Original subtitles

A Tunisian stronghold that held the key to Allied victory

in World War II.

The British Field Marshal, Montgomery, said

that the fate of the enemy would be decided here.

In Alabama, the pride of a community

that was born out of a harsh reality.

At a time when people

were struggling for freedom in this country,

this building stood as a beacon of hope.

A lavish complex in Lebanon embroiled in an unexpected tragedy.

You had every component of a bomb just sitting there

waiting for the spark that would ignite it.

And in Greece, an unforgiving institution

for the country's ambitious elite.

It looks like a paradise,

but this place was designed to toughen you up.

Decaying relics...

...ruins of lost Worlds...

...sights haunted by the past...

...their secrets waiting to be revealed.

In Tunisia, a hostile landscape

disguises remnants of a fateful confrontation.

Dug into the ground are structures that seem at one with the landscape

until you get closer to them.

Are they medieval?

Are they modern?

Who has made them?

This facility has clearly been stripped of everything of value.

All that's left is the echoing space and the concrete structures.

A complex buried high on the hillside reveals

who once occupied this site.

If you look up, you will see very clearly painted

exactly who was here.

These subterranean layers formed a vital part of the Nazi plan

to stop the allies dead in their tracks in North Africa.

The natural advantages of this piece of terrain

mean that nobody can get through here.

Overcoming this required the invention

of an entirely new type of warfare,

conducted by a ragtag group of rogues

who called themselves the Pirates of the High Desert.

Major Muhammad Maaz has served in the Tunisian army

for over 20 years.

He spent a decade uncovering the secrets

of these remote structures.

HE SPEAKS ARABIC

This site's construction began in 1936,

but it wasn't the Nazis doing the building.

In the early 20th century,

Tunisia was part of the French Empire.

The French were concerned about the Italian influence in Africa.

Libya had fallen under the authority and power of the dictators in Italy,

and they felt that Tunisia was next.

The French solution was this,

the Mareth Line.

A 22 mile long, heavily armed chain of bunkers

designed to protect Tunisia against an Italian invasion

from neighbouring Libya.

Bound on either side by natural obstacles,

these fortifications formed an impenetrable wall.

It was the perfect place to stage a defence.

Yet it wasn't an attack on the Mareth Line

that the French should have feared.

The real threat was closer to home.

Germany's blitzkrieg victory over France in 1940

led to the installation of pro-Nazi governments

in both the French North African colonies and France itself.

German led axis forces swiftly took control over much of North Africa,

including Libya and Tunisia.

The region's strategic importance would soon make it

a key battleground in the world's deadliest conflict.

It is a small step across the narrowest bit

of the Mediterranean Sea to Sicily, and you're on Italian soil.

Once you can fight the Italians and the Germans in Italy,

you can fight the Italians and the Germans in Germany.

Winning the war in Tunisia

is the first step to winning the war in Europe.

In 1942, the British launched an invasion of North Africa.

Churchill appointed Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery,

known as Monty, to lead it.

Americans landed in Morocco and Algeria to the west of Tunisia,

while British forces pushed in from Egypt to the east,

trapping the Germans in a pincer movement in Tunisia.

But the heavily fortified Mareth Line

now stood in the way of Allied victory.

Nazi commander Erwin Rommel was tasked with stopping them.

Rommel was beloved by Hitler.

He was so confident that the British called him the Desert Fox.

Rommel was determined that the Mareth Line would be defended

with the belief that so long as he held the Mareth Line,

then Tunisia would never fall to the allies.

He massively reinforced the line,

adding emplacements of pillbox and machine guns on either side.

He also added a five mile wide minefield that ran

for the entirety of its length.

Attacking this line of fortifications would

have to be done at great cost.

Paying a price in blood.

Even then, there was no guarantee a head on assault would succeed.

British Commander Montgomery knew the only way to defeat the Nazis

was to find a way around the Mareth Line.

But to get to it, he had to move thousands of troops and vehicles

across 20 miles of treacherous mountainous terrain

and then 100 miles of trackless desert

that was deemed impossible to penetrate.

It was a huge gamble, and something no-one,

including the Germans, thought possible.

But Montgomery already had a secret mission under way,

one he'd set in motion months earlier.

