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.
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#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
00:03biological warfare has been used to inflict fear and harm for thousands of
00:09years during World War two Hitler refuses to contemplate bioterror but his high command
00:19think differently a clandestine program prepares a sickening new weapon for the
00:26desperate Nazi war machine this is the real stuff of nightmares think of the very worst
00:32horror film you've ever seen and then times it by 10 recently uncovered secret files reveal a
00:38horrific pact between Axis scientists both sides knew that what they were doing had to remain
00:44secret because they know that what they're doing is morally utterly reprehensible and the shocking
00:51truth behind a man-made epidemic that will change the way you see the war forever
01:13by the summer of 1943 the tides of war are flowing in the Allies favor Rommel's African Corps have
01:23surrendered and the Soviets are steadily pushing the Nazi forces out of Russia for the Germans to win
01:31the war now it will take a miracle Germany is running out of options they're running out of
01:36resources they're running out of manpower they're losing the war and so they're starting to clutch
01:41at straws and if biological warfare can help them tone the tide then they're prepared to go to any
01:48lengths to make that happen Heinrich Himmler the ruthless leader of the SS has already committed
01:57countless atrocities in the cause of the Third Reich and in a desperate bid to create the ultimate
02:03wonder weapon he defies a direct order from the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler in the middle of the Indian Ocean
02:14Nazi U-Boats rendezvous with Japanese warships carrying high-ranking Nazi medical researchers
02:22theirs is a mission to exchange information on deadly biological agents with their axis allies
02:29the knowledge inside these scientists heads was so valuable so they were put on board these things and
02:35sent on these very very long journeys extremely risky crews of up to 56 men cramming amongst the
02:43machinery for days on end living with the knowledge they may never step foot on dry land again for
02:50the non battle-hardened scientists it's a terrible ordeal you can imagine the seasickness the
02:58claustrophobia the fear these were not naval men stuck on board one of these for a couple of months
03:04with nothing to do except hope that you will arrive at your destination safely they will put through help
03:09so why does Himmler insist on putting some of his very best scientists at risk the fact that the
03:16Germans and Japanese are meeting mid-ocean to exchange information is a very elaborate way of
03:21passing that information on both sides knew that what they were doing had to remain secret and the reason
03:28it had to remain secret is not because you might give the edge to the enemy it's because they know
03:32that
03:32what they're doing is morally utterly reprehensible just before the end of the war some of these guys
03:39committed suicide on board these vessels to avoid capture when they knew the end had come despite
03:46axis powers efforts these top-secret intelligence documents signed personally by Winston Churchill show
03:54the British code cracking enigma machine uncovered the mid-ocean rendezvous still the exchange can't be
04:03stopped the Nazis are determined to get their hands on the work of a Japanese monster
04:15although Japan has signed the Geneva protocol the agreement means nothing to one ambitious Japanese scientist
04:26General Shiro Ishii is a brilliant medical officer in the Japanese military with a very dark ambition
04:32as far as we can tell he began his life just as an ardent doctor what changed him we shall
04:38never know
04:40Ishii works his way into the heart of the Japanese war ministry and makes an impassioned case for a
04:46biological war program Shiro Ishii is probably one of the most important figures in World War Two he's
04:52a very pushy individual which is unusual for Japanese society which is very collective I've seen reports by
04:58various generals saying we don't like this officer he's a very pushy and unpleasant character but he got
05:03results Shiro Ishii is perhaps best understood both as a monster and a genius on the monster side he
05:10appears to be a narcissistic megalomaniac he's absolutely after power on the genius side he's more than
05:20sufficiently bright scientists but what really works for him is not the manipulation of the biological
05:26world it's the manipulation of the political world is she who's the Japanese top brass into building him
05:34a secret biological weapon facility where he can conduct his hideous experiments on living human guinea pigs
05:42the Institute that they set up became codenamed unit 731 and indeed it was absolutely infamous for its levels of
05:51cruelty
05:54unit 731 is built in Manchuria a remote corner of Northeast China this puppet state is occupied by Japan and
06:03is
06:03specifically chosen because Ishii knows that here the Japanese secret police can abduct the local Chinese for use as human
