Original subtitles

- [Narrator] 1941, Hitler sets into motion the building

of a 90 square kilometer complex

in the remote French village of Margival.

- You're building a city in an area that is not developed,

and you are trying to do that in secrecy.

It sounds impossible, really.

- It would be very difficult to get anywhere near this place

as an unwanted visitor.

- [Narrator] Meanwhile, on the eastern front,

Hitler moves into the Wolf's Lair,

a secret headquarters deep in the Polish wilderness.

He will go on to spend more than 800 days in this fortress,

commanding the war effort.

- Hitler now personally wants to be close to the front

so he can meddle directly.

- [Narrator] In Margival,

construction moves at a furious pace

to develop an elaborate top secret complex,

one which will dwarf the Wolf's Lair.

- Architecture in Nazi Germany was

like the word of national socialism expressed in stone.

- The question is, is this the hallmark or harbinger

for major action that was planned to come that didn't?

- [Narrator] Just what is this colossal structure,

and what could the Nazis be planning to use it for?

[dramatic theme music]

[rocks crumbling]

[birds squawking]

Late 1943, top German field marshall, Erwin Rommel arrives

in the small village of Margival, France,

flanked by an extensive security detail.

Already a hive of Nazi activity,

since local train traffic had been cut off to the area

in early February, local villagers are confined

to their homes as top Nazi brass move into the city.

Locals have become used to Nazi patrols,

and villager comings and goings are being watched closely.

Public buildings have been confiscated,

and the local church watch tower taken

down to avoid becoming a mark for allied bombings.

Security is heightened

as Rommel's detail moves to a restricted construction zone,

90 square kilometers protected by an anti-aircraft

and anti-tank defense line.

What were the Nazis building,

and what was Rommel here to inspect?

- Margival is about 300 kilometers from the English channel,

about 100 kilometers from the Belgian border.

- This tiny French village is extremely rural,

it's in the middle of nowhere.

And it is tiny,

there are fewer than 300 permanent residents there.

Suddenly it's been taken over by the Nazis,

which would've been a massive change for the people

who lived there and for the surrounding,

what had been quiet landscape.

[ominous music]

- [Narrator] But on December 23rd, 1941,

Hitler signs an order of requisition to build at Margival,

and two months later, the Nazis begin to descend.

Train service is diverted.

Eight villages are placed inside a security zone.

Nazis take over local buildings, houses, and edifices,

and the signs of construction start to move in.

- Not only did the Nazis fiercely occupy this rural region,

they also requisitioned a number of the local businesses

and companies so that they had absolute control

over their equipment and products.

Things like scaffolding, cement mixers, jackhammers, cranes.

What on earth was going on here that they needed

all of this stuff?

- The requisition for the land was signed in late 1941,

and by the end of 1942,

there were 6,000 workers beginning to develop this land.

That number increased quickly.

Within a year, there were 6,000 workers.

Within 18 months of getting started,

there were 22,000 workers

at work on a 90 square kilometer complex.

- People in the area were probably in a state of fear,

one; because they couldn't understand

what these people were up to because it was shrouded

in secrecy and they were very forcefully excluded.

And also, there was the fear

of if they inadvertently stumbled upon some secrets,

they could pay a very heavy price for it.

This sprawling area, this vast construction,

what were the Nazis trying to do over here?

[ominous music]

- [Narrator] When Rommel arrives at this top secret base,

he must go through three levels of security

to reach the heart of the installation.

- The level of secrecy and protection of this site was

so important that there were different levels of security

to get through before you got to the heart of the complex.

To start with,

the surrounding fields were filled with landmines.

There were then a number of layers of protection,

from guard houses, and watch towers, and security points,

all heavily armed.

- Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

And so that kind of installation has both an offensive

and defensive capability.

- You zoom out, and out, and out,

and it's quite a massive network of people

and thinking that is needed to develop places.

I can't think of strategies that would be effective

to hiding this type of operation.

Machines, movements, people, thoughts, planning,

landscape change, concrete pouring.

Just the work that needs to be done

to even set up to do this work, there's a huge impact.

