NARRATOR: They're watching you.
More than 5,000 satellites circle the Earth.
Every day, they uncover new,
mysterious phenomena that defy explanation.
Lair of the living god
and the super warrior of the ancient world.
FINE: He's one of the greatest generals in the history
of warfare, and he conquered
much of the known world at the time.
NARRATOR: Riches and bloodshed in the California deserts.
RUBEN: This is a great example of one of
those hidden places that have shaped human history.
NARRATOR: And the multibillion dollar money pit.
This site feels absolutely cursed.
NARRATOR: Baffling phenomena, mysteries from space.
What on Earth are they?
[theme music playing]
The Taurus Mountains, southeastern Turkey,
87,000 square miles of virtually impenetrable peaks,
an ocean of limestone that rises
some 12,000 feet towards the heavens.
Wow, look at the views from up here!
I've been walking for hours,
and I'm still nowhere near the peak.
NARRATOR: Kenneth Fine is trekking through
these desolate lands, hooked by a strange image
captured in June 2021.
When I looked at satellite images of the area,
one thing jumped out at me from the miles of
arid mountains.
There's a smooth, circular peak.
NARRATOR: The mystery feature is hundreds of feet in diameter
and sits on the summit of one of
the highest mountains in the range.
It's like you poured sugar onto a table.
I don't know what it is.
I -- I am genuinely baffled.
BELLINGER: This is an incredible structure.
We're looking at something human-made and likely ancient.
NARRATOR: Closer analysis reveals the giant cone
is surrounded by terraces and other ruins.
Historical records reveal
it's the legacy of a self-declared living
deity and descendant of the greatest warrior
of antiquity.
This place is known as Nemrut Dagi.
I mean, the sheer scale is sort of eye-watering.
It's incredible to think that this place was one
of the craziest construction projects in all of history.
NARRATOR: The Taurus Mountains played a key role
in early human history.
Many of its peaks and valleys have been stained with blood
shed by some of the most powerful civilizations of
the ancient world.
Turkey is a land that people have historically fought over,
and many empires have risen and fallen here.
NARRATOR: What makes these mountains so important
is that they mark the border between Europe and Asia,
a 930-mile-long frontier separating
the warring civilizations of East and West.
These narrow passageways have been used as trade routes
and by armies looking for new lands to conquer.
It's a choke point between Europe, Africa, and Asia.
And this place sits at the heart of that.
NARRATOR: To the southwest of the site
sit the Cilician Gates,
a military artery used by the Hittites, Romans,
Mongols, and medieval crusaders.
The structure's location suggests it could
be connected to this strategically vital pass.
One of the first rules of any form
of military activity is to control the high ground.
Maybe this strange mound is the remains of some sort of fort?
From a defensive perspective, this place would be ideal.
You'd see an invading army coming from miles away.
NARRATOR: Yet as Fine approaches the giant cone...
This is crazy, so windy up here.
NARRATOR: It becomes evident that it served
a different purpose.
Whoa, that's impressive.
Look at that. I'm speechless.
NARRATOR: A massive mound of stones rises more
than 160 feet from the mountain summit.
I knew this thing was big,
but I hadn't fully appreciated the size
or the scope of it until now.
This is unreal.
There's only one thing I could think of,
and that would be a tomb.
NARRATOR: The scale of the mountaintop tomb is almost
without precedent,
yet what's also strange is its remote location.
We know about the great pyramids of Egypt, which had
been built by pharaohs who ruled over huge kingdoms.
But here, we've got a monument of a similar scale
that was constructed out in the mountainous wilderness.
NARRATOR: Mountains are sacred to many cultures
around the world.
They are places where deities reside and are
seen as boundaries between this world and the next.
On Turkey's Mount Ararat,
some claim, sit the remains of Noah's Ark, stranded for
eternity by the great flood.
People often associated gods with being high up in the sky.
So if you build on top of a mountain,
you are that bit closer to the gods.
