Narrator:
As World War Two ended with the atomic bombing of Japan, a secret war commenced – ushering in one of the most terrifying periods in recent history.

Scientists in the Soviet Union – and America – set to work designing even bigger nuclear bombs…

… a deadly contest that culminated fifty years ago in the biggest man-made explosion of all time.

But the designers often were flying blind.

Pushing the science too far – in the effort to stay ahead.

RICHARD RHODES:
One scientist panicked and was crawling up the beach in terror as this thing kept going up and up.

Narrator:
Now, the story of what really happened in this clandestine war.

An American scientist … NOT SURE WHAT THIS LINE IS DOING HERE

DR HAROLD AGNEW:
The cloud just kept rising and rising – but what frightened me was the heat.

I never thought the heat was going to turn off.

Narrator:
Half a century later, this secret struggle is uncovered …

The race to build the world’s biggest bomb.

THE WORLD’S BIGGEST BOMB

Narrator:
In October 1961, there was a lurch on the seismograph.

But the shockwave had come from a place far from any earthquake zone.

From Russian territory – inside the Arctic Circle.

Unless the instruments were lying – there was only one possible explanation.

The Soviets had a bomb many times bigger than anything the US had built.

One of America’s key atomic scientists remembers when the news came through.

DR HAROLD AGNEW:
We were impressed.

And I was impressed mostly that it was air dropped.

That meant they had a deliverable 50 megaton weapon.

That was pretty scary.

Narrator:
A weapon four thousand (4,000) times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb.

Agnew realized – perhaps better than anyone – what that signified.

As a brilliant young physicist with the wartime Manhattan Project, he worked on the world’s first nuclear weapons.

Agnew flew on the historic mission to Hiroshima – in a B-29 shadowing the delivery aircraft, Enola Gay.

His task was to measure the yield from this first atomic bomb.

DR HAROLD AGNEW:
When the bomb went off we saw the light, then we felt two shockwaves – which surprised us – and then we realised one of them was a reflection from the ground.

And then we dashed over to look out this little porthole and I took the pictures of the Hiroshima cloud.

Narrator:
His film is a unique record – the only moving images of the Hiroshima bomb.

Agnew flew back – to help ready a second bomb.

He’s pictured here – carrying the bomb core itself.

When dropped on Nagasaki shortly after, it effectively ended World War Two.

Together, these bombs had killed more than 150-thousand people.

Many more would perish from their injuries – and the effects of radiation.

As the war ended – the era of the weapon of mass destruction had begun.

The countdown to the world’s biggest bomb began when Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, decided he too must have such a weapon.

Two weeks after Hiroshima, he ordered scientists here – at Moscow’s Lebedev Institute – to build him an atom bomb.

Physicist Boris Altshuler was part of an elite community of Soviet scientists.

His father helped design Stalin’s first bombs.

DR BORIS ALTSHULER, Nuclear Physicist:
My father really understood definitely that they must have the bomb.

Because it’s necessary to save our country – to save peace as they believed it.

DR HAROLD AGNEW:
We physicists and chemists said it would be just a matter of time.

In fact the politicians thought it would take them longer than we thought it would take them.

Narrator:
Agnew was now a key member of the team created to keep the United States ahead of the Soviet Union.

And a series of vast experiments would be conducted here – on Bikini Atoll.

One of the most remote – and for many years, most secret, places on earth.

This coral atoll in the Marshall Islands lies two thousand seven hundred (2,700) miles southwest of Hawaii.

In 1946 the US decided this is where it would test the next generation of weapons.

Historian Richard Rhodes won a Pulitzer prize for his book on the first atomic bombs.

He says the A-bomb spelled excitement – and even sex appeal.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
The bikini was invented by a French designer in 1946.

They decided to name it after the sexiest place at that time on the planet, which was where the United States was conducting nuclear weapons tests.

The bomb at that time had a kind of charisma that of course it soon lost.

Narrator:
The bombs were big news – and the people of Bikini seemed happy to be center stage.

ACTUALITY
News reel of Bikini people with VO

Narrator:
Their now desert island would witness one of the most remarkable experiments ever conducted.

Millions of dollars worth of weapons – and a fleet of 95 warships – were assembled in the lagoon.

These junked Japanese, German and American ships were assembled to test the power of the bomb. – as well as junked US vessels.

ACTUALITY
Animals being put on ship with VO

ACTUALITY
Countdown and explosion

Narrator:
The destruction of these warships and weapons sent out a clear signal.

The rules of war had been rewritten.

The atom bomb trumped yesterday’s weaponry – and only America knew the secret of how to build one.

Or so they believed.

RICHARD RHODES:
Years before our experts believed it would be possible, the Soviets in August 1949 tested their first atomic bomb.

And there was panic in Washington as a result.

Narrator:
The Soviet weapon was an almost exact copy of the Nagasaki bomb.

So exact, it was assumed there were spies inside America’s super-secret base at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

DR BORIS ALTSHULER, Nuclear Physicist:
There were American idealistic physicists who gave American secrets to Soviet intelligence.

They had the idea that there must be balance.

It’s very dangerous if only capitalists, imperialists, the United States, will have these weapons.

Narrator:
Klaus Fuchs – a German born physicist – and David Greenglass – an American Army machinist – were just part of the Los Alamos spy ring.

Four days after they were arrested in 1950, the US announced plans for a new – even more powerful — weapon.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
There was a great rush in Washington to find something that could reassert the balance.

And for some of the people in Washington, in fact those who prevailed, the hydrogen bomb was that thing.

Narrator:
The bombs tested so far at Bikini were all variations on the original World War II bomb design.

Called “Trinity,” they derived their power from a fission reaction.

Fission happens when an atom is split under such massive pressure it creates a release of energy, in this case, 20 kilotons – equal to 20 thousand tons of TNT.

But the hydrogen bomb was a fusion weapon and would soon make those early devices look primitive.

There would be two key components.

A basic atom bomb plus a tank of hydrogen isotopes such as tritium and deuterium.

The primary explosion would force together – or fuse – the bomb fuel, producing immense heat….

…. a thermonuclear reaction releasing energy measured in megatons.

Millions of tons of TNT.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
The other important thing about a hydrogen reaction is that it’s kind of like a fire – the more fuel you add, the bigger the fire.

It has an unlimited potential size.

Whereas the biggest fission weapon we ever built was half a megaton, five hundred thousand tons of TNT equivalent.

Really couldn’t get any bigger than that.

DR HAROLD AGNEW:
We all agreed, at least the technical people, that it would just be a matter of a few years before the Russians would have the same capability.

RICHARD RHODES:
The fact the Soviet Union had so quickly, with the help of espionage, developed their first atomic bombs, made it certain from the point of view of the United States joint chiefs of staff that yes, we must have this weapon.

Narrator:
But would it work?

It was down to Harold Agnew – now in his early thirties – and his Los Alamos colleagues, to build the world’s first thermonuclear device – codenamed Mike.

DR HAROLD AGNEW:
I was a project engineer with a small group. We actually put tritium in Mike, we were in charge of doing that.

We got the thing fabricated, got it shipped out.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
It was an atomic bomb – and a long cylindrical tank of liquid hydrogen, surrounded by a cylinder that would funnel the huge burst of radiation that comes off an atomic bomb, and turn the material around the hydrogen cylinder into an intense plasma.
A very, very hot gas, which would then set off the hydrogen that was in the tank.
That was the Mike device.

DR HAROLD:
I was on the Curtis – which was a seaplane tender – 30 miles away, waiting for Mike to be detonated.

DR HAROLD AGNEW:
What frightened me was the heat.

We were just in a pair of shorts – and this got hotter and hotter.

This cloud was 30 miles away – but it felt as if it was on top of us.

Narrator:
Here was a truly historic scientific milestone – the world’s first manmade thermonuclear reaction.

But weighing in at 82 tons – what use was it?

DR BORIS ALTSHULER

Nuclear Physicist
Propaganda wrote – the first hydrogen bomb was tested by the United States in 1952.

It’s called Mike. It was not a bomb.

It was a construction like a big three story house.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
It was a bomb that you would have to, as Robert Oppenheimer said, deliver by ox-cart, or by ship.

That wasn’t very useful.

He wanted one you could deliver by air.

Narrator:
Which side built the first true hydrogen bomb – a portable device – is still argued today.

For a frightened public – in the 1950s – definitions hardly mattered.

In 1953, the Soviets developed a hydrogen bomb small enough to carry in an airplane.

Could the US do the same?

Six months later – Los Alamos produced their answer to the Soviet bomb.

Their first had solid fuel – made from the lightest metal that there is – lithium.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
There are various versions of lithium, isotopes they’re called, and the one that was needed for this weapon was lithium six.

It had three protons, three neutrons – lithium six.

Narrator:
The fuel mixture – known as lithium deuteride – was packed inside this aluminum cylinder.

Bikini was about to witness the most powerful explosion ever staged by the United States – codename Castle Bravo.

But this time things would get dramatically out of control.

RICHARD RHODES:
They tested the bomb with liquid hydrogen but they’d never tested one with lithium deuteride.

And the measurements had been made wrong, as it turned out.

Narrator:
Almost 60 years ago – John R. Halderman was a young marine corporal.

Shipped out to the Pacific for this top secret mission – he stood guard over America’s superbomb.

JOHN R HALDERMAN, Marine Corps Veteran
It looked like a big propane tank. About 5 feet in diameter and 20 feet long.

I wrote my name on it, being smart. Signed it.

But we had to stay with that until it was all set up to go off. And you weren’t allowed on there.

If your name wasn’t on the access list – you had orders to shoot to kill.

Narrator:
Bikini Atoll is a ring of small islands.

Halderman stood guard in the north west corner – where Bravo would actually detonate.

But it would be triggered from the island of Enyu – 20 miles away.

What happened next is documented in this once classified film.

The bunker is located just beside the island’s landing strip.

It meant that if things went wrong they could call in a helicopter for rescue.

But the men inside here felt safe – protected not just by reinforced concrete – but massive blast doors.

Their job was to ensure that all monitoring devices were running – and finally – priming the firing circuit itself.

If the scientists calculations were correct, the lithium deuteride mixture would erupt with the force of five million tons of TNT.

If it went much higher or the force were any greater – the 20 mile margin of safety might not be enough.

Their bunker was even made watertight – in case Bravo unleashed a tidal wave.

As zero hour approached, Marine John Halderman was aboard the USS Curtiss – the ship carrying top brass and scientists – as it had been for Operation Mike two years before.

JOHN R HALDERMAN, Marine Corps Veteran:
We were 23 miles from ground zero.

And they’re starting the countdown.

They get down to 10 seconds.

Then you get kinda goose pimples – and your hair stands up on the back of you.

DETONATION

JOHN R HALDERMAN, Marine Corps Veteran:
We had dark goggles on but when it went off you can see the bone in your arm.

It’s like looking at an X-ray.

And when we did turn around and take our goggles off, we all thought it would be off in the distance.

But it was right on top of us.

JOHN R HALDERMAN, Marine Corps Veteran:
And you could see the shock wave coming.

Like a miniature tidal wave or tsunami.

You’re grabbing hold of lifelines and hanging on to gun mounts and guys are sliding across the deck and you’re grabbing them.

Then it tilted back the other way.

And I turned around to my buddy and I said ‘Hey, I think we’re goners’ and he said ‘Yeah, I think you’re right’.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
It was a terrifying moment.

The explosion reached out so close to the block houses that they barely got out alive.

Narrator:
The leader of the firing party – Dr. John C. Clark – later gave a moment by moment account of what happened.

At zero plus 20 seconds – a shock like a giant earthquake.

At zero plus 90 seconds – the air blast – so powerful that the concrete walls creaked.

But it was their Geiger counters – measuring radiation – that caused real fear.

Bravo had created a vast plume of radioactive fallout – far bigger than expected and heading in a direction no one had predicted.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
Fall out in a nuclear weapon is more a product of the material that’s churned up by the explosion than it is of the explosion itself.

The explosion itself is so hot that it turns everything in the bomb into a gas.

But a bomb that’s exploded on the ground stirs up the earth and irradiates the elements in those materials.

And then that material is intensely radioactive. And its radioactivity is what typically we call fall out.

Narrator:
Inside the bunker – radiation levels continued to rise.

Clark reassured his team that a helicopter would soon be on the way – but the men still had to get to the landing pad.

The helicopter blades would kick up fallout which had already settled … making it even more dangerous, since the men hadn’t been issued… further because the men hadn’t been issued protective clothing.

And so Clark devised a primitive solution.

These men, who’d just set off the most potent weapon in history so far would shield themselves with bedsheets – as they hurried toward the waiting chopper.

The USS Curtiss – 23 miles from ground zero – was now also in harm’s way.

JOHN R HALDERMAN, Marine Corps Veteran:
We were the closest ship to the blast.

That radioactive dust – it’s like snow.

They just ordered us below deck and we went below deck and buttoned up.

They came round with Geiger counters and the Geiger counter would sing when they brought it around your body.

I must have been down their 10 days. It stunk down there. It got really ripe.

And if anybody went out of the hatches you had orders to shoot them.

Narrator:
So what had gone wrong?

Although the principle of the hydrogen bomb had been proved with Operation Mike, each new weapon was pushing science to its limit.

Dr Martin Kalinowski – a nuclear physicist at the University of Hamburg – was asked to examine the declassified data from Castle Bravo.

DR MARTIN KALINOWSKI, Nuclear Physicist:
At that time much of the nuclear testing was trial and error. The test was their experiment to find out new information.

And one particular information that is very important for nuclear physicists, or bomb physicists, are so-called cross sections.

These are the capabilities of nuclear materials to react.

Lithium consists of two different kinds of nuclei. Lithium-6 – and what is called lithium-7.

Seven indicates that there is one more neutron in the nucleus.

Physicists at that time thought that lithium-7 is kind of inert, it doesn’t contribute in any way to the nuclear explosion.

DR HAROLD AGNEW:
You have to realise, we were pretty ignorant in those days about cross sections. And that wasn’t thought of at all.

We were ignorant of the fact – but we should not have been ignorant.

DR MARTIN KALINOWSKI:
I looked at the cross sections for lithium-6 and lithium-7 and the comparison reveals Lithium 7 does have a high cross section that means a high probability of undergoing a nuclear reaction.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
This particular fuel in this bomb was 30% lithium six, 70% lithium 7.

What the scientists were not aware of was that lithium 7 would be stripped of one of its neutrons early in this reaction as it blew.

And turn into lithium 6, at which point it would become bomb fuel.

The weapon was designed to have a yield of 5 megatons.

But because of this unknown reaction in lithium 7, it had a yield of 15 million tons of TNT equivalent.

Narrator:
The power unleashed by Bravo is still evident today.

Where it sat on the coral sand is now a water-filled crater – one mile wide – and two hundred feet deep.

Along with the vast crater – this fishing boat – named Lucky Dragon – – preserved in a Tokyo museum – provides the most vivid memorial to the Bravo bomb.

As dawn rose, the ship, with a crew of 23, was sailing 82 miles east of Bikini.

MATASHICHI OISHI, Crewmember ‘Lucky Dragon’:
This white powder – like snow – began to fall from the sky.
It was like a blizzard – of fine snowflakes. But I thought – this is the Pacific – how can it be snowing?
It fell on my head and face – and I licked some. It didn’t melt, like snow would have done.
It was like eating sand.

Narrator:
Within days, the crew were suffering from acute radiation sickness.

They hurried back to port in Japan – but despite doctors efforts the radio operator died. Others only slowly recovered.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
There was a huge outcry in Japan – I mean this was the one country that had already been atomic bombed.

The only country in the world.

For now some of its ordinary fishermen to come home sick with radiation poisoning produced a national outcry.

Narrator:
The remoteness of Bikini Atoll should have prevented such contamination.

Dr. Kalinowski uses contemporary records to provide an explanation.

DR MARTIN KALINOWSKI:
I looked at the weather data.

And I think that is one of the main reasons why the fallout was higher than expected.

DR MARTIN KALINOWSKI, Nuclear Physicist:
We’re looking here at the meteorological situation of the Castle Bravo test.

Ground zero is marked here with this black star, the lines indicating so-called trajectories.

So these are the paths that particles would follow within 24 hours after the explosion.
The red line indicates a particle at ten kilometres height – whereas the green line is for a particle almost at ground level.

The striking fact is that the green line goes in the exact opposite direction of the red line.
The winds are blowing in different directions.
At high altitudes, the winds are blowing towards the east.
And, at low altitudes, towards the west.

Narrator:
The Bravo commander expected fallout to blow toward empty ocean.

Instead most of the radiation was carried eastwards, high into the air – to descend on the USS Curtiss as well as the Lucky Dragon – and nearby islands.

DR MARTIN KALINOWSKI:
The major fraction of radioactivity is transported in high altitudes because the mushroom cloud lifts the radioactivity.

I’m not sure whether they missed the information about the wind fields – but their impact on the fallout was probably under-estimated.

Narrator:
On the islands to the east of Bikini the 260 people in harm’s way were evacuated by the US military.

Many soon showed clear symptoms of radiation exposure.

DR HAROLD AGNEW:
Usually before shots they were very meticulous in predicting what the wind was going to do, but of course winds can change very quickly.

Just unfortunate.

RICHARD RHODES:
There began in this incident a change in the view that the world had of these tests.

And to some degree also of these bombs.

Narrator:
No US bomb would ever be that big again.

Bravo remains the most powerful thing ever made in America.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
By the mid-1950s the United States had developed all the fundamental technologies it needed for nuclear weapons of any yield – small, large, in between.

We even had weapons called dial-a-yield – where you could set the yield anywhere from a few kilotons up to a megaton or more.

The problem became at that point the right delivery system.

Narrator:
Both sides now raced to develop long range missiles.

The new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, liked to show off his nation’s missile strength.

But – unlike in America – Soviet scientists were also ordered to continue research on bombs of ever increasing power.

An expert on this period, Professor Alexei Kojevnikov has begun piecing together details from once-secret files in Moscow.

DR ALEXEI KOJEVNIKOV, Russian Academy Sciences:
In terms of actual documents we don’t yet have access to the inside documents but this is how I judge the situation.

Khrushchev was trying to strike a posture that the Soviet Union was stronger than it actually was.

A typical posture of the underdog.

For all of 1961 we see a huge deterioration of relationship between the two superpowers.

Narrator:
The world’s biggest bomb would be one of the first tests for the new President Kennedy.

In Germany – the superpowers argued over who should control Berlin.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
Khrushchev decided to do something about it – and build the Berlin Wall, which came remarkably close to starting a war.

Closer than I think many people realise.

Narrator:
The wall would trap East Germans desperate to flee from Communist rule.

RICHARD RHODES:
It was a frightening time.

I was in the Air Force Reserve at that time and was recalled to active duty.

DR ALEXEI KOJEVNIKOV:
In July 61 Kennedy decided to put half of the bombers in Europe on war alert and it was that decision that scared Khrushchev the most.

RICHARD RHODES:
Khrushchev called in his scientists and said let’s show the Americans what we can do.

Narrator:
What Khrushchev wanted was a bomb…

Bigger than any in history.

RICHARD RHODES:
It was a deliberate threat.

He said let’s build a really big one – and show them what we can do.

Narrator:
The scientist Khrushchev summoned was Andrei Sakharov – the brains behind the Soviet bomb program for much of the 1950s.

Boris Altschuler studied under Sakharov – and was a close friend for 20 years.

DR BORIS ALTSHULER:
He didn’t consider it as some tool to kill anybody.

It was a tool to defend us, our country, from being killed.

Narrator:
Sakharov had three months to produce the biggest explosive device of all time – dubbed the ‘The Tsar Bomb’ – or king of bombs.

America’s Bravo had been 15 megatons.

But Sakharov planned something more than six times larger than Bravo.

This would be a three stage bomb – rather than the two stages of Castle Bravo.

An atom bomb would be the fission detonator – compressing the bomb fuel in first one thermonuclear reaction….

… and then another.

RICHARD RHODES, Historian:
Scientists once thought about making a bomb that would be a thousand megatons.
And that would be a perhaps four or five stage weapon to get that much yield.
It wouldn’t be useful because once you get above a hundred megatons, the fireball is the thickness of the atmosphere of the earth – ten miles – and any further blast is just going to go out into space.
It’s not going to do any good.

Narrator:
Sakharov was working under orders – and against the clock.

But as the bomb neared completion, he made one vital change.

DR BORIS ALTSHULER:
Sakharov designed a 100 megaton bomb.
But at the last moment was concerned about such power that somebody was polluted.

Narrator:
Frightened by the potential for massive fallout – Sakharov reduced its power to 50 megatons.

Though previous bombs had been tested in Kazakhstan, in Central Asia – the Tsar bomb would detonate over the remote Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya.

Mainly wilderness – the snowbound territory was further away from centers of population that might be affected by the bomb’s fallout.

As dawn broke the crew assigned to carry out this historic mission were given their final briefing.

Mission control was a military airbase in northern Russia – 600 miles from the drop zone.

The men had been handpicked.

And their aircraft had to be specially adapted.

The Tsar Bomb – weighing 27 tons – had been fitted with a parachute – and would be dropped from an altitude of 40 thousand feet.

The bomb would fall for 25 thousand feet – before detonating.

Enough time, it was hoped, for the aircrew to escape the devastating explosion.

DR BORIS ALTSHULER, Nuclear Physicist:
There were real concerns.

Sakharov said now they do something which was never earlier happened in history on the earth.

To foresee exactly what will happen…? (shakes head)

DR BORIS ALTSHULER, Nuclear Physicist:
When the shockwave came to the airplane. The airplane fell down about a kilometre.

But it was very high – so they didn’t perish. But it was almost broken.

Narrator:
The most powerful man-made explosion in history produced a mushroom cloud which peaked at forty miles – around seven times the height of Mount Everest.

Buildings 70 miles away were destroyed.

Windows were shattered 300 miles away.

Monitors who picked up the shockwave had been expecting something momentous – but nothing of this magnitude.

DR HAROLD AGNEW:
We were really impressed by the fact that they were able to air drop that thing.
And even more impressed when we realised that had they used much more uranium in it – which they could have – it would have been 100 megatons.
It was really amazing.

Narrator:
The implications were clear to the analysts.

If the Tsar Bomb were dropped on Washington DC – and detonated at an optimum height of 2000 feet – the initial fireball would incinerate everything – and everybody – within 3 miles.

People 12 miles away would suffer third degree burns.

Most buildings 20 miles away would be destroyed.

In this scenario – it would kill more than 1 million people instantly – perhaps three and a half million in total.

The altitude at which a bomb detonates is a critical factor.

Dr Martin Kalinowski was asked to determine what happened to the fallout from the Tsar bomb.

