Original subtitles

NARRATOR: A derelict compound in Texas,

once the epicentre of a violent revolution.

It was exciting, but it was also dangerous.

Bullets were flying, artillery shells were going off.

They had front row seats to this amazing battle.

A top secret facility outside Berlin used by a ruthless dictator

to escape justice.

This place should have lost all relevance,

but it had one final dramatic mission to carry out.

An aristocratic party palace that became an IRA stronghold.

The women would use these statues,

these symbols of colonial oppression, as target practice.

And in Spain, a medieval fortress town abandoned under duress.

MAN:Events beyond the perimeter of the walls finally overcame

these defences and left behind a tragic legacy.

NARRATOR: In downtown El Paso, Texas,

a hollow construction holds a revolutionary history.

MAN:It's a very attractive, stately old building,

but once you go inside,

it's a pretty sad state of affairs.

MAN:There's wires hanging out of the ceiling.

Windows are taken out of their frames and stacked up.

Nearby, right next to the freeway, which straddles the border,

a second abandoned building was embroiled

in the same dramatic struggle.

WOMAN:It's a huge warehouse-style building.

It looks like it might have once been a small industrial operation

of some kind.

The rooftop is a prime vantage point to look right across the border

into the neighbouring Mexican city of Juarez.

And if you look closely, you'll see that there's damage on the walls.

Pivotal in the birth of the Mexican state,

these bullet holes are remnants of a time when El Paso was caught

in violent crossfire.

So the question is, how are these two buildings,

this one here on the border, this one here in the city,

how are they connected?

These buildings might look a little forlorn today,

but there was a time when this town was a hotbed

of international intrigue.

From here, a revolution was planned and a war was launched,

while citizens watched from the rooftops.

El Paso was once Spanish territory,

but it became part of the United States

when America annexed Texas in 1845.

It began as a trading post and became one of the most important

points of contact between the US and Mexico.

Between 1890 and 1910, the population of El Paso quadruples.

You see this explosive growth as kind of a window

on America's southern border, and an outlet and an inlet for trade.

This, once ornate, structure was born during that early prosperity.

Richard Caples was a former mayor of El Paso

and, kind of, a local big shot.

He had big plans for the city and wanted to help it grow.

Construction began on this building in 1909.

It was planned as a five-storey office building

with retail on the ground floor.

It was built at tremendous cost, $135,000 at the time,

which works out to be $4.5 or $5 million today.

This is the Caples Building, named after its owner.

It was still under construction when the abandoned warehouse,

half a mile away, hosted an iconic meeting of presidents.

The gathering took place in front of the El Paso Laundry,

which sits right on the border.

There was an historic international meeting between Mexican President,

Porfirio Diaz, and American President, William Taft.

This was an important turning point in Mexican American relations.

People crowded around this street,

so much so, that the American soldiers

had to push back the crowds

when they saw the carriage of President Diaz come along.

And when he came, there was a 21-gun salute, first by the American army,

and then it echoed towards the Mexican side of the river.

And then, the Mexicans also did a 21-gun salute.

David Dorado Romo understands the subtext of this event.

There seemed to be a lot of agreement and harmony,

but that was just for public show.

Diaz was really the archetype of a corrupt dictator.

He maintained his power by crushing dissent,

not really allowing a free press, favouring certain elites.

He was also known to be in the pocket of big American businesses.

In El Paso, Diaz was seeking to further cement

American support along the border in the run-up to a crucial election,

one that had already been mired in controversy.

A couple of years earlier, Diaz had said that he'd be ready to step down

and the country could have free elections really for the first time,

and he would walk quietly off into the sunset.

But when that day came, Diaz decided to run for president,

and he didn't exactly play fair.

Diaz had thrown his main political opponent, a formidable man

by the name of Francisco Madero, in jail during the proceedings.

This was clearly not a free and open election.

And it was Madero

who became the face of the Mexican people's burning resentment.

Madero actually managed to escape from prison, and he headed

across the border to El Paso.

At that time, that wasn't a major division.

There was no barbed wire. There was no fence.

Mexicans could cross freely.

So Madero snuck into El Paso disguised as a labourer,

and took up residence on the top two floors

of the newly completed Caples Building.

He made it the epicentre of his endeavours,

and he really only had one goal,

and that was to violently overthrow the Diaz regime.