The solution came with this new British special forces

that were actually going to change the face of warfare.

This covert ops team of soldiers was called

the Long Range Desert Group, or the LRDG for short.

It was originally led by maverick military engineer Ralph Bagnold.

Bagnold was a brilliant geologist,

an amateur archaeologist,

Royal Signals officer,

he was one of the British desert lovers like Lawrence of Arabia.

Bagnold had spent the '30s pioneering new ways of getting

around the desert, like four-wheel drive vehicles

that could move heavy equipment through the shifting sands.

Bagnold formed the core of a unit

who know how to work with a desert,

rather than to have to fight against the desert environment.

They can go places no-one ever expected them to be.

On Montgomery's orders, they set out deep behind enemy lines

in specially modified off road trucks

to find a route around the Mareth Line.

The LRDG probed the mountains and out into the desert,

looking for a route that would allow the allies to avoid the Mareth Line

and outflank the Germans.

After weeks of searching,

they managed to chart a navigable course.

Armed with this vital information,

Montgomery launched a two pronged attack.

So the British Army pins down Rommel's troops

in the Mareth Line.

Another chunk of the British Army sneaked through the desert

find their way, assisted by the Long Range Desert Group,

and deliver a sharp left hook

to the German Army.

But victory was far from certain.

Two weeks of hellish fighting followed before the British finally

overpowered the Mareth Line, paving the way for victory in North Africa.

Tunisia was fundamental to the North African campaign,

and the North African campaign was fundamental to the success

of the Second World War.

Montgomery said that without the probing

of the Long Range Desert Group,

then his attack would have been a leap in the dark.

At the end of the battle for the Mareth Line,

its bunkers were disarmed and decommissioned.

The now empty structures were left to decay.

In the 1990s, a museum opened where we can all learn

about what happened here during the Second World War.

In Lebanon's capital city, an elegant structure sticks out

from the high rises that surround it.

Beirut can be a city of noise and commotion,

but tucked away in the centre of it all is something of an oasis.

When you turn onto this street,

the architecture of the space is drastically different

than everything around it.

You walk into this house and it's very elaborate, very beautiful.

It has marble floors, beautiful ceilings.

These were clearly built by and for the city's elite.

Yet the faded opulence hides the hallmarks of a traumatic event.

Everywhere you look, you start to notice damage.

The great windows at the back of the building are missing entirely.

It's like someone has reconstructed whole segments of the outside wall

but never bothered to paint it.

This level of devastation and destruction

doesn't happen over time.

Something very quick and violent has happened here.

It was a normal day, the weather was fantastic,

and all of a sudden, there was a huge circle,

just like a nuclear bomb over this area.

People had to evacuate immediately.

The city was collapsing around them.

That day would make headlines the world over

and headlines of the worst possible kind.

I've been through wars.

I've been through civil unrest.

I've never, ever seen something like that.

Eli Khoury co-owns this building.

When he and his business partners first decided

to make this the headquarters for their media company,

it had been neglected for years.

I'm the type that always wants to dream big.

When we moved in, which was in 2010,

well, it was in shambles.

Cost roughly about $4 to $5 million to fix it.

Believe me, it was funny because people didn't want to go home.

I mean, they wanted to stay here, work late.

Every Friday, we used to do like an in-house sort of little party.

But this building was not always used as an office.

It began life over a century earlier as a glamorous private residence.

More than once, it was a victim of the country's turbulent past.

In 18th and 19th century Beirut,

the aristocracy was formed by prominent Christian families

that held massive wealth and power in Lebanon.

They built these palatial homes in the style of European villas.

This one is called Villa Mokbel.

It was built in the late 19th century,

and it became known as a gathering place for politicians,

artists and great thinkers.

It's a combination of Tuscan and Ottoman,

and there are only five houses remaining like this in the country.

These houses were filled with beautiful art pieces

and things of this sort.

At one point, there were about 30 of these palaces on this street.

But few of these palazzos would escape the chaos

that descended on Beirut in the 1970s.

Civil War broke out and some of the heaviest fighting took place here,

right in the heart of the city.

As rival militias fought for control,

these buildings would suffer from artillery strikes and looting.