Doing that in secrecy just seems impossible.

- The secrecy surrounding this project was

so important to the Nazis that the workforce were

only ever assigned three months at a time

before being rotated out somewhere else,

to make sure that nobody ever got a clear idea

as to the purpose or the function

of any particular construction,

nor as to the scale of the site as a whole.

- The question is,

is this the hallmark or harbinger for major action

that was planned to come that didn't?

- [Narrator] The bunkers found at its center

are strongholds built of two meter thick concrete reinforced

with steel.

- Ordinance becomes more powerful,

fortifications have to become more powerful as well,

more robustly constructed.

The whole idea of sloping surfaces that will bounce

off an incoming shell rather than hold against it.

- As engineers, we need to understand

the different mechanical properties of our materials.

Concrete is really strong, but it's also very brittle.

If you can imagine a shell impacting concrete,

the energy's going to propagate through and sort of burst.

You end up with shards,

you end up with shrapnel from concrete.

Whereas with steel,

it is able to absorb and dissipate that energy

through its molecular structure.

And it deforms, it changes its shape.

And if you have really thick steel,

that deformation is able to spread it over a larger area.

If you have very thin steel,

that deformation isn't able to be absorbed.

The projectile penetrate right through it instead.

So there's a function of thickness, of mass.

- [Narrator] 80 years after Rommel's visit,

these installations have succumbed to decay,

but they are also familiar.

[soft ominous music]

When Hitler signs the order of construction at Margival,

he sets into motion the methodical construction

of bunkers designed by Organization Todt.

- Architecture in Nazi Germany was

like the word of national socialism expressed in stone.

- The construction of this complex came

under the jurisdiction of Organization Todt,

which was the Nazi's engineering arm, if you like.

And they had a number of standardized designs

and construction techniques for different types of bunkers,

different types of buildings.

So they had standardized munition storage bunkers,

standardized accommodation blocks and offices,

standardized buildings built to protect sensitive equipment

from bombardments above.

And this site included an elaborate combination

of a number of these different standardized designs.

- There's clearly a plan behind all this.

The walls are gonna be this thick,

there's gonna be this much reinforcing in that concrete,

it's gonna have these features that are effective

for deflecting impact, that are effective for camouflaging.

Every little detail is already thought

out before they even touch ground there.

It's an incredible operation of efficiency.

- The Todt Organization had thousands and thousands

of engineers, skilled workers, they had volunteer laborers,

and they had as well slave labour.

So there was a hierarchy of how people were treated.

And at the bottom of that, the slave laborers,

of course would've been burnt out and used up.

And ironically, todt means death.

- You have the so-called racial enemies of the Nazi state,

particularly European Jews who fall under German control,

whose labor is exploited for war fighting purposes.

And there we encounter another contradiction,

because we have a regime suffering

from a human resource deficit at the same time

that it's intentionally murdering hundreds

of thousands of Jews and/or working them to death.

And the decision to use European Jews

as forced laborers was not taken lightly by the regime,

when it really had every intention on murdering them.

So it was considered a sort of compromise.

"Well, if we don't murder all of the Jews outright,

then what we're going to do is employ their labor.

But really, the goal is still to kill

them through forced labor, and malnutrition,

and just general abuse."

And more and more, this forced labor,

irrespective of who's performing it,

comes to play a crucial role in the German war economy.

And by 1944, one in four workers in Germany

are forced laborers.

- If you have unlimited people to do the work

because you're willing to sacrifice them,

if someone passes away, you just find someone else to do it.

You throw 10 more people at a project,

you're gonna move it along even faster.

It's incredibly difficult to imagine

that this was the approach that they took.

[ominous music]

- [Narrator] Why were the Nazis pouring resources

into this sprawling complex in such a remote locale?

[ominous music]

[upbeat suspense music]

The secrecy, coupled with the hyper acceleration

of construction at Margival in Northwestern Europe,

point to a larger German strategy for the region.

- The crucial turning point in allocation of resources

to fortifications in Northwest Europe

is usually about the spring of 1942,

because it's a few months after the Americans

are in the war against Germany,

and the Germans are about nine months into the war

in the Soviet Union.