So, on this floor, the international headquarters

of the Mexican Revolution was situated in early 1911.

So this was a place that would have served for diplomatic,

administrative, but also arms smuggling

and of course, recruitment.

Madero even managed to gain the support

of legendary Mexican revolutionary, Pancho Villa,

which earned him some significant clout.

With an open border,

these headquarters were at the heart of an explosion of activity.

El Paso then really became this hub of different revolutionary groups

who all set up shop in different bars, restaurants and buildings

throughout the city.

Throughout the revolutionary period,

the American government would change their allegiance.

Despite Madero advocating democracy,

the US eventually issued a warrant for his arrest.

During my research, I found more than 80 buildings,

that are still standing here in El Paso, that have connections

to the Mexican Revolution.

There were probably hundreds, if not thousands of spies.

Every little nook and cranny,

you're gonna find people plotting revolution or counter-revolution

or even counter-counter-revolution.

A lot of people have compared El Paso to East and West Berlin

during the Cold War.

You had Madero and his associates

plotting, raising money, building support.

Diaz had his spies gathering information.

No one really knew who was on what side or who you could trust.

And it was all building to a truly violent conflict.

On the 7th of April, 1911, Madero made his move against Diaz

and his troops.

A rebel offensive known as the Battle of Ciudad Juarez.

Madero had put together a force of 2500 men,

but Juarez was well-defended by 700 Mexican federal troops

who were in a very good defensive position.

They had artillery. They had plenty of weapons.

Madero was happy to just call it a stalemate and start negotiating.

But one notorious gunslinger in the rebel's ranks had come for a fight.

The time for talking was over.

While Madero sought to negotiate a surrender,

the more aggressive Pancho Villa disobeyed orders.

He went ahead and led his troops on the attack,

and a raging battle commenced.

In the city of El Paso this was very exciting.

They were right on the border.

People climbed to the rooftop of the laundry building

where they had front-row seats to this amazing battle.

So, this was one of many rooftops in El Paso

where people would stand on top.

There were some where you would have to pay a quarter to a dollar

to watch the revolutionary scenes.

They were treated to a spectacle straight out of the Wild West.

One story is that in one moment,

one of the federal soldiers dropped his gun,

and one of the revolutionaries got out his lariat and lassoed the guy.

He is able to, like a Mexican cowboy,

bring him in together with his gun.

And people on the rooftops started applauding,

just like if it were some kind of ringside seat.

But it ended up becoming a much more deadly spectator sport.

These citizens didn't realise how close they were to the danger,

and five were killed and 18 wounded in El Paso

from fighting that was taking place in Juarez.

Today we just let the newscasters take that danger.

Back then, everybody wanted to be part of the act.

So, these bullet holes actually have a lot more significance

than meets the eyes.

They were part of the story of the Mexican Revolution.

Eventually, after two days of intense fighting,

the Juarez garrison was forced to surrender.

This Battle of Juarez became the decisive battle of the Revolution.

It was enough to show that the forces loyal to Diaz

could not control the revolutionary troops.

Diaz fled Mexico, leaving its leadership up for grabs.

Madero eventually came to power in late 1911,

but he proved to be too moderate.

By 1913, another Mexican general led a US-backed coup, and unfortunately,

Madero died in the resulting conflict.

What initially was a relatively bloodless revolution

is going to become ten years of incredible civil strife,

and you're gonna have hundreds of thousands of Mexican refugees

crossing to the United States.

My grandparents came to Ciudad Juarez and then later to El Paso,

fleeing the violence during this period after the Madero revolution.

One of my great aunts had been kidnapped, literally

kidnapped by one of the federal officers.

America's role in the revolution was a sign of things to come

across the continent.

That's a story that's going to repeat itself

for decades in Latin America, where you have US military intervention

or you have the CIA overthrow democratically-elected governments.

And as a result, you're gonna have social chaos,

people fleeing into the United States.

While the laundry would continue to operate for many more years,

the Caples Building endured long periods of vacancy

before both were eventually abandoned.

These structures are symbolic of tensions that remain

along the border to this day.

But a developer has purchased both properties with hopes

of transforming them into apartment buildings.

If that happens, the future residents can certainly claim

that they live in a location of historic intrigue.

