All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S08E08.The.Battle.Of.San.Pietro.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

Tom ward (narrates):
Italian ruins that bought war

to the big screen.

And the fear must have been

reeking out of
everybody's pores.

They weren't in
Hollywood anymore.

A striking relic hidden
in a Scottish forest.

You come upon

this kind of mind
blowing set of buildings

that don't look like anything
you'd expect to see here.

And an isolated
desert town in Chile

where progress turned to horror.

Over time that
isolation was mobilised

for different and
more sinister purposes.

And a compound in Germany

that saw an old technology
come to the rescue.

It looks imposing from outside
but if you get right down to it,

it's really a great
illusion in many respects.

Decaying relics.

Ruins of lost worlds.

Sites haunted by the past,

their secrets waiting
to be revealed.

Hidden deep within
a Scottish forest

is an enchanting structure
with uncertain origins.

As you approach
through the forest

and across this old bridge
you start to catch glimpses

of something massive and stark.

And then out of the foliage emerges
something almost other worldly.

Its bold design and
strange mix of spaces

seems to defy explanation.

With its stacks
of concrete floors,

parts of it look a little bit like
a high tech parking garage

but maybe one that's
survived a neutron bomb.

These semi dome structures
look like fingers pointing upwards,

almost as if they're hands

cradling the structure
from each side.

At the end of this large open hall
with the dappled light beaming in,

it really does feel like a,
a magical spiritual space.

The architects wanted it
to become a work of art

rather than just a
utilitarian structure.

But was it cursed
right from the start?

This was a place of great hope

but it barely lasted
the blink of an eye

before it was abandoned.

Today, this place is known

to many as nothing more
than a spell binding ruin.

Architectural
historian Diane watters

has spent 25 years
uncovering its lost story.

What it is now is so unrelated
to what it originally was,

it's become a kind of
mythical romantic ruin

of international status

and it's become a
focus of artists and...

And writers and historians.

This is one of if
not the most famous

modern buildings in Scotland,

yet few people even
know what it was used for.

Amongst all the angular
concrete and cavernous interiors

there is something here
that feels out of place.

Right at the back
of the main structure

are these foundations

of what looks to have
been quite a grand building

but they seem
strangely close together.

You know I first
came here in 1994

while this building
was still standing.

Soon after 1994

it was actually burnt
down completely

and then once this building
had gone the design rationale

for the whole extension
had disappeared.

And the modern
extension stands on its own.

But what linked these two
very different structures?

There is one purpose,

one cultural function that
has probably produced

more grand soaring structures

than any other single
activity through history.

This is where the story of st
Peters cad Ross began in 1948

when it was the first home
of the training of the priests

for the catholic church.

After the second world war

the number of young men
signing up to a life in the church

was on the rise.

It was decided that they
needed a new bigger school

for all the people they expected
to be training for the priesthood.

And there was an
immense sense of...

Of optimism amongst
church officers

and this structure was meant
to be the physical embodiment

of that future.

Construction began in 1961

but behind this futuristic
design lies an ancient concept.

The layout is actually
based on the historic building

so the idea was
to create a cloister,

a kind of medieval like cloister
around the historic building.

It's function seems almost
ancient and monastic

and it's architectural
forms are stunningly modern

so there's this kind of
contrast between the style

and the function
of the building.

The main building is a key
element that forms a courtyard

with the wings
angling off of it.

And all the different
parts of the college

were supposed to interact
with this original building.

The first trainee priests
arrived here in 1966,

much of their time was spent
in contemplation and prayer.

These are what are
commonly called the fingers

but actually they are side
chapels for the trainee priests

to have private prayer.

And this cavernous space
at the heart of the complex

was devoted to the main service.

Mass.

Here we are in the middle
of what was the chapel,

the main chapel,

what the architects
called the colonel

of the whole complex.

The sides here we would
have the trainee priests

sitting in pews along here
with the focus on the main alter.

And that's the most
dramatic space in the complex

highlighted by these
remarkable stone alters.

But with its striking
form came a problem.

The building looks incredible
and almost space age in style

but practically speaking it
was in many ways a disaster.

There's fantastic accounts
in the student magazine

of coming down and this
whole central area of the,

of the chapel being underwater.

What you also see
here is something that

isn't that uncommon with
ground breaking architecture,

they still had a few
bugs to work out.