DR MARTIN KALINOWSKI:
The big difference is that the Tsar Bomb was exploded at four kilometres height – whereas the Bravo test took place close to ground.

But there is a second issue – about wind speed and directions.

DR MARTIN KALINOWSKI, Nuclear Physicist:
This is a snapshot of the plume after 6 hours – ground zero is marked here with the red star.
The different colours are indicating the part of the plume at different heights.
The important thing is there is no vertical transport – neither downwards nor upwards.
The whole plume is travelling to the east.

DR MARTIN KALINOWSKI:
The particles, transported with fast wind speeds, had no chance to reach ground.
It took 48 hours before any fallout reached the ground.
By that time the very short-lived radioactivity had already decayed and the concentrations were very low.

Narrator:
Still, the low initial fallout of the Tsar bomb was too much for the man who built it.

Sakharov’s own estimate was that 500 thousand people, worldwide would suffer in succeeding decades as the radiation deposited by the huge cloud slowly decayed.

Only months after the Tsar bomb was detonated – in a remarkable turnaround – Andrei Sakharov became a fierce critic of nuclear weapons.

DR ALEXEI KOJEVNIKOV:
Sakharov became the leader of the protest group in the Soviet Union – largely because there was no way to contain the radioactive contamination.

Narrator:
Because of official secrecy there are only estimates of the impact of the Soviet bomb tests.

But Sakharov and his friends had first-hand evidence.

DR BORIS ALTSHULER, Nuclear Physicist:
All the facts of pollution were top secret.

My friend Mikhail Marinov when he was in Kazakhstan – being a student in 1957 – he slept on the street because of good weather and there was rain during this night.

And next day he became totally bald.

The reason is very simple.

Because there was some nuclear test and some wind and some cloud and there was radioactive rain. Nobody said a word. Nothing. But he became totally bald after that. And he died of cancer – much later but it was it was connected.

Narrator:
The true impact of the Soviet tests is still unknown.

The effects of America’s bombs in the Pacific remain equally controversial.

The United States were granted permission to use Bikini by the island’s King Juda.

But his son – two years old when he left Bikini – says his father lived to regret his decision.

TOMAKI JUDA, Son of King Juda:
It was a mistake – because the United States were not treating us good.
The United States promised us that we’re going to use your island for a short time – but that was not true.
He couldn’t really understand how strong was the thing they were going to use at Bikini Atoll.

Narrator:
Bravo was only one of 67 nuclear explosions on Bikini, and neighboring Eniwetok atoll.

The pounding they took is hard to visualize.

It equaled the dropping of one Hiroshima bomb every day – for 25 years.

Islanders were encouraged to return in 1969, when the atoll was declared safe.

But during the 1970s they left again – when new evidence showed Bikini was still dangerously radioactive.

Today Bikini islanders live elsewhere in the Marshall Islands – and some of them in the United States.

Bikini has no permanent inhabitants.

Leaders of the exiled community – including the mayor – make periodic visits – this one the first in two years.

On the island where his ancestors lived for centuries there’s now a monitoring program – funded by the US Department of Energy.

It tracks radiation levels in specified coconut trees.

Monitor radioactivity in the island’s groundwater.

And they’ve planted a garden – to help determine when crops grown here will be safe to eat.

But because of their past experience, islanders are suspicious about official statements.

ALSON KELEN, Mayor of Bikini Atoll:
According to the DOE, they say that it’s safe enough to come back.
The more it rains the more the radiation goes out.
But I actually was one of those kids that got relocated back in the 1970s.
Some people say it’s not safe yet.
So I guess it’s how you look at the picture.

ALSON KELEN, Mayor of Bikini Atoll:
Right now we are at the old graveyard site from before the testing was happening on Bikini.

These graves are our grandfathers, great great grandparents

Bikini are all one family.

So anybody dies here, we’re all related.

Narrator:
The United States has, over the years, paid almost 200 million dollars in compensation – and in its efforts to clean up Bikini. But it appears it will remain an island of ghosts.

ALSON KELEN:
The children of Israel, they travelled for 40 years.

But the children of Bikini – I really know don’t know if we will ever come back to Bikini.

Narrator:
The last bomb test here was in 1958.

And the Tsar Bomb was among the last Soviet tests conducted in the open atmosphere.

Partly because of the horror inspired by the world’s biggest bomb – and the dangers of another radiation disaster like Castle Bravo – both sides agreed to a test ban treaty in 1963, confining further tests underground to prevent fallout.

In Russia, Andrei Sakharov became an important symbol of protest against the regime and was under police surveillance.

The inventor of the world’s biggest bomb was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.

Harold Agnew also played a key role throughout this extraordinary period – from Hiroshima onward.

DR HAROLD AGNEW:
I never had any qualms that what we were doing was necessary at the time.

But I’ve said many times – politicians should have to get in their underwear and watch a megaton blast and feel the heat.

And it would really make better thinkers out of some of them.

END TITLES

Narrator:
More than 2000 years ago, the first emperor of China set out to build a lavish tomb where he could spend his eternal life.
The emperor needed fierce warriors to accompany him into the afterlife, to protect him from the unknown.
And so, to satisfy their leader’s wish, ancient Chinese craftsmen created an army of clay, 8,000 soldiers strong.
Now, 21st-century scientists are studying the terracotta warriors and making astonishing discoveries.

TITLES: CHINA’S GHOST ARMY

The year is 221 BC….
In Mexico, the city of Teotihaucan is expanding … On track to become ancient America’s greatest metropolis.

In Egypt, the city of Alexandria boasts a 400-foot-tall lighthouse … (one of the tallest buildings in the world, at the time).

… And in China, a team of craftsmen begins an incredible feat.

More than two thousand years later … In 1974 … Farmers digging a well near the Chinese city of Xian discovered strange fragments of clay sculpted in human form.

Intrigued, Chinese archaeologists carefully excavated the soil and made a staggering discovery.

8,000 clay warriors…. Infantry … Archers… Generals … Cavalry…

Buried in three pits

Near the tomb of one of history’s most powerful men.

The brilliant soldier and ruthless conqueror named Qin Shihuangdi.

More than two thousand years ago, he unified seven warring kingdoms into a single empire called China … Giving himself the title of “first emperor…”

And he built himself an extraordinary tomb, one that dwarfed the ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s pyramids.

An ancient Chinese author recorded the splendors of that tomb …

Its rivers and oceans made of mercury, its replicas of palaces, fully reproducing the emperor’s earthly realm.

But there was no mention of an underground army in this ancient text.

And nothing like it had ever been found, before or since.

The origins of the terra cotta warriors have remained a mystery for more than two millennia.

Now, archaeologists and scientists from around the world have joined together to find out everything they can about the statues—why they were made and perhaps more intriguingly, how they were made. Each soldier stands six feet tall and weighs more than 600 pounds.

Creating the terra cotta warriors was a stunning achievement.

They would have cost a fortune only an emperor could afford.

The task would have required years of work … And endless ingenuity … As workers struggled to make clay statues on a scale never attempted before.

And when they were finally finished, they were buried out of sight for eternity.

Qin Shihuangdi went to enormous trouble and expense to create these statues. Statues that would never be seen by human eyes after his death.

Just west of the first emperor’s tomb, archaelogist Jing Honwei is studying another royal tomb. One that might provide clues to understanding why the first emperor produced his army of clay.

In 537 BC…some three hundred years before the first emperor unified China …

This gigantic pit was the tomb of Qin Jing Gong … Ruler of the small kingdom of Qin … And one of the first emperor’s ancestors.

These wooden boxes are grim reminders of what happened here on the day Qin was buried … The ritual killing of his entire court.

Jing Hongwei (Translator):
When Qin Jing Gong passed away, he buried 186 living people with him.

… They were buried in these coffins. Each coffin was numbered, and each victim was also given a number. Every victim was buried in the coffin with his or her number. The position of every coffin had been preassigned.

Narrator:
Pride of place went to the ruler’s ministers and wives, assigned to the coffins nearest his own. Cruder caskets in the outer ranks held royal craftsmen, bodyguards, and other useful commoners.

They were all killed to serve their lord in death, as they had in life.

It is the largest human sacrifice ever found in an ancient Chinese tomb.

But there were others.

Jing Hongwei (Translator):
Almost every big tomb would have 100 to 200 corpses. This is a massive number.

Narrator:
Body counts like these from royal tombs conjure up images of mass slaughter.

But there’s no evidence of a violent massacre.

These bones belong to people buried in Qin Jing Gong’s tomb.

And according to archaeologist Zhang Zhongli, some of these people were happy … Or at least willing … To die.

Zhang Zhongli (Translator)
At that time, people believed that there was another world where people could carry on their lives after death … Rulers’ attendants and followers were enjoying their lives with their masters when he was alive. So it was quite natural to follow him when he died … For them, death was another form of life.

Jing Hongwei (Translator)
Some people were terrified and unwilling to die. But some other people thought their lives were meaningless without their master, so they wanted to follow their master to death, and considered this as a big honor.

Narrator:
Some committed suicide, others were murdered.

The answer to how they died lies in the bones.

Jing Hongwei (Translator)
This is a … Human skull uncovered from a coffin in the tomb. We tested the chemical composition of the skull and hair and found that they both contained arsenic.

Narrator:
There are no traces of arsenic in the ground around the coffins … which leaves only one possibility.

The arsenic must have been ingested by the victims – voluntarily or not.

Jing Hongwei (Translator)
Arsenic can be dissolved in alcohol. So we think that these victims drank arsenic wine and were poisoned to death.

Narrator:
When Qin Jing Gong took his ministers, servants and soldiers with him to the grave, he was following a thousand-year-old Chinese tradition.

Only 300 years later, the first emperor … The most powerful ruler in China’s history … Also buried officials, servants, entertainers … And 8000 soldiers … In his tomb.

But they were all made of clay.

What changed in those 300 years?

According to author Guo Xingwen, the ancient Chinese may have believed in human sacrifice… But that didn’t mean they liked it.

Guo Xingwen (Translator)
Today, we regard this as an inhumane thing. In ancient times, it was considered inhumane as well.

Most of the court officials weren’t willing to die. But they didn’t have any choice, since they would have been disloyal if they didn’t. The ritual system required them to die … It would be their honor to follow the monarch, despite the fact that none of them would really like it.

Narrator:
But it was the violence of war that put an end to the practice of human sacrifice.

Less than sixty-five years after Qin Jing Qong’s funeral, China’s seven kingdoms plunged into war.

Known as the period of warring states, it lasted more than 250 years.

As generation after generation was wiped out, and populations declined by the thousands, sacrificing hundreds of people for the afterlife became an unaffordable luxury.

Guo xin-wen I/V (Translator)
At that time human life became more important … As a consequence of years of war, the population had decreased significantly. Each state was struggling to maintain its population, since population means productivity.

Narrator:
By the time the first emperor ended centuries of war and unified China, human sacrifices were rare.

And rulers were substituting more humane ways of providing for their afterlives.

Zhang Zhongli (Translator)
Zhang Zhongli: In a tomb about three hundred years older than the first emperor, we found small pottery figurines some tens of centimeters high. This shows that pottery figurines were replacing living beings as burial objects.

From that point on, tombs which we found had more and more stuff of this kind.

Narrator:
But nothing on the scale of the terra cotta warriors.

The first emperor inherited the tradition of tiny tomb figurines … but took it to new heights, literally.

His tomb figures were life-size … And no two of them seem alike.

Their shoes …

Their bodies …

…And especially their faces …

… All appear to be different.

Some believe the 8000 clay warriors are all individuals … But no one has ever confirmed that.

Until now.

In Wellington, New Zealand, facial recognition expert Glen Cameron is about to use modern technology to analyze the ancient warriors.

He uses Neoface … A facial recognition software …

Glen Cameron
It’s been used throughout Asia and around the world in various forms. In border control, surveillance, immigration, and by the police.

We can match around 1 million faces per second.

So we’re very proud of it, and we think it’s gonna do a good job at today’s mission.

Narrator:
The software analyzes the faces of about 100 terra cotta warriors … Instantly comparing eyes, noses, mouths and other significant features … to determine if any match.

Glen Cameron
Let’s have a quick look at these top matches here. These two with the big fatter chins. So here we have very similar chin lines with the big thick chin. Similar mouth position. Nose slightly different, but the eyes, eyebrows very different.
There is a huge range of faces here. Very individual, very individual. Whole head very different in shape.

Facial hair. Very different facial hair. A lot of difference in the eyes. This guy is looking quite sad. Look at the eyebrows on this one. Nearly frowning. Very entertaining facial features in the eyes, in the eyebrows. This one here quite a flat nose. And this one here more normal.

There is some similarity between the warriors like some chins, the mouth, the nose. But they are all very unique. I think this is incredibly exciting and I am astounded they could be produced this these sort of numbers and made so, so individual.

Narrator:
8,000 individuals …

It is a mystery whether they were portaits of the emperor’s soldiers or products of the warrior-makers’ imaginations.

… But one thing is clear:

Creating 8,000 clay individuals made the job of producing the terra cotta warriors even more difficult.

Zhang Zhongli (Translator)
Human-size statues are definitely harder than small statues to make. Whoever came up with the idea might not have known how difficult making them was going to be.

Narrator:
On a day forever lost to history, the emperor gave his orders:

8,000 unique figures, and all to be ready on the unknown day when he died …

All of them strong enough to survive an eternity underground …

And all of them beautiful and realistic enough to please the imperial eye.

Each one, different from the next.

And the emperor demanded perfection.

Day one of terra cotta warrior production … Around 221 BC.

Two men can shed light on what it must have been like to face the challenge of making life-sized soldiers out of clay.

Zhang Binruo … And Han Ping Zhe … Make terra cotta warriors for a living.

Their factories churn out thousands of terra cotta warrior replicas every year …

It is a thriving business that sends warriors across the world, to people fascinated with the first emperor’s army of clay.

Mr Han (Translator)
Our Terra Cotta Warriors are exported to countries like the United State, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, and France.

We manufacture around 50,000 small terra cotta warriors each year, and about 200 full-size figures.

Besides the traditional statues, we also modify some elements according to our clients’ needs

This warrior is playing golf. We made it for our client, the Yajian Golf Club. The golf club gives it to winners as a trophy.

Narrator:
After more than twenty-five years in the replica business, Zhang Binruo and Han Ping Zhe have faced the same difficulties the original warrior makers did.

Like their ancient predecessors, they’ve had to figure out warrior-making step by step, through trial and error.

And just like ancient times, the problem is one of scale.

Zhang Binruo (Translator)
We started to make 40cm, 50cm, and finally like this one, one half of human size, about 1 meter tall. Tourists wanted even bigger size, we went through many difficulties.

Narrator:
The first challenge was simply choosing the right material.

Bricks or a tomb figurine can be made out of just about any clay.

But a typical terra cotta warrior stands nearly 7 feet tall and weighs up to 650 pounds.

Using the right material can mean the difference between a fierce warrior and a pile of broken pottery.

The right clay must be dense and sticky enough to hold together as it loses water and dries out.

… But not so dense the inside of the statue cannot dry.

Today, as it was 2000 years ago, success depends on finding a clay that’s tough enough to make a life-sized warrior.

Zhang Binruo didn’t have to look far for the right clay that could stand up to the job. The site is near the emperor’s tomb and his warriors.

Zhang Binruo (Translator)
This is called red clay, it is sticky and strong. We searched many places and could not find anywhere else with this much red clay. But we find that this place has a lot.

Now we only use red clay from here to make terra cotta warriors. 2000 years ago, I think Terra Cotta Warriors were impossible to be made with other soil or clay.

Narrator:
For the first emperor’s craftsmen, finding the right clay would have solved the first big challenge of making a life-size warrior.

But it would not have solved an even bigger problem:

How to make thousands of them.

Quickly.

The first emperor died in 210 BC … Only eleven years after he ordered his terra cotta army.

His craftsmen managed to finish 8,000 warriors in just 11 years, producing more than 700 per year.

Replica makers today, using modern technology, can only produce around 200 per year…

… not even a third of what the ancient sculptors produced.

One clue to how the craftsmen accomplished this impossible feat comes not from the statues themselves…

But from something they once held in their hands.

Yang Fuxi is a 10th-generation bowmaker …

He makes replicas of ancient Chinese crossbows … Like the ones once held by some terra cotta warriors.

Even today, the hardest part is casting the crossbow’s metal trigger … A challenge that’s made Yan deeply respectful of the men who made those triggers 2000 years ago.

Yan Fuxing (Translator)
We found one trigger at one city, and another trigger at another city that is 2000 miles away. Parts of the trigger are exchangeable. In modern terms, these are standardized parts. I don’t know how they designed these parts.

Even now this is not an easy job, even experienced artisans need to work carefully.

Narrator:
Archaeologist Liu Zhangcheng is an expert on the weapons found with the terra cotta warriors.

Liu Zhangcheng (Translator)
We found more than 30,000 arrowheads in the pits.

We tested the arrowheads, and found the difference in their sizes to be less than 1cm; some of them only have a difference of 0.22mm. The difference is very tiny. We know that weapon manufacturing was standardized.

Narrator:
The first emperor’s weapon-makers signed their work …

And so did his warrior-makers.

Archaeologist Yuan Zhong Yi has identified their names.

Mr Yuan (Translator)
In each of the figurines you can find the name of the craftsperson in the most hidden places. They did this in hope that people wouldn’t see their names.

Narrator:
Signing their work meant they weren’t anonymous.

But it seems they didn’t have a choice.

Mr Yuan (Translator)
This is to allow their managers and superiors to check their work.

If things are not constructed well, the worker may be asked to re-craft them or, in the worst case scenario, go to jail or be decapitated.

Narrator:
The warrior makers had two major advantages:

Their experience working on the imperial assembly lines producing bows…

And knowing that the likely alternative to success was death.

Both would no doubt have helped them solve the immense problem of making 8000 life-sized figures in just over 10 years.

After years of trial and error, modern replica makers have learned there’s only one way to mass-produce large clay statues quickly..

They must push the clay into a mold

Wait two or three hours for the clay to harden …

Remove the mould and prop up the clay torso with wooden sticks …while workers carve details …

Make the heads, hands and legs in separate molds…

Let everything dry out for 10 days to 2 weeks …

… And then fire all the pieces separately in the kiln.

The replica makers now know that if they make a whole statue, it will collapse under its own weight before it dries … Or fill with hot air and explode in the kiln.

Han Ping Zhe (Translator)
Because we mass-produce, making hundreds or thousands copies of one statue, moulding is the only way.

And that’s not just his opinion.

Archaeologists agree that 2000 years ago, the first emperor’s craftsmen knew that moulding was the key to efficient mass production.

Liu Zhangcheng (Translator)
Mass production was the only way to explain the large numbers of arrowheads we found … The difference between arrowheads is tiny. I think they used moulds, so they were able to produce massive amounts of arrowheads with tiny differences.

Narrator:
Case apparently closed.

It would appear the ancient warrior-makers may have met the mass-production challenge by using moulds … Just like modern warrior-makers do.

There’s only one problem.

Nothing suggests the ancient craftsmen used molds.

Yuan Zhong Yi (Translator)
This … Broken half body gives us very important information about how terra cotta warriors were made. We can see the internal traces of the clay layers here, which shows how the clay coiled up. The sign of how the clay coiled up and joined together is very clear. Here is one clay coil, here is another clay coil. One coil after another, until the clay layers were all joined up inside the body.

You see this layer, this layer, this layer and this layer … Until it reaches this place, near the bottom, one by one …

So, this is how a terra cotta warrior is made.

Narrator:
The ancient evidence leaves no doubt: the original terra cotta warriors weren’t stamped out of moulds.

Moulds did play a part … In making hands, ears, and heads …

But as incredible as it seems, the bodies of all 8000 terra cotta warriors were made individually, by hand … And with techniques that were revolutionary for their time…

Zhang Zhongli (Translator)
The ancient craftsmen used a simple method; they pounded the clay until it became soft, and rolled the clay into strips. Then they coiled the clay strips upward, we call this method clay-coiling …the first emperor’s craftsmen were the first people in China to make statues this way.

Narrator:
Coiling was a difficult way to make more than 700 statues a year.

Archaeologist Zhang Zhongli has decided to find out just how difficult the task was…

By making a terra cotta warrior the old fashioned way …

With replica maker Han Ping Zhe and his master craftsmen.

Mr Han (Translator)
When we opened our business, we weren’t sure how to make a terra cotta warrior. I read about the traditional clay-coiling method. And we tried it. It took us a month to finish one statue.

Narrator:
The heart of the challenge: Make a figure that is nearly 6 feet tall…

But only half an inch thick… That won’t collapse under its own weight, a danger that grows greater as the coiling goes higher.

Supporting the figure with wooden sticks helps. But the only real solution is to stop and let the clay dry over and over again before making the statue taller.

They must find a delicate balance between waiting long enough for the clay to dry but not so long it dries out and cracks.

Mao Sanxue (Translator)
When I looked at the terra cotta warriors, I was amazed by the ancient people’s achievement. My statues collapsed 3 or 4 times when I first started.

Narrator:
Today, molding a warrior takes 10 days to two weeks …

Coiling one can take as long as a month.

But there was a reason the first emperor’s craftsmen chose the more difficult method.

While molding may be the best way to make the same statue over and over again…

…the craftsmen weren’t making the same statue over and over. They were making 8,000 unique ones.

Zhang Zhongli (Translator)
If these statues were made with moulding, it would only be efficient if we made the same copy over and over again … This was not the goal of the ancient people.

With the clay-coiling method, it is easier to make each terra cotta warrior different, whether it was fat or slim, tall or short … The idea was to create a group of humans.

Narrator:
But if coiling made more sense for individualizing the warriors, it was still a slower process.

There was only one way to increase the number of statues produced. And the first emperor knew it.

Experts believe he made his terra cotta army the same way he built his gigantic tomb …

With massive manpower.

Archaeologists have found 87 different names stamped on the terra cotta warriors … So 87 master craftsmen must have been in charge of making them.

A team of apprentices would have worked under each master …

Experts estimate 10 apprentices per team …

Making at least 87 teams with nearly a thousand workers …

Coiling one statue every month, each team could have finished 12 warriors every year … And all 8,000 in only 8 years.

But today’s replica-makers know that having a huge labor force wouldn’t have solved yet another difficulty.

A problem that could have destroyed the production schedule… And their statues.

In northern China, winter temperatures plunge below freezing … While in the summer, they soar into the 90s.

Both extreme cold and extreme heat will ruin clay statues before they can harden.

Zhang Binruo (Translator)
From long experience, I think the coiling method that was used 2000 years ago could not have been done at such temperatures.