In eastern Germany, just 25 miles from Berlin,

a secretive complex lies hidden in the woods.

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

WOMAN:Looking at the security around this place,

this must have been one of the most closely guarded places

in all of East Germany.

It's only when you go deep into the heart of the site

that its scale becomes apparent.

We can see here that nature has reclaimed something

and it has reclaimed something big.

You see a collection of buildings that could house

a city of thousands.

But as with any ghost town, you have to ask yourself,

"What happened to all the people?"

You go inside - cobwebs, trash, crumbling masonry,

tumbledown structures that are fading or flecked or graffitied.

But through the thick foliage, a different style of structure

begins to emerge.

We've got something.

It's boarded up, and yet, you can tell what it is.

This is a control tower.

This is an airfield.

There's one massive building, near the runways,

clearly an aircraft hangar.

This facility would provide an escape route

for a ruthless dictator desperately fleeing justice.

Sven-Uwe Storm grew up nearby,

eager to understand why this site was out of bounds.

And access is still forbidden,

due to the high risk of unexploded ordnance.

That's because this location has a long history as a weapons test site,

which began in the late 1800s.

This was a place where they tested rifles, artillery, rockets,

and this was a place where Wernher von Braun,

the father of German rocketry, came to test his missiles.

They even conducted experiments on uranium for a German atomic bomb.

But in April 1945, Soviet troops were rapidly approaching

through these thick forests, as the allies closed in on Berlin.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, this complex was incorporated

into Soviet territory.

Germany was carved up among the victorious allies,

with the Soviets occupying East Germany.

They split Germany with the Western powers,

but they also split the city of Berlin,

which is inside the Soviet zone.

Initially just a line drawn on a map,

in time it would become a physical wall,

as the two camps polarised along ideological lines.

The formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or NATO,

in 1949, was seen by the Soviets as a hostile act.

West Germany joined NATO in 1955,

and Khrushchev formed the Warsaw Pact in response.

So, now you have these two opposing alliances, one western, one eastern,

and it feels like things are hotting up.

And for the Soviets, this is the front line in the clash

with the Western powers in the Cold War.

With a thousand miles separating Moscow from Berlin,

this location was earmarked to supply that front line.

This is Sperenberg airfield, the key link between East Germany

and the Soviet Union.

In 1958, the first phase of construction was rolled out,

as the site was converted into a military airfield,

capable of handling huge transport planes.

Anything that the Soviets were bringing into Germany,

to prepare to fight against NATO, came into this airport.

In the 1960s, the boundary dividing Berlin

was fortified by the East German government.

Desperate to prevent its citizens from fleeing into West Germany,

they installed guard towers

and ordered any escapees to be shot and killed.

Overseeing its construction was Erich Honecker,

and he soon turned his attention to Sperenberg Airbase.

Honecker was one of the key people in building the Berlin Wall.

A ruthless dictator who subjected all of East Germany

to his unquestioned rule.

Honecker and the Soviet army began the new phase of construction

at Sperenberg, turning it into a military airbase

of unparalleled proportions.

The real expansion is in the 1970s, when you see Soviet bombers,

Soviet fighters, Soviet combat helicopters

and lots of Soviet civilian airliners

that are shuttling personnel.

It was the fastest and most direct link between Moscow and Berlin,

and the only Red Army airport

that also had a civilian terminal building

for use by families, as well as musicians

brought in for troop entertainment.

Sperenberg base became the most valuable military airfield

in East Germany. There's no doubt about that.

But just as Sperenberg had gone through a major upgrade,

the Soviets' iron grip on East Germany began to loosen.

Numerous pro-independence groups began to form as people demanded

things like democratic elections, freedom of speech

and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

Honecker refused to shift his ground at all

and kept insisting that using the security service, the Stasi,

which had informers everywhere and thousands of agents,

that he would just repress all dissent in East Germany.

And he nearly pulled it off.

The East Germans were one of the last Warsaw Pact nations to rebel.

The Berlin Wall was being ripped down by Berliners East and West.

As the Soviet Union began the mammoth task of withdrawing

360,000 troops and their families from across Eastern Europe,

the new government brought charges against Honecker.

As East Germany frees itself from the one-party control,

a hunt is on for these creatures of the communist regime,

chief among them Honecker.