The heat didn't work that well, the
windows were cold and draughty,

there were leaks, it was
damp, kind of mouldy.

Yet it wasn't design flaws
that spelled disaster here.

A momentous decision
made over 1,000 miles away

doom st Peters seminary
before it even opened its doors.

And it came from the very top.

During the second Vatican
council which ran from 1962 to 1965

it was determined that
the training of priests

would be more a visible
part of the community.

They decided they should
be learning among the people

they would ultimately
serve as priests.

So, st Peters seminary
didn't really reflect that.

As vast cultural changes swept
across Europe in the 1960s

the catholic church moved to
bring themselves more in line

with the modern world

but with construction
already underway,

st Peters would be left behind.

It was here out in the woods
in this beautiful quiet setting

but it certainly wasn't
part of the community

and engaged in public life

the way that priests
were now expected to be.

I interviewed priests
who taught here

and what they said from
the very beginning is that

there were far too many alters,

the ideas from the
second Vatican council

had been that you were to...

To preach together
with the community

in groups of priests
rather than solitary praying

so they almost became
redundant from the very beginning.

By the time it was finished
it was already out of date

and basically doomed to failure.

St Peters limped on as a
seminary for only 14 years,

after it was abandoned

and the old house at its
heart had burned down,

it became its best known self.

The beguiling
ruins in the forest.

In many ways it's become
much more celebrated as a ruin,

as an abandoned building

than it ever was as a
functioning complex.

It attracts visitors
from all over the world,

curious about its
original purpose

and it has a cult
status among architects

and urban explorers alike.

Today, after years
of campaigning

to preserve this iconic
structure hope is on the horizon.

What do you do about
a work of architecture

that was really ground
breaking and important in its time

but never really
delivered its purpose?

Do you repurpose it?

Do you save it?

Do you turn it in
to something new?

Not every ambitious building
succeeds in its initial purpose

but that doesn't mean they
all need to be torn down.

Currently a charitable trust is
trying to develop a new vision

with education at its core.

In the Italian mountains
is a quiet village

made famous on
the silver screen.

It all looks exactly

like what you'd expect
central Italy to look like.

Olive groves, rolling hills,

mountains and beautiful
old historic villages.

Except for this Italian
village is a ghost town,

we see the remains of
a battle scarred church

and we see sort of tumbled
down homes and shops

all along these
old winding lanes.

As you move through the village

you can see that
the old stone houses

have been absolutely smashed,

you can still see fragments

of what must have been
roof beams or furniture,

everything has become
a sort of chaotic ruin.

The story of this
place is tied to a man

who came here 80 years ago.

He was used to bending
other people to his will,

he was the ruler of the crew

and assaulted the
surrounding mountains.

These chaotic ruins
and its hard-nosed visitor

set the stage for an
audacious deception,

one that would cement
this decaying village

in history forever.

Historian gaetano
de angelis Curtis

has come to tell the story of
the place he knows so well.

This scene that captured
gaetano's imagination

was the site of a fierce battle,

one that was witnessed by millions
in a ground breaking documentary.

In the end of October 1943
until the middle of December,

San Pietro and the
surrounding ground

was the scene of some
of the bitterest fighting

on our 5th army front.

Nothing like this
had really been seen,

this kind of combat footage

you know, raw and
honest including the...

The death and destruction.

No-one had really
seen it in quite like this.

And the film was replete with
you know, scenes of heroism,

it showed you know, gritty
American gi's struggling

against heavy German fire.

So, for Americans,
this was a good story

because they saw American boys

succeeding in defeating
the Nazis in Europe.

And for Italians
this was a story

of getting back their
national self respect.

The film was praised
by Hollywood's best

but this documentary was a lie.

Two years earlier an American
serviceman came to Italy

with a very special assignment.

His name was John Houston.

John Houston was
an interesting figure

you know, he was a guy who
had been working in Hollywood

after drifting around america
as a boxer, a painter, an actor

but then he really finds
his metier in Hollywood.

Houston's first movies
had been a success

so in 1943 he was
deployed to Italy

to make documentaries
of the allied victory.

So, Houston says I'm going
to go up in the mountains,

I'm going to go to a
place like San Pietro

where the fighting is heaviest

and I'm going to
film the battle there

for the American home front.

But he missed it.

When Houston and his
crew arrived at San Pietro

they were bombarded
by German shelling.

