1 00:00:58,154 --> 00:01:01,634 When he's talking, look at him. 2 00:01:02,434 --> 00:01:05,074 Okay. Speak. 3 00:02:21,394 --> 00:02:23,794 The secret recordings are one of the biggest 4 00:02:23,874 --> 00:02:27,674 intelligence operations of the Second World War. 5 00:02:30,954 --> 00:02:36,554 Using around a thousand personnel, listening in to the conversations, 6 00:02:36,634 --> 00:02:39,754 the unguarded conversations of German prisoners of war 7 00:02:39,834 --> 00:02:41,914 and even Hitler's generals. 8 00:02:46,514 --> 00:02:51,354 Even in the most far fetched science fiction scenario that I can imagine, 9 00:02:51,434 --> 00:02:55,354 there will never be a scenario like the one the British intelligence 10 00:02:55,434 --> 00:02:58,554 encountered during World War II. On the one hand, 11 00:02:58,634 --> 00:03:02,674 you have a German prisoner of war sitting and speaking to his friend, 12 00:03:02,794 --> 00:03:05,834 confessing about war crimes he committed. 13 00:03:06,074 --> 00:03:10,954 And on the other hand, a British soldier is listening, recording 14 00:03:11,034 --> 00:03:16,394 and transcribing. That British soldier is actually a Jewish refugee 15 00:03:16,474 --> 00:03:20,594 from Germany who was listening to what was happening to his own family. 16 00:03:22,354 --> 00:03:26,674 It is practically impossible to find perpetrators 17 00:03:26,754 --> 00:03:31,834 of any atrocity where they will speak honestly 18 00:03:31,914 --> 00:03:36,994 with regard to what happened and with regard to their feelings 19 00:03:37,074 --> 00:03:39,874 and their explanations about what happened. 20 00:03:40,194 --> 00:03:45,354 What you get with this recording is real time statements. 21 00:03:47,994 --> 00:03:53,914 This operation was so top secret, hush hush, even into the Cold War, 22 00:03:53,994 --> 00:03:57,514 that historians knew nothing about these files 23 00:03:57,594 --> 00:04:00,354 until the end of the Cold War. 24 00:04:01,434 --> 00:04:04,514 There is nothing like this in the research of World War II, 25 00:04:05,074 --> 00:04:07,754 where the story of the Holocaust 26 00:04:08,114 --> 00:04:10,874 is being told by the Nazis themselves, 27 00:04:11,314 --> 00:04:15,354 without any filters, and most importantly, in real time. 28 00:04:17,314 --> 00:04:20,954 The transcripts of the recordings reveal more than anything, 29 00:04:21,034 --> 00:04:24,074 the scale, the method, and the soul 30 00:04:24,154 --> 00:04:26,034 of those who perpetrated the Holocaust. 31 00:05:08,434 --> 00:05:12,154 My father, Erich Mark, once said to me, 32 00:05:12,634 --> 00:05:16,594 "There are two things that you have to work at every day 33 00:05:16,674 --> 00:05:18,794 "and you must never take for granted. 34 00:05:19,394 --> 00:05:22,114 "One is democracy and the other is marriage." 35 00:05:23,514 --> 00:05:28,354 What he meant by democracy is that we each have to be conscious 36 00:05:28,434 --> 00:05:30,554 of what democracy means. 37 00:05:33,314 --> 00:05:36,994 He was aware, as all German Jews were in the '30s, 38 00:05:37,074 --> 00:05:39,674 that Hitler was elected democratically. 39 00:05:41,354 --> 00:05:44,154 And he was elected democratically because many people were 40 00:05:44,234 --> 00:05:46,914 just tired of all the changes 41 00:05:46,994 --> 00:05:50,234 of government and they just said, fine, whatever it is, let it be. 42 00:05:51,154 --> 00:05:55,274 And that is the time when democracy is in danger, is when people 43 00:05:55,354 --> 00:05:56,794 no longer take an interest 44 00:05:56,874 --> 00:06:00,074 in working at it and thinking for themselves 45 00:06:00,154 --> 00:06:01,674 and thinking of their future. 46 00:06:08,354 --> 00:06:13,434 My father was one of 110 Jewish secret listeners, 47 00:06:14,514 --> 00:06:18,354 and as it turns out, he was the last surviving secret listener. 48 00:06:19,754 --> 00:06:23,634 These were people who sat in the basement where captured 49 00:06:23,714 --> 00:06:25,794 enemy officers were housed 50 00:06:25,874 --> 00:06:29,274 in such a way that they would chat to each other in order to 51 00:06:29,354 --> 00:06:33,034 release secrets, which they didn't realize were being bugged. 52 00:06:40,754 --> 00:06:46,114 For about 70 years, my father did not speak of this. 53 00:06:46,594 --> 00:06:49,594 He had signed the Official Secrets Act, and that is a 54 00:06:49,674 --> 00:06:50,794 closed and locked door. 55 00:06:55,314 --> 00:06:59,594 The British devised a plan to listen to every prisoner of war 56 00:06:59,674 --> 00:07:02,274 who passed through certain detention sites, 57 00:07:03,514 --> 00:07:07,194 and these sites would be wired with microphones in every corner that 58 00:07:07,274 --> 00:07:08,274 you can think of. 59 00:07:08,354 --> 00:07:12,874 In labs, under the pool table, in the fireplace, essentially the 60 00:07:12,954 --> 00:07:17,114 whole place was wired with undetectable microphones. 61 00:07:18,234 --> 00:07:23,514 The goal was that those POWs could leave without understanding 62 00:07:23,594 --> 00:07:25,394 that all their conversations 63 00:07:25,474 --> 00:07:26,794 are being recorded and then 64 00:07:26,874 --> 00:07:28,954 transcribed by the British intelligence. 