Underground Marvels (2019–…): Season 1, Episode 7 - Jersey War Tunnels - full transcript
The underground bases built by the German army during the occupation of Jersey, and a group of more than 20 underground cities in Turkey, one of which dates back to 800BC.
Narrator: In world war ii, why did
hitler convert the channel islands
Into an invincible, underground fortress.
Talking about solid
granite, it took a lot of work.
Narrator: How did a
little-known ancient civilization
Use this labyrinth to wage a guerrilla war
Against their powerful
and aggressive neighbors?
And how have two underground marvels
Transformed the fame and fortune of a city?
♪
Beneath our feet lie
extraordinary chambers,
Caves, vaults and tunnels...
The span and the size is just crazy.
Narrator: ...Some designed
and built by humans.
Others formed over thousands of years,
But how were they created and adapted?
By whom, and why?
You've got to face your fears.
Narrator: Throughout
history, subterranean life
Has captured our imagination.
We've going further and
deeper to unearth the mysteries,
The stories and the secrets
of underground marvels.
25 miles off the coast of France
Lies the archipelago known
as the channel islands,
But surprisingly they don't
belong to the european mainland.
They are proudly british territories,
And the largest of them is jersey
With an area of 46 square miles.
During world war ii, the
islands were occupied
By nazi forces under
orders from adolph hitler,
But why did the fuhrer
take such an interest
In this tiny land mass?
Working for the germans
was, really, something
That nobody really want to do.
Narrator: What did it
take to convert the island
Into an impenetrable system
of underground bunkers...
Jersey was the most
fortified place in the world.
...And at what cost?
So where did they get all this labor from?
They brought it in.
♪
Narrator: Similar to the status
that puerto rico holds in the us,
The channel islands
are dependent territories
Of british.
While not technically part of the uk,
The residents self-govern
yet are british citizens,
And from September 1939 to spring 1940,
Jersey and the other channel islands
Were largely untouched by world war ii.
But by June 1940,
Following the german
defeat of the allies in France
And their evacuation from dunkirk,
The british government determined
That the channel islands
had no strategic value
In the war effort.
The decision was made
that they would not be
Defended by allied forces.
Marc yates, a battlefield guide,
Is an expert on jersey's military history.
Yates: What little
british military resources
Were here were taken off,
And then there was a general evacuation
Of the population of the islands.
Narrator: The population of jersey
prior to the evacuation was 50,000.
Nearly 7,000 residents decided to leave,
While 43,000 stayed behind
to face the nazis alone.
Code-named operation green arrow,
The germans quickly moved
in to occupy the islands.
♪
Yates: It was british territory.
Although hitler never came here,
I think he got a bit obsessed by it,
And so at that point, they
organized operation green arrow.
The purpose of the operation was to occupy
The channel islands as part
of the occupation of France.
Narrator: The german
air force, the luftwaffe,
Landed on jersey on June 30th, 1940,
And the island's government
surrendered the very next day.
The arrival of the germans
and being under occupation
Must have been pretty scary at the outset,
And the unknown, you know, must have been,
You know, really, quite worrying,
Particularly for families
where you had young children.
Narrator: There aren't many residents
Remaining who remember the invasion,
But trevor green, now 82, was just a boy
When the germans marched
into town by the thousands.
Green: When I was about 5,
And I first came into
contact with the germans,
Where I lived, at a place
called millard's corner.
Narrator: Hitler anticipated
that the allies would attack
His european-held territories,
So he fixated on the
creation of a defense system,
Which he called the atlantic wall.
It was a series of fortresses,
Gun emplacements, tank
traps and other obstacles running
For nearly 1,900 miles along the coast.
As part of the directive,
the germans turned jersey
Into a fortress of bunker systems,
Housing radar and observation units.
They also planned nine
ocean-facing artillery posts
Like this one at battery moltke
in the northwest of the island.
The gun emplacements sit above
a network of bombproof tunnels.
♪
Trevor green has reached out to tony pike,
An expert on jersey's military
history to better understand
What the nazis devised
underneath his homeland.
This is actually constructed
by making a deep trench,
Which would have been about
4 meters deep in excavation,
And once they've actually
done their excavation,
They would have poured the floor.
Then they would have made
the shuttering for the walls,
Which you can still
see the imprint of today,
And once they've done
all that wooden shuttering,
They then poured the concrete behind,
And then they would have
done the shuttering for the roof,
Poured the concrete on top of that,
And then all the infill,
Which have been excavated
from the trench itself
Would have been put on top of that.
Around the tunnel.
The structure at battery moltke
Was built from concrete and steel,
Most of which had to be
shipped in from France.
The battery included underground bunkers,
A shelter for 27 soldiers and
four ammunition stock rooms,
Which served the gun emplacements
Situated above ground.
Excavating this vast
network was challenging.
Talking about solid granite,
and to mine it, to actually,
You know, create an excavation
4 meters deep and more,
It took a lot of work.
Quite a lot of blasting as well gelignite,
But they also used a lot of manual labor.
The 43,000 residents of jersey
Who remained after
the evacuation stood firm
And refused to help the
germans in this endeavor.
The channel islands being proudly british,
Working for the germans
was really something
That nobody really wanted to do.
♪
Narrator: But the nazis were
determined to militarize the islands,
So they found a labor
force that couldn't say no,
And their brutal treatment
Which just one of the many
prices of hitler's war machine.