The Germans have already withdrawn
but it's a careful tactical withdraw

just to the northern rim
of hills beyond the village

so they're still
firing on San Pietro,

German artillery
is still in position.

They took cover with
the sheltering residents.

After several long hours
the shelling stopped.

So, once the Germans
have covered their retreat

to their next defensive line

the German
artillery switches off

and at that point the
villagers of San Pietro

are able to move back
out in to the fresh air

and John Houston and his crew
are able to move out with them.

When Houston emerges from
these caves he looks around,

he shoots some b roll of
corpses and shattered buildings

and shell casings but there's
no real combat going on.

The battle of San Pietro was over,
Houston had missed his moment.

So, Houston has the idea

I've got all these
gi's milling around

that have been
through the battle,

that they remember
what it was like

and the experience
is fresh in their minds.

Ok, I'm going to recreate
the battle of San Pietro.

So, armed with a stock of
film and a cast of soldiers,

Houston's cameras
started rolling

on a reconstruction of
the battle of San Pietro.

So, they're firing
their weapons,

they're taking cover from
incoming German fire,

they're flinging grenades,

he took care to use
concussion grenades

not fragmentation grenades

but the viewer can't
tell the difference

and he kind of recreates the
harrowing mood of the place.

He instructs these
gi's to occasionally turn

and look directly at the camera

so as to like communicate
to the stress they're under,

the strain of battle.

And it gives it a
really immediate effect,

all of which become
trademarks of this you know,

award winning battle
of San Pietro film.

Some 200 yards forward,

they encountered mines and
automatic fire from pillboxes.

In the heat of battle
the camera pans,

an allied soldier
is shot, he falls.

Everyone in the
cinema is shocked,

they have just watched the
extinction of a human life.

And then Houston shouts cut
and the guy gets back up again.

But not everything
that Houston captured

at San Pietro was fake.

The grim toll of the
battle of San Pietro

was caught on film

and real soldiers
being wrapped up

and eventually shipped home...

That was part of
the reality of war

being communicated to
American's back home.

The military brass
initially didn't like that

they kept pushing them
to change it to soften it,

they didn't want the
people back home

or the troops in training
to see these images of...

Of young Americans who'd
been, been cut down in this battle.

And there was something else
that Houston captured for real.

An aspect of this
film that is not stage

is the relief of the survivors,

you see these children and
adults coming out of hiding

where they've been in the caves

to avoid the allied and
German bombardments

and they come in to
their shattered town

and they're kind of milling around
in the rubble of their old homes

and shops and church.

But they're beaming,
they're happy

because for them at
least the war is really over.

At the end of the war,

Houston's San Pietro was shown
across the United States and Italy,

it was praised for its
depiction of a fight to the death

between good and evil

but John Houston kept the
secret of his documentary

to the end of his life.

A lot of people
criticised Houston later

when it came out
how little of the film

had really been shot
documentary style

and about his dishonesty
and how he portrayed the film

but director Martin
scorsese later said that...

He was working in a service
of a greater truth, a harder truth.

In eastern Germany
on the outskirts of Berlin

is an entire village
that's fallen silent.

The trees do a pretty good job

of hiding just how
extensive this site is.

That you can still just about
see the tops of the buildings

poking out above the canopy.

It is a major facility

of some kind surrounded
by a great wall.

What I see here is a
lot of utilitarian buildings,

almost as though they're big
sheds up close to each other.

And the outside walls are
littered with revealing details.

Some of the walls have plagues
or stone carvings on the outside

which hint at how this
place might have been used.

You have these beautiful murals

on the various buildings all
relating to the animal kingdom.

There might be some kind of
zoo or animal husbandry function

to this sprawling facility.

So, who or what was
it all built to house?

The story of what happened here

has not travelled
far even to this day,

its secrets remain

only in the hands
of a few keen locals.

Brigitte baumann is one of them.

And it's the grand
nature of this place

that makes it so intriguing.

These buildings are really
starting to fall apart inside.

But they still maintain
a sense of grandeur.

We've got gorgeous lavish rooms,

clearly built to impress people.

And when you look at them
empty they make me feel chilly.

This was once the grand
krampnitz cavalry school.

A lot of really famous
German generals

come through krampnitz
to complete their training.

In the 1936 Olympics

the German's get
gold and silver medals

in events like show
jumping and dressage

so there's this real cavalry
tradition in Germany.

