Dive deep into one of history’s darkest chapters with Nazi Secret Files, the gripping documentary series that uncovers hidden truths, classified operations, and shocking discoveries from the era of Nazi Germany.
This powerful history documentary explores secret missions, mysterious projects, and untold stories that remained buried for decades. Through expert analysis, archival footage, and detailed investigations, the series reveals the real secrets behind the Third Reich.
📌 In this series you will discover:
Secret Nazi operations
Hidden WWII mysteries
Classified German war projects
Untold historical evidence
Rare archival footage
If you enjoy history documentaries, WWII investigations, and real historical mysteries, this series is a must-watch.
👍 Like, comment, and subscribe for more full documentary series.
#NaziSecretFiles #WWIIDocumentary #HistoryDocumentary #NaziSecrets
This powerful history documentary explores secret missions, mysterious projects, and untold stories that remained buried for decades. Through expert analysis, archival footage, and detailed investigations, the series reveals the real secrets behind the Third Reich.
📌 In this series you will discover:
Secret Nazi operations
Hidden WWII mysteries
Classified German war projects
Untold historical evidence
Rare archival footage
If you enjoy history documentaries, WWII investigations, and real historical mysteries, this series is a must-watch.
👍 Like, comment, and subscribe for more full documentary series.
#NaziSecretFiles #WWIIDocumentary #HistoryDocumentary #NaziSecrets
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TVTranscript
00:01A firestorm rips across the world from London to Washington, DC.
00:06Orbiting 5,100 miles above the Earth,
00:09Adolf Hitler's superweapon incinerates armies and cities within minutes.
00:14Allied leaders are powerless to refuse the Fuhrer's demands for an unconditional surrender.
00:20You've got a scientist, a mad Nazi scientist, who's got an exciting idea.
00:25He says this might turn the war. This is a vengeance weapon.
00:29Fact or fantasy?
00:31Incredible new research reveals the truth behind the Germans' goal to develop top-secret superweapons.
00:38The British were quite convinced that Germany had death rays, solar beams,
00:45all sorts of things waiting in the wings.
00:47Such a device like the bell would enable them to deliver the weapons of mass destruction to win the world.
00:55How close was Hitler to using space-age technology to rule the world?
01:00The shocking truth will change the way you see the war forever.
01:15January 1945.
01:17From the east, the Russians make their move, pushing the German troops back towards Berlin.
01:24From the west, the British and Americans launch a joint attack, forcing the Nazis to retreat.
01:31And yet Hitler and his high command continue to brag of imminent Wunderwaffe, superweapons,
01:38that will destroy the enemies of Germany and place the world under the Fuhrer's total command.
01:44The German propaganda machine was massive.
01:48Every single word that they issued was meticulously calculated to have the maximum demoralizing effect.
01:54And it did work.
01:57Propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels spreads many stories through newspapers, film and radio.
02:04One is of a deadly technological breakthrough, the likes of which have never been thought possible.
02:10Whichever way you look at it, Goebbels was just a brilliant, brilliant PR man.
02:15I mean, we would now call him a spin doctor.
02:16He was just fantastic.
02:17His mantra was repeat, repeat, repeat.
02:20And it's not just the German public who are listening.
02:24Goebbels kept saying, we are developing a superweapon that is going to wipe out the British.
02:28You saw it in the newspapers almost every week, there was some mention of a German superweapon.
02:34The British were quite convinced that Germany had death rays, solar beams, all sorts of things waiting in the wings.
02:43We really felt that we were for it and that Germany technologically had the upper hand.
02:53While the Allies feared annihilation from unknown wonder weapons, the Nazis were facing desperate times at home.
03:00Germany was struggling even to keep her people alive.
03:05Struggling even to find enough food to give people to eat so that they wouldn't starve to death.
03:09With the war slipping away, Hitler redoubles efforts to develop superweapons.
03:15Technology could still save Germany from defeat.
03:19The Nazis are idiots.
03:20I mean, they know the limitations of their ambitions.
03:25Those limitations are a severe shortage of resources.
03:29Iron ore, oil, bauxite, food, food particularly in the German case.
03:34They just don't have enough of it.
03:35So, how are you going to give yourself that edge?
03:38How are you going to do that?
03:40Well, science and technology are very much at the forefront of Nazi plans.
03:46Ever more money is diverted into high-end research.
03:50Hitler invests huge amounts of money in science and in technology with these incredible research and development labs,
03:57where the top scientists are all kind of corralled and given a very clean slate to kind of start developing
04:04really incredible things.