♪
Narrator: When the nazis
invaded the channel island of jersey
In world war ii,
They started building artillery
posts like battery moltke
In the northwest of the island,
but they needed a workforce
To build hitler's vision of
an atlantic wall of defense.
Battery moltke and the
other installations on the island
Were constructed mostly by prisoners
And conscripts who were treated as slaves.
The men were brought in
from nazi-occupied territories
All over the continent.
Yates: They came from the
eastern front, from eastern europe.
They were typically soviet civilians
Who were conscripted
or soviet prisoners of war.
There was hundreds of
thousands of these people
That the germans used
as labor across europe.
♪
Narrator: Locked up in nazi
camps across the channel islands,
A workforce of 16,000 was treated brutally
And forced to work in
treacherous conditions.
The germans reserved
the harshest treatment of all
For central, southern,
And eastern europeans
who spoke slavic languages.
Yates: The nazi party racial views
Regarded the slavic races as subhuman.
They were brutally treated, and, of course,
In an environment where you're starved,
You're not in the best of health,
And you're working on construction sites,
Where, to be honest,
there's no health and safety.
Narrator: In jersey alone,
over 6,000 forced laborers
Worked more than 12 hours a day.
Under constant fear of falling rock,
They excavated 1,000 yards
of tunnels through solid granite
Using only simple picks and shovels.
Pike: The forced workers
and the slave workers
Actually built this site.
That's very important to
remember what they did.
You know, it's a colossal amount of work
They did in all sorts of different weathers
With very poor equipment a lot of the time.
Slave worker, what they
had for protective clothing
Was an old cement
sack with a couple of arms
Just punched through.
Narrator: Due to cement
shortages in the summer of 1943,
The germans abandoned their original plan
To build nine batteries on jersey.
Only four army and two marine batteries
Were ultimately completed,
including battery moltke,
Which contains a gun emplacement,
Ammunition stock rooms,
and a gas-locked chamber,
All connected by tunnels 13 feet deep.
This personnel shelter was actually made
To be contrary against gas attack
Because hitler was
gassed in the first world war.
Mm-hmm.
He didn't want his troops to
go through the same experience,
So a lot of engineering
And thought has actually
gone into this bunker.
This part here, we're standing
underneath the showerhead,
So if there had been a gas attack,
This was a decontamination zone,
So the idea was you have the shower here,
And then you would go into this part,
Which would have been already closed.
Then you can walk straight
through here into the bunker.
♪
In the event of a mustard-gas
attack by the allied forces,
These steel doors would
be locked and sealed
While pumps would
filter our poisonous gases.
This part of the bunker,
the air would be cleansed,
Filtered.
When a green light shone
that was placed up there,
Shone, then it was safe to open this door
And enter into the
main part of the complex.
At the heart of the bunker
are the filtration pumps,
Designed to keep the nazi
soldiers safe from lethal gases.
Air from above the
cliffs would be pumped in
Through a network of pipes
While carbon filters cleaned
the air making it safe to breathe.
I see it's got a handle. What is that for?
Well, if there'd been
an electrical failure,
Although battery moltke had
it own generation and plant,
That should say, for example,
If there'd been a bomb that hit it
And it had been disabled
for some reason or other,
And there had been a gas attack,
there's always a backup plan.
You could actually
crank this round by hand.
Because hitler decreed
that 10 percent of the steel
And concrete used in
the entire atlantic wall
Should go to the channel islands,
They ended up as the
most heavily fortified region
Along the nazi coastal frontier.
Tony pike believes the
efforts of the forced laborers
And this little-known nazi
occupation over britons
Shouldn't be forgotten.
When I was a 15-year-old lad,
I came down here for the first time,
And we came through one of the entrances,
Which we had to dig out by hand.
This is one of the ready
entrances for the crew
That would have gone out to man the gun,
And at the time, the rubble
was virtually up to about here,
Up to the roof.
We come down, and we
literally passed out all this rubble
By hand up into a skiff above.
Narrator: In addition
to the coastal batteries,
The germans built numerous tunnels
And bunkers across the channel islands,
Even a hospital for
their expected casualties
In the event of counter invasion.
Work is ongoing to
restore these underground
Mazes to remind the world of
what almost happened to britain.
This naval battery,
Known as a type fl 242 antiaircraft bunker,
Was just excavated in 2016.
Tony and the team were
surprised to find human touches
Added by the nazis.
Pike: When I first came in here,
The first thing I saw was the flowers.
When you look at the
detail, it's quite amazing.
They must have really wanted
to make it feel like home.
Narrator: When the war ended
in 1945, the liberated residents
Wanted their home cleansed of
the taint of german occupation.
The british army had the complicated task
Of removing more than 60,000 mines
And 30,000 tons of ammunition,
While the guns of battery
moltke were thrown over the cliffs.
In the decades that followed,
The abandoned bunkers
were used as dumping grounds,
But with the help of volunteers like tony,
Jersey's complicated
past and the tireless efforts
Of thousands of enslaved
workers will not be forgotten.
Green: When you think this
was worked on by the forced labor
And the slaves to build it,
And to achieve this, this
was a lot of hard work.
This bunker complex is quite incredible.
♪
Narrator: Turkey is a stunning country
Bridging europe and the middle east.