65 00:07:32,394 --> 00:07:35,754 This was an operation unprecedented in its scale. 66 00:07:36,314 --> 00:07:40,234 Almost 10,000 soldiers passed through those detention sites. 67 00:07:40,874 --> 00:07:44,594 The British allocated almost unlimited funds for this operation. 68 00:07:48,474 --> 00:07:52,474 The prisoners didn't realize we were listening in to them and so 69 00:07:52,554 --> 00:07:54,434 they were very relaxed and 70 00:07:54,514 --> 00:07:58,714 we gained some of the highest secrets of the Nazi regime. 71 00:07:58,794 --> 00:07:59,874 It was incredible. 72 00:08:00,554 --> 00:08:07,314 And it would amass over 75,000 transcripts of conversations. 73 00:08:07,634 --> 00:08:12,714 It was a huge industrial scale intelligence operation. 74 00:08:15,514 --> 00:08:18,914 They were released into the National Archives in London 75 00:08:18,994 --> 00:08:22,114 between the late 1990s and early 2000s. 76 00:08:22,474 --> 00:08:27,474 It took over five years for someone in the UK Ministry of Defence 77 00:08:27,874 --> 00:08:29,874 to actually look at these files 78 00:08:29,954 --> 00:08:32,314 to check that there was nothing still sensitive in them. 79 00:08:34,114 --> 00:08:35,994 During our research for this series, 80 00:08:36,354 --> 00:08:38,754 we travelled to the National Archives in London 81 00:08:38,834 --> 00:08:41,194 and we've extracted all the source material 82 00:08:41,474 --> 00:08:45,514 that involves the Holocaust, war crimes and anti Semitism. 83 00:08:47,114 --> 00:08:49,394 Essentially, touching an open nerve 84 00:08:49,634 --> 00:08:52,794 that very few historians have dealt with. 85 00:08:57,794 --> 00:09:00,794 The significant breakthrough is that for the first time 86 00:09:00,994 --> 00:09:03,554 we have direct testimonies of the Holocaust 87 00:09:04,034 --> 00:09:05,994 that no one has read or heard before. 88 00:10:22,514 --> 00:10:24,594 I had the privilege of spending a long time in the 89 00:10:24,674 --> 00:10:29,354 National Archives in London, reviewing those documents myself. 90 00:10:29,834 --> 00:10:32,874 For me, it was a horrific, shocking revelation. 91 00:10:33,114 --> 00:10:36,634 I had never encountered such raw materials like that. 92 00:10:40,074 --> 00:10:43,234 Their voices come to life, but in complete apathy, 93 00:10:44,114 --> 00:10:48,194 showing little, if any, regard to human lives. 94 00:10:48,874 --> 00:10:51,994 There are passages when the transcriber 95 00:10:52,074 --> 00:10:53,434 writes in brackets, "Laughter." 96 00:10:54,874 --> 00:10:56,554 And I remember that it caught me. 97 00:10:57,634 --> 00:11:01,514 It was a very deep, unsettling experience. 98 00:11:02,954 --> 00:11:04,474 And the sad truth is, 99 00:11:04,554 --> 00:11:08,074 the Allies knew about the extent of the extermination, 100 00:11:08,354 --> 00:11:12,034 and they knew it as early as 1942, and they did nothing. 101 00:11:39,394 --> 00:11:41,794 I found it really shocking. 102 00:11:43,154 --> 00:11:46,194 These are actually prisoners talking to each other 103 00:11:46,274 --> 00:11:49,074 about how the Nazi killing machine worked, 104 00:11:49,434 --> 00:11:50,994 step by step. 105 00:11:53,474 --> 00:11:55,434 You remain changed forever. 106 00:11:55,674 --> 00:11:57,114 It's making me quite emotional. 107 00:11:58,474 --> 00:12:03,834 You can't erase those descriptions. 108 00:12:04,834 --> 00:12:06,874 They kind of become personal 109 00:12:06,954 --> 00:12:12,034 because the stories of how individual Jews died 110 00:12:12,114 --> 00:12:13,514 at the hands of the Nazis. 111 00:12:13,594 --> 00:12:16,154 In a way, it's no longer a huge figure, these are 112 00:12:16,234 --> 00:12:19,234 individuals and that touched me 113 00:12:19,314 --> 00:12:22,994 deeply that you can't be unchanged after that. 114 00:13:01,274 --> 00:13:06,514 In 1933, Hitler comes to power and he is extremely charismatic. 115 00:13:17,794 --> 00:13:22,034 He manages to form a government that actually changes everything 116 00:13:22,114 --> 00:13:24,714 and makes Germany into the Third Reich. 117 00:14:50,834 --> 00:14:53,514 Very quickly, he makes those extreme ideas, 118 00:14:53,594 --> 00:14:54,874 something that you can hear everywhere. 119 00:14:59,434 --> 00:15:04,834 And what Hitler does is he harnesses this idea to make the case 120 00:15:04,914 --> 00:15:09,434 that the Jews are in fact Germany's major enemy. 121 00:15:09,714 --> 00:15:15,354 And if they're not eliminated, that it will in fact come back to Germany 122 00:15:15,434 --> 00:15:18,914 and Germany will be weaker and stop to exist. 123 00:15:37,834 --> 00:15:43,114 The recordings offer us a glimpse into the rooted anti Semitism 124 00:15:43,434 --> 00:15:45,434 in the mind of the German soldiers. 125 00:15:47,874 --> 00:15:52,674 We enter the mind, regardless if it's a private or a field marshal, 126 00:15:52,874 --> 00:15:56,274 as he tells us his own views about the Jews. 127 00:15:56,754 --> 00:15:58,554 This is one of the crucial findings 128 00:15:58,634 --> 00:16:00,114 that emerged from these recordings 129 00:16:00,554 --> 00:16:04,314 because we now understand just how anti Semitism 130 00:16:05,074 --> 00:16:08,714 was embedded in their personality and characters. 