All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S04E03.Guernsey.Nazi.Towers.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

A castle - like building
saved from destruction

by a remarkable
Hollywood connection.

The same day that the wrecking
balls came to tear this place down,

was the same day that the
filming company showed up.

Vast monolithic structures

that dominate a tiny
island with a dark past.

What are these things doing in
this otherwise pristine landscape?

A mysterious island on
the edge of the baltic sea,

where strange things happen.

All the structures that exist

are riddled with bullet holes
and signs of explosions,

it's like you are walking
through a war zone.

Weird battered constructions
in a dangerous place

on the coast of england.

Pretty much all the works that
were carried out here were secret.

Ultimately top secret.

Once they were some of the most
advanced structures on the planet,

at the cutting edge of
design and construction.

Today they stand abandoned,
contaminated and sometimes deadly.

But who built them and how
and why were they abandoned?

In the middle of the
state of Ohio in the usa,

just to the north of
the city of Mansfield,

stands an ornate
impressive building.

From the outside it looks
like some kind of palace

or even a castle.

It appears to be the kind of
structure that you would create

that would have a lasting impression
on anyone who set eyes on it.

When you see this building,

you know it was built
for something important.

And clearly whoever
built it meant it to last.

The building is vast and grand

with very detailed
and fancy architecture,

it's definitely a
statement piece.

It's built with this
massive, massive stone,

so clearly it's not a
very inviting place.

It kind of gives
you the shivers,

it's sort of like
a haunted house

and it definitely gives
you the impression

that something bad
may have happened here.

Yet its forbidding appearance
is the only real clue

about what actually went
on inside the building.

That is a dark, brutal
and controversial story.

What it originally set out
to do and what it ended up -

those bookends
couldn't be further apart.

This was to be a place of
spiritual regeneration and rebirth,

it's about salvation, this
is a righteous building.

You have to imagine that
those who conceived it,

had no idea what a horror story
of a legacy they had spawned.

So why go to such lengths to build
such a dramatic - looking structure?

What was it used for?

And why was it abandoned?

The origin of the
building's story

stretch back as far as
the late 19th century.

It was built in the mid-1880s,

and it was intended to be a
beacon of hope for the state.

This site at Mansfield
was chosen in 1885,

for a very special reason
and a very particular project.

It was one that was going
to be liberal and progressive,

they wanted to take young
offenders and rehabilitate

and re-educate them in the
most positive way possible.

It was a reformatory,
so the notion was -

you weren't just
punishing people,

you were helping them learn

and then you would
release them out in the world

and they would
commit crimes no more.

This is the Ohio
state reformatory.

Although construction began in
1886, it wasn't until September 1896,

that the first 150 young
offenders were brought here

to begin their rehabilitation.

They started housing
prisoners in the complex

before it was even finished,

and the prisoners
themselves did a lot of the work

to complete the building,

including building
the sewer system.

Funding delays

meant that the reformatory was
not finally completed until 1910.

While the facility at first
had a progressive agenda,

the reformist zeal
was soon replaced

by a more brutal
approach to life inside.

The place had taken a
completely different direction.

This was now a place
not of rehabilitation,

but a place of incarceration,

where you would lock up the
baddies and throw away the key.

This wing is proof

of the very different direction
the reformatory eventually took.

As expert Ron puff explains.

We are currently in
the west cell block.

The west cell block was a
housing unit for your inmates.

This is five tiers,
originally 350 cells,

meant for one inmate to a cell,

ended up from the very
beginning with two inmates,

so we housed 700 inmates here.

It wasn't so bad
early on living here,

now in later years they could be
in their cells 20, 22 hours a day.

Can you imagine being there,

walking through those
corridors into your caged cell

and hearing the sound of the door
slammed and locked behind you?

Then the riotous
sounds of other inmates.

It must have been a
terrifying existence.

But the rising crime rate meant
that more and more prisoners

were arriving at the
Ohio state reformatory.

Soon, juvenile inmates were
being kept apart from adult prisoners.

The prison's aims and
purpose were changing fast.

So fast, the juveniles
were forced to leave.

So they keep this
as an adult facility

and all those juveniles have to
go to another facility altogether.