Villa Mokbel was one of those caught in the conflict's crossfire.

At the end of the war in 1990,

the derelict, battle scarred mansion changed ownership a number of times

until Eli stepped in to transform it.

But little did he know, Beirut was once again heading for disaster.

Things were going well, but there was a slow moving

catastrophe building just down the road.

Tuesday, the 4th of August 2020 started like any other day

for Eli and his 40 employees.

I came here with my colleague.

We were both talking on the phone and just looking at the port,

looking at the sky, and then the whole thing happened.

Oh, my God.

The scene I saw was incredible.

The explosion actually went through the buildings

as if they were liquid.

This is when my colleague and I...

He pushed me.

So we jump on the floor.

The lady that was on that balcony actually flew all... all the way

to that end.

And she fell unconscious, unfortunately.

The blast Eli witnessed destroyed 77,000 homes

and caused $15 billion worth of damage.

The chain of events that led to this disaster was set in motion

seven years earlier.

In 2013, a Russian owned ship, the MV Rhosus,

made an unscheduled stop in the port of Beirut.

Port authorities inspected the ship and they did not

like what they found.

They discovered that the ship's hull was leaking

and water was constantly being pumped out to keep it afloat.

They decided very quickly that this ship was unsafe

to continue its journey,

and grounded them there in the port of Beirut.

The ship's Russian owner refused to pay the mounting port bills,

and shortly after, mysteriously vanished.

The ship's cargo was unloaded and stuffed into a warehouse

right there at the port.

What was off-loaded was a potentially deadly cargo.

2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, a volatile compound that is used

in fertiliser but can also be employed to make explosives.

The cargo sat there in hangar 12 for years,

completely neglected.

Customs officials at the port sent multiple letters

to government lawyers in Beirut, pleading for the volatile payload

to be removed.

Every request was ignored.

In the weeks leading up to the disaster,

even the Prime Minister and President

were warned of the potential dangers of the situation.

Despite wide knowledge of this safety risk,

nobody took any action.

But there was an even bigger problem.

The ammonium nitrate was stored in bags that were spilling,

and it was stored with kerosene, hydrochloric acid,

and 15 tons of fireworks.

When you put all of these materials together,

you've essentially got the makings of a giant bomb.

All that was missing now was a spark.

That spark came on the 4th of August when an unexplained fire broke out,

thought to have originated at the north end of hangar 12.

It spread quickly across the warehouse.

Fireworks stored nearby discharge,

and hangar 12 goes up in a ball of flame.

Seconds later, the ammonium nitrate detonates

in a blinding, enormous explosion.

Oh, my God!

It creates the shock wave that goes across the city, breaks out windows,

knocks down buildings, blows people over.

We went out, we started seeing people with blood all over.

It was a scene from the worst World War II movie you've ever seen.

Over 200 people die.

You know, hundreds of thousands are homeless.

One of the most saddening moment was watching a lady

coming down from her apartment with a dead baby in her hands.

It was incredible.

Remarkably, we had 41 injured, but thank God no-one died.

Like many of the buildings in the blast radius,

Villa Mokbel was shattered into pieces

and needed emergency stabilisation to keep it standing.

Today, it remains in ruins until Eli can raise the funds

to once again restore it.

If I were to fix it again,

it will cost between $2 to $3 million.

If things get better, we would want to come back to this office

because it was beautiful to work out of here.

In the aftermath of the explosion, an investigation was launched,

but any attempt to hold particular government officials accountable

has been blocked on multiple occasions.

For the people of Beirut,

the long wait for justice continues.

The country is going through a real, real tough stuff now.

It's actually a tough job to be Lebanese.

It's not an easy job.

In downtown Birmingham, Alabama, is an imposing structure

that played a part in one of America's greatest times of change.

Standing alone like a monolith is this very dramatic

seven story building.

It might be a former department store or an office block.

It's just so vast.

What can it be used for?

On the upper level are long corridors with fading business signs

for lawyers, doctors and dentists.

But I'd say it's been a while since anyone sat inside of those chairs.

It's almost as if the people left in a great hurry.

Further exploration reveals there is much more to this site

than meets the eye.

The whole second floor is dominated by this enormous ballroom

with balconies and a stage.