06:12lab rats
06:12when Japan had taken over Manchuria they didn't even regard the Chinese as inferior humans they didn't regard
06:21them as human at all they were expendable they were as expendable as a rat a gopher or a squirrel
06:28and indeed
06:29they called them logs calling prisoners logs is a cruel inside joke used by the staff at unit 731 because
06:39the official cover story is that the facility is a lumber mill but it belies the heartless way they view
06:46their human guinea pigs the fact that the Japanese called these prisoners that they're testing on logs is
06:52part of the kind of sort of gross dehumanization that's gone on these are not human beings with feelings with
07:00emotions and so on these are just prisoners they're people that can be abused and used for the furthering of
07:07science and for increasing the Japanese chance of complete victory and the logs are not just the local
07:15Chinese who are tortured in the name of science inside this house of horrors the Japanese also
07:21use American and British prisoners of war this is the real stuff of nightmares you know think of the
07:27very worst horror film you've ever seen and then times it by ten the facility spans two square miles and
07:34imprisons 500 at a time surrounded by a 15-foot wall it's topped with high voltage wires and watchtowers
07:44once inside there's no chance of escape alongside experiments to see how naked prisoners respond to
07:52freezing conditions others are deliberately infected with diseases and then dissected alive to monitor the
08:00infections progress the sheer cruelty of it seems mind-boggling but they do persist reports that they
08:07carried out vivisection of fully conscious people people with as much right to life as you or me and
08:14whichever way you look at it the inherent cruelty of what the Japanese was doing was really quite
08:20extraordinary and it boggles the mind to see how however it was possible for civilized people in an
08:28advanced society to do anything quite so wicked unbelievably these live autopsies are performed with
08:37no anesthetic what they want to see is what they call pure science it's kind of sort of you know
08:43how the
08:44blood and how the body responds without any outside influence of particular interest to the Japanese is
08:52the effect of lethal diseases like anthrax brucellosis and typhoid as they spread throughout the human body
08:59the idea was to weaponize any of these germs that they could make them into bombs and just destroy the
09:07the unwanted enemy population the disease of most interest to shiro ishi is the bubonic plague of all
09:16human killers the plague is known to spread without the need for a military program everybody knew what
09:22happened in in the black death in Europe and a third of the population of Europe was killed and I
09:27think shiro ishi saw that real possibility of doing the same thing again in China and elsewhere the
09:34advantage of bubonic plague in issues demented mind is that it would only require a relatively small
09:41infusion of plague infected fleas and then the disease because of the prevalence of rats and we're
09:48talking about wartime now so hygiene has been devastated infrastructures are collapsing and so he's
09:53got everything he needs on the ground all he needs to do is catalyze an outbreak and then it will
09:58take off like wildfire run on its own and last for years and years the humble flea is identified as
10:10the
10:10perfect insect vector to spread the deadly bacterium but it's the bacterium that ensures it spreads to as
10:20many people as possible by stopping the victim's blood from reaching the flea's stomach so the flea is
10:28hungry it's starving but when it bites what it ends up doing in a sense is regurgitating those bacteria
10:33into the bloodstream of the host infecting that host but never getting the blood meal and so it
10:39continues to seek host continues to bite never being able to satisfy its hunger and it's a fantastic strategy
10:46for the bacteria to spread in a population of warm-blooded animals if the scientists at unit 731
10:52are going to undertake field trials they need millions of fleas but to feed them they need plentiful
10:59warm-blooded hosts and in Manchuria rats tick all the boxes they build a rat farm inside a four-story
11:08grain
11:08store it is nothing less than a gigantic flea factory that produces half a billion plague infected
11:15insects per year and when it comes to a dependable delivery system issues team turned to Japan's
11:22cultural heritage for inspiration ceramic bombs are a literal breakthrough they shatter on impact
11:31without exploding and leave little trace the fleas can be cunningly mixed with rice and wheat to attract
11:38rodents to the drop site in late October 1940 the ceramic bombs are put to test and dropped over Ningbo
11:46in
11:47Northeast China within days hundreds of innocent civilians fall ill issue scientists visit them at their homes
11:57posing as health officials they record the cases and then leave the victims to die in agony
12:04they were extremely successful it took them ten twenty thousand deaths to get there but they got there
