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In a quest for world domination, the Nazis built some of the biggest, deadliest pieces of military hardware and malevolent technology in history.
In a quest for world domination, the Nazis built some of the biggest, deadliest pieces of military hardware and malevolent technology in history.
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00:00They were the most sinister force in Nazi Germany.
00:05Along with the swastika, the SS runes were synonymous with evil all around the globe.
00:11A notorious cult built to oppress a state.
00:15There's never been a structure, a huge organisation on that level,
00:20which just infiltrates every aspect of life.
00:23To construct Hitler's empire.
00:25It's a villain's hideout extraordinaire.
00:29And dominate the Third Reich.
00:33The scale of its ambition, the extent of its reach,
00:36the vastness of its crimes are unprecedented in history.
00:40This is the story of the Nazis' deadliest human megastructure.
00:45The SS.
00:50The biggest construction projects of World War II,
00:53ordered by Hitler to secure world domination.
00:57Now they survive as dark reminders of the Führer's fanatical military ambition.
01:03These are the secrets of the Nazi megastructures.
01:13Summer 1940.
01:15Nazi armies are sweeping west across France.
01:19And driving the Allies out of Europe.
01:23At its heart is an elite force trained in terror.
01:27The SS.
01:31Combat units of SS soldiers lead the assault on Germany's enemies.
01:38Inside the Third Reich, it runs the dreaded concentration camps.
01:44And controls all of Nazi Germany's police and internal security.
01:49Led by Heinrich Himmler, the SS infiltrates every corner of the German state.
01:56Even constructing the Nazis' most secretive installations.
02:05The remains of SS engineering litter the European landscape even today.
02:11Battlefield archaeologist Dr Tony Pollard is deep in the forests of western Poland.
02:17Exploring one of the largest structures ever built by the SS.
02:21And known as Project Giant.
02:24This looks like an archaeological site.
02:26It's almost like a lost city in the jungle.
02:29But it's not. It's all concrete and steel.
02:32And the foundations go really deep.
02:35There are chambers and rooms underneath.
02:37And the scale of the project is phenomenal.
02:40It was going to cover around 35 square kilometres.
02:44So it's an incredibly ambitious construction which was never finished.
02:57The SS set up a dedicated concentration camp nearby.
03:01To supply the slave labour needed for the project.
03:04A black ops site so top secret that today its true purpose is a mystery.
03:11You can imagine what lies inside.
03:15It's a villain's hideout extraordinaire.
03:21The size of these rocks. This is all very precarious.
03:34Eight and a half kilometres of tunnel are known to exist down here.
03:38And there might be another eight and a half still waiting to be discovered.
03:44This is just one of thousands of installations created by the SS.
03:48An elite human structure that formed one of the cornerstones of Nazi Germany.
03:56The origins of the SS lie nearly 20 years earlier.
04:00At the very beginning of Hitler's rise to power.
04:041925.
04:07Germany is in a state of collapse following its defeat in World War I.
04:12Public anger is at fever pitch.
04:15A young Adolf Hitler leads an ultra-nationalist political movement.
04:21The Nazi Party.
04:24There's massive unemployment.
04:26There's economic meltdown.
04:28There's hyperinflation.
04:30That is a furtive breeding ground for violence, thuggery and all sorts of bad elements.
04:37They're offering an outlet for your own individual anger.
04:44As support grows, Hitler becomes a target for political opponents.
04:49He creates his own personal bodyguard to protect himself.
04:53Its name is the Schutzstaffel or Protection Squad.
04:57Known simply as the SS.
05:02While he's on his soapbox, while he's making his speeches,
05:04they need to make sure that he's safe to deliver what he needs to deliver.
05:10One disillusioned young man inspired by Hitler is 25-year-old clerical assistant Heinrich Himmler.
05:19Himmler blames the Jews for Germany's defeat in the First World War.
05:24He's spurred by a desire to eradicate non-German ethnic groups.