Now you have got a prison full
of space, what do you do with it?

In wider society,

ever more people
were being convicted

of increasingly violent crimes.

Prisons across the country were
becoming overfilled with inmates,

so Mansfield became
just another prison,

in fact, it became one
of the hardest prisons,

the worst of the worst,

with some of the most violent
offenders from around the country

being kept there.

Ohio state reformatory certainly
had its share of notorious inmates.

One was the infamous
George 'bugs' moran,

who was part of the
John Dillinger crime gang.

Others included
William Sidney Porter,

better known as o. Henry,

the short story writer,

and Sam Shepherd,
whose conviction in 1954,

for murdering his wife, attracted
national media coverage.

As inmate numbers
continued to rise,

life in the prison became even
more harsh and fraught with danger.

Living day - to - day
was a perilous business

as prison discipline broke down.

Ohio state eventually became
a maximum security facility.

Violence was part
of everyday life.

You could be beat up in a
fight, you could be stabbed,

you could be mugged, you
could be thrown off a high walkway.

I mean the place was such,

that you were in fear of
your life each and every day.

Inmates were told when you
came here, make yourself a weapon

and hide it in the bed, so
if everything goes crazy,

you at least know where
your shank, or your rock

or whatever it
is, you placed it,

so you can be safe.

And they feared
coming in the gates here.

One of the most frightening
places in which to find yourself,

was at the end of
these dark corridors.

It was somewhere
no-one wanted to be.

For the worst offenders

there was solitary confinement
here for the reformatory.

When you came in
there was punishment,

so the whole time you were in
here, you weren't supposed to talk.

They might keep the
lights on 24 hours a day,

they might keep the
lights off 24 hours a day,

there was no reading.

Your meal schedule
would be moved around,

so you never knew
what time it was,

and so early on they came
in here with no clothes,

they were naked, they had a
bucket that was their commode,

they slept on the cement floor.

In a crowded prison, blighted by
almost daily violence and rioting,

it was no surprise that
'the hole', as it was known,

was always crammed with inmates.

In one case they had a riot

and they wound up putting in
120 prisoners down in the hole

at the same time for 30 days.

In this instance they
actually found a body

that had been murdered and
stuffed into a mattress for several days

before anyone
realised he was dead.

The terrible violence continued

until the inmates
themselves finally took action.

Inmates finally took
matters into their own hands

and they filed a lawsuit

that the facility was violating
their constitutional rights

by dehumanising them.

In the end the problems of
the site were so widespread

that it was all too much, and
the facility was abandoned.

That was in 1990.

During its 96 - year history,

some 150,000 inmates had walked

through Ohio state
reformatory's doors,

more than 200 of them had
died while they were inside.

These days there are many
accounts of it being haunted,

of there being paranormal
activity at the site,

but that is hardly surprising

when you think of
the degree of violence

that the building had
seen for so many decades.

Is the Ohio state
reformatory haunted?

And if you ask a number of our
staff members they will say yes,

they will snap their finger just
like that, many things happen here.

Why? I will let
you figure it out.

Today this grand facility has
become a major tourist attraction,

thanks in no small part
to a strange twist of fate.

It was scheduled for demolition,

but just before that,

a film crew came
to shoot a movie

that of course has
become world-famous,

'the Shawshank redemption'.

The same day that the wrecking
balls came to tear this place down,

was the same day that the
filming company showed up.

The 'Shawshank redemption'
was the redemption of this prison.

Just off the coast of
normandy in France,

is the small island of Guernsey.

Along its coastline are
bizarre - looking constructions.

In the otherwise quiet and
picturesque surroundings,

you start to discover

a huge amount of these
concrete imposing structures.

The way that these concrete
monoliths are stepped,

they look a bit like the
heads off of easter island.

It's like star wars
has been filmed there.

These really strange
monolithic type constructions,

poking out of the ground.

Further inland, a cavernous concrete
bowl lies sunken into the ground.

Its huge, it's like
an amphitheatre.

I don't think the locals would have
ever envisaged structures like this

being built on the island.

Beneath this great mass of
concrete lurk other hidden features.

There is a railway track that
starts to lead you into a tunnel

and you follow that tunnel inside
you start going underground.