04:05The lure of virtually limitless funds and countless staff draws the cream of Germany scientists to the Nazi cause.
04:14So, you've got a scientist, a mad Nazi scientist who's got an exciting idea and he wants it to be
04:21developed.
04:21And he knows, under normal circumstances, there's no way he's ever going to get the funding for that project.
04:26But he says, this might turn the war. This could bring Britain to her knees.
04:29And they go, I love that. Go for it. Because, you know, they've got nothing to lose.
04:34And recently discovered documents prove, when it comes to the creation of an evil technological masterpiece,
04:41Nazi scientists are much closer than anyone ever imagined.
04:46Plans were in place for a 5,100-mile-high orbiting death ray.
04:52A giant mirror that will focus the sun's rays onto the earth, creating death, destruction, and obliterated cities throughout the
05:00world.
05:02German scientists across the Reich are bringing together technology to make these plans a reality.
05:09And if anyone has the know-how to get into space, it's the Germans.
05:17Germany in the Roaring Twenties was leading the way for massive technological advancements.
05:22And these ideas were made a possibility by the father of rocketry, Hermann Oberth.
05:29Hermann Oberth was one of the great figures.
05:31You know, everybody knows of Wernher von Braun, but there were many other people involved.
05:35And Oberth was one of the key players.
05:37Hermann Oberth is the grandfather of German rocketry.
05:41In 1923, he writes his doctoral dissertation, By Rockets to Interplanetary Space.
05:47Heavily influenced by popular culture, including authors H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, Oberth is at the forefront of a
05:54new scientific movement.
05:57In 1923, Oberth writes the rocket into interplanetary space that gives scientific credibility to theories explored in Jules Verne's book,
06:07From the Earth to the Moon.
06:10In the Victorian era, people began to look much more at sci-fi, science fiction, the idea of penetrating to
06:16the center of the world or flying to the moon, whatever else it might be.
06:19And it just so happens that by the time World War I was over, that there was a burgeoning of
06:25interest in Germany of all places.
06:28All around Germany, scientific minds form amateur groups where rockets, rocket cars and spacecraft are designed and tested.
06:38In the midst of the space rush, teenage rocketry disciple Wernher von Braun is taken under Hermann Oberth's wing.
06:46When von Braun was very young, he became one of the first of the amateur rocket enthusiasts.
06:51And yes, he wanted to build rockets and he wanted to get into space.
06:56They thought man could be put into space, we could build space stations, we could use rockets to populate space.
07:03And they sat down and they designed a number of platforms to put man, in their case Germans, into space.
07:11This was early science fiction, these were early visions of us leaving our planet.
07:16And von Braun and his colleagues were captivated by really the beauty of that vision.
07:22Among the projects they develop is Oberth's ambitious dream to create a revolutionary orbital solar reflector.
07:32Then, in late 1929, the financial temperature in the West takes a turn for the worse.
07:38The economy crashes, plunging Germany into chaos.
07:43Anger bubbles to the surface, enabling the national socialists to seize a decisive victory.
07:49Hitler comes to power, driving Europe to the cusp of war.
07:53And overnight, a wall of silence falls on the German scientific community.
07:59The Nazis suddenly began to realize that, hang on a minute, we might need this expertise to develop superweapons.
08:05And as a result, it was disapproved of to make too much contact with the West.
08:10And so after a few years of exuberance, when the Nazis came in, things began to go quiet.
08:17The wall of silence puts the Allies on the back foot.
08:20What deadly technology might the Nazi regime be developing?
08:24The Allies were justifiably afraid of what the Germans were able to build because they knew the Germans had this
08:32basis in technology and technological advancements.
08:37And they were right to be afraid.
08:39By 1932, scientists and engineers around Germany are being enlisted by the military.
08:46Still in his 20s, Werner von Braun is put in charge of a secret development facility with a staff of
08:53top engineers and scientists.
08:56In the north corner of Germany, concealed from the Allies on a small island,
09:01Von Braun and his colleagues start developing a new deadly weapon.
09:08Pino Mundo was a top secret facility.
09:11The workers there were sworn to keep silent about the location and what was going on there.
09:18You're in an isolated spot, so you've got all the scope to develop and test, importantly, weapons and all sorts
09:24of gadgetry away from prying eyes.
09:27Laboratories are set up there, factories are set up there, the means to produce prototypes.
09:33And leading scientists are all brought into this hub.
09:39Under the command of Dr. Walter Dornberger and the SS,
09:43Von Braun adapts his dreams of space travel to hasten Nazi military advancement.
09:49From the age of 13, he'd hope his rockets would one day reach the moon.