131 00:16:10,514 --> 00:16:13,754 A soldier or a general captured at any given moment 132 00:16:14,394 --> 00:16:17,234 gives us his own experiences 133 00:16:17,554 --> 00:16:19,634 of what he encountered during the war. 134 00:16:19,954 --> 00:16:23,434 And these reflections helps us to understand 135 00:16:23,754 --> 00:16:26,394 how the mass murder of Jews developed 136 00:16:26,474 --> 00:16:27,954 into a full scale genocide. 137 00:18:49,554 --> 00:18:52,674 When they make it a biological imperative 138 00:18:53,194 --> 00:18:57,394 by discussing Jews as parasites, or as plague, 139 00:18:57,474 --> 00:18:59,874 or as a dangerous bacillus, 140 00:18:59,954 --> 00:19:02,554 when you start to use that type of rhetoric, 141 00:19:02,954 --> 00:19:05,434 it drives a certain way of thinking. 142 00:19:05,834 --> 00:19:07,754 How do you get rid of the plague? 143 00:19:07,834 --> 00:19:09,834 You have to exterminate it. 144 00:19:09,914 --> 00:19:11,834 You have to annihilate it, right? 145 00:19:52,274 --> 00:19:55,874 From the moment the Nazi Party becomes the power leading the state, 146 00:19:55,954 --> 00:19:59,674 we can see antisemitic expressions in many different places. 147 00:19:59,754 --> 00:20:03,114 And the peak is in Nuremberg Laws in September 1935. 148 00:20:05,874 --> 00:20:08,354 The assault on the Jews is a legal assault 149 00:20:08,434 --> 00:20:11,834 and very soon we can see Jews kicked out of the civil service as well 150 00:20:11,914 --> 00:20:13,674 as from many other places. 151 00:20:24,834 --> 00:20:30,194 In January 1935, my grandmother put my father on a train. 152 00:20:33,274 --> 00:20:36,194 My father came to this station in London. 153 00:20:37,354 --> 00:20:41,234 He was alone, just twelve and a half years old. 154 00:20:42,314 --> 00:20:44,754 He came from Germany because he couldn't be 155 00:20:44,834 --> 00:20:46,474 educated anymore in Germany. 156 00:20:46,554 --> 00:20:49,194 He'd been thrown out of his grammar school 157 00:20:49,274 --> 00:20:53,034 for being a Jew and he needed an education somewhere. 158 00:20:53,754 --> 00:20:56,314 And this was the place that would take him in. 159 00:21:01,994 --> 00:21:07,754 He arrived very late at night, 10pm, he said it was a very 160 00:21:07,834 --> 00:21:10,834 cold, wet, rainy January day 161 00:21:11,354 --> 00:21:14,434 on the 13th of January 1935. 162 00:21:16,114 --> 00:21:19,914 And he brought with him a suitcase, a small suitcase, 163 00:21:19,994 --> 00:21:25,514 with just a few clothes and his beloved Teddy, Hans, 164 00:21:26,514 --> 00:21:30,514 who is still in the family and very precious to us. 165 00:21:37,914 --> 00:21:42,034 He couldn't know, he had no idea what the future held for him. 166 00:21:44,354 --> 00:21:49,154 He certainly had no idea that he'd end up as a secret listener 167 00:21:49,234 --> 00:21:51,354 for the British Intelligence Corps. 168 00:21:55,994 --> 00:22:00,994 On the night between November 9th and November 10th, 1938, 169 00:22:01,074 --> 00:22:03,594 something dramatic happens in Nazi Germany. 170 00:22:11,074 --> 00:22:13,154 An organized attack starts. 171 00:22:14,794 --> 00:22:18,154 Synagogues are being burned, businesses are being looted, 172 00:22:18,914 --> 00:22:20,714 people, Jews, are being killed, 173 00:22:20,794 --> 00:22:23,714 and tens of thousands are being arrested the next day. 174 00:22:23,794 --> 00:22:25,514 And I'm talking about the Kristallnacht, 175 00:22:25,594 --> 00:22:26,714 the Night of Broken Glass. 176 00:22:29,834 --> 00:22:32,434 This is the first event in which we can see 177 00:22:32,954 --> 00:22:36,554 widespread violence within the street of Nazi Germany, 178 00:22:36,634 --> 00:22:40,514 expressing the ideological themes of the Nazi Party. 179 00:22:56,394 --> 00:23:01,594 September 1st, 1939, the Second World War breaks out. 180 00:23:02,234 --> 00:23:05,834 Nazi Germany invades Poland, and within a month, 181 00:23:05,914 --> 00:23:07,474 the Polish army collapses. 182 00:23:09,314 --> 00:23:12,314 France and Great Britain declare war on Nazi Germany. 183 00:23:12,794 --> 00:23:16,474 But actually from that moment, they do nothing 184 00:23:16,554 --> 00:23:18,674 until they themselves will be attacked. 185 00:23:21,114 --> 00:23:24,354 The British didn't have to wait long for German POWs. 186 00:23:25,274 --> 00:23:28,754 At least one German pilot escaped by parachute while his blazing 187 00:23:28,834 --> 00:23:30,954 machine went hurtling down to earth. 188 00:23:31,234 --> 00:23:33,274 The pilot landed safely and was captured. 189 00:23:37,114 --> 00:23:41,234 At the beginning of the war, most of the prisoners were from the U boats. 190 00:23:41,554 --> 00:23:43,794 They'd been sunk in various campaigns 191 00:23:43,874 --> 00:23:46,034 and the survivors pulled out of the water 192 00:23:46,274 --> 00:23:48,514 and they came to these secret sites. 