Ideally the temperature needs to be maintained at around 20 degrees celsius.

Narrator:
Without the benefit of modern heating and cooling systems, the ancient warrior-makers faced a stark choice: find a way to keep their workshops at 68 degrees all year round… Or stop work for six months of the year.

No one knows for sure what they did.

But replica-maker Zhang Binruo has his own theory.

Cave houses … Dug out of hillsides by farmers living near the first emperor’s tomb.

Warm in winter, cool in summer, they’re ideal places to live while tending crops.

Zhang believes that 2000 years ago, they were also ideal places to make terra cotta warriors.

Zhang Binruo (Translator)
In the summer, the temperature outside may reach 30 Celsius degrees; inside the cave house, it may be only 20-25 Celsius degrees. In the winter, outside may be-10 Celsius degrees, while the cave-house remains at 15-20 Celsius degrees.

They sculpted the terra cotta warriors in cave-houses, then fired the statues after sculpting by sealing the entry of the cave-house and turning it into a kiln, so they could fire the statues inside.

Narrator:
Today’s warrior makers’ struggles provide insight into the immense challenges facing the creators of the clay army.

Sculpting 8,000 warriors in just over a decade … No two of them alike … Without having done so before.

But evidence also shows there was far more to producing the statues than simply sculpting them.

To satisfy their emperor, the ancient warrior-makers had to meet one more challenge.

Today, experts are reconstructing the final work that finished the terra cotta warriors …

What they’ve discovered has delighted some … And stunned others.

After more than thirty-five years, experts have learned a great deal about restoring the terra cotta warriors.

But they’re still unable to prevent an archaeological tragedy.

The warriors emerge from the earth bearing traces of brilliant color…

But those colors vanish within a week … Sometimes minutes … After excavation.

Conservation expert Zhou Tie and his team race to save what they can, working on newly-excavated terra cotta warrior fragments… Fresh from the ground after more than 2000 years.

Zhou Tie (Translator)
When people created the terra cotta warriors 2000 years ago, all the pits were full of color … When we excavated, the paints were almost gone … Only small areas of paint remained, and those were in poor condition. The paint can easily fall off after excavation.

Narrator:
For years, an international alliance of experts from China and Germany has battled to save the terra cotta warriors’ colors.

It is a battle they still haven’t won …

But at least they’ve identified the enemy.

A syrup-like substance with a pungent smell …

That was one of ancient China’s most coveted treasures.

Lacquer.

According to German conservator Catharina Blaensdorf,

Every one of the 8,000 terra cotta warriors got a coating of lacquer from head to toe.

Catharina Blaensdorf
Lacquer is a very stable material and also in the antiquity they knew that it can survive centuries or even longer. … So it had technical reasons, but also aesthetically reasons and reasons of meaning.

Narrator:
Lacquer was, and still remains, a valuable substance.

2,000 years ago, it was the ancient world’s plastic … A hard resin that protects whatever it covers from decay.

And when it dries, its brown color transforms into a glossy sheen nothing else could equal.

Catharina Blaensdorf
Lacquer wares were luxury goods and they probably were so expensive that only the emperor could afford to lacquer a whole army.

Narrator:
For the ancient Chinese, its value was derived from more than just its strength and beauty.

It was also difficult to obtain.

The sap of the lacquer tree can’t be harvested until the tree is six years old.

And even then, only from June to September … When the weather is warm.

Some experts believe it would have taken the sap of 25 trees to lacquer just one terra cotta warrior … And as many as 200,000 trees to finish all of them.

That’s because lacquer harvesters can take only about 10 grams of sap from each tree … Just enough to fill an egg cup.

Catharina Blaensdorf
You can’t take very much because otherwise the tree will die. So you do it once, let it heal, and then continue.

Narrator:
The lacquer trees aren’t the only ones at risk.

Lacquer trees are related to poison ivy and poison sumac.

Touching the sap or even just breathing its fumes can cause extreme discomfort.

Catharina Blaensdorf
I tried to work with the lacquer several times just to experiments, and in the beginning not much happened, but then twice there was a strong reaction were really my hands and my whole face was covered with this rash

It’s not painful. It’s just itching and you have to um control yourself a lot not to scratch. [laughter] and it’s not really looking nice.

And what normally happens is that you get this reaction several times and then there’s an immunization, so afterwards you don’t get it anymore.

Narrator:
Or so she thought. Breathing lacquer fumes during this interview triggered another reaction two days later.

The first emperor’s workers were forced to expose themselves to poisonous lacquer on a daily basis.

And 21st-century researchers must now work with the toxic sap so they can save the colors on the terracotta warriors.

Catharina Blaensdorf
The problem is that the lacquer layer was embedded in the wet soil for 2200 years,

Narrator:
As soon as excavation exposes the ancient lacquer to air, its moisture begins to evaporate …

As the lacquer dries out, it begins to shrink…

Until it curls up and separates from the clay … taking paint with it.

Catharina Blaensdorf
And finally the lacquer layers just flake off in tiny flakes and then there’s no chance to bring them back to the terra cotta.

Narrator:
The only solution is to keep the lacquer moist so that it will stay attached to the terra cotta. Its water must be replaced by something that won’t evaporate.

One group of German scientists has tried coating warrior fragments with a plastic used to seal underground water pipes.

Then bombarding the plastic with electron beams from a particle accelerator … Which evaporate water and bond the plastic to the lacquer.

But that can’t be done by archaeologists in the field … Who may have only minutes to save a painted warrior.

Catharina Blaensdorf
We hope that we’ll find a method that is simple and cheap, easy to apply during the excavation and that helps preserve the lacquer layers in the first moment.

Narrator:
While saving the warriors’ color seems difficult, reconstructing what they originally looked like may be an even greater challenge.

The only clues are faded fragments of terra cotta … Bits of paint found in soil … And decades-old excavation reports.

But now, visitors to a Munich museum can see what the terra cotta warriors may have looked like.

After years of painstaking research, Catharina Blaensdorf and her colleagues have painted two warrior replicas as they believe they looked when they were finished more than 2000 years ago.

Catharina Blaensdorf
Many people were astonished or surprised because they didn’t expect them to be so colorful, and some people were also really shocked, because somehow they just liked the terra cotta version … And they found it’s kind of disturbing and braking it up.

And they really asked me, they asked me, “are you really sure that it has to be like this?”… It’s based on our findings so we’re pretty sure that this is true, and they just have to get used to it … And we tell them that of course we are not going to repaint the originals (laughs).

Narrator:
But there are even more complex mysteries surrounding the warriors.

When they analyzed surviving color fragments, conservation experts made an unexpected discovery.

One of those ancient colors differed from the others.

Known as Chinese purple, it has unique and surprising properties.

Halfway around the world, researchers at Stanford University are using the world’s most powerful x-ray machine to study those properties.

A team of scientists has focused a light one billion times brighter than the sun on a few flakes of Chinese purple…trying to find out exactly what they’re made of …

Zhi Liu, Apurva Mehta, and Nobumichi Tamura are all physicists … But they’ve set out to solve an archaeological mystery.

Zhi Liu
We’re looking at one clump of the Chinese purple pigment and the size is around 50 micron to 50 micron. So it’s about your, the cross section of your hair.

From a very tiny sample you can tell very big story.

Narrator:
Chinese purple is one of only two entirely man-made colors produced anywhere in the world before the birth of Jesus.

The other was Egyptian blue … Created by chemists working for the pharoahs thousands of miles from China … And centuries before the silk road opened up trade between China and the west.

Zhi Liu
People speculate there is a technology transfer from Egypt to china because of the similarity of those two materials … Which is really significant in terms of technological development and the communication between two civilizations.

Narrator:
Stanford’s powerful x-ray machine confirms that Chinese purple and Egyptian blue shared all the same ingredients… With two exceptions.

Egyptian blue contains calcium … While Chinese purple has barium in it.

And the Chinese also added something the Egyptians never used … Lead oxide.

Nobumichi Tamura
It … Indicates that the Chinese really actually invented the Chinese purple completely independently from the Egyptians there was no technology transfers at all.

Apurva Mehta
And that told us that the technology they used for forming this material was very unique.

Narrator:
If it wasn’t brought from Egypt, that means the Chinese created the pigment using their own methods.

The team believes those methods were not developed for art or science… but for religion.

This burial suit was made for a Chinese leader who went to his grave not long after the terra cotta warriors went to theirs.

A suit made of thousands of pieces of jade.

2,000 years ago, the Chinese elite believed jade would magically make them immortal …

They paid alchemists to find a formula for making jade.

The alchemists created a jade lookalike called “Chinese glass,” made with barium and lead: The two key ingredients of Chinese purple.

As they searched for the secrets of immortality, did they also create Chinese purple?

Chinese glass and Chinese purple have nearly identical chemical compositions … And their apparent connection doesn’t end there.

Around 250 AD … Some five hundred years after the terra cotta warriors were made … China’s religious beliefs began to change. People no longer buried themselves in jade to make their bodies immortal. Chinese glass disappeared.

And Chinese purple vanished at exactly the same time … It was never made again.

It would seem Chinese purple has a sacred past. Fitting for warriors meant to accompany the emperor into the afterlife.

And across the United States, another powerful scientific tool has revealed that Chinese purple’s potential might lead to fantastic technological breakthroughs.

In Tallahassee, Florida, scientists have discovered that the terra cotta warriors’ purple paint is much more than just a beautiful color.

They made their discovery here… at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory …

Home of the 45t hybrid… the world’s most powerful magnet …

It packs 45 teslas of magnetic force.

Facility director Eric Palm has a simple way of showing what 45 teslas can do.

Eric Palm
If I take this steel washer closer to the magnet you can see that it will be pulled, attracted to the magnet

I believe that the stored energy is about 20 sticks of dynamite
It’s dangerous enough that we don’t typically allow people that have not been trained to be around the magnet. We don’t allow people to bring tours where they can see the magnet, just in case something bad happens.

Narrator:
Scientists from around the world, like Suchitra Sebastian of Cambridge University, use the magnet in their research.

Load just about any material on earth into this magnet’s core …

And then pump in liquid helium to cool it down to hundreds of degrees below zero …

The 45t hybrid’s power will force the material to reveal its hidden physical properties.

In 2006, Suchitra Sebastian and Neil Harrison put a few flakes of Chinese purple into the magnet’s core, and saw something astonishing.

Inside the magnet, the molecules of Chinese purple became a single magnetic wave, a unique state in the world of quantum physics.

The team dropped the temperature even further …

And the magnetic wave lost its third dimension… separating into individual two-dimensional planes.

Neil Harrison
Well when I first saw this I was just in disbelief.

It was a big surprise, I mean it was a totally new type of discovery.

Narrator:
A discovery that might change the world.

Because studying shifts from three dimensions down to two could help make better superconductors …

And better superconductors could mean more efficient magnetic trains … Lower electricity bills … And faster computers.

Suchitra Sebastian
It’s incredible to think that this material that’s been around for more than 2,000 years, that was initially discovered and in fact created by Chinese chemists and has been on this terracotta army for 2,0000 years. It’s incredible to think that we’ve re-visited this material, something that’s a fundamental advance in our understanding, in our 21th century knowledge of physics. And thats just mind blowing.

Narrator:
And there may still be other mysteries concealed within this ancient army.

More than 2,000 years ago, the terra cotta warriors were an emperor’s vision and a brilliant technological achievement …

Today, scientists are revealing just how brilliant that achievement was.

And searching for other mysteries hidden within these ancient masterpieces.

END

Narrator:
For decades, explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett captivated the world. His exploits in the Amazon featuring lost cities and fantastic creatures inspired books and Hollywood movies.

William Lowther: He was the original, he was a swashbuckler. This really was an Indiana Jones figure

Niall McCann
He was the hardest explorer of his day. He was able to thrive in these incredibly tough environments simply by determination.

Narrator:
In 1925, at the age of 58 Fawcett headed into the jungle with his son and a friend to find a mysterious lost city called Z. It was one of the biggest news stories of the day, and millions followed reports of their exploits.

Then all three vanished without a trace.

Despite countless rescue missions, Fawcett was never found. Only mystery remains. Was he killed by Indians as most believe? And is there a factual basis for his Lost City?

Now modern day explorer Niall McCann travels to South America armed with new clues: Fawcett’s signet ring, secret map coordinates, and an understanding of the mystical purpose behind Fawcett’s final journey.

Title – Lost in the Amazon

Since Europeans first arrived in the New World, they heard stories of a legendary jungle city: El Dorado, whose king was said to dust himself with gold. In 1542, a Spanish expedition was the first of many to go deep into the Amazon in pursuit of the golden city and its riches. A monk named Gaspar de Carvajal accompanied the explorers and kept a journal.

Charles Mann
Author 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus
Carvajal went down the main channel of the Amazon and reported that there were millions of people living there, that there were these successful advanced societies that were perfectly capable of defending themselves, that the Spaniards were scared of…

Narrator:
By the 20th century, El Dorado had been declared a myth: the Amazon was clearly populated by scattered groups of tribal peoples. Carvajals’ account of large populations was dismissed by archaeologists who believed this jungle could not sustain large cities.

Charles Mann
As archaeologists have begun to go into this area, they’re digging up more and more evidence that these societies had existed in the way that Carvajal had reported. What happened is that disease came through and wiped them out.

Narrator:
The thirst for global exploration defined the British Victorian age. Coming at the very end of that era, Percy Fawcett was among the last of the great English explorers that included Burton, Livingstone and Shackleton. Each pushing back the veil of the unknown…

Unlike the seekers of El Dorado, Percy Fawcett was no treasure hunter. A war hero, brilliant surveyor and amateur archaeologist, he became fascinated with the seemingly impossible idea that large civilizations must have once existed in the Amazon.

He first stepped foot in South America in 1906. At the age of 39, Fawcett was hand picked by England’s Royal Geographical Society, to solve a political dispute by surveying and establishing the newly formed borders of Bolivia and Brazil.

As a skilled surveyor, he crossed vast distances – facing every imaginable danger: from hostile tribes to deadly diseases.

William Lowther
And he would drive the people that worked for him so that he was able to complete the surveys that would take three or four weeks for another team.
He would do them in three or four days.

Narrator: Crucial to his survival, was Percy’s ability to learn native languages and keep a cool head when encountering even the fiercest Indians.

William Lowther
They were going in canoes up a narrow river when they were suddenly attacked, and arrows began to fly all over the place. These arrows by the way would come at you with enormous force. One of them would pass right through a canoe. Right through the wooden sides of the canoe.

Narrator: Instead of firing a gun, Fawcett began playing music on a small accordion. This ended the attack and the natives were soon his friends, providing him safe passage through their jungle.

William Lowther
Fawcett was very successful in his boundary work and certainly pleased the Bolivians enormously. But those borders have stuck and people who have redone them have said that his work was quite accurate

Narrator: Then in 1911 an important archaeological event rocked the world and spurred Fawcett’s obsession with the search for a lost city in the jungle.

Charles Mann
In 1911 Hiram Bingham led by native people finds Machu Picchu and a whole bunch of other Inca sites and takes these pictures that appear subsequently in National Geographic and they just electrify people all over the world. It’s the first time that these images of these lost cities have been seen in this way and it inspires people to believe that there are others and to take credence in the idea that there are these lost cities and one of these of course was Percy Fawcett.

Narrator:
Fawcett was certain the Incas had warned numerous tribes to flee the Spanish invaders and hide in the jungle. His proof? Discovery of ancient artifacts buried far inland, and vivid accounts of white Indians and a stone city.

After 1913 Fawcett formulated theories of such a city he called simply Z, pronounced Zed in the British fashion. He refers to it in his journals:

Fawcett voice
“The central place I call ‘Zed’ our main objective, is in a valley about 10 miles wide and the lost city is on an eminence in the middle of it, approached by a barreled roadway of stone”.

Narrator:
But there would be something special about this city he called Zed – something spiritual…and it would be this strange brew of exploration and belief that brought Percy, son Jack and his friend Raleigh Rimmell to Brazil’s central regions in 1925. Since Fawcett’s disappearance on that expedition, much of the true purpose behind his quest for Z has remained hidden, waiting to be uncovered.

Over the decades hundreds of would be rescuers have sought the truth in this impenetrable jungle. None succeeded…many paid with their lives.

Niall McCann: (on camera)
I can certainly understand Col. Fawcett’s motivation for being out here and what it was like to try and travel through these incredibly tough environments.

Narrator: Explorer Niall McCann has crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat, beaten paths through the Amazon and crossed the Earth’s polar regions: now he has the legend of Colonel Fawcett in his sites.

Niall McCann
I’ve been able to really appreciate what he was going through, because I’ve not only worked in these environments but I’ve been to the exact places that he’s been to and I’ve seen the exact animals that he was describing…

Narrator:
Niall has come to the Royal Geographical Society in London, where Fawcett was trained, to seek out any clues to his disappearance.

Niall McCann:
We’ve been invited down here to the map room of the Royal Geographical Society here in London and I’ve asked the archivist here to lay out an arrangement of the maps as drawn by Col. Fawcett and the first thing that strikes you here is just the incredible level of detail that he has put into these. We’ve got remarkable detail in the way the streams have been marked, and the contour lines and in everything. A far cry from when I walk around in the forest with a GPS. This man has done it all on foot with his own sextant.

Narrator:
Percy’s love of the jungle began at an early age. At 19, he was sent by his parents to Sri Lanka, then named Ceylon, to join the British army.

William Lowther
His mother decided that that would be the best course for him and she chose the Royal Artillery for him because she thought the uniform was so sweet. He had been influenced by his mother’s strong attraction to spiritualism and to occult movements which had become very popular in Britain at the time.

Narrator:
Here, Percy’s brother introduced him to the Theosophy movement- created by Madame Blavatsky, a famous 19th century psychic and spiritualist. Her global religious movement influenced leading figures of the day including Gandhi, Thomas Edison and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Blavatsky taught that enlightened Master Priests delivered psychic messages to help mankind; they lived in various hidden cities around the world including Tibet and South America.

Fawcett fell under the movement’s spell, and would never forget the Masters in the hidden cities.

Then in Ceylon he met Nina, the daughter of a magistrate, who in 1901 would become his wife.

William Lowther
And he found that she was as interested in psychic and spiritual things as he was. And they became very good friends and they would go out together searching in the jungle for areas where they thought old civilizations may have buried treasures.

Narrator:
Inspired by what he discovered in Ceylon, Fawcett would pursue a career as an RGS explorer; in the Amazon he began to connect ancient civilizations with Madame Blavatsky’s secret cities.

His first expedition to look for Z in 1921 was a disaster. Crossing the vast Mato Grosso towards the deep jungle, men got sick, oxen drowned and a horse had to be shot.

His final search for Z in 1925, started off well, then deteriorated… culminating in Fawcett’s disappearance. Most believe he was killed deep in the Amazon…far up the Kululene River, by hostile Indians such as the Kalapalo.

But the evidence for this theory is sketchy.

Back at the Royal Geographical Society, Niall discovers letters and artifacts from Nina providing clues to Fawcett’s disappearance. She knew the true coordinates of his last camp based on a code Percy had given her so his actual position was secret from potential rivals.

Also here at the RGS, a wax impression of Fawcett’s signet ring, donated by Nina after his disappearance as a way to identify his body if it ever turned up.

Sixty years after Fawcett went missing the ring was found, and sent to his granddaughter Rolette now living in Cardiff, Wales.

Niall McCann
Do you recognize this writing at all?

Rolette:
Yes of course I do, it’s my grandmother Nina’s.

Niall McCann
Okay, and is this the family motto?

Rolette
It is indeed. Yes.

Niall McCann
Can you translate that, my Latin’s not as good as it used to be.

Rolette
As far as I know, it means “they fear no obstacles”

Niall McCann
They fear no obstacles, fantastic. Now you actually have a copy, well the ring itself here.

Rolette:
I do indeed, yes.

Niall McCann
Amazing, can we compare the impression

Rolette:
I think that is pretty much that isn’t it?

Niall McCann
That seems pretty exact to me. That’s it.

Rolette
That’s it yup.

Niall McCann
For your family, what is the significance of the ring actually being found?

Rolette
I think it was some quite significant. I was in Switzerland once and I went to see my sister and she had a very good friend who was a very good medium, so I handed it over to her and she took it and she just dropped it straight away and she said there’s a lot of blood involved here. I don’t want to touch it anymore. So whatever has happened it’s not been good.

Rolette
…either he was killed or his finger was simply chopped off because he didn’t want to give it up, it’s quite a possibility

Rolette
Do you want to have a look at some photographs?

Narrator:
The story of the ring may provide a clue to Percy’s Fate.

So might another possession, part of a Fawcett exhibit in Torquay, England.

One of the artifacts being catalogued is a key part of a mapping instrument.

Niall McCann
Right, so this compass was actually the compass used by Col. Fawcett in his Theodilite when he was out on exploration. Now, it was found eight years after he went missing and there’s been lots of speculation as to where it actually camerom.

Several of Percy’s expedition diaries were recently given to the Torquay museum. In the 1950’s, surviving son Brian wrote side notes about Percy’s 1921 trip to find the lost city.

Niall McCann
What’s most interesting for me is these coordinates here for Dead Horse camp. Now Dead Horse camp was where he was supposed to have last been seen in the Bakairi area. He’s given one set of coordinates here, which he writes “coordinates given the RGS” and beneath, in a different handwriting, presumed to be Brian Fawcett’s handwriting, he’s got another set of coordinates. Now, I’m going to be very interested to see, when I investigate both theses areas which was the last place Fawcett was supposed to have been.

Narrator:
The search takes Niall to Rio De Janeiro where Fawcett spent time preparing his two expeditions to find Z.

There, Brazil’s National Library holds a 260-year-old manuscript which includes a treasure map describing a fantastic silver-laden lost city.

A friend sent Fawcett a copy translated by Isabel Burton, wife of famed explorer Sir Richard Burton.

Written by 18th century fortune hunters who claim they discovered a stone jungle city, the document was an important clue for Fawcett … and for Niall.

Niall McCann
Hi Anna

Anna
Here is the document you wanted.

Niall McCann
Fantastic, thank you very much. Okay, there it is document #512.

Anna
Yeah.

Niall McCann
This is, I presume, presented to the King in 1754. It has suffered so much damage over the years hasn’t it?

Anna
Yeah, they tried to restore it but some text was lost.

William Lowther
It tells of a stone city with multi storied buildings with wonderful architecture, soaring arches, very cleverly designed, wide streets leading down to a lake on which the adventures saw two white Indians in a canoe, confirming everything Fawcett believed to be right. On the sides of the buildings there was carved letters that seemed to resemble Greek or at least an early European alphabet.