05:28He joins the SS, now nearly 200 strong, and quickly rises through its ranks.
05:35He thinks, ah, these guys are for me.
05:37This is where I can put on a uniform, I can play at being a soldier,
05:40and I can do something about the plight of Germany.
05:43By 1929, he is its leader and Hitler's right-hand man.
05:48Himmler decides to evolve the SS into a huge paramilitary organisation,
05:53with undying loyalty to the Führer.
05:56In an intensive recruitment drive, he swells its numbers to 50,000 in just three years.
06:07In 1933, Hitler and the Nazis take control of Germany.
06:12Suddenly, when Hitler takes power, it's not about securing Hitler,
06:15it's about securing the state as well.
06:17And that means police.
06:19Suddenly, your net is just spreading wider and wider.
06:25Himmler becomes police chief of Munich.
06:28He's the only German in the world to be a police chief.
06:32He's the only German in the world to be a police chief.
06:36He's the only German in the world to be a police chief.
06:39Himmler becomes police chief of Munich.
06:43As his power grows, thousands more recruits flock to the SS.
06:49Membership rockets to around 200,000,
06:52giving Himmler the power to make his next move.
06:57One of the ways where the SS can exert itself
06:59is by helping to get rid of a lot of Hitler's political opponents.
07:03And so Himmler develops the idea of the concentration camp.
07:05So basically, you just create this huge great cordon,
07:07and you round up your political prisoners and you put them there,
07:09and that keeps them out of society, out of your way, no longer a problem.
07:14Himmler builds his first concentration camp on the outskirts of Munich,
07:18in the town of Dachau.
07:24The SS will run the camp.
07:29Professor Stephen Remy, an expert on the SS, is exploring the ruins.
07:35I'm at the oldest part of the site.
07:37It was an abandoned munitions factory,
07:39and Heinrich Himmler decided in March 1933
07:43to convert the site into a concentration camp,
07:47Germany's first concentration camp.
07:52These basic buildings are initially filled with around 200 people,
07:56all political prisoners.
07:59The prototype concentration camp consists of 11 barracks buildings,
08:03surrounded by a barbed wire fence,
08:06and three guard towers.
08:10Himmler decides to use Dachau to accomplish his next goal.
08:17He wants to expand the SS into an organisation
08:20that polices the entire German nation.
08:23Dachau was going to become a complex for training the SS,
08:27not just prison guards for this camp and for other camps,
08:31but for this infrastructure of terror that would be ruled by the SS.
08:38Himmler needs a commander for the camp,
08:40who can strike fear into the prisoners
08:42and also deliver deadly battalions of SS guards.
08:45He chooses former soldier and convicted terrorist Theodor Eicke.
08:50Theodor Eicke, the first important commandant of Dachau,
08:54he is the man that Himmler entrusts with laying the groundwork
08:58for the re-engineering of German society,
09:00using the concentration camps as the anchor, as the basis.
09:05He is the man that Himmler entrusts with laying the groundwork
09:08for the re-engineering of German society,
09:10using the concentration camps as the anchor, as the basis.
09:16Himmler sees in him the potential
09:18as somebody who can create this infrastructure of terror.
09:25Eicke's new regime begins with the SS guards themselves.
09:29He calls them Totenkopfverbande, or Death's Head Unit.
09:36Their insignia is the skull and crossbones.
09:40Eicke insists that camp guards be brutal,
09:44that tolerance means weakness.
09:47I can only use hard men, who are determined to do anything.
09:55We have no use for weaklings.
09:59Eicke is turning the SS men from individuals
10:02into a unified terror machine,
10:04with power of life and death over Dachau's inmates.
10:07By 1934, over 2,000 political prisoners are locked up,
10:11and Himmler sees an opportunity to exploit them.
10:15What he realizes is that actually these are able-bodied men,
10:18a lot of them young men as well,
10:20and you can use them for different purposes.
10:22You can use them for labor, you can use them for all sorts of things.
10:26Himmler plans to build more camps
10:28and increase prisoner numbers to provide free labor.
