All language subtitles for Dark.Marvels.S01E02.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH

Tonight, a closer look inside

the world’s most sinister
castles and strongholds...

Nobody can fathom a mind

that would create a place

that seems welcoming,
that seems safe,

but was designed to kill.

From an iconic torture tower...

It must have been
terrifying for prisoners

to be led down into the dungeon.

Your hips are
being pulled apart.

Your knees, your
wrists, everything.

It took some real time to
get his head off the body.

To a hotel of hidden horrors.

They’re going to be murdered

and the skeletons
sold for money.

It’s a tomb. It’s a trap.

These are the origin stories
of true temples of doom.

Not all inventions are
made with good intentions.

Unlock the twisted history

behind the world’s
darkest marvels.

Looming over the north bank
of London’s River Thames

is an imposing stone structure

that has been a fixture
on the city skyline

for nearly a 1,000 years...
The Tower of London.

The Tower of London
covers about 12 acres,

which is about nine
football fields of area.

It’s surrounded by a huge moat.

It dominates with its breadth.

It dominates with its width.
It dominates with its walls.

The Tower of London
is a phenomenal,

spectacular building.

It was in many ways the
archetypal medieval castle.

This intimidating stronghold

is ordered to be built
in the 11th century

by King William I.

In 1066, William the
Bastard conquers England

and becomes known forever
as William the Conqueror.

Once he takes
the reins of power,

the Tower of London is
built as his first main fortress.

William the Conqueror orders
this tower to be built from stone.

This is very unusual,

because people haven’t
really started crafting homes

out of stone yet in England,

and the reason why
William the Conqueror

wanted it to be
made out of stone

is because the idea was
stone would last forever.

The whole point of
a castle was to say,

"I am here, this is my land,

and I have now
built this structure

that will outlast even me."

But construction isn’t
complete until 1097,

ten years after William’s death.

The Tower of
London was originally

what is now just
the White Tower.

It was meant to be impregnable.

It was the part of a castle
that was then known as a keep,

and the word means that
you could keep safe there.

Keep the royal family safe.
Keep the royal jewels safe.

Retreat there from an angry
mob or an invading enemy.

Over the course of
the next three centuries,

the White Tower in the
middle was successfully,

as we would say
today, militarily hardened

by the construction of
two encircling curtain walls,

moats, and drawbridges.

Each of those walls
had towers built on them.

The tower is considered so safe

it serves as the
royal living quarters

throughout times
of great upheaval.

In 1348, the first cases of
the bubonic plague show up.

Now the bubonic plague of course

decimated the population
of medieval Europe,

killing six million people.

There’s a recession,
there’s economic depression.

There’s famine.

There’s a drought,
which doesn’t help.

And at the same time,

you have the English monarchy

pressing its claim
to the French throne

using English resources.

And so that leads to dissent
among the English population.

On May 30th, 1381,

that dissent turns
into an uprising

against the king
and his advisors.

King Richard II came into power
in 1377 when he was only ten.

So in an England
that’s run by a boy king,

that’s still reeling from
the bubonic plague

and thirty years of
economic upheavals,

1381 marks a watershed moment

in which the
peasants, the farmers,

the people who produce
the food are fed up.

Richard II wants to
appease the peasants,

so he leaves the tower
to go to talk to them.

But naively, the
gates are left open,

because it’s assumed that no
one would ever go into the tower

because it is such
a large fortress.

Unfortunately, the peasants
see their opportunity,

and over 400 of
them storm the tower.

They go in, and they
want to get major leaders.

They do get a hold of one
of those advisors of the king

who they consider an
enemy of the people,

and that is chancellor and archbishop
of Canterbury Simon Sudbury.

Along with him and
several other royal officials,

they drag them out of the
tower across to Tower Hill.

And there they proceed
to behead these officials.

The beheading of Simon
Sudbury appears to have been done

with, let’s say, a
rather blunt axe...

and it took some real time
to get his head off the body.

And they take these heads

and put them on spears

and display them
on London Bridge.

Several days later,
the revolt would end

with the heads of some of
the leading rebellers on pikes

and used to replace
the heads on the bridge.

King Richard manages
to crush the rebellion,

but ultimately meets
his own grisly fate.

