Original subtitles

An epic terraced construction

once at the heart of a mighty Asian empire.

You see this overgrown structure kind of tumbling down the mountain

and then reaching away from it are these long pipes

stretching out over the hills, almost like tentacles.

A forbidding Ukrainian palace shrouded in intrigue.

It's brooding.

Every one of those windows

looks like it ought to have a ghost hiding in the draperies.

Mountain-side ruins forged in one of humanity's darkest hours.

Emerging from the tunnel, you see a grey stone building.

Grass and vegetation are starting to climb up the walls

and nature's beginning to reclaim it.

And a massive facility that powered america to the forefront

of aviation technology.

It's an eerily deserted town.

The houses are all boarded up. There's an old theatre.

And the focal point is these three huge, hangar-like structures.

Decaying relics,

ruins of lost worlds,

forged through years of toil, now haunted by the past,

their secrets waiting to be revealed.

On the rugged coastline of jinguashih, Taiwan, where mountains

rise out of the ocean, an imposing structure

breaks the otherwise lush, green vegetation.

There looks to be some kind of fortress built

into the mountainside.

Fortress or castle, it's not really very clear.

It's terraced and it's magnificent in its monumental scale.

It looks like some old fortress or palace tumbling down the hillside

or maybe some overgrown Tibetan monastery.

But it's not luxurious, it's not ceremonial, but nor is it domestic.

There are no doors or windows that are apparent.

Clues as to its function may lie in the surrounding infrastructure.

Reaching away from it are these long pipes,

almost like tentacles disappearing over the nearby ridges.

They're like veins protruding out from this main fortress structure.

On a hill overlooking both the main complex and these giant pipelines

is something altogether different.

It looks quite grand and intricate compared to the other structure.

Maybe a sign of a more luxurious period of time for this area

or perhaps the influence of a different culture or ruler.

What kind of facility was this

and why would hundreds of Americans find themselves working here?

For local resident mr Cheng, this place is in his blood.

I've been through so much at this place.

I was born, educated, worked here.

Even after I retired, I'm still living here.

Now in his mid-'80s, he remembers this facility in full flow.

I was involved with an experiment with sulphides and copper.

If the density of the sulphides were too high,

we weren't able to extract the gold and copper from it.

So, we'd have to grind it in order to extract them.

This is the shuinandong smelter,

known locally as the remains of the 13 levels.

A processing plant for refining and smelting copper and gold.

The tunnel is a transportation system for mining.

The rocks are transported out from here.

This is tunnel six.

The miners used to work here,

but there's no work anymore.

It's dangerous, so they shut it down.

Once the high-grade gold ore was extracted

from beneath the mountains, these tunnels and railway lines

took the rocks to the smelter for processing.

The way they processed the ores, they would bring it in at the top

and there were a series of processes and getting the ore

to be refined in a purer and purer state

as they worked their way down to the bottom.

The reason it has these large arches without any windows is,

that's where they loaded the rocks and the ore in and out.

And the same goes for the ceiling.

It was all about efficiency.

The smelter is a chemical process that involves huge amount of heat

and also a massive amount of power

to split the component parts of the raw ore into pieces.

And it's done through a process of reactions,

with trying to separate and oxidise out the metals that you want.

Yet, none of the valuable gold remained here.

When this compound was constructed in the 1930s,

Taiwan wasn't part of China.

At that time, mr Cheng's father was working in brutal conditions

under the gaze of a different overlord.

The ornate details and kanji writing around the site

reveal their identity - the empire of Japan.

Wherever the Japanese went, they expected to stay.

They thought they were building a grand empire

that would last forever.

And so, they built not just factories and smelters,

but shrines.

Here in Taiwan, they built the shinto shrine to the mountain god.

Originally built to bring peace and stability,

the health of local workers became secondary to gold,

as mr Cheng's father discovered.

He worked in the mines as a mine worker.

He was digging in the fields.

I was four years old when he passed away.

I was raised by my mother and brother.

Japan was an empire on the rise.

Having emerged out of an era of isolation,

the country had entered a period of rapid transformation

and Taiwan was incorporated in to the empire of Japan in 1895.

