three stories above.
To me, it seemed like ancient Egypt
and the building of the pyramids.
A lot of people running back
and forth driven by overseers
because it was a project
that had to be finished
very quickly.
- [Narrator] A five meter
thick and 400 meter long roof
made of reinforced
concrete would form a vault
over the production halls.
Some 2,000 inmates lost their
lives during its construction.
- [Translator] The main jobs were digging,
carrying iron and carrying cement.
That was actually the worst command
and also the most feared.
The SS doctors at the time
calculated that an inmate
who did this job and if he
performed as he was expected
to do had a life
expectancy of 60 to 80 days
and this calculation proved
to be quite accurate.
- [Narrator] When the war ended,
Max Mannheimer's body weight was 37 kilos.
Many of his fellow laborers did not live
to see the liberation.
Crammed in freight trains,
they were evacuated
from Muhldorf and other
camps and taken to Dachau.
The pictures of the dead but
also those of the survivors
shocked the free world.
(dramatic music)
In a forest northeast of Nuremberg,
there is another hidden portal to a tunnel
usually sealed by a concrete wall.
Mining engineers have opened
it in order to carry out
some maintenance work.
The (speaking in foreign language)
near Hersbruck is one of the biggest
subterranean constructions
built by the Nazis.
Even today the people in
the surrounding villages
in the Franconian alp
do not know how large
the mysterious tunnel system
in the mountain really is.
The tunnels were lined in
parts but evidently never used.
Once a year, Heinz Rabe
inspects the installation.
Especially during the
winter, tunnel parts cave-in
and must be repaired, a job
which requires a lot of effort.
The mining expert is well
aware of how dangerous
working underground is,
particularly, in the sections
that had not been reinforced by the Nazis.
Loosened blocks of stone
can fall at any time.
- [Translator] We're now leaving
the lined tunnel sections
and entering the unlined ones.
As you can see here, it's
all sandstone without support
and the greatest risk is that
piles of sandstone come loose
from the roof and fall
and cause depressions
that can reach as far as and
be seen from above ground.
- [Narrator] The Nazis
gave this installation
the code name (speaking
in foreign language) one.
- [Translator] We're now coming
into a heading to the point
where this tunnel should
have been driven forward.
You can see here that the
bore holes for blasting,
these black dots, had already been made.
And, if you're lucky, you could also find
explosive cartridges in the bore holes
next to the drill rods like this one here,
which is an original, that are
still embedded in the stone.
Here is one such cartridge.
So, the bore holes were
loaded ready to be blasted.
It all stopped abruptly.
They left everything
behind just as it was.
- [Narrator] Over 9,000 inmates
from the Flossenburg Concentration Camp
were forced to work here
under appalling conditions
so that the tunnels were
excavated as quickly as possible.
Some 3,500 of them died.
- [Translator] From the
planned 100,000 square meters
of area only about 15,000 were completed.
The excavations should have
been continued in this direction
as you can see from
these so-called drifts.
These galleries are all 20
meters apart from one another
and would have been used
as production plants.
The excavation works on this tunnel system
began in March 1944 and
continued up until May 1945.
Approximately 7.5 kilometers
of tunnels were dug
and parts of them, about 10%,
had already been lined with concrete.
All the rest are still unsupported.
This underground
installation was to be used
for the production of BMW aircraft engines
and the aim was to transfer
the manufacturing plant
from above-ground to a
bomb-proof underground site.
- [Narrator] The slave
laborers blasted and removed
half a million cubic
meters of dogger sandstone
from the mountainside.
Yet aircraft engines
were never built here.
By order of the American occupying power,
the portals to the tunnel
system were walled up
after the war and the abandoned
plant fell into oblivion.
Every now and again, former
concentration camp inmates
come here in order to commemorate
their murdered companions.
There was one new type of weapon
on which the Nazi leadership
pinned their hopes
that would bring a decisive
turn in the course of the war.
In the propaganda jargon
of the Third Reich,
it was called V2.
V stood for vengeance.
Missile engineer Wernher
von Braun had developed
in Peenemunde a new ballistic
missile of the type A4
to a stage where it was
ready for production.
With the V2, the Nazis wanted
to bomb targets in England
and thus terrorize the
British civilian population.
(roaring)
Despite numerous
unsuccessful launch attempts,
the V2 was operational
in the summer of 1944.
(explosion booming)
An inconspicuous mountain
ridge in the Harz region.
In mid-April 1945,
American troops advanced
to the town of Nordhausen.
In the shadows of the Kohnstein mountain,
they found a concentration camp
with emaciated inmates and many corpses.
Here, survivors of the Mittelbau-Dora Camp
report to their liberators
details of mysterious tunnels
in the mountain and a
top-secret missile factory
where they had to work as
slave laborers of the SS.
Yet the victors had long
known that one of the most
important arms forges of
the Third Reich was here.
After the British carried
out a devastating bomb raid
on the Peenemunde plant, the
Nazis quickly transferred
the missile production
to an already existing
underground fuel tank in August 1943.
Concentration camp inmates had to begin
excavating immediately under
the cruelest of conditions.
- [Translator] The 10,000
inmates were put up
in four crosscut connecting
chambers of the tunnel system
which meant that they slept
where they had to work.
They were totally inadequately dressed
for the conditions they
faced here below ground.
They just wore their thin
strapped prisoners uniforms
in the cold and the air was very humid.
And this, of course, quickly
resulted in the spreading
of pulmonary diseases
and it was no surprise
that many of the 3,000 fatalities
during the first five months
were caused by tuberculosis
and other lung diseases.
All the others died of
exhaustion, starvation,
or froze to death but also
from maltreatment by the SS
and the civilian employees of the plant.
- [Narrator] The 250,000
square meter tunnel system
in Kohnstein is largely closed today.
Being in the unlined tunnels
is extremely dangerous.
Only the men of the Mines Safety Authority
go in periodically to inspect the plant.
However, treasure or souvenir
hunters often attempt
to enter the tunnels illegally
as original pieces from the mountain
where the missiles were
built are very sought after
by collectors.
Peter Wolff was brought to
Mittelbau-Dora from Auschwitz.
As a Jewish inmate, he was
given the camp number 105065.