Even though Richard is
only 14 when this happens,

his reign becomes very unstable
after the Peasants’ Revolt,

and he is seen as more and more
authoritarian as his reign progresses,

until he’s deposed in 1399
and likely starved to death.

After the Peasants’ Revolt,

the monarchy stops
using the White Tower

as a primary residence.

In the late 15th century,
early 16th century,

the center of power shifts.

The monarchy moves
around a lot more,

and actually Windsor becomes

one of the primary
royal residences.

The Tower of London
becomes a seat of government.

But it also serves
another crucial purpose...

As a prison for people
accused of high treason,

including a queen.

Of Henry the VIII’s wives,

Anne Boleyn is perhaps
the most famous.

Henry VIII, his main concern

is to produce an
heir for the kingdom.

Anne Boleyn was not able to provide
him this male heir whom he sought.

He wanted to get
her out of the way.

She is accused
of incest, adultery,

and she’s even
accused of witchcraft...

The idea that she
bewitched Henry

into divorcing his first
wife, Catherine of Aragon,

so he’d marry her instead.

Ultimately, she is found guilty,

and she’s thrown into the
tower and condemned to death.

She is shut up in
the same apartments

where she had
prepared for her wedding

a mere three years before.

While she’s held
there for 17 days,

she can watch the
construction of the gallows

on which she is to be beheaded.

Henry wants to orchestrate
a spectacle for her execution.

But Anne was very afraid that an
English axeman would botch the job.

So Anne Boleyn
asked and was granted

the right to have a French
swordsman come over from Calais.

French beheadings at this time

were done with a very
sharp, very skilled swordsman.

He was paid 23
pounds, 6 shillings,

the equivalent of $10,000 today,

to execute the first queen who’d
been executed in English history.

This is unprecedented.

Anne Boleyn is led to
the site of her beheading,

the Tower Green,
cementing its legacy

as a stage for
bloody executions,

which includes another
of Henry VIII’s wives

just six years later.

Catherine Howard is
Henry VIII’s fifth wife.

She’s very young
when she marries Henry.

Some historians believe
that she’s only 15 years old.

But Catherine is
repulsed by him,

and so she starts
having an affair

with a young member of court,

and she doesn’t
even really hide it.

So Henry VIII orders her to be
sent to the tower to be executed.

In comparison to
the quite regal death

that attended Anne Boleyn,

Catherine Howard’s
was without pageantry.

It was hurried.
It was inglorious.

And this is very likely due

to Henry’s extreme humiliation

at not only having been cuckolded
after just one year of marriage,

but also having married someone

who so openly was
disgusted by him.

Her body is buried beneath
the floor of the chapel.

There’s not even a box.

Catherine Howard
is buried with lime.

And there’s every suggestion

that he just wanted to
dissolve her body and move on.

During the course
of its bloody history,

many more meet their end
beneath the executioner’s axe.

There is currently on display

in the top of the White Tower

one of four axes that
was used for executions.

It’s a very distinctive axe
because it has a wide blade,

and then it tapers into
this almost hooked shape.

And that axe, of
course, very notoriously

becomes an emblem of
beheading in England specifically.

But the tower becomes
even more well known

for its brutal
methods of torture.

Hidden beneath
the Tower of London

are several dungeons
responsible for its bloody reputation.

It must have been terrifying

for prisoners to be led
down into the dungeons,

where they would have heard
other prisoners screaming,

moaning in agony.

They would have
also heard the torturers

and what they were doing.

Torture was extremely prolific

under the reign of
Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

And this is because of
Henry VIII’s growing paranoia

of people working against him.

And so, anybody who
he even suspected

of possibly being treasonous
would get thrown into the tower.

In the dungeons at
the Tower of London,

you would have had
three main forms of torture.

One of them is the rack.

When somebody’s
attached to a rack,

they’re stretched, and what
you hear is the popping sound

of their joints
and the cartilage

as they are slowly dislocated.

Your spine is
being pulled apart.

Your hips are
being pulled apart,

your knees, your
wrists, everything.

It would leave somebody
completely and totally incapacitated.

Then you would have
also had the manacles

that could be employed when
someone was accused of stealing

because one is being
hung by the hands.

Manacles were
meant for imprisonment

or to suspend somebody
in a distended form.

Someone’s hands are tied behind
their back and they’re lifted up.