NARRATOR: Ancient civilizations believed these mountains to
be inhabited by storm and thunder gods.
They were often depicted as bulls -- Taurus in Latin --
Which gives this mountain range its name.
FINE: It's hard to believe
there could be human remains buried
under this giant pile of rocks.
I've never seen anything like this.
It's amazing.
What it means is that whoever was buried there
had another mountain made on top of a mountain.
WALTERS: If this is your grave, I think it's pretty safe
to assume you're not gonna be some lowly peasant.
It's gonna be the tomb of someone very important.
NARRATOR: Exploring further, Fine discovers other structures
not visible in the satellite image.
Wow, look at these stone heads.
I'm totally flabbergasted.
NARRATOR: The bodies of the 30-foot-high statues
stands sentinel at the base of the burial mound,
their decapitated heads resting on a terrace below them.
Fine calculates that each likely weighs around 10 tons.
That's gotta be the Greek god, Zeus.
Zeus was the god of sky and thunder,
but he was also the king of the gods.
The stone heads reflect a mixing of cultural influences.
So we see both Greek and Persian elements.
NARRATOR: In the distant past,
someone commanded their subjects to inter them
under a man-made mountain of stones,
guarded by giant Greek and Persian gods.
This has to be one of
the most insane and incredible tombs I've ever seen.
But the question is who's buried here?
NARRATOR: Coming up, secrets of the mountaintop tomb.
This guy was a military genius with an insatiable
desire for bloodshed and conquest.
NARRATOR: And Nazis versus witches.
The Nazis tried to incorporate
the occult into an advantage on the battlefield.
Drawn by a weird structure revealed from the skies...
It's one of the most incredible things
I've ever seen.
Kenneth Fine is exploring
a mammoth Turkish mountaintop mausoleum,
guarded by the ruined statues of pagan gods.
These statues are amazing.
They represent a blend of the Persian and Greek empires.
NARRATOR: Close to the statues are more clues etched in stone.
Look here.
It's an ancient Greek inscription.
♪
I can make out the name Antiochus.
NARRATOR: The giant tomb is the resting place
of the megalomaniac ruler
of an overlooked yet pivotal kingdom
of the ancient world.
Antiochus ruled one of the kingdoms that
formed after the death of Alexander the Great.
HUNT: One of the names he gave himself
was Antiochus Theos, meaning Antiochus the God.
NARRATOR: The story of the giant tomb begins in 336 B.C.,
When Alexander the Great becomes ruler of Macedonia, some
900 miles to the northwest.
His father taught him military rule.
His tutor was Aristotle, who made his mind razor sharp.
No one was better suited to
conquer the world than Alexander the Great.
This guy was a military genius with
an insatiable desire for bloodshed and conquest.
NARRATOR: Alexander quickly defeats Macedonia's
neighboring Greek states before moving past
the site in the image to conquer the mighty
Persian empire.
Key to his victories is the use of the phalanx,
a formation of 128 warriors equipped
with lances up to 20 feet long.
Part of Alexander's success was his willingness to
throw himself into battle and fight alongside them.
That front line bravery earned him enormous devotion
from his men,
who probably also thought he was a living god.
[men shouting]
NARRATOR: By the age of just 32, Alexander has built
an empire spanning three continents and covering
two million square miles.
Alexander the Great was unquestionably one of the most
influential people in human history.
He never lost a battle, and he conquered much of the known
world at the time.
Julius Caesar, before he conquered Gaul,
lamented, "At my age,
"Alexander has already conquered the world.
What have I done?"
NARRATOR: In 323 B.C., Alexander dies of a fever,
triggering a strange sequence of events
that leads to the construction of the giant
mountain peak mausoleum.
After Alexander's death,
this vast empire that he had very quickly conquered,
just as quickly fell apart.
His empire is effectively kind of atomized, and it's split into
all these sort separate little kingdoms ruled by
his former generals, and one of them is this place here.
