Original subtitles

male narrator: Previously on "Hunting Hitler"...

Bormann's headquarters, Tangier, Morocco.

Bormann goes to Tangier to set up the Fourth Reich.

This has all the markings of a military command center.

If Hitler is gonna come back, weapons are absolutely crucial.

In Buenos Aires, Mandel's bicycle

and plastic plants

began to produce machine guns, airplanes,

bullets, and bombs.

- I have explosives detected. - It's detected TNT, Tim.

Yeah.

After the end of the Second World War,

there was a meeting between Juan Perón,

the president of Argentina,

and Martin Bormann in Buenos Aires.

The deeper we get into a Fourth Reich in Argentina,

the more I'm convinced.

Look, what we got is a secret

Nazi headquarters in Tangier, Morocco.

It's connected to Bormann, who was Hitler's right-hand man.

We've got a munitions factory in Argentina,

which we've now established

there was government support for the Nazis,

and we've got 10,000 Nazis fleeing Europe,

heading for South America.

I mean, these pieces are telling a story

that's changing history.

narrator: CIA veteran Bob Baer and war crimes investigator

Dr. John Cencich

are overseeing a dual-pronged investigation.

While the team in Tangier, Morocco,

has uncovered a possible Nazi headquarters

where a declassified MI6 file reports Martin Bormann

organizing the Fourth Reich,

the team in Buenos Aires, Argentina has discovered

a munitions factory with Nazi ties operating after the war.

The deeper we get into this,

it's looking like these people truly

believed that they were gonna arm,

establish the Fourth Reich,

and they were gonna win this time.

The evidence is out there. They were planning something,

but they weren't going to simply re-arm in Argentina

and drive a tank division all over South America.

The only way that they were ever going to make this happen

is some sort of weapon of mass destruction.

And this has always been the dream of dictators;

it's always been the dream of countries that have failed.

So there's no reason to believe that the Nazis

would not entertain fantasies like this.

Attacks with weapons of mass destruction

do change the game.

After the utter defeat of Germany,

the only way for Hitler to come back was a giant weapon.

You need to take a look at this.

This is a map of Manhattan.

This map came from the internal files

of an engineer in the Nazi Luftwaffe,

the Air Force.

It depicts a plan developed

in 1944 to bomb the United States,

and more specifically, Manhattan Island.

This is chilling. I mean, they had a plan

for mass destruction in the United States,

using a weapon with a kill radius

which would have taken out a Manhattan.

That's a scary thought.

If Hitler lived,

one of his principle targets

would have been New York City.

By attacking New York City, it strikes

at the heart of Americans,

it strikes at the heart of the free world all over.

I guarantee you that even after the war,

they were all the more motivated to hit Manhattan

'cause that was their only hope of ever coming back,

and somebody told Hitler that this was doable.

If we know how close the Nazis

actually got toward having a workable nuclear weapon

during the war, then that brings in an entirely different

perspective on the Fourth Reich's actual operational

capacity after the war.

I totally agree.

Now, what we have to do now is dig into the database

and see how far the Nazis got.

Could they have made one?

All right, let's see what we've got here.

Region is Germany.

Nuclear.

All right, here is a document from the District Council

in Thuringia, Germany.

It's a deposition of Clare Werner,

and it goes on to say that on March 4, 1945,

"a Wehrmacht officer told me

"that today world history would be rewritten.

"I was at my window to look over

"the military training ground in the evening.

"There was suddenly a brightness

like hundreds of bolts of lightning."

"So bright that you could read a newspaper.

"Afterwards, there was a very powerful wind.

"Later I had, like many residents in the area,

"nosebleeds, headaches,

and pressure in the ears."

This woman is living next to a base in Thuringia.

She's standing at her window,

and there's this explosion which fits a nuclear bomb.

Exactly fits one.

If we want to know what was going on during the war,

we need to send the team to Thuringia.

And I guarantee you, if you can make a bomb

and set it off in Thuringia,

you could easily transport the same technology

or the bomb itself to Argentina after the war.

Let's see what we can find in Thuringia.