And that war was supposed to be over already,

but of course it's not.

And then it's clear to anybody who's looking

at the situation realistically

that the war on the Eastern front is going to last

a lot longer than originally envisioned,

and may very well end badly.

So in those circumstances,

it's prudent to begin developing

the defensive infrastructure in northwestern Europe

to respond to an invasion

that the allies are already planning.

- It's more than likely that that invasion will occur

along the French coast, and so this makes Northern France

an important point, or at least a very important point

for the future of the Second World War.

- [Narrator] These would not be the only bunkers

Rommel would be on the ground to inspect.

In fact, at the time of his visit,

Rommel is completing a tour of the entire Atlantic Wall.

- He was kind of the inspector of fortifications,

as it were,

and he was making sure that these met all the requirements,

and would be a place where Hitler could

actually personally come and visit

and preside over the front, as it were.

This was certainly Rommel's burden,

to ensure that all those requirements had been met.

- The question is,

how best to defend Western Europe given

the limited resources available to the Germans?

Building these fortifications is expensive.

So we have Rommel who is arguing that the Germans need

to put their fortifications as far forward as possible,

because he believes, with reason,

that if the allies are able to establish a foothold

or a bridgehead, that it will be difficult to undo that.

- [Narrator] Built from 1942 to 1944,

under Hitler's Directive 40,

the Atlantic Wall commanded 3,200 miles of coastline,

with mines, pill boxes and tanks.

It required over 17 million cubic tons of concrete,

and 1.2 million tons of steel.

- As some Germans described the Atlantic Wall at the time,

it wasn't really a wall in the literal sense,

that was physically impossible.

But they made the analogy

that it was more like a long rope extending all the way

from northern Norway down to the border

between France and Spain.

And that every so often,

at points where seaborne attacks were likely,

there was a knot tied in the rope,

and the knot represented the local fortifications.

- [Narrator] The sprawling 90 square kilometers

of construction at Margival is a mere 300 kilometers

from the Atlantic Wall,

and is encircled by strategically placed defenses.

- The layout is designed to follow something called

a crossfire plan,

whereby each bunker has a very well-defined area

that can withstand a certain amount of attack from firearms

or bombs whilst protecting the blind spots

of surrounding structures.

And to top it all off,

there were a number of gun emplacements

that housed large artillery, anti-tank

and anti-aircraft guns.

It would be very difficult to get anywhere near this place

as an unwanted visitor.

[upbeat suspense music]

- It's in the theater of operations in Northwestern Europe.

And therefore, in a circumstance where the allies

increasingly are exercising air superiority,

these forward command complexes have

to be pretty well protected.

- The scale of this facility is not a show of status.

but it's scaling with the size of the operations

that are being planned.

[upbeat suspense music]

- [Narrator] Moving through the security checkpoints

of the structure, more can be discovered.

- This was not a Spartan military facility.

It was a military headquarters,

but it also had comforts that the Nazis didn't

usually build in to their fortifications.

And one example here is the infamous swimming pool.

It was a system for capturing water,

but also quite clearly a pool for swimming in.

This was a creature comfort

that had been built into the headquarters.

- A swimming pool is typically built below ground.

You have to excavate out,

you have to create a bowl in the earth.

If it's soil, it's easy to excavate.

If you hit rock, you have to blast that.

It's quite hard to scrape away.

And this is quite a big pool,

so that excavation is significant.

- Other notable features of the headquarters included

a backup power station,

which ensured that the headquarters could keep running,

no matter what was happening all around it.

And this suggests that this was a facility

that was meant to be used in the long term

and in increasingly difficult conditions.

[upbeat suspense music]

- [Narrator] The communications bunker

also signals the site's importance.

- One of the most important parts

of this complex was bunker 005,

the largest communications center built

during the Second World War.

And it was so important, it had its own power supply,

its own water supply, its own air filtration system.

It also had 600 telephone lines, and most significantly,

one was a direct line to Berlin.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Further exploration shows the site's potential

as a strategic reporting station for field marshals.

