Original subtitles

In England,

the nerve centre of a heroic rescue operation

that remains the pride of a nation...

You cannot overestimate the effect this had

on the country's morale.

..a dilapidated mansion in Virginia

that found itself perilously close to the front lines...

..until one day, the fighting arrived right at their doorstep.

..a palatial ruin in Estonia that hosted a formidable empress.

She would make it her mission

to uncover the secrets of its wealth.

..and in Detroit,

a colourful facility where a champion made his name.

Nowhere is anyone celebrated like my father is in the city of Detroit

and that all started in this building.

Overlooking the English Channel is an ancient stronghold

with a modern secret buried in its bowels.

We're on the south coast of England

looking out over the white cliffs of Dover.

There's a medieval castle that stands out on a promontory

and commands the entire terrain.

There are holes carved out of the cliff face,

concrete and metal constructions.

These windows offer a glimpse into a subterranean labyrinth.

And as you get into the chambers underneath the ground,

you see desks, you see typewriters,

you see all the things you need to run a modern office.

There's electrical equipment,

huge machinery.

It's like a time capsule.

One wonders, "What's happening here?"

Why is all of this infrastructure under the ground?

You feel like you're seeing something that had to be protected,

the nerve centre of something very, very big.

This facility was called into service

during a moment of national crisis.

The survival of Britain's army and Britain itself

hung by a thread.

Dover Castle has been standing guard over Britain's southern coast

since the 12th century.

It's been adapted for defence through the ages

and by the late 1700s,

Britain was at war with Napoleon Bonaparte's France.

Tunnels were excavated to meet the threat of invasion.

So, the original tunnel was constructed about 1797

and were designed, really,

just to be extra accommodation

for lots of troops.

There were about 2,000 soldiers living down here

at the end of the 18th century.

But that invasion never came

and they were soon shut up and abandoned.

That was until the arrival of a new threat from Europe

in the 1930s.

By 1938, war with Nazi Germany seemed inevitable.

So, the Dover Castle tunnels, safe from aerial attack,

were converted into naval headquarters.

Retired Admiral Bertram Ramsey

is brought back into service to organise

the defence of England.

He had his own quarters here

but also, he had this amazing view

right out to the harbour beneath us and into the Channel.

Ramsey and his team's job was focused on controlling the Channel.

But very soon, the workers in this facility

found themselves directing a rescue mission.

This operation would become famous around the world

known simply by the name of the French town where it took place,

Dunkirk.

In 1940, very rapidly, the German armed forces

encircle the British and French armies

in and around Dunkirk.

Loire and Calais had already been taken...

..and they found themselves more or less surrounded.

Nearly half a million British and Allied soldiers

were marooned on the beaches.

The British and French armies are about to be annihilated

by the Nazis.

If they didn't get the men off those beaches,

the remaining Allied forces would be destroyed

and Britain would be defenceless to Nazi invasion.

Ramsey was ordered to plan and organise Operation Dynamo

to bring back across the Channel as many soldiers as possible.

With less than a week to prepare,

Ramsey and his team worked around the clock making plans,

gathering resources and mobilising ships.

The main docks had been destroyed and the beaches were shallow.

Even at high tide,

British destroyers could get no closer than a mile from shore.

Troops would have to be ferried out to the big ships on small boats

under constant artillery fire and aerial attack.

Ramsay's team scrambled for solutions...

..but they soon ran out of time.

On the 26th of May 1940

the order came in to commence Operation Dynamo.

The first few days were disastrous,

Only a small number of soldiers were actually able to

escape those beaches, less than 8,000 on the first day.

But a discovery offered hope.

In Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk,

the title of the first timeline in the film

was The Mole.

It's actually the name of a concrete breakwater

which provided a vital lifeline back to England.

Built to protect the harbour from rough seas,

it was more than 1,200m long

heading out into deeper water.

You could pull destroyers alongside the mole

and you could get soldiers to walk out onto the end of the mole

and get aboard the destroyers.

For the troops waiting in line, however,

they were sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe.

Diary entries describe the psychological terror

as the soldiers anxiously awaited the dreaded scream

of the German Stukas.

And they really are a harrowing read.

They speak of the desperation,

the fear of the potential danger that was coming their way.

Despite these Stuka raids,

the mole was working

and the number of rescues began to swell

so Ramsay desperately requested more destroyers.

The admiralty were worried about the fact that they were losing ships out there.

They didn't want to lose those ships.