193 00:23:48,834 --> 00:23:52,754 Then, of course, we started to capture German Air Force, 194 00:23:52,834 --> 00:23:54,194 the pilots and the crew. 195 00:23:54,674 --> 00:23:58,114 But also, we don't often think about those commando raids 196 00:23:58,194 --> 00:24:01,114 that were mounted into Norway, into parts of France. 197 00:24:01,994 --> 00:24:05,314 British military captured prisoners there 198 00:24:05,394 --> 00:24:07,354 and brought them back to secret sites 199 00:24:07,434 --> 00:24:09,514 and they gave up vital information. 200 00:24:10,754 --> 00:24:14,274 German prisoners of war arrived at the Tower of London 201 00:24:14,354 --> 00:24:17,714 to what will become an eavesdropping operation 202 00:24:17,794 --> 00:24:20,914 that will continue until several months after the war. 203 00:24:25,074 --> 00:24:28,674 That iconic tourist attraction today that we all love 204 00:24:28,754 --> 00:24:31,234 was actually the very first place 205 00:24:31,314 --> 00:24:35,834 where we held German prisoners of war in the autumn of 1939. 206 00:24:36,274 --> 00:24:39,114 And already the special engineers had been in, 207 00:24:39,194 --> 00:24:42,474 they had embedded microphones in the light fittings, 208 00:24:42,554 --> 00:24:45,474 in the fireplaces, in some of the towers. 209 00:24:49,314 --> 00:24:52,034 And the first German prisoners started to arrive 210 00:24:52,114 --> 00:24:54,074 by the middle of September 1939. 211 00:24:58,154 --> 00:25:01,594 There's no roughing up of prisoners, there's no brutality. 212 00:25:02,394 --> 00:25:04,994 They would have a sort of phony interrogation. 213 00:25:06,514 --> 00:25:09,514 They'd go back to the room where their mate was 214 00:25:09,594 --> 00:25:11,594 and they'd start to boast 215 00:25:11,674 --> 00:25:14,434 about what they hadn't told the interrogating officer. 216 00:25:18,994 --> 00:25:21,634 And they also think that the British 217 00:25:21,714 --> 00:25:23,674 are stupid and incompetent. 218 00:25:23,754 --> 00:25:26,634 We know that because we heard that through the microphones. 219 00:25:26,954 --> 00:25:28,914 Oh, the British, you know, 220 00:25:28,994 --> 00:25:32,114 they don't really know how to conduct a proper interrogation. 221 00:25:33,714 --> 00:25:35,914 But the British military intelligence officers 222 00:25:35,994 --> 00:25:38,274 knew exactly what they were doing. 223 00:25:38,354 --> 00:25:40,794 It was all part of this elaborate ploy 224 00:25:41,314 --> 00:25:43,474 to get those prisoners to speak 225 00:25:43,554 --> 00:25:44,994 to those hidden microphones. 226 00:25:49,714 --> 00:25:51,394 To conduct such an operation, 227 00:25:51,994 --> 00:25:53,874 you need a very particular figure. 228 00:25:59,514 --> 00:26:02,754 And the British had a historical stroke of luck. 229 00:26:02,834 --> 00:26:04,554 They found Thomas Kendrick, 230 00:26:04,634 --> 00:26:08,914 an intelligence officer who was not just an intelligence officer. 231 00:26:09,354 --> 00:26:13,674 He was a gentleman, an officer, and a master spy. 232 00:26:16,434 --> 00:26:19,954 Thomas Joseph Kendrick is one of my greatest heroes. 233 00:26:21,514 --> 00:26:26,274 He operated as one of the leading spy masters 234 00:26:26,354 --> 00:26:31,834 for MI6 in Europe, out of Vienna, in the 1920s and '30s. 235 00:26:31,914 --> 00:26:35,954 So he was undercover as the British passport control officer. 236 00:26:36,274 --> 00:26:39,154 Of course, that was a cover for his intelligence work, 237 00:26:39,514 --> 00:26:43,394 in which he ran spy networks right across Eastern Europe, 238 00:26:43,474 --> 00:26:44,834 Czechoslovakia, Hungary, 239 00:26:45,074 --> 00:26:47,914 eventually into Italy and into Nazi Germany. 240 00:26:52,794 --> 00:26:58,554 In March 1938, Adolf Hitler did what he'd long intended 241 00:26:58,634 --> 00:27:00,874 to do, he annexed Austria 242 00:27:01,314 --> 00:27:03,554 in what became known as the Anschluss. 243 00:27:08,154 --> 00:27:09,994 From the moment the Anschluss starts, 244 00:27:10,234 --> 00:27:12,554 the Jews of Austria find themselves 245 00:27:12,634 --> 00:27:15,074 in a situation unlike anything 246 00:27:15,154 --> 00:27:17,474 even the Jews of Germany have faced yet. 247 00:27:20,394 --> 00:27:22,194 People are being dragged to the street, 248 00:27:22,274 --> 00:27:23,754 forced to scrub the pavement. 249 00:27:25,074 --> 00:27:28,234 Children and old people are humiliated in awful ways. 250 00:27:29,274 --> 00:27:32,514 As this is happening, Adolf Eichmann comes to Vienna 251 00:27:32,594 --> 00:27:38,034 in order to organise the emigration of Austrian Jews in an orderly way. 252 00:27:38,314 --> 00:27:42,114 In a few months, more than 50% of the Jews of Austria 253 00:27:42,194 --> 00:27:43,274 will leave the country. 254 00:27:46,354 --> 00:27:49,194 The following morning after the Anschluss, 255 00:27:49,274 --> 00:27:52,234 Kendrick arrives at the office to find the 256 00:27:52,314 --> 00:27:59,594 files say over 800 Jews queuing, desperate to get out, 257 00:27:59,674 --> 00:28:02,274 and his staff make a conscious 258 00:28:02,354 --> 00:28:05,754 choice to embark on a humanitarian mission. 