Over its breathtaking terrain,
This land has seen much
bloodshed over its history,
Although not always above ground.
Dating back to the 8th century bc
Is an underground marvel
Hidden beneath the
central region of cappadocia.
Famous for its pockmarked
landscape of volcanic rock
Called tufa, this compressed volcanic ash
Is the site where two ancient civilizations
Came head-to-head in
combat 3,000 years ago.
How were these secret,
underground spaces engineered?
There are no straight lines,
no rational decisions made
By an architect or a constructor.
Narrator: And how have these tunnels
been adapted over the centuries?
♪
Narrator: Kaymakli is
nearly 200 miles southeast
Of turkey's capitol, ankara.
The sprawling hill town
conceals numerous entrances
To a hidden world, a subterranean labyrinth
That has existed for millennia.
Built on eight levels, 130 feet deep,
Kaymakli has space for 5,000 people
To survive somewhat
comfortably for months at a time.
Husam suleymangil, a long-time guide,
Knows the tunnels intimately.
♪
But who created this
cavernous realm, and why?
The evidence is illusive.
Despite the uncertainty,
Historians have estimated
kaymakli dates from 800 years bc
Based on artifacts found
in the surrounding region.
In the same era that
tribes of western europe
Were learning how to make
the first bronze age tools,
It's thought the people
living here in cappadocia
Were developing a network
of underground fortresses
To invade and entrap their enemies.
♪
An ongoing battle was playing
out between the local phrygians
And the powerful invading assyrians.
The assyrians had
dominated the middle east,
And their empire had
lasted almost 2,000 years,
Ending around the 6th century bc,
While the phrygians
residing in central turkey
Were more closely connected
to the mediterranean civilizations.
Known for their legendary king midas
With the golden touch,
They built underground
cities like kaymakli to both hide
From and retaliate against
the aggressive assyrians.
The clever phrygians had a
plan in store for their assailants.
After making their enemies vulnerable
In this confined space,
A network of traps would lock them in.
Circular doors carved from rock
Were designed to roll into place
and block the tunnel entrances.
In the event the assailants
Couldn't be contained or pushed back,
The phrygians built
one final line of defense:
A secret passage hidden
within this underground marvel.
♪
Narrator: The ancient hill
town of kaymakli in turkey
Was built to protect its
residents from invading armies.
It is ingeniously linked to
other underground cities
In the central region of cappadocia.
Suleymangil: They also have escape
routes, and they would just run out,
And some of those underground cities
Are connected to each other with,
Oh, about 6, 7-miles-long tunnels,
So they can come into one
of those underground cities
And escape from the other
one and still attack the army.
Narrator: While it appears the
phrygians originally built kaymakli
As a refuge from assailants, it
didn't seem to have been done
With a significant amount of planning.
In later centuries,
Residents found new uses
for these underground spaces.
Asli ozbay's insight sheds some light
On what happened in kaymakli
Since the phrygians
occupied the underground city.
Historians have found evidence
of continues use of kaymakli
By many civilizations up to the present.
Over the millennia, different cultures
Have used this incredible space,
Yet what's remarkable is
that this underground marvel
Was ever created in the first place.
Oh, yeah. That's true.
And the different societies
that made use of this labyrinth
Left behind clues of
how they used this space.
The rock walls offer insights
as to the ingenious techniques
They would have used for food preservation.
Ozbay: They stick branches into holes,
And they used to hang their fruits
And vegetables onto the branches,
So that's how they dried them out.
Narrator: The kitchen
area includes other tools,
Such as a stone grain mill.
They put a small wooden handle here,
Gradually turning it
and grinding the grains,
Obtaining flour to make
their breads or whatever else.
Narrator: Other signs
suggest the inhabitants
Literally brought everything
into these caves with them.
Ozbay: When you see
an animal-tie hole here,
It shouldn't be at the same spot,
Where they dry their
fruits and tie their animals,
So you understand that
probably, before, it was a storage,
Then, in time, it became a barn kind of.
Narrator: By the 4th century ad,
The cappadocia region was
part of the byzantine empire,
A powerful cultural and military force,
Rooted in orthodox christianity.
This room is known as the church.
Narrator: The local
bishop, st. Basil the great,
Founded numerous places
of worship in the region,
Including one within
this subterranean space.
Monastic orders started here by the guy
Called basilius the great
around 4th century ad.
They were trying to imitate
a normal church construction.
There is one small niche here.
Right, you can see it's also blackened.
They would put a small
terra-cotta or lamp in here.
Another one is right there.
Narrator: The last christians
left both these caves
And the country entirely in 1923,
When the modern state
of turkey was founded.
Abandoned for 40 years,
the caves were finally restored
And opened to the public in 1964.
It took us quite a long time in those days
Trying to figure out what is what.
Now, they've got nice signs.
Narrator: But the old cappadocian
traditions of underground
Dwelling are enjoying a resurgence
Thanks to the work of architects like asli,
Who is turning old caves into remarkable
New living spaces for homes and hotels.
This is modern cappadocia.
One has been turned into a bathroom space.
You can still see the original niches
With the fireplace in the middle.
Here we are in the old stable room,
And today we are using it
as a nice wardrobe room.
Narrator: The underground city of
kaymakli remains an enigma for historians
Who continue to look for clues
About what happened here in centuries past,
Yet this subterranean haven is
a testament to human ingenuity.
