Das unterirdische Reich. Die geheimen Welten der Nazis (2003) - full transcript

- [Narrator] It was one

of the largest projects

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)