Original subtitles

Weapons have existed as long as humankind.

For millennia they have determined

the destiny of generations.

Weapons bring suffering and death.

They show what humans can inflict upon other humans.

But they're also intended to keep the peace

and pave new ways for technology.

(lively ominous drumming)

Ambush the enemy, surprise them.

Insidious but efficient.

Strategies that have determined the outcome of wars

and have been employed for centuries.

We will present three weapons used in attacks from cover.

Astonishing experiments reveal their secrets.

The landmine, perfidious and invisible.

Stop you're in a minefield, stop.

The Dreyse gun increases the rate of fire.

It transforms the way the rest of the world

looks at infantry firepower.

Particularly perilous for calvary, caltrops.

You can't smell them, you don't know where they are.

You don't know how many they are.

That's Russian roulette.

The Romans were using caltrops

as early as 2,000 years ago.

Why are they so feared?

Since horses were domesticized

they became an integral part of battles.

Infantry soldiers are hardly a match for armed riders.

The problem for infantry when they face calvary is

the speed with which the calvary move.

And the weight they bring to contact.

The impact of a calvary attack

can decide the fate of an entire war.

And it takes a lot of discipline

to make foot soldiers stand

when they're being charged by horsemen.

The mobility and speed

of calvary attacks pose problems.

Ancient military leaders are trying to find

more efficient weapons to counter the attacks.

A tool known as a caltrop

proves to be an ingenious solution.

Weapons expert Mike Loades wants to take a closer look

at the small weapon.

How were caltrops deployed on the battlefield?

Well, this vicious matrix of iron spikes

it's called a caltrop.

And they were used on the ancient

and medieval battlefield in the thousands,

scattered all over the field.

The thing about them is that when you throw them

they land spike up.

They always gonna land with

one of these spikes sticking up.

So anybody walking through long grass can't see this

and their foot drives through the spike.

This one's got a barb so very difficult to get out.

Vicious against horses.

Kind of medieval minefield.

On horseback soldiers

can hardly see the caltrops.

If used correctly they can cause deep injuries

for both humans and animals.

The heavier, the deeper the spikes

drive into the skin.

This is particularly dangerous for calvary horses.

And of course speed plays into it.

If I'm moving fast the spike is going to impale the foot

or the hoof and that immobilizes you.

217 CE Roman infantry soldiers are fighting

the heavily armed Parthian riders

in the Battle of Nisibis.

As the horsemen gallop towards them

the Romans fake a retreat

and scatter tribuli on the battlefield

the Roman version of the caltrop.

They consist of four sharp iron spikes.

Roman tribuli have barbs

which are less common on their medieval counterparts.

In those situations the caltrop can be very useful

to control the terrain.

You can create dead ground where no one can go.

And that can prevent a flanking attack

or the enemy coming 'round behind.

So the caltrop is useful to control the ground.

Tribuli slow down calvary attacks

in the most insidious and efficient manner

often causing great losses for both men and horses.

Tribuli or caltrops are easy to make.

Every blacksmith can forge them.

Jens Christiansen shows us how.

He only has to heat a piece of iron

that has been prepared beforehand.

Bend the ends to achieve the intended form

and forge the spikes.

That's it.

The defensive weapon is ready for use.

What a terrible, terrible thing.

So this is the Roman version the tribulus.

The barbs are intimidating.

If that goes through your foot or certainly a horse's foot

that man is out of action

that horse is out of action forever.

So by the middle ages they had dispensed with these barbs

and the tribulus became the caltrop.

It's the same thing, different name but without the barbs.

Tribuli are part of the standard equipment

of the Roman legions.

For horses stepping on a caltrop usually marks their doom.

The most important animals in military history

are particularly vulnerable

along the underside of their hooves.

Horses play a decisive factor in winning wars

through to the 20th century.

German forces alone lost about 1.5 million horses

during World War I.

Ever since men have been waging wars

animals have been among the victims.

They are often the first ones to die

be it in the front lines

or when transporting weapons, ammunition or food.

Canons, siege engines have been pulled by oxen

rather than by horses.

And great advantage of the ox is

when he's finished his job you can eat him.

So animals are also a critical part of the food chain.

