All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S04E09.Behind.The.Berlin.Wall.Special.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

A country torn in two by opposing
ideological and political systems.

When Winston Churchill
said, "an iron curtain

"has descended across Europe,"
this is what he was talking about.

A shocking place of
interrogation and torture.

They made sure that you
never met another prisoner.

Felt completely isolated
from the rest of the world.

A complex built to
protect a brutal dictator.

As you delve deeper into
the island, you realise there's a

vast network of tunnels that point
to something really quite major.

A facility that covered up
a regime's darkest secrets.

Why would you create this
and then, why would you hide it?

I find that really creepy.

And a forbidden
place in a capital city.

Whoever was here obviously
left in a mad rush, which begs

the question, what forced them
into such a sudden evacuation?

This is a glimpse
behind the Berlin wall.

Some are engineering
marvels now abandoned.

Others are ruins
shrouded in mystery

but within each of these decaying
structures are the echoes of history.

While some are
associated with dark times,

they are all reminders of
human ingenuity and endeavour.

Each haunting shell is
now ready to be unmasked

to tell its own unique story.

In 1989, the Soviet
empire collapsed

and the fall of the Berlin
wall reunified Germany

- something most thought
they would never see.

When the iron curtain lifted,
all over the communist world,

extraordinary abandoned relics
of communist rule were discovered.

The silent prisons, spy
headquarters, administration blocks

and all the rest, at
last, gave the free world

the harrowing glimpse at life as it
was for ordinary east German people.

In the lichtenberg district of
Berlin, the capital city of Germany,

an opposing grey wall lines
an otherwise typical street.

We don't really think about

what horrors might have happened
behind the walls right beside us.

It looks ominous and,
you know intuitively

that you wouldn't want to be
on the other side of that wall.

You can't go by
without asking yourself,

what did people have to do

to get locked up in a
horrible place like that?

Inside, long corridors are lined
with bars and thick, grey doors.

They made sure that you
never met another prisoner.

They felt completely isolated
from the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, just a few miles away
is an innocuous-looking tower block.

These hallways and offices they
seem almost deliberately bland,

faceless, anonymous.

It could be the offices of a
third-rate office supplies company.

It's banal. It's
cold. It's dull.

But take a look inside.
The interiors of the offices

look like they've come straight
from the set of a spy movie.

You do see a lot of equipment,
old-fashioned equipment,

and various electronic devices.

This isn't just an office where
people do something productive.

This is an office where people
pry and spy and look into things that

perhaps ought to be left alone.

But how are these two
buildings connected?

What were they for and
who was based here?

Even today, this place still makes
many German people shudder.

Among them is former
inmate Peter keup.

In 1981, when he was aged just 22,
Peter was arrested, bundled into one

of these vans and locked in
a cell the size of a cupboard,

with no idea of where he was
going or what fate awaited him.

After they closed the door, then
it was completely dark in there.

It was just horrible.

That was probably this moment
in my life I was scared the most.

After four hours of being locked up,
Peter was taken to a stark building.

So, what was his crime?

And who betrayed him to
the east German authorities?

We hear a lot
about the Berlin wall

and, of course,
that was significant,

but the entire border
between east Germany

and its neighbours
was heavily fortified.

Peter was trying to escape east
Germany by crossing the border

into neighbouring
czechoslovakia.

It was hard to get from
any part of east Germany

into west Germany or czechoslovakia
or anywhere that might make it

easier to get to the west.

East Germany had been
turned into one giant prison

and the reasons for that
go back to its very birth.

At the potsdam
conference in August 1945,

it was agreed Nazi
Germany would be divided

into four separate
occupied zones.

The eastern zone came
under Soviet control.

The communist regime of east
Germany discovered very early on

that Moscow, their Soviet
overlords, would not tolerate

anything other than unthinking
obedience to Moscow's rule.

But they're going to
exceed the Soviet union

in their devotion to communism.

They're going to exceed
Stalin in their work

to create a new socialist man.

And to do so, you have to
control every aspect of people's life.

That is the job of the stasi.

This is the stasi
central remand prison.

Peter was one of the
many picked up by the stasi,

which was attempting to control
a population of 18 million people

and prevent escapes to the west.

The state security
services comprised

a force of over a quarter
of a million people,

and this was essentially
the political police,

to enforce informity to the
communist regime in east Germany.