Ramsay actually had to persuade the, uh, admiralty,

um, that the larger ships were necessary.

But Nazi forces were closing in

and Ramsay knew he couldn't rely on the mole alone.

He called on the seafaring people of Britain for help.

Ramsay decided to enlist the support of the little ships,

some of them sort of N-boats,

some of them commercial boats and ferries

who were...had a shallow enough draught

to be able to get close in to the beach.

Gradually, troops began to see more and more rescue vessels

on the horizon.

The British people had rallied to Ramsay's call.

Fishing smacks, lifeboats, sailing barges,

watercraft of all kinds, crewed by volunteers,

bravely ventured into enemy territory to pick up stranded soldiers.

In just over a week,

Ramsay's operation had been able to rescue 338,000 Allied troops,

a remarkable feat.

This was over ten times what they'd hoped

and in large part, thanks to civilian boats.

90,000 men were left behind

but it's seen as a great victory

and proved to be a pivotal turning point in the war.

The next day, Churchill gave his famous speech,

"We shall fight on the beaches.

"We shall fight on the landing grounds.

"We shall fight in the fields and in the streets."

You cannot overestimate the effect this had on the country's morale.

In the months that followed,

the Royal Air Force repulsed Hitler's aerial assault

and secured victory in what became known as the Battle of Britain.

The island was now safe from Nazi invasion

and when the United States joined the war in December 1941

it could be used as a base

from which to launch the biggest seaborne invasion in history.

From 1942,

Dover Castle functioned as a centre for Allied headquarters

to direct the invasion of Europe

and it would involve using one of America's greatest generals

as bait.

A section of tunnels was used in the planning of D-Day.

So, this space would have been known as Q Dover

and it was part of, uh, an elaborate hoax.

Q Dover was set up as a communications base

to direct a hugely ambitious deception plan.

In the run up to D-Day,

Operation Fortitude was set up to feed false intel to the Nazis.

The Allies are going to convince the Germans

that they're going to go across the Channel from Dover to Calais...

..shortest distance.

Meanwhile,

the Allies are gonna land in Normandy,

There has got to be a convincing picture

of an Allied army properly positioned

to cross from Dover to Calais.

George Patton was selected to lead this army.

He was the leader the Germans feared the most.

They considered him the Allies' best general.

So, while Omar Bradley and Bernard Montgomery

and Dwight Eisenhower are running the real invasion...

..George Patton is put in command of First United States Army Group

which doesn't exist.

Fake tanks and trucks

as well as fake camps

were created as part of an entirely fictitious army,

positioned in the east of England to support the idea

of a Dover-Calais crossing.

They create fake radio networks

communicating all around the fake units

and the centre for coordinating

all of the deception operations of Operation Fortitude

is right here in these tunnels.

The 6th of June, D-Day.

Operation Fortitude has completely deceived the Nazis.

German commanders hold back from committing

against the Allied invasion in Normandy.

They're still waiting for the real invasion

to come across from Dover to Calais.

Two months later, some German commanders still believe

that Patton's phantom army was real.

It was one of the greatest deceptions in history

and the Nazis bought it,

hook, line and sinker.

Much of the complex is still empty and closed to the public

but it's possible to visit parts of the tunnels

and stand in the spaces that were so crucial to Britain's survival

and Europe's salvation.

Near the town of Farmville, Virginia,

nestled among poplar trees

is an unusual relic of the Old South.

The classic grand home in Virginia would be, you know,

white wood, columns.

This is different.

It's got an elegant turret and ornate slate roof

and a beautiful arch welcoming you in.

When we move inside,

the rooms have pretty much been stripped bare

but there are still the trappings of wealth on display.

But when the nation split apart,

this mansion was caught in the crossfire.

And the fortunes of the war went, you know,

back and forth until one battle

changed the entire direction of the war.

It was the largest calvary clash in American history

and the man who lived here

was right in the thick of the action.

And the family waited uneasily

for news from the front lines until one day,

the battle arrived right at their doorstep.

Ann Stone spent her childhood summers visiting this old mansion.

It was overwhelming as a child cos this house scared me.

It was dark and I can remember sitting on the floor

and playing with the little soldiers.

My brother, the oldest one,

this is where he found the Civil War uniforms.

Constructed around the 1830s

Ann Stone's great-great grandfather moved in

when the nation was on the cusp of war.

John Hughes Knight, Jr

was a prominent planter and lawyer

born just 30 miles away.

In 1860, he bought this place

and moved his wife and three children here.