His memories are so dreadful
that he doesn't want to
enter the tunnels again.
- [Translator] We were inmates
in the camp at Nordhausen.
A train took us every morning
and drove us to the tunnels.
We were considered the death commando
and people called us that too.
Working outside was somewhat easier,
if you can use that
word, compared to inside
because inside one was under
constant SS supervision
and people were beaten all the time.
The inmates before us never saw daylight.
They were in the tunnels 24 hours a day.
They slept, ate and worked underground.
The conditions were murderous
and the brutality of the
SS beyond description.
A lot of people died in there.
- [Narrator] These memories demonstrate
the unspeakable suffering
of the slave laborers.
Today, the interior of the mountain
is still littered with debris.
It's almost unimaginable
that an entire factory
was once in operation here.
The Armament Ministry had
assigned 200 million Reichsmarks
for the creation of a gigantic
subterranean industrial area
of 600,000 square meters in total.
The production of the V
missiles was at its core.
A thousand rockets were
to be produced per month
according to the ambitious plan.
In April 1944, the output
was 450 and even this number
was rarely achieved as the
production seldom ran smoothly.
- [Translator] It was
not an ordinary factory
in the sense that the product
which was being manufactured
was not ready to go into mass production.
Almost on a daily basis, Peenemunde,
the development plant of the
A4 missile would send orders
to alter the production
process and these modifications
were then adapted into production here.
As a result, more than half
of the rockets produced
were not fully operational.
- [Narrator] Rare color pictures taken
by Hitler's cameraman Walter Frenz.
Under the instructions
of German technicians,
selected prisoners put
the missiles together
from some 45,000 component parts.
The assembled V2s were taken to tunnel 41
for the final inspection.
The 15-meter tall testing tower
is almost completely under water today.
From here, the missiles were
loaded onto freight trains
and transported to the launching
sites in northern Germany
and occupied Holland.
After the end of the war,
first the British and then the Americans,
collected everything that
could be of use from the plant.
Then the Soviets came and
took whatever was left.
Yet in tunnel 29, relics
of the underground
missile production can still be found.
Jet engines and other parts
rust away in the water.
(dramatic music)
They are the last remnants
of the insane idea
to transfer most of the Third
Reich's armament production
under the earth.
Whether the deployment of a great number
of operational missiles
would have influenced
the outcome of the war is questionable.
In Kohnstein, however,
their production plant
was almost unassailable.
- [Translator] The Allies had extensive
and detailed information
about what was happening here,
chiefly through the evaluation
of aerial reconnaissance photos.
For example, they had
located and knew exactly
where the ventilation
shafts were in Kohnstein.
And they thought long and hard
about whether they could drop
phosphorous or other incendiary
bombs into the shafts
in order to bombard
the underground factory
and render it obsolete.
- [Narrator] U.S. army footage
from April the 12th 1945.
The whole horror of the
Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp
revealed itself to the liberators,
after a British bomb
raid had heavily damaged
the Berga death camp.
This was where the emaciated
SS slaves were brought to die.
Annihilation through work.
- [Translator] Somehow you
get used to seeing dead people
all around you.
Early every morning, each block
had to report for roll call.
Everyone had to be counted,
even those who had died during the night.
So, we had to lay them on one side.
We were always happy to
have survived the day.
I'm often asked why did you
not offer any resistance
to the SS troopers?
And I always reply, if we were
still alive by the evening,
we had offered enough
resistance the whole day.
(engines roaring)
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The chief destination
of the destructive weapon was London.
On September the 7th
1944, the first V2 struck
at the heart of the British capital.
Tens of thousands more would follow.
At least, that was what the
Nazi leadership was planning.
Propaganda Minister
Joseph Goebbels gloated.
The first successful
strikes of V2 missiles
were unscrupulously
exploited on the home front.
(crowd cheering)
(crowd applauding)
- [Narrator] Initially, the
Nazi leaders had planned
to launch the V missiles from
gigantic launching bunkers.
In May 1943, construction
of a concrete colossus
40 meters wide and 75
meters long began in Watten
in northern France.
The German engineers believed
that the five meter thick
reinforced concrete roof was impenetrable.
British bombers proved them
wrong in the summer of 1944.
The incomplete base was
severely damaged by bombs
and became useless for
launching V missiles.
The interior of the mammoth installation
was converted after the raid
and was used for the production of fuel.
A true-to-scale model of
the V2 reminds us today
of the original purpose of the plant.
From the Wehrmacht's viewpoint,
the destruction of Watten
was a tactical error on
the part of the Allies
as the bombing led to
new launch possibilities
being considered.
The missiles, according to the plan
supported by Professor von Braun,
should be launched from
a number of mobile ramps.
These easily camouflaged launching sites
could not be identified
in time by the enemy.
It would be difficult for
Allied bomber pilots to locate
and destroy such targets.
- Oh yeah, we knew all
about the danger of this.
The V2s, especially when
they started coming,
they would blow those off from France
and they would come down
somewhere in England.
This is rather pretty horrifying really.
For people who obviously
knew more about it,
for instance Churchill, it was crucial
because he was thinking
about morale as well.
Whereas to us, of course,
it was merely another job.
We realized the importance
of it and to get on with it
and do the job but we had nothing
about the far-reaching implications of it.
- [Narrator] The 617 Squadron
of the Royal Air Force,
also called the Dambusters,
was put into action
every time British
intelligence had identified
military point targets
such as the launching sites
of V rockets.
In the northern French town of Wizernes
stands, perhaps, the most
spectacular subterranean bunker
built by the Nazis.
From here, the vengeance weapons
would be launched in great numbers.
The locals called the gigantic
roof construction La Coupole,
the dome.
Inside, the missiles would
be fitted with warheads
in an assembly line style of production.
According to the plans of the Nazis,
the operational missiles
would then be transported
to a former quarry and
be launched immediately.
The storage capacity was 500 missiles.
Starting from an old quarry,
thousands of slave laborers
had to blast open kilometers of tunnels
into the mountain under
inhuman conditions.
(dramatic music)
The concrete dome was five meters thick
and weighed 55,000 tons.
It would form a protective vault
over the heart of the unit.
The excavation work in
the interior had begun.