And the fact that they're mobile means it's easier to move

an animal food supply than it is a vegetable food supply

which needs animals to tow it.

Even elephants are used in World War I.

The most famous of them is a lady.

In Sheffield Lizzie takes over the work

from the horses in the steel industry

after those have been deployed to the front lines.

Hannibal's legendary crossing of the Alps

was accompanied by 37 elephants.

To this day it remains unclear how many of them

froze to death or fell down the mountain slopes.

Dogs are also deployed to the front lines

in World War I.

Most of them serve as watchdogs,

detection dogs or rescue dogs.

They play a crucial role for the troops.

A short moment with the animals

can already have a huge impact on the soldiers' morale.

Stubby, a Boston and Bull terrier mix becomes famous.

He saves his regiment from mustard gas attacks,

finds artillery grenades and wounded soldiers.

To this day animals are used in the military.

Sea lions and about 70 dolphins

are currently serving in the U.S. Navy.

Their mission, finding mines and enemy combat divers.

They undergo special training

to learn how to mark and report their targets.

Their great military value

often makes animals a target for the enemy.

For horses, stepping onto a caltrop

often means receiving the coup de grace.

In battle soldiers neither have the time

nor sympathy for a wounded animal.

Mike Loades wants to find out if caltrops

are really that easy to deploy.

And what I wanna find out is in a field of caltrops

what's the Russian roulette?

What's the chance of a cavalryman getting through?

We've got these sponges soaked in blue paint.

I'm gonna hide them in the grass here.

So the horses can't see them.

Get them well covered.

Mike Loades distributes our dummy caltrops

across a staked off plot.

If you were doing it in the middle ages

you would just simply be throwing them out as you walk back.

You could get it done really quite quickly.

At top speed four horsemen

will try to cross the field unharmed.

You can also see underneath on a horse's foot

how vulnerable it is.

Look, this is soft.

This is where the spike of a caltrop would go in.

Really cruel weapon.

Can the horses cross the whole area

at full speed and escape unscathed?

Action!

Caltrops are invisible

to a galloping horse and its rider.

In our experiment of course

we make sure no animal is harmed.

The worst that can happen are some color stains.

But in war stepping on a caltrop

would mean game over for the horse

and often also for the rider.

Okay, let's have a look.

I can see straight away that Absalon

has fallen victim to a caltrop.

Look at that.

You can see the streak of blue down his leg.

The horse would be down, the rider would be thrown.

They're out of the battle.

Look at that.

On his hind leg this horse as well has stepped on a sponge.

Which means he would have stepped on a caltrop.

Look at that.

That's, even being this wet I think there'd be a trace.

So maybe you survived.

Nothing here.

Both hooves are clean.

But that's two horses out of four in that one run

got struck by caltrops.

Imagine if you, if you're in a calvary charge

and your fellows go down and, you know, the cry would go up.

Caltrops!

It would take a brave man or a foolish man

to ride their horse through.

Now, that's Russian roulette.

Our experiment has shown

there is no protection against a caltrop attack.

Nevertheless the weapon can harm both friend and foe.

One of the few historical depictions

of documenting the use of caltrops

is a mural in the Chapel of Schonenbuchen

in Southern Germany.

It depicts mercenaries on a raid

in the Black Forest in 1444.

Farmers are trying to stop them with caltrops.

You put baskets of caltrops on a mountain pass

that's the only way to get to your town.

Then you decimate an army before it arrives.

You put baskets of caltrops through a woodland causeway

then you cause chaos in an attacking army.

You don't even have to fight them.

Are there only just a few

historical depictions of caltrops

because they are considered dishonorable weapons?

Regardless, over the course of history

millions of them have been manufactured.

And the ingenuity of medieval weapon engineers

will bring more ideas to light.

The caltrop is a silent assassin.

It hides and waits for it's victims.

But sometimes it's used more actively.

We actually have evidence of caltrops

in clay pots, pots that could be dropped

from the height of city walls or castles.

But you would think that once the pot smashed

and these caltrops were on the ground

everyone would know where they were.

They would know it was a minefield.

But there was something else in the pot.

When the pots break

not only caltrops cover the battlefield

the result is one of the first chemical weapons of history.

The other ingredient in the pot of caltrops was quicklime.