So somebody in manacles
could be suspended

at varying angles that
cause varying degrees of pain.

And then, of course, you also
had the scavenger’s daughter.

Like the rack, the
scavenger’s daughter

is used to elicit confessions.

But instead of stretching
victims, it compresses them.

The idea of the
scavenger’s daughter,

it’s a metal frame that holds
someone’s hands and their feet

so that they are forced into a
stress position for a length of time.

And it is designed specifically

to cause severe
pain and cramping.

Perhaps even worse
is being locked up

in the most fearsome
dungeon of all,

a dark four-by-four cell
known as the Little Ease.

If you’ve ever had
to even bend over

for longer than you’d like,
you know how painful it can get.

People would be locked
in it for hours or even days.

But it’s also
solitary confinement.

You cannot see anyone.
There is no window.

And in my opinion, except for
deaths that happen bit by bit,

nothing is worse than
solitary confinement.

A horrific fate
experienced by its first

unfortunate victim in 1534.

There was a young woman named Alice
Tankerville who had been accused of theft,

convicted for it, and
imprisoned in the tower.

However, one of the guards
of the tower named John Bawd

fell in love with her.

So one night they
sought to slip out

of the tower together.

They made their
way toward Tower Hill,

when they were caught
by one of John’s colleagues,

who of course
called other guards in.

As punishment,
John Bawd is locked

inside Little Ease
until he’s almost dead.

Then he’s hung outside
until he dies of exposure

and his body is
picked apart by ravens.

John Bawd goes from being
one of the guards of the tower

to one of the tower’s victims.

Alice, because she
had originally committed

a theft on the Thames,
was convicted of piracy.

And in keeping with the crime,

she was hanged from the side of
the River Thames as were all pirates,

either to die of hanging first

or die as the
tide rose over her.

In 1640, torture is
outlawed in England,

bringing this dark chapter in
the tower’s history to a close.

But over two centuries later,

an even more menacing
castle emerges.

July 1895, Chicago, Illinois.

While conducting an
investigation of a South Side hotel,

police make a
shocking discovery.

In the basement, the
police find a dissection table.

They find a kiln
for burning things,

and they ultimately find evidence
of bones and jewelry inside this kiln.

Also, a tub full of quicklime,

which is a classic way to
dissolve and dispose of a body.

And they find so
many jumbled remains

that it’s impossible
for them to determine

exactly how many
corpses they’ve found.

News headlines dub the
hotel "The Murder Castle,"

and investigators
start to dig deeper

into the building’s
owner, Dr. H.H. Holmes.

Holmes was born in May of 1861

as Herman Webster Mudgett.

And then it is upon his
graduation from medical school

that he decides to take
on an assumed name.

Holmes also displays a
macabre fascination with cadavers,

with bodies, with dissection,

and some of his
earliest known scams

are taking out insurance
policies on fictitious people

and presenting a cadaver
as the dead person,

collecting the insurance money.

After leaving New
York and Philadelphia

under suspicious circumstances,

Holmes moves to Chicago in
1886 to work at a pharmacy.

Soon after, he buys the
vacant lot across the street

to build a new
endeavor... A hotel.

Holmes is a guy who wants
to keep his business secret.

So no contractor, no
carpenter, no bricklayer,

does more than a couple of
weeks work before they’re fired,

which means they won’t
see the diabolical plan in full.

When this building
of Holmes’ springs up

in the middle of the
town, it is so singular,

even down to the turrets.

It has the
resemblance of a castle,

and it is so tall and takes
up so much real estate,

that it is eye-catching.

The ground floor
of Holmes’ hotel

is built out as a
conventional retail space.

But the second level is a
maze of hidden passageways,

trap doors, and dead ends.

On the second floor, we’re
looking at approximately,

say 8,000 square feet,

and you’ve got roughly
30-some-odd rooms

and about 50-plus
doors. That’s a lot.

He folds asbestos
into the plans.

This makes everything
silent. Why is this important?

Because you can’t hear
someone in a muffled room.

Holmes wants to keep you
in. So, the hallways are mazes.

The exits are not clear. The
windows are boarded over.

So, it’s almost the opposite
of what a hotel should be.

It’s a tomb. It’s a trap.

In late 1892,

H.H. Holmes’ hotel
is open for business.