This was a place for big public meetings of some sort.

Discarded paraphernalia hints at an ominous agenda.

They're strange symbols, a coffin and throne like seating.

It all feels sort of ritualistic.

Yet looks can be deceiving.

And all is not what it seems.

It was a place where people organised to make sure

that democracy was for all of American citizens.

Corey D Hawkins is a local lawyer who grew up in northern Alabama.

Since 2013, he has headed up the group that originally

constructed this grand century old building.

It was the place that African Americans were proud of,

and whether they were a member of the organisation or not,

this was their building.

That organisation is one often shrouded in secrecy.

We have been accused of being a cult, which is not true.

Being a part of the Illuminati.

I am a fourth generation Mason.

My father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather were all Masons.

Freemasonry has been described as a beautiful system of morality.

In simple terms,

the Freemasons are a male social and philanthropic organisation,

and its origins date back to medieval Europe

and the guilds of stone masons.

Through his career, a mason would move up from being an apprentice

to a journeyman, to eventually a master mason,

and at each level, they were taught secret code words and handshakes.

That way, as stone masons made their way across Europe to the next job,

each man would be paid according to his skill level.

By the mid 1700s, the handshake still remained,

but the society had evolved into a fraternity no longer connected

to the stonemasonry labour force.

Yet there were no lodges for African Americans.

That is, until Revolutionary War hero Prince Hall

made it his mission to change that.

Prince Hall was an extraordinary man.

Born, raised as a slave in Boston, by 1770, he had earned his freedom.

He sought admittance to an established lodge

and was prevented because of his colour.

But he wasn't daunted, he continued.

Hall realised he had to sidestep the American Masons

that denied him access.

Instead, he petitioned the Duke of Cumberland in England,

the home of Freemasonry, to ask permission to start his own lodge.

A charter was granted and the African lodge number 459 began.

Many African American lodges, including this one,

are descended from Prince Hall's.

Fast forward to the early 1900s, and Birmingham's Prince Hall Masons

were determined to build a state headquarters worthy

of their hard-fought history.

You have to remember that this was a period of Jim Crow laws,

meaning that segregation was enshrined in law.

This building, therefore, was to be the beacon of hope

for those communities.

The order raised $720,000 from its members,

and in 1922 construction started on their new Masonic Temple.

Two years later, it opened its doors.

There's a photo from 1924, when the Masons were congregated

here in this room at the statewide meeting.

But this building was much more than just a headquarters for the Masons.

This building was intended to be one that people could walk in proudly

through the front door without fear of reprisal.

It was full of excitement and creativity,

businesses and activities designed to uplift the community.

On the 17th Street side, ground level,

you had a drug store,

barbershop, shoeshine shop.

There were several dentists here.

Doctors and attorneys were in here.

Places like that, where people can just walk in right off the street

and not have to worry about if they were offending anyone

just because of the colour of their skin.

For African Americans, that was new,

gave people a sense of pride and hope in

what the future holds for our people.

Over the next three decades, the Masonic Temple helped transform

the Fourth Avenue District into a thriving business and cultural hub.

But the biggest test was still yet to come.

In the 1960s, the long overdue fight for civil rights

was really coming to a boil.

And Birmingham is today synonymous with the intensity of this fight.

In January 1963, Martin Luther King

announced he wanted to lead a demonstration in Birmingham.

It was while he was in the city to recruit nonviolent protesters

for the Birmingham campaign that Martin Luther King came

to the Masonic Temple.

And there is a photo where he's making a pool shot.

So, that lets you know that he was in this building,

and we're proud of that.

King chose Birmingham because of its strong segregation laws

and because it had officials there like Bull Connor,

who was a symbol of segregation.

But Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth,

a key civil rights spokesperson in Birmingham,

didn't want to proceed with the protest,

while Connor, the city's public safety officer

and de facto police chief, was still in office.

He believed that if a desegregation accord was reached

with local businesses, that Connor would actually reverse it

and then reinforce segregation.

The only way to remove Conner was if the City of Birmingham

voted to change how the local government was set up.

Jamison Davis played a crucial role in making that happen

from his legal practice at the Masonic Temple.