It is the kingdom of Commagene.
NARRATOR: Commagene is a small kingdom,
but it controls trade routes
through the Taurus Mountains, and that makes it strategically
vital to its more powerful neighbors,
the Armenian, Parthian, Syrian, and Roman Empires.
Commagene, because it's at the kind of nexus
of all these bigger empires,
acts as a kind of buffer between them,
and that makes it very wealthy.
NARRATOR: In 70 B.C., Antiochus the First becomes
ruler of the kingdom of Commagene.
He was one of the final rulers of
Commagene before it fell to the Romans.
HORTON: He was an unusual king.
He had what might describe as a very high opinion of himself.
NARRATOR: Like his forefather, Alexander the Great, Antiochus
believes he is a deity in human form.
He creates an imperial cult in honor
of himself, one celebrated with orgiastic feasts.
And, to enshrine his legacy,
he orders the construction of the grandest
temple tomb of its era.
Not only did he encourage all this feasting
and enjoyment while he was alive,
but he also constructed one of the most extraordinary
and fantastical monuments to his memory on Earth.
This tomb becomes the physical embodiment of megalomania,
a man who sees himself as a god.
NARRATOR: Work on the epic mortuary complex begins
in 50 B.C., with massive boulders being hauled
up the 7,000-foot-high mountain.
Around the tomb itself are piled
70,000 tons of limestone,
extending its peak yet further towards the heavens.
This was one of the most staggering construction projects
in history.
Basically, he remade the peak of the mountain
in his own image.
NARRATOR: Next to the 200,000-square-foot
burial mound, engineers carve giant statues
depicting Antiochus among
a pantheon of Greco-Persian gods.
Antiochus would have wanted his link
to Alexander the Great to be seen by all.
Having these monumental statues accomplishes that.
The guy's ego knew no limits.
Just goes to show you how determined he was
to be remembered.
NARRATOR: Two millennia after his death,
the god king is immortalized by one of
the most incredible structures on Earth,
visible from the heavens.
But this place is far more than that king in that tomb.
It represents the legacy of Alexander the Great,
and the bringing together of
the ancient Greeks and Persians in this antique land.
NARRATOR: Coming up, the Mojave Desert's
extraterrestrial cipher.
The circles kind of look like giant alien Petri dishes.
I don't know what this is.
NARRATOR: And haunt of the mad emperor.
His insanity was notorious.
NARRATOR: August 18th, 2018.
Eyes in the sky scan arid desert near
Death Valley, California,
and capture this image.
MORGAN: This is an unusual sight.
You don't typically look down from
space and see anything like this.
What's really extraordinary about this are
both the colors and the shapes.
The circles kind of look like giant alien Petri dishes.
I don't know what this is.
NARRATOR: The weird kaleidoscopic code covers around
five square miles of the valley floor.
When you see bright colors like this on the surface,
you associate it with some form of mineral -- for my money,
this has to be some form of mining.
NARRATOR: Analysts turn to local geological records.
What we're actually seeing here is a mineral called borax.
It's what's left when
alkaline lakes in arid regions dry up.
NARRATOR: Each year, miners harvest hundreds of thousands of
tons of borax from California's dry lake beds
for use in anything, from pills to pesticides.
And it's an industry built on an extraordinary tale
of bloodshed and riches that stretches back 150 years.
RUBEN: This is a great example of one of those hidden places
that are so important to the forces that have shaped
human history.
NARRATOR: It's the late 1850s.
The California Gold Rush is coming to an end,
forcing prospectors to push deeper
into the state's desert interior
in search of the next mother lode.
Those that reach the site in the image
discover that untold riches lie right under their feet.
What a couple of very enterprising American
businessmen realized was
actually these dried-out lake beds weren't rich in gold,
but they were rich in borax.
And in its way, that could be
a hell of a lot more valuable than gold.
NARRATOR: During the mid 19th century, borax is
in high demand for America's booming industries.