Quicklime's used in building materials, mortar, cement.

This is it when it's set.

This is now inert.

But before it's inert it's a very,

very dangerous substance in powder form.

That's why for this demonstration

we're using flour, not the real thing.

Quicklime is made from crushed seashells and limestone

that are then heated to a very, very high temperature.

And then you get this substance that reacts with water,

and reacts with any moisture.

And it has a rapid acceleration in temperature.

And it burns like acid.

The clay pots filled with caltrops

prove to be a particularly efficient

defensive weapon in sieges.

You got it?

Sometimes medieval defendants

use in the upwards of several hundred clay pots.

(dramatic thundering drumming)

If this was really quicklime

it would be a scene of true terror.

This dust would be getting down the back,

behind your armor, you couldn't get at it.

It would be getting in your eyes.

Everything would be stinging.

And you would be blinded.

Quicklime is completely caustic for humans.

It's basically an acid

and causes extremely bad chemical burns.

It's also highly flammable.

So if in addition to the caltrops and quicklime

you add other highly flammable substances

you can effortlessly make it all catch fire.

This stuff if it's quicklime

touching the moisture in your eyes

would burn your eyes out.

And you could not see and you would stand on the caltrops.

This always caught the enemy off guard,

slowed down attacks on the battlefield

or prevented them altogether.

The fact that caltrops are so easy to manufacture

makes them a cheap and mass produced defensive weapon.

They remain important

even when motor vehicles are introduced.

Modern caltrops and their variations like spike strips

destroy car tires even today.

Police all around the globe use them.

They are one of the few weapons in history

that have been deployed almost unaltered

since the Roman era.

Our next weapon is also used to ambush the enemy.

But unlike caltrops it is suitable

for both offense and defense, the Dreyse needle gun.

3rd of July, 1866 Koniggratz, Northern Bohemia.

440,000 soldiers of the two most powerful states

in the German Confederation

are facing each other in battle.

Whoever wins this war will win the fight for the hegemony

and power over the future of what we know today as Germany.

The Austrian troops are armed

with traditional muzzle-loaders which have a long reach.

On the other side Prussian soldiers

equipped with state of the art breech-loading guns.

These weapons will revolutionize warfare in Europe.

Weapons Expert Wolfgang Stabe

wants to test this wonder weapon from 1866 for us.

What makes the needle gun so innovative?

A fascinating weapon.

It's amazing what it can do.

In the 16th century

the musket becomes the standard weapon of infantry.

Compared to its predecessor

the shooting range is especially long.

But muskets and all other muzzle-loaders

have one major downside.

Muzzle-loaders are the original firearm.

You have a muzzle that's closed on one end.

It's loaded with black powder or another type of explosive

and then the projectile.

The problem is you always have to

lean over the firearm to reload it.

Everything needs to be rammed down

into the barrel really snugly.

This results in the line formation.

All soldiers fire their weapons simultaneously.

Cover is not an issue yet just like camouflage.

Uniforms in the early modern era

are very, very colorful because you have to be able

to tell apart the various units on the battlefield.

This may sound odd at first but you have to remember

that due to the powder dust coming from the musket shells

the air was filled with a thick smoke.

As a commander you need to be able to see

where which unit is standing.

How is it possible that soldiers

still fight unprotected in the 19th century

clad in colorful uniforms that ar easy to spot?

And only a few decades later

fight each other from the trenches.

German inventor Johann Nikolaus Von Dreyse

has been working on a new gun since 1827.

Back then the ignition of standard weapons

was not weather proof

because the wheel locks were placed outside the weapon.

In Dreyse's gun however

the ignition takes place within the wheel lock

with the help of an ignition needle piercing the cartridge.

Dreyse builds a cartridge that contains a projectile,

a propellant and black powder all in one piece

which is placed into the muzzle

from the rear side of the gun.

In 1841 the Prussian Army starts buying this gun

in large quantities.

But it would take another 20 years

until its first major debut.

Wolfgang Stabe is an expert in blasting techniques

and historical weapons.

To this day he is fascinated

by the development of the Dreyse gun.

The lock system was so revolutionary

that it's been copied a million times

and it's still used today.