Narrator:
For Fawcett, it all came together — the stone city, tales of white Indians, ancient relics. Z must exist. And the legend also seemed to match Madame Blavatsky’s hidden cities and psychic priests.

Pale skinned Indians may have existed…but Fawcett thought these could be Blavatsky’s Master Priests delivering important spiritual teachings to the world.

Niall McCann
So these are the signs that they found written on the sides of the city on the walls of the city and from a caves that they found near a waterfall three days downstream from the city itself.

Anna
Yes, I believe so.

Charles Mann
Well Fawcett imagined, a you know Atlantis kind of … a Greek City in the middle of the forest. That’s very difficult in most of the Amazon because there really isn’t the stone to do that. You can have really impressive cities but they are not going to be that kind of city.

Narrator:
Then what about the city in the manuscript?

William Lowther
Many of the experts now think that it was written by adventurers who were trying to raise money, that there was no city, that they saw no city.

Narrator:
Niall’s come to the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to pursue the clues leading to Fawcett’s disappearance. Fernando Garcia is a jungle survival expert who will help lead the way.

Fernando:
Hey Niall.

Niall McCann
Fernando, how are you doin

Fernando
Nice to meet you man.

Narrator:
Niall’s destination is a Bakairi Indian village: the last people known to have seen Fawcett alive. He finds this land transformed by deforestation and farming.

Fernando
Okay man, we’re almost hitting the Bakairi village,

Niall McCann
As far as I know, no one has actually been here to speak to them. So no one knows what he was like when he came here, whether they know where he went, where he stayed, where he went afterwards. No one knows that.

Narrator:
Niall seeks permission from the Tribal leaders to speak about Fawcett.

Niall McCann
If we could please ask Don Antonio what he remembers about the stories of Col. Fawcett himself. Did his parents speak to him, did his relatives speak to him about Fawcett. What kind of stories were they telling.

Narrator:
Native leaders speaks in language

Fernando
Ok, The chief at that time was his uncle, okay. Then they arrive at his uncles house and they gave him some food at the time they was staying you know for the two days they were staying, they feed him. But at the time they leave, he was carrying his own supplies.

Narrator:
In 1925 at age 58, Fawcett had just one more chance of finding the Lost City of Z. Once again, he came a thousand miles by train and riverboat from Rio, then crossed the unforgiving Mato Grosso state: 3 times the size of Texas.

To ensure success he brought with him his strapping 22-year old son Jack and Raleigh Rimmell, Jack’s lifelong friend who, it turned out, was ill-prepared to handle the physical challenges of the trip.

Those challenges were compounded by the lack of funding. Fawcett managed to scrape together some backing from the Royal Geographical Society, the Rockefellers, and a large newspaper consortium but it was much less than needed for an expedition of this sort.

Percy was now an official correspondent and the exploits of the daring party would be followed by millions. Indian runners were employed to take dispatches out of the wilderness, back to civilization along with photographs which Percy took great pride in.

William Lowther
Fawcett was very good at writing the dispatches, he made them quiet riveting and even reading them today you can see how they made the front pages. This really was an Indiana Jones figure

Narrator:
Niall’s search for Fawcett clues continues. Several miles from the Bakairi village, Chief Don Antonio has located a river crossing Fawcett passed through on his last expedition.

Further discussions with the Bakairis confirm what Fawcett wrote in his logs. He crossed the creek, then stayed for 2 days with a local cattle baron at his ranch before arriving in the Indian village.

Remnants of the ranch and Col. Fawcett’s visit remain.

Don Antonio interview (Fernando Translates)

Fernando
He say that you know once that he get inside the Bakairi village you know that he have a very warm welcome and he stay there and you know he say I don’t need anything, I just need a place to stay, I want my animals to have a rest okay, I take care of my people, you know I have everything, I have food, I have water, I only need a place to rest. Next morning, they ask him how he sleep, how he rest. He say perfectly, I slept better here right next to the river.

Narrator:
A report from one of the rescue missions said that Fawcett had gone up the Kululene river and was killed after insulting a fierce indian chief, or kasik. But the visit here has given Niall some new insight.

Niall McCann
Don Antonio, whose uncle was the kasik at the time when Fawcett passed through here, specifically remembers that he was a warm and a welcoming man and very smiley, even though there were considerable language barriers. Now that doesn’t tally at all with two of the rumors surrounding Fawcett’s disappearance, one of which stated that he had touched the daughter of a chief inappropriately and had subsequently been killed and the other one which states that he had actually beaten the son of one of the local chiefs. Now Fawcett himself in all his diaries talked about trying to maintain positive relations with the indigenous people of the area and the way the Bakairi remember him tallies exactly with what Fawcett has written and it makes me want to rule out those two possibilities as to why he disappeared.

Narrator:
Making Fawcett feel welcome, the Bakari’s would have shared their sacred KAPA dance. This was a glimpse into the mysteries which lay ahead … a tangled dark jungle filled with all manner of creatures and forest beings.

A clue to the location of Fawcett’s last camp is a waterfall described in the 1753 manuscript and in Fawcett’s journals.

Fawcett’s Voice
about 3 wks journey from here, we expect to strike the waterfall … heard about it from the Bacairy Indian Roberto … it can be heard five leagues away and there is to be seen an upright rock with painted figures, protected from the waters.”

Niall McCann
We’ve just learned this morning about these waterfalls which are of cultural significance to the Bakairi and Fawcett refers to the waterfalls as a signpost to the lost city of Zed. We’re here in the Bakairi village on Santana, here are the waterfalls and right in the middle of them on a straight line are the new coordinates to Dead Horse Camp.

Narrator:
These are the same coded coordinates written by son Brian into Percy’s diary and the ones Nina referred to. Fawcett used coded map coordinates to throw people off his trail. Only his family knew his exact route.

Niall McCann
Up until now, everyone has been looking for Fawcett’s last location have been looking 200 miles further to the North. Now, we have to go there, we don’t know what it’s going to be like. It might be completely and utterly impenetrable, but we’ve got to go and we’ve got to try and find it and who knows, we might just stumble across Fawcett’s genuine last location

Narrator:
Older map coordinates are not as accurate as today, so finding the waterfall first, will help them pinpoint Fawcett’s direction and the location of Dead Horse Camp.

5 hours into their trip, 5 hours to go, and an unfinished bridge.

They have few options…

Niall McCann
…and they’ve agreed that they are going to build this bridge for us and we’re going to give it a go, we are going to take the trucks and we are going to try and drive over this half built rickety bridge and it’s going to save us half a day.

A slight slip of the wheel could send the vehicle tumbling off the bridge.

Very nicely done Fernando, nicely done driving over that! Hahaha.

Narrator:
Soy bean farming has stripped the thick bush land that Fawcett walked through.

But in Fawcett’s time he had different concerns.

Heat, lack of water, snakes and disease-carrying insects were a constant problem. Raleigh now suffered from a badly infected bite on his leg.

William Lowther
He refused to go back, both Jack and the colonel tried to persuade him to return but he wouldn’t. They were preceding with a lame person someone who was certain to hold them up. While they still had mules, while they still had some kind of transportation, that was sort of okay, but once they had to go by foot, it couldn’t have worked, he just couldn’t have done it.

Narrator:
Traveling further inland, Niall and Fernando locate a Bakairi man who shows them the way to the falls, considered sacred to his people.

This was a major find for Fawcett: the 1753 manuscript said the falls were close to the Lost City and home to strange inscriptions and silver mines sealed with large rock slabs.

They are among the few outsiders to visit this remote location.

It’s not clear Percy made it here … but it is possible fortune hunters who wrote the ancient manuscript did.

Hiding beneath the water, the sparkling treasures described by the fortune seekers.

They’re guarded by South American dragons: 6 ft electric eels that can kill a man.

Niall McCann
What we’ve got here are rocks which look exactly like blocks of silver. Now what they’ll be is Mica glistening like silver and over there next to all the caves, are large slab like rocks. Now, it’s just a different strata … makes it look like it’s a man made slab. You can understand how a team of Portuguese Conquistadors in the 1750’s after years of hiking through the bush, starved to the point of delirium might well have believed that these were genuinely blocks of silver and those were man made slabs, covering the mines which contained in them enormous riches that they wanted to bring back to the King of Portugal.

Narrator:
More pieces of the puzzle come together above the falls; the Bakari man brings Niall to an unexplored cave covered in ancient writing.

The fortune hunters thought the text they saw might be Greek, and Fawcett himself reproduced them in his logs, speculating they could come from the fabled city of Atlantis. Niall thinks these designs look close to some of the text in the logs.

Niall McCann
This looks very very Atlantean. It’ll be great to actually see when we compare it on the manuscript, how closely they resemble the writings in the manuscript of 1753.

Narrator:
With the falls as a likely Fawcett destination, they now back track, using GPS to line up Fawcett’s last location at Dead Horse. Maps tell them, it must lie on a river between the Bakairi Village and the Falls. They solicit the help of locals to find their way.

In 1925, the Fawcett party walked and rode overland for 4 weeks to get to Dead Horse Camp: so named because Percy shot his sick horse there in 1921. Raleigh’s health had gotten worse, and the journey had only just begun. Ahead of them lay thick jungle and hostile tribes.

Why then had Percy risked his son Jack’s life on this journey?

The underlying purpose, not divulged to anyone but his family, dates back to the time of Jack’s birth in Ceylon.

William Lowther
He says he was visited by a delegation of holy men from India and they told him that he was to become the father of a son, and that this son would be the reincarnation of a Buddhist holy man, that the son would have very special powers and would be a very special person, and they predicted that he would have certain physical traits. There was to be a mole on the inside of one of his feet and his toes were to be of an irregular shape. When the boy was born, Percy said all of these things matched and he came to believe it. Jack was very special to them. They felt that he had very high spiritual and psychic powers and that he had some sort of destiny that would be of major importance to mankind as a whole. That he would become a leader, but not just a leader, not just a spiritual leader but a leader who would have the powers of the masters that Blavatsky had talked about.

Narrator:
So Jack came to Brazil to fulfill the prophesy of the Buddhist holy men and the beliefs of Madame Blavatsky. It was here in the city of Z that Jack’s future would be clearly defined.

William Lowther:
It was particularly important that Jack be on the last expedition. Fawcett believed that when they reached the hidden city, the white tribe that lived there, the masters, these extremely wise super human people would recognize Jack as one of their own and would welcome them into the community and share their secrets.

Narrator:
They arrived at Dead Horse Camp, 3 months after leaving Rio De Janeiro. Despite the difficulties, Fawcett continued writing dispatches for the newspapers. He knew he’d have to keep Raleigh’s spirits up, even if his chances looked slim. It was imperative that he and Jack make it to Z. And this would be the last chance to get a message to the outside world and to his wife Nina.

William Lowther
Inevitably, they run out of runners. There were only so many people who could go back with the stories and after they’d left Bakairi Post and headed toward Dead Horse Camp, the last runner went with the last story. In the final dispatch when the last of the runners returned Fawcett sent a message to his wife Nina.
He said, that she have no fear of failure. The message reflected his own confidence and optimism that he was going to the lost cities at last.

Narrator:
Somewhere, in a narrow strip of jungle still surviving among these soy bean fields is the site of Fawcett’s last camp.
01:35:24
01:36:18

Niall
Right last junction, 8 kilometers and then left.

Then … a wash out. There’s only a narrow, crumbling strip of mud road left … no room for their truck. They have work to do.

The brittle mud barely holds the truck’s weight…

we’ve got six inches of space, there’s absolutely no room for error whatsoever, no margin for error, but we’re over, we’re on our way back towards Dead Horse Camp, let’s roll.

This is it, look at this, look how shallow this is.

Fernando
Yeah, this is the perfect spot to crossing.

Niall McCann
There’s the crossing. There it is. This is an old trail.

Narrator:
All the pieces seem to add up — it’s Dead Horse Camp: the right coordinates, a shallow river crossing and back in the woods, a camp site used by travelers to this day.

The river and jungle make short work of what does not belong. No sign of Fawcett artifacts or remains.

Niall McCann
From as far as I can tell, this is where they would have camped, this is Dead Horse Camp. We’ve had a good look around the forest for several hundred meters in either direction and this is the best place to camp. This tree here has obviously has had people sitting on it for decades and decades and decades. There’s lots of excellent trees here for slinging hammocks, there’s actually a fire place over here which must have been used, I don’t know within the last year or so, this is pretty much it.

Narrator:
After the dispatch from Dead Horse, there was only silence. And most, including Nina and the RGS believed that the Percy was surviving as he always had…

Fawcett was considered indestructible; but after a year since his last message, even the Royal Geographical Society grew skeptical. Discussions of a rescue mission began and public interest swelled anew.

William Lowther
The public imagination had been very firmly hooked by the Fawcett story. People not just in Britain but throughout the United States and Europe and Australia … all felt that Fawcett could have been captured by Indian tribes and could be quite well and thriving and living with these tribes perhaps in one of the lost cities.

Narrator:
As early as 1927 reports came in from Brazil: an engineer named Courteville said he met Fawcett and the three were thriving in a glorious Eden. It was not to be.

Two years after any word had come from Fawcett, Nina was sure Percy was still alive and she began to encourage the RGS to send out an official rescue mission

Ali Ford
I think Nina, and she is always putting on a brave face towards everybody but I get a great sense that on the inside, she’s not coping with it too well.

Narrator:
At the Torquay museum where Niall saw Fawcett’s diary and compass, a researcher is transcribing his journals and her letters.

Ali Ford
Especially when Fawcett’s gone missing, I find that she’s using very spiritual things to try and get her through. She is constantly focusing on there must be a reason for this, there must be a predetermined thing I’m supposed to go through as a person. And she is always talking about one day we’ll get the call, and we’ll go over to him and be with him in the lost city.

Narrator:
Finally, in 1928, the Society mounted a rescue expedition and they backed a colorful adventurer named Col George Dyott… who had recently retraced former US President Teddy Roosevelt’s 1913 Amazon expedition.

William Lowther
Dyott was equipped with sophisticated two way radios and he was picked up, his messages were picked up by two way radio hams throughout the United States who were passing them on to radio stations and so once again the Fawcett story made the headlines and the front pages. The story had enormous legs, it just kept on going.

Narrator:
Dyott received credible evidence that Fawcett was killed by Bandits in the Mato Grosso. Ignoring this, he pursued a native claiming to have guided Fawcett much deeper into the Xingu Amazon region. Dyott and his men followed him in…and found themselves in hostile territory: each tribe pointing to the other as Fawcett’s killers

Dyott was held captive by Indians, barely escaping with his life. He did not find Fawcett but turned his adventure into a book and Hollywood movie.

Then in 1937, a missionary named Martha Moennich announced she’d found a white boy, she felt certain was the son of Jack Fawcett. It turned out he was an albino native. The rescue missions continued.

LOWTHER
Literally thousands of people applied to go on these expeditions. People as ill qualified as Jack and Raleigh for the most part and dozens of expeditions, dozens set out into the Mato Grosso looking for him and continue to look for him to this day.

Narrator:
But new evidence points to Fawcett’s signet ring, found in a Mato Grosso shop in 1979 and returned to his granddaughter.

Brian Ridout
I became involved in it in the 1970’s when I met …

Narrator:
Brian Ridout, a wildlife biologist, unraveled a tangled web of shady characters leading to the ring in the Mato Grosso in the mid 1970’s.

Shopkeeper Vicente Grisolia and his wife claimed he got the ring on Percy’s disastrous earlier hunt for Z: either in exchange for mules or as payment for guiding the Englishman towards the lost city.

Ridout thinks Grisola’s ring story is suspicious.

Nina told the RGS Percy had the ring on the final expedition and would not have given it up easily.

Brian Ridout
I don’t think that he needed a guide. He was a founder, Gold Medalist from the Royal Geographical Society, he’d gone through their surveying course … and no reason to suppose that he didn’t know where he was at every day of the week. I’m sure he knew precisely where he was at all times. So, I don’t think he got lost in the jungle. He disappeared because somebody killed him.

William Lowther
Basically, there are only three things that could have happened to them. They were either killed by Indians, they died as a result of some accident, perhaps disease, perhaps drowned in a river … or thirdly, there had been a revolution not long before and renegade soldiers had been hiding out in the area and there had been a number of occasions within months of this expedition in which travelers had been stopped and robbed and in some cases murdered by these rebel soldiers. That could have happened to them also.

Narrator:
All the pieces now come together to tell a new version of Fawcett’s fate. Percy’s theodolite compass was found within days of Dead Horse Camp: it’s possible it was stolen then abandoned. And it’s unlikely a remote tribe like the Kalapalos would have traded the ring for money. And that means Fawcett likely did not get as far into the Amazon as Col Dyott claimed he did.

Brian Ridout
When the Fawcett party actually left Cuiaba the whole town came out to see them off and Fawcett being there was quite an event. So I know from people I’ve met who had been there at that time that there was a sort of massive party when
They left, so everybody knew about the equipment that the Fawcett party had. It was a time when a few new rifles and a bit of money would certainly have come in handy for the sort of neer-do-well population of the area and I think that the Fawcett party probably didn’t get any further than Dead Horse Camp … and I think that’s what happened to them. I don’t think there is any evidence whatsoever that they every went around the Kululene River and met the Kalapolos Indians and that everybody that’s gone looking for Fawcett has headed off in the wrong direction.

Narrator:
In this version, the end comes quickly, not far from Dead Horse Camp, when a renegade catches the old explorer and soldier off guard.

Fawcett is gone, but what of his lost city? Until recently the vast Amazon has hidden its secrets.

Some evidence of advanced communal villages has emerged in the Xingu where Percy was heading in his search for Z… but Niall has heard of even more dramatic discoveries in the western Amazon and he travels more than a thousand miles to other side of Brazil to see for himself.

Hidden in the jungle for two thousand years and only emerging as trees are felled to create farmland, a vast network of mysterious religious sites- Archaeologists believe they are part of an ancient city state stretching some 160 sq. miles.

These prove that ancient lost cities did exist in the Amazon- though they don’t match the expectations of explorers like Fawcett.

Dr. Denise Schann
When we talk about civilization in general people think about buildings and things made out of rock and things like that. In this place and in other places in the Amazon there is no rocks so people build things moving earth.

Narrator:
This vast network of ancient religious sites points to the scale of city that Fawcett was seeking. What’s more Fawcett was here in 1907 and actually may have camped inside one of these grass circles.

Denise Schaan helped discover the sites; now she’s the archaeologist in charge of the excavation.

Dr. Denise Schaan:
In the beginning it’s funny because people who came here first, he couldn’t understand what these things were. And when I saw the pictures for the first the aerial photographs, I got amazed with this. We had this general idea that things like that don’t exist in the Amazon

Niall McCann:
Are they all built to a standard design?

Narrator:
No one fully understands the exact purpose of these deep trenches but they do support at least one of Fawcett’s main precepts: large sophisticated populations once lived in the Amazon rainforest.

Dr. Schaan:
…When the Spanish got there there was this land with civilized people…

Narrator:
And the more they dig and locate hundreds of sites on Google Earth, the more traditional beliefs about Amazonian settlement are made obsolete.

Niall McCann
Is that the same kind of age?

Dr. Schaan
One thing that Amazonian Archeologists have believed for 30, 40 years, that nobody was living in the hinterlands … so it’s very strange to find these sites here, because you need lots of people to build them. So, it’s what we call monumental construction.

Charles Mann
Well Fawcett was right, if there is going to be a lost city there has to be higher populations back then then there are now. The estimates that I’ve seen from Clark Erickson at the University of Pennsylvania is about a million people, it’s a swath that goes from eastern Bolivia all the way into Western Brazil, 700 hundred miles long, 1,000 miles long and the north and south end of it which is the two areas that research has been done are these large earth works — that are called geoglyphs sometimes — and they were clearly built by societies that weren’t a couple of guys in loin clothes.

Narrator:
A new picture of the western Amazon is now emerging: here, discoveries of ceramics and nearby water sources, indicate human habitation. Geoglyphs may have been religious sites, surrounded by raised fields and communities of 60,000 people.

So, hundred miles west of Fawcett’s last search for Z, civilizations are being found in a state mapped by Percy in 1907. While he did not comprehend what lay under his feet, today, Fawcett’s journals are being used to help scientists unravel the mystery of these lost cities.

Dr. Schaan:
Actually the Fawcett you know report was one of the things we read because he was in this region in the beginning of the 20th Century. And if he talks about clearings, circular villages with Indians, some of them were already abandoned. The Indians had already left.

Niall McCann:
Fawcett in one of his itineraries that he wrote to the RGS — he says there is only one way. Now Fawcett was a Geographer so he knows that any geographic point has three hundred and sixty degrees of angles, so in my opinion, Fawcett wasn’t just talking about the geographical direction he had to go but about a spiritual direction as well so he had to follow these exact points, Dead Horse Camp, then onto Kamukwakwa Falls where he would have seen what looks like the silver bars were he would have seen what looked like the Atlantean symbols and then carry on into the Xingu area towards the city, but from there on, it’s not just about being a great geographer, it’s about believing that you are actually going to your final destination, and that’s what Fawcett believed. He believed that he was the one man who had both the physical capabilities and the spiritual capabilities to make it to the lost city of Zed.

William Lowther:
And I think he should be remembered … despite what anyone might think about the psychic and the spiritual side of it, he should be remembered as a very brave explorer.

END

Narrator: This is Ventotene—an Italian island with a mysterious past.

Just off its shore lies a watery graveyard filled with the remains of ancient Roman ships.

Now, a team of deep-sea explorers is setting out to uncover the mystery of these wrecks and why they were lost.

Timmy Gambin: It’s not every day that five well-preserved shipwrecks are discovered within one contained area.

Narrator: Recovering some of the ancient cargo could reveal new secrets about the Roman Empire… and this enigmatic island.

The dive site is more than 300 feet under water, extreme conditions which will test the crew’s courage and equipment to their limits.

Boom – I just heard this bang.

Jeez!

This expedition is a combination of extreme diving and archaeology.

Title – The Lost Ships of Rome

Ventotene is a tiny Italian holiday island – just 43 miles off the coast of Naples.

It is also the site of one of the more incredible archaeological finds in recent history.

In 2009, archaeologist Timmy Gambin and his crew scanned the seabed surrounding the island with sonar equipment and discovered five ancient Roman shipwrecks.

Timmy Gambin: L Sia la corda di recupero
Translation: This is the recovery rope.

Narrator: And now they’ve returned to retrieve the ancient cargo, untouched for more than two millennia.

The first dive is to the wreck of a Roman merchant ship filmed using a remote camera called an R-O-V.

The ship’s wooden hull has long since rotted away but its cargo of amphorae is incredibly well preserved.

