Original subtitles

NARRATOR: They're watching you.

More than 5,000 satellites circle the Earth.

Every day, they uncover new,

mysterious phenomena that defy explanation.

Lair of the living god

and the super warrior of the ancient world.

FINE: He's one of the greatest generals in the history

of warfare, and he conquered

much of the known world at the time.

NARRATOR: Riches and bloodshed in the California deserts.

RUBEN: This is a great example of one of

those hidden places that have shaped human history.

NARRATOR: And the multibillion dollar money pit.

This site feels absolutely cursed.

NARRATOR: Baffling phenomena, mysteries from space.

What on Earth are they?

[theme music playing]

The Taurus Mountains, southeastern Turkey,

87,000 square miles of virtually impenetrable peaks,

an ocean of limestone that rises

some 12,000 feet towards the heavens.

Wow, look at the views from up here!

I've been walking for hours,

and I'm still nowhere near the peak.

NARRATOR: Kenneth Fine is trekking through

these desolate lands, hooked by a strange image

captured in June 2021.

When I looked at satellite images of the area,

one thing jumped out at me from the miles of

arid mountains.

There's a smooth, circular peak.

NARRATOR: The mystery feature is hundreds of feet in diameter

and sits on the summit of one of

the highest mountains in the range.

It's like you poured sugar onto a table.

I don't know what it is.

I -- I am genuinely baffled.

BELLINGER: This is an incredible structure.

We're looking at something human-made and likely ancient.

NARRATOR: Closer analysis reveals the giant cone

is surrounded by terraces and other ruins.

Historical records reveal

it's the legacy of a self-declared living

deity and descendant of the greatest warrior

of antiquity.

This place is known as Nemrut Dagi.

I mean, the sheer scale is sort of eye-watering.

It's incredible to think that this place was one

of the craziest construction projects in all of history.

NARRATOR: The Taurus Mountains played a key role

in early human history.

Many of its peaks and valleys have been stained with blood

shed by some of the most powerful civilizations of

the ancient world.

Turkey is a land that people have historically fought over,

and many empires have risen and fallen here.

NARRATOR: What makes these mountains so important

is that they mark the border between Europe and Asia,

a 930-mile-long frontier separating

the warring civilizations of East and West.

These narrow passageways have been used as trade routes

and by armies looking for new lands to conquer.

It's a choke point between Europe, Africa, and Asia.

And this place sits at the heart of that.

NARRATOR: To the southwest of the site

sit the Cilician Gates,

a military artery used by the Hittites, Romans,

Mongols, and medieval crusaders.

The structure's location suggests it could

be connected to this strategically vital pass.

One of the first rules of any form

of military activity is to control the high ground.

Maybe this strange mound is the remains of some sort of fort?

From a defensive perspective, this place would be ideal.

You'd see an invading army coming from miles away.

NARRATOR: Yet as Fine approaches the giant cone...

This is crazy, so windy up here.

NARRATOR: It becomes evident that it served

a different purpose.

Whoa, that's impressive.

Look at that. I'm speechless.

NARRATOR: A massive mound of stones rises more

than 160 feet from the mountain summit.

I knew this thing was big,

but I hadn't fully appreciated the size

or the scope of it until now.

This is unreal.

There's only one thing I could think of,

and that would be a tomb.

NARRATOR: The scale of the mountaintop tomb is almost

without precedent,

yet what's also strange is its remote location.

We know about the great pyramids of Egypt, which had

been built by pharaohs who ruled over huge kingdoms.

But here, we've got a monument of a similar scale

that was constructed out in the mountainous wilderness.

NARRATOR: Mountains are sacred to many cultures

around the world.

They are places where deities reside and are

seen as boundaries between this world and the next.

On Turkey's Mount Ararat,

some claim, sit the remains of Noah's Ark, stranded for

eternity by the great flood.

People often associated gods with being high up in the sky.

So if you build on top of a mountain,

you are that bit closer to the gods.