Here, the missiles were to be uprighted
for the final assembly, the
fitting of the warheads.
The octagonal hall is 13 meters high.
Yet not long after construction had begun,
the Brits heard about the plant
and ordered the Dambusters
to destroy it.
- It was important, in fact,
that we knocked it down
before it started sending
all these dreadful things
over to us.
We were thoroughly
briefed where we were told
everything they knew about them.
The whole idea of it as well
was to undermine targets.
So, it had a dual effect.
If you got a direct hit,
it will blow the place up
and blow it completely to smithereens
and, at the same time, we would undermine
all the foundations.
- [Narrator] British military
engineers had developed
a special type of bomb for this purpose.
The 12,000 pound tall boys could penetrate
through meters of solid concrete.
On July the 17th 1944,
these bombs were used
to attack Wizernes.
Although the planes of
the 617 Bomber Squadron
did not manage to land a
direct strike on the dome,
the entire plant became
ineffective after the raid.
- Well, we get the information
because the photo aeroplanes came back.
Almost immediately they were over there
and they got the photo
and they'd come back
and we would be told how
successful the raid was
and also if you had to go
again because, with tall boys,
you'd normally didn't have to go again
if it was successful.
- [Narrator] 11 days prior to that,
the Dambusters had also
attacked Mimoyecques,
a small village just a few kilometers
away from the channel coast
to the south of Calais.
By command of Nazi
Armament Minister Speer,
the building of another
subterranean plant had begun here
in the summer of 1943 for
the production of a weapon
which was to reach London
directly just like the V2.
One single tall boy bomb was
enough to end Hitler's dream
of the so-called England cannon.
The bomb broke through the
six-meter thick concrete roof
and exploded inside the mountain.
Slave laborers had blasted
100-meter long shafts
diagonally into the mountain
to accommodate entire batteries
of new high-pressure pumps.
These cannons, also
called V3 or Busy Lizzies,
were supposed to fire shells to distances
of up to 200 kilometers.
It's not clear which kind
of shells the England cannon
was to fire at a speed of
one kilometer per second.
Theories exist that mention
biological or chemical weapons,
but there is no evidence to support them.
After the successful bombing raid,
the installation was useless
but not completely destroyed.
Today, a few of the 60-year-old tunnels
are still accessible.
A model of the so-called millipede
reminds us of the magnitude of the plan
the Nazis tried to achieve here.
The threat to England had
obviously been so great
that British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill
concerned himself with
Mimoyecques for eight months
after the liberation of France.
He could not allow this
installation to pose a threat
to the safety of the country,
he wrote in a confidential memorandum.
As a result, the V3 shafts
that were not destroyed
in the raid were blasted
by British engineers.
Did Churchill know more
about the plans of the Nazis
than is known today?
An obsolete railway track
leads into no-man's land,
Falkenhagen southeast of Berlin.
British records concerning
this small place
in Brandenburg's countryside,
are partly classified
to this day.
The reason is that here was to be produced
one of the most dangerous
weapons of mass destruction
in the history of war.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] A Wehrmacht
instructional film.
The effects of the toxic substances,
mustard gas and hydrocyanic acid,
were demonstrated on living objects.
Great Britain, the United
States and the Soviet Union
stockpiled large amounts
of these warfare agents
during the second world war.
Nazi Germany also had some 55,000 tons.
Yet these lethal gases were not used.
The memories of the terrors
caused by the use of gas
in the first world war were too dreadful.
Dr Hoffman, a physicist and former member
of the GDR's Academy of
Sciences, has been investigating
the history of Falkenhagen for decades.
In 1938, the military had built the unit
in a large, densely
forested area to protect it
from inquisitive eyes.
Under the code name (speaking
in foreign language)
scientists here developed
mostly incendiary substances.
Incomplete parts of buildings
testified to a project
which was started here in 1944.
The Army Supreme Command
had made the grounds
available to IG Farben.
The chemical concern was
to produce a completely new
chemical warfare agent.
44 million Reichsmarks were apportioned
for the construction.
A gigantic thermal power station
was already structurally complete.
The chemists had already
transferred their labs
to Falkenhagen.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] There was
a new process development
and that was the nerve agent Sarin.
This warfare agent was to
be produced in a large plant
here in Falkenhagen.
Sarin mainly affects
the respiratory system.
A concentration of one droplet,
which evaporates into a cubic
meter of air is sufficient,
and when one comes into
contact with this agent,
death by respiratory failure
will result within six minutes.
- [Narrator] The
traditional chemical weapons
that were known at the time
would have been recognized
by the soldiers on both sides.
(soldier yelling)
(explosion booming)
The use of protective
gas masks was practiced
over and over again.
Sarin, however, was different.
One could neither see it
nor smell or taste it.
With Sarin, death came with no warning.
It's said that Hitler had
forbidden the use of gas
because he'd almost lost his eyesight
after a gas attack during
the first world war.
At the same time, however,
he personally ordered
the production of Sarin.
Would he have had the nerve
to use this new weapon
if it had been available?
With a month's production of Sarin,
the Nazis would have been able
to eradicate the population
of a city as large as London.
When the Red Army reached the
borders of the Third Reich
at the beginning of 1945,
the German chemists in Falkenhagen
packed up their equipment and left.
Nothing should give the victors
any clues about their plans.
Sarin was never produced here.
The Soviet conquerors
used the production tract
for breeding pigs.
- [Translator] After the war,
people were rendered speechless
when they realized the
disastrous potential
of what was in preparation here.
This chemical warfare agent
was a purely German invention
and was totally unknown to the Allies.
500 tons monthly is a vast amount
and, with artillery shells or bombs,
one could have exterminated whole areas.
With such a weapon, one
does not distinguish
between civilians and soldiers.
- [Narrator] An 80-meter-long
subterranean duct
is what remains of the semi-finished
filling plant for Sarin.
IG Farben had announced that production
could commence in the summer of 1945.
How realistic that was can no
longer be established today.
(dramatic music)
American tank units advancing into Austria
in early May 1945.
The sorry remains of the
Wehrmacht had surrendered
to the superiority of the Allies
and become prisoners of war.
Footage from the end of
the war near Salzburg
filmed by a cameraman of the US Army.