It would have been impossible to manufacture

modern weapons without this crucial invention.

The Dreyse needle gun

a breech-loading gun with a cylindrical lock.

Firing pin cartridges are used as ammunition.

They still have paper cases

but they make it possible to refill the propellant,

black powder and projectile with just one movement.

Our experiment begins.

Is the needle gun really superior to the musket?

Wolfgang Stabe and the gunmen are making preparations.

Which one will fire faster

the Dreyse Gun, a breech-loading gun

or the muzzle-loader which is easy to handle?

We're about to find out.

We've got one minute.

Plastic bottles filled with liquid

and tin serve as targets.

The test is intended to show what the Austrians had to face

in 1866 when they encountered the Prussians

and their new guns.

Fire at will.

Compared to the Dreyse

and its all in one cartridge

loading the muzzle is time consuming.

The needle gun clearly has the edge in terms of speed.

The minute is over.

Wolfgang Stabe has managed three shots in 60 seconds.

One of them hit the target.

His opponent only manages to load and fire his gun once.

I was superior by far

in terms of rate of fire.

The quick loading and firing

of the Dreyse needle gun

is a game changer in battlefield tactics.

With the help of two gotcha teams

Wolfgang Stabe wants to demonstrate why.

Hi everyone, thanks for being here today.

We're about to conduct a historical experiment.

Blue is Prussia, these are the Austrians.

It's the battle between a breech-loading system

and a muzzle-loader system.

Everyone has the same weapons.

The Austrians are only allowed to reload once

and have to wait 20 to 30 seconds.

This is about the time it took

a historical muzzle-loader to reload.

The Prussians are allowed to reload once, fire,

reload once, fire.

Team Orange has to fire together

and load while standing just as the musketeers had to do

until the middle of the 19th century.

Team Blue may now take cover.

Attention everyone.

Get ready.

Three, two, one.

Being able to fire faster

and to take cover to reload.

The benefits of the needle gun

should be quite obvious during our test.

How real.

Just imagine how muzzle-loaders used to shoot

back in the days.

They all fired their guns at the same time.

It maybe took a well-trained shooter

20 seconds to fire one shot, they're an easy target.

Hit.

One man down.

Team Blue is still intact, zero hits.

They're bending down and they're much harder to hit.

This doesn't look good at all for them.

Oh come on, hit 'em.

Team Blue wins.

Team Orange doesn't stand the slightest chance

against the attack from cover.

Team Blue was significantly faster.

They could take cover

and were there for a much smaller target.

Team Orange had to stand.

Firing one shot took them much longer

which is historically accurate.

And this is why Blue won.

On the 19th century battlefield

the breech-loading technique still has a few kinks

but still turns out to be a pioneer development.

Only the generals still have their reservations.

You have to imagine the generals

as very conservative people.

Never change a winning team.

Never change a winning weapon.

They were also worried that introducing

new gun systems like the Dreyse needle gun

would make the ammunition use skyrocket.

Paradoxically because it could fire quickly.

And that this would incur enormous costs.

The Battle of Koniggratz in 1866 however

puts any doubts to rest.

A wooden hill known as Svib Forest

is a key position for the Prussians.

The Prussians entrenched themselves

in a forest.

So they took advantage of the benefit

their breech-loading guns had over the muzzle-loaders,

the higher rate of fire

and they could be used from any position.

The longer reach of the Austrian muzzle-loaders

served no purpose on the ground in Koniggratz.

The battle claims an unusually large number of victims.

The Prussians fire their Dreyse guns from their cover.

By nightfall 13,000 Austrians are dead or missing.

The Prussians only lose about 2,000 men.

So this becomes the battle-winning weapon in 1866.

And it transforms the way

the rest of the world looks at infantry firepower.

All of a sudden there's a new way of fighting with infantry

and it involves breech-loading rifled weapons.

Fundamental changes of battlefield tactics

can almost always be traced back to new weapons technology.

It is mostly up to the generals to make the next call:

How do I use my units best?

The 17th century serves as an example of this.

The bayonet replaces the pike and leads to the introduction

of what is called line formation.

Infantry units form in line in two to three ranks.

Such ranks of soldiers can be up to a thousand meters long.

On command all weapons are fired simultaneously

with fatal blows known as volley fire.