10:31They will be forced to build the Nazi empire.
10:37Now Himmler can accelerate his grand plan
10:40to engineer the SS into an organization
10:43that controls every part of German life.
10:52Himmler's dream is to create a racially pure,
10:55and free German society.
10:58Himmler's dream is to create a racially pure Germany.
11:03But first he must engineer the minds of his SS men
11:06to believe in his cause.
11:09He devises a mythology to justify his dark desires.
11:14Himmler is, to a large extent, a fantasist.
11:17He's remembering the myths and legends that he used to read as a boy,
11:21these ancient tales of Teutonic Knights and heroism.
11:25It's kind of King Arthur's stuff, it's Knights of the Round Table.
11:28And he sees the SS as being almost like a chivalric order,
11:33where all true Germans are tall and broad and muscular
11:38and blonde-haired and blue-eyed,
11:40even though to a person almost all the Nazi high command aren't.
11:46Himmler sets out a standard that every SS recruit must meet.
11:51Perfect vision.
11:53At least 5 feet 11 inches tall,
11:55and over a century of pure German ancestry.
12:03In 1934, he acquires a cathedral for his SS knights to worship at.
12:10The 17th century castle of Wavelsburg.
12:1880 years later, former British Army officer Patrick Berry
12:21is exploring what remains of Himmler's vision.
12:26We're outside a guard tower of Wavelsburg here,
12:29and what you can see is the outline
12:31of one of the most notorious emblems in the world.
12:34Along with the swastika,
12:36the SS runes were synonymous with evil all around the globe.
12:40The guys in here would have been a guard, your average SS guard.
12:44One of the interesting things about this is this,
12:47because this is basically a gun portal or a viewing site,
12:51and the idea is that a soldier standing inside
12:54would be able to raise a rifle to his shoulder
12:57and fire through if he needed to.
12:59You can tell that the soldier inside was meant to be taller than me.
13:03The irony about all this is that you would have had
13:06a tall, perhaps blonde SS soldier saluting Himmler
13:09as he drives into his own castle,
13:11and yet Himmler himself wears glasses
13:14much shorter than the 5'11 criteria that he has to get into the SS.
13:21Himmler's vision for Wavelsburg
13:23is to make it the ultimate spiritual seat of Nazi power.
13:27He embarks on a massive renovation project.
13:32Himmler selects Wavelsburg Castle
13:34because it's close to the historic Battle of the Teutoburg Forest,
13:39and in that battle, the Germanic tribes beat the Romans,
13:43and it's seen as a golden age in German history.
13:46But this site is also an ancient burial and worship area.
13:52So Himmler's really got a whole load of history and traditions
13:55that he's mish-mashing together
13:57and then saying that Wavelsburg represents these.
14:04Himmler wants to make the castle look as grand as possible,
14:08and so this moat that we're standing in,
14:11he deepens it and he widens it.
14:13And this wall here and this bridge is new, you know,
14:17because he made it wider and he made it bigger.
14:21And again, it's to increase the grandiosity.
14:25You can see up here there's a gargoyle with the year 1934 on it.
14:30It shows you when this bridge was restored.
14:34The focal point of the entire complex
14:37is the Hall of the Supreme Leaders,
14:40a circular room with 12 columns,
14:43representing Himmler and a group of SS knights,
14:46mimicking the knights of Arthurian legend.
14:49At the centre of the marble floor is a decoration
14:52based on the German tribal symbol for the sun.
14:54Each of the 12 spokes point out towards a column.
14:58And around the symbol,
15:00a giant circular table was put for Himmler and his knights to sit around.
15:06Underground, beneath the Hall of the Supreme Leaders,
15:09is the mysterious crypt.
15:14In the centre of the floor is a sunken circle
15:17and within this circle is a basin.
15:20And running into the basin is a gas pipe.
15:24And it's believed that Himmler intended to have
15:27an eternal flame to burn for the SS dead.