It was the start of a chain reaction that would have devastating

consequences for the region and for many young Americans.

Taking over Taiwan was one of the first steps

in Japan's expansionism, where they would ultimately

take over much of Asia and finally attack the us at Pearl harbor.

After Taiwan came Korea.

Then, they turned their gaze back to northern China

with the invasion of manchuria in 1931.

Japan really conducted itself like Great Britain at its prime.

They had a powerful Navy,

they set up colonies, they took over territory.

And wherever they went, they wanted to extract resources,

they wanted to accumulate wealth.

The Taiwanese people here in of jinguashih

would enjoy little of this wealth.

They exploited most of the gold when it was under Japanese rule.

They sent all of it to Japan for their national celebrations.

The exploitation extended into all aspects of life.

Since we were ruled by the Japanese,

we became second-class citizens.

It became much tougher.

Even with schools, there were different schools

for the Japanese and the locals.

We were segregated.

By the time mr Cheng arrived here as a young man in 1943,

the pacific war was raging.

Japan's desire to dominate the pacific

had bought them into direct conflict with america.

And that meant a new labour force was arriving on the island.

Prisoners of war caught by the Japanese were sent to this mine.

Now, the biggest copper mine in the Japanese empire.

And they were predominantly British and American soldiers.

In total, 1,100 allied prisoners of war served time here.

Many bought in on hell ships from Singapore and the Philippines.

Most were forced to work here for almost three years

and face conditions as bad - if not worse -

than on the railway of death in Burma

made famous by movies like 'bridge on the river kwai'.

Many died of disease and a prisoner of war memorial erected here in 1997

pays homage to their memory.

The Japanese surrendered and left in 1945.

So, who was behind the mammoth pipelines

that extend out of the facility?

After the country's restoration,

the Taiwan gold and copper mining bureau was established.

But it soon faced new challenges.

With gold deposits depleted,

the focus was on copper refining and then purification.

They started purification in 1965.

There was a 65m-high chimney,

but it was really close to the factory.

The sulphate levels were high

and the residents and workers couldn't take it.

Safely disposing of these toxic emissions

required a marvel of engineering.

What they ended up doing was building a massive chimney

or flue system to take the gases up and away out of the valley

and over the Ridge of the mountain.

It's actually, they say it's the longest concrete pipeline

ventilation system in the world.

Despite this, with dwindling profits

and compensation claims hanging over their heads,

the company soon shut down operations.

The Japanese shrine still looks over this dramatic scene,

a remnant of an empire that emerged at an extraordinary pace

and crumbled away even faster.

Yet today, in 2020, some in Taiwan are still fighting for independence.

This time, from China.

Out in rural champagne county, Illinois,

lie a group of massive abandoned warehouses.

But they're not alone.

It's a huge area with buildings that look in fairly good condition.

It looks sort of like its own self-contained town.

Fire station, warehouses,

housing stores, it's all shut down.

Everything's overgrown.

The focal point is these three huge, hanger-like structures.

Quite clearly, the hangars tells you what this site was.

But yet, when you look at the other elements,

there's something else going on here.

Clues inside suggest these hangars weren't just for storage,

but for something rather different.

The large hangars

give you the impression that when this place was operating,

it must have been filled with machines,

aircraft equipment and people.

Something that really makes it feel rather ghostly

is its vastness and its emptiness

and a sense of something having just gone away almost inexplicably.

You have a sense that the answer to this place

lies at the bottom of the stairs.

Here is where you're finally going to understand what this is for.

But, in fact, what you're confronted with is a lake of water.

It's entirely unpassable. You can go no further.

In its day, this place was at the forefront

of technological change.

But it was also at the heart

of a ground-breaking social transformation.

The war department authorised the formation

of the 99th pursuit squadron,

which was the first all-black squadron.

This vast site would become the birthplace of an

African-American air squadron who went on to become world-renowned.

The clue to the origins of this site in rural Illinois

are found outside - the airstrip.

The first one built here was completed in the early 1900s.

Aviation in the early 20th century was an incredibly exciting

new adventure. This was all about boundaries and how to break them.

John Pratt worked at this site for 22 years.

I probably would have retired here.

I was that close to it.

But to walk around now is very painful.

