The Reich Underground

- It was one of the largest projects

in the history of mankind,

the Third Reich's bomb-proof factories.

Germany's Wunderwaffen were to bring death

and destruction to its enemies.

Gigantic underground plants would have kept

the supply chain running for the Wehrmacht.

Armaments Minister Albert Speer had devised

the monstrous plan for his Fuhrer.

Today, only few may set foot in the remnants

of the mammoth project.

Hundreds of millions of Reichsmarks were spent

in order to hollow out entire mountains.

Production plants for weapons essential to the war effort

were to be built in underground tunnel systems.

Hundreds of thousands of slave laborers had to toil

for the ambitious plans of the Nazis.

The number of those who lost their lives is uncertain

Up until the last day of the war,

work in the tunnels went on feverishly.

Yet how close had the Nazis come to accomplishing

their outrageous project?

What would have happened

if the underground armament production had run successfully?

Would Hitler's war of annihilation have claimed

millions more victims?

A slope close to the Bavarian town of Oberammergau.

Here, one of the mysterious tunnel systems laid out

by the Nazis is hidden from the eyes of the inquisitive.

The only entrance is blocked with a concrete seal

only the state-appointed geologist may open it.

Every few years, he has to make sure that everything

inside is intact.

Heinz Rabe is responsible for about 20 subterranean

tunnel systems in southern and eastern Germany.

He has to test whether the installations,

which were built 60 years ago, are still safe.

After the end of the war,

the Americans went into the tunnels in Oberammergau

and searched through everything.

Since then the tunnels have stood empty.

The wooden lining is rotten and stones may come loose

from the roof at any time.

During the war,

the plant belong to Messerschmitt AG.

It served as a bomb-proof production and development plant

for the aircraft construction.

According to the plans, there were three or four portals.

We've opened one.

The others were all blasted at the end of the war.

Here, we have two parallel tunnels

of about 80 or 90 meters in length

connected by cross sections.

They were used as bomb-proof production plants.

The Allies knew of 340

underground construction sites

even before the end of the war.

Over 400 had been given code names during the Third Reich

and the plans of the Ministry of Armaments

pointed to some 800 plants.

The Nazi leadership had hesitated for some time

before it decreed the excavation of subterranean factories.

Only in the summer of 1943, when the air raids

of Allied bomber squadrons became increasingly destructive,

did Hitler's armament Minister Albert Speer

give the command to systemically transfer

the war production underground.

Initially, the industry rejected the idea

although the outrageous costs were borne by the government.

The plans appeared to be incomplete

and their implementation too chaotic.

At first, the Nazis had existing mines expanded.

One of the first projects was realized at the end of 1943

on the bank of the Neckar River codenamed

120 meters deep under the vineyard slopes,

a gigantic subterranean tunnel system still lies here

out of sight.

Initially, the mines in Neckarzimmern

had been extracting gypsum for over 150 years

During World War I, they housed a dynamite factory

and, from 1937, they were used to store ammunition.

Whether the workers' latrines date from World War II

is uncertain as this tunnel system is one of the few

that are still in use.

The iron gate opens into a subterranean town.

The mountainside is hollowed out by a road network

34 kilometers long.

A gigantic arms forge was to be built here

on an area of 130,000 square meters.

It was partly put into operation in the spring of 1944.

Today, the facility covers a total area

of 170,000 square meters.

Some units of the German armed forces

are stationed in Neckarzimmern.

- Two plants were transferred here

during World War II, the production

of ammunition casing of a nearby ammunition factory

and a ball-bearing production plant for a factory

that was initially situated in the Schweinfurt.

When the army began to expand this installation in 1957,

Europe was in the political crisis of the Cold War

and because of the threat of possible confrontation,

facilities were sought that would also be nuclear bomb proof

in order to be able to store high-grade valuable parts

and to continue the necessary repairs

even under aggravated conditions of war.

- 720 people work underground here

providing supplies and repair parts for the army.

The maintenance of the plants cost

the German Ministry of Defense $1.6 million Euros annually.

Our job these days

in this underground facility is to repair and store

for safekeeping sensitive materials,

particularly materials which are worth being guarded.

The greatest advantage here

is that we have special climatic conditions,

invariable air temperature and humidity,

so that there is little effort involved

in preserving and packaging.

In addition because of the few access points

and ventilation shafts, the plant is also very easy to guard

so the number of guards necessary

is comparably small for this gigantic installation.

- In the same tunnels where materials are stored

for the German peace missions

in Kosovo and Afghanistan today,

weapons of war were to be produced 60 years ago.

The expansion of the tunnel system would have cost

at least 50 million Reichsmarks.

Only half of the project was completed

by the end of the war.

The ball-bearing factories in Schweinfurt in particular

were the target of the Allied bomber raids.

In spite of heavy losses, the Americans succeeded

in razing the factories to the ground.

Their main goal, however, namely to paralyze the production

of supplies for Hitler's Wehrmacht

was not achieved at that stage.

Up to 80% of the key war industries

were to be moved underground.

Along with the ball-bearing factories,

these were the production plants for aircraft engines,

fuel tanks and the secret missile program of the SS.

Only about 20% of these projects were put into operation.

Installations that were considered essential

for the war effort were well camouflaged

in order to become invisible

to the Allied reconnaissance planes.

For instance, the gigantic fuel tanks of Nazi Germany

were bunkered underground from as early as the mid 1930s.

One such tank near Bremen is still in operation

over 60 years later.

The state-owned installations must be maintained regularly.

Only trained personnel can descend into the tanks.

Each of the 80 gigantic tanks

holds 4,000 cubic meters of fuel.

They are made of 12-millimeter thick shipbuilding steel

with a one-meter thick concrete jacket.

Everywhere in the Third Reich,

the underground construction work

was given the highest priority.

This propaganda film

is called Weapons, Hands, Hearts.

It contains rare footage

of the subterranean construction sites.

These scenes were shot in Kahla in Turinnia

where an aircraft factory was to be built codenamed Lax.

It was mostly foreign slave laborers

who had to do the dirty work in the tunnels

under inhuman conditions.

On our first day,

we were divided into groups.

A German officer made his speech and told us

you will work until you drop dead.

Three people had to drill holes in the tunnels,

another three shoveled and one took out the full tippers.

We stood on a scaffold and drilled huge holes into the roof

2.5 to three meters deep which were filled with dynamite.

Then they blasted it and we had to get back to work

and start shoveling immediately afterwards.

We could not even see one another in all the dust and gases,

but they were merciless.

We had to carry on.

- After their grueling 12-hour shift,

the tens of thousands of slave laborers

were given a frugal food ration.

At the beginning of February 1945, even 14 to 16-year-olds

were assigned to Kahla in order to help

with the construction.

From a technical viewpoint,

the concept was rationally thought-out and essential

considering the air supremacy of the Allies over Germany,

but the means to realize it was sheer madness, of course.

The engine had to be kept running at full steam

although it was foreseeably speeding towards disaster,

namely the end of the thousand-year Reich

and the cruelties that took place was something

that is beyond the understanding of a normal thinking

and feeling human being.

- One of the most closely-guarded new weapons