The team wants to bring one of these jars to the surface, as they can provide precious clues on how the ancient Romans lived.

But this treasure is under 360 feet of water – nearly three times deeper than a recreational SCUBA diver can go.

So far the crew has only been able to get their robotic camera down to film the wreck.

Sending humans down proves more difficult.

Italian cameraman Roberto Rinaldi is a deep-sea diver who’s worked with legendary explorer Jacques Cousteau.

Together with his partner Marco, nicknamed Numero Uno, he’ll descend to the bottom of the ocean where the wrecks lie.

Divers must follow special equipment when diving so deep. The compressed air normally used for scuba diving can have dangerous side effects.

Roberto Rinaldi: You can feel a bit dizzy, you can feel sleepy, you can feel euphoric, you can but basically your brain is not working in the normal way, it’s not working as it should work. And obviously this is something you don’t want to experience when you are diving, especially when you’re diving deep.

Narrator: Instead of air the divers breathe a finely tuned mix of oxygen, nitrogen and helium.

And for backup they’ve recruited of a team of military divers from a special branch of the Carabinieri, Italy’s national law enforcement organization.

The archaeologists only have this specialized team for five days so the clock is ticking…

Out on the ocean archaeologist Timmy Gambin begins the first phase of the mission – locating and marking the shipwreck.

Our starting point is a GPS waypoint. Once we’re on that point we put down a shotline, which is basically a rope, which will lead the divers from the surface to the wreck site.

The crew tries to manoeuvre the boat precisely over the wreck and then drops a lead weight.

The weight must land as close as possible to the wreck – without smashing the precious cargo.

Now all eyes are on skipper Aaron Podesta.

Timmy Gambin: Aaron’s nickname from the Italian part of the team is Sniper – Cecchino – because of his accuracy.

Narrator: The Sniper is confident he’s hit the mark, but the crew must confirm his accuracy.

They mobilise their diving robot – the ROV. Its video camera will show the ROV pilot where the shot line has landed.

If the marker is too far away from the wreck the divers may struggle to reach the site.

Eric Mullen: That might be it here…

Timmy Gambin: We found it – great.

Timmy Gambin: We’re extremely happy – Aaron was able to get the shotline down to within 2 metres of the site, which when you consider the hundred and ten metre depth that exists between us and the site – I think it’s a good shot.

Narrator: Roberto and Marco start the dive.

There is no direct line of communication between the divers and the boat so from now on, they’re on their own.

As the divers descend through the water, the pressure on their bodies reaches over 150 pounds per square inch – five times that of a car tire.

And there it is—the wreck they’ve been so eager to find.

This is the first time in more than 2,000 years that a human being has been anywhere near these amphorae.

The wreck is so well preserved, some amphorae are still stacked in their original positions.

None of the containers have intact stoppers, so there’s little hope of finding any of their ancient contents inside.

At such extreme depths, the divers can only spend a few minutes at the wreck so they must quickly decide which amphora to bring to the surface.

It must be clear of the other amphorae, so they can lift it out without breaking it.

Numero Uno spots the perfect target.

He clips the recovery line around the amphora and starts his ascent.

Diving so deep limits the time divers can spend at the site and also makes resurfacing more complicated.

If the divers came straight up to the surface lethal gas bubbles would form in their bloodstream.

Instead, they must come up very slowly to clear the high-pressure gases from their bodies – which takes more than three hours.

Now it’s time for the surface crew to retrieve the R-O-V.

Timmy Gambin: Can we recover?

Eric Mullen: Can I just get minute to sort things out? I don’t know where the rest of this cable went. OK – can I just get minute?

Timmy Gambin: Roberto and Marco have a shot line down for their decompression. We’ve got the original shot line down with an amphora attached, and we we’ve got over a 120 metres of ROV cable down there. We just want to make sure that all these three cables are free from one another.

Timmy Gambin: Well done with the recovery.

Narrator: The crew can start pulling up their treasure.

It’s a delicate operation: They don’t know how fragile the ancient pottery is.

If the boat bounces in the waves and jerks the line even slightly, it could easily break the amphora’s neck.

While they are excited to catch their first glimpse, they must be extra cautious.

Once out of the water, the amphora’s full weight hangs by a single thread.

But it survives without a scratch.

It is in excellent condition given that it’s spent thousands of years under water.

Timmy Gambin: My first reaction is a fantastic, fantastic feeling. The last time someone touched it approximately 2100 years ago – it was the stevedore who was putting carefully into the hold of the ship, thinking that it was going to safely make it to its destination.

Narrator: This simple piece of pottery holds important clues about the shipwrecks.

And in the hands of an expert like Timmy it will open up a window into ancient Roman life.

On board the expedition ship, the crew has a closer look at their find.

The amphora’s contents have vanished, so Timmy can’t tell immediately what it carried.

But he can build on the detective work of other archaeologists.

He compares this vessel to a database of known amphorae types – and finds a match.

Timmy Gambin: This amphora dates from the first century BC, originates from Italy and was made to carry wine.

What is considered treasure today was actually a very common object in ancient Rome.

Timmy Gambin: These containers have been referred to as the jerrycans of antiquity. But rather than fuel they were used to carry foodstuffs.

Narrator: With their pointed ends, amphorae can’t stand on their own.

But in fact, they’re unique shape made them perfect shipping containers.

Stacked inside a ship, the tip of each amphora fits precisely into the neck of the one below to form interlocking layers.

The layers make the most of the available space and keep the cargo stable.

The humble amphora was a cornerstone of the Roman Empire.

It was just as mighty as the sword.

Without the vital goods it carried, Rome could not have sustained its 500-year reign.

The Carabinieri take amphora to the local museum for cleaning and display.

But the question remains: Where was this boatload full of wine going?

Was it destined for Ventotene?

When the ship sank in the first century BC, Ventotene had one very important resident: Augustus – the first Emperor of Rome.

Classicist Annelise Freisenbruch has come to the island to look for traces of the great ruler.

Annelise Freisenbruch: You can see why this was a good place for him to have a holiday home here because it gives you peace and quiet – it’s the none thing you’re certain of getting here.

Narrator: Augustus chose the island as the site for a luxurious imperial villa, set in spectacular surroundings.

It was built as a seaside retreat – where Augustus could relax and recover from the business of running an empire.

These steps here are the remains of what would have been a large communal bathing room for Augustus and his friends to enjoy.

Over here you’ve got a sauna where you could come and sweat before going into one of the other baths, for example the frigidarium. So it’s sort of like great kind of health spa, almost, this place.

This villa was clearly a place fit for an emperor.

Was the wine from the shipwreck destined for the imperial cellars – or perhaps to fuel a Roman orgy?

The answer lies with the woman who lived in this palace – Princess Julia, the emperor’s daughter.

Annelise has studied Julia’s tragic story.

Julia is Augustus’ only daughter. And he had everything set up for her to be the golden girl of his regime. She is a pawn on a chessboard, she is a piece to be moved around to suit Augustus’ political ends.

When Augustus comes to power, Rome is a decadent and morally corrupt metropolis.

Eager to reform his imperial capital, the emperor vows to lead by example.

He made a virtue out of the fact that he was restoring a kind of Golden Age of Rome, a morally pure period in comparison with the political and moral corruption that was seen to characterise the Republic. So just as he himself made a virtue out of claiming to dress frugally to live simply he insisted that his wife, his daughter – Julia – and his female relatives should follow a similarly unimpeachable pattern of living.

But Julia rebels against her father’s strict moral code and seems to seek out scandal.

The worst thing she was said to have done was to have had sex on the rostrum, the speakers’ platform in the Forum, from where of course her father had probably issued his moral legislation of 18 BC – in which he had made adultery a criminal offence for the first time.

One of Julia’s alleged lovers is executed, while she is banished to the villa on Ventotene – a seemingly mild sentence.

But the emperor makes sure his alduterous daughter can feel his wrath.

She was to be denied all luxuries, no visitors, no male visitors were allowed to visit her, she was prevented from drinking wine – and essentially made to live the life her father couldn’t impose on her while she was living in Rome.

Julia’s villa is the only place of note on the island, so the wine on the wrecked ship must have been headed elsewhere – to the new provinces of Rome.

The local tribes in France and Spain have a huge appetite for wine, but Rome has forbidden them from making their own.

Wine merchants from mainland Italy capitalize on the local prohibition and sell their wine for huge profits.

They can afford to risk losing a whole ship and its cargo – which wasn’t a rare occurrence.

The sunken ship carrying wine from the bay of Naples probably ran into trouble only a day into its voyage and sank near Ventotene.

For Princess Julia, Ventotene was her own personal Alcatraz.

But for Roman sailors it was an oasis – where they could find shelter, food and water.

And all this thanks to Emperor Augustus – who transformed Ventotene from barren rock to blossoming island.

Before Roman times there was no fresh water on the island; it has no natural springs.

Today nearly every drop of water on the island is shipped from mainland Italy in this tanker.

So how did Augustus supply his villa with water?

With the help of local historian Salvatore Schiano, Timmy Gambin sets out to learn where Augustus got his water from.

The Romans harvested the water from the sky – by paving over part of the island.

E il pavimento qua fuori che cosa?
This pavement – what was it made of?

Cocciopesto – malta idraulica quindi frammenti di coccio impastati con sabbia pozzolana.
Cocciopesto – hydraulic mortar, mixed with pottery shards and volcanic sand

The large paved areas collected rainwater and funnelled it into a series of collection chambers.

First the water flowed through decantation pools – to filter out the dirt and debris.

Then it went underground – to a huge cistern carved from the rock.

The first thing that strikes you is how cool the temperature is inside. So it must have kept the water from turning stagnant. And so the Romans put a lot of thought into keeping the water fresh.

To keep the water from escaping the Romans used one of their many amazing inventions, which was this concrete that set under water. We usually come across this in harbour structures such as quays and wharves, but in this case the engineers have used it in this underground cistern.

Augustus built two of these big water collection systems – which could gather more than 250,000 gallons of water a year.

His engineers connected the two cisterns and carved a network of tunnels deep into the rock of the island – to transport the water where it was needed.

This tunnel that carried water to Julia’s villa is a masterpiece of precision engineering.

This tunnel is over one kilometre long and takes the water from the main cistern and feeds it to the lower part of the island.

Cut it too steep and the water will just run off, too flat and the water will stagnate. So the Roman engineers had to get the levels absolutely spot on. It’s incredible how they managed to achieve this even though they did not have the modern technologies wreck available to engineers today.

The next wreck the crew discovers is highly unusual.

When experts first see the sonar image, it looks less like an ancient ship and more like a pile of car tires.

But when Timmy gets his remote camera on site, he knows he’s made a stunning discovery – a shipment of Roman kitchenware called mortaria.

It’s only the second time a whole boatload of mortaria has ever been found.

The wreck lies even deeper than the first one – nearly 380 feet below the surface.

The ship’s cargo lies in two separate piles, which suggests the ship sank violently.

Close inspection reveals that the piles are made up of hundreds of these clay bowls.

All of them are absolutely identical – a clear indication that they were mass-produced and shipped in bulk.

These simple objects reveal how Roman technology conquered the world.

The pottery is so robust, Numero Uno has no problem bringing it to the surface.

The object is very well preserved – even tiny details of the potter’s work are still visible after 2,000 years.

This ancient piece of clay is a perfect example of how Roman ideas spread through the Empire.

Timmy Gambin: This cargo is representative of the Romanisation that’s going on in the first century BC, where the Romans are exporting know-how – like cuisine, the making of olive oil, the making of wine – to the new provinces.

Narrator: Gejtu, the ship’s cook, demonstrates how the tool was actually used by an ancient chef. Cooks today will recognize it as a mortar and pestle.

It’s the ancient Roman version of a food processor – and every kitchen in the empire would have had one.

Timmy Gambin: One of the interesting features about the mortaria is this, the coarseness on the inside. The potter would have included this grit which consisted of small stones and rough pieces of ceramics and it just makes the items easier to grind within it.

Narrator: Gejtu whips up a recipe from the oldest known cookbook, by the ancient Roman writer Apicius.

It’s a sauce made from eggs, leeks and herbs – the kind of food a common Roman would have eaten.

Timmy Gambin: The sauce is starting to take shape and it’s not looking from what a modern dish would look like today.

Narrator: Gejtu serves up his Roman surprise at dinner – how will the ancient recipe go down?

This simple meal gives the crew a taste of princess Julia’s frugal life in Ventotene.

Served as a canapé at a dinner party it is pleasant enough.

But it’s a far cry from the rich food she would have enjoyed before her exile – a fitting punishment for the girl who dared to defy the Emperor.

Annelise Freisenbruch: Well this looks like a lovely, simple Mediterranean summer lunch. To us it actually looks a very tasty, nice sort of thing to have a on a hot day.
But to Julia this would represent denial, for her. Someone who’d been used to the social scene of Rome, to going to lavish dinner parties and so on. When she came to Ventotene we’re told that Augustus imposed a very frugal, monastic regime on her.
I’m sure Augustus felt a certain amount of vindictive satisfaction in knowing that, probably for the first time in her life his rebellious daughter actually had to do exactly what he wanted her to do.

The third wreck promises to be especially interesting.

Timmy Gambin: We’re trying to head for this shipwreck, which is in this area here.

Craig Mullen: This is a beautiful wreck to go visit – particularly with all the amphorae spread out. A massive pile went down completely intact.

Timmy Gambin: You’ve got the classic stacking …

Narrator: Timmy has analyzed the R-O-V footage and identified the type of amphora found.

Timmy Gambin: What we’re looking at is probably a variation of this type. And it dates from approximately the fourth century AD, comes from North Africa or modern day Tunisia, and was in all probability carrying this very important condiment called Garum.

Narrator: The garum the amphorae carried was a highly prized commodity – a pungent fish sauce that was essential to Roman cooking.

Two pints of the best garum could fetch the Roman equivalent of a thousand dollars, so this ship would have been worth more than 60 million dollars.

The wreck is incredibly well preserved, and the crew hopes to recover an amphora that still has traces of ancient garum inside.

It’s all hands on deck for dive number three.

But as they head out to sea, black clouds appear on the horizon.

Timmy Gambin: In the harbour you get a false sense of security, you think that it may have calmed down. Coming out, what’s happening now is that it’s increasing. You can feel it’s increasing, it’s not a dying wind, it’s a wind that’s picking up.

Narrator: Today, the Mediterranean reveals its ugly side.

The crew heads back to base empty-handed.

In port, they meet up with diver Roberto Rinaldi who never even left the shore.

Timmy Gambin: We went out into the lee of the island and it’s a wind that’s not settling down, it’ a wind that’s getting much stronger, so…

Roberto Rinaldi: It’s better we stop.

Craig Mullen: You’d be OK at 100 metres…

Roberto Rinaldi:AAAAHHHH…

Roberto Rinaldi: No, It’s not OK, because if anything happens for our decompression, you don’t get rid of it…

Craig Mullen:No, that’s right, it’s too dangerous.

Timmy Gambin: This is June in the Mediterranean, we should be dealing with heat waves and not constant strong North-Westerly and persistent rain.

Narrator: It’s a discouraging setback for the team, but they have a backup plan.

Timmy Gambin: We put in a layer of salt

Narrator: Timmy teams up with Geijtu to mix together a batch of garum.

This valuable substance is made from nothing more than salt and fermenting fish.

Timmy Gambin: OK – more salt. OK the last layer now.

Narrator: The actual preparation of Garum is relatively unknown. There are various theories as to its consistency, as to its preparation, but this is our experiment and hopefully in a few days’ time we’re going to see, or taste, what Garum was actually like.

Now you need to get a wooden spoon.

Timmy Gambin: One of the crucial elements of this preparation are the entrails of the fish. It’s the digestive fluids that help in the fermentation process.

Narrator: Of course, all this would have been done in a big vat, the Garum factories were huge complexes by the seaside and this preparation would have been done in a stone vat, and once mixed the vat would have been covered for a few days.

OK – where sees the sun most, I think we can leave it here? Yes.

As the fish bake in the sun, their digestive juices leak out of the guts and start to break down the flesh.

Soon the fish begin to ooze an oily slush – this is the garum.

It may look disgusting – but it’s brimming with nutrients.

And it contains a powerful taste enhancer – glutamate – also known as mono sodium glutamate, MSG.

Glutamate triggers chemical receptors on the tongue that can make the brain crave it like a drug…

… which explains the passion for garum in Julia’s time.

Annelise Freisenbruch: It was used quite ubiquitously across the whole Empire and certainly according to the cookbook we have from the ancient world – Apicius – he has Garum featured in almost every recipe in there – even in the sweet things – which seems completely bizarre to us, if you’ve actually smelt the stuff you sort of think – you know – God – what a disgusting prospect of having this in custard…

Narrator: Julia would have consumed garum nearly every day, but it’s unlikely that the massive shipment from Africa was destined for her villa.

So what was the ship doing at Ventotene?

A new day dawns but the wind and rain have not ceased.

The weather is now threatening the success of the entire mission—the crew has just one day left on the island.

But Timmy Gambin uses the time to explore the engineering masterpiece in the Emperor’s transformation of Ventotene – the port.

Timmy Gambin: This island had small sandy beaches, so anybody wishing to land would have had to anchor in the middle of the bay and take a small boat to land.

Narrator: The Romans, wishing to build something more permanent here, had to solve that problem. And to solve that problem they decided to build a formal port.

Timmy Gambin: And here we are, standing on the outer seawall of this fantastic piece of Roman engineering. Rather than the traditional way of building large seawalls out, extending out into the sea they decided to excavate a basin into solid rock.

Narrator: Augustus’ engineers picked the only spot on the island where the land meets the sea in a gentle slope.

Here they started digging into the volcanic rock – and carved out a deep basin 10 feet below the sea level.

The workers excavated more than 120,000 tons of rock by hand – an incredible effort.

But then came the most difficult task: removing the last of the rock so ships could enter the harbour.

The sea level has risen by nearly three feet since Roman times so much of the port’s structure now lies hidden under water.

But the team has been given special permission to explore what’s left of Augustus’ work.

Six feet down, they spot the original wharf where the ancient ships would have docked.

They find huge boulders which might have been used to tie up the ships.

And as they near the tip of the ancient pier, they spot strange striations in the rock.

They could be the toolmarks of ancient Roman divers who dug out the entrance – under water.

They had to hold their breath, dive down and hack away at the rock with hammers and chisels – until they’d carved an opening wide and deep enough for ships to pass.

Timmy Gambin: Absolutely fascinating! One of the most amazing things is the entrance, it’s cut extremely deep into the rock.

Roberto Rinaldi: I don’t know I cannot imagine how they could dig this in the water. OK this is soft as a rock, but it’s a rock! So must not be easy at all.

Craig Mullen: Those were heavy when we tried pick up some.

Timmy Gambin: Absolutely incredible engineering to get divers down 2000 years ago to cut that channel. Those were the real divers!

Narrator: Augustus’ port made Ventotene an important hub in the Roman trading empire and it’s still in perfect working order after 2,000 years.

The port is the reason the now sunken ships were here – the question is why did they perish so close to the safety of the habor?

In the afternoon, the weather suddenly clears so Timmy and skipper Aaron go out to explore what may have sunk the ships.

Timmy Gambin: At least four of the five shipwrecks we’ve discovered went down whole, so we’re looking at a scenario whereby these vessels were actually swamped, filled with water and then went down to the seabed as a whole.

Narrator: It may be that Ventotene itself is to blame for this strange occurrence.

Aaron Podesta, Captain: The problem is when you come too close to an island you can also get – apart from with big waves coming along with the wind you also get a backwash as a rebound from the rocks, which can stir up a pretty confused sea. So at one stage you’d be rolling one way and if the timing is correct you get a wave coming the other way which will keep on rolling you over.

Narrator: In high seas, the Roman ships’ precious cargo becomes a liability.

There’s a limit to how much pressure the stacked amphorae can take.

Eventually some of them break, upsetting the system of interlocking layers and shifting the cargo.

The ship becomes heavier on one side and lists out of balance.

Now it is vulnerable to the waves which submerge the ship so that it sinks to the sea floor completely intact.

The fate of the shipwrecked Roman sailors has been lost in time, but the story of princess Julia continues to fascinate historians.

They have recently re-opened her case and found that maybe she wasn’t a harlot after all, but something far more dangerous.

Annelise Freisenbruc: The charge of adultery was often in Roman society an excuse to get opponents out of the way.

Narrator: Many scholars actually now believe that Julia’s crime may not in fact have been adultery at all. There is a theory that perhaps Julia’s real crime was involvement in a political conspiracy of sorts against her father.

Augustus crushed many plots to stay in power and he isn’t going to make an exception for his daughter.

So he banishes Julia – to keep her away from Rome and his political power games.

Annelise Freisenbruch: When Julia came here she would have had no idea how long she was destined to remain here. This must have seemed like a living death.
Julia was said to have been very popular back in Rome with the general public and they were said to have protested against her exile. And although Augustus initially refused to listen to them, after five years it seem he did relent.

Narrator: After five years Augustus allows Julia to leave Ventotene, but he won’t let her return to Rome.

Julia speds the rest of her life far from the power center of ancient Rome in what is today Reggio di Calabria.

She dies at age 53 – just a few months after her father – apparently starved to death by the new Emperor, Tiberius, who was also her husband.

On the final day of the expedition, the crew tackles the deepest wreck of all.

It’s nearly 500 feet deep and holds a one last secret – a cargo of mysterious cylinders.

Objects like these have never been seen before and Timmy is keen to find out what they are.

So far the crew has only seen murky R-O-V footage – now they want to bring up one of the cylinders.

And as luck would have it, the weather forecast is promising.

Timmy Gambin: It’s the only day we’re going to have a shot at this and we’ve been preparing meticulously yesterday and this morning and we’re gonna give it our best shot.

Narrator: Spirits are high, but as the team approaches the dive site, the waves pick up again.

Eric Mullen: Here comes a big one…

Narrator: Despite the heavy seas, the crew prepares for the dive.

Eric Mullen: I’m really getting jerked around

Timmy Gambin: What’s the depth?

Eric Mullen: 109 – I see the shot line – I just don’t want to get tangled in it.

Narrator: The conditions quickly go from bad to worse.

And as the wreck appears on the R-O-V camera, there’s more bad news.

The shot line has landed close to the ship – but not close enough.

Timmy Gambin: Roberto – il pedagno sta dieci metri dal sito. Non siamo in una posizione di riprendere per riportare etc. Il ROV? Il ROV è gia sul sito. Se potete farla …

Translation: Roberto – the shotline is ten metres away from the site. We can’t bring it up and move it.
The ROV? The ROV is on the site. If you can do it…

Narrator: Timmy consults the divers.