12:10eventually bubonic plague was weaponized very very effectively now is she has proof of concept enabling him
12:18to set his sights on an enemy further afield his master plan is to drop plague infected fleas on America's
12:30west coast cities San Francisco and Los Angeles are his prime targets their idea was to pack some of
12:38these disease-laden agents inside bombs launch them in hydrogen balloons high up so that they would rise
12:45into the jet stream be carried across to America and spread disease you can imagine if these had been
12:52used in downtown San Francisco bubonic plague would have killed a hell of a lot of people and huge numbers
12:58of
12:58people would have fled the city the industries may have been shut down it would have been incalculable
13:04damage to the American war economy right at the very end of the war people sometimes say you know did
13:09Japan have the stomach to do it Japan had the stomach to do anything the Japanese self-image was of
13:17that of a
13:17superior and invincible a wonderful race of superbeings there is nothing at which they would have stopped yes of
13:25course they would have bombed America even if it was with their little paper balloons
13:33the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki end the war before Ishii can go through with his wicked plan
13:40but Ishii's research was in the hands of the Nazis too and newly recovered secret documents revealed just
13:48how close the Nazis come to pulling off a bio-attack of their own during World War two Adolf Hitler
14:04recognizes the Geneva protocol of 1925 and publicly declares his opposition to the use of biological
14:11weapons it's the only issue he joins the rest of the world on and his stance is at odds with
14:18his
14:18general disregard for human life but few modern historians believe that this stance has anything
14:25to do with a desire to follow international law at no point does Hitler have any qualms about breaking the
14:32Geneva protocol at all it's just not on his radar so he's constantly breaking it every available
14:38opportunity a more convincing theory links Hitler's aversion to bioweapons with his experiences during
14:46the first world war October 1918 a young corporal Hitler is fighting on the front line when he thinks he's
14:58been
14:58blinded by a mustard gas attack
15:02actually it turns out that his blindness is not actually caused by gas he's gassed and he rubs his eyes
15:07and his eyes sore but then he goes
15:08blind but it's entirely it turns out a figment of his imagination this is one of the big moments in
15:14Hitler's life
15:14that he spends quite a period of time completely blind he is not medically blind he is psychologically blind
15:22the event leaves a lasting impression on Hitler but was it a desire not to see others suffer
15:28or that biological and chemical warfare is difficult to control
15:33and he's seen what can happen when it goes wrong the wind suddenly turns and instead of the gas going
15:38over towards your enemy and actually blows back in the face of your own men with disastrous results
15:42so he's very keen on on ensuring that until he knows that chemical weapons and biological weapons as well
15:50can be guaranteed to only inflict injury on your enemy and not on your own side then he's not going
15:57to use
15:58it another theory is that Hitler believes that when it comes to bio and chemical warfare the allies hold all
16:08the cards
16:10when he didn't use gas in world war ii it wasn't because he didn't want to be unkind to the
16:15enemy
16:15it's because he knew that we had all the phos gene we had all the mustard gas we had all
16:21the chlorine that anybody wanted
16:23he knew that we would have hit back and it may well be that that memory of world war one
16:28was so terrifying
16:29that he couldn't bring himself to stomach risking using those weapons himself
16:38but now a brand new theory is emerging claiming the true answer lies buried in the notes of hitler's
16:44personal physician dr theodore morell morell writes that hitler is obsessed with hygiene and scared of germs
16:54hitler was a was a very odd duck in a couple of ways he was very much opposed to both
17:00biological and particularly chemical warfare
17:02now the chemical warfare opposition probably came as a result of him having been a victim of chemical warfare in
17:09world war one
17:09but hitler was famous for his paranoia about about disease and filth and germs
17:15and so when you combine somebody who's who's been gassed in world war one with somebody who is who is
17:21paranoid about about disease
17:23you end up with somebody who's totally opposed to chemical and biological and non-conventional warfare
17:31whether it was fear of reprisal or fear of bio warfare backfiring
17:36despite a litany of atrocities against humanity
17:40hitler is adamant that he would not dirty his hands with biological weapons
17:46but these fbi records kept secret for 50 years reveal that seemingly unknown to the fuhrer
17:52his second in command does not have the same qualms about bio warfare
17:58the papers show that heinrich himmler leader of the dreaded ss desperately wants a bio weapon to delay the anticipated