This is a state that
is utterly repressive.

Once they were imprisoned,
inmates were kept in total isolation.

My mother was the only person
who knew that I wanted to escape.

I always thought, "does
she know that I'm still alive?"

Preventing contact with anyone,
including family, was just one

of the stasi
interrogation techniques.

The stasi would isolate people
with no other human contact,

Rob them of an
understanding of day

and night, when their
meals were going to come

and, most important,
Rob them of sleep.

The man pulling the stasi
strings was erich mielke.

He was the head of the stasi.

He was a very bland,

very unremarkable
government bureaucrat

who ruled over one
of the most frightening

and intrusive secret polices
ever known in the world.

Just a few minutes
away from the prison

was mielke's seat of power.

It was the nerve
centre of the stasi state.

So, this is the office of the east
German minister of state security,

the heart of the system.

The heart of evil,
from my point of view.

The stasi headquarters was, in a
way, the most important building

in east Germany.

It was entirely focused on
controlling the population,

gathering as much information
about the most intimate details

of people's lives.

Construction here
was completed in 1961

and the stasi now had a powerful
base for a surveillance state,

the scale of which had
never been seen before.

They needed to know what
was happening in your apartment,

in your house, in your factory,

in your school, and they
had spies in all those places.

At home or at work, the
state was always watching.

2-3% of the population is actually
paid to inform on their neighbours,

their classmates,
their work colleagues.

To inform the state security
as to what people are thinking.

And they kept vast files.

Everything that you want to know

about 18 million people is
kept in the stasi headquarters.

However, by the late
1980s, things were changing

and resistance was growing.

Among the stasi officers trying
desperately to maintain order

was none other than the future
Russian president, Vladimir putin.

Very often, the kgb
would use the stasi,

in some cases to influence the west,
to carry out espionage operations,

but they're also supervising
and keeping close contact

on the stasi's activities against
any dissidents in east Germany.

In dresden, the head of the kgb
branch office is Vladimir putin,

who's a career kgb officer.

For putin and the
stasi organisation,

the writing was on the wall and
their time was fast running out.

But what would happen
to their vast classified files?

In January of 1990,
something incredible happened.

The public had this idea

that the records contained
in the stasi headquarters

were going to be destroyed and
they wanted these records preserved.

They went and they occupied
the building and they insisted

that the government preserved
what had happened here.

They wanted to give
some kind of a testimony

to what they'd lived through.

And they felt that if
the records were gone,

there'd be no way to document
these generations of injustice.

Eventually, the prison gates were
closed and the stasi was disbanded.

Erich mielke was publicly
disgraced live on television

and, himself, saw the
inside of a prison cell.

In 1992, the stasi
records were declassified

and people like Peter
could finally see their files.

This is actually my stasi file.

This photo was taken a couple
of hours after they arrested me

officially, in the
remand prison.

But when his
brother died in 2012,

Peter made the most
extraordinary discovery of all.

This is my brother's stasi file.

When I opened it and read this, I
found something really shocking,

surprising and something,

which I could never even
have imagined before.

Peter discovered that his
brother was actually a stasi spy

who had passed on information
about Peter and his family.

While the Berlin
wall has long gone,

the victims and perpetrators
of the terror state, even now,

walk and live amongst each other
and the memories are still fresh.

All the people who were loyal to

the state and worked
with the stasi and so on,

they are still living
in east Germany

and that makes me sometimes
feeling uncomfortable.

Now 600 million shreds
of paper from stasi files

are being pieced together
using new computer technology.

A testament to just how much it
all still means to those who lived

in this brutal police state.

They are ordinary Germans,

desperate for closure and to finally
found out who betrayed them and why.

Off the coast of Croatia,

in the crystal-clear
waters of the adriatic sea,

is the beautiful island of vis.

But not all is as it seems.

Vis island is a hugely
popular tourist destination

and you can see why.

But every now and then, you
catch a glimpse of something

you feel shouldn't
really be there.

A relic from a bygone era.

If you sail around this island,

it looks like a mediterranean
vacation paradise.

And then you come across
this bizarre concrete structure,

it's like a keyhole leading
in to the island itself.

What was the purpose
of this curious building?