Timmy Gambin: They’re not going to be able to do the recovery because of a) the weather and the distance and b) the weather doesn’t allow us to pick this up and re-deploy.

Narrator: Imagine something weighing 200 kilos or 150 kilos and something like that. One of us will end up getting injured.

They can’t bring up a cylinder today, but all is not lost.

Timmy Gambin: Nothing beats the human eye, so the divers are going to get a good visual inspection done of these objects and hopefully Roberto’s footage of the site will help us better understand the makeup of this mysterious cargo.

Narrator: This is the toughest of all the dives.

Roberto and Marco only have a slim window of 10 minutes at 480 feet.

Every extra minute they spend at the wreck means an extra hour of decompression.

When they reach the bottom, they discover they face yet another challenge.

The water over the target is as black as night, clouded by sediment.

The divers venture into the darkness alone because in these conditions, it’s too dangerous to have the R-O-V follow them.

From the surface, the crew can only watch the divers’ lights in the distance.

After Roberto finishes his survey of the wreck, the crew must wait until after his decompression before they can watch his footage.

What they don’t know is that something has gone wrong with the dive…

After a five-hour wait, they get a call from the dive base.

Part of Roberto’s camera was crushed by the extreme water pressure.

Roberto Rinaldi: this was perfectly round before, now it’s completely squeezed.

Craig Mullen: Bent completely. You’re a lucky guy.

Roberto Rinaldi: Always – You’re born lucky, you don’t become lucky.

Narrator: But for Timmy this is no laughing matter.

Timmy Gambin: You spent 12.5 minutes down there.

Roberto Rinaldi: Twelve and a half? You see – I’m good, eh?

Timmy Gambin: You were meant to spend 10, you naughty man.

Roberto Rinaldi: Ah but come on…

Narrator: Only a few minutes into the dive Roberto got into trouble.

Roberto Rinaldi: Toom! I just heard this big bang, like this and I mean it was very strong in my hands and in my stomach. And it was not long to realise that something imploded.

Craig Mullen: This one here.

Roberto Rinaldi: Toom – this is the second one.

Craig Mullen: The second one went? Jesus!

Narrator: The shrapnel from the implosion could have shredded Roberto’s equipment – or even injured him.

And at this depth a fast rescue would have been impossible.

A lesser diver would have aborted the mission.

But Roberto put down his camera to get his hands on one of the mysterious objects.

Roberto Rinaldi: And I tried to pull it up – it was stuck on the bottom. No way to move, not even to move a little bit. And there is a hole here. And I tried to put the finger inside and tried to move – and see that – I mean, it’s completely stuck.

Timmy Gambin: So you think that almost definitely they are some form of metal?

Roberto Rinaldi: I would say, yeah.

Roberto Rinaldi: And this blue – this colour belongs to the material. This I can tell for sure.

Craig Mullen: Could it be lead? Lead is a blue grey.

Narrator: The cylinders keep the crew guessing but they’ve gathered other clues about the wreck.

These amphorae prove that the ship sank around 2000 years ago. Timmy thinks it may have been heading for the city of Rome, with a hold full of grain.

This would have rotted a way over the millennia and left only the pottery and the mysterious metal cylinders.

Timmy Gambin: Now whether they’re some form of raw materials being transported – we still don’t know. But we’re a step closer to solving that mystery.

It’s been five days since the team started the expedition and their time in Ventotene is coming to an end.

But they’re about to face the biggest challenge of all.

After days of stewing in the sun the garum is ready to be served.

Timmy Gambin: Allora – assaggiamo questo Garum? Senti l’odore… L’abbiamo preso la ricetta antica…

Translation: So – shall we taste this Garum? Have a smell… We’ve taken the ancient recipe…

Narrator: At first the crew is suspicious – but finally the garum works its ancient magic.

Craig Mullen: It’s not bad… with a little Campanian wine.

Narrator: The treasure the crew has found off the coast of Ventotene has given them appetite for more adventure.

They may just come back next year to add more pieces to the great jigsaw puzzle that is the history of the Roman Empire.

END

Narrator: Hidden in these tattered books is a story about one man’s fight for freedom.

His battle took place nearly 250 years ago, on a slave ship bound for Cape Town, South Africa.

A free man named Massavana… enslaved through deception… and determined to return to his home any way he can, seizes a notorious Dutch slave ship.

Onboard, a life and death struggle between slaves and sailors takes place.

There can only be one victor.

Today, the ship lies buried under these waves at Cape Agulhas, the southern-most tip of Africa.

This slave ship mutiny has been largely forgotten.

But now, three people are uncovering these remarkable events and learning the story of Massavana, the man now being hailed as one of South Africa’s first freedom fighters.

Professor Nigel Worden studies the history of Cape Town under Dutch rule and is researching how and why the rebellion happened.

Slave descendent Lucy Campbell wants to know: who Cape Town’s slave ancestors were… and how they struggled for their freedom.

And marine archaeologist Jaco Boshoff is hunting for the remains of the slave ship at the heart of this story.

It was called: The Meermin

It sailed from Madagascar in January 1766 with more than one hundred and forty enslaved people aboard.

This would be its final voyage.

Today, Cape Town, South Africa is a thriving city whose residents can trace their ancestry back to far-flung countries all around the Indian Ocean.

However, most residents have ancestors who were brought to the Cape against their will, as slaves.

Cape Town was founded in 1652, to supply food and water for the merchant ships of the Dutch East India Company, also known as the VOC.

It was a company town and the VOC wanted to keep it that way.

Commerce was king.

Prof. Nigel Worden: The VOC was a commercial company – but it was also a government – it was a state within a state, if you like – it had been given the authority, by the States’ General in the Netherlands to, to rule – to, to run law, to make treaties, to declare wars, as well as to trade – so it was much more than just a trading company.

Prof. Nigel Worden: In the Cape, it had total power – it was THE state – and it had the right of life and death over, over all of the inhabitants of the colony.

Narrator: The historic documents of the VOC are held in Cape Town’s Provincial Archives.

Here, 30 miles of documents hold the secrets of life in Cape Town’s slave society – and why the Meermin was bringing slaves here.

Prof. Nigel Worden: They did not want a settler colony here at the Cape – they didn’t want lots of immigrants coming in – that would have been expensive for them – they, they didn’t want people to establish themselves as independent farmers – and instead, therefore, encouraging immigrants, they turned to slave labour.

The VOC brought 63,000 people to Cape Town as slaves, beginning in 1658.

They came from all around the Indian Ocean: from eastern Africa, through India, to Indonesia.

Slavery continued until 1838.

Until then , as Cape Town expanded, its free citizens purchased slaves for domestic labor.

Cape Town became a slave society.

Now, their descendents want to know their history. None more so than heritage activist Lucy Campbell.

Lucy Campbell: When slaves came to the Cape, their names were changed – if it was a name like Sangora, or Massavana, and they arrived in Cape Town say on February 15th – or September – they would have been named September – the month when they arrived. Just like to indicate to you – there’s September

Lucy Campbell: Look at all these names – thousands of them – thousands of them… look at all the February’s you see here – all these are names of slaves that were brought to the Cape.
A lot of the people in Cape Town – I would say even the majority of the people in Cape Town – are slave descendants, whether they are White, whether they are Black – or whether they are so–called Coloured.

Narrator: By 1766, Cape Town had grown into a sizeable settlement, with more than 7,000 inhabitants – two-thirds of them slaves.

Keeping so many people under control required constant supervision and coercion. Even the architecture of a typical Cape Town house was designed to control slaves.

This is Koopman de Wet house. Now a museum, it once housed a family of 13 Europeans – the De Wet family – and their 26 slaves.

Lucy Campbell: This house would have been a very – house of a very wealthy owner that would have had slaves – and the house was built specifically around slaves, because without slaves, there, they couldn’t function. They couldn’t function at all. So this would have been the centre or the domain of the mistress of the house. The mistress of the house could watch over the slaves outside and they could, she could watch, uh slaves coming up and down from the steps.

Lucy Campbell: There would be, a, been an eye on them at all times – whatever they did – there was an eye on them and the weird thing is, is that there was not physical control – but there was the psychological control – where the, the master or the mistress didn’t have to use physical abuse – but the mental slavery was, is the psychological slavery.

Lucy Campbell: A slave was at the mercy of the master – at all times – a master could, ask anything of that slave – brush my shoes – put on my shirt – carry this, carry that – come lay with me – they could basically ask for anything, because the master owned that slave – that slave was a commodity.

Narrator: The slave ship Meermin transported this commodity.

Its sailors would give tribal kings guns and gunpowder in exchange for people.

On January 20, 1766, the ship sets sail from Betisboka Bay in western Madagascar.

Its heading is for Cape Town.

Three crewmembers will play critical roles in what is about to happen …

Gerrit Muller is the ship’s captain. This is his first time running a slave ship.

Chief Merchant Johann Krause is in charge of the VOC’s cargo of slaves.

Krause has been on slave journeys to Madagascar before … and so has his assistant Olaf Leij.

Prof. Nigel Worden: The Meermin story, is indeed, one of the most remarkable of the whole of the period of slavery at the Cape – although it is relatively little–known about, in, both in South Africa or outside it –but what is particularly extraordinary is that we have records of that – we have the very words of the people who participated in that.
The Dutch East India Company was an incredibly bureaucratic organisation – and it must have been hell to work for – it recorded everything.

Narrator: Those words were recorded when the survivors of the Meermin shipwreck were brought to Cape Town and questioned by the VOC’s very own Court of Justice.

Prof. Nigel Worden: And one thing we know is that Muller was only recently appointed as a Captain – he hadn’t had much experience of being on a slave ship – whereas Krause had. And all the way through the records we see Krause reminding Muller who is in fact his superior – that actually he knows a lot more about how to sail a slave ship than, than Muller does.
So Muller’s authority is being rather undermined by, by Krause. This younger man, but nonetheless a man who has more experience of this.

Narrator: This struggle over leadership will compromise the Dutch crew.

The VOC preferred to import children to work in Cape Town – they survived the voyages better than adults … and would provide more labor over the course of their lives.

The average age of an imported slave was just sixteen.

The true face of slavery can be seen in photos of slave children taken from Madagascar in 1868.

The children were rescued when a British naval vessel intercepted the slave ship.

The photos have attracted the attention of South Africa’s leading human rights advocate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: They remind one so very much of pictures out of the holocaust – Belsen and things of that sort, just showing our inhumanity to, to one another.

We have bandied about that word ‘slavery’, not always aware of just how inhumane the conditions were.

Narrator: Beginning in the 15th century, slave ships took more than 12 million people out of Africa. The vast majority went to the Americas.

Those ships are the research subject of marine archaeologist Jaco Boshoff.

If he can find the Meermin, it will be one of only a few such vessels discovered.

Jaco Boshoff: The important thing about it is that she was a slave vessel, and then the fact that there was a rebellion on board, and that’s the main reason why she got wrecked. Also – we do not know too much about these vessels that the Dutch East India Company used at the Cape, for slavery.

Narrator: This coastline is called the graveyard of shipwrecks. More than two hundred boats lie buried here. The lack of oxygen under the seabed should preserve the Meermin wreck … But where is it?

Jaco Boshoff: We know that the Meermin does not have a lot of material left on it because a lot of it was taken off at the time when she wrecked. So it is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack, underwater and on, under sand.

Narrator: The most effective way to find it is by locating any iron-based artifacts that went down with the wooden ship.

This crop duster is equipped with highly sensitive magnetometry sensors, which can penetrate through ocean water and beach sand.

If any iron remains of the Meermin are here, they will leave a magnetic trace.

Jaco Boshoff: We’re very fortunate in the fact that we’ve got this ship’s plan of the Meermin which we found was in the scheepvaartmuseum, in Amsterdam.

It will guide us towards what the size of the vessel was, how wide it was, how many ribs did it have.
A vessel like this obviously made largely out of timber – would have used oak. So oak is something that we’re looking for and then the fastenings would have been metal – would have been iron, so there’s a lot of iron there and that’s what we’re hoping to pick up with the magnetometer.

Narrator: In the end, it will be the slaves who determine the fate of the Meermin.

Their chains do not prevent them from choosing leaders for their rebellion.

Even before the ship sets sail, one man leads an escape attempt but fails.

His name is Massavana. He is from the village of Toulier in western Madagascar. He has many supporters, including a strong fighter named Koesaaij.

Koesaaij’s experience on board the Meermin was later recorded in detail by the VOC.

Now Lucy Campbell wants to read this first-hand account of a free man turned slave.

Prof. Nigel Worden: I gather you want to know about Massavana, and what we can find out about him. What is really exciting is that here we have the cross–examination of Massavana – at his trial.
And here he is – Massavana van Madagascar, age about 26 years old, so he was, we know that he was 26. And he’s asked questions about what happened on the, on board the ship but also he gives details about how he came to be sold as a slave.

Massavana: My name is Massavana. I was asked by the King of Toulier to visit the Dutch ship.

Massavana: We went to view this ship. I was dressed in clean clothes, with gold and silver ornaments. When this was done, halfway back, the King tied me up, and his people undressed me – they took my gold, silver and clothes off my body – and they sold me – as a slave.

Narrator: Scattered around Cape Town are the remains of old slave lodges, where the memories of the city’s slave history can still be experienced.

Lucy Campbell: Before the, the Europeans came to Madagascar – the Madagascans – they fought amongst each other – those that won these battles used to take slaves as spoils of war. And they used to sell these slaves to those, to the Europeans. So now there was a market for them and the King took advantage of this. And this is how they started – it became a regular thing, and it became a trading post for the Europeans and for the Madagascans to trade in slaves.

Narrator: Most of the slaves purchased by the VOC would remain the property of the company.

But Cape Town also had traders who provided private individuals with slaves.

A typical slave would cost the equivalent of two oxen and a cart.

Lucy Campbell: You are just a, a commodity. You can’t think. You can’t say anything. You have to be quiet at all times. So what I am going to be doing is, I am going to be selling you. Now remember there’s going to be people standing there. They are the buyers and they’re going to bid for you. So now I want you to come forward.
I am going to be looking for: Can he hear properly? Can he see? Do you have all your teeth? Have you got strong muscles? And that’s why it’s important that I have a strong slave, because what’s the use then, for me to buy him? If you can’t work for me? I’m going to have me this slave. He’s perfect, he’s young, he is strong enough and he can work for me – long hours – can carry wood – can carry water – and we can have lots of other slaves.

Narrator: The Meermin has a 4-week journey from Madagascar to Cape Town at the height of summer.

Temperatures can exceed 100 degrees.

The misery below deck is almost unimaginable.

It is a nightmarish voyage.

Archaeologist Jaco Boshoff is conducting a detailed study of the Meermin blueprints to create an accurate 3D, computer graphic model of the slave ship.

Knowing the architecture of the ship will help him understand how the rebellion happened.

Jaco Boshoff: The vessel was about 30, 30–odd meters long, so that’s quite small – they, they didn’t want to have a big vessel because it costs more money.

Narrator: The Meermin was a multipurpose cargo vessel outfitted in Amsterdam in 1761 to carry slaves.

When sailing on a slaving voyage, more than 200 people would be crammed on board.

Sixty of them would be sailors whose cabins were at the bow.

The officers were based toward the stern, with the captain’s cabin built under the quarterdeck.

Below this is the gunroom, where ample supplies of guns and gunpowder were kept to trade for slaves.

If the vessel was following VOC rules, no sign of the human cargo would be permitted on the top deck.

They would be kept below.

They were expected to remain here for the course of the month-long journey.

Jaco Boshoff: These people would be shackled up in the slave deck. So we’d have rows of people two, two – shackled – and they would often have one long chain running the whole length to get as many slaves in as possible.
Look, remember in the 18th Century there, there, there was no human rights – human rights didn’t exist.

Narrator: There would be little light… All the gun hatches are sealed up to prevent slaves from escaping.

Only two small portals provide ventilation for the slaves.

Jaco Boshoff: In fact some of these vessels you couldn’t light a candle, because the air was so stuffy and rotten.

Narrator: Nigel Worden is investigating just how many people were enslaved on the Meermin.

One of the puzzling things about some of these sources is that the numbers of slaves onboard the ship don’t add up. You could say that that was bad memory – but I think there’s something else going on here. We know that onboard all VOC vessels – certainly the Captain and the higher officers were carrying goods which they were not declaring to the company – and they were selling off privately themselves. This is how most slaves actually got to the Cape.

Prof. Nigel Worden: And in this case, what I think is clearly happening is that they’ve got more slaves than they’ve officially admitted to the company and they’re hoping that they’re going to be able to sell them off privately, themselves, when they get to Cape Town.
And of course the consequence of this is that the, you know people like Muller and Krause, are desperate to cram as many slaves onboard the ship as they can, more so than they’re declaring – which means that there’s going to be overcrowding, desperate overcrowding as a result.

Jaco Boshoff: The consequence that you get, is disease, you’d get things like dysentery, typhus and things like that, that would break out under conditions like this and you’ve had some of these vessels with large amounts of deaths.

The Meermin’s survivors later testify to the VOC that
disease was rife on their ship too.

Slaves were dying…

And disease was spreading.

Lucy Campbell: I think the situation in the deck was very volatile with the smell and the stench and the – that sickness – because there was disease also underneath that ship.
The Dutch were scared that something was going to happen, they were going to die and they were going to lose their commodity.

Narrator: Two days into the voyage, Krause makes a fatal decision, according to Captain Muller’s testimony for the VOC.

Gerrit Muller: Krause strongly requested that the slaves be freed from their shackles. And that we should let them loose on the ship.

Prof. Nigel Worden: When your cargo is spices – or material goods being brought from Asia – which most of the ships were carrying – then it was in the interests of both of them to keep them safe and to keep the ship sailing, but when your cargo are human beings, and the issue is their health and keeping them alive, and by bringing them up onboard the deck – which Krause did – it’s actually endangering the security of the ship – then you’ve got a division of interests between the two of them.

Prof. Nigel Worden: So, you know, here we have Muller saying that Krause had said that on all his other journeys, he’d let the slaves free from their chains – so he never had anything to fear from them.

Gerrit Muller: I did not want to give permission for this, but the surgeon said there were no medicines on board to prevent illness – and that the crew was also starting to suffer.

Jaco Boshoff: The Captains’ authority was to do with the vessel itself – sailing the vessel, so in essence, the head Merchant had a, had a lot of influence in terms of what happens to the slaves – on the vessel.

Gerrit Muller: Krause told me that if the slaves became ill and if some of them died, it would be my responsibility. I agreed that some slaves could be freed.

Narrator: It is a critical decision: It plays right into the hands of the slaves.

Massavana: The slaves planned for a long time to become masters of the ship. Our aim was to go back to our own country.

Lucy Campbell: I think underneath the deck, they believed that they were going to take over the ship because they were free man, men in their mentality; they were not mentally enslaved – at that point – yet.
They were strong men that believed that they were going to be free, even though they were in chains and in shackles.

Massavana: We were ordered to work on the ship. We often pulled ropes. We worked with the sails.

Narrator: Putting the slaves to work makes the journey easier for the sailors – something they could get used to.

Olaf Leij: Krause told me it was not dangerous to unshackle the slaves. From time to time thereafter more slaves were freed.

Jaco Boshoff: You’ve got all the ammunition, if you will, for an explosive situation – all the elements are there – basically all you needed was a trigger – and, and that trigger was supplied – by the Senior Merchant, funny enough – the man who, who was the greediest of the lot.

Olaf Leij: It was February the 18th. Sailor Harmen Korps was ordered to fetch the assegais and swords to be cleaned.

Narrator: Assegais are traditional weapons of war from Madagascar… spears.

Jaco Boshoff: But what the Dutch often forgot, in, certainly in the case of the Meermin story – is that the Malagasies was a war–like people, so you would have characters on board this vessel that inherently wanted to break free.

Massavana: It was morning. A sailor brought the assegais to us. Six in total.

Olaf Leij: Krause was laughing and said “I’m sure there are people who would doubt the wisdom of asking slaves to clean these weapons.”

Lucy Campbell: I can’t believe that the, that they actually did it – I mean how could you, how can you give slaves weapons?

Lucy Campbell: At that point they didn’t think that the slaves would have, would do it. Because a slave doesn’t think.A slave don’t make decisions. A slave doesn’t have an opinion. A slave is property.

Massavana: The slaves had 4 assegais in our possession when the battle started.

Massavana: We all attacked at the same time.

Olaf Leij: And suddenly I heard screaming and groaning of some of the crew.

Massavana: Krause was stabbed in his chest and also his belly. He fell down dead immediately.

Massavana: Several sailors fled into the maintop. Three of them were thrown overboard.

Gerrit Muller: Then I started running to the cabin. I was then stabbed in my left side – I received another two stabs in my back. All these wounds were inflicted on me by Massavana.

Narrator: The captain isn’t safe in his cabin. The slaves could break through the door at any moment. So he climbs out the port window and slides down the rudder to the gunroom.

Up on deck, the slaves take possession of the muskets.

Massavana: We decided to do everything possible to become masters of the ship. Even if we had to stay at the sea a long time.

Lucy Campbell: I think he actually did surprise himself.
In that few hours, he conquered the mighty VOC – and he took over that ship.

Narrator: Thirty sailors are killed in the uprising – stabbed, shot or thrown overboard.

The survivors barricade themselves in the gunroom, below deck.

The thirty remaining sailors have only a sack of potatoes, some raw bacon and a cask of palm wine to fortify their nerves.

They know they can’t remain here for long … they need food… they need to regain control of their ship.

Jaco Boshoff: Now these guys are sitting at the back, there’s very little supplies in the area where they are because most of the supplies would have been kept up front – and for them to get to that they would have had to run the gauntlet – with all these slaves – which is quite difficult and obviously, and they did try that and they – you know the slaves would be shooting down from the hatches.

Olaf Leij: The slaves moved around the hatch and threatened to jump to the lower deck – they shot down at the crew, who returned fire. At 8 am on the third day the sailors made a sally against the slaves.

Gerrit Muller: The mate was killed, and another man was also shot dead.

Olaf Leij: And two more sailors died of their wounds a few days later.

Jaco Boshoff: OK, so now you, you had the slaves in control, but they weren’t quite fully in control – the reason being that they were now in charge of a machine, that they didn’t know how to operate and this is the ship – they didn’t, didn’t know how to sail the vessel.

Narrator: By now the Meermin is drifting aimlessly, hundreds of miles from land.

The sailors are desperate…

Olaf Leij: The ships mate brought up a barrel containing 25 pounds of gunpowder. He took this upstairs and lit it with the purpose of frightening the slaves.

Narrator: The plan fails … but it does get the slaves’ attention.