The mansion was just part of a vast estate

that covered 1,000 acres.

They had stables for the horses,

a smoke house for preserving meat,

even an icehouse

to keep themselves cool in the summer.

The Knight family lived here in ease and luxury.

But this privileged lifestyle was built on the backs of the oppressed.

30 enslaved workers ensured they were waited on, hand and foot.

The country was increasingly divided over the issue of enslavement

with the abolitionist movement gathering pace in the North.

With some states wanting to suppress the spread of slavery

and other states wanting to perpetuate it,

the battle lines were drawn and both sides prepared for war.

Virginia joined the Confederacy

and like much of its population,

the Knight family supported the cause.

On April 12th 1861,

the first shots of the American Civil War are fired.

John Knight immediately signs up to fight.

As a relatively wealthy man,

he can supply his own horse and tack.

So, he joins the cavalry as a sergeant.

His Confederate regiment immediately skirmished with Union forces

who had crossed into Virginia.

In the Civil War,

cavalry played an outsize role because of

the huge spaces of North America.

Basically, cavalry units had the mobility and the range

to raid and to forage and to strike terror into the other side

and the South generally had the better cavalry units

at the beginning of the war.

So, John Knight is in one of the elite units of the Confederate Army.

John's family, back at Poplar Hill, had little idea what was going on

or whether John was even still alive.

This was a time when press accounts of the war were very sketchy.

The Knight family relied on letters from John

which would wend their way very slowly

back from whatever front line he was on.

Ann recalls reading her great-great grandfather's accounts from the front lines.

I remember the feel of it.

There was a lot of personal, you know, recollection.

"Kiss the babies for me."

Very personal, where you could see

it had to have been agony.

He wrote about the meagre rations

living on one meal of crackers and poor quality beef a day

and the difficulties sending and receiving mail from home

which left men feeling isolated, hungry and cut off.

In 1863,

General Robert E Lee's thrust northwards

threatened to take John, now a lieutenant,

further from his family.

This Gettysburg Campaign, which is Lee's bold foray

into the north to try to win a great victory on Union soil,

John Knight is part of this.

His Virginia cavalry unit marches with Lee's army.

But Knight's campaign was soon cut short in dramatic fashion.

On the night of June 8th,

John Knight and his men are camped near Brandy Station, Virginia,

100 miles north of the Poplar Hill Mansion.

Well, little did they know,

they were being watched.

In the early hours,

they were suddenly woken by a cacophony of noise.

Bugles rent the air and gunshots sounded

as 11,000 Union cavalry charged Confederate positions.

Knight and his comrades are caught totally off guard.

Startled, they leapt onto their horses,

many half-naked and without saddles.

And it becomes intense, brutal, close-range combat

fought with sabres and pistols.

Brandy Station was, you know, 14 hours of mayhem.

The biggest cavalry battle of the American Civil War

and the biggest cavalry battle ever fought

on the North American continent.

Confederates claimed victory

but a vastly improved and more organised Union cavalry

showed they could finally compete.

And it's kind of a morale turning point.

Afterwards, the Union cavalry forces

feel that they can contest with their Confederate opposites

on nearly even terms.

In the aftermath,

Knight fell sick with a fever and was sent home to Poplar Hill.

While the Knight family waited to see whether John would recover,

word of the disastrous Confederate defeat at Gettysburg

reached the house.

The news only motivated Knight to return to the heat of battle.

Once fully recovered, he rejoined his regiment

but they were forced on a long retreat by the new Union commander,

Ulysses S Grant.

After Gettysburg, when Grant takes commend

and starts pressing on Richmond and pushing into Virginia,

you know, Poplar Hill Mansion finds itself near the front line.

Eventually, they were pushed back to Appomattox

just 20 miles from his home at Poplar Hill.

You can just imagine the Knight family

holed up in this house, watching the horizon.

And it was all women,

hustling around to get the valuables out and all that

and I wondered, "Were they up here?"

And you know, on the watchout, were they on the lookout?

But one morning, the children living in the house look out the window

and they see smoke and out of that smoke emerges

grizzled men in blue uniforms

marching towards them.

Hungry stragglers, cut off from the main Union army,

arrived at the front of the house where the family has gathered.

They're standing outside with six children,

including a baby wrapped in a comforter

as the men start ransacking the house.

And they start looting the place and looking under furniture and beds

and taking anything of value.

The men left the house a mess but intact

and the family unharmed.

These Union soldiers were merely hungry and desperate.