There were four or five lawyers that were in this building,

and we were all working toward the same end

of getting the city of Birmingham changed

from a three person city commission

to a nine person City Council.

Once the voters voted to change the form of government,

that changed the attitude of all of the people

that lived in the city toward progress by blacks.

Birmingham then held its first mayoral election.

Connor ran, but lost.

And with the more moderate Albert Boutwell in office,

the marches actually could go forward.

On April 3rd, 1963,

the campaign began with lunch counter sit ins,

a march to City Hall and a boycott of downtown businesses.

But toward the end of April, things were starting to flag.

It was hard for people to keep going in the streets and facing

the kind of abuse they were facing.

The civil rights campaign in Birmingham

was in danger of falling apart.

It would take a profound leap of faith to save it.

Some leaders came up with a pretty radical idea,

which was to send the children out to help lead these protests,

the Children's Crusade.

This was very controversial, obviously,

cos they were sending these kids into harm's way.

In May, the campaign was reinvigorated

by these young people's presence.

But Bull Connor, despite no longer having any real lawmaking power

after being ousted by Birmingham's voters,

refused to relinquish control of the city's police force.

He was willing to use the most extreme and vicious methods

to drive these protesters off the streets.

Over 900 children were arrested, and then he began to implement

even more draconian measures involving the use of water cannons

and attack dogs.

I remember looking out the window and watching the water

coming out of those hoses, hitting young people

and knocking them down in the street.

Often when protesters were injured, they didn't go to the hospital.

They came to the Masonic Temple because there were doctors there.

Outside, the tide was turning in the fight for equality.

The shocking scenes were enough to spark both national

and international outrage.

Eventually, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent a representative

down to Birmingham to try to negotiate a compromise,

and indeed, the result of all this was the effective

desegregation of Birmingham.

It was very good because you knew that you were making progress,

because in the next year, the Civil Rights Act was passed,

and the next year, 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed.

That that was the genius of King's movement

was to make people see for themselves that this was unfair,

that it had to change.

For a long time after the Civil Rights Campaign,

this building continued to be popular,

useful and a centre for this community in this city.

But as the years passed, the businesses slowly vacated

until the last occupants left in 2011.

Its legacy, however, is secure,

and there are multimillion dollar plans in progress

to bring it back to life.

As one of his last acts in office, President Obama

signed an executive order establishing a civil rights

national monument in Birmingham,

and it includes protecting the Prince Hall Lodge Masonic Temple.

On the Greek island of Spetses, is a collection of monolithic

constructions intended to mould the country's elite.

Here, in this town of Red roof buildings, we see this compound,

a very imposing, large white structures.

They were clearly designed to be stately and impressive,

but it's kind of eerily empty.

There's an old basketball court with a hoop just lying on the ground

and then what seems like an old gymnasium.

You can still see the wooden climbing frames along the sides.

It all gives a very ghost town feel about the place.

Entering through a broken door, you're greeted by a vast number

of chairs and desks piled precariously on top of each other.

Concealed within this Aladdin's cave of artefacts

is evidence this facility had a financial motive.

It says here how much money they were getting.

Rows of old lockers with the doors just hanging open.

Blackboards.

I mean, it looks like a school,

but why would you have such a huge educational facility like this

stranded on a tiny island?

This complex was built to achieve an ambitious national dream.

But for the people contained within, it felt more like a prison.

The first year was very difficult, especially for me.

- For everybody. - And for everybody, because we were bad boys.

This was no luxury five-star resort.

This place was designed to toughen you up.

It was a world-class institution with a very serious purpose.

Leontios Portokalakis and Panos Karamitsos

met here in the 1960s.

No Facebook, no internet at that time,

not even cellular phones.

So we had to rely on each other.

We became brothers.

It's a like a family.

Forging strong alliances was central to this facility's vision.

It was conceived in an era when Greece was still emerging

from the dark shadow of tyranny.

At the start of the 20th century,

Greece was still a relatively young country,

having been ruled for much of the previous 500 years

by the Ottoman Empire.

In a bloody war of independence in the 1820s,

the Greeks had taken back Athens and many of the surrounding areas,

but much of the mainland and the islands

were still controlled by the Turks.