18:06allied invasion
18:09himmler expressed this dark desire to a nazi doctor called kurt blohm
18:13in order to get their plans past hitler
18:16they pretend to look for cures to protect nazi soldiers against biological killers
18:21while actually carrying out research into bio weapons
18:25the ss managed to sidestep hitler's ban of offensive biological warfare
18:30in a way that continues for decades
18:34and that is government's claim around the world is that they have to understand how to start biological warfare
18:42in order to properly defend themselves in biological warfare
18:46and that was exactly what the ss convinced hitler they were doing
18:49blohm's top secret research is buried within a program code named blitzer
18:55translation lightning rod
19:00and while he's busy raiding the most destructive biological agents
19:04an unsettling piece of intelligence reaches him
19:07the british are planning a bioterror attack on germany
19:12the germans received a report from one of their agents in the uk
19:16telling them that a u.s bomber had flown over to the uk
19:19carrying a cargo of colorado beetles for use as a weapon
19:27the colorado beetle may be harmless to humans
19:30but it's a menace to an essential wartime food source
19:34potatoes
19:35now potatoes were very important to the germans
19:38the germans are very short of food generally
19:40and potato was one of their main crops
19:42so the idea of having their potato harvest ravaged by colorado beetles
19:46was something that they took a very very dim view of indeed
19:51within europe the colorado beetle is a relatively new pest
19:55sneaking across from north america during world war one
20:00but by the 1940s this colorful beetle is becoming a serious problem for farmers across the continent
20:07the female colorado beetle will lay a whole bunch of eggs like 70 80 100 eggs more than that maybe
20:13and they'll all hatch into these little grubs which will immediately start eating the leaves
20:17and when you've got a good population or a strong population of these beetles
20:21you'll defoliate whole potato fields in just a season
20:25can be incredibly destructive
20:27i think anybody witnessing that destruction would would just see what the beetle could do and think
20:32yeah we'd like we'd like this to happen to our enemies
20:35in fact the nazis have been tricked
20:38one of the most interesting things about this is of course that the germans didn't have any agents in the
20:43uk
20:43all of the people who were reporting back to them were under the control of the british
20:48so the story about the colorado beetles is clearly fake and it's clearly been planted there by british intelligence
20:59the deception works blome's unit deflect time and resources into researching colorado beetles
21:08the nazis plan a preemptive strike to drop 400 million beetles on british soil
21:15the attempt was to try and drop it over parts of east anglia where there were supposed to be very
21:20very large potato fields
21:22and of course you know dig for britain was going on everybody was who was who was not fighting was
21:26encouraged to be growing food for the war effort
21:30blome's initial tests are a disaster
21:33in october 1943 the nazis dropped 40 000 beetles over speyer in germany
21:40where teams on the ground are primed to find out how many of the insects survive
21:44the way that they went about doing it was i think not very well thought out
21:50interestingly doesn't seem to have occurred to them that by dropping colorado beetles onto their own crops that they were
21:56actually conducting biological warfare against themselves
21:59in the end fewer than a hundred beetles are recovered on the ground
22:04it seems the insects can't survive the drop further tests are abandoned
22:11however it's not an entirely crazy idea
22:14at the time of the war in the 40s it was spreading quite rapidly across europe
22:20it seemed like only a matter of time until it got to the british isles
22:24so what seems like to us a completely harebrained scheme actually was quite feasible and quite logical way of damaging
22:32the uk potato industry at that time
22:35the following year the nazi scientists get a surprise when the region around speyer records terrible crop failures
22:43the insect agents were more robust than they realized
22:47so it's sort of something of an own goal but it's very much a sign in 1943 when these experiments
22:52were conducted
22:54that germany's getting pretty desperate i mean you know the tide has turned and they are starting to chuck an
22:59awful lot of mud at the wall i'm hoping some will stick
23:01and these developments in biological warfare are just one of those indicators
23:06but after the fiasco of the colorado beetle experiment at dachau concentration camp
23:12sickening research will start in earnest
23:15and a bio attack will kill tens of thousands in italy
23:20it's a horror that has remained a secret until now
23:32it's 1942 and the nazis are aggressively attacking southern russia
23:42meanwhile back in germany scientists are redoubling their efforts to find the perfect weapon of mass destruction
23:58although the fuhrer is resolutely against developing a super bioweapon