On May the 8th, two days after
the Ebensee Concentration Camp
was liberated by the Americans,
war correspondents
documented the suffering
of the survivors.
Concentration camp
inmates and slave laborers
from Ebensee had been toiling
in a SS secret tunnel system
close to the camp, codename cement.
Today, a diesel locomotive
drives into the mountain
once a day in order to remove
the lime that is mined there.
60 years ago, the Nazis
expropriated the family business
and gave it to the SS for the production
of the most spectacular new development
in the field of military engineering.
The plant was never put into operation.
However, especially in
the former tunnel A,
the initial purpose can
still be identified.
The halls in which
intercontinental missiles
were to be assembled
under the supervision of
SS Obergruppenfuhrer Hans
Kammler are 30 meters high.
The newest missile model,
the 26-meter-tall A9
was supposed to have a strike range
that would reach as far as the USA,
according to the ambitious
plans of the Nazis.
20 such rockets would be
built monthly in Ebensee.
The A9 project did not even
reach the testing stage.
Its inventor, Wernher von Braun,
was taken to the USA
without further questioning
after the end of the
war where he continued
his missile research for his new masters.
The precise number of
the victims of his work
while in Hitler's service is unknown.
(dramatic music)
the Third Reich's bomb-proof factories.
Germany's Wunderwaffen were to bring death
and destruction to its enemies.
Gigantic underground
plants would have kept
the supply chain running
for the Wehrmacht.
Armaments Minister
Albert Speer had devised
the monstrous plan for his Fuhrer.
Today, only few may set
foot in the remnants
of the mammoth project.
Hundreds of millions of
Reichsmarks were spent
in order to hollow out entire mountains.
Production plants for weapons
essential to the war effort
were to be built in
underground tunnel systems.
Hundreds of thousands of
slave laborers had to toil
for the ambitious plans of the Nazis.
The number of those who lost
their lives is uncertain
Up until the last day of the war,
work in the tunnels went on feverishly.
Yet how close had the
Nazis come to accomplishing
their outrageous project?
What would have happened
if the underground armament
production had run successfully?
Would Hitler's war of
annihilation have claimed
millions more victims?
(dramatic music)
A slope close to the Bavarian
town of Oberammergau.
Here, one of the mysterious
tunnel systems laid out
by the Nazis is hidden from
the eyes of the inquisitive.
The only entrance is
blocked with a concrete seal
only the state-appointed
geologist may open it.
Every few years, he has to
make sure that everything
inside is intact.
Heinz Rabe is responsible
for about 20 subterranean
tunnel systems in southern
and eastern Germany.
He has to test whether the installations,
which were built 60 years
ago, are still safe.
After the end of the war,
the Americans went into
the tunnels in Oberammergau
and searched through everything.
Since then the tunnels have stood empty.
The wooden lining is rotten
and stones may come loose
from the roof at any time.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] During the war,
the plant belong to Messerschmitt AG.
It served as a bomb-proof
production and development plant
for the aircraft construction.
According to the plans, there
were three or four portals.
We've opened one.
The others were all blasted
at the end of the war.
Here, we have two parallel tunnels
of about 80 or 90 meters in length
connected by cross sections.
They were used as bomb-proof
production plants.
- [Narrator] The Allies knew of 340
underground construction sites
even before the end of the war.
Over 400 had been given code
names during the Third Reich
and the plans of the Ministry of Armaments
pointed to some 800 plants.
The Nazi leadership had
hesitated for some time
before it decreed the excavation
of subterranean factories.
Only in the summer of
1943, when the air raids
of Allied bomber squadrons
became increasingly destructive,
did Hitler's armament
Minister Albert Speer
give the command to systemically transfer
the war production underground.
Initially, the industry rejected the idea
although the outrageous costs
were borne by the government.
The plans appeared to be incomplete
and their implementation too chaotic.
At first, the Nazis had
existing mines expanded.
One of the first projects was
realized at the end of 1943
on the bank of the Neckar River codenamed
(speaking in foreign language)
120 meters deep under the vineyard slopes,
a gigantic subterranean
tunnel system still lies here
out of sight.
Initially, the mines in Neckarzimmern
had been extracting
gypsum for over 150 years
During World War I, they
housed a dynamite factory
and, from 1937, they were
used to store ammunition.
Whether the workers' latrines
date from World War II
is uncertain as this tunnel
system is one of the few
that are still in use.
The iron gate opens into
a subterranean town.
The mountainside is hollowed
out by a road network
34 kilometers long.
A gigantic arms forge was to be built here
on an area of 130,000 square meters.
It was partly put into
operation in the spring of 1944.
Today, the facility covers a total area
of 170,000 square meters.
Some units of the German armed forces
are stationed in Neckarzimmern.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] Two plants
were transferred here
during World War II, the production
of ammunition casing of a
nearby ammunition factory
and a ball-bearing production
plant for a factory
that was initially situated
in the Schweinfurt.
When the army began to expand
this installation in 1957,
Europe was in the political
crisis of the Cold War
and because of the threat
of possible confrontation,
facilities were sought that
would also be nuclear bomb proof
in order to be able to store
high-grade valuable parts
and to continue the necessary repairs
even under aggravated conditions of war.
- [Narrator] 720 people
work underground here
providing supplies and
repair parts for the army.
The maintenance of the plants cost
the German Ministry of Defense
$1.6 million Euros annually.
- [Translator] Our job these days
in this underground facility
is to repair and store
for safekeeping sensitive materials,
particularly materials which
are worth being guarded.
The greatest advantage here
is that we have special
climatic conditions,
invariable air temperature and humidity,
so that there is little effort involved
in preserving and packaging.
In addition because of
the few access points
and ventilation shafts, the
plant is also very easy to guard
so the number of guards necessary
is comparably small for
this gigantic installation.
- [Narrator] In the same tunnels
where materials are stored
for the German peace missions
in Kosovo and Afghanistan today,
weapons of war were to
be produced 60 years ago.
The expansion of the tunnel
system would have cost
at least 50 million Reichsmarks.
Only half of the project was completed
by the end of the war.
The ball-bearing factories
in Schweinfurt in particular
were the target of the
Allied bomber raids.