The prospectors discover that California's deserts contain
one of the largest mineable
reserves of it on Earth, worth billions of dollars.
HYMEL: So, you have this rush of people
to extract the borax out of the ground.
The problem is, this is an incredibly
inhospitable place to operate, much less live.
NARRATOR: Much of the borax is located in Death Valley,
the hottest place on Earth,
and every ounce of the valuable mineral must
be scraped by hand from the desert floor.
MORGAN: The early teams that were involved in extraction
were functionally enslaved,
and many of the people that were involved in this
undertaking were immigrants from China.
Working in temperatures of up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit,
the immigrant laborers are paid
$1.30 for a 14-hour day.
But the biggest challenge is yet to come.
HUNT: Getting borax out of the desert
is an intimidating problem.
It's 165 miles from this borax deposit
to the edge of the Mojave Desert.
The most practical solution to this produced one of
the indelible images of
the 19th century, and that was the 20-mule team.
NARRATOR: Between 1883 and 1889,
so-called 20-mule teams haul thousands
of tons of borax out of the desert.
Lashed to some of the heaviest wagons ever pulled by animals,
it takes 10 perilous days to complete each journey.
Conditions on these 10-day treks
with these mules must have been equally horrific for
both man and animal alike.
MORGAN: The slightest miscalculation
could produce fatal results.
If you're slowed down, then suddenly, you're going to be
running through the amount of fresh water you had brought.
You're going on for miles upon miles for days upon days
in temperatures of over 100 degrees -- frankly,
it's a miracle if any of them survived.
NARRATOR: During the early 20th century,
technological advancements lead to yet more minerals being
extracted from Death Valley's salt beds.
And another strange chapter opens in the history of
the site revealed from space.
WALTERS: This area isn't just rich in borax.
It also contains another substance that's even more
valuable, and that's potash.
Potash is a central ingredient in fertilizer,
and it is also an essential ingredient
in the production of explosives.
NARRATOR: In 1900, 40 percent of the U.S. population
live on farms.
Explosives are also reshaping the land,
[explosion blasts]
Creating the mines and railways that will transform
the country into a superpower.
This surge in demand for potash brings
violence to the salt flats of the Mojave.
You've got all these prospectors suddenly
arriving at the area,
trying to stake their claim to the potash.
So what big companies do is they send
in teams that they refer to as claim jumpers.
The series of disputes that arose because these large
corporations were rivaling the small claimants
are sometimes referred to as the Potash Wars.
NARRATOR: One of these claim jumpers is legendary lawman,
Wyatt Earp, who, in 1910,
tries to seize the reserves around the site.
In the image.
He's best known for the shootout
at the O.K. Corral,
but he was also an important player in the Potash Wars.
NARRATOR: Today, California's gunslinging claim jumpers are long gone,
but the riches that drew them here
are still visible from space.
WALTERS: We've all heard of the Gold Rush,
but actually, who's heard of the Borax Rush
or the Potash Rush?
But they're just as important and, in many ways,
more valuable, so actually, this image shows a really,
really vital part of America's history.
NARRATOR: Coming up, Mississippi's monster mystery.
If you wanted to store Tyrannosaurus Rexes,
this is the cage to put them in.
NARRATOR: And the seventh circle of hell.
This history was one of unbelievable savagery.
NARRATOR: June 14th, 2020.
Eyes in the sky scan an industrial complex
north of the town of Iuka, Mississippi.
RUBEN: I'm not seeing any sign of human activity.
It looks like this whole site has been abandoned.
HYMEL: And then right in the center,
you can see a cage,
and it just dwarfs everything else in the area.
WALTERS: If Jurassic Park were real, and you wanted
to store your Tyrannosaurus Rexes somewhere safe,
I think this is the cage to put them in.
NARRATOR: What's more, the monster cage isn't
the only weird structure to be found here.
There's this tall, rectangular building off to
the left -- I mean, really tall.