259 00:28:09,554 --> 00:28:13,394 In the following months, Kendrick and his staff issue 260 00:28:13,474 --> 00:28:17,834 thousands of visas, many of them 261 00:28:17,914 --> 00:28:20,954 false visas to get Jews out of Austria. 262 00:28:24,394 --> 00:28:29,594 He becomes the Oskar Schindler of Vienna and the official 263 00:28:29,674 --> 00:28:35,354 files tell us he saved up to 200 Jews a day. 264 00:28:38,994 --> 00:28:43,554 Whilst this rescue effort's going on, Kendrick himself is at great 265 00:28:43,634 --> 00:28:46,234 personal risk as the Gestapo are on his tail. 266 00:28:46,674 --> 00:28:50,434 They're out to arrest this elusive Englishman. 267 00:28:50,514 --> 00:28:54,634 They want to nab Britain's top spy in Europe. 268 00:29:01,114 --> 00:29:04,514 Thomas Kendrick was arrested in Vienna in August 1938. 269 00:29:06,514 --> 00:29:08,594 The British Foreign Office immediately 270 00:29:08,674 --> 00:29:11,034 intervened and he was deported two days later. 271 00:29:14,034 --> 00:29:17,994 He then returns to London and disappears from the public eye 272 00:29:18,074 --> 00:29:21,514 and that's when arguably one 273 00:29:21,594 --> 00:29:25,554 of his most important pieces of work is about to begin. 274 00:29:30,154 --> 00:29:33,914 He knew how to organize large groups under his supervision. 275 00:29:35,794 --> 00:29:39,354 Thomas Kendrick was the one who took command over this unit 276 00:29:39,434 --> 00:29:42,474 whose job was to record and transcribe 277 00:29:42,554 --> 00:29:45,354 all the conversations of the POWs. 278 00:29:50,954 --> 00:29:53,314 In England, there are already enough German prisoners 279 00:29:53,394 --> 00:29:54,634 of war to warrant this large 280 00:29:54,714 --> 00:29:56,394 and quite comfortable looking prison camp. 281 00:29:56,914 --> 00:29:59,074 As a matter of fact, these are U boat officers and men, 282 00:29:59,274 --> 00:30:01,994 and I should think they're happier even behind barbed wire 283 00:30:02,074 --> 00:30:04,274 in a foreign land than being hunted down at sea. 284 00:30:08,594 --> 00:30:10,834 It was a highly top secret section 285 00:30:10,914 --> 00:30:14,434 of the post office, the post office research center, 286 00:30:14,754 --> 00:30:19,354 that actually sent in engineers to wire the place for sound. 287 00:30:20,914 --> 00:30:24,034 This was the latest state of the art technology 288 00:30:24,434 --> 00:30:26,354 that came from America. 289 00:30:26,594 --> 00:30:29,674 It was supplied by the Radio Corporation of America. 290 00:30:30,274 --> 00:30:32,874 We needed this high level technology. 291 00:30:34,674 --> 00:30:37,754 The Germans clearly had no idea 292 00:30:38,314 --> 00:30:40,994 every single thing that they did was captured. 293 00:30:42,074 --> 00:30:44,234 Somebody, just two feet or whatever, 294 00:30:45,074 --> 00:30:47,434 underneath them would be listening 295 00:30:47,514 --> 00:30:49,954 and notating and clocking everything. 296 00:30:51,514 --> 00:30:54,434 At the heart of all of this were the M rooms. 297 00:30:54,754 --> 00:30:56,474 M stood for mic'd. 298 00:30:56,554 --> 00:30:58,714 And this is where the secret listeners were. 299 00:32:02,194 --> 00:32:05,034 And they would record the conversations onto 300 00:32:05,114 --> 00:32:08,034 78 inch acetate disks. 301 00:32:08,314 --> 00:32:11,954 So enormous disks, and this huge technology 302 00:32:12,034 --> 00:32:14,794 that today looks quite ridiculous to us, 303 00:32:14,874 --> 00:32:16,754 but it was latest state of the art. 304 00:32:18,274 --> 00:32:19,994 There was no time off. 305 00:32:20,074 --> 00:32:22,954 You had to monitor those conversations 306 00:32:23,474 --> 00:32:26,874 every single day of the year, even on Christmas Day. 307 00:32:30,554 --> 00:32:33,514 And, of course, the conversations were originally in German. 308 00:32:33,994 --> 00:32:36,594 So once the conversations had finished, 309 00:32:36,674 --> 00:32:39,834 the secret listeners had to listen to that conversation again 310 00:32:40,074 --> 00:32:44,274 and write with pencil and paper, word for word, 311 00:32:44,834 --> 00:32:47,994 what that prisoner had said or what they'd said to each other. 312 00:32:48,234 --> 00:32:50,714 And then, of course, it had to be translated. 313 00:33:01,394 --> 00:33:04,874 And what survives today in the National Archives are 314 00:33:04,954 --> 00:33:07,234 the typed up conversations 315 00:33:07,594 --> 00:33:11,274 in the original German and in the English translation. 316 00:33:15,154 --> 00:33:18,674 So in contrast to today where you can record hours of audio 317 00:33:18,754 --> 00:33:20,114 footage, often on a smartphone, 318 00:33:20,194 --> 00:33:23,794 back in the 1940s you were using technology where the 319 00:33:23,874 --> 00:33:26,114 capacity allows you for seven minutes, 320 00:33:26,194 --> 00:33:29,874 you only have a finite number of vinyls that you can use, 321 00:33:29,954 --> 00:33:31,994 and as a result you're recording these, 322 00:33:32,074 --> 00:33:34,914 you're then listening back, you're transcribing them, 323 00:33:34,994 --> 00:33:38,474 but then they're subsequently wiped to reuse at a future date. 324 00:33:38,994 --> 00:33:42,674 So we lack the actual recordings themselves, and in the end it 325 00:33:42,754 --> 00:33:45,954 means that the only details of the conversations that we have are 326 00:33:46,034 --> 00:33:49,234 the transcripts that have been declassified into government archives. 