Infantry battles in the age of the musket

were fought by platoons, regiments and whole armies of men

standing in two and three lines

exchanging volleys of leveled fire not aimed fire.

Soldiers were not trained to aim at the enemy.

They were trained to level,

to point their musket dead ahead towards the enemy.

And you fired as many rounds as possible

as quickly as possible

hoping that you would do more damage to the enemy

than they would do to you.

Precision was not an issue.

This was about masses of bullets being fired

as quickly as possible.

The rate of fire that drives a needle gun

will change that.

Battles become more mobile.

Soldiers take cover and shoot at the enemy forces

in a targeted way.

Another development forces a change in tactics.

The dense smoke of black powder looms over the battlefields

well into the 19th century.

French chemist Paul Vielle

invents a new gunpowder in 1884.

The Poudre B is almost smokeless.

Generals can keep track of things more easily now

and coordinate movements on the battlefield.

The Dreyse needle gun and Poudre B

move Europe's battles from open fields into cover.

Soon after automatic weapons

promote a further change in military tactics.

They result in camouflage uniforms and trenches.

Movement during battle therefore

becomes increasingly dangerous.

Another reason for this is that an old design

can now be manufactured at an industrial scale,

the landmine.

El-Alamein, Egypt 1942.

The German-Africa core under their commander Erwin Rommel

has pushed through Tunisia and reached Egypt.

British troops are intending to stop the German advance

near El-Alamein about a hundred kilometers from Alexandria.

Desert battlefield offers virtually no cover

and therefore lends itself

perfectly for the use of landmine.

Both sides deploy countless of these

hidden explosive devices.

They hide more than 17 million landmines in the sand.

And the bomb landmine was invented

as part of a defensive system

to prevent the enemy attacking.

Rather like the medieval caltrop

it's an anti-attack system.

The British mine belt limits

Rommel's tank troops severely.

They also lack supplies and air support.

The battle comes to an end in Autumn 1942.

The Germans have to retreat.

Six months later Hitler loses his war

in North Africa for good.

To this day the legacy of this campaign

lies deep within the North African desert.

Experts estimate that about 1/5th

of the landmines buried worldwide

lie in the desert area around the Libyan-Egyptian border.

Clearing these old minefields costs millions.

The purpose of landmines

is to stop the enemy using a piece of ground

and that works both as an absolute barrier

But it can also work as a channel.

You create minefields which oblige the enemy

to go through a particular zone

where you may have targeted all of your artillery,

where you may be ready with other forms of defense

to meet their attack.

Landmines become an efficient means

to slow down the enemy's approach in World War II.

The deadly legacy of this tactic claims victims

in the former war zones to this day.

Weapons expert Stephen Bull

wants to learn more about this weapon

that cost hundreds of thousands

of their lives in the 20th century.

So this is a Second World War type antipersonnel mine,

one of the most vicious weapons ever invented.

This is a Bouncing Betty,

the sort of weapon everybody wants to ban now.

The Bouncing Betty is a bouncing mine.

Like in most landmines its detonator

is triggered by pressure.

After a short delay

the mine body is launched into the air

and detonates at a height of about one meter.

This magnifies the effect of the mine.

Well, what made mines possible was the fuses,

the ways they were initiated.

And this is a surprisingly long story.

The story dates back

to the 11th century in China.

The Chinese find out that a mixture of nitrate,

charcoal and sulfur carries explosive powers.

Gunpowder is born.

It is immediately used by the military.

In 1368 the predecessor of the landmine

makes its debut in Inner Mongolia.

The Yuan Dynasty is fighting against the Ming Dynasty

for power over the empire.

The explosive devices consist of hollowed out containers

weighing 1.7 kilograms.

A special type of fuse triggers off the explosion.

Black powder wrapped in thin silk paper

easy to make but not reliable.

One of the major problems

with those mines were their detonators.

They weren't very reliable,

didn't go off or sometimes went off at the wrong moment.

The black powder used in the mines posed another problem,

it absorbs humidity

and wet black powder renders the mine useless.

In the centuries that follow

concealed explosives are used many times

to defend forts and castles.

But the attackers are now also using such weapons.

In fact they give the mines their name.