When you get closer,

you see that there is
actually a lot more to them.

There are networks and you
start to see old paraphernalia.

In the maze of dark rooms,

mysterious symbols and
writings can still be seen.

But the words are not in English,
they are written in German.

And these are the first hints

of the terrible fate that befell
those who once occupied the rooms.

Things started to
get really tough.

In fact, many of
them began to starve.

Who was it that built
these gigantic structures?

And why were they
finally abandoned?

The roots of the
mystery can be found

in the early years
of world war 2.

By June 1940, Hitler's
forces had defeated France

and were turning their attention
to their next target, Great Britain.

A mere 20 miles away,
across the English channel,

the prize was
tantalisingly close,

but a small piece of British
territory lay even closer -

the channel islands.

Although the channel
islands are British territory,

they are actually much
closer to the coast of France

and Hitler viewed them
as strategically important.

If you want to go from
britain and invade France,

the channel islands
are a great first step.

They get you most
of the way there,

and the Nazis could
not allow the British

to continue to control those
islands right on the edge of France.

On the 28th of June 1940,

luftwaffe bombers came
swooping in over the islands.

A tragedy within the war,

was the fact that the Germans

essentially bombed
the channel islands

expecting there to be
quite a lot of resistance

and they killed about 44 people
and they didn't need to do that.

It was only a few days later
when the Germans actually arrived,

they discovered that the islands
had been undefended the whole time.

(Bell tolls)

In 1940, britain
was standing alone

against the power
of the third reich

and Churchill was not sure he could
defend the island of Great Britain,

never mind Guernsey and
Jersey, sark and alderney.

As the German army stormed through
France during the summer of 1940,

about a third of channel islanders,
some 30,000 people, were evacuated.

The rest chose to remain,

preferring to take their chances
when the inevitable invasion came.

In late June, the German
flag was raised on Guernsey.

On July 1st, Jersey surrendered.

The German order for islands
to fly white flags over their houses

was just a small taste
of what was to come.

While Churchill decided to
leave the islands undefended,

Hitler had other ideas.

He desperately wanted them fortified
with the most impressive defences

the third reich could create.

Here on Guernsey,
this was part of the plan.

The mighty mp3 tower.

Local expert and
preservationist Paul bourgaize,

explains how the tower
fitted into the Nazi plans.

It was basically a
range-finding tower.

It was one of five,

and each level had
range-finding capabilities

to obviously find and
observe the targets

and send the data back
to the gun batteries inland.

The Germans spent over a year
building their extensive network

of defences on Guernsey.

Located a few miles inland
from the mp3 range tower,

this immense concrete bowl was to
be one of its most important features.

But what was it to be used for?

There is a clue in the rail
tracks that snake underground.

This railway track was
used to bring the ammunition

from the storage bunkers

and they would be stored
in this large room here

and these would be loaded
through this flush boot hatch

and then stored in that room.

More than 61,000 cubic
yards of concrete were used

to build the bunker systems
that contained troop quarters,

ammunition storage

and electrical generators -

all constructed to withstand
concerted sustained firepower.

Deep in the darkness,

the slogans on the walls
provide chilling proof

of the German army's intentions.

And of its supreme confidence.

You can see on one side we
have got a nice German eagle

painted on the wall,

and over on this side the
emblem of the naval engineers

and this cog,

and they are marching towards
england, that was the motto.

"Wir fahren nach england."

We are going to england,

the Germans intended
to invade england.

Why would they be
painting that on a bunker?

The Germans great confidence

may have been helped by what
was housed in this huge concrete bowl.

Formidable guns,

in a bunker complex that
was called battery miras.

They consisted of four
gunning placements

with huge great big
guns disguised as houses.

You can start to imagine the
size and the scale of these guns.

Here we are.

We can see one of the four huge
emplacements for the 30.5 cm gun.

Mounted down that central position
where those studs are sticking up.

Underneath the mount
is a naval depth charge

and that could
have been detonated

in the event that the
emplacement was captured

and blow the gun
off its mountings.

With a range of over 30 miles,

the four guns were able to
protect the channel islands

and reach almost all the
way to the normandy coast.

The German fire power on
Guernsey was extraordinary.