It's hard to see this. It was a beautiful installation.

This place was vital to the protection

of the United States.

At the time of the site's inception,

the us military was facing a problem.

Even though aviation was really sort of born in the United States,

the United States was sort of slow to take advantage of that ability.

The Wright brothers may have started it all, but by 1917,

the Americans had fallen behind in terms of aviation technology.

So, this place was specifically created to remedy that.

There was a vast amount of money.

Over $600 million appropriated by the congress in 1917,

solely for building up the us aviation infrastructure.

A suitable site had to be chosen for the us to develop their air power.

It was an isolated situation.

There's flatlands out here and it was a good flying place.

It was centrally located in the United States.

Testing aircraft was only the start,

as the site soon became a vital cog in the us war machine.

When you think of aeroplanes, you think of pilots.

But actually, that's only a small part of the story.

What it takes to keep aeroplanes in the air

is a vast number of different skills - ground crew, engineers.

It's absolutely critical that people are trained in various

aspects of maintaining the planes and so, it's really about

building and training a crew in all aspects of maintenance.

This is the chanute air force base.

Chanute field, as it was first known, was used for technical training

and to instruct cadets in the rigours of flying warplanes.

The first real challenge for this place

came with the outbreak of the second world war.

Everything changed for the United States with Pearl harbor.

After that attack,

america was on a war footing and knew it was about to engage.

And so, this place became absolutely key to the air effort.

Us army air core expands from perhaps 20,000 in 1939

to several million by 1943/44.

Now, this expansion requires a training infrastructure

that is enormous.

Oh, this place is huge.

It's bigger even when it's empty.

It was all kinds of training that went on in here

and all kinds of activity from wall to wall.

There would be planes and activity and classes

going on, all the way through here.

Let's take a b-17 bomber.

A b-17 bomber carried a flight engineer

who would have been trained here at chanute field.

The b-17 also carried the radiomen.

They had radio courses and radio repair courses,

radio specialist courses here at chanute field.

There were four places similar to this

and they were filled with activity every day.

There were students coming and going all the time.

But it wasn't just the kind of training taking place

here that was groundbreaking.

It was also who was being trained.

At the beginning of world war ii,

the society in the United States is thoroughly segregated.

In 1940, the us census recorded

only 140 African American pilots across the nation.

But this would soon change.

There were black airmen that came here

and they were trained as mechanics.

But some of them had prior flying experience

and they were doing exceptionally well in the classes

and so some of the people on the base decided

that they would make them into actual pilots.

Fighting a war against a fascist and racist regime in Europe,

suddenly, the United States' own policies were under scrutiny.

So, it's a moment that United States realises that having this squadron,

this 99 squadron, training these black pilots,

is a way to indicate an opening,

a commitment to democracy, a commitment against racism.

Unlike some other peers in the army, for example,

they're being trained equally.

And so, this is a breakdown of segregation

in the United States military.

That unit would evolve into the tuskegee airmen,

who would become world-famous.

And so, the 99 pursuit squadron became the tuskegee airmen,

and they moved them to tuskegee, Alabama,

from here and became pilots.

So they were trained, initially, at chanute.

The forming of the tuskegee airmen

was a very important part of chanute's history.

These first black military aviators had a really critical role to play.

They flew over 15,000 individual sorties

over north Africa and Europe.

So, they really had a wide-ranging impact and sphere of influence.

And for their skill and bravery and commitment,

they received 150 distinguished flying crosses,

which is a very significant record.

Whilst the work being done here during world war ii

was vital to the us war effort, much of what remains lies empty.

Yet, the interior of one hangar suggests the site still had

a crucial role to play later in the nuclear age.

We're talking about a very powerful aggressive totalitarian

Soviet union on one side with a vast number of nuclear weapons.

There was a new type of aerial warfare during the cold war,

during this nuclear age, and chanute was at the forefront of offering

this training in a situation where mistakes could cost American lives.

These new weapons were titan intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Some of the largest ever deployed.

With that spirit and legacy of innovation and training

and reliability, when the time came for the titan missile programme,

chanute was the obvious place to host it.

Well, the 1950s, it was decided that

all seven different missile programmes would move here

to chanute and the training was conducted here.