And his timing is
deviously perfect,

because in just a few months

the World’s Fair
will open in Chicago

in the spring of 1893.

Holmes put ads in newspapers
around the middle-west,

and incredibly, he has
women answering his ads

who are planning on
coming to Chicago.

These people have no idea
what they have walked into.

He would put them in rooms

where he knew that he could
either control them entirely,

or he could control
their sense of perception.

The hotel itself is
set up like a maze.

It’s a labyrinth.
There are dead ends.

They’re staircases
that lead nowhere.

There are doors that open
out onto alleys with a drop.

And if a young
woman is disoriented

and tries to leave her
room, she’d get lost.

They are put to sleep,

because Holmes
has introduced gas

into their sleeping chamber.

And then they sadly
wake up in the basement

strapped to a table.

And he might be
experimenting on them.

He might be torturing them.

For those unfortunate enough
to actually see this basement,

they must have felt like they
were seeing some new form

of a medieval torture dungeon.

A rack for stretching
human bodies,

a dissection table for
experimenting and for torture.

A vat for quicklime,
a vat for acid.

A huge furnace that could
accommodate a full human body.

And then so many surgical and
dissection tools all around the room.

Ultimately, they’re
going to be murdered,

the soft tissue disposed of,

and the skeletons
sold for money.

Holmes is a spider,

and the Murder Castle itself
is the ultimate spider’s web.

He was charming and could
convince women to come with him.

Most of the victims of H.H.
Holmes were young women,

many of them who had
resources, who had wealth.

The best example of
that is the Williams sisters,

Minnie and Nannie Williams.

Minnie comes to Chicago,
and she and Holmes

not only take up
with one another,

but Minnie begins to work
for Holmes as a stenographer.

They become engaged.

Minnie Williams is convinced

to sign over all of
her material wealth,

and Holmes does the same
thing with young Nannie Williams.

And now he really has no
use for the sisters Williams.

Minnie is killed. When
Nannie gets there, she is killed.

That’s sort of the distillation
of Holmes’ kind of MO,

drawing in young
vulnerable women,

ultimately killing them,
and acquiring their property.

But after a series
of suspicious fires,

by the summer of 1893,

his crimes start
catching up with him.

Holmes had taken out
insurance on the castle,

and so he was trying to collect.

But because of the
really, really sketchy nature

of the fires, he
was not paid off.

Undeterred, Holmes
cooks up a new scam

with his business
partner Benjamin Pitezel.

Holmes and Benjamin
Pitezel have a plan to defraud

an insurance company
in Philadelphia,

where they will
present a dead body

after taking out
an insurance policy

on Benjamin Pitezel.

Pitezel, sadly, he
thinks he’s a partner,

but he’s actually
going to be the victim,

because Holmes is going
to present the real body

of one Ben Pitezel to
the insurance company.

Holmes had a
tendency to eliminate

anybody who knew his secrets.

Pitezel knew of his fraud.

He kills his business partner,

and then acquires possession

of Benjamin Pitezel’s
three children.

Holmes goes on the run

with Pitezel’s children in tow,

ultimately killing them.

After two of the bodies
are discovered in Toronto,

police search his
Chicago hotel in 1895,

and what they
uncover is truly horrific.

When the police arrive,
this one-time fortress

is in tremendous disrepair.

And so they’re looking around,

and they see these
nefarious and weird rooms.

But it’s when they
go to the basement

that they are greeted with the sight of
bones and blood and bloody clothing,

and a basement that looks like it
had been a medieval torture dungeon.

Nobody can fathom a mind
that would create a place

that seems welcoming,
that seems safe,

but was designed to kill.

Ultimately, Holmes
is sentenced to death

for the murder of
Benjamin Pitezel.

But before he’s executed, he writes
a shockingly detailed confession,

admitting to a total of
27 gruesome murders.

Because the stories of Holmes’
crimes is nationwide news,

the tabloid medium
makes him into a celebrity.

Now that he knows
he can do no further,

he wants his crimes
to be revealed.

Whether or not he
reveals accurately

or exaggerates and
embellishes his own reputation

is impossible to know.

H.H. Holmes hangs
on May 7th, 1896.

But the building dubbed
the Murder Castle

stands as a grim reminder
of his crimes until 1938.