The concrete cave gives
just a tantalising glimpse.

As you delve
deeper into the island,

you realise there's a
vast network of tunnels

that point to something
really quite major.

But what their purpose was and
who built them is initially mystifying.

Local guide tomislav
mileis explains

how strategically
important the island is.

Going all the way back
to the time of the Greeks

and the romans, military
leaders have recognised

this island's incredible
strategic location

and how useful
it is to control it.

After world war I,
vis became part of

a newly formed
nation, yugoslavia.

Within 30 years,
this young country

would become a communist
republic and take centre stage

in the ideological battle
between the ussr and the west.

The buildings on vis
are key to the story.

The origins of this hidden
labyrinth of tunnels and caves go

back to the height
of the cold war.

They were built to protect
the island and yugoslavia

against the threat of nuclear
attack by an unexpected enemy.

This is a secret communist base.

A maze of tunnels extends
12 miles across the island,

connecting camouflaged bunkers,

caves and gun emplacements.

And on the northern coast lies
the centrepiece of the fortifications.

Probably the most
impressive installation is

an imposing concrete
submarine pen

that leads right into
the island hills and,

although it's obvious
from the water,

it's invisible from the air.

Codenamed 'lobster', this concrete
cave hid submarines like the 'sava',

a yugoslavian attack vessel
armed with ten huge torpedoes,

which replaced the
older submarines.

But why did communist yugoslavia
need this fortress in the adriatic?

Was it solely a defence against
the military might of the west?

At the centre of the story is the
country's most infamous leader,

josip tito, who was walking a
dangerous political tightrope.

Josip tito was a
communist partisan fighter

against the Nazis in world
war ii and a very effective one.

When the war ended, he
was able to unify yugoslavia

under his own very particular
brand of communism.

When world war
ii came to an end,

the iron curtain
descended across Europe.

Tito and Stalin
were allies until 1948

but tito is very, very afraid
of yugoslavia becoming

an east Germany or a Poland,

which is effectively a
colony of the Soviet union.

In 1948, he will take the step
of formally breaking with Stalin

and saying that yugoslavia
will not cooperate.

There will be no Soviet
bases, no Soviet troops.

In fact, tito cleverly played off
the powers of east and west against

each other and was instrumental
in creating the third way,

or what was called the
non-aligned movement.

So, tito was refusing to
support the Russians or the west.

But this left his country under
the constant threat of invasion

or even nuclear
attack by the Soviets.

Yugoslavia's very
existence was at risk

and tito had to
protect his homeland.

The way to do it is what
he learned during the war,

is establish these bases all
throughout the country and,

if the Soviet union and his
allies should invade yugoslavia,

they can retreat to
the mountain areas,

they can retreat to
these fortified bases

and they can carry
out resistance.

It was a plan that put vis
directly in the line of fire.

The island had been
home to tito's headquarters

when he led the resistance

against the Nazis during
the second world war.

Tito never forgot the
strategic importance

of vis and kept a
tight grip on the island,

making it one of the main naval
bases of the Yugoslav people's army.

So these concrete caves
and tunnels were actually built

to defend yugoslavia
against the mighty red army.

But were they ever needed?

And why are these mighty
fortifications now abandoned?

Tito's cold-blooded determination
to maintain his grip on power

had terrible consequences
for the people of yugoslavia.

Tito ran a ruthless
internal policy

to suppress any
internal opposition.

Tito's merciless regime is
thought to have been responsible

for hundreds and
thousands of deaths.

But what eventually became
of his hidden island base?

If the Soviets had ever
succeeded in invading yugoslavia,

they could have
captured the base

and perhaps even used it to
launch nuclear attacks on Europe.

The purpose of this
massive defence system

in yugoslavia is not offensive.

It's purely defensive.

It is to make it so difficult
to overrun yugoslavia,

it's a deterrence policy and it's a
very effective deterrence policy.

Tito's plan worked.

Creating this forbidding
fortress helped to ensure

that the Russians
never attacked.

But there was another serious
threat to yugoslavia on the horizon.

After tito's death, that
iron-fisted rule that held

yugoslavia together went
away and the different regions

and the different
tribal animosities began

to manifest themselves

and the country really
fractured into different,

sometimes warring segments.

No amount of military bases

could prevent the brutal
civil wars of the 1990s.