Olaf Leij: A female slave was asked to tell them that the sailors would blow up the whole deck with all the slaves if they would not surrender themselves, and to offer them a peace proposal. The slaves agreed and asked to see me.

Narrator: Olaf Leij is able to speak to the slaves in their native tongue.

Prof. Nigel Worden: Olaf Leij is really left in charge of things, because Krause’s now dead – Muller is still sick and unable to take any control.

Olaf Leij: They told me they should be taken back to their own country and to throw the gunpowder overboard.

Gerrit Muller: Leij told the slaves that we would not throw the gunpowder overboard – but we would take the slaves back to their own country, Madagascar. In this manner peace was made.

Narrator: A deal is made.

But Olaf Leij and his captain plan on having the last laugh.

They have no intention of taking the slaves back to their homeland.

Gerrit Muller: I gave instructions that the ship should set course in the direction of Cape Town.

Olaf Leij: The Captain instructed me to set a course to North-Northwest in order to get near land.

Prof. Nigel Worden: They agree that they will take the slaves back to Madagascar, by sailing, by sailing East – but in fact, they sail the ship North-West – and therefore the ship’s going in the opposite direction.

Narrator: The deception is a breathtaking gamble.

Returning to Madagascar means losing the VOC’s precious cargo.

But sailing to Cape Town might mean losing their lives if their plan is discovered.

Prof. Nigel Worden: It is a very risky strategy, first of all they really don’t know just how much, the slaves and Massavana would know about currents – and where they are and…

Narrator: The north-northwest heading the captain sets will take the ship straight to the southernmost tip of Africa – the graveyard of shipwrecks.

It’s been two weeks since Boshoff’s magnetometry survey. He now has the results.

Jaco Boshoff: This blue band represents the flight path of the aircraft that carried the magnetometers, and what it shows us are these anomalies, the red dots, that you can see – like that one for instance, is a fishing trawler that we know of – but what’s more interesting are the smaller ones that you cannot see so clearly – that are very likely to be the Meermin, because she was a smaller ship – and wooden, and has, has broken up over the years, obviously – so we are really interested in those.

Narrator: Of course, these sites are all underwater. Boshoff wants to sail out into the bay to see for himself where the slave ship drama played out.

Ten days after the mutiny, the Meermin sails into view of land, near the Dutch settlement of Struisbaai.

Most of the slaves think they are home.

But Massavana has doubts.

Prof. Nigel Worden: But then, as it’s described here, the leader asks Leij why he had not taken them to their country – and how did he know this? Well he knew this because the Sun wasn’t rising in his face – in other words they weren’t facing East as they should have been.
And Leij who has been rumbled of course at this point, with fairly quick wits, perhaps, said well they’re on the East side of Madagascar – then the leader points out something else…

Gerrit Muller: A number of birds were seen – and the slaves said that one couldn’t find such birds on Madagascar.

Prof. Nigel Worden: And Leij then comes up with this answer…
Well these are the kinds of birds that are found on small islands lying off the coast of Madagascar and were typical of the ones which wouldn’t have been found on the West coast. I think there’s no doubt that if we put ourselves – or try to put ourselves in the minds of the slaves and of Massavana – they might have realised that – or suspected that something’s gone wrong here – but on the other hand at last they’ve seen land – and they’re hoping against hope that freedom is going to be theirs’ at last.

Jaco Boshoff: One could probably think of the Malagasies on the – on the ship, thinking that this might be Madagascar – excitement – you know – finally after so many days – getting off the stinking tub – and being excited and you have the sailors on the other sense – also being excited – but for a different reason – because they know they’re at the Cape Agulhas and they know that salvation is at hand for them.

Narrator: Dropping anchor a mile offshore, the beleaguered Meermin will now draw a new group of characters into its story.

Local farmers notice the ship’s flag is not flying – a sign of distress. A report of a suspect ship is immediately sent to the VOC’s head official for the area, Johannes Le Sueur.

Prof. Nigel Worden: I think Le Sueur, the magistrate in Stellenbosch is the key figure here. He has to go there – it is part of his, part of his district – this enormous district to the colony – and Agulhus is not Cape Town – he’s in a very remote part of the colony – there are not troops around him so he’s on his own there.

Narrator: Le Sueur knows he must contain the slave rebellion. After all, the VOC is running a slave society.

News of a successful slave revolt could send panic through the colony and empower more slaves to take up arms.

Olaf Leij: The next morning the slaves demanded to go to the shore in a rowboat. As many as possible boarded. The boat would return after the slaves landed ashore.

Narrator: Everyone agrees the slaves will light three bonfires on the beach if it is Madagascar.

Prof. Nigel Worden: Now Leij’s playing a very cunning game here – he’s trying to outwit the slaves at their own game – as it were. But of course he’s a very desperate man because he knows that once those slaves get ashore and discover they’re not in Madagascar, and if they get back to the ship and report that back to Massavana and the others, all hell is going to break loose – and they’re going to have their throats cut.

Narrator: By the time the Malagasy arrive on shore, the local farmers are waiting – they have formed a militia.

Fifteen slaves are killed, the rest put back in chains.

From his position on the Meermin, Massavana cannot see the massacre on the beach.

He is waiting for the bonfires.

Johannes Le Sueur arrives in Struisbaai two days after the Meermin was spotted. He quickly takes charge of the situation on shore.

For 3 more days, Massavana and the others desperately wait for the bonfire signal.

In the gunroom, the sailors’ situation is reaching a crisis point.

Gerrit Muller: Leij came to tell me that it wouldn’t be long before the slaves would break through the hold and get to the gun powder room. We could not stay at anchor any longer.

Narrator: Leij pours out his concerns in a letter.

Prof. Nigel Worden: This is the letter that, which comes from Leij which he had written, sort of cooped up in this, in this room and one has the sort of notion of him writing this in a rather cramped handwriting, and see here the handwriting is extremely erratic – and it’s a letter of desperation.

Olaf Leij: Through the guidance of our Almighty and beloved God, the 140 male and female slaves which we exchanged at Madagascar have revolted and taken over the Meermin. About 70 of them went ashore with the boat but at least 50 have remained on board. 32 of the Europeans are still alive, but most of them are wounded. The slaves are in control of the whole ship, except for the gunroom, to which we have fled.

Prof. Nigel Worden: One of the most extraordinary things in this, in this extremely extraordinary case is the story of this bottle and what happened to it.

Olaf Leij: We are scared the slaves may attack and kill us at any moment. We continually pray to our Lord for His mercy and that He may rescue us from our miserable plight.

Prof. Nigel Worden: This is a man who is facing the fact that he’s about to meet his maker. He believes he’s going to die. And his only hope is to be able to hope that by throwing the bottle overboard, somebody’s going to find it – and the authorities are going to come to their rescue.

Prof. Nigel Worden: If you wrote this up in a novel, nobody would believe it, but it actually happened. It happened like this.

Prof. Nigel Worden: And what happens this bottle is found by this Khoi woman who is on the shore – and she takes it to the authorities and who’s the authority – it just happens to be the Landdrost of Stellenbosch who’s there.

Olaf Leij: Although we trust in the Lord to save us we kindly request the finder of this letter to light three fires on the beach and stand guard at these behind the dunes, should the ship run aground, so that the slaves may not become aware that this is a Christian country.
They will certainly kill us if they establish that we made them believe that this is their country.
In the name of the Lord we remain your obedient servant. Olaf Leij.

Prof. Nigel Worden: So Le Sueur is in a real dilemma. He’s got to decide what to do, you know, either way he’s taking a big risk – and he’s taking a risk for – in the one case – perhaps – the future of the colony, one might say, certainly the dangers of slaves running amok on land – on the other hand he runs the risk of losing the cargo, losing the ship and I suspect as a result, he would have lost his job – and probably a great deal more, as well.So in the end, what does he decide to do? He takes the risk. He’ll light the fires.

Narrator: A week after arriving at Struisbaai, the slaves finally see the signal they are waiting for.

Massavana: Madagascar! [LAUGHTER]

Narrator: They are eager to get ashore. The weather is in their favor, high winds and currents push the ship closer and closer to shore.

Olaf Leij: The vessel drifted towards the beach. To avoid disaster it was decided to beach the ship. In strong seas the ship would have been smashed up and no souls would have been saved.

Gerrit Muller: When the ship touched ground I gave the order to cut the main mast.

Narrator: The first group of slaves goes ashore in the one remaining rowboat.

Le Sueur positions his home-grown militia out of sight, behind the dunes. He has orders from Cape Town to recapture the slaves, but not harm them. But he quickly loses control of the nervous farmers.

Olaf Leij: They were attacked near the dunes and shot at.

Narrator: Finally, Massavana and his countrymen realize they’ve been deceived.

They know they will never return home.

Lucy Campbell: I think it must have been a moment of distress – a moment of pain knowing that this is the end, that I’m going to be taken.

Narrator: 19 days after taking over the Meerman, Massavana and his countrymen give up their struggle.

They are taken to Cape Town immediately. The Meermin is left behind to sink into the ocean.

Furious about their financial loss, the VOC Court of Justice puts both the slave leaders and the sailors on trial.

The VOC has a severe punishment for any slave who attacks his master: death by impalement on a stake.

Prof. Nigel Worden: The end of the trial – this record that we’ve got of all the trial – you would expect that the result of this would be that Massavana would receive the most gruesome kind of death sentence – which is what happened to slaves who’d revolted against their owners or against the company and you would also expect that Muller, who is also put on trial – for negligence – would perhaps have got a – you know – a mild punishment or a ticking off, but it’s really Massavana who would have got the, the full force of the law.
Absolutely the opposite happens.

Narrator: Gerrit Muller is stripped of his captain’s rank and wages, and forbidden from serving in the VOC for the remainder of his life.

He is banned from the Cape, and put on the first ship returning to Amsterdam – on which he must work for his passage.

He is fined one month’s wages and ordered to pay the costs of the case.

And despite all his efforts, Olaf Leij is also fired from the VOC.

As assistant chief merchant, he was expected to have obeyed company rules.

Prof. Nigel Worden: All through the trial, Massavana denies some of the key things that he’s been accused of. I get the sense of him as a very forceful man. Look, look at these answers he gives to some of the questions, you know, is it not the case that you had planned to do this and to, and to attack the Europeans.
NO! Exclamation mark, you know, he’s, he’s forceful…

Lucy Campbell: Defiant.

Prof. Nigel Worden: Defiant, exactly.

Prof. Nigel Worden: It’s not possible for the Court to have enough definitive evidence to be able to, to execute him.
It was very important that you had somebody who could provide definitive evidence against someone in a trial – whose, who were honourable men. Trustworthy men. There weren’t many of these around in this trial. So really the company is caught in its own, in its own legal laws here. And these are the words they use – “definitiewe vonnisse”, they haven’t got definitive enough evidence in order to be able to pass a death sentence on him. And instead they are going to place him, provisionally, they are going to ban him to Robben Island.

Prof. Nigel Worden: What I think is particularly moving is that he signs right at the end here – there! He signs with his, his mark – his cross. He makes the sign of a cross. This is the one mark in this huge archive which Massavana himself left, directly on the page.

Narrator: Massavana’s story doesn’t end here. Nigel Worden has discovered one more document in the vast VOC archive.

Prof. Nigel Worden: So, these are the registers of the people who were sent to Robben Island – and as you see this is in 1766, so the year just, just after his trial. Massavana from Madagascar – sentenced at the Cape on the 25th of August – and there he is – it says – see here the people who had arrived – and there’s Massavana, together with Koesaaij. The two of them. What to me is the moving part – it gives the, the details of everybody else, of how long they’ve been sentenced for on the island – 5 years, 15 years – but for Massavana and Koesaaij it says: “Put on the island until further instructions” – so they’re dumped there at the mercy of the court to decide how long they’re going to stay there – there’s no termination to this.

Massavana: In our country if somebody kills a person, the King will find the murderer. I am an imprisoned man, and only a slave. And you can do with me what you want.

Narrator: For centuries, Robben Island was used to imprison troublesome rebel leaders including its most famous resident—Nelson Mandela.

Massavana was in good company.

Prof. Nigel Worden: And then four years later, we get the news here that Massavana has died on the 20th of December, 1769, just over 3 years he lived on the island and then died as a company slave.

Narrator: Robben Island was where people were sent to be forgotten. But Massavana’s memory as a freedom fighter lives on.

Jaco Boshoff: It does show people that resistance to oppression is, is not a new thing. It’s part of history.

Narrator: It’s what keeps Boshoff searching for the wreck of the Meermin.

Jaco Boshoff: Someone asked a famous mountaineer at one stage “why do you climb mountains?”, and he said because it’s there. And I think it’s in a sense similar. I think the wreck is there. We need to find it.

Narrator: He is now ready to begin the next phase of the Meermin story, to find the wreck itself.

As for the VOC, it went bankrupt in 1798, due to rampant corruption.

For Lucy Campbell, Massavana’s mutiny was a triumph. He never made it home, but he did destroy the slave ship Meermin.

Lucy Campbell: The fact that he, that boat the Meermin will never ever sail again for me is a celebration, that they will never carry human cargo, that, the Meermin is a wreck.

Narrator: Massavana’s co-leader, Koesaaij, survived 20 years here. Both men are buried on Robben Island.

Lucy Campbell: I would like to believe he is here, but here is so many unmarked graves it could be anyone. But for me the memory of Massavana will always live on. Because I have gotten to know Massavana. And this memory I will carry over from generation to generation. For me he is here somewhere, and for me he is amongst the heroes of all heroes.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: It says something about human beings that there is something in us that refuses to be, to be regarded, as less than human. We are created for freedom. That’s why slavery is going to fail ultimately. That is why injustice fails, ultimately. Oppression fails, ultimately

Narrator: Massavana was just one of tens of thousands of enslaved people whose lives were recorded in this vast archive.

An unlikely hero who simply wanted to return home, he is now remembered for his fight for freedom.

END

Narrator: For more than 5,000 years, tomb raiders plundered the graves of Egypt’s ancient pharaohs.

By the 20th century, every royal tomb archaeologists entered had already been robbed – except one.

Inside, was a prize beyond imagining.

It was a pharaoh’s casket…

…Made entirely of silver, a treasure to rival that of Tutankhamun.

But the destruction of World War II overshadowed the discovery.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: It’s hard to imagine a worse time to make such a spectacular discovery.

Narrator: Today, this incredible find still remains virtually unknown.

Now, investigators have pieced together the silver pharaoh’s life and times, one of the least understood and most turbulent periods of Egypt’s history.

Dr Peter Lacovara : We have civil war, the country’s split between north and south …

Narrator: Egyptologists have reexamined the tomb and the fabulous city which surrounded it.

And the first full examination of the pharaohs remains has revealed surprising results.

Prof. Fawzi Gaballah: This is a new finding which I discovered during my examination. I am actually very excited to an extent that I can’t speak

Narrator: Using source material from the team who first discovered the tomb, investigators are decoding the message of these fabulous treasures to lift the veil on one of the most mysterious periods of Egypt’s history – the era of the silver pharaoh.

February, 1940. Adolf Hitler has launched his blitzkrieg in Europe.

The first savage blow in a war which will soon engulf the world.

For the moment, Egypt is remote from the battlefield. At an excavation site near the Nile, a French archaeology team has been toiling for more than a decade.

Now they’re racing to complete their work before war heads their way.

Professor Pierre Montet, the archaeologist leading the team, has announced an extraordinary discovery. He’s uncovered a pharaoh about whom little is known, from an era few people know anything about.

What Montet finds here will rewrite the story of ancient Egypt.

He had been looking for clues to explain one of the most mysterious periods in Egyptian history …

… around 1000bc.

It was a brief but dark era in ancient Egypt’s 3,000 year history.

Egypt’s great pyramid was built by pharaoh Khufu in what’s called the 4th dynasty.

The most famous pharaohs, people like Tutankhamun and Rameses the Great, ruled more than 1,000 years later in the 18th and 19th dynasties.

The last of the pharaohs, Cleopatra, ruled another 1,000 years after that.

Doctor Peter Lacovara is an Egyptologist who uses the evidence of inscriptions and hieroglyphs to chart this immense period of time.

Dr Peter Lacovara: If you think about it, in history’s timeline, Cleopatra is actually closer to us than she was to the people who built the pyramids.

Narrator: Historians believe Egypt was ruled by at least 170 pharaohs, though this is a difficult number to confirm.

The tombs of 70 pharaohs remain undiscovered.

They might lie anywhere in Egypt’s ancient burial grounds beside the river Nile …

… in the valley of the kings, at ancient Thebes, beside modern day Luxor, at the old capital of Memphis, close to where Cairo is today.

Or maybe in the far north, the delta where the Nile splits into branches on its way to the sea.

For Egyptologists, filling the gaps in Egyptian history is made more difficult by periods when the country was in political chaos.

For 500 years, competing rulers fought for dominance in an era known today as the intermediate period…

…Egypt’s dark age.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egyptologist: In the Intermediate Period, we have economic downturn, we have civil war, the country’s split between north and south, even the threat of foreign invasion.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egyptologist: Civil discord is bad for archaeologists. We don’t have the great monuments, the historical inscriptions, the private statues. People are just too busy trying to stay alive.

Narrator: The lack of archaeological evidence means there is still much to be learned about this era.

Clues can be found in some of the best known stories in the world.

Scholars place the Old Testament battle between David and Goliath right around this time, at 1020 BC.

The Bible describes how a pharaoh of this era invaded the Holy Land around 950 BC.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egyptologist: On this wall we have Shoshank I, who was recorded in the Bible as Shishak, who sacked the Temple of Solomon and brought the Ark of the Covenant back to Egypt.

Narrator: These tantalizing stories linking Egypt and the Holy Land are what inspired Pierre Montet.

He began digging in 1928 at Tanis, in the Nile delta.

Other archaeologists had already searched here, but Montet believed there could still be important finds buried in the sand.

And soon, Montet’s hunch began to pay off.

Through the 1930s, he uncovered the remains of a vast temple with inscriptions showing it was dedicated to Egypt’s supreme god, Amun.

The temple compound was protected by a massive mud brick wall, inside which Montet believed there could be tombs waiting to be discovered.

Hollywood even imagined the lost ark might be buried in Tanis. And like Indiana Jones, Montet had to deal with the threat of the Nazis.

While Montet worked in the desert of Egypt, Europe was on the brink of war, with Adolf Hitler threatening to unleash his storm troopers at any moment.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: Although Montet had found a great many carved blocks, pieces of temples and things, he hadn’t found anything truly spectacular that would set the world alight.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: At the same time, there were all these rumblings of war in Europe, so he was always casting half an eye backwards to see what was going on, so it must have been an incredibly tense time for him.

Narrator: In Tanis, Montet’s diggers had almost completed their sweep of the temple compound when they came to a spot close to the mud brick wall.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: They were digging right here, at the south west corner of the temple, when they came upon the roof of an enormous tomb complex. As an archaeologist, Montet’s heart must have been pounding.

Narrator: Montet quickly scrambled down into the tomb.

In the shadows, he could make out a whole series of burial chambers.

But his worst fears … were quickly confirmed.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: Montet’s heart must have been sinking when he came in here because there was a hole in the roof and there wasn’t supposed to have been one, so obviously it must mean that tomb robbers had made their way here before he had.

Narrator: It was a royal tomb, dating from around 850bc.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: The inscriptions said that this tomb belonged to Osorkon II, who was a pharaoh of the 22nd Dynasty, and also some of his relatives were buried here. So it was a find, and in fact a significant find, but it certainly wasn’t an un-robbed, intact royal burial.

Narrator: Montet knew the chances of finding an undisturbed tomb were unlikely.

No archaeologist had ever found an intact pharaoh’s tomb before.

But he refused to stop searching.

Dr Salima Ikram: Montet ordered his workmen to extend the excavation area to about right here, only 10 yards away.

Narrator: Incredibly, they found a second tomb complex next to the one which had been ransacked.

Montet could hardly believe it. And this time, the tomb appeared to be intact. Was it possible tomb raiders overlooked this grave?

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: It’s surprising that the tomb robbers, who so successfully robbed this tomb, missed the one over there that’s only a few yards away. Maybe they didn’t realise that there was a whole mass of graves around here, but that would be surprising because tomb robbers were astonishingly good at reading the landscape and could ferret out tombs when even archaeologists have a hard time doing that.

Narrator: Montet couldn’t be sure who was buried here.

But as he entered the antechamber, the answer appeared.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: Imagine Montet’s excitement when he stood at this very spot and shone a light up here, and saw a royal name, Pasebakhaenniut, and that means ‘The Star is Rising in the City, beloved of the God Amun’. And then he saw other royal names, because pharaohs have a panoply of royal names, and here is ‘Great are the Manifestations of Re, chosen of the God Amun’. So here we have a pharaoh’s tomb which seemed to be intact, and this pharaoh is really known by his Greek name which is Psusennes I.

Narrator: Montet knew little about Psusennes, one of a succession of pharaohs whose lives and times weren’t fully understood.

He lived during the intermediate period, that dark age when power was divided between rulers.

Psusennes reigned near the beginning of this chaotic era.

He ruled the north of Egypt from here in Tanis. But the real power and wealth lay in the south, in the ancient capital of Thebes.

Much is known about the Theban rulers from the monuments and treasures they left behind.

But who were these northern kings?

Petty warlords? Or significant pharaohs, due a place in history?

If Psusennes’ tomb really was intact, then Montet’s find could fill one of the yawning gaps in Egypt’s story.

The doorway of the burial chamber itself was still tightly sealed with a massive block of solid granite.

It took six days of back-breaking work to shatter it into pieces.

Then, finally, Montet could enter the tomb itself.

It was all he could have ever hoped for.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: Montet said the tomb was filled with marvels worthy of the Thousand and One Nights and, indeed, it was because on the floor of the tomb right here there were hundreds of figurines. There were gemstones, precious metals.

Narrator: Montet knew he was the first person to touch these treasures since they were placed there 3,000 years earlier.

This photograph, taken moments after Montet entered, shows exactly what he saw.

But, there was no sign of a mummy or casket.

They lay, as is typical in pharaonic tombs, inside a huge stone sarcophagus which almost filled the chamber.

It was carved, and covered in hieroglyphs.

Today, the massive lid is on display here in the Egyptian Museum.

Inside was another sarcophagus, also richly carved.

Montet and his team had to pry open these granite sarcophagi carefully to reveal the pharaoh’s actual casket within.

When news of the find emerged, Montet was told to expect a very important guest …

… the king of Egypt himself.

Montet agreed to leave the most important find, Psusennes’ casket, sealed until the king was there to behold the incredible discovery.

King Farouk had been supporting Montet’s expedition and arrived at the dig dressed every inch the explorer.