- Bunker 005 existed to serve as the communications hub

in support of Hitler and the entire Nazi war machine,

if needed.

- The Germans have this huge coast,

and there are many different places

where invasion could happen, and limited resources.

So they can't have strong points

close to the coast everywhere,

and that's why some of these command facilities

are situated well inland, near road hubs and networks.

So that irrespective of where an invasion

or threat may materialize on the coastline,

the command element is able to address it.

[upbeat suspense music]

- [Narrator] Along with being the Fuhrer,

Hitler was the head of the high command,

directing the armed forces.

This included the war ministry, or OKW,

alonged with the Lufftwaffe, Germany's Air Force,

and the Kriegsmarine, the German Navy.

[upbeat suspense music]

- Where on one hand, Hitler can be terribly insistent

that a particular course of action is followed,

either at the strategic level,

or even at the tactical level

where he increasingly intercedes,

which shouldn't really have been his concern realistically.

So on one hand, he can be terribly insistent on following

this or that course of action, but at the same time,

when it comes to making, especially longer term decisions,

could be terribly indecisive

about how resources should be allocated.

We see this time and again with Hitler,

even early in the war when there's some uncertainty

over what kind of Navy Germany's going to build,

is it going to be a surface navy or a submarine navy?

There's never any resolution to that question,

and ultimately the Germans then go to war

without a completely prepared Navy of either type.

So it's a situation sometimes where no decision is made,

which is even worse than making the wrong decision.

- [Narrator] How does this complex

outside of Margival factor into Hitler's strategy

for the war?

December 23rd, 1941, Hitler signs the order to build

on the Western front at Margival.

For months, he's been staying on the Eastern front.

- The Wolf's Lair was a headquarters

from which Hitler commanded the Second World War

on the eastern front against the Soviet Union.

The Wolf's Lair was a much smaller facility,

a much less comfortable one,

but one at which Hitler spent 850 days of the war.

- To fully appreciate the scale of the construction

at Margival,

you need to compare it to Hitler's primary residence

throughout the war, the Wolf's Lair,

which itself consisted of 200 buildings,

it had its own power station, it housed up to 2000 people.

Margival was 40 times the size of the Wolf's Lair.

[upbeat suspense music]

- [Narrator] The true purpose of the headquarters

in Margival becomes clear.

- The assumption, of course, that the Germans are having

is they're gonna defeat the Soviet Union.

[click clacking of soldiers marching]

[canon explosion]

[fire sputtering]

And so once that happens,

either they'll make peace with Britain

or they're now going to return back to the original plan,

Operation Sea Lion, and invade now Britain

once they've taken out Russia.

So you need that headquarters in that location.

[upbeat suspense music]

- [Narrator] The headquarters in Margival would become known

as Wolfsschlucht II or W2,

and would need to be perfectly situated

to insulate Hitler from a potential invasion.

The site is accessible via roads, railways, and rivers,

along with four airports within 30 kilometers.

- This particular, the headquarters, the Wolfsschluchts

or the Wolf's Gorge was built in a strategic area,

again, just before the German border would be looming

up on the inside of France.

It's far enough from the coast to be able to evacuate

the Fuhrer, if that would be necessary.

- This was a place in that sort of sweet spot,

not in a major city, but definitely not isolated.

- Some people have pointed out that it was close

to where Hitler had fought in World War I.

It's actually fairly close to Campaign,

and that maybe it was some sort of nostalgia there.

- I think he was thinking huge,

so he wanted this to be almost like an underground city.

This is where he was going to set up his base.

He's getting ready.

[action instrumental music] [rifle clicks]

- [Narrator] Most importantly,

the site has the perfect location

for Hitler's preferred mode of transportation.

- The accessibility of the site at Margival was a huge part

of the design, so that you could get there by road,

you could get there by river,

but most importantly for Hitler,

you could get there by rail.

And more specifically, on his own custom built 17 car train,

which had two locomotives,

it had two anti-aircraft guns built into the train,

and a 22 man security force.