Yugoslavia tore itself apart.

Tito's socialist republic eventually
became seven independent countries

divided along ethnic lines.

The island of vis
is part of Croatia,

which pulled away and became
its own independent state.

After years of terrible conflict, the
new nation simply wanted peace.

Tito's base in the
adriatic was abandoned.

Now a place for
sunshine holidays,

vis today is a far cry
from tito's dark vision

of an island defence
against the Soviets.

But these concrete
ruins still offer

a chilling reminder of how
different things could have been.

This submarine base
reflects the very real threat

of nuclear attack that existed
at the height of the cold war.

Set amongst thick woods and
peaceful lakes 25 miles east of Berlin

is an innocuous-looking
complex of buildings.

Little about this place betrays

the dark secrets
that lie at its heart.

Until you explore a
small, anonymous building

that is quietly tucked away.

Inside a spartan office,

the equipment comes
from a different age,

but this is just the
entrance to a secret world.

At first, it looks like a typical
leisure centre or a sports complex,

but then, beneath,
hidden from prying eyes,

is a secret underground bunker.

There are rooms full

of industrial-scale machinery,
which once powered this hidden site.

Judging by the
equipment on show,

this was a place
involved in surveillance.

Rooms packed full of
monitors and listening devices.

It looks like something
straight out of a spy movie.

Why the sophisticated
surveillance equipment?

What or who was it watching?

A clue to the sinister past
of this place can be found

behind a strange-looking door.

This is the kind of door you'd
expect to see inside a submarine.

Can you imagine descending
down into this secret chamber?

Entering through a
submarine-style pressure lock.

It must have been a
daunting experience.

Inside,

there's a huge chamber filled
with sports training equipment,

along with a room packed
with medical supplies.

Other eerie rooms
now lie silent.

Why would you create this?

And then, why would you hide it?

I find that really creepy.

Unlikely as it seems,
this place once epitomised

the struggle between
east and west.

During the cold war era, it was
part of communist east Germany,

known as the German
Democratic republic or the gdr.

And at that time, a proxy
war was being fought on

sports fields around the world.

So, the communist athletes
had to win for the greater glory,

not of their country so much, but
for the greater glory of communism.

And the east German athletes
also had the burden of the fact that

east Germans thought that they
were absolutely the best communists.

Four-time olympic kayaking
medal winner torsten gutsche

remembers this intense rivalry.

The gdr has always been
one of the most successful

canoe nations in the world.

There was ongoing
competition between Hungarian,

gdr and Russian athletes,
who were also very strong.

The gdr was a small country and,

of course, as a socialist state,

they wanted to prove

to the capitalist countries

that socialism was
superior to capitalism.

And of course,

sport was one of the
best ways to prove it.

East German athletes
did very, very well.

Over and over again,

east German athletes succeeded
in international competition.

Between 1976 and 1986, east
Germany won more olympic games

and world championship
medals than any other nation.

Taking into account factors
such as population size,

it was punching
far above its weight.

But, a murky secret
lay behind all the glory.

It used to be that east German
athletes were known for being

completely pumped
up on steroids...

..Which resulted in liver damage,
reproductive damage, birth defects

for their children, tremendous
difficulty for decades to come.

The health of east Germany's
young athletes was sacrificed

in the name of glory
and propaganda.

And it was the east German
government, which was behind it all.

A directive called state plan 1425
coordinated a sophisticated system

of athletes' steroid use
throughout the country.

But the world was getting
wise to the dirty tricks.

All of the athletic
governing boards

in the world, the
olympic committees,

the athletics commissions, they
were all starting to do blood testing,

so the east Germans could no
longer cheat by using steroids.

So how did east Germany try to
stay one step ahead of the testers?

The answer to that lay here,
at the kienbaum training facility.

This was a top-secret location,

therefore it was a great honour
for us athletes to train here.

It was very impressive.

This secret facility was
developed as an alternative

to the steroid programs that had
served the east Germans so well.

Built in 1979, this
state-of-the-art centre was

fitted with all the usual training
equipment you would expect

to find in any sports facility.

But it was this top-secret bunker
that was most crucial to success.

So what made this
chamber so unique?

So, the east Germans
create a sports training

and development facility

that will be entirely done
at high-altitude air pressure.