But this luxurious world would
soon be tipped upside down.

With the arrival of
the second world war

the old traditions here were
supplanted by new technologies.

There needs to be a
place to train people

to do the old
horse cavalry tasks

and that's going to be
done now by soldiers

in fast moving reconnaissance
vehicles and light tanks.

Instead of horses.

The age of the German tank
known as the panzer had arrived.

Krampnitz quickly
developed to prioritise training

of these new armoured vehicles.

In a way the panzers
are attacking in the style

of the old shock cavalry

where you'd have
this heavy cavalry

with steel breast plates
galping at the enemy.

They could cross ditches
and crush barbed wire,

there was no denying it,

toe to toe with a
horse the panzer

was by far the meaner
beast on the battle field.

Panzers played the key role
in a revolutionary new tactic

called blitz...

Or lightening war.

The armour forces

in the German army
are not just tanks.

They're fast moving
tanks with radios,

that means that a
German tank commander

handles his tanks differently
from everybody else.

These armoured spearheads
that will rip through the enemy line

and be followed by infantry

that will come in
quickly behind them

to consolidate the victory.

At first, this achieved
great success

but when Hitler turned his tanks
towards the vast expanses of Russia,

their fatal flaw
would be revealed.

Advancing wasn't a problem
for the Germans in Russia,

the real challenge was waiting

for the vital supplies of
food and fuel to catch up.

Panzers are only as
good as the logistical train

that's following them,

the fuel trucks,

the motorised infantry

that has to be able to
keep up with the panzers

so they don't get
surrounded and isolated and,

and picked apart by
anti tank weapons.

The freezing temperatures

also played havoc with
all the German vehicles,

the engines just gave up

and turned whatever
they were powering

in to huge road blocks.

But the vast distances

and the horrific weather
on the eastern front

exposed a more fundamental
weakness in the Nazi war machine.

The German army of world war two

it's really a great
illusion in many respects,

it looks imposing from outside
but if you get right down to it...

It has these kind of gleaming
armoured spearheads

but the rest of it is, is
really a 19th century army.

To keep their
armies progressing,

the Germans relied on
some unlikely heroes.

And many were trained
here at krampnitz.

A horse could carry on

as long as you put
good shoes on them,

they get on through mud,

a horse didn't
need to have its fuel

delivered from
Romania or Germany,

a horse could eat the
local grain, the local fodder.

Despite the Nazi's grand
ambitions for mechanised superiority,

in reality their armies
depended heavily on horses.

One of the great
ironies of the war,

of course, is that you know,
the panzer gets all the credit

and yet at the end of
these long supply lines

the panzers are often
being kept in the field

by long lines of horse
drawn fuel trucks.

More than 80% of the
German combat strength

was pulled by these
beasts of burden.

But despite the best efforts
of the 625,000 pack horses

active on the eastern front,

the Nazis advance crumbled.

Leaving 300,000 soldiers trapped
behind enemy lines at stalingrad.

The German soldiers

were unable to look after
themselves never mind their animals,

they couldn't keep
shoes on their feet

and food in their bellies.

So, without food,

many of the Nazi soldiers

ate the only things that
were available to them.

They ate rats and, of course,
before that, they ate the horses.

Eventually, the Soviets
would push the Nazi forces

all the way back to
within 15 miles of here,

capturing Berlin
and ending the war...

And while the common soldier
was left to fend for themselves

the prized horses and
trophies at krampnitz

were handed over
to American troops.

Though it was Hitler that
ordered the Nazi armies on...

To the eastern front, it was
not he who suffered there.

Not only did the
German soldier die

in the service of
their insane fuhre,

it meant that the German
horse innocently died

in the service of
their insane fuhre.

Deep within the atacoma desert,

isolated from the modern world
sits a time capsule of Chile's past.

From the dust of
this expansive desert,

suddenly there's
this sprawling town.

The whole place is derelict
as far as the eye can see.

There's an industrial
section, there's retail,

there's residential.

This is or at least this
was a proper community.

Set in one of the most
inhospitable places on earth,

why would anyone choose
to make this their home?

There's a real feeling
of utter isolation.

In this town...

No-one can hear you scream.

There has to have been
a reason for being there

and these reasons usually revolve
around some sort of resource.

This explains the
industrial machinery

but there are some things
here that don't add up.