♪
The czech republic, a
country in central europe
Formed where the ancient
kingdom of bohemia once reigned.
Today, it boasts a population
of just over 10 million
With pilsen as its fourth-largest city.
Nearly 55 miles west
of the capital, prague,
There's a rich history of beer brewing here
Dating back to the 14th century,
A tradition which has given rise
To an extraordinary network of cellars,
Wells and tunnels,
which lie under this city.
How did they harness the power
of nature to create liquid gold?
And how did these secret passages
Give birth to the most popular
fermented beverage ever?
♪
♪
Narrator: Pilsen is an
ancient city founded in 1295
By bohemian king wencelaus
ii on an important trade route
Where four rivers meet.
During a time when fresh
water was unsafe to drink,
The locals turned to
fermented beverages to survive,
And handcrafted
tunnels aided in that effort,
So what led residents
to excavate these tunnels
And vaulted chambers in the first place?
Local historian jan hus first
came here with his father
When he just 14, and ever since,
He's been fascinated by
this underground labyrinth.
Beneath the historic city of pilsen
Lies a subterranean network of cellars,
Wells and storerooms,
Linked together by a complex chain
Of interconnecting tunnels.
As he makes his way into this labyrinth,
Jan is traveling back through time
To the beginning of the pilsen story,
One that would impact
the course of history.
Local monks first brewed
beer here in the 1300s.
The water quality was ideal
because of it's low alkalinity.
Townspeople caught on and
began to make their own beer
By creating wells to
access the water supply.
During the middle ages,
europe was rife with plague
And waterborne disease,
Which meant it was safer to
drink beer rather than water
Because the fermentation
process kills unwanted bacteria.
So how did residents construct
these underground tunnels,
And how would they go on to
change the future of brewing?
You can literally touch the history.
Narrator: Having perfected
their digging methods,
The 14th-century residents of pilsen
Carved out cellars for storage and brewing.
To this day, you can find these relics.
Many homes in the city have ancient cellars
Running three-stories deep.
Little did they know
their efforts would go on
To change the course of beer making.
♪
The oldest corridors
here are only 5-feet tall.
Today, an adult of average
height would struggle
To fit through them.
The labyrinth grew organically
as individual householders
Carved out their basements
to suit their own needs.
The residents were known
to use this cave system
Beyond everyday purposes.
In times of war, they turned to
the tunnels to save their lives.
During medieval times,
The kingdom of bohemia was often at war.
When pilsen's residents
found themselves under siege,
They were able to evade their enemies
And use the tunnels to spring
stealth attacks on invaders.
♪
So how did the residents centuries ago
Make the rudimentary cave system
That would one day become world-famous?
Sandstone is a porous, sedimentary rock,
Which can be unstable.
As the underground labyrinth expanded
And the width of the corridors increased,
It became necessary to support them
To stop them from caving in.
The residents made full
use of the labyrinth's cool,
Ambient temperature.
This was integral to the development
Of the brewing industry,
For which pilsen was
to become world-famous.
The history of pilsen
and its brewing tradition
Are intimately entwined with
the city's subterranean character.
By the 19th century, a major
revolution was on its way.
Pilsen cottage industry
of brewing in private cellars
Was about to become a worldwide phenomenon.
♪
Narrator: Pilsen in the czech
republic has a brewing tradition
Dating back to the 14th century,
Entwined with its underground
network of cellars and tunnels.
Beer quality varied from
one small brewery to another,
So the city elders founded
a large-scale brewery
To standardize their product.
The collective brewery opened in 1839.
Here, a unique form of beer was developed,
Which was to become one of the
world's most popular beverages.
Vaclav berka has held a key
role in the brewery since 1982.
He's the brewmaster,
like his father before him.
Vaclav is preserving a
tradition that connects back
To the original invention of
the now world-famous local beer.
Joseph groll was the
first brewmaster in pilsen.
He came from bavaria,
which is now part of germany.
Groll was experimenting with lager,
A new beer-making process
spreading across europe
In the mid 19th century.
By adapting the technique
to suit the local soft water,
Groll ended up creating
the first golden lager,
Which is called pilsner, after the town.
Malt, barley and hops
are combined with water
To make lager.
The name comes from the
german word for storehouse
Because the beer matured
slowly and at very low temperatures
And in caves or cellars.
So in the 1840s, when the people
of pilsen decided to brew lager
On an industrial scale,
They needed enormous cooling
cellars to ferment their beer.
A city that already had
one massive labyrinth
Was about to dig itself another one.
Historian jan has come to
the most remarkable feature
Of the pilsen cellars,
The staggering rooms
that were built to create
A rudimentary refrigeration system.
The innovation in these enormous cellars
Was that the ice would
slowly melt and trickle
Into a series of channels
running along the floor
To cool every room throughout the brewery.
The scale and innovation
Continued in these giant cellars,
Where fermentation and maturation
Originally took place.
Each cellar is 23-feet
wide and 30-feet deep.
This underground marvel
Is an ingenious 19th-century masterpiece,
Much copies, but rarely better.
Pilsen's world-renowned
drink owes its popularity
To a fine tradition of
underground excavation.