The time-consuming yet devastating siege war attack tactic

requires soldiers who are also engineers.

The idea: Building a tunnel or a mine

underneath the enemy's fortification walls,

fill it up with explosives and make it blast.

The Turks do this in a particularly effective manner

during the siege of Vienna in 1529.

Several times Vienna is close to being conquered

thanks to the work of the Ottoman sappers.

Their explosives caused substantial damage

to the walls of the Austrian capital.

The defenders are forced to come up with countermeasures.

They set up listening posts to defect vibrations

created by the mining of the tunnel.

If they find a Turkish mine tunnel

the defendants fill it up with water

or attack the enemy underground

using close combat fighters.

This mining technique is still used in World War I.

In 1917 British pioneers blast 19 tunnel mines

with up to 600 tons of explosives

under the German emplacements in Flanders, Belgium.

The detonations claim the lives

of roughly 10,000 German soldiers.

Afterwards the British troops could start assaults

on the parts of the front line that have been hit.

The development of landmines

featuring an automatic ignition however

drags on for quite some time.

As early as the mid-16th century

gunsmith Samuel Zimmerman from Augsberg, Germany

develops a mechanical system for self-detonating mines.

He combines the ignition mechanism of a musket

with an explosive.

The weapon seems to have enormous potential

but it is not reliable

and cannot be produced on a large scale.

In 1862 landmines play a big military role

in the American Civil War.

Confederate troops under

Brigadier General Gabriel J. Rains

bury large numbers of landmines

with simple mechanical fuses in the Battle of Yorktown.

It's essentially a weapon of the defense.

It's a relatively simple weapon.

And because the Confederacy is on the defensive

it's much more effective for them than the Union

which is largely an offensive army.

Most of the Confederate mines do not go off.

Unionists use captives

to detect the insidious explosive devices.

Landmines are no battle-winning weapons yet.

The black powder is not weatherproof.

The fuse mechanism is too unreliable.

In 1867 Alfred Nobel from Sweden

contributes to making landmines much more reliable.

After countless setbacks

he eventually develops an explosive

that is far less failure-prone than black powder

but also releases more energy.

The name of his invention, dynamite.

The great innovation was that Alfred Nobel

managed to stabilize the explosive

preventing it from igniting accidentally.

This made it easier to store, transport

and produce dynamite on a large scale.

So he basically found a way to keep up

with the growing demands of the weapons industry.

The Great Powers start manufacturing

large quantities of landmines.

Due to the high demand in World War I

production figures see a sudden peak during this time.

Between the two World Wars

newly improved mine types are developed.

In World War II plenty of them are used

mostly in the Soviet Union and in North Africa.

Historians estimate that about 300 million tank mines

and a significantly larger number

of smaller antipersonnel mines were deployed.

Weapons expert Stephen Bull

wants to conduct a test on a training area.

Which tactic did the troops use?

Most landmines are set off by pressure.

A cap or detonator is crushed and the mine explodes.

The amount of pressure required varies according to purpose.

Antipersonnel mines require very little pressure.

And anti-tank mine an awful lot of pressure.

The T42 is an antitank mine

with a diameter of 32 centimeters

and a height of 10 centimeters.

Its trigger weight, 210 kilograms.

The S35 is an antipersonnel mine

with a diameter of only 10 centimeters.

Three kilos are enough to set off

the pressure fuse mechanism.

Stephen Bull kicks off the experiment.

11 assistants have to plant landmines into the ground

in accordance with the plan used in World War II.

So welcome to my trainee mine technicians.

Our job today is to lay a minefield across this track.

Two mines a person.

And move away to the left, thank you.

Stephen Bull is following

the technical manual 514/4 of German Armed Forces

for the placement of mines.

So I'm going to give you numbers.

And please remember your numbers.

So one, two, three, four,

five, six, seven,

eight, nine, 10, 11.

And I'd like you to move into position

at two meter intervals right on the far side of this track.

Do you understand?

Yes.

Okay, please take your positions.

So I would like odd numbers to take one pace into the track

and prepare to lay your mines.

Even numbers stay where you are please.

So now we're gonna dig a hole about 10 centimeters deep.

So just the top part of the mine

is showing above the ground.