NARRATOR: Ancient civilizations believed these mountains to

be inhabited by storm and thunder gods.

They were often depicted as bulls -- Taurus in Latin --

which gives this mountain range its name.

FINE: It's hard to believe

there could be human remains buried

under this giant pile of rocks.

I've never seen anything like this.

It's amazing.

What it means is that whoever was buried there

had another mountain made on top of a mountain.

WALTERS: If this is your grave, I think it's pretty safe

to assume you're not gonna be some lowly peasant.

It's gonna be the tomb of someone very important.

NARRATOR: Exploring further, Fine discovers other structures

not visible in the satellite image.

Wow, look at these stone heads.

I'm totally flabbergasted.

NARRATOR: The bodies of the 30-foot-high statues

stands sentinel at the base of the burial mound,

their decapitated heads resting on a terrace below them.

Fine calculates that each likely weighs around 10 tons.

That's gotta be the Greek god, Zeus.

Zeus was the god of sky and thunder,

but he was also the king of the gods.

The stone heads reflect a mixing of cultural influences.

So we see both Greek and Persian elements.

NARRATOR: In the distant past,

someone commanded their subjects to inter them

under a man-made mountain of stones,

guarded by giant Greek and Persian gods.

This has to be one of

the most insane and incredible tombs I've ever seen.

But the question is who's buried here?

NARRATOR: Coming up, secrets of the mountaintop tomb.

This guy was a military genius with an insatiable

desire for bloodshed and conquest.

NARRATOR: And Nazis versus witches.

The Nazis tried to incorporate

the occult into an advantage on the battlefield.

Drawn by a weird structure revealed from the skies...

It's one of the most incredible things

I've ever seen.

...Kenneth Fine is exploring

a mammoth Turkish mountaintop mausoleum,

guarded by the ruined statues of pagan gods.

These statues are amazing.

They represent a blend of the Persian and Greek empires.

NARRATOR: Close to the statues are more clues etched in stone.

Look here.

It's an ancient Greek inscription.

♪

I can make out the name Antiochus.

NARRATOR: The giant tomb is the resting place

of the megalomaniac ruler

of an overlooked yet pivotal kingdom

of the ancient world.

Antiochus ruled one of the kingdoms that

formed after the death of Alexander the Great.

HUNT: One of the names he gave himself

was Antiochus Theos, meaning Antiochus the God.

NARRATOR: The story of the giant tomb begins in 336 B.C.,

When Alexander the Great becomes ruler of Macedonia, some

900 miles to the northwest.

His father taught him military rule.

His tutor was Aristotle, who made his mind razor sharp.

No one was better suited to

conquer the world than Alexander the Great.

This guy was a military genius with

an insatiable desire for bloodshed and conquest.

NARRATOR: Alexander quickly defeats Macedonia's

neighboring Greek states before moving past

the site in the image to conquer the mighty

Persian empire.

Key to his victories is the use of the phalanx,

a formation of 128 warriors equipped

with lances up to 20 feet long.

Part of Alexander's success was his willingness to

throw himself into battle and fight alongside them.

That front line bravery earned him enormous devotion

from his men,

who probably also thought he was a living god.

[men shouting]

NARRATOR: By the age of just 32, Alexander has built

an empire spanning three continents and covering

two million square miles.

Alexander the Great was unquestionably one of the most

influential people in human history.

He never lost a battle, and he conquered much of the known

world at the time.

Julius Caesar, before he conquered Gaul,

lamented, "At my age,

"Alexander has already conquered the world.

What have I done?"

NARRATOR: In 323 B.C., Alexander dies of a fever,

triggering a strange sequence of events

that leads to the construction of the giant

mountain peak mausoleum.

After Alexander's death,

this vast empire that he had very quickly conquered,

just as quickly fell apart.

His empire is effectively kind of atomized, and it's split into

all these sort separate little kingdoms ruled by

his former generals, and one of them is this place here.