[upbeat suspense music]

- He can essentially go anywhere he needs to go,

as long as the Nazis can control the railway system.

[dramatic bass music]

- [Narrator] The goal was to protect the Fuhrer at all costs

as he traveled between the fronts.

Documentation of each journey was destroyed after arrival,

so it could not be used to plan attacks.

[dramatic bass music]

- One of the reasons for building the military headquarters

here at Margival was because it lay upon a system

of railway lines.

And along this railway line, Hitler and the Nazis repurposed

a large underground train tunnel to essentially create

a bunker for Hitler's train.

The tunnel was specially repurposed with two lines of track

to allow Hitler's train or any other train to be parked

and others to pass by.

And was a place where Hitler's train could park,

and essentially wait out any enemy attack.

- [Narrator] The Vauxaillon tunnel was repurposed

from the SNCF rail system's Paris-Soissons Margival line.

[dramatic music]

- It was 30 meters down from the plateau above.

It was 650 meters long, and had two tracks along its length.

The ends of the tunnel were also blocked

off with doors reinforced

by 50 millimeter thick steel plates.

- A bullet is not going to penetrate that.

A shell is going to deform it, but still be resisted

and contain that blast on the right side of it.

[rocks crumbling]

- Anything that was parked up inside there would've been

incredibly well protected.

- [Narrator] The doors open and are driven by a winch.

- Swinging that door alone is a heavy, heavy force.

Imagine building these plates,

and you can only build plates in certain sizes

so you need to weld that together,

so the fabrication of these doors alone is amazing.

And then they're heavy as heck,

so you've gotta have a crane in place to position those,

and a hinge system to allow for a rotation of that.

Just the operation of this door alone,

it's really impressive to think about.

- [Narrator] Ventilation shafts and escape hatches

are installed to expel fumes from the tunnel.

With this tunnel and three rings of security,

a few bunkers left over from 1940 are quickly transformed

into the next Fuhrer headquarters for Hitler.

And inside the three rings,

a comfortable welcome awaits the Fuhrer.

- The underground bunker system built here for Hitler was

a mix of comfort and command.

It had the facilities he needed to manage the war,

but it also had a whole series of rooms,

like dining rooms, bedrooms,

and other rooms where he could live

while he managed the war.

[dramatic music]

[ominous music] [birds squawking]

- [Narrator] Knowing this site to be the next Fuhrer bunker,

theories circulate around the purpose

of the large pool found within the complex.

[ominous music]

- First of all, Hitler didn't exercise.

He was a sedentary character who,

if he ever went for a walk, always walked downhill,

and there was always a car at the bottom waiting

to pick him up,

which was one of the factors that aggravated his health

as he got into his 40s and early 50s.

So whether the pool was put

there for other people's recreational use or not,

I mean, that's possible.

- There are rumors that this swimming pool was

actually installed for Eva Braun, who was a keen swimmer.

And from that,

you could deduce that there must have been plans

for Hitler himself to spend large amounts

of time here at Margival.

[upbeat bass music] [swoosh effect]

- [Narrator] Observing from above

the massive 90 kilometer installation at Margival destined

to house the Fuhrer himself,

those building it and manning its battlements look

constantly to the skies for signs of the enemy.

[upbeat bass music]

- It's a remarkable fact that despite

the aerial reconnaissance undertaken by allied forces

against France and against conquered Europe,

this headquarters was never discovered

by the allies during the war.

- This gargantuan complex took two years to build.

How on earth did it escape detection from the allies?

[dramatic instrumental] [swoosh effect]

- To try and do something like this quietly is,

it sounds impossible, really,

you're building a city in an area that is not developed,

and you're trying to do that in secrecy.

But every single move you make is impacting the land.

You need to deforest things, you need to build things,

you need to blast things, create roads.

So our impact as humans in a space, it's evident over time.

It's like a time lapse,

you're gonna see movement on that ground.

How do you build in secrecy around that?

That's another variable that they're thinking

about when they're developing here.

We don't have to think about secrecy in our projects.

We're able to be open and clear about what we're doing.

Adding in that layer of complexity makes

it really difficult.