The city of Chicago, they
take possession of this building,

they bulldoze it, and they build
a brand-new U.S. post office,

using in part the original
Murder Castle basement

as the basement for
the new post office.

And so in that regard,
this hotel, this fortress,

this monster is still there.

Just because this
building was torn down

doesn’t mean that whatever
happened there didn’t happen there.

The horrors that took
place on that ground,

the blood that was
shed there, is still there.

The Murder Castle might
never escape its bloody past,

but about 1,800 miles away,
there’s an island where escape

is said to be
downright impossible.

A mile and a half
from San Francisco

stands one of the most notorious

maximum-security prisons
in America... Alcatraz.

The nickname of
Alcatraz was The Rock.

Someone once
wrote about Alcatraz

that it was the great garbage
can in San Francisco Bay,

into which all the federal penitentiaries
sent their most rotten apples,

so it had that reputation
of being a terrible place.

Ironically, Alcatraz,

a place known for
locking people in,

was initially built
to keep people out.

Alcatraz has history
going back to the 1850s

as a U.S. Army post,
the first fortress built

by the American government
on the West Coast.

After a major natural
disaster in 1906,

the fort gets a new purpose.

The thing we need to remember

about the San Francisco
earthquake of 1906

is that it wasn’t
just an earthquake.

It was also a great fire.

Fire sweeps through and
obliterates San Francisco.

Alcatraz is an island
just a mile away,

and it becomes the dumping
ground for all of the people

who had been incarcerated
in San Francisco.

Ultimately, it would be decided

that building
would be torn down,

and rebuilt by a much
larger prison building.

When the prison building that
we see today was completed,

it was the largest
reinforced concrete building

ever built at that time.

In 1934, it officially opens.

Letters were sent
out to the wardens

of other federal prisons,

"Make your prison safer.

Send us your worst."

They wanted to round up

all the most
troublesome prisoners,

and the most
dangerous prisoners,

and put them all in one place.

Al Capone ended up at Alcatraz.

Machine Gun Kelly as well.

And in a later
date, Whitey Bulger.

So lots of well-known criminals
who had made headlines

before they ended up
getting incarcerated.

Most convicts are
housed in three blocks,

A, B, and C.

But the worst offenders

are sent to solitary
confinement,

the dreaded D block.

The lower floor of D block
contains six dark cells.

The door leading in is a three-inch
thick steel door filled with concrete.

And when they
closed that cell door,

you were in there in the dark.

The diet was basically
bread and water

with a real meal every third
day by government order.

Some prisoners who would
be taken to the dark cells,

and they would be
complaining, "I have pain.

I think I’m really sick. I
should see the doctor."

And on a couple of occasions,

when they were
checked on, they had died.

They had six cells that were
psychotic cells, you know?

Sort of where you put the
guys that are cracking up,

that are uncontrollable.

There’s nothing but a hole
in the floor. That’s all they got.

No bed, no sink, no toilet,
nothing. Just a hole in the floor.

The solitary confinement
wasn’t completely solitary,

because being in the center of
the bay and very, very isolated,

the prisoners, they were able
to hear the ocean waves outside.

If there were boats sailing
by with people celebrating

or even just people laughing,

prisoners could
hear that very clearly.

It was like freedom was
just at the tip of their fingers

but they could never touch it.

The most high-profile guy that was
there when I was there was the Birdman.

They gave him life in
solitary confinement.

Now can you imagine
that? Never to come out.

They did the same thing
to a guy in later years,

only they put him actually
underground in a cell.

They buried him alive.

Solitary confinement is
the most brutal punishment

a prisoner can receive.

If you’re in a room like
that day after day after day,

it’s been proven that your
mind completely breaks down.

Solitary confinement isn’t
the only form of punishment.

In the early years, you’re
not allowed to speak at all.

The theory was it was a
good idea to keep order.

But it actually was terrible for the
psychological well-being of prisoners.

Conditions are so bad,

some inmates contemplate
drastic measures.

To build a prison,
you have to understand

that the people inside will
do everything in their power

to try and break
out of that prison.

And so you have
to keep that in mind

as you’re designing
and building it,

human beings inside
are very creative

and they’re very effective
at finding weaknesses.

Preventing any
attempts to escape

are armed guards who patrol
24/7 from the gun galleries,

a maze of walkways
protected by bars and mesh.