In total 17 coasted
artillery batteries

and 175 anti-air craft guns
were placed on the island.

But all of this came at a
huge cost in resources.

This was part of
the Atlantic wall,

which stretched all the way
from Norway down to Spain

and it is estimated that
some 8% of all of the concrete

along all of those constructions

was just housed in
the channel islands.

In fact, they fortified the
channel islands so much

that there were more
guns installed here

than there were on the neighbouring
600 miles of normandy coast line.

German officers who were
sceptical about the strategic

and operational value
of the channel islands,

referred to the dense
resource - intensive fortification,

as 'Hitler's island madness.'

with so much effort,

time and resources
committed to building it,

and with its frequent appearance
in German propaganda,

what finally became
of battery miras?

The beginning of the end
came on June 6th, 1944.

The famous date of the
allied invasion of France.

After the d-day landings,

the German soldiers based in
the channel islands became cut off

and had no access to supplies.

There were red cross packages
delivered onto the islands,

but they were for the
locals only, for the British,

the Germans had to go without.

The troops themselves that
weren't allowed those rations,

were really starving.

They were trying to
catch birds, you know,

eating limpets off the beach,

anything, you know, seaweed
and some things, you know,

even made themselves sick,

eating things that they really
shouldn't have been eating,

just to stay alive.

After almost a year
of near - starvation,

the German Garrison on
Guernsey finally surrendered

on may 9th, 1945.

Battery miras fell silent.

And its colossal guns
were sold off for scrap.

Today these eerie concrete
symbols of the third reich

still dominate the
Guernsey skyline.

A reminder of a time
when these islands became

one of the most
fortified places on earth.

Looking at these massive
concrete fortifications,

it reminds us that even
tiny corners of Europe

that we barely even heard of,

are really important
to some people,

and to their lives as they lived
through the second world war.

It's a part of history
that is easily forgotten,

that part of britain was occupied,
but important to remember.

In southern Finland,

on the edge of the baltic sea,

is what's known locally
as the mysterious island.

From a distance it looks
like other islands in the region.

When you get closer,

you can see there is
something different about it.

The island itself has
a kind of darkness,

everything is a
little bit spooky,

you wouldn't necessarily want to
find yourself on the island alone.

Mysteriously, ships compasses
don't operate properly here.

The beaches are stained black,

and the more you look,
the stranger things get.

You can spot what looks like
bunkers hidden along the shoreline,

ruins of old pipelines, piles of
broken up rock and concrete.

This isn't an ordinary island.

The island itself
is also riddled

with some ancient
history about tales of,

you know, compasses
not working quite correctly.

There has been a whole
history of shipwrecks.

The wreckage and debris
are not confined to the waters.

On land too, there
are strange ruins.

All the structures that exist
are riddled with bullet holes

and signs of explosions, it's like
you are walking through a war zone.

What is the problem with
this place, why is it so odd?

The answers to
this peculiar puzzle

can be found in the
early 19th century.

By 1809, Finland had been
incorporated into the Russian empire

and this was a
strategically vital site.

Jussaro island.

The southern part of Finland
is very important to Russia,

because that is the gate to
the capital at st Petersburg

and so,

controlling the Gulf of Finland

is an absolute defence
requirement for Russia.

It sits in such a strategic
location in the baltic sea,

anybody trying
to head to Helsinki

or the port of st
Petersburg in Russia,

has to sail right
by that island.

That makes it very valuable
from a military perspective.

Vital it may have been, but it
was also extremely dangerous.

In the glacial periods it was
covered under kilometres of ice,

it was pushed down.

Since the ice has gone,

the area is actually slowly
lifting, about 4mm a year.

So you might sail past a place
that 50 years ago was free sailing

and now there is a rocky island
emerging right in your path.

Under Russian rule,

a pilot station was set up here

to help ships navigate
these precarious waters

through to st Petersburg.

But why did the remnants
of an extensive complex

litter this remote outpost?

It was an underground discovery
that first interested the Russian state.

It turns out to have
been an amazing find,

because it was the largest
undersea iron ore reserve in Finland.

That solved a
centuries-old mystery.

It's why ships compasses
work so badly here.