In spite of heavy losses,
the Americans succeeded
in razing the factories to the ground.
Their main goal, however, namely
to paralyze the production
of supplies for Hitler's Wehrmacht
was not achieved at that stage.
(explosion booming)
Up to 80% of the key war industries
were to be moved underground.
Along with the ball-bearing factories,
these were the production
plants for aircraft engines,
fuel tanks and the secret
missile program of the SS.
Only about 20% of these projects
were put into operation.
(dramatic music)
Installations that were
considered essential
for the war effort were well camouflaged
in order to become invisible
to the Allied reconnaissance planes.
For instance, the gigantic
fuel tanks of Nazi Germany
were bunkered underground from
as early as the mid 1930s.
One such tank near Bremen
is still in operation
over 60 years later.
The state-owned installations
must be maintained regularly.
Only trained personnel can
descend into the tanks.
Each of the 80 gigantic tanks
holds 4,000 cubic meters of fuel.
They are made of 12-millimeter
thick shipbuilding steel
with a one-meter thick concrete jacket.
Everywhere in the Third Reich,
the underground construction work
was given the highest priority.
- [Narrator] This propaganda film
is called Weapons, Hands, Hearts.
It contains rare footage
of the subterranean construction sites.
These scenes were shot
in Kahla in Turinnia
where an aircraft factory was
to be built codenamed Lax.
It was mostly foreign slave laborers
who had to do the dirty
work in the tunnels
under inhuman conditions.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] On our first day,
we were divided into groups.
A German officer made
his speech and told us
you will work until you drop dead.
Three people had to drill
holes in the tunnels,
another three shoveled and
one took out the full tippers.
We stood on a scaffold and
drilled huge holes into the roof
2.5 to three meters deep which
were filled with dynamite.
Then they blasted it and
we had to get back to work
and start shoveling
immediately afterwards.
We could not even see one another
in all the dust and gases,
but they were merciless.
We had to carry on.
- [Narrator] After their
grueling 12-hour shift,
the tens of thousands of slave laborers
were given a frugal food ration.
At the beginning of February
1945, even 14 to 16-year-olds
were assigned to Kahla in order to help
with the construction.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] From a technical viewpoint,
the concept was rationally
thought-out and essential
considering the air supremacy
of the Allies over Germany,
but the means to realize it
was sheer madness, of course.
The engine had to be kept
running at full steam
although it was foreseeably
speeding towards disaster,
namely the end of the thousand-year Reich
and the cruelties that
took place was something
that is beyond the understanding
of a normal thinking
and feeling human being.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] One of the most
closely-guarded new weapons
of the Luftwaffe was
manufactured in Kahla,
the jet fighter Me-262.
The first aircraft was ready for takeoff
in mid-February 1945.
- [Translator] The jet
fighter looked like a fish.
It was ultra-modern, very
slim and presumably very fast.
We'd heard some rumors that the plan
was to build 1,200
fighters here every month.
We just couldn't believe that,
but it happened before our eyes.
We were all terrified
because it was obvious
that if the war lasted any
longer we would not survive.
- [Narrator] These aerial
photos of Kahla were taken
by the US Air Force in 1945.
The bunkered entrances
and the freight lift
at the side of the mountain
are clearly discernible.
Inside the mountain, the
Nazis planned to build
a total of 30 kilometers of passageways.
At the end of the war,
almost half this distance
had been blasted through the rock.
The tunnels that were not lined
led into the actual heart of the plant,
four gigantic subterranean halls
covering 27,000 square meters,
where the manufacturing was to take place.
- [Translator] We are
in one of the huge halls
which they were planning
to use for the assembly
of the jet fighters, the Me-262.
Here, the fighter was put together
and then transported above ground
through this large cross
section of a tunnel.
Then it was hoisted up the
mountain by means of an elevator
and, from there, it would take off.
- [Narrator] Above the totally
excavated mountain ridge,
the Germans had apparently
laid out a runway
for this purpose.
The serial production of the jet planes
was only a question of time.
As it happened, only few of
them ever took off from there.
- [Translator] I remember
two take offs of Me-262s.
We were working outside
and were able to see
the sloping elevator as
well as what was happening
above ground.
We all looked up and some
were already pointing
at the horizon and then we
saw this strange aircraft
flying incredibly fast.
One could really say that the Me-262
was another wonder weapon.
- [Narrator] The Nazi leadership
had placed great hopes
on the potential of the new wonder weapon.
Ultimately, however, even the
state-of-the-art jet fighter
was largely ineffective
against the superiority
of the Allied air combat forces.
Up until the end of the war,
hundreds of thousands of
internees were transferred
from the concentration camps
in the east to the Reich
in order to build new aircraft factories
within a few months.
Max Mannheimer came from
Auschwitz to Muhldorf,
a town by the Inn River in February 1945.
- [Translator] We knew
that a subterranean factory
was to be built there and we also knew
that the reason for that was
because the armament plants
above ground were all being bombed.
They decided to transfer everything
under the surface of the earth.
Here, for example, there should have been
three stories underground
and three stories above.
To me, it seemed like ancient Egypt
and the building of the pyramids.
A lot of people running back
and forth driven by overseers
because it was a project
that had to be finished
very quickly.
- [Narrator] A five meter
thick and 400 meter long roof
made of reinforced
concrete would form a vault
over the production halls.
Some 2,000 inmates lost their
lives during its construction.
- [Translator] The main jobs were digging,
carrying iron and carrying cement.
That was actually the worst command
and also the most feared.
The SS doctors at the time
calculated that an inmate
who did this job and if he
performed as he was expected
to do had a life
expectancy of 60 to 80 days
and this calculation proved
to be quite accurate.
- [Narrator] When the war ended,
Max Mannheimer's body weight was 37 kilos.
Many of his fellow laborers did not live
to see the liberation.
Crammed in freight trains,
they were evacuated
from Muhldorf and other
camps and taken to Dachau.
The pictures of the dead but
also those of the survivors
shocked the free world.
(dramatic music)
In a forest northeast of Nuremberg,
there is another hidden portal to a tunnel
usually sealed by a concrete wall.
Mining engineers have opened
it in order to carry out
some maintenance work.
The (speaking in foreign language)
near Hersbruck is one of the biggest
subterranean constructions
built by the Nazis.