24:02his high command do not share his qualms
24:06so they set out on a secret mission whose true goals hitler himself is unaware of
24:12that he had to do so
24:13heimlich himmler's ss take over scientific research at the concentration camps
24:18and just like their axis allies in japan
24:21the german military have no issues with experimenting on living human beings
24:26otherwise destined for the gas chambers
24:29there is a direct comparison between the way that the japanese
24:32look down upon the expendable chinese just as the germans look down on their expendable prisoners in concentration camps
24:39they both felt that if we want to advance our knowledge we can do whatever we want to these people
24:45and both of those great enemies of the west in world war ii
24:49had that single underpinning of an attitude of unassailable superiority
24:55which led them both to carry out appalling acts against their fellow human beings
25:01one center for experimentation is dachau in southern germany
25:06today it's impossible to fully comprehend the suffering that took place
25:13here more than 40 000 prisoners lost their lives in the cruelest ways imaginable
25:19many in the name of the third reich as ss doctors push forward with their scientific research
25:25as the war progresses as the tables turn as german fortunes start to plunge
25:32so the experimentation becomes ever more wild um and frankly spurious
25:38and you see these doctors and scientists really getting out of control
25:44prisoners are put in decompression chambers to test the effect of high altitudes
25:50others are dropped into tanks of freezing water to learn about hypothermia
25:54some are even forced to drink sea water until they go mad
25:59disease is also a key area of research
26:03although the official purpose is to find vaccines to protect troops
26:07nazi doctor kurt blome oversees human experiments with typhoid cholera
26:13and like at japan's unit 731 the bubonic plague
26:19but the disease of most interest to blome is malaria
26:28during the first world war disease causes a third of all military deaths
26:34in many battles malaria becomes the unexpected enemy infecting a staggering 1.5 million soldiers
26:44this parasitic disease is spread by mosquitoes and it doesn't just kill troops
26:50it leaves survivors permanently weak and vulnerable to other infections
26:56by the time of the second world war malaria is still an airborne battlefield killer
27:01and himmler wants to weaponize it
27:07he orders research into malaria
27:10and identifies the perfect man for the job
27:14Dr. Klaus Schilling is hired to establish a malaria station at Dachau
27:20a testing facility allegedly working on a malaria vaccination
27:26the concentration camp gives him the unique opportunity to conduct his research
27:30not on animals but on humans
27:33and he doesn't hold back
27:37Dr. Klaus Schilling is actually quite an old man by the war years
27:40but he's determined to kind of learn more about malaria
27:44and he's experimenting with prisoners
27:50Polish Catholic priests are singled out for Schilling's vile experiments
27:54the SS had imprisoned over 2,000 of them
27:58they may have been men of peace
28:00but the SS feared these educated men at the center of occupied communities
28:04were well placed to inspire and organize political uprisings
28:11Dr. Schilling needs his guinea pigs in relatively good health
28:15the priests are selected because they do not endure the same terrible treatment
28:20handed out to Jewish prisoners
28:22in the museum at Dachau
28:25they still have a grisly remnant of Schilling's callous research
28:28this net cage reveals how the priests were infected with malaria
28:33the method of infection is simple but effective
28:37the victims arms are strapped to a box filled with mosquitoes
28:42the malaria parasite inside the insects gut makes them hungry for blood
28:48so they attack the human flesh in a frenzy
28:51the priests soon fall ill
28:54and a variety of experimental drugs are tested
28:57they have little effect and many die in agony
29:00while doctors record their observations unmoved
29:07the doctor's records still exist today as a sober reminder of the cruelty that took place
29:14what we've got here are the records of one of the prisoners of Dachau concentration camp
29:20his name was Eduardo Milcharek
29:23and he was infected with malaria
29:27and then he received drugs
29:30and the SS doctors reported what strain of malaria he was infected with
29:36and how his body temperature was developing
29:40what we can see here is that the body temperature was rising very high
29:46and the prisoner was getting worse and worse
29:50but the SS did not do anything against it
29:53they just were watching him and in the end they were reporting his death
29:57and so this is a document about the killing of one of the prisoners of Dachau concentration camp
30:04by the SS doctors
30:10Officially, Dr Schilling's mission is to protect German soldiers infected in the field of combat
30:17but Himmler has other plans for him
30:20armed with the research from the infamous Japanese unit 731
30:24Schilling can start searching for the perfect bioweapon