It is the kingdom of Commagene.

NARRATOR: Commagene is a small kingdom,

but it controls trade routes

through the Taurus Mountains, and that makes it strategically

vital to its more powerful neighbors,

the Armenian, Parthian, Syrian, and Roman Empires.

Commagene, because it's at the kind of nexus

of all these bigger empires,

acts as a kind of buffer between them,

and that makes it very wealthy.

NARRATOR: In 70 B.C., Antiochus the First becomes

ruler of the kingdom of Commagene.

He was one of the final rulers of

Commagene before it fell to the Romans.

HORTON: He was an unusual king.

He had what might describe as a very high opinion of himself.

NARRATOR: Like his forefather, Alexander the Great, Antiochus

believes he is a deity in human form.

He creates an imperial cult in honor

of himself, one celebrated with orgiastic feasts.

And, to enshrine his legacy,

he orders the construction of the grandest

temple tomb of its era.

Not only did he encourage all this feasting

and enjoyment while he was alive,

but he also constructed one of the most extraordinary

and fantastical monuments to his memory on Earth.

This tomb becomes the physical embodiment of megalomania,

a man who sees himself as a god.

NARRATOR: Work on the epic mortuary complex begins

in 50 B.C., with massive boulders being hauled

up the 7,000-foot-high mountain.

Around the tomb itself are piled

70,000 tons of limestone,

extending its peak yet further towards the heavens.

This was one of the most staggering construction projects

in history.

Basically, he remade the peak of the mountain

in his own image.

NARRATOR: Next to the 200,000-square-foot

burial mound, engineers carve giant statues

depicting Antiochus among

a pantheon of Greco-Persian gods.

Antiochus would have wanted his link

to Alexander the Great to be seen by all.

Having these monumental statues accomplishes that.

The guy's ego knew no limits.

Just goes to show you how determined he was

to be remembered.

NARRATOR: Two millennia after his death,

the god king is immortalized by one of

the most incredible structures on Earth,

visible from the heavens.

But this place is far more than that king in that tomb.

It represents the legacy of Alexander the Great,

and the bringing together of

the ancient Greeks and Persians in this antique land.

NARRATOR: Coming up, the Mojave Desert's

extraterrestrial cipher.

The circles kind of look like giant alien Petri dishes.

I don't know what this is.

NARRATOR: And haunt of the mad emperor.

His insanity was notorious.

NARRATOR: August 18th, 2018.

Eyes in the sky scan arid desert near

Death Valley, California,

and capture this image.

MORGAN: This is an unusual sight.

You don't typically look down from

space and see anything like this.

What's really extraordinary about this are

both the colors and the shapes.

The circles kind of look like giant alien Petri dishes.

I don't know what this is.

NARRATOR: The weird kaleidoscopic code covers around

five square miles of the valley floor.

When you see bright colors like this on the surface,

you associate it with some form of mineral -- for my money,

this has to be some form of mining.

NARRATOR: Analysts turn to local geological records.

What we're actually seeing here is a mineral called borax.

It's what's left when

alkaline lakes in arid regions dry up.

NARRATOR: Each year, miners harvest hundreds of thousands of

tons of borax from California's dry lake beds

for use in anything, from pills to pesticides.

And it's an industry built on an extraordinary tale

of bloodshed and riches that stretches back 150 years.

RUBEN: This is a great example of one of those hidden places

that are so important to the forces that have shaped

human history.

NARRATOR: It's the late 1850s.

The California Gold Rush is coming to an end,

forcing prospectors to push deeper

into the state's desert interior

in search of the next mother lode.

Those that reach the site in the image

discover that untold riches lie right under their feet.

What a couple of very enterprising American

businessmen realized was

actually these dried-out lake beds weren't rich in gold,

but they were rich in borax.

And in its way, that could be

a hell of a lot more valuable than gold.

NARRATOR: During the mid 19th century, borax is

in high demand for America's booming industries.