09:54Now, they would be destined for London.
09:58The Nazis realized the military application of the missiles very, very early on
10:04and put enormous amounts of money and materials and manpower and brainpower
10:09into developing this weapons system specifically.
10:12Von Braun always has to be corralled back into the weapons side of missiles and rockets,
10:18rather than the fantastical side of spacefaring.
10:21Yet despite huge military pressure to develop a devastating weapon,
10:26Werner Von Braun and his colleagues hope one day their missiles will be used as space transporters.
10:32The civilian designers that were important in the development of this weapons system
10:37saw it as a vehicle to put man into space.
10:40The Nazis saw this as a missile that could be used to throw weapons downrange and destroy things.
10:55In 1941, Herman Oberth arrives in Peenemünde, where he is reunited with his disciple Von Braun.
11:03These people are kind of siphoned off up to Peenemünde and given sort of carte blanche to go and develop
11:09something amazing.
11:10And of course that's exactly what they are doing.
11:12With Nazi resources fully behind him, Oberth repurposes one peacetime design into the ultimate weapon.
11:20Soon, plans start to circulate for his space-based solar reflector.
11:25Even in their worst nightmares, Allied intelligence can't imagine Oberth's orbiting sci-fi superweapon.
11:32A weapon Hitler can use to dominate the world.
11:36Oberth's plans are in Nazi hands, and what was once an agricultural wonder has been reimagined into a devastating solar
11:44death ray.
11:50As the Wehrmacht storms through Europe, the German panzer divisions, with their lightweight and maneuverable tanks, showcase Nazi technological prowess.
12:01Blitzkrieg puts the Allies on the back foot, wondering what other military innovations the Nazis are working on.
12:09Unfortunately, intelligence reports are sparse. Hitler's scientific lockdown is unbreakable.
12:17The unbelievable truth is, throughout the Reich, German scientists are working hard to make the impossible a reality.
12:25Their sights are set higher and deadlier.
12:29For the Nazi rocket scientists, this means harnessing the sun to create the ultimate weapon.
12:38The idea of using the sun to defeat enemies is not new.
12:43In ancient Greece, Archimedes had designs to focus the sun to burn approaching ships.
12:49But his weapon was earthbound.
12:53With the help of rocket scientists such as Wernher von Braun, the Nazis hoped to take this idea much further.
13:01But before they can reach space, they need to conquer a decade-old challenge.
13:07The first challenge in putting any structure into space, into orbit around the earth, is to get going very fast.
13:13And that's why we see all the fire and thunder of massive rockets launching off the surface of the earth.
13:19It's the energy it takes to get going that fast so you can stay in orbit around the earth.
13:28So, if you want to build something, you know, obviously the very first hurdle, the major hurdle, is to get
13:33it into space in the first place.
13:34You've got to have some sort of technology and the vehicle capabilities to actually put that into orbit.
13:42By 1942, the scientists at the secret testing ground in Pinamunda take rocketry to a new level.
13:50They unveil a new nightmare to reign terror on the Allied forces, the vengeance weapon.
13:56And by January 1944, the first flying bomb, the V-1, is successfully launched on London.
14:06The weapon is a crushing blow for British morale.
14:11Everyone remembered the Blitz from September 1940 to May 1941.
14:15So, I think for the British it was incredibly traumatic when the V-1s in the summer of 1944 started
14:21to land on British cities.
14:25The V-1 is just the beginning.
14:29Working at lightning pace, Von Braun's team create a new vengeance weapon.
14:35On September 8th, 1944, the V-2 is unveiled.
14:40A devastating rocket straight out of science fiction with an incredible range.
14:46The V-2 had a range of about 200 miles so the Germans could hit England, France,
14:52Belgium from the launch sites that they had at the end of the war.
15:07The most significant launch site in V-2 history still remains in part today at the Pinamunda development site.
15:17So, this is, we're walking to the launch site, we're deep inside the restricted area.
15:30This used to be the constructing area.
15:35As you see here, the rockets were constructed before they were brought in into the arena and there were launched.
15:50Now we're entering the arena, the launching site of where the rockets really started.
16:02Here we have finally reached the point where the rockets really were launched.
16:11It was from this launch site the V-2 came to life.
16:27The Nazis had enough vision under Dornberger and Werner von Braun to see that if you built a chunky rocket,
16:33something the size of a house, then you could build a liquid-fueled rocket and indeed they succeeded in doing
16:40it.
16:40The design of the V-2 was extraordinary.
16:43The world's first long-range rocket can reach deep into Britain.