This was the primary training facility

for especially missile launch and missile maintenance.

The titan missile housed a nine mega-tonne nuclear warhead,

making it america's single most powerful nuclear weapon.

And at chanute, the titan missile silo was housed inside a vast hangar,

so missilers could train in the latest deployment techniques.

They were fully prepared to go out into the field

and take the order, if necessary, to fire a missile.

The crews trained at chanute through the years

had to be vigilant and alert for whatever threats were coming.

So, chanute is one of the pillars

of the success of western power in the cold war and we're free today

because chanute did a very good job in training its people.

Chanute provided training for thousands of us air force airmen.

Until the government downsized the armed forces

and it was closed in 1993.

The slightly melancholy aspect to places like this,

the sad reality is that whilst war is live,

places like this are of a supreme importance.

But when the war is over, there's no real need for it,

and their legacy is one that is so powerful, but so quickly forgotten.

This was like a family.

I mean, there were a lot of people here just really enjoyed working

with each other and they enjoyed their jobs and they really enjoyed

what they were doing, it gave your life a meaning to work here.

And at least for me, that was a very important thing.

In a remote region of western Ukraine

stands an imposing building with an unusual charm.

You're out in this rural area and here's a hulking massive castle.

It looks almost like an English manor house

out of a Tim Burton movie.

On examining this palace, you know, you're struck by its grandeur,

its magnificence and yet, something really bad has happened to it.

It's brooding.

Every one of those windows looks like it ought to have

a ghost hiding in the draperies.

You could see how people could find this kind of spooky and unsettling.

All across this grand building are confusing design aspects.

This has kind of a split personality.

On the one hand, it looks like a sprawling English country estate

with grand windows and ballrooms.

On the other hand, it has a military quality.

It's got a moat and emplacements for canons.

Throughout its life, this building went through so much turmoil.

But what finally struck this place down

was a bizarre and unexpected twist to its story.

The foundations of this castle are buried in the 17th century,

when this area was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth.

A territory that stretched over 400,000 square miles

in Eastern Europe.

The palace was built by a guy named stanisław poniatowski,

who was a grand hetman - meaning a senior advisor to the king -

and a guy that, you know, exercised a lot of power

and wanted to build a palace that reflected his personal role

in this Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth.

Historian Ivan dudych has explored every room in this building.

Hidden behind the fortress walls, there is a real royal luxury inside.

There are bright, grand rooms that display wealth.

There were balls and thematic evenings here,

both theatrical and poetic.

There were also musical performances.

Life raged within these walls.

But this building doesn't only feel like a luxurious palace.

The parties came later, something else was going on here before.

It's not exactly a palace for a aristocrat to enjoy

all the pleasures of life, because it has some real military features.

It's up on this hill. It has a moat around it.

It has a couple of fortified bastions on it to repel attackers.

When you look at this place from the air,

you see the long, pointy corners of what's called the trace italienne,

the Italian shape of fortresses.

And this is designed to repel Cannon fire.

To the extent that poniatowski built a military structure -

one that could be defended -

that turned out to be smart because, in fact, this palace

was the focal point of a number of battles and attacks over the years.

Reflecting the violent times it was built in,

the result was a unique hybrid design,

an opulent grandiosity on the inside,

but a brutally efficient military structure on the outside.

This is pidhirtsi castle.

What were the defensive advantages of this type of castle?

At close range, it was easy to fire effectively from the castle,

and the fact that it had a bastion

and Pentagon towers made it hard to breach.

Here is a strategically important valley.

If you come charging up this valley

and if you can get up there with impunity,

then you can make inroads against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth.

Across the first 150 years of its existence,

the castle saw battle after battle.

But the warring wouldn't last forever.

It suddenly arrives in an era of peace from the 1770s onward,

because of the partitions of Poland.

So, now, this is a golden age for the castle

because now, it's in a region that's characterised by peace.

They can develop all of its economic assets.

As the austro-Hungarian empire starts to exert control over

galicia, this part of the world, it becomes a lot more peaceful.

And as austro-Hungarian empire policies

start to make this place wealthy

this fortress becomes a Jewel of a country house.