The prospectors discover that California's deserts contain

one of the largest mineable

reserves of it on Earth, worth billions of dollars.

HYMEL: So, you have this rush of people

to extract the borax out of the ground.

The problem is, this is an incredibly

inhospitable place to operate, much less live.

NARRATOR: Much of the borax is located in Death Valley,

the hottest place on Earth,

and every ounce of the valuable mineral must

be scraped by hand from the desert floor.

MORGAN: The early teams that were involved in extraction

were functionally enslaved,

and many of the people that were involved in this

undertaking were immigrants from China.

Working in temperatures of up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit,

the immigrant laborers are paid

$1.30 for a 14-hour day.

But the biggest challenge is yet to come.

HUNT: Getting borax out of the desert

is an intimidating problem.

It's 165 miles from this borax deposit

to the edge of the Mojave Desert.

The most practical solution to this produced one of

the indelible images of

the 19th century, and that was the 20-mule team.

NARRATOR: Between 1883 and 1889,

so-called 20-mule teams haul thousands

of tons of borax out of the desert.

Lashed to some of the heaviest wagons ever pulled by animals,

it takes 10 perilous days to complete each journey.

Conditions on these 10-day treks

with these mules must have been equally horrific for

both man and animal alike.

MORGAN: The slightest miscalculation

could produce fatal results.

If you're slowed down, then suddenly, you're going to be

running through the amount of fresh water you had brought.

You're going on for miles upon miles for days upon days

in temperatures of over 100 degrees -- frankly,

it's a miracle if any of them survived.

NARRATOR: During the early 20th century,

technological advancements lead to yet more minerals being

extracted from Death Valley's salt beds.

And another strange chapter opens in the history of

the site revealed from space.

WALTERS: This area isn't just rich in borax.

It also contains another substance that's even more

valuable, and that's potash.

Potash is a central ingredient in fertilizer,

and it is also an essential ingredient

in the production of explosives.

NARRATOR: In 1900, 40 percent of the U.S. population

live on farms.

Explosives are also reshaping the land,

[explosion blasts]

creating the mines and railways that will transform

the country into a superpower.

This surge in demand for potash brings

violence to the salt flats of the Mojave.

You've got all these prospectors suddenly

arriving at the area,

trying to stake their claim to the potash.

So what big companies do is they send

in teams that they refer to as claim jumpers.

The series of disputes that arose because these large

corporations were rivaling the small claimants

are sometimes referred to as the Potash Wars.

NARRATOR: One of these claim jumpers is legendary lawman,

Wyatt Earp, who, in 1910,

tries to seize the reserves around the site.

in the image.

He's best known for the shootout

at the O.K. Corral,

but he was also an important player in the Potash Wars.

NARRATOR: Today, California's gunslinging claim jumpers are long gone,

but the riches that drew them here

are still visible from space.

WALTERS: We've all heard of the Gold Rush,

but actually, who's heard of the Borax Rush

or the Potash Rush?

But they're just as important and, in many ways,

more valuable, so actually, this image shows a really,

really vital part of America's history.

NARRATOR: Coming up, Mississippi's monster mystery.

If you wanted to store Tyrannosaurus Rexes,

this is the cage to put them in.

NARRATOR: And the seventh circle of hell.

This history was one of unbelievable savagery.

NARRATOR: June 14th, 2020.

Eyes in the sky scan an industrial complex

north of the town of Iuka, Mississippi.

RUBEN: I'm not seeing any sign of human activity.

It looks like this whole site has been abandoned.

HYMEL: And then right in the center,

you can see a cage,

and it just dwarfs everything else in the area.

WALTERS: If Jurassic Park were real, and you wanted

to store your Tyrannosaurus Rexes somewhere safe,

I think this is the cage to put them in.

NARRATOR: What's more, the monster cage isn't

the only weird structure to be found here.

There's this tall, rectangular building off to

the left -- I mean, really tall.