It's remarkable to think
that a system of wells, cellars
And tunnels dating back to the 13th century
Led to the creation of a
brewery in the 19th century,
Which in turn relied on a
brilliant new system of tunnels
And ice-water channels
to produce its famous lager,
Now a global success story.
hitler convert the channel islands
Into an invincible, underground fortress.
Talking about solid
granite, it took a lot of work.
Narrator: How did a
little-known ancient civilization
Use this labyrinth to wage a guerrilla war
Against their powerful
and aggressive neighbors?
And how have two underground marvels
Transformed the fame and fortune of a city?
♪
Beneath our feet lie
extraordinary chambers,
Caves, vaults and tunnels...
The span and the size is just crazy.
Narrator: ...Some designed
and built by humans.
Others formed over thousands of years,
But how were they created and adapted?
By whom, and why?
You've got to face your fears.
Narrator: Throughout
history, subterranean life
Has captured our imagination.
We've going further and
deeper to unearth the mysteries,
The stories and the secrets
of underground marvels.
25 miles off the coast of France
Lies the archipelago known
as the channel islands,
But surprisingly they don't
belong to the european mainland.
They are proudly british territories,
And the largest of them is jersey
With an area of 46 square miles.
During world war ii, the
islands were occupied
By nazi forces under
orders from adolph hitler,
But why did the fuhrer
take such an interest
In this tiny land mass?
Working for the germans
was, really, something
That nobody really want to do.
Narrator: What did it
take to convert the island
Into an impenetrable system
of underground bunkers...
Jersey was the most
fortified place in the world.
...And at what cost?
So where did they get all this labor from?
They brought it in.
♪
Narrator: Similar to the status
that puerto rico holds in the us,
The channel islands
are dependent territories
Of british.
While not technically part of the uk,
The residents self-govern
yet are british citizens,
And from September 1939 to spring 1940,
Jersey and the other channel islands
Were largely untouched by world war ii.
But by June 1940,
Following the german
defeat of the allies in France
And their evacuation from dunkirk,
The british government determined
That the channel islands
had no strategic value
In the war effort.
The decision was made
that they would not be
Defended by allied forces.
Marc yates, a battlefield guide,
Is an expert on jersey's military history.
Yates: What little
british military resources
Were here were taken off,
And then there was a general evacuation
Of the population of the islands.
Narrator: The population of jersey
prior to the evacuation was 50,000.
Nearly 7,000 residents decided to leave,
While 43,000 stayed behind
to face the nazis alone.
Code-named operation green arrow,
The germans quickly moved
in to occupy the islands.
♪
Yates: It was british territory.
Although hitler never came here,
I think he got a bit obsessed by it,
And so at that point, they
organized operation green arrow.
The purpose of the operation was to occupy
The channel islands as part
of the occupation of France.
Narrator: The german
air force, the luftwaffe,
Landed on jersey on June 30th, 1940,
And the island's government
surrendered the very next day.
The arrival of the germans
and being under occupation
Must have been pretty scary at the outset,
And the unknown, you know, must have been,
You know, really, quite worrying,
Particularly for families
where you had young children.
Narrator: There aren't many residents
Remaining who remember the invasion,
But trevor green, now 82, was just a boy
When the germans marched
into town by the thousands.
Green: When I was about 5,
And I first came into
contact with the germans,
Where I lived, at a place
called millard's corner.
Narrator: Hitler anticipated
that the allies would attack
His european-held territories,
So he fixated on the
creation of a defense system,
Which he called the atlantic wall.
It was a series of fortresses,
Gun emplacements, tank
traps and other obstacles running
For nearly 1,900 miles along the coast.
As part of the directive,
the germans turned jersey
Into a fortress of bunker systems,
Housing radar and observation units.
They also planned nine
ocean-facing artillery posts
Like this one at battery moltke
in the northwest of the island.
The gun emplacements sit above
a network of bombproof tunnels.
♪
Trevor green has reached out to tony pike,
An expert on jersey's military
history to better understand
What the nazis devised
underneath his homeland.
This is actually constructed
by making a deep trench,
Which would have been about
4 meters deep in excavation,
And once they've actually
done their excavation,
They would have poured the floor.
Then they would have made
the shuttering for the walls,
Which you can still
see the imprint of today,
And once they've done
all that wooden shuttering,
They then poured the concrete behind,
And then they would have
done the shuttering for the roof,
Poured the concrete on top of that,
And then all the infill,
Which have been excavated
from the trench itself
Would have been put on top of that.
Around the tunnel.
The structure at battery moltke
Was built from concrete and steel,
Most of which had to be
shipped in from France.
The battery included underground bunkers,
A shelter for 27 soldiers and
four ammunition stock rooms,
Which served the gun emplacements
Situated above ground.
Excavating this vast
network was challenging.
Talking about solid granite,
and to mine it, to actually,
You know, create an excavation
4 meters deep and more,
It took a lot of work.
Quite a lot of blasting as well gelignite,
But they also used a lot of manual labor.
The 43,000 residents of jersey
Who remained after
the evacuation stood firm
And refused to help the
germans in this endeavor.
The channel islands being proudly british,
Working for the germans
was really something
That nobody really wanted to do.
♪
Narrator: But the nazis were
determined to militarize the islands,
So they found a labor
force that couldn't say no,
And their brutal treatment
Which just one of the many
prices of hitler's war machine.