Even today the people in
the surrounding villages
in the Franconian alp
do not know how large
the mysterious tunnel system
in the mountain really is.
The tunnels were lined in
parts but evidently never used.
Once a year, Heinz Rabe
inspects the installation.
Especially during the
winter, tunnel parts cave-in
and must be repaired, a job
which requires a lot of effort.
The mining expert is well
aware of how dangerous
working underground is,
particularly, in the sections
that had not been reinforced by the Nazis.
Loosened blocks of stone
can fall at any time.
- [Translator] We're now leaving
the lined tunnel sections
and entering the unlined ones.
As you can see here, it's
all sandstone without support
and the greatest risk is that
piles of sandstone come loose
from the roof and fall
and cause depressions
that can reach as far as and
be seen from above ground.
- [Narrator] The Nazis
gave this installation
the code name (speaking
in foreign language) one.
- [Translator] We're now coming
into a heading to the point
where this tunnel should
have been driven forward.
You can see here that the
bore holes for blasting,
these black dots, had already been made.
And, if you're lucky, you could also find
explosive cartridges in the bore holes
next to the drill rods like this one here,
which is an original, that are
still embedded in the stone.
Here is one such cartridge.
So, the bore holes were
loaded ready to be blasted.
It all stopped abruptly.
They left everything
behind just as it was.
- [Narrator] Over 9,000 inmates
from the Flossenburg Concentration Camp
were forced to work here
under appalling conditions
so that the tunnels were
excavated as quickly as possible.
Some 3,500 of them died.
- [Translator] From the
planned 100,000 square meters
of area only about 15,000 were completed.
The excavations should have
been continued in this direction
as you can see from
these so-called drifts.
These galleries are all 20
meters apart from one another
and would have been used
as production plants.
The excavation works on this tunnel system
began in March 1944 and
continued up until May 1945.
Approximately 7.5 kilometers
of tunnels were dug
and parts of them, about 10%,
had already been lined with concrete.
All the rest are still unsupported.
This underground
installation was to be used
for the production of BMW aircraft engines
and the aim was to transfer
the manufacturing plant
from above-ground to a
bomb-proof underground site.
- [Narrator] The slave
laborers blasted and removed
half a million cubic
meters of dogger sandstone
from the mountainside.
Yet aircraft engines
were never built here.
By order of the American occupying power,
the portals to the tunnel
system were walled up
after the war and the abandoned
plant fell into oblivion.
Every now and again, former
concentration camp inmates
come here in order to commemorate
their murdered companions.
There was one new type of weapon
on which the Nazi leadership
pinned their hopes
that would bring a decisive
turn in the course of the war.
In the propaganda jargon
of the Third Reich,
it was called V2.
V stood for vengeance.
Missile engineer Wernher
von Braun had developed
in Peenemunde a new ballistic
missile of the type A4
to a stage where it was
ready for production.
With the V2, the Nazis wanted
to bomb targets in England
and thus terrorize the
British civilian population.
(roaring)
Despite numerous
unsuccessful launch attempts,
the V2 was operational
in the summer of 1944.
(explosion booming)
An inconspicuous mountain
ridge in the Harz region.
In mid-April 1945,
American troops advanced
to the town of Nordhausen.
In the shadows of the Kohnstein mountain,
they found a concentration camp
with emaciated inmates and many corpses.
Here, survivors of the Mittelbau-Dora Camp
report to their liberators
details of mysterious tunnels
in the mountain and a
top-secret missile factory
where they had to work as
slave laborers of the SS.
Yet the victors had long
known that one of the most
important arms forges of
the Third Reich was here.
After the British carried
out a devastating bomb raid
on the Peenemunde plant, the
Nazis quickly transferred
the missile production
to an already existing
underground fuel tank in August 1943.
Concentration camp inmates had to begin
excavating immediately under
the cruelest of conditions.
- [Translator] The 10,000
inmates were put up
in four crosscut connecting
chambers of the tunnel system
which meant that they slept
where they had to work.
They were totally inadequately dressed
for the conditions they
faced here below ground.
They just wore their thin
strapped prisoners uniforms
in the cold and the air was very humid.
And this, of course, quickly
resulted in the spreading
of pulmonary diseases
and it was no surprise
that many of the 3,000 fatalities
during the first five months
were caused by tuberculosis
and other lung diseases.
All the others died of
exhaustion, starvation,
or froze to death but also
from maltreatment by the SS
and the civilian employees of the plant.
- [Narrator] The 250,000
square meter tunnel system
in Kohnstein is largely closed today.
Being in the unlined tunnels
is extremely dangerous.
Only the men of the Mines Safety Authority
go in periodically to inspect the plant.
However, treasure or souvenir
hunters often attempt
to enter the tunnels illegally
as original pieces from the mountain
where the missiles were
built are very sought after
by collectors.
Peter Wolff was brought to
Mittelbau-Dora from Auschwitz.
As a Jewish inmate, he was
given the camp number 105065.
His memories are so dreadful
that he doesn't want to
enter the tunnels again.
- [Translator] We were inmates
in the camp at Nordhausen.
A train took us every morning
and drove us to the tunnels.
We were considered the death commando
and people called us that too.
Working outside was somewhat easier,
if you can use that
word, compared to inside
because inside one was under
constant SS supervision
and people were beaten all the time.
The inmates before us never saw daylight.
They were in the tunnels 24 hours a day.
They slept, ate and worked underground.
The conditions were murderous
and the brutality of the
SS beyond description.
A lot of people died in there.
- [Narrator] These memories demonstrate
the unspeakable suffering
of the slave laborers.
Today, the interior of the mountain
is still littered with debris.
It's almost unimaginable
that an entire factory
was once in operation here.
The Armament Ministry had
assigned 200 million Reichsmarks
for the creation of a gigantic
subterranean industrial area
of 600,000 square meters in total.
The production of the V
missiles was at its core.
A thousand rockets were
to be produced per month
according to the ambitious plan.
In April 1944, the output
was 450 and even this number
was rarely achieved as the
production seldom ran smoothly.
- [Translator] It was
not an ordinary factory
in the sense that the product
which was being manufactured
was not ready to go into mass production.