That means very little
oxygen, very little air pressure.

A colossal ventilation
system extracted air

until it simulated the pressure
found at an altitude of 13,000ft.

That induced athletes to
produce more red blood cells,

which increased their
levels of endurance.

They're hoping that the bodies
are going to get used to working

with little oxygen and then, when
they go back to regular altitude,

their blood and their tissues
are going to be saturated

with all that lovely oxygen,

and the east Germans are
going to keep on winning.

But there was a dreadful
cost to the athletes.

Compared to the regular training
outside, it was very exhausting

to train in here due to the
simulated altitude and air pressure.

It was physically
very demanding.

It was very monotonous. The light
in this room was very unpleasant.

The air was unpleasant

and the atmosphere
was very unpleasant, too.

For two weeks at a time, they were
locked in this underground bunker,

training 12 hours a day,

with no natural light

and no understanding how
this high-pressured chamber was

affecting their
long-term health.

You've got to pity those
east German athletes.

They were good at their sports

but that turned them
into special lab rats.

But the constant monitoring was
not only about performance analysis.

The stasi's secret police were
also hard at work behind the scenes,

watching and guarding
east Germany's prized assets.

It was the issue of national
security during the gdr era.

Therefore, you had
to be a bit more careful

with the people you didn't know.

There were cameras everywhere
and we didn't really understand

why they were filming.

For some athletes,

life in a repressive policed
state was unbearable

and more than 600 elite sportsmen
and women defected to the west.

As a result, before
the fall of the Berlin wall

and the reunification
of Germany in 1990,

many were branded traitors

and were hunted by the stasi.

Some athletes have claimed they
were either forcibly or unwittingly doped

at kienbaum.

Torsten gutsche knows he was
never consciously involved in doping

but also believes he was simply
lucky never to have been given steroids.

Torsten just had to endure a
strange underground environment

that strained his
body to the limit

and left him with some
very unpleasant memories.

In this room, I had a
very oppressive feeling.

We were sitting very
close to each other

and we were
constantly under control.

That's why we were quiet.

We didn't talk much because we
didn't know who might be listening.

And another question is, was
this training good for our health?

These are the questions,
which I cannot answer.

Today, kienbaum
operates as an olympic

and paralympic training
facility for a united Germany.

But that hidden
chamber is still there,

a creepy reminder of
a very different time.

This was a pioneering
approach to sports performance.

You often hear of top
athletes or soccer teams

going up into the mountains to
training camps at high altitude.

This was creating those conditions
but in a secret underground bunker.

South of Berlin, standing
alone on the edge of the city,

is a vast complex
of deserted buildings.

Through the mist and
the Autumn leaves,

these grand buildings
emerge, almost palatial.

At first glance, the architecture
has an old-fashioned opulence.

Then, jutting out in the
centre of this courtyard,

this strange circular structure that
looks altogether different in style.

This odd concrete addition is
decorated with distinctive murals,

which look very out of place.

When you come on an example
of something that's clearly alien

to the middle of Europe,
something that is clearly there

because some other
culture has implanted itself

onto the soil of Germany.

Hundreds of buildings
stand across this huge stretch

of Berlin suburbia.

Inside them are long corridors
and seemingly endless empty rooms.

A theatre, the swimming pool
and many of the other facilities

suggest something civilian,

but then the maps and the
murals give you the sense

of something that
feels far more military.

This place is cut off
from everything around it.

Isolated, derelict and decaying,

the buildings are
relics from the past.

Who was it all for and
why was it abandoned?

Whoever was here
obviously left in a mad rush,

which begs the question, what forced
them into such a sudden evacuation?

On one cold march day
in 1994, it changed forever.

The people who
lived here were leaving

and everything was in turmoil.

Jurgen naumann, now the site's
caretaker, saw it all for himself.

A certain chaos broke out.

There was no discipline anymore.

Order and discipline
had gone down the drain.

They sold everything here,
from gasoline to kalashnikovs.

The people here had
been part of a tiny elite.

For decades, the place had been
off limits to everyone except them.

They annexed this neighbourhood
and they put this big wall around it.

It was forbidden for any
east German to go in there.

With more than 600 buildings in an
area of more than 2.5 square miles,

this site dominated
everything around it.

So what was it?