♪
Narrator: When the nazis
invaded the channel island of jersey
In world war ii,
They started building artillery
posts like battery moltke
In the northwest of the island,
but they needed a workforce
To build hitler's vision of
an atlantic wall of defense.
Battery moltke and the
other installations on the island
Were constructed mostly by prisoners
And conscripts who were treated as slaves.
The men were brought in
from nazi-occupied territories
All over the continent.
Yates: They came from the
eastern front, from eastern europe.
They were typically soviet civilians
Who were conscripted
or soviet prisoners of war.
There was hundreds of
thousands of these people
That the germans used
as labor across europe.
♪
Narrator: Locked up in nazi
camps across the channel islands,
A workforce of 16,000 was treated brutally
And forced to work in
treacherous conditions.
The germans reserved
the harshest treatment of all
For central, southern,
And eastern europeans
who spoke slavic languages.
Yates: The nazi party racial views
Regarded the slavic races as subhuman.
They were brutally treated, and, of course,
In an environment where you're starved,
You're not in the best of health,
And you're working on construction sites,
Where, to be honest,
there's no health and safety.
Narrator: In jersey alone,
over 6,000 forced laborers
Worked more than 12 hours a day.
Under constant fear of falling rock,
They excavated 1,000 yards
of tunnels through solid granite
Using only simple picks and shovels.
Pike: The forced workers
and the slave workers
Actually built this site.
That's very important to
remember what they did.
You know, it's a colossal amount of work
They did in all sorts of different weathers
With very poor equipment a lot of the time.
Slave worker, what they
had for protective clothing
Was an old cement
sack with a couple of arms
Just punched through.
Narrator: Due to cement
shortages in the summer of 1943,
The germans abandoned their original plan
To build nine batteries on jersey.
Only four army and two marine batteries
Were ultimately completed,
including battery moltke,
Which contains a gun emplacement,
Ammunition stock rooms,
and a gas-locked chamber,
All connected by tunnels 13 feet deep.
This personnel shelter was actually made
To be contrary against gas attack
Because hitler was
gassed in the first world war.
Mm-hmm.
He didn't want his troops to
go through the same experience,
So a lot of engineering
And thought has actually
gone into this bunker.
This part here, we're standing
underneath the showerhead,
So if there had been a gas attack,
This was a decontamination zone,
So the idea was you have the shower here,
And then you would go into this part,
Which would have been already closed.
Then you can walk straight
through here into the bunker.
♪
In the event of a mustard-gas
attack by the allied forces,
These steel doors would
be locked and sealed
While pumps would
filter our poisonous gases.
This part of the bunker,
the air would be cleansed,
Filtered.
When a green light shone
that was placed up there,
Shone, then it was safe to open this door
And enter into the
main part of the complex.
At the heart of the bunker
are the filtration pumps,
Designed to keep the nazi
soldiers safe from lethal gases.
Air from above the
cliffs would be pumped in
Through a network of pipes
While carbon filters cleaned
the air making it safe to breathe.
I see it's got a handle. What is that for?
Well, if there'd been
an electrical failure,
Although battery moltke had
it own generation and plant,
That should say, for example,
If there'd been a bomb that hit it
And it had been disabled
for some reason or other,
And there had been a gas attack,
there's always a backup plan.
You could actually
crank this round by hand.
Because hitler decreed
that 10 percent of the steel
And concrete used in
the entire atlantic wall
Should go to the channel islands,
They ended up as the
most heavily fortified region
Along the nazi coastal frontier.
Tony pike believes the
efforts of the forced laborers
And this little-known nazi
occupation over britons
Shouldn't be forgotten.
When I was a 15-year-old lad,
I came down here for the first time,
And we came through one of the entrances,
Which we had to dig out by hand.
This is one of the ready
entrances for the crew
That would have gone out to man the gun,
And at the time, the rubble
was virtually up to about here,
Up to the roof.
We come down, and we
literally passed out all this rubble
By hand up into a skiff above.
Narrator: In addition
to the coastal batteries,
The germans built numerous tunnels
And bunkers across the channel islands,
Even a hospital for
their expected casualties
In the event of counter invasion.
Work is ongoing to
restore these underground
Mazes to remind the world of
what almost happened to britain.
This naval battery,
Known as a type fl 242 antiaircraft bunker,
Was just excavated in 2016.
Tony and the team were
surprised to find human touches
Added by the nazis.
Pike: When I first came in here,
The first thing I saw was the flowers.
When you look at the
detail, it's quite amazing.
They must have really wanted
to make it feel like home.
Narrator: When the war ended
in 1945, the liberated residents
Wanted their home cleansed of
the taint of german occupation.
The british army had the complicated task
Of removing more than 60,000 mines
And 30,000 tons of ammunition,
While the guns of battery
moltke were thrown over the cliffs.
In the decades that followed,
The abandoned bunkers
were used as dumping grounds,
But with the help of volunteers like tony,
Jersey's complicated
past and the tireless efforts
Of thousands of enslaved
workers will not be forgotten.
Green: When you think this
was worked on by the forced labor
And the slaves to build it,
And to achieve this, this
was a lot of hard work.
This bunker complex is quite incredible.
♪
Narrator: Turkey is a stunning country
Bridging europe and the middle east.
Over its breathtaking terrain,
This land has seen much
bloodshed over its history,
Although not always above ground.