Everybody knew that Honecker had approved orders

for East German border guards to shoot to kill

if anybody tried to escape East Germany.

That meant that Honecker had a noose around his neck.

On the run, and desperate to avoid a show trial,

Honecker turned to his overlords in Moscow.

The last thing anybody needs is a trial with Erich Honecker

talking about the truth of the East German communist regime.

So, Sperenberg, throughout this period, is in Soviet hands

as they shuttle people home using this air base.

You know, hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops and, and family

that were housed in East Germany.

So, in March 1991, Soviet communists see an opportunity to spirit

Honecker out of East Germany.

Under the cover of darkness,

he was brought to Sperenberg by Soviet troops.

The couple then boarded a plane on the airstrip,

right beside the building, destined for Moscow.

Honecker was later extradited from Russia to stand trial in Berlin,

appearing in court in November 1992.

Honecker was defiant until the end,

claiming that the Berlin Wall had saved lives,

that it prevented World War Three, which would have killed millions.

The trial was quickly abandoned due to his deteriorating health,

and he died two years later.

At that point in 1994, the last of the Soviet equipment and people

were still being moved out of Sperenberg,

but since then the site has remained abandoned and largely untouched.

Local residents have formed a Museum Association,

offering guided tours and are pushing for the 2000-acre complex

to become a Unesco World Heritage Site.

In the Republic of Ireland, lie the remains of a doomed vanity project.

We're in County Carlow, an hour south of Dublin,

in a wet and windy Irish countryside.

One structure casts a long shadow over the surrounding landscape.

WOMAN:When you first see the building,

you almost can't believe it's still standing.

The place has been hollowed out, but the walls are still intact.

It's got the parapets and battlements of a medieval castle.

MAN:Anybody looking up at this tower

would realise that these people were in charge...

..in charge of their lives, and in charge of their destiny.

But the owners of this house felt the ground shifting under their feet.

The building once housed a powerful and influential family.

But a tide of change was coming to Ireland,

and this place was caught in the middle of it.

It went from an aristocratic party palace to an IRA stronghold.

But one organisation took up residence here,

whose role in Irish independence has been almost entirely forgotten.

It's really a privilege to have this at our doorstep,

and lots of people in Carlow don't actually know that it's here.

Danny McDaid has dedicated much of his time to researching this site

and dispelling the many myths that surround it.

When you look upon this house now you see a ruin,

a Gothic mansion which has suffered horrendous damage.

But for me, looking upon it, I see life.

I see what it was.

This is Duckett's Grove, historical home of the Duckett family.

The Duckett's were married into the Protestant elites

and moved to Ireland during the years of English plantation

and colonisation.

With the marriages that they made and the money that they made,

they built the Georgian-style house, a very square basic house.

But then in the 1820s, the Duckett family starts to massively expand it

and makes it into this gothic dreamland castle.

This was all about impressing their rich friends.

So, their rich friends would come around the corner.

They would look up at this structure.

You have this magnificent tower,

and even today, almost 200 years later,

you can see how impressive it still is.

Duckett's Grove was not just architecturally impressive,

it was also ahead of its time.

The technological achievements of the Ducketts was quite amazing.

What you had was pipes leading into a boiler house

just around the corner.

So they were able to temperature regulate greenhouses

in the 18th century, and from that they were able to grow exotic fruits

like melons and strawberries and tomatoes

and, quite amazingly, pineapples.

This would have seemed like the lap of luxury to the tenant farmers

who are just living in absolute poverty in the area around.

The family had a reputation that matched the extravagance

of the building and surrounding grounds.

The last of the Duckett line was a man named William Duckett,

and he was known as quite the eccentric, quite a philanderer.

He married a much, much younger woman.

Maria Duckett and William Duckett, liked nothing more than to party.

They loved a good party. And then William Duckett

would have ran downstairs to play the organ to welcome the people in.

Some of the parties would have lasted for days.

During the Irish Famine, Protestant William Duckett

extended his generosity to residents across the county,

regardless of their faith.

He was generally well liked for a British landlord.

He provided food for the workhouses and paid good wages.

Here in Carlow, the death rate during the famine

was less than in other counties, in part due to Mr Duckett.