John Knight was present at Appomattox

for General Lee's Confederate surrender

on the 9th of April 1865.

Knight rushed back to his family, possibly that same day.

And then, after the war,

Poplar Hill Mansion and its surrounding estate

kind of return to normal.

But, you know, what was normal after the Civil War?

Because Poplar Hill Mansion had been the centre of a slave economy

and suddenly, all these enslaved people were technically emancipated

and yet the...the losers of the Civil War, you know,

they don't really admit that and they expect, you know,

that they're gonna retain control over these people,

if not through formal slavery,

through some kind of indentured servitude

or sharecropping arrangements.

There was a lot of debate among the political leaders

of the country and victorious Union at the end of the war

and really, the watchword was reconstruction and reconciliation.

So, there was not much push at all

to ensure that the formerly enslaved population

was treated with any level of respect

let alone equality.

Many African-Americans did migrant north

where they had a chance to start a new life.

But for those who didn't,

their options were extremely limited.

The mansion remained in the family for generations

and Ann recalls how they clung to the old ways.

The great-grandmother died in 1960

and they had maintained this antebellum lifestyle

right up to the day she died

and when you realise these people really did live like that,

there's a level of embarrassment,

guilt.

The last enslaved man born at Poplar Hill

doesn't die until 1935

and one wonders what would have been more amazing

or disappointing to them,

how much things had changed or how much they'd stayed the same.

Life at Poplar Hill was reflected in the wider region

which was hugely resistant to change.

In fact, the county in which this house resides

was one of the very last in the country to integrate its schools

and they only did so after a Supreme Court ruling

forced the issue in 1964.

Ann's family sold the estate in 1960

and since 2000, it's been left to gather cobwebs and dust.

A local preservation group has been established

with aim to secure funds to buy it and protect it.

If successful, they hope to turn it into an education centre.

In Estonia, 30 miles from the capital, Tallin,

is a grand ruin that once hosted a formidable empress

stamping her authority on her new kingdom.

The forest stretches out in every direction

and you can see a smattering of villages in the distance.

Then you notice a settlement.

There are compounds that could have been farmyards or stables.

At the heart of this complex is this huge, grand building

with tall, imperious columns rising up around the entrance.

And when you go inside, oh, my god.

I mean, these rooms are just absolutely palatial,

high ceilings,

beautiful mouldings,

fixtures for, like, enormous chandeliers.

Whoever built this place was certainly wealthy.

But where did all this money come from?

At a moment of great upheaval across a vast empire,

this lavish building drew the attention

of one of history's most powerful women.

She would make it her mission

to uncover the secrets of its wealth.

Nele Reial is a local historian

who grew up in the shadow of this extravagant structure.

When I was a kid, this was my playground.

I had no idea that

the great world leaders stayed here

or the decisions that changed hundreds and hundreds of people's lives

were made here.

This manor house is one of the oldest in Estonia

with roots going back to the 13th century.

By the mid-1700s,

it fell into the hands of a man called Carl Magnus Stenbock.

Carl Magnus and his descendants would build one of the grandest

and certainly, the largest manor complexes

in Estonia.

So, now we have entered to the welcoming hall.

All the walls were covered with the portraits of the ancestors.

The Stenbock family's rise to prominence

coincided with an era of great change in the Russian Empire...

..and the arrival of a now iconic empress.

In 1762, the Russian Emperor's wife

launched a rebellion against her own husband.

She forced him to abdicate

and possibly, even ordered his assassination.

And almost overnight, she becomes the ruler,

the autocrat of the entire Russian Empire

including this wedge of Estonia.

She would become known as Catherine the Great.

In 1764,

Catherine embarked on a tour of her new kingdom.

High on her list was this complex,

Kolga Manor.

With Catherine coming, you had to put on a good show.

They had to really put out the best silverware

and the best food and drink.

The white wines and the champagne had to be chilled in the cellar.

She preordered, for example, six bottles of champagne,

12 bottles of Burgundy wine,

bottles of arrack,

wine vinegar and quantity-wise the biggest was

the distilled and undistilled vodka.

There were 20 different kind of meat.

You only name it, they had it.

But the Russian leader wasn't only here to enjoy lavish banquets.

Catherine was an extremely enlightened tsar,

western-looking, reform-minded

who was determined to import,

you know, a lot of foreign technology, foreign practices

into Russia to modernise it.

So, she would go on these trips

around different regions of the empire.