16:47But can it reach space?
16:50Flash forward to 1946 in White Sands, New Mexico.
16:54The Americans have requisitioned a German V-2.
17:00With a camera strapped to the top of one of these incredible rockets.
17:05Remarkable footage shows von Braun's weapon going beyond Earth's atmosphere.
17:11The V-2 could indeed take the Nazis into the final frontier.
17:15The V-2 is the first object to reach the edge of space.
17:20The civilian designers saw it as a vehicle to take man into space, in their case hopefully Germans.
17:28Von Braun's dream of traveling in space is closer than ever before.
17:34Getting into orbit around the Earth is a bit of a challenge because we have an atmosphere.
17:38To get up to about, maybe about 130 kilometers up, maybe about 80 miles before the air, the atmosphere itself
17:44has gotten thin enough that you can sort of stay even for a very short time in a relatively unassisted
17:51orbit.
17:52You need rockets, rocket technology, this ability to continuously produce the thrust as you go, to build your speed higher
18:01and higher.
18:02The technology, at least in some rudimentary form, it certainly existed.
18:06So it's not out of the question that something like this could be done.
18:09When the V-2 is unleashed on London, the Allies' worst fears about Nazi super-scientists are confirmed.
18:18Now this German wonder weapon is no longer a secret.
18:21Churchill and his commanders demand to know where the V-2 is being built and launched.
18:27Aerial photographs and footage soon reveal the rocket test site cunningly hidden amongst the trees at Pinamunda.
18:37As soon as the Allies found out what the Germans were doing with rocket technology and missile technology,
18:43they mounted an enormous bombing campaign to destroy it.
18:49The Nazis move quickly to protect super-weapons development.
18:53The only way you can really make your facility safe by 1943, certainly by 1944, is to put it underground
19:02and to put it in a mountain.
19:04And of course that's exactly what the Germans do.
19:06The whole idea was we need to bury everything underground, make everything secret, and make everything as bomb-proof as
19:13we possibly can.
19:15V-2 production is moved inland to a specially designed underground bunker in Middlebau.
19:31To build this mammoth facility in such a short amount of time, thousands of concentration camp inmates are forced to
19:39work around the clock.
19:43The plan was, of course, to produce in the Middlebau concentration camp as many rockets as they could produce in
19:50a certain time,
19:51and of course shoot that rocket to the west and to their enemies.
19:55The whole complex of building the tunnels in the Middlebau camps was a very primitive way to build that.
20:04So you have a clash of the high technology they thought they would produce,
20:08and of course the other way of using concentration camp prisoners is slave laborers that die because of the treatment
20:17and the brutality.
20:22Today, discarded rocket parts litter this incredible tunnel complex.
20:27It owes its existence to one of the great atrocities of the Second World War.
20:33In the construction of the tunnel complex and mass production of the new vengeance weapons, thousands of men died.
20:41Their deaths ensure the underground factory is completed in record time, and work on the V-2 weapons continues.
20:51Production of the V-2 is stepped up, and Oberth's plans for an orbital superweapon are taken over by scientists
20:58across the Reich.
21:01And if the V-2 spreads fear amongst the European enemies of Nazi Germany, the orbital death ray will cause
21:09the world to tremble.
21:14With Nazi wonder weapons already raining terror on the Allies, tensions start to rise.
21:21When Goebbels claims Hitler has another war-changing weapon in his arsenal, those fears bubble over, especially when the unexplainable
21:30starts happening.
21:32Allied bombers, right from 1941 onwards, reported seeing these strange lights that seemed to be invulnerable to their own fire.
21:40So, you know, they'd pummel them with machine gun fire, and they'd still be there.
21:43And sometimes they were there for a matter of seconds, sometimes it was a couple of minutes.
21:47Everyone was convinced that Germany had some amazing new superweapon, because you'd suddenly see bright lights whizzing past in the
21:53sky.
21:54Enough people were seeing them and reporting them to give them some kind of credence. They're not just out of
22:00their imagination.
22:01Nicknamed Foo Fighters, the Allied High Command takes the reported craft very seriously.
22:07There is no knowing what tech the Germans are working on, or how advanced they have become.
22:12The Allies were perfectly aware that the Germans had already created some quite sophisticated kit, whether it be things like
22:18reports of strange lights known as Foo Fighters, whether it be jet aircraft like the ME-262.
22:25You know, they'd seen these, so they knew that the Germans were developing pioneering airframes, jet technology, all sorts of
22:31weird and wonderful stuff.
22:36Separating science fiction from science fact is a challenge researchers are still struggling with today.