Compasses work

by being drawn to the
magnetic field of the north pole,

but the iron ore in
this particular region

had its own magnetic field

and compasses were more
drawn to that than the north pole.

In the 1840s, Russian prisoners
were sent to the islands mine

and forced to excavate
the valuable metal ore.

The miners were down there with
long metal drills and sledge hammers,

banging away, dislodging
the rock face bit by bit.

And the conditions
were so hellish,

some of the prisoners reported
they would rather be sent

to labour camps in Siberia.

By the time Finland declared
independence from Russia in 1917,

mining on the
island had stopped.

During the following decades,

the young nation's relationship
with its communist neighbour

was marked by tension and war.

In 1939, the infamous
winter war broke out.

A conflict that was
fought in temperatures

as low as minus 43 celsius.

The better - equipped fins were
able to inflict huge casualties

on the Soviet troops,

using the deep snow, dense
forests and long hours of darkness

to maximum advantage.

The war was ended by the
signing of the Moscow peace treaty

in march 1940,

and although the Finns were
forced to cede territory to the Soviets,

the red army's reputation
was badly damaged.

Its poor performance is
said to have convinced Hitler

to invade Russia
the following year.

By the 1950s, however,

Finland had settled
into its uneasy existence

between the west
and the Soviet union.

In those tense political times,
mining at jussaro began again.

Finland reopened the mines,

and now they had
modern equipment

and they could mine on a much
greater, more industrial scale.

When mining
started back up again,

they had to put in a
whole new infrastructure

which included crushing plants,

underwater railway lines, pipe
networks on land, deep tunnels...

I mean, it became a
productive mining machine.

Former resident Goran
wikstrom arrived in 1956

as preparations for
modern mining operations

were getting underway.

The tunnelling went straight
out from here to the stone island.

The tunnel went
straight out from there

from the shaft above at a
depth of 550 ft, out there.

There were mining tunnels -

in total 1.8 miles of tunnels
all at a depth of nearly 600 ft.

However, mining on the island
once again became unsustainable.

Global iron prices
plummeted and so did profits.

The operation was shut down and
the workers were simply sent packing.

It was at Christmas in 1967,

when the final decision was made
that everyone was to leave here.

It was over, in other words.

We just moved out and
then the destruction set in.

But the debris and
destruction here is clear to see.

Surely the damage was not caused
solely by nature and the elements?

After the miners moved out,
the Finnish army moved in.

The government realised this
location was just too strategic

to leave unoccupied.

The 60s, 70s and 80s, yes,

there was a very genuine
threat from the Soviet union.

They were pretty careful,

pretty conciliatory to
Russia during that period,

but a lot of the use of the
island was really for training

and military exercises.

It was a place where they could
fire weapons and drop bombs

without any danger of
injuring the civilian population,

because there was
no civilian population.

The Russian invasion never came.

In 2002, the armed forces
held their final shooting drill

and the island was
abandoned once again.

Today, the battered site
serves as a national park,

with half the island
open to the public.

It's a smorgasbord of
mining and militarisation.

There are bullet holes everywhere.
It's actually seen a lot of action,

this small, little island
in the middle of nowhere.

In eastern england,
on the Suffolk coastline,

are a string of
abandoned buildings,

strange mounts and intriguing
pagoda - like structures.

It's incredibly isolated.

It's bleak. It's cut off from
the mainland by a river,

but yet there are these strange
mounds and structures on it.

The interiors of the dilapidated
buildings are equally mystifying.

Inside, the buildings have an
abandoned quasi - industrial feel.

There are elements of metal
and machinery still there,

but long disused.

Pretty well all the work that
was carried out here was secret,

ultimately top secret.

You are still
warned to this day,

that you mustn't tread incorrectly
or you could be blown sky-high.

What was the purpose
of these battered buildings

and strange Asian-style pagodas?

And why is this area
still filled with danger?

If you look at all these
solidly - built buildings

and you look at the
terrible destruction

that has clearly been
wreaked on them,

you have to ask, "what
happened to these buildings?"

The reasons can be found
back in the tense years

leading up to the
start of world war I.

In 1913, the British war department
acquired this large area of land,

near a small village in Suffolk,

in order to develop the
latest technology in warfare.