The building, it looks like it's made of very thick walls,

making us wonder, could this be some kind of

military project?

NARRATOR: Analysts turn to local land records for clues.

The two structures, it transpires, are the legacies of

a catastrophic sequence of errors that have plagued

this town for decades.

What we're looking at in this image is not just one,

but really two of the world's most expensive mistakes.

This site feels absolutely cursed.

NARRATOR: The structures have their origin in the early 1930s

during the horrors of the Great Depression.

With a quarter of people unemployed,

President Roosevelt initiates a plan to help

the ravaged southern states.

ANNOUNCER: This was the plan --

to chain the river through a series of giant dams.

The idea was to start damming

up the rivers in the Tennessee Valley.

That would both provide energy to

the residents that live there and give jobs.

WALTERS: The idea behind it was great.

But there was a tremendous amount of blowback, because in

order to create the hydro-electric power,

you've got a flood valleys, and doing that,

you're displacing the very poor people you're trying

to help.

NARRATOR: Despite these challenges,

the Tennessee Valley Authority continues to grow,

and by the 1950s, is the biggest energy provider in the country.

It begins constructing coal, gas, and nuclear plants,

with towns like a Iuka vying for the vast amounts of money

they bring in.

RUBEN: The site we see in this image was supposed to be

the location of one of the TVA's

new, gigantic nuclear power plants.

NARRATOR: Work finally begins on the plant in 1978.

Hundreds of millions of dollars pour in, and the base of

the giant cooling tower begins to rise

above the local skyline.

But then, disaster strikes.

Construction was already well underway on this site when

the Three Mile Island

disaster happened, and that was one of the biggest near misses

in nuclear history.

So, the United States goes from this attitude of

nuclear power being the great answer

to it now being this great fear.

NARRATOR: The subsequent drop in demand for nuclear power

forces authorities to pull the plug on the plant,

losing over a billion dollars in the process.

But this mega-sized money pit's

problems are only just beginning.

After the TVA built all their infrastructure

and left, NASA tried to move in.

SILBEY: NASA was impressed by all the existing infrastructure

and thought that they could use it for their own

purposes to build a factory.

ANNOUNCER: Lift off of the 25th space shuttle

mission, and it has cleared the tower.

NARRATOR: NASA is still reeling from

the 1986 Challenger disaster...

OVER RADIO: Challenger, go with throttle up.

...when a cataclysmic explosion on

one of its rocket boosters kills all seven crew members.

After the Challenger disaster,

NASA decided to redesign and rebuild the solid fuel rockets,

and that's where this new factory comes in.

These are some of the most

powerful engines mankind has ever made.

These are awesome rockets.

NARRATOR: At liftoff, NASA's twin boosters each

produce over 6.5 million pounds of thrust.

They burn 11,000 pounds of fuel a second,

two million times the rate of the average family car.

RUBEN: That tall building that we see in the image is where

the scientists were going to

turn the liquid fuel into solid fuel,

which is very explosive.

NARRATOR: The space agency also installs labs,

multimillion-dollar computer systems, and brings in hundreds

of new workers.

By 1993, it has completed over 80 percent of its

rocket factory and spent more than a billion dollars.

But then the curse of Iuka strikes again.

RUBEN: Even though NASA wanted to redesign the rocket

boosters, instead, they made minor design changes.

So there was no big design overhaul

of the rocket boosters,

so this site never got completed.

You've got to feel for the folks in the nearby town,

because first of all,

it was this lovely big power station that was gonna

provide jobs, and then that goes.

Then NASA turned up.

They're going to build this lovely, great big factory,

and again, that's abandoned.

NARRATOR: Three decades later, the crumbling structures

revealed from space are all that remain

of these multibillion dollar mistakes.

The area in this image is like a graveyard

of broken promises -- between the Tennessee Valley Authority

and NASA,

they spend more than $4 billion dollars,

and yet, nobody has anything to show for it.