15:30And you can see above here, you've got a swastika in the dome
15:34and you've also got shafts to allow light to come right down
15:37into the centre of the circle, sort of illuminating the place.
15:40What Himmler is trying to do here, really,
15:43is to create an ethos and a tradition,
15:46a ritual, basically, for his organisation.
15:49And this is based on their past,
15:52but also, crucially, on their destiny.
15:56Himmler is transforming the building
15:58into the spiritual heart of his SS cult.
16:02This stonework may look like it's been here for years,
16:06but, in fact, it's just cladding over concrete.
16:10And it's a bit like Himmler's visions, myths and traditions.
16:15It's sort of made up. It's fake.
16:18It's just a façade.
16:25In 1936, Himmler is given control of all German public buildings.
16:30He is in control of all German police forces.
16:34The SS organisation now has two main factions.
16:37The Allgemeine SS, controlling the police and internal security,
16:41and the Totenkopfverbande, administering the concentration camps.
16:50Himmler rewrites state law,
16:52giving the SS power to arrest who they want, when they want.
16:57He creates a climate of fear,
16:59where even the slightest opposition to the Nazis means arrest.
17:04Huge numbers of people are rounded up,
17:07and this means a new problem.
17:12By 1937, there are three main concentration camps in Germany.
17:16Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Dachau.
17:20But they're not big enough to hold the influx of prisoners.
17:27Dachau was originally designed to hold 5,000.
17:30Himmler's aim is for it to hold ten times as many.
17:36It will fall to the SS labour force of prisoners to massively expand the camp.
17:42The evidence of their plight can still be seen.
17:49I'm at the Jurhaus, the main administration building for the prisoners' camp.
17:57Prisoners entered Dachau, they came underneath this archway,
18:00and they came through this gate.
18:02And they saw this, Arbeit macht frei.
18:04It means work will make you free.
18:06It was one of the most perverse lies that the SS told prisoners.
18:10This gate itself was, like the rest of this building, built by prisoner labour.
18:21Heinrich Himmler envisioned holding tens of thousands of prisoners in Dachau
18:25and in other concentration camps.
18:27These are the foundations of the barracks built
18:30when the SS rebuilt and expanded the camp.
18:33By the end of the war, there were 34 barracks.
18:38The scale of this building project at Dachau and other camps
18:42reflects the scale and the ambition of the SS
18:47in constructing an infrastructure of terror in Germany and Europe.
18:51By 1938, the SS has effectively destroyed
18:55all political opposition to Hitler within Germany.
18:58Hundreds of thousands serve in its ranks.
19:03Secure at home, Hitler annexes Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia.
19:08The SS prepares for its greatest challenge, the domination of Europe.
19:14As Nazi Germany prepares for war,
19:17Himmler wants the SS to be at the heart of the fight.
19:20He's planning a military faction of his machine, the Waffen-SS.
19:26By 1939, there's around a quarter of a million people in the SS,
19:30but they don't have any formal military training.
19:33They're policemen, they're security men, they're camp guards,
19:36and that's quite a different thing from being a prisoner.
19:39In preparation for the coming war,
19:41Himmler has constructed a military training facility
19:44in the town of Bad Toltz.
19:48Parts of the structure are still recognisable today.
19:52This is Bad Toltz.
19:54And it's here that Heinrich Himmler chooses to build a school
19:58to train the political and military elite of the SS.
20:01And these two towers mark the beginning of a new era
20:07And these two towers mark the entryway to the school.
20:14The school is designed to train elite officers
20:16to lead future armies of SS soldiers.
20:23When Himmler creates this school, he has in mind, as a basic model,
20:26Sandhurst in Great Britain or West Point in the United States.
20:29But it's going to be much more than that.
20:32Along with five hours of political education each week,
20:35Bad Toltz focuses on military training and athletics.
20:42Heinrich Himmler had a bit of a strange fascination
20:45with the British aristocracy, the British elite.