Almost on a daily basis, Peenemunde,
the development plant of the
A4 missile would send orders
to alter the production
process and these modifications
were then adapted into production here.
As a result, more than half
of the rockets produced
were not fully operational.
- [Narrator] Rare color pictures taken
by Hitler's cameraman Walter Frenz.
Under the instructions
of German technicians,
selected prisoners put
the missiles together
from some 45,000 component parts.
The assembled V2s were taken to tunnel 41
for the final inspection.
The 15-meter tall testing tower
is almost completely under water today.
From here, the missiles were
loaded onto freight trains
and transported to the launching
sites in northern Germany
and occupied Holland.
After the end of the war,
first the British and then the Americans,
collected everything that
could be of use from the plant.
Then the Soviets came and
took whatever was left.
Yet in tunnel 29, relics
of the underground
missile production can still be found.
Jet engines and other parts
rust away in the water.
(dramatic music)
They are the last remnants
of the insane idea
to transfer most of the Third
Reich's armament production
under the earth.
Whether the deployment of a great number
of operational missiles
would have influenced
the outcome of the war is questionable.
In Kohnstein, however,
their production plant
was almost unassailable.
- [Translator] The Allies had extensive
and detailed information
about what was happening here,
chiefly through the evaluation
of aerial reconnaissance photos.
For example, they had
located and knew exactly
where the ventilation
shafts were in Kohnstein.
And they thought long and hard
about whether they could drop
phosphorous or other incendiary
bombs into the shafts
in order to bombard
the underground factory
and render it obsolete.
- [Narrator] U.S. army footage
from April the 12th 1945.
The whole horror of the
Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp
revealed itself to the liberators,
after a British bomb
raid had heavily damaged
the Berga death camp.
This was where the emaciated
SS slaves were brought to die.
Annihilation through work.
- [Translator] Somehow you
get used to seeing dead people
all around you.
Early every morning, each block
had to report for roll call.
Everyone had to be counted,
even those who had died during the night.
So, we had to lay them on one side.
We were always happy to
have survived the day.
I'm often asked why did you
not offer any resistance
to the SS troopers?
And I always reply, if we were
still alive by the evening,
we had offered enough
resistance the whole day.
(engines roaring)
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The chief destination
of the destructive weapon was London.
On September the 7th
1944, the first V2 struck
at the heart of the British capital.
Tens of thousands more would follow.
At least, that was what the
Nazi leadership was planning.
Propaganda Minister
Joseph Goebbels gloated.
The first successful
strikes of V2 missiles
were unscrupulously
exploited on the home front.
(crowd cheering)
(crowd applauding)
- [Narrator] Initially, the
Nazi leaders had planned
to launch the V missiles from
gigantic launching bunkers.
In May 1943, construction
of a concrete colossus
40 meters wide and 75
meters long began in Watten
in northern France.
The German engineers believed
that the five meter thick
reinforced concrete roof was impenetrable.
British bombers proved them
wrong in the summer of 1944.
The incomplete base was
severely damaged by bombs
and became useless for
launching V missiles.
The interior of the mammoth installation
was converted after the raid
and was used for the production of fuel.
A true-to-scale model of
the V2 reminds us today
of the original purpose of the plant.
From the Wehrmacht's viewpoint,
the destruction of Watten
was a tactical error on
the part of the Allies
as the bombing led to
new launch possibilities
being considered.
The missiles, according to the plan
supported by Professor von Braun,
should be launched from
a number of mobile ramps.
These easily camouflaged launching sites
could not be identified
in time by the enemy.
It would be difficult for
Allied bomber pilots to locate
and destroy such targets.
- Oh yeah, we knew all
about the danger of this.
The V2s, especially when
they started coming,
they would blow those off from France
and they would come down
somewhere in England.
This is rather pretty horrifying really.
For people who obviously
knew more about it,
for instance Churchill, it was crucial
because he was thinking
about morale as well.
Whereas to us, of course,
it was merely another job.
We realized the importance
of it and to get on with it
and do the job but we had nothing
about the far-reaching implications of it.
- [Narrator] The 617 Squadron
of the Royal Air Force,
also called the Dambusters,
was put into action
every time British
intelligence had identified
military point targets
such as the launching sites
of V rockets.
In the northern French town of Wizernes
stands, perhaps, the most
spectacular subterranean bunker
built by the Nazis.
From here, the vengeance weapons
would be launched in great numbers.
The locals called the gigantic
roof construction La Coupole,
the dome.
Inside, the missiles would
be fitted with warheads
in an assembly line style of production.
According to the plans of the Nazis,
the operational missiles
would then be transported
to a former quarry and
be launched immediately.
The storage capacity was 500 missiles.
Starting from an old quarry,
thousands of slave laborers
had to blast open kilometers of tunnels
into the mountain under
inhuman conditions.
(dramatic music)
The concrete dome was five meters thick
and weighed 55,000 tons.
It would form a protective vault
over the heart of the unit.
The excavation work in
the interior had begun.
Here, the missiles were to be uprighted
for the final assembly, the
fitting of the warheads.
The octagonal hall is 13 meters high.
Yet not long after construction had begun,
the Brits heard about the plant
and ordered the Dambusters
to destroy it.
- It was important, in fact,
that we knocked it down
before it started sending
all these dreadful things
over to us.
We were thoroughly
briefed where we were told
everything they knew about them.
The whole idea of it as well
was to undermine targets.
So, it had a dual effect.
If you got a direct hit,
it will blow the place up
and blow it completely to smithereens
and, at the same time, we would undermine
all the foundations.
- [Narrator] British military
engineers had developed
a special type of bomb for this purpose.
The 12,000 pound tall boys could penetrate
through meters of solid concrete.
On July the 17th 1944,
these bombs were used
to attack Wizernes.
Although the planes of
the 617 Bomber Squadron
did not manage to land a
direct strike on the dome,
the entire plant became
ineffective after the raid.
- Well, we get the information
because the photo aeroplanes came back.
Almost immediately they were over there
and they got the photo
and they'd come back
and we would be told how
successful the raid was
and also if you had to go
again because, with tall boys,
you'd normally didn't have to go again
if it was successful.