That's the big story.

Well, this is an absolutely amazing place.

So I wonder which window

was Clare Werner looking from.

narrator: In Thuringia, Germany,

World War II historian James Holland

and Third Reich expert Sascha Keil arrive

at the outskirts of a former Nazi

training base in the location that Clare Werner

claimed to have witnessed an explosion from her window.

- Now, this is the room. - Thank you.

Gosh, look at this.

Suddenly you see this huge flash of light

that lights up the room so much

that you could read a newspaper from it.

That would seem apocalyptic.

When you're thinking of the Second World War bombs,

you're thinking of huge eruptions of debris,

and grit, and suddenly lots of smoke.

But you're not expecting blinding flash of light

and mushroom clouds.

So we need to find out what was going on here in Thuringia.

This one is from 1944, and this one, one year later.

Looking at it, you can see the blast damage,

this dark area here,

the sense of spread, kind of pushing out.

In the 1944 picture, the area in question is nice and clear,

the one that follows a year later,

there's a blast that's spread out from a kind of epicenter.

So where is that blast area?

We're standing in the middle of a castle

which is on a hill surrounded by trees.

Boom. There.

There's our castle, there's our surrounding of trees.

And then if I look out this window,

what I'm looking at is a long, narrow, wooded ridge.

Long, narrow, wooded ridge.

So if I'm here, and I'm looking out through there,

my view is sort of across there.

That's our area.

We sure do.

If our photo analysis is correct,

that epicenter is just there,

and so you can see the land drop,

so that's going to shield a lot of the blast, isn't it?

Here we go. This is it.

Here's our track.

Yeah.

Look at it, it's basically empty.

I mean it's just the perfect place to do it,

because A, we know this is a military training area

in the 1940s, and B, it's a pretty safe,

secluded area.

You know, your blast is gonna be absorbed

by these ridges all around us.

So it's all starting to stack up.

Okay.

narrator: The team makes contact

with George Ribienski,

a historian who has spent his career

studying the wartime history

of the Nazi training base in Thuringia.

Do you know about this explosion?

We've seen the spread on the photographs.

People have been talking about nosebleeds and things.

I mean, what's the damage?

600 or 700.

Wow, that's horrible.

Really horrible.

What do you think was being tested here?

It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up,

thinking about German scientists,

physicists creating an atomic bomb.

But what I want to know is were the nuclear experiments

at this base undertaken by a rogue physicist,

or were they something more sinister?

An essential part of the Nazi's military strategy

in the final days of the war?

So we know this area has been a military area

for kind of over 100 years.

How important was it to the Nazis in 1945?

And these tunnels, they still exist?

So did Hitler ever come to this area?

Gosh, that's amazing.

Wow.

Clearly something big was going on here.

The team needs to keep digging in Thuringia,

but in the meantime,

I've come across an extremely interesting document

that relates to Nazi nuclear technology

after the war.

narrator: With the investigation

under way in Thuringia, Germany,

Bob and John turn their focus to the Nazi's ability

to potentially build a weapon of mass destruction

after the war.

It's from the 6th of December, 1946, and it was produced by

a Captain Harry Sperber.

He was a United States Army translator

at the Nuremberg trials.

Captain Sperber expressed the personal opinion

that Hitler is alive

and directing atomic bomb experiments in Argentina.

If Hitler wanted to build a bomb after the war,

he would have gone to Argentina.

The place to go.

Got the support of the government,

you got Germans, you got money,

you got wide-open country.

It's absolutely ideal.

This is giving Hitler a reason to keep going, is this bomb.

Now the question is what's there in Argentina

that's going to substantiate this, if anything?

Let's see.

There we go.

U.S. State Department decree 9-697

of May 17, 1951

creates a new atomic energy plant

at Bariloche under direct

control of President Perón.

Look, John, Bariloche.

It was a hotbed for Nazis in Argentina.

Earlier in the investigation,

we found a Nazi community in Bariloche.

Hundreds of Nazis came here at the end of World War II.

This is a refuge.

We found the Inalco house,

which could have been a safe house for Hitler...