22:50It's here, hidden between the Owl Mountains, just outside Ludwikowice, Poland, that journalist Igor Witkowski claims some of Germany's top
22:59engineers came to develop tech beyond anything the Allies have come across before.
23:06We are in the middle of a valley that was taken over by the by the SS during the war
23:14and transformed into a top secret giant research complex.
23:22And what we can see here is the surface infrastructure of this complex.
23:28It's only a shadow of the underground part, which is not accessible. By some, it was compared to the American
23:37Area 51.
23:38In fact, in the middle of all this stands this structure, which is called the flytrap or henge.
23:51It might seem like science fiction, but Witkowski and other researchers believe this henge was the center for antigravity experiments.
24:02This is the construction that stands here, and it looks like a test rig, typical test rig, classical test rig
24:11for testing vertically taking off and landing objects or other devices related to this, such as it might have been
24:20used for testing rotors of helicopters, for example.
24:24There is a suspicion that it specifically was built to test the bell, which was probably an experimental or part
24:34of a propulsion system based on gravity.
24:41According to Vietkovsky's research, the bell contained high voltage cylinders, which spun to create an incredibly powerful electrical field that
24:51he believes counters the Earth's gravitational pull.
24:55If this is true, it's likely the testing process was incredibly dangerous.
25:02German soldiers and scientists would have been at risk of radiation poisoning, explosions and death.
25:08All risks worth taking to make the Nazi army invincible.
25:14Such a device like the bell would have enabled them to go out into space.
25:20It would enable them to deliver the weapons of mass destruction and to win the war, essentially.
25:26It was described, this project was described officially as decisive for the world.
25:33As alluring as Vietkovsky's story is, his claims as to what took place in Ludwigowice are viewed by many with
25:40skepticism.
25:41The notion that you would waste money on something so futuristic seems, on any consideration, to be foolish.
25:49Had the Germans discovered antigravity, we would all have it today.
25:53The fact that we don't have any of these fantastical engineering projects and counter-physics developments suggests to me that
26:05they're simply unavailable.
26:08Whether or not the antigravity Foo Fighters remain in the realms of science fiction,
26:14Undisputed facts suggest Herman Oberth's solar death ray to be the true game changer the Nazis were inching closer to
26:22building by the day.
26:27Completion will give them the ability to vaporize entire cities and armies within minutes.
26:33The V-2 has already shown that the Nazis can reach space, but it cannot return safely.
26:42To build the death ray, they need a vehicle that can survive re-entry.
26:49The challenge for these German engineers is to have the capability to actually get to space on a routine basis,
26:56because you're going to have to take more pieces up than you can take on one launch.
27:01So you've got to have the technology of safely and efficiently and repeatably being able to return back to the
27:08Earth after being in orbit and then go up again.
27:10And that necessarily entails something like a shuttle-like vehicle.
27:16The first space shuttle was launched in 1981, 35 years after the war ended.
27:23It seems inconceivable that the Nazis had ambitions so far ahead of their time.
27:29And yet they did.
27:331944, Jürgen Saniger approaches the Luftwaffe with plans for a high-tech plane,
27:39which would give Germany an advantage no other power had in their possession.
27:44Saniger presents blueprints for a long-distance bomber,
27:48a plane called the Silbervogel, or Silver Bird,
27:51a plane designed to bomb mainland America.
27:55They've got jet aircraft, they've got rockets.
27:57You know, what they now need is a long-distance aircraft,
28:02spacecraft almost, that can reach America and can bomb America.
28:06And that is where the Silver Bird starts to become a real project that the Germans see as being achievable.
28:15Hitler knows only too well that America is too far away for conventional bombers.
28:20But Saniger's Silver Bird would be the world's first space bomber.
28:25He was an incredibly clever chap, and he had the idea of an orbital bomber,
28:30that you would launch into low-Earth orbit,
28:33and it could get around the world to the other side of the Earth in 40 minutes.
28:36And then, of course, it could drop its bomb wherever you wanted.
28:39Launched on a rocket-propelled track,
28:41the Silver Bird would reach heights no other bomber has achieved before,
28:46conserving fuel by skipping across the top of the atmosphere like a stone on the surface of a pond.
28:53Once it gets over the United States, theoretically, it could drop bombs in the United States
28:57and then keep skipping and land in their allied country, Japan.
29:02The Silver Bird not only gives the Nazis a military edge,
29:06it's also the first step towards a returnable space vehicle, a Nazi space shuttle.