- [Narrator] 11 days prior to that,
the Dambusters had also
attacked Mimoyecques,
a small village just a few kilometers
away from the channel coast
to the south of Calais.
By command of Nazi
Armament Minister Speer,
the building of another
subterranean plant had begun here
in the summer of 1943 for
the production of a weapon
which was to reach London
directly just like the V2.
One single tall boy bomb was
enough to end Hitler's dream
of the so-called England cannon.
The bomb broke through the
six-meter thick concrete roof
and exploded inside the mountain.
Slave laborers had blasted
100-meter long shafts
diagonally into the mountain
to accommodate entire batteries
of new high-pressure pumps.
These cannons, also
called V3 or Busy Lizzies,
were supposed to fire shells to distances
of up to 200 kilometers.
It's not clear which kind
of shells the England cannon
was to fire at a speed of
one kilometer per second.
Theories exist that mention
biological or chemical weapons,
but there is no evidence to support them.
After the successful bombing raid,
the installation was useless
but not completely destroyed.
Today, a few of the 60-year-old tunnels
are still accessible.
A model of the so-called millipede
reminds us of the magnitude of the plan
the Nazis tried to achieve here.
The threat to England had
obviously been so great
that British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill
concerned himself with
Mimoyecques for eight months
after the liberation of France.
He could not allow this
installation to pose a threat
to the safety of the country,
he wrote in a confidential memorandum.
As a result, the V3 shafts
that were not destroyed
in the raid were blasted
by British engineers.
Did Churchill know more
about the plans of the Nazis
than is known today?
An obsolete railway track
leads into no-man's land,
Falkenhagen southeast of Berlin.
British records concerning
this small place
in Brandenburg's countryside,
are partly classified
to this day.
The reason is that here was to be produced
one of the most dangerous
weapons of mass destruction
in the history of war.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] A Wehrmacht
instructional film.
The effects of the toxic substances,
mustard gas and hydrocyanic acid,
were demonstrated on living objects.
Great Britain, the United
States and the Soviet Union
stockpiled large amounts
of these warfare agents
during the second world war.
Nazi Germany also had some 55,000 tons.
Yet these lethal gases were not used.
The memories of the terrors
caused by the use of gas
in the first world war were too dreadful.
Dr Hoffman, a physicist and former member
of the GDR's Academy of
Sciences, has been investigating
the history of Falkenhagen for decades.
In 1938, the military had built the unit
in a large, densely
forested area to protect it
from inquisitive eyes.
Under the code name (speaking
in foreign language)
scientists here developed
mostly incendiary substances.
Incomplete parts of buildings
testified to a project
which was started here in 1944.
The Army Supreme Command
had made the grounds
available to IG Farben.
The chemical concern was
to produce a completely new
chemical warfare agent.
44 million Reichsmarks were apportioned
for the construction.
A gigantic thermal power station
was already structurally complete.
The chemists had already
transferred their labs
to Falkenhagen.
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Translator] There was
a new process development
and that was the nerve agent Sarin.
This warfare agent was to
be produced in a large plant
here in Falkenhagen.
Sarin mainly affects
the respiratory system.
A concentration of one droplet,
which evaporates into a cubic
meter of air is sufficient,
and when one comes into
contact with this agent,
death by respiratory failure
will result within six minutes.
- [Narrator] The
traditional chemical weapons
that were known at the time
would have been recognized
by the soldiers on both sides.
(soldier yelling)
(explosion booming)
The use of protective
gas masks was practiced
over and over again.
Sarin, however, was different.
One could neither see it
nor smell or taste it.
With Sarin, death came with no warning.
It's said that Hitler had
forbidden the use of gas
because he'd almost lost his eyesight
after a gas attack during
the first world war.
At the same time, however,
he personally ordered
the production of Sarin.
Would he have had the nerve
to use this new weapon
if it had been available?
With a month's production of Sarin,
the Nazis would have been able
to eradicate the population
of a city as large as London.
When the Red Army reached the
borders of the Third Reich
at the beginning of 1945,
the German chemists in Falkenhagen
packed up their equipment and left.
Nothing should give the victors
any clues about their plans.
Sarin was never produced here.
The Soviet conquerors
used the production tract
for breeding pigs.
- [Translator] After the war,
people were rendered speechless
when they realized the
disastrous potential
of what was in preparation here.
This chemical warfare agent
was a purely German invention
and was totally unknown to the Allies.
500 tons monthly is a vast amount
and, with artillery shells or bombs,
one could have exterminated whole areas.
With such a weapon, one
does not distinguish
between civilians and soldiers.
- [Narrator] An 80-meter-long
subterranean duct
is what remains of the semi-finished
filling plant for Sarin.
IG Farben had announced that production
could commence in the summer of 1945.
How realistic that was can no
longer be established today.
(dramatic music)
American tank units advancing into Austria
in early May 1945.
The sorry remains of the
Wehrmacht had surrendered
to the superiority of the Allies
and become prisoners of war.
Footage from the end of
the war near Salzburg
filmed by a cameraman of the US Army.
On May the 8th, two days after
the Ebensee Concentration Camp
was liberated by the Americans,
war correspondents
documented the suffering
of the survivors.
Concentration camp
inmates and slave laborers
from Ebensee had been toiling
in a SS secret tunnel system
close to the camp, codename cement.
Today, a diesel locomotive
drives into the mountain
once a day in order to remove
the lime that is mined there.
60 years ago, the Nazis
expropriated the family business
and gave it to the SS for the production
of the most spectacular new development
in the field of military engineering.
The plant was never put into operation.
However, especially in
the former tunnel A,
the initial purpose can
still be identified.
The halls in which
intercontinental missiles
were to be assembled
under the supervision of
SS Obergruppenfuhrer Hans
Kammler are 30 meters high.
The newest missile model,
the 26-meter-tall A9
was supposed to have a strike range
that would reach as far as the USA,
according to the ambitious
plans of the Nazis.
20 such rockets would be
built monthly in Ebensee.
The A9 project did not even
reach the testing stage.
Its inventor, Wernher von Braun,
was taken to the USA
without further questioning
after the end of the
war where he continued
his missile research for his new masters.
The precise number of
the victims of his work
while in Hitler's service is unknown.
(dramatic music)