The building, it looks like it's made of very thick walls,
making us wonder, could this be some kind of
military project?
NARRATOR: Analysts turn to local land records for clues.
The two structures, it transpires, are the legacies of
a catastrophic sequence of errors that have plagued
this town for decades.
What we're looking at in this image is not just one,
but really two of the world's most expensive mistakes.
This site feels absolutely cursed.
NARRATOR: The structures have their origin in the early 1930s
during the horrors of the Great Depression.
With a quarter of people unemployed,
President Roosevelt initiates a plan to help
the ravaged southern states.
ANNOUNCER: This was the plan --
To chain the river through a series of giant dams.
The idea was to start damming
up the rivers in the Tennessee Valley.
That would both provide energy to
the residents that live there and give jobs.
WALTERS: The idea behind it was great.
But there was a tremendous amount of blowback, because in
order to create the hydro-electric power,
you've got a flood valleys, and doing that,
you're displacing the very poor people you're trying
to help.
NARRATOR: Despite these challenges,
the Tennessee Valley Authority continues to grow,
and by the 1950s, is the biggest energy provider in the country.
It begins constructing coal, gas, and nuclear plants,
with towns like a Iuka vying for the vast amounts of money
they bring in.
RUBEN: The site we see in this image was supposed to be
the location of one of the TVA's
new, gigantic nuclear power plants.
NARRATOR: Work finally begins on the plant in 1978.
Hundreds of millions of dollars pour in, and the base of
the giant cooling tower begins to rise
above the local skyline.
But then, disaster strikes.
Construction was already well underway on this site when
the Three Mile Island
disaster happened, and that was one of the biggest near misses
in nuclear history.
So, the United States goes from this attitude of
nuclear power being the great answer
to it now being this great fear.
NARRATOR: The subsequent drop in demand for nuclear power
forces authorities to pull the plug on the plant,
losing over a billion dollars in the process.
But this mega-sized money pit's
problems are only just beginning.
After the TVA built all their infrastructure
and left, NASA tried to move in.
SILBEY: NASA was impressed by all the existing infrastructure
and thought that they could use it for their own
purposes to build a factory.
ANNOUNCER: Lift off of the 25th space shuttle
mission, and it has cleared the tower.
NARRATOR: NASA is still reeling from
the 1986 Challenger disaster...
OVER RADIO: Challenger, go with throttle up.
when a cataclysmic explosion on
one of its rocket boosters kills all seven crew members.
After the Challenger disaster,
NASA decided to redesign and rebuild the solid fuel rockets,
and that's where this new factory comes in.
These are some of the most
powerful engines mankind has ever made.
These are awesome rockets.
NARRATOR: At liftoff, NASA's twin boosters each
produce over 6.5 million pounds of thrust.
They burn 11,000 pounds of fuel a second,
two million times the rate of the average family car.
RUBEN: That tall building that we see in the image is where
the scientists were going to
turn the liquid fuel into solid fuel,
which is very explosive.
NARRATOR: The space agency also installs labs,
multimillion-dollar computer systems, and brings in hundreds
of new workers.
By 1993, it has completed over 80 percent of its
rocket factory and spent more than a billion dollars.
But then the curse of Iuka strikes again.
RUBEN: Even though NASA wanted to redesign the rocket
boosters, instead, they made minor design changes.
So there was no big design overhaul
of the rocket boosters,
so this site never got completed.
You've got to feel for the folks in the nearby town,
because first of all,
it was this lovely big power station that was gonna
provide jobs, and then that goes.
Then NASA turned up.
They're going to build this lovely, great big factory,
and again, that's abandoned.
NARRATOR: Three decades later, the crumbling structures
revealed from space are all that remain
of these multibillion dollar mistakes.
The area in this image is like a graveyard
of broken promises -- between the Tennessee Valley Authority
and NASA,
they spend more than $4 billion dollars,
and yet, nobody has anything to show for it.