But while he offered charity to his Catholic neighbours,

his wife Maria, a staunch Protestant, held a different attitude,

one born of bigotry and paranoia.

She felt that she was way above everybody else.

She had almost a disdain for local people.

She had a big distrust and probably a big fear of Catholics.

She was always looking over her shoulder at her Catholic staff

and the grounds workers.

Anti-British and anti-Protestant sentiment was sweeping Ireland,

stoking Maria's fears.

And that was soon compounded by the death of her husband.

William Duckett died in 1908.

But when he died, this house died with him.

Maria Duckett stopped all the parties.

She fell out with some of her neighbours.

So, for eight years, Maria Duckett led a very solitary life.

And her worst fears were soon realised.

In April of 1916, Irish Republicans launched an armed insurrection

against British rule, known as the Easter Rising.

You can only imagine, if she was paranoid before,

this must have felt like the end of the world.

She believed that she'd be rounded up and be killed.

So she packed it all in, abandons Duckett's Grove

and leaves for England.

The house became a sitting duck

as the newly-formed Irish Republican Army prowled the countryside.

The IRA targeted big houses like this

as a symbol of British colonial oppression

in their fight for independence.

Between just 1919 and 1923, the IRA looted and burned

almost 300 of these country mansions across Ireland.

But William Duckett's lasting reputation in the county

ensured a different fate for his grand house.

Because they had supplied food into Carlow during the famine

and because they had kept employment high, the local people asked the IRA

not to burn Duckett's Grove.

Instead, the army devised a use for the sprawling mansion

that would grant it a new life.

It's practically already a fortress.

You've got these walled gardens where you can garrison troops.

There's this giant tower where you can see everywhere

from over 100 miles.

The property was turned into an IRA training centre.

Soon three new arrivals would make their mark on the mansion.

During the Irish War for independence,

three women were locked up in the Mountjoy Prison in Dublin,

Mae Bourke, Eithne Coyle and Linda Kearns.

They were imprisoned for various Republican activities.

Trading guns, possessing seditious materials,

generally aiding the revolution.

What happened next made international headlines.

And a story straight out of the great escapes from World War II.

They fastened ropes and ladders, and they escaped.

When they broke out of Mountjoy Jail in Dublin,

they stole bicycles and they cycled from Dublin to Duckett's Grove.

The escape plan was orchestrated by Michael Collins,

the IRA's Director of Intelligence.

Three of the women cycled the 50 miles

to find the previously abandoned mansion transformed.

It was now a fully-fledged IRA base occupied by 400 men.

The women quickly set about getting the camp in order.

They set up an officer's mess, nursed the wounded back to health,

and even organised concerts to keep up morale.

But they weren't here just to support the troops.

They were part of what was known as Cumann na mBan.

Cumann na mBan was the Irish Republicans Women's Association.

They were at the heart of the rebellion in Ireland.

They ran guns.

They supplied intelligence.

They worked in Dublin Castle, supplying Michael Collins

with information.

They used Duckett's Grove as a command control centre

for operations against the British.

You might see in old paintings that there were statues once covering

the grounds of Duckett's Grove, but most of them are gone now.

The women would use these statues,

these symbols of colonial oppression,

as target practice, blowing them to smithereens.

One particular photo of the women survives, rifles in hand,

standing triumphantly in the door of the house,

with the Union Jack firmly under their boots.

In December 1921, the Anglo-Irish treaty was signed by Michael Collins.

And the IRA training grounds were dissolved.

But the treaty partitioned the island

into the largely Protestant north

and the predominantly Catholic South,

which would be named the Irish Free State.

Its status was somewhere between a province of the British Empire

and an independent republic.

Collins knew this was a compromise many of his comrades wouldn't abide,

and reportedly said, "I may have just signed my actual death warrant."

This prophecy came true just months later as the IRA split in two

and he was assassinated by Anti-Treaty forces.

Ireland was plunged into a terrible civil war.

Brother against brother.

After that, the fledgling Irish state needed money,

so they were selling off lands belonging to these big houses

all across Ireland.

And Duckett's Grove was no different.

The mansion was sold and its contents auctioned off.

Stripped of its original grandeur,

it then suffered further humiliation when it was consumed by fire.

I believe the cause of the fire was financial,

either insurance or taxes.

Because the bigger the house, the more taxes people had to pay.