We're not talking about a small property.

We're talking a mansion 40 miles away from anywhere.

With guard towers.

This place was a Nazi stronghold in Argentina.

So why does Perón set up a nuclear energy plant

nearby a potential safe haven for Hitler?

It's no accident here.

If it was a benign nuclear program,

you put it through a university in Buenos Aires.

You do not set it up in the Andes Mountains

in a German community.

That makes no sense at all.

Argentina cannot jumpstart a nuclear program.

They need experts.

They had to bring in people

that knew about fission and fusion and the rest of it.

See what we can find here.

So look here.

1st of June, 1948.

The following information

was given to the preparing officer

by Dr. Richter.

"In 1937 I was in charge of a research laboratory

"connected to Thuringia,Germany.

"In May 1948 I was invited officially by

"the Argentine government to Argentina

in order to do some work in nuclear reactor development."

Here's a Nazi nuclear scientist.

He was in charge of research laboratory

connected to Thuringia, Germany.

Bingo.

He's invited officially to Argentina

to develop a nuclear facility.

It's one too many coincidences for me.

I agree.

Dr. Richter really ties it all together.

Let's get the team back to Bariloche.

I'm optimistic that we can find evidence

of potential relationship

between Bariloche, the Nazis,

and nuclear weapons after the war.

When there's this much smoke, there's got to be fire.

I didn't think we'd be coming back here.

narrator: U.S. Army special forces Tim Kennedy

and investigative journalist Gerrard Williams

arrive in Bariloche, Argentina.

Hey, Federico, good to see you again, mate.

narrator: They make contact with Federico Palma,

an expert on the Nazi history in Bariloche.

We're here to find out everything we can

about a Nazi scientist called Dr. Richter.

We need to know everything about what this guy was doing,

where he was doing it, and what he was up to.

Well...

So where is Richter's research center?

He got himself an island?

Who gave him the island?

Yeah, but how does a Nazi scientist

just ask for an island?

Peron essentially was giving Dr. Richter

anything he wanted, money-wise?

Tell me about this island.

Where's it situated?

How big is it?

narrator: The team has uncovered

that 30 miles south of the Inalco house

and near the city of Bariloche is the island of Huemul,

the possible location of Dr. Richter's nuclear program.

So island's here, here's Bariloche,

and we have Adolf Hitler on the other side of the lake.

Mm-hmm.

That's far enough away for him to be safe from anything

that could go wrong on Huemul Island.

But then, coincidentally,

it's close enough, on a good boat,

that's a couple hours.

This changes everything.

Adolf Hitler and the Fourth Reich

could have been supervising

what Dr. Richter is doing on the island.

It is very possible that this nuclear program,

this is them starting where they left off in Germany,

but right here in Argentina.

We're gonna do whatever it takes to get on that island.

Can you get us there?

Mate, we have to get on this island.

Get us on the island.

What we got here is a Nazi scientist.

And now we find out he goes to Bariloche

where he's given an island.

We need to get on that island and see what we can find.

narrator: While the South American team

tries to gain entry to Huemul Island

in Bariloche, Argentina...

Let's talk about Thuringia now.

narrator: Bob and John review their investigation

in Thuringia, Germany,

where a declassified German document reports

that Nazis were testing a potential nuclear weapon

two months before the end of the war.

There's a report from Clare Werner

of what appears to be

a nuclear explosion at Thuringia.

And these pictures corroborate the deposition.

You clearly have right here

what appears to be a giant crater.

That's precisely what it looks like, a crater.

They were testing something there.

I'm fully confident of it.

And then also what the team discovered,

a vast complex of tunnels.

We know it was very important to the Nazis.

So what's going on there?

Now we've got local historians saying the Nazis

were digging tunnels into the mountain.

Whatever they were working on in the tunnels,

these explosions have to be connected.

These underground tunnels

could be some type of clandestine laboratory

used to develop nuclear weapons,

and some type of explosion took place thereafter.

The only way we'll really know is to get the team in there

and really dig into this.