Designed with opulence in mind,

pidhirtsi castle now reverted to its original purpose.

The second floor was occupied by the royal rooms.

There were several halls.

Crimson hall, yellow hall, and the European throne room.

They all helped influence the decorative style

of other palaces and castles in the region.

There were highly artistic parquet floors, marble windowsills

and all the walls were covered with precious tapestries.

This castle becomes a place of ostentation.

It becomes a place to show off wealth.

But for all its glamour, there was something troubling

lingering in the background.

A gruesome tale that still haunts

the castle's empty rooms and dark corridors.

We're currently standing in the dungeons of the castle.

This place gives you the shivers. It's cold and damp.

The 18th century was a strange, bizarre epoch

and there was no better place than the basement to hide your secrets.

The second owner of the castle was waclaw rzewuski,

and dark legends surround him.

His fiancee Maria rzewuski,

a beautiful 16-year-old girl who constantly cheated on him.

Rumour has it that driven by suspicion and jealousy,

he murdered her.

Her body has never been discovered.

It's believed that her spirit never found peace

and she is buried somewhere within these walls.

Maria's spirit, however, wouldn't be the only one

to haunt the castle's corridors.

For, in time, a different use for this place

would soon see other lost souls join her.

By the mid-20th century, war had returned.

First, the Nazis, and then the Soviets invaded this land.

Not wanting to take any chances as the rampaging forces approached,

the castle's owner removed the last of the treasures and fled to Brazil.

The castle stripped bare is what we see here today.

When the Russians took control of this territory late in world war ii,

they didn't care about the opulent past of the castle.

They turned it into a hospital for tuberculosis patients.

They divided all the halls into narrow corridors and tiny hospital

wards, which significantly changed the layout of the interior space.

As the second world war ended, finally,

there was hope for peace and calm again at pidhirtsi.

But in 1956, a final blow was struck.

And just when the palace had emerged from centuries of war

and looked like it was going to reclaim its old lustre,

somebody was working up in the roof with a blowtorch,

doing some repairs, started a fire.

So, a lot of the damage to the palace that we can see

with a naked eye today, you know, stems from that big fire.

This place that was so strong for so long,

this fortress that existed for hundreds of years,

built to last, was so absurdly destroyed by a simple house fire.

And plans are now afoot for the next stage of its life.

The actual goal is to rebuild this place

and open a museum about pidhirtsi castle.

We are hopeful that this castle will attract visitors

and will have another chance to shine.

In spite of everything that was thrown at this place for centuries,

the walls are still there,

the new roof is up,

and maybe this place has got the staying power

to continue to dominate this valley for a long time to come.

In the mountains of Slovenia,

a set of crumbling ruins perch above a precipitous gorge.

You might think of this, at a distance, as an old monastery.

The thing that strikes you is, it's a very calm, tranquil place.

But scars on the mountainside

hint that the Serenity is not what it seems.

There's a whole series of stone walls tunnelling through

the earth and something about it doesn't feel quite right.

Structures scattered around this whole area

point to a history of conflict.

Somebody went to enormous effort

to actually cut through rock and excavate trench systems.

This building hasn't just decayed.

Massive damage was inflicted upon it.

Whole walls have been bought down.

And on the plains below this place, half a million men were slaughtered.

This site saw one of the most futile and deadly battles

in one of history's most catastrophic conflicts.

At the turn of the 20th century this region lay under Austrian rule

at the edge of the austro-Hungarian empire,

on the border with a newly unified Italy.

Italy wanted the austro-Hungarian land just across its border

in the Julian alps in what was, at the time,

austro-Hungarian territory.

With the threat of war looming,

in 1900 the Austrians finished building this - fort hermann.

The purpose of fort hermann is to mount heavy guns

that will control the valley and the pass below.

At every key pass and valley,

there are military fortifications that are very, very tough to take.

Local historian and tour guide Vladimir lipovec

is an expert in the Austrian border defence system.

They made 92 fortresses

all along the border between Austria-Hungary and Italy.

This position was chosen because from here,

you can see the Italians coming from the west.

From this window, you can see the enemy

and you can shoot the enemy.

Fort hermann really commanded this valley region

with particularly good viewpoints.