NARRATOR: Coming up, insanity island.
He tried to appoint his own horse as consul
in the Senate.
NARRATOR: And the slayers of the Roman Empire.
Over 600 bodies have been found here and nearby.
NARRATOR: January 1st, 2019.
A satellite approaching
Italy's west coast uncovers a mystery far below.
What I'm looking at is a small island,
but in the middle is what appears to be a very elaborate
structure, sort of horseshoe-shaped.
HUNT: It looks pretty desolate.
There's no other visible sign of life here.
WALTERS: This strikes me as a place where something
quite strange, perhaps even sinister, has happened,
but it doesn't look like it's been used for a very long time.
NARRATOR: The isolated structure sits on the Pontine Islands,
and they have long been a place of dread and terror.
What we know from historical records is that the Romans
used these islands as kind of dumping grounds for
undesirables, prisoners, you name it.
NARRATOR: In Roman times,
the humiliation of exile on the Pontine Islands
was often considered a fate worse than death.
One of the most famous exiles was Agrippina the Younger.
She was the sister of possibly
the most notorious Roman emperor that ever
ruled, Caligula.
WALTERS: Agrippina the Younger took part in what was known as
the Plot of Three Daggers to get her brother murdered.
Now, that plot failed, Agrippina was captured,
and Caligula banished his sister to these islands.
NARRATOR: Agrippina's attempt to murder her brother
takes place in 39 A.D.,
two years into Emperor Caligula's rule,
a rule marked by decadence,
mass murder, and carnal deviance.
HORTON: He was often accused of incest and sexual depravity.
But perhaps the most famous incident was when he tried
to appoint his own horse as consul in the Senate.
HUNT: He was mad.
His insanity was notorious.
Could this be a place where Agrippina was imprisoned?
NARRATOR: Historical records reveal that the structure
appears long after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
And it's a relic of
an equally dark period in this country's history.
WALTERS: So what this building is, is a prison.
It's Italy's Alcatraz.
Its history was one of unbelievable savagery.
It became like Dante's Inferno,
with its seven levels of hell.
NARRATOR: The prison's strange shape has its origins
in the festering jails of 18th century
England, where disease and maltreatment kill up to
a quarter of all inmates.
Prisons before the 18th century were never
really properly designed.
They didn't have cells.
The conditions within them was appalling.
But out of that came a movement to
try and create more humane prisons to house convicts.
NARRATOR: A leader of this movement is
the philosopher Jeremy Bentham,
who, in 1785, designs a prison
he hopes will revolutionize the penal system.
He calls it the panopticon.
The whole idea of the panopticon was this incredibly
effective way of
keeping a large prison population under control with
relatively few guards.
NARRATOR: The panopticon's circular layout enables just
a few centrally placed guards to constantly observe
hundreds of prisoners.
What's more, the inmates can't tell
when they're being watched,
which Bentham hopes will force them to behave at all times.
He believed that prisoners should be
under the watchful eye of guards 24-7.
That's exactly what is accomplished in this place.
HORTON: The idea was the prisoners could contemplate
their -- their wickedness, and in that way,
find a route to rehabilitation.
NARRATOR: Inspired by Bentham's vision,
Italian authorities construct the circular island prison
in 1795.
But conditions there soon spiral
into a hellish, violent nightmare.
The guards in this prison became notoriously sadistic.
Prisoners were beaten, often to death,
and because it was this open courtyard,
these beatings were done in public view.
NARRATOR: Instead of improving prisoner behavior,
the fear of constant surveillance
also turns many of them insane.
You've got to imagine the kind of mental impact that's gonna
have on you for -- for months and years,
constantly thinking you're being looked at, never having
a private moment.
It is very, very inhumane.
NARRATOR: In 1860, brewing anger among
the inmates boils over, and they revolt.
After overpowering the few guards,
they take over the island and establish their own republic.