29:12The Silver Vogel was a multiple-use weapon to be reused a number of times,
29:19piloted by humans who were put into the edge of space very safely
29:23and then brought back from the edge of space very safely.
29:27The technology needed to make Herman Oberth's death ray a possibility
29:31is starting to fall into place.
29:33But if the giant orbiting mirror is to turn the war, it will need guiding and firing,
29:39and that means placing Nazi soldiers in space.
29:44Unknown to the Allies, Nazi medical officers are carrying out horrific human experiments
29:50to make this a reality.
29:55April, 1945.
29:57Germany is in ruins, and Hitler is found dead in his underground bunker.
30:03For days, Hitler's secret army of scientists and engineers
30:07have been gathering together their work and preparing for surrender.
30:13The Germans led the world in rocket and missile technology during the war.
30:18Consequently, at the end of the war, the Allies all rushed to grab up German scientists, engineers, and designers,
30:24because each country wanted those German scientists for themselves.
30:30Fearful of what awaits them at the hands of the Allies,
30:33many German weapons experts destroy or hide their designs.
30:38Nazi secret weapons are not going to be easy to find.
30:42Yet some do surface.
30:44What is uncovered is astonishing.
30:48The Nazi ambition for guided air missiles, jet-powered bombers, and thunderous tanks is frightening.
31:00But the most extraordinary and destructive plan uncovered by the occupying Allied forces
31:06was Oberth's revolutionary solar death ray.
31:11In June, 1945, in the small town of Hillersleben, Colonel John Keck of the American Ordnance Division
31:19arrives at one of the secret laboratories to interrogate Nazi scientists.
31:25Among their work, he discovers plans for submarine rocket launch systems
31:29and heat-detonated anti-aircraft missiles.
31:32But one plan in particular is so horrifying that Colonel Keck calls an immediate press conference.
31:40When Colonel Keck interviews a lot of leading Nazi scientists, he gets terribly excited about it
31:45because these Nazi scientists are talking about putting up what is effectively a space station above the Earth
31:50and managing to organize the rays of the sun into a kind of what becomes a death ray of sort
31:56of, you know, untold terror and power.
31:58And this seems fantastical, but the way the Nazi scientists are talking, it seems also incredibly possible.
32:04Keck tells a shocked press corps that he has taken possession of detailed blueprints for an orbiting three-mile-wide
32:12solar death ray
32:13that would have handed Hitler total victory within days.
32:19The plans are so thorough and detailed that it's clear.
32:23Had it been launched, it would have delivered Hitler's fantasy of the thousand-year global Nazi empire.
32:31News of the death ray captures the attention of media outlets around the world.
32:35There was always the undercurrent, the theme of a death ray, of a sun ray, capturing the energy of the
32:42sun and destroying soldiers within.
32:44The idea may have sounded outlandish, but Keck had reason to be worried.
32:48Colonel Keck takes it seriously because he knows enough to realize that the concept,
32:54the principles behind getting a space station into orbit are sound enough to make that a real possibility.
33:04Space scientist Dan Derda has looked over the Nazi death ray design and reached some startling conclusions.
33:11A project like this would be, you know, ambitious today with today's space program.
33:17This is going to take hundreds and hundreds of launches.
33:20So you're going to have to build some sort of a reusable vehicle right off the bat to be able
33:23to do that.
33:24And a lot of them.
33:30You're going to have people up there assembling, so you're going to have all of the challenges of living and
33:36working in space.
33:37Right? This is not just standing on a construction site. You're floating.
33:42To build such a large structure was a challenge the Nazis were willing to contemplate.
33:48They had the brains and the brute force to make it happen.
33:53The size of the death ray would have been breathtaking.
33:56The facility we're sitting at here has about 20 acres of mirrors.
34:00Just plain, ordinary, flat mirrors that are focusing energy to a single point.
34:06When this facility is in full operation, the sunlight is so intense, focused on that point, that that tower literally
34:13glows like the sun.
34:15The temperatures are raised up to, you know, over 440 degrees Celsius.
34:21That's over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
34:23A square mile is 640 acres. So you put about, I don't know, 20 or 30 or 40 of these
34:30facilities together.
34:31And they're actually talking about the scale of this mirror that was being contemplated for deployment in space.
34:37To the desperate Nazis, this powerful death ray would have delivered a game changer.
34:42It could conceivably actually be used as a weapon.
34:45If you're going to be raising temperatures in a small area to literally up to, you know, a couple thousand
34:51degrees,
34:52those are the kinds of temperatures you can literally melt metals with.
34:55You can fuse sand into glass.
34:57Obviously, you can char and burn organic material, trees and forests and living material.