20:47He believed that this elite dominated British society,
20:51and he expected the SS to serve a similar function in the new Germany.
20:57Some of the physical activities, some of the recreational activities
21:00that officers were to be trained in at Bad Toltz
21:03reflected this fascination with the British elite.
21:06Horseback riding and even cricket.
21:13By the start of 1939,
21:15Bad Toltz is turning out hundreds of Waffen-SS officers per year.
21:23Himmler's SS structure now has three parts.
21:28The Totenkopfverbander run the concentration camps.
21:32The Allgemeine SS control police and security,
21:35and the Waffen-SS is the military combat arm.
21:42By September 1939, Hitler is ready for war
21:46and plans to attack Poland.
21:50And so he's got to find an excuse to justify his invasion into Poland,
21:55and who's going to do this for him?
21:57Well, there's only one organisation he's going to turn to,
22:00and that's Himmler's SS.
22:06Himmler creates a plan for an SS black ops raid.
22:11He decides to fake an attack on a German radio station in Gleiwitz,
22:15near the Polish border.
22:18What Himmler and his SS suggest is an entirely cynical operation
22:22whereby SS men dress up as Polish soldiers
22:26and do a mock attack of the Gleiwitz radio station,
22:29and then they can turn around and go,
22:31look, we didn't start it, it was the Poles, and here's the evidence.
22:3931st August 1939.
22:42A team of SS men pretending to be Polish attackers
22:45break into the radio station and assault the German staff.
22:52Hands up!
22:53Hands up!
22:58In Berlin, Himmler waits, tuned in to the station.
23:04One of the SS men broadcasts a message in fluent Polish
23:07to make it look like Poland has attacked Germany.
23:12Attention, the Gleiwitz broadcasting station is in Polish hands.
23:17Mein Führer, it is done.
23:22What's incredible about it is that in just a few minutes
23:24of this sort of faux attack on the Gleiwitz radio station
23:27beating up a few people,
23:29the SS have managed to engineer the perfect excuse Hitler needs,
23:32and the next day he goes on radio and says,
23:35look what these Poles have done, isn't it terrible?
23:38Well, I've got to defend my own people.
23:40What Gleiwitz shows is that the SS is not just about
23:43a political weapon, it's an actual martial weapon as well,
23:46one that can be used in a forthcoming war.
23:50Thanks to the SS, Hitler invades Poland.
23:54World War II has begun,
23:56and the SS is about to export its reign of terror across Europe.
24:07In September 1939,
24:09in September and October 1939,
24:11Poland falls to the Nazis.
24:14Hitler now looks west, to France and Britain.
24:19A newly formed Waffen-SS combat unit will lead the assault.
24:26So they're really, really well equipped,
24:28and they're also incredibly fired up.
24:30They know that they are the absolute elite.
24:33These are the guys who are going into battle.
24:35They've come from the concentration camps
24:38where violence is part and parcel of everyday life,
24:41and so there's already a kind of brutalisation,
24:44a dehumanisation at the very core of this unit,
24:47which they do bring to the battlefront.
24:51By early summer 1940,
24:53the British and French forces are falling back to the Atlantic coast.
24:57The Germans are on their way to the Atlantic coast,
25:00By early summer 1940,
25:02the British and French forces are falling back to the Atlantic coast,
25:06followed by the rampaging Germans,
25:08and the SS commit one of their first military atrocities.
25:12Waffen-SS soldiers reach the French village of Le Paradis.
25:21They approach a British unit, isolated in a farmhouse.
25:26No fire!
25:29SS soldiers in combat camouflage start their assault.
25:36Fire!
25:43The 99 British soldiers defend the farmhouse all afternoon,
25:47but exhaust their ammunition.
25:51Their commander surrenders.
25:58If you take a prisoner at this stage of the war,
26:01you're supposed to follow the Geneva Convention,
26:04which means you take the prisoner, you disarm them,
26:07and you put them in a prison camp.
26:09The SS soldiers start the British marching.
26:12But instead of taking them to a prisoner of war camp...