327 00:34:23,314 --> 00:34:26,994 And occasionally, as some of the secret listeners told me, 328 00:34:27,354 --> 00:34:29,234 a particular prisoner might think, 329 00:34:29,314 --> 00:34:31,714 I wonder if they're listening outside the door or something. 330 00:34:31,994 --> 00:34:33,874 So he would turn the tap on, 331 00:34:33,954 --> 00:34:35,434 there was a sink in their room, 332 00:34:35,514 --> 00:34:37,394 and they would talk very quietly. 333 00:34:38,194 --> 00:34:41,554 And those microphones were so sophisticated, 334 00:34:41,634 --> 00:34:45,194 they could pick up that conversation so clearly, 335 00:34:45,274 --> 00:34:48,154 even with the tap running in their room. 336 00:34:53,394 --> 00:34:57,954 The first aim was, of course, to find out military intelligence, 337 00:34:58,514 --> 00:35:02,154 information about weapons, and then, through that, 338 00:35:02,434 --> 00:35:04,554 they found something very different. 339 00:35:05,114 --> 00:35:08,474 Suddenly, they realized that they are actually recording 340 00:35:08,874 --> 00:35:11,034 the annihilation of the European Jews. 341 00:35:14,954 --> 00:35:17,234 From very early on in this operation, 342 00:35:17,594 --> 00:35:19,874 prisoners were talking about atrocities, 343 00:35:19,954 --> 00:35:24,194 and they were even boasting about the number of Jews that were 344 00:35:24,274 --> 00:35:25,954 being murdered across Europe. 345 00:36:02,354 --> 00:36:06,674 The British had a lot of categories of information that they were after. 346 00:36:07,434 --> 00:36:11,834 Atrocities on the Eastern Front was not one of those categories. 347 00:36:15,914 --> 00:36:18,954 From the moment Nazi Germany invades Poland, 348 00:36:19,274 --> 00:36:23,314 the Jews of Poland find themselves in a completely different situation 349 00:36:23,394 --> 00:36:25,714 and this starts from the very first hours. 350 00:36:26,194 --> 00:36:29,914 Synagogues are being burned, community leaders are abused, 351 00:36:29,994 --> 00:36:32,754 sometimes because of their Jewish appearance, 352 00:36:32,834 --> 00:36:35,674 sometimes because of being seen as wealthy. 353 00:36:36,034 --> 00:36:39,034 And those things are happening all over Poland. 354 00:36:40,274 --> 00:36:42,554 This causes a profound shock. 355 00:36:43,394 --> 00:36:46,914 This shatters the Jewish community at its core 356 00:36:46,994 --> 00:36:48,394 from the very beginning. 357 00:36:53,434 --> 00:36:55,994 Many decrees are being imposed on the Jews, 358 00:36:56,074 --> 00:36:58,834 and one of the most difficult one is forced labor. 359 00:37:01,194 --> 00:37:02,754 It meant abducting men. 360 00:37:03,474 --> 00:37:05,514 And these Jewish men who were abducted 361 00:37:05,594 --> 00:37:08,714 might be taken for work like clearing rubble 362 00:37:08,794 --> 00:37:12,114 from the bombings, or simply for torture. 363 00:37:12,914 --> 00:37:16,914 They eventually were put into projects that the SS and the rest of 364 00:37:16,994 --> 00:37:18,714 the Nazi regime had in mind. 365 00:37:20,434 --> 00:37:24,634 One of the recordings echoed the difficult conditions in the 366 00:37:24,714 --> 00:37:27,514 camps of Skarzyszko-Kamiena and Szynszuchowa. 367 00:37:28,234 --> 00:37:30,994 In that camp, the Jewish prisoners were forced to 368 00:37:31,074 --> 00:37:35,274 work with bare hands with this yellow material that penetrated their skin, 369 00:37:35,354 --> 00:37:38,794 causing them great suffering. The skin became yellow, 370 00:37:38,874 --> 00:37:41,394 their hair dropped, their teeth fell out, 371 00:37:41,634 --> 00:37:45,194 and they suffered greatly until many of them just died. 372 00:37:46,554 --> 00:37:48,994 And many of these men never returned. 373 00:38:23,354 --> 00:38:25,394 And the person who commanded this, 374 00:38:25,634 --> 00:38:27,794 the man in charge, was Reinhard Heydrich, 375 00:38:28,234 --> 00:38:30,434 one of the senior SS officers. 376 00:38:30,514 --> 00:38:32,754 He's actually one of the deputies of Heinrich Himmler, 377 00:38:33,074 --> 00:38:34,474 the head of the SS. 378 00:38:34,914 --> 00:38:38,874 And Heydrich, who oversaw all of these special units 379 00:38:38,954 --> 00:38:41,274 who were brutal and murderous in Poland, 380 00:38:41,874 --> 00:38:45,114 sent out a schnellbrief, an express letter 381 00:38:45,194 --> 00:38:46,514 to the commanders of those units 382 00:38:46,594 --> 00:38:48,674 on September the 21st of 1939, 383 00:38:49,354 --> 00:38:52,674 in which he spoke about the final aim, 384 00:38:52,754 --> 00:38:54,554 without saying what that was, 385 00:38:54,634 --> 00:38:58,234 and spelled out the steps on how to get to the final aim. 386 00:39:01,274 --> 00:39:04,074 More than 3 1/2 million Jews lived in Poland 387 00:39:04,154 --> 00:39:06,874 prior to the war, and about a third of them, 388 00:39:06,954 --> 00:39:09,074 about a million, were religious Jews. 389 00:39:12,514 --> 00:39:15,314 For the young German soldier who was raised 390 00:39:15,394 --> 00:39:17,154 within the Nazi education system, 391 00:39:17,354 --> 00:39:19,594 this is actually the very first time 392 00:39:19,674 --> 00:39:21,514 he meets those Polish Jews. 393 00:39:22,354 --> 00:39:24,514 And when those Germans see those Jews, 394 00:39:24,594 --> 00:39:26,154 an eruption of violence follows. 