We're gonna find something, I bet.

narrator: In Thuringia, Germany,

James Holland, Sascha Keil,

and historian George Ribienski arrive

at the location of a rumored Nazi tunnel complex,

12 miles from where a weapon of mass destruction

could have been detonated.

So where are they?

Goodness me, that's really enormous.

And that's just the number he knows.

Perhaps they are more.

narrator: This Nazi complex was rumored

to include multiple levels

of laboratories, weapon workshops,

and a control center connected by tunnels

stretching dozens of miles through the mountainside.

Gosh, it's just incredible the scale of it, isn't it?

It really is.

I'm realizing that this is not just

a little tunnel in a hillside.

This could be a major complex.

But if we can get in just one of these tunnels,

we'll have an even better sense of scale and scope here.

narrator: Although the Soviet army

sealed off access to this tunnel system

when they captured this base in April, 1945,

the team attempts to locate an entry point

in hopes of determining the hidden purpose

of this facility.

Oh look, there's a gap.

narrator: The team deploys a small remote camera known

as a Throwbot.

This technology is used by military personnel worldwide

to provide real-time video feeds of difficult-to-access

and unstable environments.

How far do you think you're in there?

Oh...

50 meters?

Yep.

No. You just can't get any further?

It's frustrating but I tell you what.

This is just 50 meters of one tunnel.

We know about at least 25 here...

- Yeah, yeah. - And possibly even more.

The extent of this place is absolutely enormous.

The facility here is filled with rubble,

but this could have been enough infrastructure

to support atomic research labs here in Thuringia.

Do we have any idea

of what these tunnels were being used for?

They were planning a Fuhrer headquarters here?

I mean, at that stage of the war,

the Germans were just clutching at straws, aren't they?

Fortunately for the rest of the world,

the Allies get here in time.

The ambition of the Third Reich

is laid out for us here.

Leading Nazis were just not giving up

because a nuclear bomb is a world-changing,

war-changing weapon.

One weapon.

If Hitler had his hands on that,

it's a totally different end to WWII.

And it seems he came fairly close.

That's incredible. It's hiding in plain sight.

narrator: On a lake deep in the mountains of Bariloche,

Argentina, Tim Kennedy and Gerrard Williams

have been granted access to Huemul Island,

which, according to a declassified

U.S. State Department file,

could be the location where Nazi scientist

Dr. Richter was working on nuclear technology after WWII.

From shore it didn't look this big.

So this is it?

Mystery Island?

Whatever was going on here,

this island definitely has to hold secrets.

Huemul Island reminds me a little bit of Alcatraz.

It's near a big city,

but it's also this secretive place

where nobody knows what's going on

because nobody's being told what's happening here.

There are trees everywhere.

This is what happens if you leave a place abandoned

on a fertile island like this

for 70-something years.

It's a massive building.

There.

Massive.

Okay, it's looking a little more structured.

Okay.

Oh, my God.

What building is this?

There are many stories around this place.

What was inside of here?

Whatever Richter was designing,

everything's been stripped: light fittings,

switches, the lot.

So all we can see now is the remains.

Federico, how many more of these are there?

How many more buildings like this?

Are we going up that way or up that way?

Okay.

So what have we got here?

These are the power buildings?

This is massive for the time.

Whatever his ambitions for this place were,

he thought he required a massive amount of power.

Enough power to power a city.

In the late '40s, early '50s, to develop a nuclear weapon,

you needed such huge amounts of electrical power.

The generators would have been massive.

So just that logistical operation is quite mind blowing.

This is one beast of a generating station.

The laborers, the manufacturing of it,

the transportation of it across a lake.

This is a huge project.

Yeah, definitely.

And probably out of a Nazi's bank account.

Or three.

It is obvious on the island that Dr. Richter

had money and infrastructure.

That's what we know.

It's what we don't know that's scaring me.

Oh, somebody's taken a hell of a pounding.

It's eerie.

Bombing from the air?

Bullet holes on the front.

It doesn't make any damn sense.

Why would you destroy it?

There's nothing natural about the destruction

of Richter's lab.

It's been blown up deliberately.