26:21they massacre them.
26:27Two survivors later reveal the murders to the world.
26:31The extraordinary thing about Le Paradis is
26:34there's no real reason for them executing them at all.
26:37I mean, they've just had quite a tough fight,
26:40they've lost a number of their own men,
26:42and I think it's just that their blood's up and revenge is in the air.
26:46What the SS have done is create an atmosphere and a training machine
26:52in which the totally unacceptable somehow becomes acceptable.
27:00The free world is looking back in horror,
27:02just thinking, how on earth did this happen?
27:05In 1941, Hitler sets his sights on Russia.
27:09His plan is to conquer vast swathes of land for the German people.
27:15It'll be Himmler's job to clear the millions of Slavs, Roma and Jews who live there.
27:24As the invasion of Russia approaches,
27:26he calls a momentous meeting at Wavelsburg Castle.
27:32Himmler gathers his SS leaders here
27:35and briefs them about the forthcoming extermination of the Eastern race.
27:41One of those present records Himmler's chilling words.
27:47Gentlemen, it is a question of existence,
27:51thus it will be a racial struggle of pitiless severity,
27:56in the course of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews
28:01will perish through military actions and crisis of food supply.
28:11The whole idea about the invasion of the Soviet Union
28:14is that this is going to be a war of annihilation.
28:17This is a kind of terminology that is deeply sinister
28:20and is obviously going to unleash a vast amount of terror and violence
28:25into the Soviet Union.
28:27And what they're going to do is they're going to round up prisoners,
28:30these undesirables, and basically execute them.
28:35The SS eventually decide that they will ship millions to concentration camps.
28:40This presents the SS with a massive logistical challenge.
28:45The challenge is to move huge numbers of people
28:48across vast spaces in the middle of a war.
28:52The solution is the pre-existing railway network.
28:57This ghost-like remnant is the remains of the railway spur that the SS built
29:03that connected the railway station in the town of Dachau
29:06with the SS compound and the Dachau concentration camp beyond.
29:11Railway networks became absolutely crucial to the SS.
29:15They were a fast and efficient way of moving huge numbers of people
29:18across vast distances.
29:21The entire European rail network will become part of the SS machine,
29:25transporting millions across the continent.
29:31The SS is now ready to launch the biggest and most horrific operation
29:34Himmler has ever attempted.
29:43The 22nd of June, 1941.
29:48The 22nd of June, 1941. Germany invades Russia.
29:56Within a year, Himmler's plan to kill millions is fully underway.
30:03The operational details are supposed to remain secret,
30:06and to keep them secret, the SS relies on the use of euphemisms.
30:11The final solution to the Jewish question is a euphemism.
30:15Transport to the East is a euphemism.
30:18There are many of these euphemisms that the SS uses
30:22to attempt to cover its tracks,
30:27knowing full well that what is being done here
30:31is a crime of unprecedented proportions.
30:36Hundreds of thousands of people are rounded up and transported across Europe.
30:42The conditions were unimaginably horrible.
30:46The Nazis converted cattle cars to transport people.
30:49They were overpacked. In the summer, they were broiling hot.
30:52In the winter, they were freezing cold.
30:55Often the transports had to stop in the middle of nowhere,
30:58sometimes for days on end.
31:01An unknown, an unknowable number of people died on these transports.
31:07Those that survived the transportation arrived at a new kind of hell,
31:12dozens of huge SS camps.
31:16And a lot of these camps now are no longer just concentration camps
31:20where you would have prisoners that you can then use for labour.
31:23They're basically death camps, extermination camps,
31:26where they're herded there for one purpose, really, one purpose only,
31:30and that is to just eliminate them.
31:33Gas chambers are the favoured system of mass execution at many camps.
31:38But at Dachau, firing squads are used.
31:42Hidden in the woods a few miles from Dachau, the SS built a shooting range.
31:46These gate posts mark the entry to the range.