That all changed when a legendary leader hailing from Crete

took power in 1910.

Eleftherios Venizelos was a young politician

determined to unite all Greeks into one nation.

By 1913, after fighting against the Turks

with his Balkan neighbours,

he managed to retake former Greek land.

Then, during the First World War,

after siding with the allies,

he seized back even more.

By 1920, Greece had doubled in size and population under his leadership.

Venizelos believed that this re-established country

with its deep cultural roots, needed a strong, elite,

a leadership class who could manage the challenges that lay ahead.

And he was very aligned to looking at his allies in Britain and saying,

"Well, how did the British do it?"

Venizelos used the centuries old English boarding school,

Eton College, as the blueprint for his vision.

The aim was to educate future leaders of Greece.

By that time, Eton had already produced 15 British prime ministers.

The Duke of Wellington supposedly said after defeating Napoleon,

that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.

For Venizelos, his country's future depended

on the realisation of this dream.

Yet no-one else was willing to invest in his idea.

He didn't have anywhere near the money to build his school.

The grand plan looked destined to fail

until an old friend offered him a lifeline.

Sotirios Anargyros was the wealthiest man in Spetses,

having made a fortune trading tobacco in America.

But he offered the cash on one condition,

that the school be built on his beloved Spetses.

In 1927, the Anargyros and Korgialeneios school of Spetses

opened its doors to wealthy families.

It featured five neoclassical buildings, manicured gardens,

state of the art sports facilities,

and even an amphitheatre with breathtaking views out over the sea.

The school brought in noted scholars and educators

to train these young men,

but it also really sought to toughen these kids up.

These might be the spoiled children of the elite,

but they wouldn't be spoiled for long.

The school adopted the harsh discipline system of Eton,

complete with a timetable that kept the boys busy from 6am to 10pm.

Every half an hour, we had something to do.

We were kept busy.

There was no other disciplinary system like that

in any other school of Greece.

That system included physical punishment

by the teachers for alleged bad behaviour.

The boys could be caned for the slightest breach,

from speaking in class to not cleaning their rooms.

If that wasn't bad enough,

the students themselves were forced into a brutal hierarchy.

Older boys who'd earned their rank

were free to dish out punishments as they saw fit.

That was one of the saddest memories,

because we had to cope with the discipline tactics

of the teachers and also the discipline tactics

of the boys of the higher grade.

The daily curriculum also included harsh activities

intended to build character.

Every morning the boys had to take a plunge into the cold sea

or face punishment.

That was the start of the day.

At 6am, in the morning,

it was dark in winter, and some days it was snowing also,

and we had to go inside the sea.

The regime was tough, but the school's early years

delivered on Venizelos's promise.

In the 1930s, future Greek Prime Minister Georgios Rallis

was educated there.

Yet Rallis would be the only Prime Minister produced here.

13 years after the school opened,

world events forced it into a radical new era.

Greece was devastated by conflict in the 1940s,

first under occupation by the Nazis and then by a three year civil war.

With the country in a state of post-war poverty,

parents were less able to afford

expensive boarding schools.

The school then began to target a different type of student

to keep its doors open.

Greek shipping tycoons working abroad knew that their children

would be well taken care of here by the round the clock boarding.

Another type of student who got sent to the school were

basically the ne'er do well kids of the upper classes,

kids who were out of control or making trouble,

a little bit like the way some people

would send a wayward child off to a military academy

to get straightened out.

Panos was one of those children.

I was a bad boy before I come here.

- - Yes. - No. - That's why they put me in this school.

- Yes. - In order to have more discipline.

Confined on this tiny island,

this was almost the school version of Alcatraz.

We have many, many escapes from students during our lessons.

But the school was running on borrowed time.

As Greek society became more liberal,

the school's conservative approach to education gradually

became less popular.

Student numbers declined in the 1970s,

and by 1983 there were only five pupils attending the massive school.

Without enough income to maintain the extensive facilities,

it was forced to close.

Today, Leontios and Panos helped run a foundation which is working

to revitalise the school.

Their goal is to host summer schools,

conferences and academies here.

Our task is to make the whole foundation more popular

and attract more seminars.

All of us, we feel very proud.

We lived a part of this vision.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media