And you can imagine this fort perched on this mountainside

and glaring down at troops marching towards it.

But no amount of mountain defences would prevent the carnage

that was about to play out in the valley below.

Across the border, the Italians believed

this land to be rightfully theirs.

When world war I started, Italy should have sided with Germany

and Austria-Hungary. But, in fact, Italy decided to be neutral.

That meant that it was courted by both sides

and, ultimately, it was the allies who were able to offer Italy

the greatest prospect of success.

The allies promised Italy the prize of these disputed lands.

And in 1915, the Italians joined the war

led by the notorious general Luigi cadorna.

One commentator described him as an old Roman

cast in the big, simple mould of antiquity.

Cadorna, as the Italian chief of staff,

is the picture of the officer who has a headquarters 17 miles

far behind the front, almost out of hearing of any artillery fire.

He was an authoritarian. He was old-fashioned.

He was a strict disciplinarian.

He ran the army like a dictator.

One of the first prizes in cadorna's sights was fort hermann.

In anticipation of this, the Austrian's reinforced

their defences on the plains below, an area known as the bovec basin.

There's a whole series of stone walls

snaking across the mountainside.

And as you look, it becomes apparent these are trenches.

This is battery chello,

a nearly 200m-long trench connecting two artillery positions.

They prepared some positions to stop the Italian attack.

The Cannon was fixed here and you can move it for maybe 60 degrees.

The Austrian defences continued below ground,

where shored-up caves would act as bunkers.

To hide against heavy artillery fire,

they made a lot of caverns.

And this small division near bovec, there's approximately 500 caverns.

On 29 may, just six days after the Italians joined the war,

Luigi cadorna gave the order for his troops to attack.

This splinter is a part of Italian grenade, which were launched

across this mountain over there, which is 2,200m high.

All these grenades were launched across the mountain.

Approximately 200 grenades were falling around there.

All these grenades were producing strong noise,

which causes shellshock.

Fort hermann held its own, but Luigi cadorna was far from done.

He throws away large numbers of troops in pointless attacks

and then criticises his commanders who have had their units decimated

by Austrian artillery and machine guns.

And for minimal gains, keeps doing the same thing over and over again.

The Italian attack on fort hermann heralded the start

of cadorna's ill-fated campaign along the infamous isonzo front,

which ran south from fort hermann.

Here, some of the bloodiest battles

of the first world war were to be waged.

This is a front of only 60 miles.

On a 60-mile front, we have 300,000 dead Italians

in the course of the war, 200,000 dead Austrians.

This is one of the bloodiest battlefields anywhere.

This is the place where everything ended with just one battle,

but not before half a million men had lost their lives.

Eventually, in 1917, cadorna's men were nearing the bovec basin

and the mountain town of caporetto.

The frontline went through this, bovec basin,

across those two mountains or hills.

The Italian positions were on the other side, a little further,

and the Austrians were here.

And this was the beginning of the battle of caporetto,

but began here in the bovec region.

Instead of defending, the Austrians called in help

from a specialist German military unit.

They came armed with a controversial weapon.

They bought a special weapon -

gas - and this was very poisonous gas

and it was launched down there, from this direction,

to Italian positions approximately a mile away.

In a few seconds, approximately 500 Italian soldiers were dead.

The Italians, taken by surprise, break very rapidly

and the entire front collapses in a two-week period.

The Italian loss at the battle of caporetto

is one of the most comprehensive defeats in Italian military history.

General Luigi cadorna was finally sacked.

Despite their victory at caporetto,

the Austrian-German alliance lost the war

and the vast austro-Hungarian empire collapsed.

And at the end of the war Italy gets this piece of land

that they had wanted, but it's certainly not worth the price

of several 100,000 dead and the virtual rumination

of the Italian economy.

Today, the crumbling structures that litter the bovec basin

are all that's left of a bitter conflict.

Now, the region is known for the beauty of the landscape and hiking.

There's even a path of peace created

that connects the forts and the old trench system.

Now, they are abandoned, crumbling ruins.

Many remind us of dark times,

but some were once beacons of hope and progress,

lasting testimonies to human imagination, enterprise and spirit.

Captions edited by ai-media ai-media. TV