It became an extraordinary little sort of micro nation
run by prisoners,
a kind of prisoner utopia on this tiny,
rocky, barren island.
In 1861, the following year, the Italians storm the island,
take back control, and the short-lived republic is
sadly, in some ways, no more.
NARRATOR: During the 20th century,
fascist dictator Benito Mussolini uses the island
prison to incarcerate his opponents before it finally
closes in 1965.
Today, Italy's Alcatraz is a crumbling monument
to a doomed vision, visible from space.
HORTON: This panopticon prison
was built with lofty ideals of prison reform,
and the deep irony is it's actually ended up
crushing them.
NARRATOR: Coming up,
Hitler's secret witch hunters.
There was a concerted attempt by Nazi Germany to make
this site a part of the history of Nazism.
NARRATOR: July 2020.
A survey plane scanning dense forest in
northern Poland fires laser beams at the canopy,
producing a Lidar image of what lies beneath.
This image doesn't even look like it's the Earth's surface.
It looks more like a moonscape.
It actually looks like diseased or pocked skin.
This is really strange.
NARRATOR: Around 30 of the mystery features scar
the landscape, some more than 100 feet in diameter.
The shadows in this image reveal that a good number
of these circular structures are mounds,
they're raised from the earth.
MORGAN: When you see mound-building like this,
in many cases, it's associated with burial.
NARRATOR: Archaeological records confirm
the image has uncovered a vast cemetery dating back
some 2,000 years.
The people who created this were Goths, and this ancient
cemetery tells us a great deal about what their culture was.
NARRATOR: The Goths were a Germanic people who rose
up against Roman rule during the 4th century A.D.
In 410 A.D.,
they capture and loot Rome,
triggering the empire's collapse.
The site in the image was likely used to
inter many of the leaders of
these history-changing warriors.
Over 600 bodies have been found here
and in the barrows nearby.
It's a site of incredible archaeological
and cultural significance.
NARRATOR: Over the following centuries,
Poland's forests claim the Goth tombs,
and the site disappears from
the archaeological record.
But around 100 years ago,
it returns to play a bizarre role in some of the vilest
events in human history.
After the Germans capture and occupy Poland, they declared
this a sight of German national identity.
CHAMBERLAIN: Their archaeologists found that
the stones were arranged in a sun, moon, stars --
The pattern, it led them to believe that
this was some sort of ancient observatory.
NARRATOR: Hitler is obsessed with Aryanism,
the theory that the Nazis are descended from superior races
and are therefore entitled to rule the world.
By proving the Germanic Goths
could create an advanced solar observatory,
he hopes to show that his evil ideology has legitimate roots.
MORGAN: The Nazis wanted to draw a direct line that connected
modern-day national socialism
to the cultural and religious practices of
early Germans.
NARRATOR: During the Nazis' rise to power,
head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, also develops
a new religion,
one that adopts the occultic rituals of tribes like
the Goths.
As part of his obsession with the dark arts,
he forms a unit dedicated to witchcraft,
the Hexen-Sonderauftrag.
One of the things that this group does is they
go throughout the records and the archives
in libraries and look at witch trials and burnings.
BELLINGER: One really crazy idea they had was that the historic
witch trials were actually part of
a Jewish, Catholic conspiracy to wipe out the authentic
German faith and the true Germanic origins of society.
NARRATOR: Working in secret, the unit combs through
the records of hundreds of medieval witch trials
and executions.
It's psychotic, but they were seriously
attempting to come up with proof
to advance this false narrative that Jews and early
Christians suppressed ancient Germans.
It's not uncommon for military people to be superstitious.
The Nazis took it to another level, and they tried
to incorporate occult into an advantage on
the battlefield.
NARRATOR: The Nazis go on to use occultic rituals
and beliefs as crazed justification
for the murder of millions.
And the place that helped give rise to
these atrocities can now be revealed from the skies.
There was a concerted attempt to make this site
a part of the history and heritage of Nazism.