And if a house didn't have a roof, you didn't pay taxes.

But this magnificent house was left in ruins...

..in 1933.

Many big houses in Ireland remain derelict,

but the work of volunteers like Danny,

has opened Duckett's Grove up to the public.

The building is wonderful, but it's the story behind the building.

It's the people that truly bring it to life.

The role of the Women's Army is becoming more widely acknowledged,

but the full scope of their activities may never be known.

As they grew older,

the women who had participated in revolutionary activities

were very secretive and silent about their role.

So sadly, because no one documented what women did cos of patriarchy,

we'll probably never know the full extent of their role

in the revolution.

In a secluded region of western Spain,

a peninsula juts out over a vast, shimmering lake.

WOMAN:We're about 180 miles west of Madrid.

It's a beautiful area, a glorious green landscape.

MAN:It's picturesque. It's peaceful.

It's like something out of a fairy tale.

Except that, there's not a single soul to be seen.

This imposing ghost town displays all the hallmarks

of an ancient stronghold.

WOMAN:The whole town is protected by this high stone wall,

and it's even got its own kind of castle tower

near the gates guarding it.

Within the walls, the town is laid out around a large central plaza,

which is bounded by grand townhouses and civic buildings.

You can imagine that this place was once bustling with life,

but not any more.

It's a classic frozen-in-time scenario.

Everyone just up and vanished.

And there's general decay, but no big obvious clue

as to what caused this abandonment.

Not many people are left

to keep alive the story of what happened here.

But sisters Vicenta and Rosario, are some of the last

and recall a vibrant community.

SHE SPEAKS IN SPANISH

The square has been a focal point since medieval times,

when the town adopted its name, Granadilla.

The walls went up in the 12th century.

A couple of hundred years later, the imposing castle was added.

By the 20th century, this town was home to over a thousand inhabitants.

It had evolved over more than a millennium into a bustling town

with 300 family homes.

Though she was young, Vicenta still fondly recalls family life

in her now ruined home.

Life here was rooted in agriculture and farming.

But in 1955, Vicenta's childhood was shattered.

This ancient town was about to have the life sucked out of it,

thanks to a dictator who came to prominence in the 1930s.

The Civil War was brutal, a bloody and violent conflict that claimed

hundreds of thousands of lives.

General Francisco Franco, aided by his fascist allies, Adolf Hitler

and Benito Mussolini, emerged as leader in 1939.

But the country had torn itself apart.

Poverty, poor housing, disease, drought and famine were rife.

The challenges that Spain faced must have seemed insurmountable.

Essentially, Franco needed to turn around

the battle-scarred country's fortunes.

So, one of the approaches that General Franco took

was to back these vast civil engineering projects.

Central to this plan was advances in irrigation.

Over 600 dams were built between 1939 and 1975.

This was construction on an immense scale.

The largest of these hydroelectric dams was to be in the Alagon River,

just 24 miles from Granadilla.

In 1955, officials declared the town a flood zone

and ordered its inhabitants to evacuate.

Some began leaving, but to force the remainder out,

the government declared that the land,

including the town and the farms, would become state property

and insisted that not even a chair be left behind.

Can you imagine what that must have felt like?

Just to be told to get up and leave

what had been your family's home for generations?

It must have been absolutely devastating.

The situation here was far from unique. The same approach

was being taken to towns and villages right across Spain,

to make way for these grand infrastructure projects.

In 1963, the dam was complete and the floodgates opened on Granadilla.

It completely altered the surrounding landscape.

These roads that used to lead into this town

kind of slip beneath the rising tide.

But there would be a cruel twist to this tale.

The rising waters turned the hill on which the town sat,

into a kind of peninsula, but that's as high as the water got.

The town was completely cut off.

It was surrounded, but the town itself never actually flooded.

This was the plan all along,

and engineers would have known that the town wouldn't flood.

In the end, it was either bureaucratic blunder

or bureaucratic deception.

Either way, for the people there, what happened was unforgivable.

The key question here is, why hasn't anyone come back.

In order to prevent the residents from ever returning to Granadilla,

the flood zone status is still in effect,

ensuring that no one can live here permanently.

The town is now a tourist site

and a monument to the many communities across Spain

that suffered a similar fate at the hands of the dictatorship.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media