31:50And here, these fittings
31:54held two black Ss in the shape of lightning bolts.
32:01The unmistakable symbol of the SS.
32:05In 1941 and 1942, the SS conducted a major killing operation right here.
32:11This wall still bears the markings of SS target practice.
32:17Some 4,000 Soviet prisoners of war were brought to the shooting range,
32:21and they were executed here systematically by the SS.
32:27By August 1943, Himmler appears to be fulfilling his dream of SS domination.
32:33But his sickening disregard for human life
32:37is evident in his letters home to his wife.
32:41In the coming days, I'll be in Lublin, Auschwitz and Lwów.
32:47All the best, have a good trip, and see you soon.
32:57And have a good time with our little daughter.
33:00Lots of warm wishes and kisses.
33:06Himmler's SS operates its own military units, concentration camps and police forces.
33:14Himmler masterminds a vast ethnic cleansing program
33:18and controls an empire that reaches into every part of occupied Europe.
33:25The scale of its ambition, the extent of its reach,
33:29the vastness of its crimes are unprecedented in history.
33:34The tide is beginning to turn against Nazi Germany.
33:39The Russians are fighting back.
33:47To defend the Third Reich,
33:49Hitler orders the construction of a massive series of underground bases
33:52built by SS slave labour.
33:56One of the largest and most mysterious projects, codenamed Giant,
34:00can still be found in modern-day Poland.
34:04Dr Tony Pollard is investigating its remains.
34:08The Nazis had an outlandish plan to build what was essentially an underground city
34:12at a place called Osówka in the Owl Mountains.
34:15We're not 100% sure what they intended to do there,
34:18but it looks as though as the war started to go badly for them,
34:20they wanted a safe bolt hole.
34:23Clues to its purpose are hidden around the site.
34:30Above ground, the SS construct 36 miles of roads and dozens of buildings.
34:38Beneath the surface, a huge engineering effort hollows out the mountains.
34:43Supervised by the SS, 23,000 prisoners construct seven linked but self-contained complexes.
34:53One mountainside entrance is still accessible.
35:05As soon as you walk inside, the temperature drops like a stone.
35:08It's freezing in here.
35:13A warren of tunnels lead from the surface to almost 165 feet beneath the mountain.
35:21They've chipped away manually at the rock.
35:26You can see where they've been pecking away.
35:29And that's the point about this. It's not a mechanical exercise.
35:33This would have taken thousands of workers a heck of a long time to burrow into this mountain.
35:42The base is designed to trap attackers in confined spaces and withstand a long siege.
35:51Wow, look at this.
35:54Grief, what is this?
35:57This is quite a surprise.
35:59Everything else has just been bare rock up till now.
36:02In this side chamber, there's a concrete edifice.
36:06And it looks like a pillbox.
36:09I'm going to have to use a torch on it because it's pretty dark in here, surprisingly.
36:15Oh, wow.
36:18Yeah, it must be a pillbox.
36:20We've got a gun port here lined with timber.
36:24And then at the back, there's a steel shutter.
36:29So there would have been, I presume, a machine gun protruding through this.
36:33And it makes total sense because it's covering the entrance at a right angle.
36:38This is clearly the product of a paranoid mind.
36:43It's like something a supervillain in a James Bond movie would build as a hideout.
36:48But Dr. No's got nothing on this.
36:53Yeah, we've got a fully formed bunker here.
36:57Probably the ammunition store in there.
37:04Wow.
37:06Look at this.
37:09Heavy-duty armor plating.
37:11So there would have been a machine gun through here.
37:13And I can clearly see into the passage there.
37:18Nobody's getting through there if you don't want them to.
37:24The Nazis had a strange idea of what the future was going to look like, that's for sure.
37:30Much of the citadel is only accessible by raft.
37:35Are you kidding me?
37:43This section of the tunnel system is entirely flooded.
37:48There's just been a few drips before now, but this has gone way beyond that.
37:53And it gives a good indication of the difficulties of working and then, I suppose, living underground.