What was so important to hide that you let the Navy bomb it?

- This is solid cement. - Yeah, amazing.

Three, four feet thick.

With a few holes

to witness whatever's going on in here

'cause they'd have had thick,

shielded glass inside them, I'd have thought.

This is to prevent radiation from escaping.

That's how close they were.

And he's punching electricity into here.

Look at those.

Those are the sort of things you see on top of pylons.

Those ceramic...

- Yeah. - Dampers.

It's difficult to discern what was going on here.

Is there any evidence of how this building was laid out?

How'd it looked before it got smashed?

Well, that's a serious nuclear kit.

And this is a huge industrial complex.

I mean, he has everything that he needs

to do I think anything that he wants.

And that's scary.

Richter's laboratory was cutting-edge,

top-line technology from around the world.

All the machines that will enable him

to develop a nuclear weapon.

The Nazis in Germany were trying

to do this exact same thing.

God knows what they were doing.

Documents tell us Hitler would dream of New York in flames

and a new Fourth Reich.

And it seems to be coming together

here in Bariloche.

Make of it what you will.

This clearly was a secret nuclear site,

as secret as Iraq's

or Iran's, or anybody else.

narrator: Bob and John review the findings from Bariloche,

Argentina, where they have uncovered what could be

a secret nuclear facility on Huemul Island,

just 30 miles from the Inalco house,

a potential refuge for Adolf Hitler.

Just taking a look at Huemul Island,

some of the pieces of evidence,

we know that there's the development

of some type of weapon

of mass destruction in Thuringia,

and Dr. Richter travels

then to Argentina after the war

for the purposes of this so-called energy plant.

There is a lot of electricity being utilized on the island.

It's a massive infrastructure,

a lot of money, a lot of people.

There's just no question about it.

There was a nefarious purpose

for what was going on on Huemul Island.

When you have a nuclear facility run by a Nazi,

and Hitler could be down the lake,

it's starting to tell a story--a bigger story

than we started.

You have this gigantic body of water

and no urban development.

You can do what you want out here.

At the other end of the lake is the Inalco house.

Bunkers, guard towers.

Could have been a safe house for Hitler.

And then you've got Huemul Island,

which is the nuclear facility.

I mean, this is some sort of Nazi base

in the middle of Argentina.

I agree with that, but for Hitler

to carry out the Fourth Reich,

there needs to be some type of security

or fortifications

that would provide an environment

of overall protection,

an outer perimeter, if you will.

I would want to look for evidence of bunkers.

Are there fortifications?

If we could find evidence

of 1940s-era security measures,

I think it's a major leap in this investigation.

Yep.

- Hi there. - Alan?

- Hi. - I'm Gerrard.

Morning. Tim.

narrator: To investigate potential military

infrastructure that could have protected both Huemul Island

and the Inalco house,

Tim and Gerrard make contact with Alan Joos,

an expert on post-war architecture in Bariloche

and his translator.

This lake is the only transportation

between Hitler's home and Huemul Island,

where Dr. Richter's doing his nuclear research.

If Hitler was supervising Dr. Richter

and everything that he does,

the infrastructure has to be in place to lock down

and shut down the entire lake.

So I know you have a lot of knowledge

and expertise in the area, the geography,

and some of the structures that are here.

What I need to know, Alan, is what's between Inalco...

and the island.

Are there any military structures

or a built network between this island

and this house?

At the northern tip of this peninsula,

there's a tower, like an observation tower.

We have to put eyes on it.

narrator: The team heads for the location of the tower

which sits directly between the Inalco house

and Huemul Island.

Oh, there it is.

Gerrard.

Oh, gosh.

Man.

The architect had built Adolf Hitler's home--

Built this thing.

Strategically where it's located,

this has eyes not only on what's coming

and going from Inalco,

but also has eyes on Island Huemul.

Nothing can get through, nothing can get past.

This locks the entire lake down.

Yep.

This might just be the flagship.

There might be three or four more fighting positions

on this mountain.

This is a clear indication of military infrastructure

that could provide the support from Adolf Hitler.