As we know, after Nazi
Germany's defeat in 1945,

the allied powers
divided the country in half.

Soviet forces poured into their half
of the newly-created east Germany,

and the army needed
somewhere to station its troops.

When the red army took
over eastern Germany,

the easiest thing
for them to do was

to take over existing German
armed forces' complexes

from the second world war.

When the Soviets
arrived in April 1945,

they found a large
military complex

and they simply rolled
in and took it over.

This is wunsdorf, the headquarters
of the Russian army in east Germany.

This was the most formidable
concentration of Soviet armed might

outside the borders
of the Soviet union.

The site was strictly
off-limits to Germans

but that didn't prevent some
locals from finding a way in.

The whole place was
surrounded by fences

and there were
several entrances,

large, fortified
gates with guards.

But if you were to, say,

give a soldier a gift,
they would let you in.

You could go shopping
here, buy some cigarettes

and, well, a lot of alcohol
because it was reasonably priced

for those who liked
to drink a bit more.

By the late 1980s, wunsdorf had
become more than just an army camp.

It was a whole forbidden city.

This place was home to
75,000 men, women and children.

It was known as 'little Moscow'.

It had shops, schools,
leisure facilities,

even had a daily train
service to the Soviet capital.

Here in wunsdorf, this area
served as the cultural centre

for the Soviet citizens
who lived here.

There was a theatre
with a lot of performances.

In the big building behind me,
there were exhibitions, museums,

memorial rooms and much more.

But all this would
come to a dramatic end.

Europe was on the
verge of a seismic change.

In Moscow, president
gorbachev's new policies

couldn't prevent the collapse
of the entire Soviet system.

In 1989, the Berlin wall fell

and, after 40 years, the
end had come for the gdr.

The huge Soviet infrastructure

in east Germany was
enormously expensive to maintain.

And as the Soviet
economy collapsed,

the Soviet presence in
Germany had to be pulled back.

After the reunification
of Germany,

the Russians agreed to withdraw
all their troops by the end of 1994.

But it was a far from
straightforward process.

For the officers and
their families at wunsdorf,

life was turned upside down.

This very orderly society

that the red army had
lived under is now gone.

The government handled
this relocation of their forces

very, very badly.

Jurgen naumann remembers

the deep distress felt by
the Russians at the time.

Once, I went up to
see a sales manager

who I used to see almost daily.

She was sitting
in her office crying.

She had two little children.

She said, "we have to
leave the country in two days

"and I don't know
where we are going."

The turmoil in Berlin was
mirrored 1,000 miles away.

The government in
Moscow was in chaos.

Wunsdorf's returning army
officers were a threat to the president

of the newly independent
Russian state.

Boris yeltsin had already
survived one coup attempt

so, with all these high-ranking

and loyal Soviet soldiers being
sent back to the motherland,

they were purposefully split up

and sent to different locations,
to reduce the risk of another

attempted military coup.

Certainly, in many respects,

the red army officers liked
being stationed in east Germany

because actually,
the standard of living

in east Germany was way above
the standard of living in Russia.

They had access to goods and
shops that east Germans didn't have.

They had swimming
facilities, athletic facilities.

You would not have known
you were in east Germany.

Life was, of course, much harder
for those who lived outside the gates.

After so many years of
being the masters there,

some Russians were afraid
that the east Germans might

seize their chance for revenge.

For Jurgen, who worked
nearby at the time,

the change in Russian
attitude came as a shock.

Suddenly, we were not
their friends anymore.

We were the enemy.

But in the end, serious violence
in wunsdorf was narrowly avoided

and the Russians left.

After one final military parade,

they pulled out and they
left in their wake a site littered

with ammunition,
ordnance and rubbish.

Shops were simply abandoned,
left full of electronics -

tvs, radios, fridges-houses were
left full of domestic appliances.

By the end of 1994, every Russian
soldier in Germany had gone.

The buildings in wunsdorf

were handed back to
the German government.

But today, the former
Soviet city is still deserted.

The only regular visitor
is Jurgen naumann.

In terms of the architecture,

these are beautiful buildings and
I hope they will be restored soon.

It's our history.

Once, they were at the very
heart of the communist empire.

Now they lie abandoned,

leaving only dark memories of a
time before the fall of the Berlin wall.

Captioned by
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