35:03The solar death ray would go further, raising temperatures to match the surface of the sun, an unimaginable high of
35:1210,000 degrees.
35:14Cities would be obliterated.
35:17With technology to take Nazi weaponry into space and advance plans for a reusable space shuttle,
35:25the Germans are edging closer to the goal of an orbiting death ray.
35:31But one challenge remains.
35:33To build and operate the solar death ray, engineers and pilots need to survive in space.
35:41It's pretty obvious from the scope of this design that it's going to take people to put this together in
35:45orbit.
35:46You've got to be able to survive in the vacuum of space, the radiation environment of space,
35:50the temperature extremes between daylight and nighttime.
35:54One of the things that was fundamentally unknown at the time was how humans would survive in the upper atmosphere
36:00or even the vacuum of space.
36:02The Germans were trying to unlock the secrets of high atmosphere and space flight and how it would affect humans.
36:12Planes are becoming more advanced and Luftwaffe pilots more daring.
36:16The Allies fear the Me 262 for its incredible speed and high-flying abilities.
36:23And yet the Luftwaffe are experiencing problems.
36:28Pilots are blacking out and reporting sickness, causing planes to dive out of their control.
36:34As you go to higher and higher altitudes above the surface of the Earth, your time unprotected without an oxygen
36:41mask or a space suit,
36:42your time of useful consciousness becomes very, very short and deep.
36:46The first high-altitude flyers very quickly understood that you need those pressure suits to keep you conscious.
36:51You get out of your aircraft at high altitude without that, you literally pass out.
36:55You just can't remain conscious for very long.
36:57The theoretical underpinnings were brought home in a very strong way as we began high-altitude flight,
37:03at the beginning of the jet age especially.
37:05As Allied troops discover to their horror, surviving high altitude was high up on the Nazi agenda.
37:13On April 29th, 1945, a division of the U.S. 7th Army liberates Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany.
37:23Here they uncover evidence that the Nazis were investigating the effects of high-altitude flight on inmates.
37:31The experiments they carried out made for some of the most horrifying evidence heard by the judges at the Nuremberg
37:38trials.
37:40The doctor behind the horrors at Dachau is the cold and callous Sigmund Rascher.
37:46A man tasked to uncover the limits of high-altitude human survival.
37:52His cold indifference to the suffering of others makes him an ideal Nazi researcher.
38:08Shocking documents discovered in the Dachau archives and used in the Nuremberg trials reveal the extent of Rascher's wickedness.
38:17Portable, low-pressure chambers were built at Dachau to simulate high-altitude flying.
38:24The results were tragic.
38:26The SS doctors tried to record all the results of the aviation testings.
38:33And this is what we got here.
38:36The documents show us today what really happened to the prisoners.
38:42They simulated the situation of the pilot being 7.2 kilometers after 10 minutes.
38:4814 kilometers means that he suddenly gets limp, is hanging inside of the parachutes.
39:03They used high-compression chambers and low-compression chambers to experiment with humans.
39:09It was tragic and abhorrent.
39:12But at the end of the day, the Germans led the way in experimenting in the information on what would
39:18happen to the human body in these conditions.
39:22Understanding how the human body reacted to extreme altitude was only one of the torments inmates had to endure.
39:30The Nazi medics were also desperate to understand the limits of the human body's ability to deal with freezing temperatures.
39:39They took people and they froze them in bars of icy water, screaming in terror for the unendurable pain.
39:47And then took meticulous records of exactly what happened and how they died and what their temperature was and how
39:53quickly they cooled.
39:58The Dachau archive shed startling light on the tortures inmates endured as part of Rascher's hunt for answers.
40:06So one of the aviation testings was the cold water experiments.
40:12Prisons were put into a basin with ice cold water.
40:18Here, for example, we have the records about a prisoner who was put into water from 4.5 degrees.
40:25Then they just recorded the body temperature of the prisoners, which lowered to 25 degrees.
40:33They recorded the heart rate, the breath of the prisoners.
40:38And then here is a cross, and this cross means that the prisoner died when his body was low at
40:4625 degrees.
40:47A further 90 prisoners died as part of the quest to understand how to recover from freezing temperatures.
40:58Today, Dachau remains as a reminder of the terrors of the Second World War.
41:06How many people do you estimate were murdered in connection with the Rascher and the other experiments carried out under
41:16the guise of Nazi science?
41:18Shockingly, at the Nuremberg trials, many of the doctors carrying out these brutal experiments are acquitted to take up jobs
41:26at allied medical schools,
41:27where their knowledge formed the basis of today's space medicine.