The manor and all the land around it were making a huge amount of money

and Catherine wanted to know how they were doing it

and whether it could be replicated across her empire.

She found a vast estate sprawling across 130,000 acres

and stretching out to the coast.

Within it were various profitable industries.

She wants to see the farming operations.

She wants to see the forestry operations.

She wants to go out to the coast and see the shipbuilding.

But it was all based on an ancient system of exploitation.

The manor was super wealthy

because on this land were living around 10,000 serfs,

uh, who were working for free.

Serfdom was a form of forced labour

which tied peasants to the land they worked on

and the nobles who owned it.

These servants had no real freedoms to speak of.

They could be bought and sold and lived in extreme poverty.

For the nobles like the Stenbock family,

it was incredibly lucrative.

It's not hard to make a fortune

when you don't have to pay the staff.

On taking the throne a few years earlier in 1762,

Catherine had given serfs certain rights

and even considered plans to emancipate them.

However, having seen the riches on display

at places like Kolga Manor

and realising the support of powerful nobles was crucial to her empire,

she would go on to strengthen the system

she had once condemned as inhuman.

By the time of her death in 1796,

she had enabled landowners

to sentence their serfs to hard labour in Siberia

and personally owned half a million serfs.

These serfs get poorer and poorer.

The Stenbocks and other such landlords

get richer and richer.

In the mid-1800s,

Catherine's great-grandson finally seemed to offer hope

to the impoverished peasants across the empire.

In 1856,

Alexander II declared his intention to abolish serfdom.

But the peasants at Kolga quickly grew frustrated

at how slowly these reforms were being put into place.

By the summer of 1858,

they'd had enough and refused to work.

The landlord responds by bringing in

450 soldiers.

The peasants quickly backed down.

A man called Mikk Kivi

was identified as the leader of the uprising

and singled out for special punishment.

So, in this part, in front of the big barn,

200 soldiers formed two lines

and Mikk Kivi

had to run four times through this corridor of men

each man beating him with a wooden stick.

They deport this barely-living Mikk Kivi

to a penal colony in Siberia.

So, you see what happens if you try to, like,

you know, buck the system.

And so, really, little changes for the peasants there

until the Russian Revolution in 1917.

The emancipation laws of 1861

did little to improve daily lives of peasants

but crucially, it gave them the freedom to organise

and in 1917,

the floodgates opened.

In the wake of the Russian Revolution and the First World War,

Estonia won its independence

but peace at Kolga wouldn't last.

The estate was soon caught up in the biggest military campaign in history.

Kolga Manor was captured by the Nazi Army during Operation Barbarossa

and turned into a military hospital.

With Germany's defeat in 1945,

Estonia fell once more under Russian control,

this time, the Soviet Union.

The manor house was converted into a state farm

until Estonia won its freedom

in 1990.

Amazingly, in 1993,

the Stenbock family actually managed to regain possession of Kolga Manor

but by that time, it was really in a terrible state.

Today, the manor house has a new owner

who is looking for the funds to restore it to its former glory...

..and Nele works for a museum on the site

dedicated to preserving the story of nearly 1,000 years of life here.

Kolga Manor tells a great story

of how Estonian people preserve their folklore, their culture,

their language, throughout the different, uh, oppressions.

So, it can be also a symbol of the resilience of the people

working for the manor.

In the heart of America's Motor City,

a commanding structure stands watch over the Detroit River.

Right in the middle of this area is this huge looming building

made out of substantial stone blocks.

As you get closer, you can see a faded red sign

that says Marine Core Reserve Center.

So, clearly, this is a military structure.

Despite its stark functional exterior,

inside is a riot of colour and artistry.

Several rooms have some really interesting ambitious artwork.

Most military bases are not decorated in this way.

So, what is this wonderful artwork doing here?

This building has a legacy that goes well beyond its original purpose.

It becomes a launching point for America's longest-serving president

and is a part of the origin story of one of its greatest boxers.

Nowhere is anyone celebrated like my father is in the city of Detroit

and that all started in this building.

In the late 1800s

the US Government was expanding its global reach...

..and turned to the citizens of states like Michigan

to provide support in times of war.

Detroit became a centre for naval training.

It seems kind of incongruous.

Detroit lies hundreds of miles from the ocean

but the Great Lakes region has been part of America's naval history

going back, really, to the founding of the republic.

Several Great Lake states formed naval militias

and these were the forerunners

of the US Marine Core and Naval Reserves.

The Detroit reservists saw service in the Spanish-American War

and in the First World War.