They had holes where they’d
stick their gun through the window.

Any time there was
a fight in Alcatraz,

they’d shoot one
shot, a warning shot.

If you didn’t break it
up, they would shoot you.

We hated the.

In addition to all
of these guards,

highest percentage of guards to
prisoners than anywhere in the country,

is a system of tear gas canisters
that are suspended from the ceiling.

So, if there’s a prison
uprising or an escape attempt,

they can release this tear gas
and immobilize the prisoners.

But these defenses
don’t stop prisoners

from risking it
all to break out.

In the 29 years
the prison is open,

few inmates are daring enough

to put the escape-proof
Alcatraz to the test.

One of the most violent attempts

occurs in May of 1946.

Bernard Coy is a bank robber,
and he’s hell-bent on escaping.

He enlists the help of
several other inmates

in a scheme to find
a way to break out.

They study for a
period of months

the movements of the guards
and the changing of shifts.

Bernard Coy
successfully navigated

his way to the gun gallery

when the guard had
gone around the corner.

When he came back, Coy
punched him unconscious.

He succeeded in
getting his guns,

a .30-06 rifle and a handgun.

Their plan was to retrieve
the key that hung on a chain

from the gun gallery,
and it wasn’t there.

Coy and his cohorts grab the
keyring off the unconscious guard.

They try as many keys as
possible in the mechanism,

but they jam the mechanism,
and they can’t get out.

One of the prisoners says,

"We’ve gotta kill
these guards because

they’re gonna testify against us

and send us all to
the electric chair."

So Coy kills one, seriously
injures several others.

This ultimately leads to
a tense three-day standoff

between the escaping
inmates and law enforcement.

Marines come in with grenades

and the real heavy equipment
and begin blasting away,

not really caring whether
they take down the building

or kill a lot of
innocent prisoners.

It’s all about simply
suppressing the insurrection.

And there was no escape,

and they would die in
the plumbing corridor

under gunfire by
guards and the Marines.

The prison launch
takes aboard the bodies

of the three leaders
of the mutiny...

Coy, Hubbard, and Cretzer.

The deadly mayhem

reminds prisoners
that the harshest torture

is knowing that escape
is all but impossible.

I thought about escaping from
Alcatraz. Everybody did, of course.

But I learned very quickly that if
you’re gonna escape from Alcatraz,

you have to be willing
to give up your life.

’Cause if you don’t make
it, you’re either gonna drown

or they’re gonna shoot
you... One or the other.

There’s no second chances.

During the federal
penitentiary era,

from 1934 to 1963,

we had 1,576 federal
prisoners sent to Alcatraz.

There were 14 official
escape attempts.

36 men took part in those.

And we just have five
men unaccounted for

out of that number.

Even if on the off-chance

those five survived,
an escape rate of 0.3%

makes Alcatraz one of the most
escape-proof prisons in U.S. history.

While Alcatraz proves
effective at locking evil away,

there’s a temple of doom built to
help unleash it out into the world.

Germany, 1933.

As the Nazi party
continues its rise to power,

Adolph Hitler’s chief
deputy Heinrich Himmler

begins searching for
a base of operations

for his elite soldiers,
the Schutzstaffel,

otherwise known as the SS.

The SS under
Himmler is exploding.

It’s an enormous number of
new recruits that are coming in,

and they need to be trained.

And Himmler needs
a place to do this.

The Nazis have for a long time
been associated with the occult,

especially Himmler,
who’s absolutely invested

in medieval chivalric culture.

Himmler’s obsession
with medieval culture

leads to the perfect location

deep in Germany’s
Teutoburg Forest.

The Wewelsburg
Castle is very near a site

where it is believed
that native Germans

were able to defeat
invading Roman armies

in the first decade
of the common era.

This space is so important
to Heinrich Himmler

and the Nazi regime
because it connects it

to a storied and
ancient history.

And this fortress, which
is built in the 17th century

on much earlier
medieval foundations,

comes to symbolize the
heart of the Nazi regime.

All of this is coming together

in this kind of
soup of symbolism

that Himmler
distills into a vision

of this being the
heart of the SS,

and a place to educate the future
leaders of the great new Reich.