NARRATOR: Coming up, insanity island.

He tried to appoint his own horse as consul

in the Senate.

NARRATOR: And the slayers of the Roman Empire.

Over 600 bodies have been found here and nearby.

NARRATOR: January 1st, 2019.

A satellite approaching

Italy's west coast uncovers a mystery far below.

What I'm looking at is a small island,

but in the middle is what appears to be a very elaborate

structure, sort of horseshoe-shaped.

HUNT: It looks pretty desolate.

There's no other visible sign of life here.

WALTERS: This strikes me as a place where something

quite strange, perhaps even sinister, has happened,

but it doesn't look like it's been used for a very long time.

NARRATOR: The isolated structure sits on the Pontine Islands,

and they have long been a place of dread and terror.

What we know from historical records is that the Romans

used these islands as kind of dumping grounds for

undesirables, prisoners, you name it.

NARRATOR: In Roman times,

the humiliation of exile on the Pontine Islands

was often considered a fate worse than death.

One of the most famous exiles was Agrippina the Younger.

She was the sister of possibly

the most notorious Roman emperor that ever

ruled, Caligula.

WALTERS: Agrippina the Younger took part in what was known as

the Plot of Three Daggers to get her brother murdered.

Now, that plot failed, Agrippina was captured,

and Caligula banished his sister to these islands.

NARRATOR: Agrippina's attempt to murder her brother

takes place in 39 A.D.,

two years into Emperor Caligula's rule,

a rule marked by decadence,

mass murder, and carnal deviance.

HORTON: He was often accused of incest and sexual depravity.

But perhaps the most famous incident was when he tried

to appoint his own horse as consul in the Senate.

HUNT: He was mad.

His insanity was notorious.

Could this be a place where Agrippina was imprisoned?

NARRATOR: Historical records reveal that the structure

appears long after the collapse of the Roman Empire.

And it's a relic of

an equally dark period in this country's history.

WALTERS: So what this building is, is a prison.

It's Italy's Alcatraz.

Its history was one of unbelievable savagery.

It became like Dante's Inferno,

with its seven levels of hell.

NARRATOR: The prison's strange shape has its origins

in the festering jails of 18th century

England, where disease and maltreatment kill up to

a quarter of all inmates.

Prisons before the 18th century were never

really properly designed.

They didn't have cells.

The conditions within them was appalling.

But out of that came a movement to

try and create more humane prisons to house convicts.

NARRATOR: A leader of this movement is

the philosopher Jeremy Bentham,

who, in 1785, designs a prison

he hopes will revolutionize the penal system.

He calls it the panopticon.

The whole idea of the panopticon was this incredibly

effective way of

keeping a large prison population under control with

relatively few guards.

NARRATOR: The panopticon's circular layout enables just

a few centrally placed guards to constantly observe

hundreds of prisoners.

What's more, the inmates can't tell

when they're being watched,

which Bentham hopes will force them to behave at all times.

He believed that prisoners should be

under the watchful eye of guards 24-7.

That's exactly what is accomplished in this place.

HORTON: The idea was the prisoners could contemplate

their -- their wickedness, and in that way,

find a route to rehabilitation.

NARRATOR: Inspired by Bentham's vision,

Italian authorities construct the circular island prison

in 1795.

But conditions there soon spiral

into a hellish, violent nightmare.

The guards in this prison became notoriously sadistic.

Prisoners were beaten, often to death,

and because it was this open courtyard,

these beatings were done in public view.

NARRATOR: Instead of improving prisoner behavior,

the fear of constant surveillance

also turns many of them insane.

You've got to imagine the kind of mental impact that's gonna

have on you for -- for months and years,

constantly thinking you're being looked at, never having

a private moment.

It is very, very inhumane.

NARRATOR: In 1860, brewing anger among

the inmates boils over, and they revolt.

After overpowering the few guards,

they take over the island and establish their own republic.