395 00:40:53,794 --> 00:40:57,634 Polish Jews were ghettoized in the larger cities. 396 00:40:58,394 --> 00:41:02,874 They were systematically robbed of all of their possessions 397 00:41:02,954 --> 00:41:07,314 and their bank accounts, anything that could be of value. 398 00:41:07,674 --> 00:41:10,074 But they were also killed at random. 399 00:41:10,434 --> 00:41:13,034 Every now and then, you'd have a mass shooting 400 00:41:13,114 --> 00:41:14,514 of hundreds of Jews. 401 00:42:13,354 --> 00:42:16,994 Later on, in 1942, as the operation expanded, 402 00:42:17,354 --> 00:42:20,034 the British realized that their listeners, 403 00:42:20,594 --> 00:42:24,194 although fluent in German, are simply not good enough 404 00:42:24,274 --> 00:42:27,314 because they couldn't grasp the small nuances 405 00:42:27,394 --> 00:42:30,274 and dialect of the German prisoners of war. 406 00:42:30,354 --> 00:42:35,994 The only way to transcribe with 100% accuracy was to use native speakers. 407 00:42:39,194 --> 00:42:41,634 The British had such native speakers. 408 00:42:42,674 --> 00:42:48,394 They will use German Jews who fled Germany in the 1930s 409 00:42:48,474 --> 00:42:50,634 and enlisted to the British Army. 410 00:42:52,594 --> 00:42:58,234 My father turned 18 in the summer of 1940. 411 00:42:59,474 --> 00:43:03,034 And shortly after that, the British authorities rounded up 412 00:43:03,114 --> 00:43:06,914 all German and Austrian nationals as enemy aliens. 413 00:43:12,554 --> 00:43:17,874 The only way out of internment was to volunteer to join the Pioneer Corps. 414 00:43:18,514 --> 00:43:19,674 And this is what he did. 415 00:43:22,674 --> 00:43:26,594 This was when the British army realized, in the early to 416 00:43:26,674 --> 00:43:29,394 mid 1940s, that they could use 417 00:43:29,474 --> 00:43:34,754 native born German and Austrian Jews because they could pick 418 00:43:34,834 --> 00:43:39,634 up the details, the nuances of people speaking their regional dialect. 419 00:43:42,874 --> 00:43:46,674 And the next thing he knew, he'd signed the Official Secrets Act 420 00:43:46,754 --> 00:43:50,914 and was going to do something for the war, which he was happy about. 421 00:43:51,874 --> 00:43:56,154 He thought he was going to do something practical, useful, 422 00:43:56,234 --> 00:43:57,714 get to the front, do something. 423 00:43:58,794 --> 00:44:02,594 In fact he was sent to go and sit in the basement and listen to 424 00:44:02,674 --> 00:44:06,434 bugged conversations of captured enemy officers. 425 00:44:11,634 --> 00:44:16,434 So here is my father sitting in the basement, above him are 426 00:44:16,514 --> 00:44:21,034 people boasting about their atrocities to each other. 427 00:44:22,034 --> 00:44:26,194 "I killed this many in this place on this day." "Oh, that's nothing," 428 00:44:26,274 --> 00:44:28,954 says the other one. "I killed that many in such a place. 429 00:44:29,034 --> 00:44:30,234 Much more efficient." 430 00:44:30,314 --> 00:44:36,114 These are humans we're talking about. These are people, and these are Jews. 431 00:44:36,194 --> 00:44:40,194 And here is my father having to listen to these conversations, 432 00:44:40,274 --> 00:44:43,114 and at the back of his head all the time is, 433 00:44:43,194 --> 00:44:46,714 "Where are my parents? Where's my family? Are they safe?" 434 00:44:48,834 --> 00:44:53,554 What he did know was that he was bearing witness 435 00:44:53,634 --> 00:44:55,674 to what they were talking about in the hope 436 00:44:55,754 --> 00:44:59,194 that one day they would have to account for their crimes 437 00:44:59,274 --> 00:45:02,554 and that is what helped him get through 438 00:45:02,594 --> 00:45:05,274 "I'm listening to this, I'm recording this 439 00:45:05,354 --> 00:45:08,594 and one day they will have to answer for their crimes." 440 00:45:11,754 --> 00:45:15,514 It turns out from the research that women played an 441 00:45:15,594 --> 00:45:19,914 absolutely crucial part in the recordings. 442 00:45:20,674 --> 00:45:24,514 Women were in some cases the interrogators, 443 00:45:24,594 --> 00:45:27,914 in other cases they were analyzing the intelligence 444 00:45:27,994 --> 00:45:29,674 coming out of the M rooms. 445 00:45:29,754 --> 00:45:32,594 These were roles traditionally not assigned to women 446 00:45:32,674 --> 00:45:35,034 and let alone in wartime. 447 00:45:36,114 --> 00:45:40,514 One of the most extraordinary, I think, roles that was 448 00:45:40,594 --> 00:45:43,274 undertaken was by Katherine Townshend. 