30:30in 1943
30:33a German U-boat returns from a dangerous mission
30:36to swap information with the world's most advanced germ warfare facility
30:40Japan's notorious unit 731
30:46The information stowed on board is of special interest to the Nazi doctors at Dachau concentration camp
30:53who are experimenting on prisoners with the deadliest strains of malaria
30:57Although Adolf Hitler is famously against biowarfare
31:02Secret reports suggest Heinrich Himmler has other plans
31:06He sets up a special institute to create insect-borne bioweapons
31:13Next he needs a brilliant scientist to run it
31:16and has the choice of two leading entomologists
31:20Eduard Mai or Erich Martini
31:23Martini is Himmler's protege
31:25a devout Nazi and an expert on germ warfare
31:29So it's a surprise when the job is given to the relatively unknown, Dr. Mai
31:36He begins experimenting with germ-carrying fleas, lice and flies
31:42But soon his interest is drawn to a more mobile transmitter of disease
31:48The mosquito
31:52There are thousands of types of mosquito
31:55But the female of only one genus transmits malaria to humans
32:01Anopheles
32:01Records show that Dr. Mai is breeding that very mosquito in enormous quantities
32:08Certainly the SS was aware of three features of mosquitoes
32:12And that is they increase in tremendous numbers
32:15So they have very high reproductive rate
32:17They're very effective at finding hosts
32:19The females have to feed on blood to produce their eggs
32:21And the mosquitoes have co-evolved with a number of pathogens
32:25And particular viruses
32:26Such that when they take them up
32:28They're actually amplifying the virus
32:30And there's something different about the female Anopheles
32:34That makes her so deadly
32:38One of the incredible things about a mosquito
32:40Is that when it's infected with a malaria parasite
32:43The malaria parasite manipulates the mosquito
32:46To make it this super sensing mosquito
32:48That detects human odour much better than uninfected mosquitoes
32:53So you've kind of got these flying syringes essentially
32:55Which are designed to specifically sniff out human odour
32:59So they're highly effective at biting
33:04Mai's mosquito lab is also based at Dachau concentration camp
33:09Just a few hundred yards from the unit where Dr. Klaus Schilling
33:13Is infecting prisoners with malaria
33:16But is their research really carried out in the name of defence?
33:20Secret reports reveal the doctors are in communication with each other
33:24And the end game is terrifying
33:27What it shows is that the work being carried out by Professor Schilling
33:31And Eduard May, who was the head of the entomological department at Dachau
33:35Into malaria had changed drastically during the course of the war
33:38The experiment started off looking for a cure for malaria
33:42But by the later part of the war, they have a much more sinister intention
33:47And that is to use malaria-carrying mosquitoes and dropping them on their enemy
33:53And there's a very revealing passage here
33:55Which says,
33:56May looked at the survival of food-deprived mosquitoes
33:59Reporting that in the continued starvation trials
34:03It was generally confirmed that even freshly enclosed individuals that are not fed yet
34:08Can starve relatively long
34:10I.e. so long that transport is possible from the breeding station to the air-dropping site
34:15It shows quite clearly that their plans have changed
34:20That what they're developing here is biological warfare
34:23Something altogether more sinister
34:30May's report is written for none other than SS officer Kurt Blom
34:35Who has been tasked with finding Himmler the ultimate bioweapon to win the war
34:40Professor Blom was very interested in the capacity of insects
34:44In particular mosquitoes to spread disease
34:46The disease of greatest interest based on experience and potential was malaria
34:51And malaria, mosquito-borne malaria was well known to cause devastating losses
34:57Not only on the possible target of the Indian subcontinent
35:01But even in the European continent itself
35:06If Blom is to weaponize malaria successfully
35:10He first needs a ready supply of malaria to infect the mosquitoes
35:14And for the scientists at Dachau
35:17The solution had a brutal logic
35:21To be able to make this effective
35:22You'd have to have a lot of malaria and a lot of mosquitoes
35:26And that means you'd have to have a lot of people infected with malaria
35:29To be able to transmit the malaria to the mosquitoes and make them infective
35:33And that's probably something that wasn't in short supply for the Germans
35:40Prisoners sick with malaria are used as living incubators for the disease
35:45They're fed to hungry mosquitoes
35:47Which ingest the parasite from the prisoners' bloodstream
35:50The newly infected army of mosquitoes are now ready for war
35:55The next challenge is putting them in a bomb and dropping them on the enemy
36:00But timing will be critical
36:02Once you've got malaria inside the mosquito
36:05It has to go through part of its life cycle
36:08And that can take a couple of weeks
36:09So the mosquito has to survive long enough