- What I find curious is that considering how many agents

the allies would have in France,

and the legendary French resistance,

that there wasn't any intelligence coming

from French resistance on, especially by 1944, 1943.

So it does surprise me it wasn't detected.

But again, if it's not near another target,

we have those famous photographs of Auschwitz taken

by the US Air Force, but only because they were bombing

a facility near Auschwitz.

[fighter jet engine roars] [bombs exploding]

- The allies have a reasonably complete picture

of what the coastal defenses look like

through their contacts with French resistance elements,

many of whom are living or working

in close proximity to these coastal fortifications.

And of course the coastal fortifications,

by virtue of their location,

cannot be completely hidden from allied observation.

When we're talking about structures

that are built further inland in occupied territory,

they might not be so easily spotted

by allied reconnaissance flights.

[fighter jet engines roaring] [dramatic music]

- Their priority is on getting ashore,

and then overwhelming the German military,

that's their top priority.

So with that in mind,

looking for secret bunkers in the middle of, in effect,

nowhere isn't their top priority.

Killing Germans on the beach

and getting their own boys ashore is.

[bombs exploding] [waves crashing]

- [Narrator] Incredibly,

two years of construction goes unabated and undetected,

but that doesn't mean that another kind of attack

isn't coming.

[ominous music]

- Their singular goal for these structures was to protect

the senior command, that was it.

Nothing was going to stop them from that.

They didn't have those constraints.

That was their one goal,

every day they were thinking about that.

And so it wasn't money, it wasn't labor,

it wasn't materials, it wasn't logistics,

it wasn't anything.

The environment didn't factor in,

people's lives did not factor in.

That sole goal propelled them relentlessly

to do whatever it took to make sure that that was achieved.

- [Narrator] This suggests a prolonged battle.

All of these structures are built

to withstand continuous attack,

and house Hitler for months, and even years.

In 1942, Rommel visits Wolfsschlucht II

to make final preparations for the assumed arrival

of none other than Hitler himself.

- People like Erwin Rommel,

who was responsible for the defense of the French Coast,

thought that troops, that mobile forces were the best way

to combat any invasion.

And he would've preferred to rely more on the fighting power

of men and tanks rather than these fortifications.

But ultimately, it was Hitler's view that held sway.

- Rommel sees Wolfsschlucht II's needs

as far more immediate,

and sends a dispatch shortly after his visit requesting

he be stationed at W2 in anticipation

of an upcoming invasion.

His request is denied.

This will all change June 6th, 1944.

- It's inevitable that the allies sooner or later

are gonna open up the second front.

The only question is where on the French coast

it's going to be, and so June 6th, it happens.

- I mean, the great mystery is over,

as to where the allies are gonna land,

when they were gonna land.

And the allies had gone to great lengths

to conceal the actual details of D-Day.

So the reality is already there on their very doorstep.

- This is the invasion that everybody was dreading forever,

and that the Russians were desperately asking for.

It's the second front.

It's, we're hitting now Northern Europe.

- The D-Day landings for the Western allies really represent

in the European theater of war at least,

the culmination of years of planning.

Because much like many of the German commanders,

the Western allies were fixated on the challenges

of penetrating this defended coastline.

And from the perspective of the 1940s,

landings against defended coastlines were not

commonly attempted,

because a landing force could become victims of weather,

tide, and other natural phenomenon that were impossible

to surmount with the technology of the day.

Consequently, when the bridgehead,

which was a combined amphibious and airborne bridgehead,

is effectively established by the end of the 6th of June

at a rather lower cost than what anybody dared to expect.

And at least in part, that success on the 6th of June was

a function of the Germans confused reaction to the landings.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Under Hitler's command,

the German war machine is still pouring resources

into the construction of Wolfsschlucht II.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic Wall coastal defense can

no longer hold back the allied forces.

[bombs exploding]

- This is a disaster for the Germans.

The allies get a ground, a hold, beachhead,

which wasn't supposed to happen.

All these fortifications,

all these things that were supposed

to stop them in the water failed.

And now they got a leak,

and now the allies are pouring hundreds of thousands of men,

and there's no stopping them.