449 00:45:46,194 --> 00:45:52,194 She was young in her early 20s, she was working on the M room tech, 450 00:45:52,274 --> 00:45:57,434 and from 1942 until the end of the war and just beyond, 451 00:45:57,474 --> 00:46:01,274 goes on to be head of the whole of the eavesdropping 452 00:46:01,354 --> 00:46:05,994 technology for British intelligence in the Second World War. 453 00:46:06,634 --> 00:46:08,154 I find that extraordinary. 454 00:46:11,274 --> 00:46:16,634 My mother wrote a memoir and had it privately printed for the family. 455 00:46:16,714 --> 00:46:19,154 She said things in the memoir 456 00:46:19,194 --> 00:46:23,114 that she had never spoken about before because of the 457 00:46:23,194 --> 00:46:25,754 Secrets Act. So the memoir really 458 00:46:25,834 --> 00:46:31,154 was for just the family, and has not been actually publicly published. 459 00:46:34,514 --> 00:46:37,834 I decided to apply for a commission with the hope of using my 460 00:46:37,914 --> 00:46:40,714 knowledge of German, perhaps in intelligence. 461 00:46:43,834 --> 00:46:47,914 Two weeks later, I received a notice of my acceptance 462 00:46:47,994 --> 00:46:49,434 by military intelligence. 463 00:46:51,594 --> 00:46:57,034 The Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Center, CSDIC, 464 00:46:57,114 --> 00:46:59,434 was then the only unit of its kind, 465 00:46:59,514 --> 00:47:03,834 but before long there were other CSDICs elsewhere in England, 466 00:47:03,914 --> 00:47:07,194 and in the Middle East, India and Australia. 467 00:47:11,194 --> 00:47:15,114 Despite their size, the enemy never discovered the sites, 468 00:47:15,194 --> 00:47:17,954 or were able to destroy any of the centers. 469 00:47:21,074 --> 00:47:25,274 With speed and accuracy, my colleagues transcribed and typed reports 470 00:47:25,354 --> 00:47:27,194 in German and English 471 00:47:27,274 --> 00:47:31,354 for distribution through most secret channels, sometimes by a 472 00:47:31,434 --> 00:47:34,314 dispatch rider directly to Churchill himself. 473 00:48:00,114 --> 00:48:03,234 For the British and Americans, this was not important enough. 474 00:48:04,554 --> 00:48:07,234 Their mantra was, "We'll win the war, 475 00:48:07,314 --> 00:48:08,994 "and this is how we're going to save the Jews." 476 00:48:13,914 --> 00:48:16,594 The occupation of Poland is being established, 477 00:48:16,674 --> 00:48:18,834 but at the same time, Nazi Germany 478 00:48:19,234 --> 00:48:21,674 starts setting its eyes towards the West. 479 00:48:21,754 --> 00:48:25,954 In the first half of 1940, the attack starts from the north. 480 00:48:26,034 --> 00:48:28,554 First Denmark, then Belgium and France. 481 00:48:28,954 --> 00:48:34,514 And within weeks, all Western Europe fell into the hands of Nazi Germany. 482 00:48:40,634 --> 00:48:44,834 Britain remains almost the only country still fighting Nazi Germany, 483 00:48:45,194 --> 00:48:48,394 despite the fact that it's being attacked, the blitz, the bombing. 484 00:48:54,074 --> 00:48:56,994 And despite this suffering, despite the fact that there were a 485 00:48:57,074 --> 00:48:59,194 few attempts to try to convince 486 00:48:59,274 --> 00:49:01,754 Great Britain to sign an agreement with Nazi Germany, 487 00:49:01,834 --> 00:49:03,234 this doesn't happen. 488 00:49:03,514 --> 00:49:07,234 And Great Britain continues to be an important force in the 489 00:49:07,314 --> 00:49:08,834 fight against Nazi Germany. 490 00:49:17,434 --> 00:49:20,394 In the first half of 1940, the situation of Polish Jews 491 00:49:20,474 --> 00:49:22,314 continues to be very difficult. 492 00:49:22,594 --> 00:49:23,874 There are more restrictions. 493 00:49:24,234 --> 00:49:28,634 The hardship is very difficult, and the food rations are very, very small. 494 00:49:31,914 --> 00:49:34,234 But this is not yet the final solution. 495 00:49:34,314 --> 00:49:37,154 It is not yet the total extermination of the Jews. 496 00:49:37,954 --> 00:49:42,274 And in the summer of 1940, Hitler announced to his service 497 00:49:42,354 --> 00:49:44,074 chiefs that they were going 498 00:49:44,154 --> 00:49:47,194 to attack the Soviet Union the following year. 499 00:49:50,674 --> 00:49:54,994 The Soviet Union was the center of the great global 500 00:49:55,074 --> 00:49:58,114 conspiracy of Judeo Bolshevism. 501 00:49:58,194 --> 00:50:00,594 At least this is how Hitler saw it. 502 00:50:03,594 --> 00:50:07,354 And the discourse among these groups of officials in Germany 503 00:50:07,434 --> 00:50:11,154 became very murderous, especially regarding Jews. 504 00:50:13,794 --> 00:50:18,234 Hitler tells them, "This is a war of extermination." 505 00:50:23,634 --> 00:50:27,434 Gradually, more prisoners of war fell into British hands, 506 00:50:27,514 --> 00:50:28,834 including generals. 507 00:50:30,034 --> 00:50:32,954 These generals commanded when the Holocaust took place. 508 00:50:34,194 --> 00:50:38,634 The recordings show us not only how the extermination intensified, 509 00:50:39,274 --> 00:50:41,514 but how it truly became a genocide.