Whatever you do do not remove the pin yet.

We are going to remove the pins to activate the mines

at the end of our job, okay?

Our dummy mines basically work

like antipersonnel mines

only that the fuse mechanism doesn't set off an explosion

but rather a colored cloud.

Soon the mines are hidden in the ground

each spaced out at a distance of 1.5 meters width

and one meter length from each other.

These patterns are intended to form a barrier

that is as impenetrable as possible.

Antitank mines are placed in three consecutive rows

only one to two meters apart from each other.

The chances of crossing these lines unharmed

are very slim.

In the largest mine battle

of World War II in El-Alamein, Egypt

both sides used several millions of mines.

Erwin Rommel who has undergone

special mine clearing training

has his men plant what is called devil's gardens

a maze of minefields arranged like a horseshoe.

It is easy to drive into them

but almost impossible to escape from when under fire.

British tank drivers dreaded this tactic.

Weapons expert Stephen Bull wants to find out

if it is possible to cross a minefield.

So he put the assistants into two groups.

One group has planted the mines.

Without knowing the pattern

the other group will now have to get to

the other side unharmed.

If anybody has a weak heart they should tell me now.

Everybody feels fit and well.

Yes.

The second group doesn't know yet

that the track is riddled with mines.

Are we okay?

Let's go!

Quickly, quickly!

Oh!

Stop, stop, stop!

You're in a minefield, stop!

That certainly gave a few people surprises.

Only two meters into the field

two mines go off.

In reality the explosive power would have

at the very least caused severe harm to everyone.

I just heard it but I got so scared

that I just had to run faster and faster.

Well, the first instinct wants to run, to run fast.

To stay alive.

Oh!

The perfidious thing about landmines

is that they are invisible for the enemy.

This aspect weighs heavily on the soldiers' minds.

There is no protection

because you know that each centimeter

is potentially dangerous.

And in this case because I was the last man

I just blindly followed the others

and hoped I would get lucky.

There is a serious message here.

And that is how dangerous mines were on the battlefield

and their effect of slowing armies down,

of causing panic, of causing occasional casualties.

It all adds up to an effective, nasty and cunning weapon.

Planting mines

is relatively easy and inexpensive.

Clearing a minefield on the other hand

is all the more difficult.

In the aftermath of asymmetrical conflicts and civil wars

perilous minefields often pose problems

because there are no maps

indicating where they have been placed.

There are still landmines in the Falkland Islands

from the 1982 war.

All over Southern Africa there are landmines

in post-colonial conflicts.

They're in Vietnam.

People are still being killed by landmines.

There are several techniques

to clear minefields.

Besides manual methods with detectors

animals can also help like specially trained rats.

If it financially feasible

machines can also do this dangerous job.

According to estimates of the U.N.

more than 100 million landmines were still buried

worldwide in the mid-1990.

Celebrities also get involved in the fight against mines

like Lady Diana.

In August 1997 she visits mine victims

in Bosnia, Herzegovina.

In December 1997 the international community

reaches an historic agreement.

121 states signed the Ottawa Treaty,

the convention on the prohibition of antipersonnel mines.

32 states still have yet

to sign the convention to this day.

Among them are North and South Korea, India,

Israel, Russia and the U.S.

The problem with the ban is it's not universal.

The kinds of people who would have used mines in the past

are highly unlikely to stop using them now.

If the circumstances are right

people will use these things because they work.

The relics of past wars

still claim victims today.

Every 20 to 30 minutes someone steps onto a landmine

somewhere in the world.

An age old principle lethally improved by modern technology

deployed countless times

as a result of industrial manufacturing.

Landmines, invisible killers.

The race to the perfect attack from cover

is likely to become increasingly essential in the future.

New techniques are being developed

that aim at concealing anything

from the enemy's eyes even tanks.

Special camouflage systems for vehicles already exist.

They make vehicles invisible at least to infrared cameras.

This is possible thanks to thermal reflectors

that change their temperature within the blink of an eye.

You need 1,000 of these panels

in order to make a tank disappear.

Sensors on board create a heat image

that matches the surroundings.

More like a chameleon than a traditional tank.

Comparable stealth technology for soldiers

is already being developed,

the next generation of attacks from cover.