- [Narrator] Rommel sends frantic dispatches to Hitler,

voicing how overwhelmed they are at the front.

- The situation is becoming increasingly tense,

because it's imperative at that stage

that the Germans prevent the allies

from breaking out of the Normandy peninsula.

Contrary to the popular idea that Hitler is directing

everything with the puppet strings at the very top,

actually in many respects,

power becomes quite decentralized,

and there are so many different stakeholders involved

that we end up with a sort of jungle when it comes

to who is going to determine the direction

of key strategic decisions.

All of them claiming that they're the ones

who are working toward Hitler's will.

- [Narrator] Hitler sees the note and launches into a fury.

He plans his first visit to W2.

[soft ominous music]

[upbeat suspense music]

Frustrated by Rommel's view of the western front,

Hitler prepares to make his first trip to W2.

[upbeat suspense music]

- Hitler now personally wants to be close to the front

so he can meddle directly.

And with allied troops now on the ground,

Hitler's gotta be kept safe, as well as people visiting him.

- [Narrator] With no time to travel by train,

Hitler flies into Mets under Luftwaffe cover.

He's been diverted from Enna,

which had been bombed two days earlier.

Hitler is then transferred to a car,

and spends eight hours driving towards Margival

under cover of darkness,

taking many detours around severed routes

and protected by SS officers.

- Even his trip from Berlin is quite dangerous

because he can't take a train anymore,

the allies are better at bombing those things

and are looking for trains on the move.

And of course with them ashore,

there's all sorts of questions

about the security apparatus that's necessary.

[upbeat suspense music]

- [Narrator] In the depths of the Fuhrer bunker,

Erwin Rommel awaits his arrival with nervous anticipation.

He knows Hitler will not appreciate the dower news

from the front.

Within hours, Rommel will advise the Fuhrer

to pull back from the Atlantic Wall,

reinforcing them with Hitler's own OKW,

which ultimately means losing ground to the allies.

[upbeat suspense music]

June 16th, 1944, Hitler arrives at W2

with over 100 flack artillery poised

to intercept enemies from above.

He passes through three rings of security,

towards what was intended to be the command center

of another Reich victory.

[upbeat suspense music] [clock ticking effect]

On no sleep, he enters the room to find Rommel ready

to deliver the bad news.

- Hitler arrives at the headquarters,

and he's furious about the course of the war,

he's extremely frustrated.

And he meets his commanding generals there,

he meets Rommel and others,

and Hitler and his generals discuss the course of the war.

- By June of 1944, the end is nay,

but the only one who doesn't fully understand

that is Hitler.

And that I think is well documented.

A lot of people who knew him and talked to him were

consistently pointing out that he had lived in a fairytale.

And so he was commanding fictitious armies.

He wasn't listening to generals who were trying

to tell him as nicely as possible

that the war effort was done.

- Some of the guys who haven't had physical contact

with Hitler are kind of shocked

by just how delusional Hitler is by now.

He's getting high at night,

he's on all sorts of amphetamines.

The guy's hitting the pipe essentially,

and that doesn't bring rational, unemotional thinking.

- What exactly transpired, what kind of conversation is,

there's a lot of speculation about that.

But given what we know of Hitler in his last days,

it's quite obvious to think he wasn't happy

with what Rommel told him.

And we know definitively that Rommel had contemplated

and probably suggested surrender,

which of course is not in Hitler's mind whatsoever.

- That is a true turning point

within Hitler's own inner circle,

because now he's getting pushback from his own men.

You can see him kind of unraveling.

[upbeat suspense music] [clock ticking effect]

- [Narrator] Hitler leaves in a rage,

refusing reinforcements and plans for peace talks.

Furious, he skips his next meeting with generals

about the state of troops in France,

and returns home to Germany.

[upbeat suspense music] [clock ticking effect]

- Hitler cuts his meeting with senior generals short,

citing a security threat due to the misfiring

of a V1 missile.

Well, 75 years on,

researcher has shown that the V1 misfire happened miles

away from Margival.