Himmler signs a 100-year
lease on the castle

and forces prisoners
to help renovate it.

One of the most insidious
aspects of Wewelsburg Castle

is its association with the
death by work program.

And over 4,000 workers

were brought in from
the concentration camps.

Himmler used the enforced labor

of individuals at
concentration camps nearby,

and he then put into
practice what he was teaching,

how to force people
to death by laboring.

Over a 1,000 people
died in the reconstructing

and building of various
aspects of this castle.

They were either
starved to death,

worked to death, or they
were beaten, or they were shot.

So this castle is literally
built on the blood of the people

who were interned in
those concentration camps

and forced to work to
fulfill this sadistic Nazi ideal.

In 1941,

with construction of his
temple of doom well underway,

Himmler plans his sadistic
hub of Nazi ideology.

They wanted to create a sort of
academy of Nazism within this castle.

It was in Wewelsburg
that Himmler

would have taught his
philosophy to willing men.

They were going to become
these elite, the ubermensch.

They would have been educated

and taught in the
rooms of this castle

about the Final Solution
and about their role in it,

and their role in essentially
exterminating anybody

who was not of pure Aryan blood.

After training,
recruits would be led

to the Obergruppenfuhrersaal,
or the General’s Hall.

In the Obergruppenfuhrersaal,

he has a mosaic of a
black sun on the floor,

because he believes
that the astral significance

and the alignment
of the building itself

would somehow endow them
with a sense of immortality.

In this chamber,

there would have been
a large round oak table,

evocative of the Round Table.

Around the edges of the
room, there are twelve seats

for the twelve knights
of the Round Table.

And of course,
there’s the central seat,

which is for the king himself,

which for Himmler would
have been the Fuhrer.

The Nazis are not
inventive enough

to create their own mythology.
They’ve got to borrow it.

It’s especially
ironic that they take

the whole Arthurian
myth from the English

and try to put it in Germany
and make their own version

of a kind of dark
Camelot within this castle.

It is here that
members of the SS

would be officially
indoctrinated.

Every cult needs
to have its initiation,

and part of that is
to give these SS men

a death’s head ring,
something that will bond them

as though in a
marriage to the cult,

but also as a reminder
to future recruits,

"You belong to us."

Himmler would go so far
as to have SS members

renounce the
Judeo-Christian holidays

in favor of the pagan holidays
that largely preceded them.

So in order to isolate them

from the lives they
had lived previously,

you got to get rid of
those things like Christmas.

Himmler even goes as far

as to make plans
for the afterlife.

In the north tower, he
has the room constructed

with a domed roof
like a Mycenaean tomb.

The crypt, or as Himmler
called it, the gruft,

was the cistern of the
castle that was modified

to become sort
of a symbolic tomb

that Himmler himself
wanted to be interred in.

In this room, there
are twelve niches

set up along in the
circle along the walls

for the urns of
elites of the SS.

And there’s an eternal
flame in the center,

and that flame was meant
to last as long as the Reich.

A vile legacy Himmler and
the SS work towards cementing.

Probably the most
important event

that ever took
place at the castle

was the meeting to plan for
the invasion of the Soviet Union,

Operation Barbarossa.

The people belonging
to this death cult

they were told, "Go out and
kill as many people as you can."

It was assumed
30 million would die

who were mostly civilians
or political officials or Jews,

and it was the SS’s job
to do this methodical killing

in order to make it so
that you purified the country

as you moved
along in the battle.

But Himmler’s dream
of making this fortress

the center of a new Aryan empire

is ultimately crushed.

March of 1945, the
Allies have landed

and are advancing
across Germany.

And Himmler runs like a coward

and gives orders to destroy
Wewelsburg Castle behind him.

And of course, all that happens

is small fires throughout.

Tapestries, flammables
burn, but for the most part

the castle itself
is still standing

and the local population
loot it once the Nazis vacate.

Today, Wewelsburg
Castle is home to a museum

commemorating the
victims who suffered violence

at the hands of the Nazi SS.

So Wewelsburg Castle,
which was meant to be

the physical stone fortress

that symbolized the
heart of the Nazi regime,

ultimately becomes a place
for young German students

gaining a broader
perspective of their history.

The storied halls
of these dark places

remind us that even though they
were originally designed to protect,

they can just as easily
become bastions of evil.