This is a corner of england

where the experimenters
came to find out what happened

when you dropped
a bomb from a plane.

In a lot of ways, this beach is
where military aviation started.

In short, the race was on to
develop new areas of military science

and this pioneering
site was leading the way.

It was called orford ness.

In world war I, aerial
warfare was completely new.

People had to invent
a new military science

and to start with,
it was very crude.

It was simply a question of
dropping bombs out of windows.

We didn't know what happened
to a bomb dropped from a plane,

until the guys at
orford ness watched it

and measured it
with their instruments.

Over the years,

orford ness established
itself as a prime testing site,

critical to
britain's air forces.

One of its greatest
successes was achieved

by one of its most illustrious
names, Robert Watson watt,

the brilliant Scottish pioneer
in radio direction - finding

and radar technology.

It was at orford
ness in the late 30s,

that Watson watt carried out his
ground - breaking work on radar -

the system that served the
country so well during the dark days

of the battle of britain.

After world war ii, however,

a new era of World-Wide
mistrust and paranoia began.

During the second world war

the UK and us had collaborated
very closely on weapons development,

but as the cold war emerged
after 1945, the two parted company,

fairly spectacularly,

and britain was left alone
to develop its own weapons,

including nuclear weapons.

The west goes into overdrive
in developing nuclear weapons

and 1949 - this is the
height of the cold war.

Britain was now engaged
in a nuclear arms race

and orford ness was transformed

into the atomic weapons
research establishment.

You don't want an
atomic bomb to go off

between the factory
and the air field.

You don't want the atomic
bomb to go off on the plane

on the way to the target

and you don't want the
atomic bomb to go off

at the wrong time
after you drop it.

All of those problems needed to
be worked out with experimentation

and that required an
experimentation site.

So what experiments
took place here?

The site's manager
Grant lahorr, explains.

The first test carried
out here was on vibration,

so they were trying to replicate
the vibration in an aircraft

or in a lorry on the road,

or they were subjecting
them to shock,

or g-forces, or
humidity, or temperature.

Each laboratory was designed
to test different components

of nuclear bombs.

So this is what was called the
hard target or the high impact facility

and this essentially
is where they were

rocket - propelling atomic bomb
cases and nuclear bomb cases

into very hard concrete wall,

which was effectively replicating
the impact of the weapon

when it was dropped.

Yet the two most
intriguing facilities

are at the furthest point.

They are the
distinctive pagodas.

It's these highly
unusual buildings

that remain the area's most
famous landmarks today.

This looks like
an ancient temple,

it's got columns
holding up a pyramid,

it's got arcane
markings on the walls,

these strange
cruciform brackets.

The work carried out
here during the cold war era

was shrouded in secrecy.

During that period from
the late 50s into the 1960s,

the most paranoid period,
probably, of the cold war.

Everything really
was extremely secret

and it appears as if the site
was constantly being monitored

and surveyed and
photographed by the Soviet union

and so, everything around
it was cloaked in secrecy.

The architecture of the
buildings is highly unusual,

but very specific.

They were created explicitly
for the purpose of understanding

the behaviour of
weaponry and explosions.

This is a place designed so
that if the pillars are blown up,

the roof drops down

and clamps all of the explosion
and debris down into the ground.

The research
conducted at orford ness

remains largely
secret to this day.

Ironically,

it was the success of the site
that contributed to its downfall.

The us were so
impressed by its work,

it re-established its old
relationship with britain

to help advance both
nations' weapons programmes.

This facility that concentrates

on britain's separate
nuclear development,

is really no longer needed
because, essentially,

the British work together with
the Americans on nuclear weapons,

which is how it works today.

Orford ness was finally
abandoned in 1987.

Today, the site is maintained
by the British national trust

as a peaceful nature reserve.

But its past has left
a dangerous legacy.

After so many decades of
weapons testing at that site,

it's simply not
possibly to guarantee

that all devices
have been found.

It is essentially impossible
to ever clean it out.

Now they lie abandoned,

but once, they were at the
cutting edge of engineering.

There are echoes from history
in these decaying structures.

They remind us
of terror and war,

but also of great innovation
and human endeavour.

Captioned by
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