When you look
around the perimeter

you see that people took the
trouble to put minefields down.

This place was designed with
a utopian vision of the future

but by the end it
became a nightmare.

Local researcher, Luis
Enrique silva guerrero,

knows the difficulties of
living in this harsh climate.

Looking to the horizon, the
north south east and west,

the only thing
you see is dryness.

It is in a place that calls
man, er, to settle down here,

er, it's very hostile.

It would have been no small
feat to basically build this site,

there's almost no natural
resources to sustain itself on its own.

And yet there has to
have been something,

something there in the
ground that makes it worthwhile

but what exactly was it?

But if you know
what to look for,

the reason for chacabuco
existence is in plain sight.

Over there you can see
the deposits of nitrate.

In the early 19th century

it was discovered that
nitrates known as salt Peter

were a miracle fertiliser.

Here the concentration
of salt Peter

was actually at the surface so
it was very, very easy to mine.

The raw material went
through those tunnels

in to the crushing machine

and once it was
crushed in fine pieces

it was transported to
that building over there.

These huge vats of boiling water

were used to gradually
dissolve the chemicals

out of the pulverised rocks.

All of these pipes and networks
and so on are part of this process

by which you're able
to try and purify the ore

then essentially
reprocess and reprocess

along different sections

to completely purify
the final product.

With a global
intensification in agriculture,

the demand for salt
Peter sky rocketed.

Chacabuco became a boom town.

The mine became very successful

in fact some of the
other local areas

were bringing some of their
resource to the mine to be processed

because it was
actually that efficient

at being able to
generate the ore.

And it wasn't just the industry
here that was revolutionary.

This town was created

with a sort of
corporate welfare vision,

that if we can pull
the worker away

from cramped living
conditions in the city

and provide them with
clean living arrangements

and leisure time then they
might be better workers

and they might be healthier.

They were provided for,
they were looked after,

they had lovely
houses, they had shops,

they had a church, they
had a community centre,

they had a theatre.

But there is evidence that life
here was not entirely utopian.

What's interesting about
the layout of this town

is that it seems like
it's almost designed

to surveil the people there,

that at the centre of this community
you have the tallest buildings

with the tallest roof tops

and from there they can
almost see the inner workings

of everything going
on in their community.

We now know that the people
who lived in this community

were being watched

and we have records
of peoples intimate lives

being surveiled by
company security.

They maintained records

of which house was
making too much noise

or causing too much trouble

or other instances where workers

were passing out
socialist newspapers.

But corporate surveillance

was nothing compared
to what came next.

Before too long

this community became something
very different, a darker place.

The last kind of
vestiges of life

that you can see in
and around the buildings

is the graffiti...

And this is graffiti of
a very political nature.

In 1938 the industry
here ground to a halt.

And the town was
left to the elements.

But in 1973, everything changed.

Allegedly with support from the CIA
a right wing group launched a coup,

their leader Augusto pinochet.

Augusto pinochet
was a ruthless dictator,

he controlled Chile in
a way that was brutal,

it was repressive.

Pinochet's political
opponents could be anyone

but it could also be their
families and also their children.

Anyone who disagreed

with the new juntor
quickly vanished.

And where better to
make people disappear

than in the middle of a desert.

So, not only were the
buildings already there

but you didn't have to
go far from the buildings

and you were in the harshest
driest desert on the planet,

it became the ideal
place to lock people away,

away from prying eyes.

And these homes that
used to belong to individuals

suddenly became
great cells for prisoners.

Roberto sepulveda is
part of the organisation

that now preserves chacabuco.

From the moment
the prisoners arrived,

conditions were brutal.

Most of the prisoners
faced harassment

and few had enough rations
to barely keep them alive.

So, people who were
held here were expendable

as far as the Chilean
regime was concerned.

At its height over 1,000
people were held here,

most of them innocent...

But their spirit of resistance
is etched in to the walls.

The concentration camp at chacabuco
was closed after only two years

and the authorities quickly tried
to cover up what they did here.

They stripped away
a lot of the evidence

and they tried to
purify this place.

Today, chacabuco lies derelict

but it's history of
pioneering industry

and cruel repression
leaves a complicated legacy.

It's important to remember

some of the unsavoury
elements of history

so that we can continue
to learn from them,

that we can see warning
signs of authoritarianism

when we see them again.

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