Dating back to the 8th century bc
Is an underground marvel
Hidden beneath the
central region of cappadocia.
Famous for its pockmarked
landscape of volcanic rock
Called tufa, this compressed volcanic ash
Is the site where two ancient civilizations
Came head-to-head in
combat 3,000 years ago.
How were these secret,
underground spaces engineered?
There are no straight lines,
no rational decisions made
By an architect or a constructor.
Narrator: And how have these tunnels
been adapted over the centuries?
♪
Narrator: Kaymakli is
nearly 200 miles southeast
Of turkey's capitol, ankara.
The sprawling hill town
conceals numerous entrances
To a hidden world, a subterranean labyrinth
That has existed for millennia.
Built on eight levels, 130 feet deep,
Kaymakli has space for 5,000 people
To survive somewhat
comfortably for months at a time.
Husam suleymangil, a long-time guide,
Knows the tunnels intimately.
♪
But who created this
cavernous realm, and why?
The evidence is illusive.
Despite the uncertainty,
Historians have estimated
kaymakli dates from 800 years bc
Based on artifacts found
in the surrounding region.
In the same era that
tribes of western europe
Were learning how to make
the first bronze age tools,
It's thought the people
living here in cappadocia
Were developing a network
of underground fortresses
To invade and entrap their enemies.
♪
An ongoing battle was playing
out between the local phrygians
And the powerful invading assyrians.
The assyrians had
dominated the middle east,
And their empire had
lasted almost 2,000 years,
Ending around the 6th century bc,
While the phrygians
residing in central turkey
Were more closely connected
to the mediterranean civilizations.
Known for their legendary king midas
With the golden touch,
They built underground
cities like kaymakli to both hide
From and retaliate against
the aggressive assyrians.
The clever phrygians had a
plan in store for their assailants.
After making their enemies vulnerable
In this confined space,
A network of traps would lock them in.
Circular doors carved from rock
Were designed to roll into place
and block the tunnel entrances.
In the event the assailants
Couldn't be contained or pushed back,
The phrygians built
one final line of defense:
A secret passage hidden
within this underground marvel.
♪
Narrator: The ancient hill
town of kaymakli in turkey
Was built to protect its
residents from invading armies.
It is ingeniously linked to
other underground cities
In the central region of cappadocia.
Suleymangil: They also have escape
routes, and they would just run out,
And some of those underground cities
Are connected to each other with,
Oh, about 6, 7-miles-long tunnels,
So they can come into one
of those underground cities
And escape from the other
one and still attack the army.
Narrator: While it appears the
phrygians originally built kaymakli
As a refuge from assailants, it
didn't seem to have been done
With a significant amount of planning.
In later centuries,
Residents found new uses
for these underground spaces.
Asli ozbay's insight sheds some light
On what happened in kaymakli
Since the phrygians
occupied the underground city.
Historians have found evidence
of continues use of kaymakli
By many civilizations up to the present.
Over the millennia, different cultures
Have used this incredible space,
Yet what's remarkable is
that this underground marvel
Was ever created in the first place.
Oh, yeah. That's true.
And the different societies
that made use of this labyrinth
Left behind clues of
how they used this space.
The rock walls offer insights
as to the ingenious techniques
They would have used for food preservation.
Ozbay: They stick branches into holes,
And they used to hang their fruits
And vegetables onto the branches,
So that's how they dried them out.
Narrator: The kitchen
area includes other tools,
Such as a stone grain mill.
They put a small wooden handle here,
Gradually turning it
and grinding the grains,
Obtaining flour to make
their breads or whatever else.
Narrator: Other signs
suggest the inhabitants
Literally brought everything
into these caves with them.
Ozbay: When you see
an animal-tie hole here,
It shouldn't be at the same spot,
Where they dry their
fruits and tie their animals,
So you understand that
probably, before, it was a storage,
Then, in time, it became a barn kind of.
Narrator: By the 4th century ad,
The cappadocia region was
part of the byzantine empire,
A powerful cultural and military force,
Rooted in orthodox christianity.
This room is known as the church.
Narrator: The local
bishop, st. Basil the great,
Founded numerous places
of worship in the region,
Including one within
this subterranean space.
Monastic orders started here by the guy
Called basilius the great
around 4th century ad.
They were trying to imitate
a normal church construction.
There is one small niche here.
Right, you can see it's also blackened.
They would put a small
terra-cotta or lamp in here.
Another one is right there.
Narrator: The last christians
left both these caves
And the country entirely in 1923,
When the modern state
of turkey was founded.
Abandoned for 40 years,
the caves were finally restored
And opened to the public in 1964.
It took us quite a long time in those days
Trying to figure out what is what.
Now, they've got nice signs.
Narrator: But the old cappadocian
traditions of underground
Dwelling are enjoying a resurgence
Thanks to the work of architects like asli,
Who is turning old caves into remarkable
New living spaces for homes and hotels.
This is modern cappadocia.
One has been turned into a bathroom space.
You can still see the original niches
With the fireplace in the middle.
Here we are in the old stable room,
And today we are using it
as a nice wardrobe room.
Narrator: The underground city of
kaymakli remains an enigma for historians
Who continue to look for clues
About what happened here in centuries past,
Yet this subterranean haven is
a testament to human ingenuity.
♪
The czech republic, a
country in central europe
Formed where the ancient
kingdom of bohemia once reigned.