41:31Many of the doctors who carried out those experiments have only died in recent decades.
41:37And many of them have said that they are still haunted.
41:40To their dying day, they would say, we're still haunted by the memory of what it was that we did.
41:48Many German experts are brought to account for their actions.
41:52But some are given another chance.
41:55While Hitler's dream is over, the German space race is only just beginning.
42:04May 1945, Allied forces liberate Germany from Nazi tyranny.
42:10For many of the Nazi space scientists in their secret facilities, the dream is over.
42:19Herman Oberth's solar death ray will never be constructed in space.
42:24Hitler's plans for victory are smashed, and with them, it seems, his orbital weapon.
42:30The awesome power of the sun will not be harnessed to bring Britain and America to their knees.
42:37But the peacetime dreams of many of the German engineers will not die.
42:42Everybody was convinced that Germany was on the point of doing amazing things.
42:46And she was, but the amazing things she did ended up as the Apollo space mission.
42:51But these super weapons that somehow have been hidden from history never existed.
42:57It is just the way in which people love to invent scandals, myths, and mysteries, when nothing like it really
43:05exists.
43:08As the Allies swoop through Germany, they round up Nazi scientists, engineers, and medics.
43:16Many of the experts find themselves enlisted by both Soviet and US forces, allowing them to continue the work they
43:24had started.
43:26It is an opportunity for them to turn their research to the forces of good, and a chance for them
43:32to achieve the dreams created in pre-war Germany.
43:36In the kind of fevered atmosphere of the end of the war, that this would be very kind of seductive
43:40stuff.
43:41Because also, if he does manage to get this technology and these scientists back to America, then, you know, the
43:46possibilities are endless.
43:49Rocket parts are spirited away to the desert of New Mexico, along with hundreds of German experts.
43:56And at their head is the brilliant Wernher von Braun.
44:00With an intercontinental missile already on the drawing board, it doesn't take long for his space program to get started.
44:09These guys like von Braun and Dernberger are whittled back very secretly into the US and put into space programs
44:16and aerospace programs in the United States.
44:21And the Americans managed to put a man on the moon in the 1960s is largely because they have Nazi
44:28scientists who are streets ahead in terms of rocketry and space science.
44:32Just 15 years after V-2's reigned terror on London, von Braun's wonder weapon is scaled up.
44:41The result is Saturn V, taking Americans into space.
44:47The horrific pressurized experiments and hypothermia tests conducted in Dachau directly enable Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to enter space.
44:58The space suits they wear are a direct consequence of the data collected by the ruthless Dr. Rasher.
45:05What it led to were ideas and concepts of how to build space suits for eventual space flight when the
45:14Soviets and the Americans started going into space.
45:22By 1961, the first American reaches space.
45:26And by 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin take their first steps on the moon.
45:33That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
45:41Without the help and knowledge of the German Second World War experts, none of this would have been possible.
45:47If Germany had in some way won the war, then I dare say that the Apollo mission would have looked
45:52much the same when it went to the moon as it did when Kennedy sent it.
45:58By the end of the war, the suborbital bomber designed by Eugen Sanegar had been in the early testing stages.
46:06Small rockets were strapped to jet planes in an attempt to reach the high speeds needed for an atmospheric flight.
46:14Without Sanegar's revolutionary re-entry heat shield, the American space shuttle would not exist.
46:22The idea of a manned station in space might have only been a plan in the 1940s.
46:28Yet it has now been achieved.
46:32While the International Space Station carries out scientific experiments instead of raining terror on the Earth,
46:39the Nazi concept of a manned space station is now echoed by the ISS.
46:44It's the same technologies developed today that we utilize literally daily up there on the International Space Station.
46:54Although the death ray may seem to be a Nazi fantasy, Colonel Keck was right to be worried.
47:02The Nazis were closer to taking the battle into space than anyone had realized.
47:09Technology is starting to be there, and so therefore the concept of getting into space and creating some kind of
47:16super weapon from outside the Earth's orbit is...
47:20It feels like it's within grasp.
47:24It was within the reach of German technology.
47:28It certainly wasn't going to happen by 1945, but if the Germans had had another five or ten years to
47:33develop it, then certainly it could have worked then.
47:36But it's modern technology and modern materials that make it much more practical for present-day scientists to investigate than
47:43it ever would have been during the time of World War II.
47:46Technically, they weren't quite ready to be able to do something like this at the time, but, you know, they
47:51have those sorts of challenges in reach for them.
47:52It's what got us to the moon. It's what's going to take us to Mars and beyond.
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