And that the security threat to Hitler was no way

near what he claimed at the time.

- The way the regime was set up,

the way the regime was organized,

I mean, it would be very strange to find that the Fuhrer

around whom the entire Reich was, as it were constructed,

was taking orders or advice from a field marshal.

The Fuhrer could not be wrong.

- And so he came in a hissy fit,

panicked about the allies getting ashore

at Normandy in the first place,

and then he left in hissy fit.

[loud bang]

[ominous music] [birds squawking]

- [Narrator] With Hitler returning to Germany,

and disarray on the western front,

Paris returns to the allies,

presenting a clear path towards Germany.

Hitler orders Paris destroyed by V1s and V2s,

but a general refuses because he loves the city,

yet another sign of defection from Hitler's higher ups.

[upbeat suspense music]

- Inside, deep inside, or maybe not so deep inside,

he understands that the cause is lost.

But since Hitler looks at the world in binary terms,

"We're either gonna come out with everything

or we're gonna be destroyed,"

why not throw your last energies into the fight,

why not put all of the chips on the table?

It'll be total victory or self destruction, essentially.

It's not unreasonable to describe

the Nazi state as a death cult.

- Symbolic domination is not real domination.

So a megalomania and great ideas,

even great engineering skills only go so far.

The reality was that Germany was not in a position

to fight a war on two fronts against very strong enemies,

and that was inevitably gonna show at some point

or the other.

[upbeat suspense music] [clock ticking effect]

- August 28th, 1944, the allies reached Soissons,

and it falls to troops of the first army of General Hodges.

- After the phenomenal effort, and materials,

and cost that went into designing and building

the site at Margival,

Hitler only ever spent one day at the complex.

- It's difficult to reconcile looking at these structures

from an engineer's point of view

and then from a humanitarian point of view as well.

They're impressive structures,

they're impressive projects in terms of their ability

to build something rather quickly.

But you have to remember that they're also have

a very sinister purpose,

there's quite an evil approach behind them.

Knowing that so many people died for this,

it's quite devastating.

- [Narrator] The allies are shocked

to find the 90 kilometer installation.

It becomes the subject of an inquest by the American army.

Why did no reconnaissance flights detect it?

[fighter jets engines roaring]

- I mean, you can only imagine what it must have been

like for those allied soldiers who first discovered

this site when that area of France was liberated in 1944.

I mean, the shock of it all,

the awe of it all must have been

quite something to properly take in.

[upbeat suspense music]

- This is in France.

It's within reconnaissance range of their airplanes.

They're flying over, they're taking pictures,

they're looking at things.

Nobody noticed such a massive infrastructure project.

That's gonna be considered a failure

in military intelligence.

- [Narrator] What might have happened had

the Germans been able to hold the Atlantic Wall?

Would Hitler have committed a crippling offensive

from inside the Fuhrer bunker?

Could the same boardroom where Rommel delivered the news

of D-Day instead have been the sight

of Hitler's greatest triumph as he pushed the allies

back towards defeat?

- If the German forces had retreated slightly

and set up better defensive positions,

they might have been able to force the allies

to something of a standstill in France.

[ominous music]

- Had the Nazis managed to resist the advance of the allies,

you can't help but think what would've become of the complex

at Margival.

Who would've resided here?

what decisions would've been made here?

What were the intentions for this enormous complex

in the longer term that were never properly realized?

- [Narrator] 80 Years later,

what was built as an ultras secured military complex,

a closed fist of steel and concrete around the Fuhrer

is now a relic of Hitler's incredible megalomania

and denial,

and the place where Hitler was once asked to face the truth.

- Hitler, he enslaved 22,000 people to build a facility

that would never be used.

- These were not realistic projects.

These were projects which were half fantasy,

half megalomania.

- You gotta understand that there's not always logic applied

to everything the Nazis do.

So sometimes we look for logical reasons,

but don't forget this is the man who demonstrated

anything but logic his whole life.

So building grand fortifications towards the end of the war

for purposes that are anybody's guess

is kind of what the Nazis did.

[ominous music]

[dramatic theme music]