36:12To be able to allow the parasite to replicate inside the mosquito
36:15Before it travels to the salivary glands
36:18Where it's then injected into the bloodstream when it bites somebody else
36:21So getting that timing spot on
36:24Has to be done for this to be an effective malaria bomb
36:28The enemy target for this proposed malaria bomb would have to be carefully considered by Blum
36:34He would have been certainly interested in sort of a target analysis
36:38That would have included southern Europe
36:41But it also would have included central Europe and well into Britain
36:44Where malaria had, at least in marshy areas
36:47Had caused human death and suffering for a very long period of time
36:51An attack in the most northerly parts of Europe would have little effect
36:55The life cycle of the malaria parasite slows down in cold weather
37:00And as mosquitoes only live for a month
37:02They're more likely to die before they can infect
37:06But the climate in the allied territory of southern Russia
37:09Or even the south of England
37:11Would be ripe for a mosquito attack
37:14I don't think people realise the fact that the malaria mosquito
37:18Still existed in the Thames River in England up until the 1930s
37:23And we already know that in London we've got the right climate
37:26For mosquitoes to survive long enough to be able to transmit some forms of malaria
37:31So back then it would have been the case as well
37:33So anywhere that there's a lot of people around
37:35The mosquitoes would have to come out of the bomb
37:37And the first thing that they would find would be a person
37:40Bite those and then the malaria is transmitted
37:43In World War II London
37:45The population would have been especially vulnerable to a malaria attack
37:49People would have been malnourished
37:52So people would have succumbed to malaria much more than they would nowadays
37:57A mosquito bomb in 1940s London would have caused not just suffering
38:02But widespread panic
38:06If every time a mosquito landed on you
38:09It meant the possibility of imminent and painful death
38:13You would fail to function in a social, in an industrial, in any capacity
38:20Out of a fear of going outside, out of a fear of what was coming
38:24So people will be fleeing from the local area
38:27They'll be leaving work
38:29Important things won't be getting done
38:31And that's going to cause damage to your war effort
38:34It has this sort of escalating effect
38:36And even areas which aren't affected by the physical presence of malaria
38:39Will still be affected by the psychological panic that it's created
38:44Mercifully the war ends
38:46And the Allies liberate Dachau
38:48Before Blom can unleash a single mosquito on Britain
38:51But new research suggests
38:54The Nazis did go through with a bio-attack after all
39:03In 1943
39:04A German biowarfare expert
39:07Visits a remote coastal region in Italy
39:09His mission is to advise Nazi engineers
39:13On how to unleash the most devastating act of biological terror
39:17Ever seen in Europe
39:19But why would the German army
39:21Want to cause suffering amongst the people
39:23Who had been their closest allies during the war?
39:28It all begins seven years earlier
39:36Back in 1936
39:38Adolf Hitler and the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini
39:42Share a mutual respect
39:46Together they make a deadly duo
39:49Going on to form the Axis powers with Japan
39:52But Mussolini is more than a brother in arms to Hitler
39:56Hitler admired Mussolini
39:58He was the first fascist leader
40:00And the Nazi system adopted many elements from fascist Italy
40:04For instance the cult around the leader
40:07And the aesthetics of mass rallies
40:09And the uniforms, the militaristic style
40:14Mussolini shows Hitler the way
40:16When it comes to demonstrating the possibilities of a dictator
40:19In total control of an industrialized country
40:25When the global depression hits Italy
40:27Mussolini successfully creates thousands of jobs
40:31Through ambitious public schemes
40:33He builds the world's first super highway
40:35Connecting Milan with Varese
40:38Germany is quick to copy
40:40Opening the first Autobahn three years later
40:43But perhaps Mussolini's greatest project
40:47Is the draining of Europe's biggest swamp
40:49The Pontine Marshes
40:52Under Mussolini the Pontine Marshes
40:55Which had long been known as a malarial zone
40:57Were drained at a tremendous cost
41:01In terms of human power, human death and suffering
41:04But eventually those marshes were drained
41:07Which made the land arable
41:08It could be farmed
41:09And it eliminated to a very large extent
41:12The malaria problem of that portion of Italy
41:16What was once an uninhabitable swamp
41:19Is transformed into thriving towns and farms
41:22It soon becomes the great showpiece of the fascist regime
41:26Italy is in many ways Germany's inspiration
41:33All this changes in 1943
41:36When Italy turns against Mussolini
41:39And the country switches to the Allies side
41:42It was absolutely surprising and shocking
41:47For the Nazi elite in July 1943
41:51When Mussolini was arrested
41:54To see that fascism was overnight disappearing in Italy