There's no telling what else they could have built here

that hasn't even been discovered.

Alan, are there any other structures

like this around the lake or Bariloche?

Yeah.

A bunker.

Where's the bunker at?

This is feeling more and more systematic and strategic.

This was orchestrated and planned.

This is the Nazis raising a flag

saying that we're here and we own the lake.

And that island is ours.

If the bunker strategically is located in a way

that supports this,

that's what we need to know.

narrator: Tim Kennedy and Gerrard Williams

are in search of military infrastructure

that could have protected the area

surrounding the Inalco house,

a potential refuge for Adolf Hitler,

and Huemul Island,

a reported Nazi nuclear facility.

We have to see this bunker.

narrator: After discovering a mysterious watchtower located

directly between the Inalco house and Huemul Island,

they head for a bunker six miles away.

You can hardly see it.

Adolf Hitler is here overseeing Dr. Richter

working on Huemul Island,

he needs troops. He needs security.

This bunker can be a defensive position.

We have Inalco over here,

Dr. Richter with Island Huemul,

and the tower that way.

The only way to Inalco is coming by this or by the tower.

So a machine gun here with a machine gun there--

Killing field. Complete killing field.

As soon as I see the bunker, it is quickly and easily

recognizable that they're creating a choke point

to prevent people

from going to Inalco or Huemul Island.

This bunker wasn't built at random.

Everything was by design, by a purpose.

Was there any records about who built this,

when it was built, why it was built,

was there a work permit?

They don't know a thing?

Nobody knows who built it.

On having seen Richter's place on the island,

construction methods are remarkably similar

to parts of that.

This looks like it was moved right from the island.

Whoever engineered Huemul

engineered quite a lot of this, I would have thought.

This bunker is purely functional.

This is there to do something.

If it isn't part of the network that's guarding Adolf Hitler,

what else is it for?

After the coup that toppled Perón.

I can get in here.

What you got, Tim?

I see piping.

Whatever this room is that I'm in right now, Gerrard,

they had electricity, they had water,

and it's not a tiny bunker.

So this might have been, like, a headquarters area.

Maybe communications, talking to the tower,

talking to Inalco,

talking to Huemul Island.

It's connected, though.

You don't build a bunker like that for one night.

You don't build it for short term.

However long it would take for Dr. Richter

to be successful at Huemul Island,

that bunker could work and stay in place.

They could be there for years.

There's a drill hole that's about six inches deep

that's an inch and a half to two inches wide.

- Part of the construction? - No.

I think these are demolition drill holes.

I found char marks too.

This was explosive.

This is guys crawling through this building,

drilling into the foundation...

- Yeah. - At the juncture points

of the support, and bringing it down.

And planting high explosives.

A lot of it.

So somebody wanted this destroyed pretty badly.

Whatever this was, they tried to erase

quite a lot of the evidence here.

They've either blown it up or they've bombed it.

Again, it's the pattern of trying to erase things

to make sure that history can't be told in the correct way.

1945, you're not going to get any more fortified

than this right here.

No.

This could be both defensive and offensive.

The size of this, you could base 20, 30 people on it.

At least.

What I see here

is the Fourth Reich's blueprint.

I know what they did in Misiones,

I found their fighting positions,

I found the concentric walls,

and everything that they did in Misiones,

they duplicated here just at a larger scale.

So Adolf Hitler living in Inalco

has the protection he needs to oversee Dr. Richter

giving the Fourth Reich their new hope:

a nuclear weapon.

With success here, the Fourth Reich

could change the landscape of the world.

narrator: Next time on "Hunting Hitler"...

Were there any senior Nazis who came here after the war?

He was a person who lived in the shadows.

There's something strange going on here.

There is a rumor that Juan Keller is Martin Bormann.

Is that true?

Does this look like your father?

Yes.

Bormann's here; Hitler's not very far away

Four men came to her house from Colonia Dignidad.

Colonia Dignidad still remains today.

They've changed their name to Villa Baviera.

How can a sanctuary for Nazis on the run

now be a tourist location?

They get wind of what we're here for,

it's dangerous.