38:00Because water is going to be a constant problem percolating through the rocks and hitting underground streams.
38:07And so part of the infrastructure of whatever is taking place down here would have to be a pump system.
38:13And I imagine we'd be working 24-7 to keep this place at least moderately dry.
38:20If anything goes wrong down here, you could be trapped down here like a rat in a hole.
38:26While German civilians suffer under Allied air attacks, Germany's dwindling resources are diverted to Project Giant.
38:35Half a million tons of concrete are used.
38:42The sheer scale suggests some of the likeliest theories for its use.
38:47Weapons factories and a headquarters for Hitler, Himmler and the SS.
38:55What he's looking for here is extending the life of the Reich.
38:59In fact, making it immortal and in doing so, making himself immortal.
39:08To still be going on and continuing the war effort even when all around you your cities have been largely destroyed
39:15and going on by creating underground factories and factories in the size of a mountain is frankly absolutely lunatic.
39:22It's a bonkers use of your resources, even if a lot of those resources are slave labour.
39:29By the summer of 1944, completion of the complex is estimated to be over a year away.
39:36Tensions are advancing and in June, the Western Allies launch D-Day.
39:43For Himmler, the Nazis and the SS, the war is closing in.
39:53As the Red Army pushes through Poland in late 1944, the Third Reich shrinks and Himmler's SS infrastructure is at risk of being overrun.
40:04In 1945, a panicked evacuation begins of the area surrounding Project Giant.
40:13Oh, hang on. What's this? What's this? Oh, wow. Look at that.
40:23That is a classic cold-scuttle German helmet from World War II.
40:34Oh, it's still got part of the strapping, a headband and a loop for the chin strap.
40:40The Germans abandoned this system in a great hurry at the end of the war and just gave up on it.
40:50By March, the German war machine is crumbling.
40:54Himmler's entire SS operation, over 15 years in the making, is on the brink of collapse.
41:01As the Germans are being forced to retreat, they're very careful to try and hide their crimes as much as they possibly can.
41:06What they don't want is the rest of the world to find out the truth behind the brutality and horror of the genocide that they've enacted.
41:15On the 29th of April, 1945, American troops reach and liberate Dachau.
41:23Dachau itself has been responsible for the deaths of around 32,000 people, but elsewhere, concentration camps and death camps,
41:31you're talking millions, millions of people that have been killed by being herded into these appalling places
41:38and then systematically either worked to death or brutally executed.
41:44The scale of Himmler's ambition is exposed.
41:49Over 11 million people have lost their lives at the hands of the SS.
41:56On the 30th of April, Adolf Hitler commits suicide, but Himmler fantasizes about escape.
42:05Hitler's committed suicide, it's all over, Germany lies in ruins, but Himmler has absolutely no intention of throwing in the towel.
42:13He's on the run, he realizes that his life in Nazi Germany is all over, but he's hoping to go into hiding.
42:19He's now one of the most wanted men in the entire world, and the Allies are after him and they're determined to get him.
42:27Himmler does all he can to destroy the evidence of his SS atrocities, but his crimes are too extensive.
42:38On the 23rd of May, 1945, he's captured by the British.
42:42During a medical examination, he bites a cyanide capsule, committing suicide.
42:52The SS dies with him.
42:56At the end of the war, this huge structure that has just been such a crucial part of the Third Reich,
43:02that has infiltrated almost every aspect of the Nazi war machine, suddenly implodes.
43:11Almost overnight, the SS, this huge structure, this huge organization, is just no more.
43:19Thousands of the SS are tried across Europe.
43:23At Dachau, a special US military tribunal alone sentences 420 to death.
43:30Sentences you to be hanged by the neck until dead.
43:33The SS is declared a criminal organization.
43:38It was meant to be an example of the purity and might of the Third Reich,
43:42but in reality became the twisted symbol for the evil that was Hitler's Germany.
43:49The horrific legacy of Himmler's SS stands as a monument to the horrors of Nazism.