Today, it boasts a population
of just over 10 million
With pilsen as its fourth-largest city.
Nearly 55 miles west
of the capital, prague,
There's a rich history of beer brewing here
Dating back to the 14th century,
A tradition which has given rise
To an extraordinary network of cellars,
Wells and tunnels,
which lie under this city.
How did they harness the power
of nature to create liquid gold?
And how did these secret passages
Give birth to the most popular
fermented beverage ever?
♪
♪
Narrator: Pilsen is an
ancient city founded in 1295
By bohemian king wencelaus
ii on an important trade route
Where four rivers meet.
During a time when fresh
water was unsafe to drink,
The locals turned to
fermented beverages to survive,
And handcrafted
tunnels aided in that effort,
So what led residents
to excavate these tunnels
And vaulted chambers in the first place?
Local historian jan hus first
came here with his father
When he just 14, and ever since,
He's been fascinated by
this underground labyrinth.
Beneath the historic city of pilsen
Lies a subterranean network of cellars,
Wells and storerooms,
Linked together by a complex chain
Of interconnecting tunnels.
As he makes his way into this labyrinth,
Jan is traveling back through time
To the beginning of the pilsen story,
One that would impact
the course of history.
Local monks first brewed
beer here in the 1300s.
The water quality was ideal
because of it's low alkalinity.
Townspeople caught on and
began to make their own beer
By creating wells to
access the water supply.
During the middle ages,
europe was rife with plague
And waterborne disease,
Which meant it was safer to
drink beer rather than water
Because the fermentation
process kills unwanted bacteria.
So how did residents construct
these underground tunnels,
And how would they go on to
change the future of brewing?
You can literally touch the history.
Narrator: Having perfected
their digging methods,
The 14th-century residents of pilsen
Carved out cellars for storage and brewing.
To this day, you can find these relics.
Many homes in the city have ancient cellars
Running three-stories deep.
Little did they know
their efforts would go on
To change the course of beer making.
♪
The oldest corridors
here are only 5-feet tall.
Today, an adult of average
height would struggle
To fit through them.
The labyrinth grew organically
as individual householders
Carved out their basements
to suit their own needs.
The residents were known
to use this cave system
Beyond everyday purposes.
In times of war, they turned to
the tunnels to save their lives.
During medieval times,
The kingdom of bohemia was often at war.
When pilsen's residents
found themselves under siege,
They were able to evade their enemies
And use the tunnels to spring
stealth attacks on invaders.
♪
So how did the residents centuries ago
Make the rudimentary cave system
That would one day become world-famous?
Sandstone is a porous, sedimentary rock,
Which can be unstable.
As the underground labyrinth expanded
And the width of the corridors increased,
It became necessary to support them
To stop them from caving in.
The residents made full
use of the labyrinth's cool,
Ambient temperature.
This was integral to the development
Of the brewing industry,
For which pilsen was
to become world-famous.
The history of pilsen
and its brewing tradition
Are intimately entwined with
the city's subterranean character.
By the 19th century, a major
revolution was on its way.
Pilsen cottage industry
of brewing in private cellars
Was about to become a worldwide phenomenon.
♪
Narrator: Pilsen in the czech
republic has a brewing tradition
Dating back to the 14th century,
Entwined with its underground
network of cellars and tunnels.
Beer quality varied from
one small brewery to another,
So the city elders founded
a large-scale brewery
To standardize their product.
The collective brewery opened in 1839.
Here, a unique form of beer was developed,
Which was to become one of the
world's most popular beverages.
Vaclav berka has held a key
role in the brewery since 1982.
He's the brewmaster,
like his father before him.
Vaclav is preserving a
tradition that connects back
To the original invention of
the now world-famous local beer.
Joseph groll was the
first brewmaster in pilsen.
He came from bavaria,
which is now part of germany.
Groll was experimenting with lager,
A new beer-making process
spreading across europe
In the mid 19th century.
By adapting the technique
to suit the local soft water,
Groll ended up creating
the first golden lager,
Which is called pilsner, after the town.
Malt, barley and hops
are combined with water
To make lager.
The name comes from the
german word for storehouse
Because the beer matured
slowly and at very low temperatures
And in caves or cellars.
So in the 1840s, when the people
of pilsen decided to brew lager
On an industrial scale,
They needed enormous cooling
cellars to ferment their beer.
A city that already had
one massive labyrinth
Was about to dig itself another one.
Historian jan has come to
the most remarkable feature
Of the pilsen cellars,
The staggering rooms
that were built to create
A rudimentary refrigeration system.
The innovation in these enormous cellars
Was that the ice would
slowly melt and trickle
Into a series of channels
running along the floor
To cool every room throughout the brewery.
The scale and innovation
Continued in these giant cellars,
Where fermentation and maturation
Originally took place.
Each cellar is 23-feet
wide and 30-feet deep.
This underground marvel
Is an ingenious 19th-century masterpiece,
Much copies, but rarely better.
Pilsen's world-renowned
drink owes its popularity
To a fine tradition of
underground excavation.
It's remarkable to think
that a system of wells, cellars
And tunnels dating back to the 13th century
Led to the creation of a
brewery in the 19th century,
Which in turn relied on a
brilliant new system of tunnels
And ice-water channels
to produce its famous lager,
Now a global success story.