It became an extraordinary little sort of micro nation

run by prisoners,

a kind of prisoner utopia on this tiny,

rocky, barren island.

In 1861, the following year, the Italians storm the island,

take back control, and the short-lived republic is

sadly, in some ways, no more.

NARRATOR: During the 20th century,

fascist dictator Benito Mussolini uses the island

prison to incarcerate his opponents before it finally

closes in 1965.

Today, Italy's Alcatraz is a crumbling monument

to a doomed vision, visible from space.

HORTON: This panopticon prison

was built with lofty ideals of prison reform,

and the deep irony is it's actually ended up

crushing them.

NARRATOR: Coming up,

Hitler's secret witch hunters.

There was a concerted attempt by Nazi Germany to make

this site a part of the history of Nazism.

NARRATOR: July 2020.

A survey plane scanning dense forest in

northern Poland fires laser beams at the canopy,

producing a Lidar image of what lies beneath.

This image doesn't even look like it's the Earth's surface.

It looks more like a moonscape.

It actually looks like diseased or pocked skin.

This is really strange.

NARRATOR: Around 30 of the mystery features scar

the landscape, some more than 100 feet in diameter.

The shadows in this image reveal that a good number

of these circular structures are mounds,

they're raised from the earth.

MORGAN: When you see mound-building like this,

in many cases, it's associated with burial.

NARRATOR: Archaeological records confirm

the image has uncovered a vast cemetery dating back

some 2,000 years.

The people who created this were Goths, and this ancient

cemetery tells us a great deal about what their culture was.

NARRATOR: The Goths were a Germanic people who rose

up against Roman rule during the 4th century A.D.

In 410 A.D.,

they capture and loot Rome,

triggering the empire's collapse.

The site in the image was likely used to

inter many of the leaders of

these history-changing warriors.

Over 600 bodies have been found here

and in the barrows nearby.

It's a site of incredible archaeological

and cultural significance.

NARRATOR: Over the following centuries,

Poland's forests claim the Goth tombs,

and the site disappears from

the archaeological record.

But around 100 years ago,

it returns to play a bizarre role in some of the vilest

events in human history.

After the Germans capture and occupy Poland, they declared

this a sight of German national identity.

CHAMBERLAIN: Their archaeologists found that

the stones were arranged in a sun, moon, stars --

the pattern, it led them to believe that

this was some sort of ancient observatory.

NARRATOR: Hitler is obsessed with Aryanism,

the theory that the Nazis are descended from superior races

and are therefore entitled to rule the world.

By proving the Germanic Goths

could create an advanced solar observatory,

he hopes to show that his evil ideology has legitimate roots.

MORGAN: The Nazis wanted to draw a direct line that connected

modern-day national socialism

to the cultural and religious practices of

early Germans.

NARRATOR: During the Nazis' rise to power,

head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, also develops

a new religion,

one that adopts the occultic rituals of tribes like

the Goths.

As part of his obsession with the dark arts,

he forms a unit dedicated to witchcraft,

the Hexen-Sonderauftrag.

One of the things that this group does is they

go throughout the records and the archives

in libraries and look at witch trials and burnings.

BELLINGER: One really crazy idea they had was that the historic

witch trials were actually part of

a Jewish, Catholic conspiracy to wipe out the authentic

German faith and the true Germanic origins of society.

NARRATOR: Working in secret, the unit combs through

the records of hundreds of medieval witch trials

and executions.

It's psychotic, but they were seriously

attempting to come up with proof

to advance this false narrative that Jews and early

Christians suppressed ancient Germans.

It's not uncommon for military people to be superstitious.

The Nazis took it to another level, and they tried

to incorporate occult into an advantage on

the battlefield.

NARRATOR: The Nazis go on to use occultic rituals

and beliefs as crazed justification

for the murder of millions.

And the place that helped give rise to

these atrocities can now be revealed from the skies.

There was a concerted attempt to make this site

a part of the history and heritage of Nazism.