41:59And the Italian state still continued to exist
42:03And that had of course consequences
42:06For the way the Nazis started to think about
42:09A possible end of their own regime
42:13The Nazis feel isolated and utterly betrayed
42:18The Germans perceived the Italian allied armistice
42:22From 1943 as treason
42:24And their positive image of the Italians
42:28And the leader turned into hatred and contempt
42:33As Nazi troops retreat from Italy
42:35They carry out several acts of sabotage
42:38And they know the former Pontine marshes
42:41Hold the potential for a major act of vengeance
42:44The land is at sea level
42:47And giant pumps continually drain the water
42:50Running down from the nearby mountains
42:51The Nazis came in and began to reverse the pumps
42:56Rather than pumping water out of the marshes
42:59They pumped water, brackish water, sea water as well
43:01Into the marshes
43:04As a military tactic
43:06The flooding has little effect on the Italian army
43:09It seems at first like an act of spite
43:12That becomes a natural disaster
43:15When the salty water triggers an epidemic
43:18Delivered by a very specific genus of mosquito
43:22Brackish water was particularly conducive
43:26To the known carrier of malaria
43:29After they flooded with brackish water
43:32They gave that species a competitive advantage
43:34The horrifying results
43:36Over the next three years
43:38A hundred thousand civilians contract malaria
43:41Until recently the disaster was believed
43:44To be an unforeseeable catastrophe
43:47But a new discovery has led historians to think again
43:51The pages of a secret journal
43:53Written by an Italian doctor at the scene
43:56Revealed darker forces were at work
44:00Clearly there was a mind at work
44:03That knew full well
44:05That brackish water would favor the development
44:09Of certain mosquitoes
44:10And that it's those mosquitoes
44:13That were the best vectors for malaria
44:18What this diary began to make sense of
44:23Was the fact that this was not unintentional
44:27It really seems almost inescapable
44:30That this was a scientifically purposefully engineered event
44:38Two major clues point to their wicked intentions
44:42The Nazis remove the pumps
44:44So the waters can't be drained
44:46And worse still
44:47They confiscate the country's supply of quinine
44:51But just who had the scientific knowledge
44:54To engineer this covert bioattack?
44:57The diary points the finger at the German army
45:00And historians now think the mastermind behind the attack
45:04Was Himmler's close friend, Eric Martini
45:08Eric Martini, he understands the transmission of malaria
45:13He knows the breeding habits of Anopheles lebranchie
45:16He has all of the know-how in order to carry out this event
45:21Martini was seen on a field trip to the region
45:24Giving strict instructions to the German engineers
45:27To create the perfect conditions for malaria-carrying mosquitoes
45:32If this act was designed to humiliate Italy
45:35It was punishment of the most brutal and vindictive nature
45:38But was it really a deliberate bioattack?
45:41They knew exactly what they were doing by flooding those marshes
45:45Particularly with brackish water
45:47Which gave a competitive advantage to the vectors of malaria
45:50This particular mosquito species
45:52And they knew this was going to have devastating effects
45:55If this theory is correct
45:57It's the only large-scale example of a European bioattack
46:01In the entire conflict
46:05Mercifully, the war ends before the Nazi doctors at Dachau
46:09Can put their deadly research into action
46:13Evidence heard at the Nuremberg war trials
46:16Sends Dr. Schilling to the gallows
46:19But Eduard Mai and Kurt Blom are let off without charge
46:24Blom will even go on to work for the US
46:29In Japan, the atomic bombs forced the country to surrender
46:33And the monster Shiro Ishii
46:35Destroys Unit 731
46:37In a desperate attempt to hide his work from the world
46:44It won't stay secret for long
46:46Because Japan makes a deal with the US
46:48To share their evil research
46:50Provided their scientists escape prosecution
46:54Shiro himself was let off lightly
46:57Unbelievably lightly
46:59He was never punished
47:01And he died peacefully in Japan in 1959
47:04As though there wasn't a stain on his character
47:09As for the Nazis
47:10Could Hitler really have been unaware
47:13Of the bio-warfare research going on under his command?
47:18After all, very little escaped the Fuhrer's attention
47:22Perhaps the true reason he never went through
47:24With a direct bio-attack
47:26Is down to a tactical flaw
47:28At the end of it, you've got that eternal paradox, haven't you?
47:31That you've released an agent of disease
47:33In a country that you wish to occupy
47:35And like nuclear war
47:37Once Bio-Geddon is started
47:39There's no way back
47:41I'm perfectly certain there are people at this very moment
47:44Developing similar agents of war
47:47It is only the threat of repercussion
47:50Of retaliation
47:51That stops people doing worse things than they do
47:54To be continued
47:55To be continued
47:56To be continued
47:59To be continued
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