With their numbers growing,

a modernist-style facility was constructed.

It would become known as the Brodhead Naval Armory.

This armoury opened in 1930

but almost from the start,

it was more than just a place for military training.

The Great Depression, which hit Detroit especially hard,

forced its owners to adapt the site.

To raise money to maintain the armoury,

it became a premier civic events site.

Its popularity was such that it was chosen

as the locale for a seminal moment in the lives of two great Americans.

The first was a charismatic politician,

determined to solve the country's economic woes.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a liberal reformer,

was running against the incumbent president, Herbert Hoover,

who many people saw as responsible for this Great Depression.

Michigan is a pivotal state,

a swing state in presidential elections, even today.

In the 1930s, it became kind of a battleground

for one of the biggest showdowns in American electoral history.

In October of 1932,

both candidates came to Detroit to give speeches.

Roosevelt chose the armoury as the location for his address.

Roosevelt spoke passionately about the need for change.

Roosevelt, of course, won the election.

He also won the state of Michigan.

Roosevelt's promise of a New Deal had won him the election.

Now, it was time to take action.

Broad executive power

to wage a war against the emergency.

In his first 100 days,

the new president passed an astonishing 77 laws

through Congress...

..and signed an unprecedented 99 executive orders.

FDR was able to push through a whole host of public policies

aimed at getting people back to work.

There were massive public works projects,

building infrastructure, bridges, highways.

However, the New Deal didn't just support blue collar jobs.

The programme involves something called the Federal Art Project

which employed some 10,000 artists across the country.

That project would transform the country's public buildings

including the Brodhead Naval Armory.

The Federal Arts Project employed artists like David Friedenthal and Edgar Joerger

to decorate the armoury's mess halls, bars, corridors, staircases.

Paintings showed sailors at work and there were portraits

of some of the US Navy's most powerful warships.

Beauty and strength were shown side by side on the walls of the armoury.

The large halls were also used to host sporting events

and a future icon would literally make his name here.

The day my father walked in this building, he didn't know

the future he was about to embark on.

Joe Louis Barrow II's father

is one of America's most celebrated athletes.

My father relocated with his family to Detroit

because Detroit offered a future that Alabama just simply could not.

Long before black lives mattered anywhere else,

black lives mattered in Detroit, right?

You could get a job at Ford.

You could become a part of the automation boom.

Joe's mother was worried he might fall into the wrong crowd.

So, she was giving him money to go and take violin lessons.

Well, young Joe Barrow wasn't that interested in the violin.

Every day, he would leave the house for school

with his violin case

but never turned up with the violin teacher.

Young Joe told a little fib to his mother.

Instead of going to his violin lessons,

he enrolled at a programme to learn boxing.

In 1932, aged 17,

he entered his first amateur fight here at the armoury.

Perhaps he was trying to hide this activity from his mother

but Joe Louis Barrow

had himself listed on the card simply as Joe Louis,

a name that would go down in history.

He was knocked down, I think, seven times

but he kept getting back up. He kept getting back up.

The judges unanimously ruled that he lost.

And the result of that

was a newfound determination and discipline.

Defeats bring about the character that is required...

..to be a great champion.

Louis would go on to become heavyweight champion

and held the title for nearly 12 years.

But December 7th 1941 changed all that.

Pearl Harbour changed all that.

My father was at the height of his career.

He knew he needed to go and so, he enlisted.

Being heavyweight champion of the world didn't alleviate that obligation to him.

He was asked to fight segregated exhibitions.

He said, "I'll fight exhibitions but they will not be segregated,"

and that was the introduction for the armed forces

to integrated audiences.

While Joe Louis toured the front lines

as part of the Special Services Division,

the armoury spent the war serving on the home front.

During World War II, the armoury is used as barracks

and an education centre for over 1,200 sailors

becoming diesel and electrical mechanics.

After the war, it reverts back to it's original purpose

of a training centre for reservists.

But in the decades that followed,

this structure began a long period of decline.

After World War II and the Vietnam War,

the US military began reducing its footprint across the nation.

They didn't need as many bases and facilities and training centres.

The armoury ultimately closed down in 2004

and like so many important historical buildings in Detroit,

it began to fall into disrepair.

After decades of neglect,

there's finally hope for the Brodhead armoury.

Plans are underway for the nonprofit behind Detroit's Thanksgiving parade

to restore the building,

providing a space for veterans

and bringing marching and drilling back to this grand old hall

once again.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media