Montet pointed out the cartouche, which showed the signature of the man who was Egypt’s king 3,000 years before.

But King Farouk wanted to see treasure, not carvings.

He’d been promised something unique, completely different from what he had seen so often on other digs.

He was not disappointed.

The casket was a human form, forged in silver instead of the familiar gold.

Nothing like it had ever been found before or since.

Here lay a little-known ruler from Egypt’s turbulent dark age.

But his tomb and its riches seemed to put him alongside the mightiest of pharaohs.

And what lay inside the silver casket only deepened the mystery of who this little-known pharaoh was.

The mummy’s death mask was solid gold.

This was no small-time warlord or regional strong man, but someone with enormous wealth and power.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egyptologist: It was not just gold and silver that’s in Psusennes’ tomb but lapis lazuli and in huge quantities, far more than in Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egyptologist: And this was material that had to be imported from Afghanistan, 3,000 miles away. So incredibly prized and incredibly valuable.

Narrator: The treasures were stamped with the pharaoh’s distinctive cartouche …

… the star representing Psusennes rising over the city of Tanis.

Their value wasn’t simply in the quantity of precious metal but the quality of the craftsmanship.

Dr Peter Lacovara: They’re beautifully made, beautifully designed, clearly for an individual who could appreciate these great aesthetics.

Narrator: Montet needed months to meticulously examine the incredible treasures he’d found, but he didn’t have that luxury.

He’d made the find of a lifetime, but his timing could not have been worse.

Back in Europe, Hitler’s armies arrived at the French border; invasion was only weeks away.

The Nazis were expected to strike at any moment. Montet had a heartrending decision to make.

His family, a wife and three little girls, had been out in Egypt with him, sharing the excitement as each new discovery came to light.

But they had since returned to France. Should he stay to complete his work, or quit to be with his family?

It didn’t take long to decide. Montet packed up the treasures from the tomb and ordered the excavation sites be shut down.

Work ceased and Montet rushed back to his family in France as World War II began to rage. He wouldn’t make it back to Egypt for five years.

The treasures were quickly transported to Cairo for safe-keeping in a museum vault.

Though it was one of the great moments in archaeology, Montet’s discovery of Psusennes barely made a ripple.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: There was war going on in Europe so who was going to pay any attention to an archaeological find in Egypt? Because of this, even today we don’t really know enough about Montet’s amazing discovery.

Narrator: When Tutankhamun was unearthed, nearly 20 years earlier, it made headlines around the world.

And when his mummy was examined, the cameras were there too.

It was a grand affair, conducted by a professor of anatomy at Cairo University, Professor Douglas Derry.

In 1940, Professor Derry received another invitation.

He was asked to examine an exciting find from northern Egypt: an obscure pharaoh named Psusennes.

Or, at least, the parts of him that remained.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: He was buried in the Nile Delta, which is a very wet, damp environment, while other people were buried in the Valley of the Kings, which is in the desert. So anyone buried in the Delta is prone to decompose because of the dampness. It’s very difficult to study mummies that were buried there.

Derry carried out what now looks like a cursory examination.

He could tell straight away that Psusennes died an old man, but he missed further important evidence.

When Derry was finished, the bones were buried again, this time not in a royal tomb but deep in the university’s archives.

Having been entombed for 3,000 years, Psusennes’ bones would now lay unstudied and unheralded for another 70.

But now, Doctor Fawzi Gaballah, Derry’s successor as professor of anatomy, has reopened the examination.

Prof. Fawzi Gaballah: I’m actually very excited to an extent that I can’t speak.

Prof. Fawzi Gaballah: There is nothing published in detail about this skeleton which could explain his state of health and way of living.

Narrator: Evidence from that first examination remained.

The smaller bones were still tucked inside Professor Derry’s old cigarette packets.

Although the soft tissue was gone, Psusennes’ bones revealed plenty about the pharaoh.

He stood nearly five and a half feet tall and was powerfully built.

As Derry noted, Psusennes died a very old man, perhaps approaching 80, at a time when the average lifespan was closer to 35.

Wear and tear in the teeth confirmed Derry’s opinion.

But astonishing new information has emerged from the professor’s examination, in particular from this seventh cervical vertebra, part of the king’s backbone.

Prof. Fawzi Gaballah: This is a new finding which I discovered during my examination. This spine is broken and healed during the life of the king, and now it is healed. Look at the irregular, look at the bend, at the bend of the spine. It is not mentioned by Professor Derry. I discovered it, and this is called, a type of fracture called Shovels Fracture. And it may, it may point to the fact that this king was not leading a sedentary life. This fracture usually indicates hard work with the upper limbs.

Narrator: The cause of Psusennes’ injury, undetected until now, remains unclear. But other pharaohs were known for working and playing hard.

Tutankhamun went hunting, and may have even broken his leg in a hunting accident.

Tuthmosis the third was one of Egypt’s great warrior kings … but also an avid gardener.

He brought back rare plants from his foreign campaigns … to plant in the royal gardens.

What kept Psusennes busy here in Tanis is a mystery which will now keep scholars guessing.

Psusennes’ broken upper vertebra healed over time, but there was evidence of chronic disease in the lower backbone.

Prof. Fawzi Gaballah: This king was suffering from a disease of connective tissue, a rheumatic disease in the form of ossification of the ligaments of the vertebral column. Professor Derry mentioned this, but didn’t diagnose the cause of this.

Narrator: This first detailed examination of Psusennes’ bones provided important new insights into his life.

And for the first time, a forensic artist could speculate on what Psusennes may have actually looked like.

Melissa Dring, Forensic Artist: What is absolutely fascinating for anyone looking at this head is his right eye appears slightly higher than the left one. The socket is actually set higher, so this cheekbone starts higher and is set higher, there, than this one.

Melissa Dring, Forensic Artist: It must be reflected in the face.

Narrator: Melissa Dring holds a degree in the psychology of facial identification and studied forensic reconstruction with the FBI.

Dead for 3,000 years, the sketch brings the silver pharaoh back to life.

Melissa Dring, Forensic Artist: Psusennes … here he is.

Melissa Dring, Forensic Artist: He’s physically extremely well built, he’s got a large head on a fairly short body, but he’s not been shy of using his body in energetic exercise of some kind.

Melissa Dring, Forensic Artist: He’s also lost a lot of teeth on both sides, so you have something of the sort of the nutcracker look, because the jaw is able to close more firmly.

Melissa Dring, Forensic Artist: It’s a determined mouth. It’s a no-nonsense look, I think.

Narrator: Psusennes must have been in extreme pain in his last years with back problems, and also a tooth abscess so severe it forced a large opening in the roof of his mouth.

Prof. Fawzi Gaballah:This is the cavity of the abscess and the infection was so heavy and extensive that it also opens on the inside, on the inside on the surface of the palate. This is the hard palate and, as we see, the opening is great and his abscess was great.

Narrator: Psusennes suffered in agony for at least part of his life … but do his bones reveal anything about his death?

Prof. Fawzi Gaballah: As far as I see from the bones, there is nothing apparent to lead to death. He could have died by heart attack, maybe something like that.

Prof. Fawzi Gaballah: These bones show us the sufferings of his life, but not the cause of his death.

Narrator: The fact that Psusennes lived so long, despite his medical history, tells Egyptologists that, above all, he was a survivor.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: The fact that he was physically strong and long-lived absolutely must have contributed to his success as a ruler. He managed to reign for 46 years, which was a very long time. People like Tutankhamun died when they were teenagers, so someone like Psusennes really could make a difference.

Narrator: Psusennes’ 46-year reign made him one of the longest serving of all Egypt’s pharaohs. The treasures from his tomb as well as his physical remains have yielded a great deal of new information

But Egyptologists still struggle to interpret this turbulent period around 1000 BC, when pharaohs like Psusennes had to share power with rivals in the south of the kingdom.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egypotologist: It’s ironic that this dark age in Egyptian history followed a period when the pharaohs were at their greatest height of power.

Narrator: The turmoil that plagued Psussennes’ reign actually began 200 years earlier… and was started by the most powerful pharaoh of them all.

Dr Peter Lacovara: Egypt reached the peak of its power under Rameses II, Rameses the Great.

Dr Peter Lacovara: He was a prolific builder, the greatest builder that Egypt had ever seen, and had as many as 100 children.

Narrator: Before Rameses, Egypt had just two power centers …

… Thebes … and Memphis.

Rameses’ boundless ambition led him to build an entirely new capital in the Nile delta.

He called it Pi-Ramesse, the house of Rameses.

But Rameses could not see what his new city would mean for future pharaohs.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egypotologist, Emory University: The Delta region was really a frontier area for Egypt before Rameses really started to colonize it and build his great capital there. It sort of threw things off balance. While a strong central ruler like Rameses the Great could maintain control, once you had a weak ruler you could see the Delta kind of flying off on its own.

Narrator: Creating a third power center left the pharaoh open to political attack.

The trouble began here in Thebes. The only figure powerful enough to challenge a pharaoh was Egypt’s high priest who was in charge of the vast temple of Karnak.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egypotologist, Emory University: In some ways, the term High Priest is a bit misleading because he was more than just a religious official. He ran a big business which is what this temple was, he was an important political leader, and he could even command military might.

Narrator: Priests were richly rewarded – in advance – for keeping the memory of a dead pharaoh alive.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egypotologist, Emory: A king would leave an estate to the temple and then the priests of the temple would maintain his cult, would maintain his monuments, keep his memory alive which was essential to the Egyptians.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: Kings, to win their favour, would give them rights to fishing and fowling and hunting, or rights to mines, or even trade along the Nile. And so the priest would gain increasing amounts of wealth.

Dr Peter Lacovara: They were just getting wealthier and wealthier as time went on, until they eventually decided why don’t we become king?

Narrator: Shortly before Psusennes’ reign began, the high priests made their play for power.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egypotologist, Emory University: Here’s the High Priest shown as almost the same height as the pharaoh. You can see the other priests are much shorter, and previously in Egypt everyone was shorter than the pharaoh, to show their relative status, but here the High Priest has gained so much power that he’s almost equivalent to the pharaoh.

Narrator: As the priests asserted their authority, Egypt was riven in two and five centuries of chaos—the intermediate period—would follow.

The high priest seized the south and the pharaoh was exiled to the frontier region, the northern Delta.

A checkpoint between the north and south was established on the Nile, close to Memphis.

So how did Psusennes turn his small northern province into a rich domain, fit for a king?

Investigators returned to the treasures from Psusennes’ tomb, looking for clues.

Critical evidence was spotted on this small, seemingly insignificant silver dish, called a patera.

Archaeologists recognized Psusennes’ familiar signature, including the star and bird.

But this time, the cartouche contained a long series of further symbols.

Dr Yasmin El Shazly, Egyptian Museum: The inscription on the patera reads ‘Life to the Perfect God, Lord of the two lands, the High Priest of Amun, King of the Gods, Beloved of Amun’, and then ‘Psusennes’. What’s very important about this is the fact that we know from this bowl that he held the title of High Priest of Amun in the north.

Narrator: The key to understanding his power lay in the hieroglyphs:

Psusennes was more than just a pharaoh; he was a high priest as well.

At last, the mystery of his fabulous treasure hoard was revealed.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egypotologist, Emory University: A pharaoh would traditionally derive his wealth from taxes. If you were a farmer, and that was most of the people of Egypt, you would have to give a certain proportion of your crop yield to the Treasury of the Pharaoh.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egypotologist, Emory: As we’ve seen, the High Priest was getting wealthier than the Pharaoh, but this way he’s combining both sources of income, the wealth of the temple as well as the traditional wealth of the Pharaoh.

Narrator: But how did Psusennes carve out such a powerful position?

A look at the family tree of Egypt’s ruling clan makes it clear.

The branches lead to the family patriarch at the time when the southern priests revolted – high priest and strong man, Pinedjem.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egypotologist, Emory University: Pinedjem was High Priest here at the Temple of Karnak around 1070BC. He had four sons, three of whom succeeded him as High Priest, and one, Psusennes, went to Tanis where he became Pharaoh. But he was also given the title High Priest of Amun in the north.

Narrator: Psusennes was a smart politician, determined to use those powerful family connections.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egypotologist: The records indicate that Psusennes sent his daughter to Thebes to marry his own brother when he succeeded to become High Priest of Karnak …

Dr Peter Lacovara: … And therefore cemented further the relations between the north and the south.

Narrator: By ensuring relatives made strategic alliances, Psusennes’ family had the whole of Egypt in their grasp.

This is the patriarch, Pinedjem, whose mummy was found in Thebes.

Psusennes’ mother, Princess Henuttawy, was buried there too, both mummies preserved in the dry desert climate.

Again, Psusennes’s sarcophagus gave investigators evidence of just how powerful the family was.

Carved in the granite, alongside Psusennes’ name, they found a totally different royal signature.

Dr Yasmin El Shazly, Egyptian Museum: What’s very interesting about this cartouche is that if you look at it carefully you’ll see [UNSURE OF WORDS], the 19th sign of the King Merenptah. Even if you don’t know Ancient Egyptian it looks completely different to Psusennes I.

Narrator: Merenptah was the son of Rameses the great.

He’d been buried near Thebes, roughly 150 years before Psusennes took the throne.

But his tomb was opened up and the sarcophagus was sent to Tanis … as a family gift for Psusennes.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egypotologist, Emory University: It would have to have been dragged across the desert from the Valley of the Kings and loaded on to a fairly large ship in order to be brought to the north, and then bring it up to the Delta. Clearly they had to be friendly relations. You wouldn’t have been able to get it across the border had there been strife between the north and the south.

Narrator: Psusennes ordered stonemasons to add his cartouche to the sarcophagus, next to the earlier one to show how his family had risen to join the ranks of the historical greats.

Dr Peter Lacovara, Egypotologist: By using Merenptah’s sarcophagus, he’s associating himself with Rameses the Great, and associating for eternity with the great former rulers of Egypt.

Narrator: The story surrounding the tomb of the silver pharaoh is not marked by chaos and strife but something far different.

Through his family connections, and the making of political marriages and key alliances, Psusennes won wealth and power.

But having won it, the question remains, how did he wield it?

Recent discoveries prove that Psusennes was the driving force behind one of the most extraordinary feats of ancient times.

Relocating a metropolis, stone by stone.

The exact location of Rameses the Second’s fabled capital, Pi-Ramesse, was one of the world’s great archaeological mysteries.

A city of about a quarter of a million people, one of the largest in the ancient world, vanished in the sands.

Dr Salima Ikram, American: This is really the Holy Grail of Egyptian archaeology for many decades. Find Pi-Ramesse.

Narrator: In the 1930s, before discovering Psusennes’ tomb, Pierre Montet uncovered a number of ancient relics at Tanis…

…and he began to wonder about an amazing possibility.

Had he found the archaeologists’ holy grail?

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: Montet was absolutely convinced that he had found the missing city of Pi-Ramesse, and so he went on record saying that Tanis and Pi-Ramesse were one and the same. And the reason he did this was because there were lots and lots of blocks and statues that he found here bearing the name of Rameses II, just like this one. Here you can see the cartouche royal name of Rameses II, so all of these cartouches that were scattered about through the entire site convinced Montet that here we have the city of Pi-Ramesse.

Narrator: For Montet and archaeologists worldwide, this discovery was far more significant than uncovering a royal tomb.

But Montet had made one critical mistake.

On the surface, his theory made sense because Tanis was a riverside city.

And ancient records showed that Pi-Ramesse was also beside the Nile.

But in Egypt’s delta country, the river Nile doesn’t just stay put.

It has many branches.

And they switch location over time, as one area silts up and another is flooded.

In the 1970s, archaeologists began to question Montet’s findings.

They focused on a small settlement about 12 miles from Tanis.

And discovered evidence of a long-lost branch of the Nile Montet had discounted.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: They started to dig and found a huge cache of Ramesside Period pottery. So they brought in the ground penetrating radar to check out the site. The scans revealed a huge city.

Narrator: The city’s foundations… the site where the Nile once flowed… and the ghostly image of Rameses’ lost city were all visible on these scans.

There had been a temple here … as well as military installations.

Dr Salima Ikram, American: They even found the stables of Rameses II. They were huge, and they must have had hundreds of horses in them.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: In fact, where they used to practice we even have found the hoof prints of the horses when they were running around, so it really was an incredibly large complex city which had all the hallmarks of Rameses’ capital.

Narrator: Today, not a trace of the city is visible above ground.

And the vast buildings have totally disappeared.

But how could such a large city simply vanish?

Archaeologists now know that this branch of the Nile became so badly silted up that it changed course.

Pi-ramesse was literally high and dry. Life there became unsustainable.

The record shows it happened around the time Psusennes came to the throne, 1047 BC.

And so he had the great monuments dismantled and shifted to tanis.

Psusennes may not deserve credit for building a capital city, but he did rescue one.

Dr Salima Ikram: Imagine what a vast undertaking this must have been.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: It would have been like moving the monuments of Washington DC, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, being dragged half way to Baltimore.

Narrator: Without the radar scans, Psusennes’ amazing feat may have never emerged.

Montet did find the great relics of Rameses’ fabled city.

But Psusennes had moved them from their original site.

Comparing remains found here with the scans, archaeologists could see that the temple at Pi-Ramesse was built in the same shape as the one Montet unearthed at Tanis.

Psusennes was able to move an entire city—piece by piece.

And it was from here that he wielded his incredible power as both the pharaoh and high priest.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: This is clear evidence that Psusennes had the work force and organisation and good bureaucracy to move a city from one place to another.

Dr Salima Ikram, American: He also had the gumption and the chutzpah to make this new city come alive.

Narrator: Psusennes’ power and wealth, and his long reign, gave him the luxury of planning the most important decision a pharaoh had to make …

… how to face the afterlife.

The choice of which objects to take to the tomb was an important one.

But why, Egyptologists wondered, did he choose silver for his casket?

200 pounds of pure silver.

For ancient Egyptians, gold was known as the flesh of the gods. Because it does not rust or tarnish, the metal had the appearance of lasting forever, like the gods themselves.

Silver was called the bones of the gods, because of its pale color and sheen.

Ancient Egypt had natural gold reserves, but silver was scarce. In the early dynasties, it was considered more precious.

But by Psusennes’ era, Egypt had developed foreign trade routes.

Merchants began to glut the market with silver and by 1000 BC, its value had declined to roughly half that of gold.

Psusennes could clearly afford the best: Some of his treasures rival those of Tutankhamun.

Jon Privett, an archaeologist and a silversmith, has studied the question of why Psusennes chose silver.

Jon Privett, Archaeologist: It would have been cheaper, not as expensive as gold, but the amount of work and the craft involved was considerable.

Jon Privett, Archaeologis:
Silver is a harder material, less malleable than gold to work.

Jon Privett, Archaeologist/Silversmith:
Silver requires to be heated every now and again to soften the crystalline structure of it to then carry on working it, a repeated process which involves time, labour, fuel.

Jon Privett, Archaeologist: The craftsmanship involved is certainly more intense than gold.

Narrator: Psusennes clearly wanted items of quality and artistry—and not just expense—to accompany him into the after life.

The body section of the casket was beaten from sheets of silver so thin and delicate that in places, it was damaged during removal from the tomb. The head section is much thicker.

Telltale marks around the nose and mouth suggest that it was cast in a mold, then hammered into shape.

The Egyptians are known to have mastered the art of casting precious metals.

From the first rough cast, which would have looked like this, Psusennes’ craftsmen then had to polish and sculpt their pharaoh’s features, a process which took hundreds of hours of painstaking work.

Today, the silver casket is one of the great treasures of the Egyptian Museum, a permanent reminder of Pierre Montet’s amazing find.

After the war, he made new discoveries but none as dazzling as the silver pharaoh.

He died in 1966, still believing that the city he’d unearthed was Pi-Ramesse.

But his remarkable discovery of Psusennes’ tomb remains one of the key moments in archaeology.

Psusennes has never enjoyed the fame of Rameses or Tutankhamun, but his star is rising.

Investigators are now taking on the work that Montet began and revealing the secrets of what was considered Egypt’s dark age.

Dr Salima Ikram, American University, Cairo: Psusennes was really an incredible man. He moved the capital city from one place to the next, he also managed to build a spectacular tomb for himself which withstood the ravages of time as well as the attentions of tomb robbers.

Dr Salima Ikram, American: He needs to be re-evaluated and we need to pay more attention to this remarkable pharaoh of the 21st Dynasty.

Narrator: Psusennes would have believed that, by commanding such an elaborate burial, he was buying a ticket to immortality.

3,000 years later, we can look back and say that’s exactly what he’s done.

END

Narrator: The battle of Stalingrad is known as one of the pivotal actions of World War II.

It was also the deadliest battle in the history of warfare.

Kevin Farrell: If you had to pick the most important battle of the Second World War, Stalingrad stands at the top.

Narrator: More than one million lives were lost in seven months of unrelenting fighting. And the eventual German defeat destroyed Hitler’s dream of commanding a global empire.

Walter Guenther: Everybody thought that’s the beginning of the end. It sent shockwaves through Germany.

Narrator: For decades after the war, the battle was seen as a defining victory for a cunning Joseph Stalin, whose military strategy stalled the relentless German advance.

But now, newly-released archives from behind the Iron Curtain are allowing a more detailed analysis of the fighting, and revealing a very different picture of the battle that changed the course of history…

Here at the Citadel, the famed Military College in South Carolina, retired US Army Colonel and military historian David Glantz has made a career out of studying the War on the Eastern Front.

Glantz has written more than a hundred books on the Soviet Army and the Soviet/German War.

He is one of the world’s leading experts on the topic. But recently, he has been forced to rethink his understanding of Stalin’s most famous victory.

David Glantz: All the questions I had were now answered. My single volume book on Stalingrad suddenly was transformed into a 3-volume book, from 400 pages to 3 volumes of 900 each.

Narrator: The pivotal battle raged across the Ukraine and Southern Russia during the second half of 1942. It ended in a bloody war of attrition in-and-around the frozen city of Stalingrad.

When the last Axis forces surrendered on February 2nd, 1943, the story of the fighting was cast in Stalin’s favor.

For years, history held that the Soviet dictator had drawn Hitler into a trap. That the Red Army victory over powerful Nazi forces was a masterstroke of Stalin’s ingenuity.

But this is history told by the victors, and the truth is far more complex.

The Battle of Stalingrad was a titanic clash between two of the world’s most infamous dictators: Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

Hitler believed that the Communist regime had been created by a “Jewish conspiracy,” since many prominent founders of the Communist movement, including Leon Trotsky, were Jewish. The Fuhrer wanted the country destroyed at all costs.

Kevin Farrell: Adolph Hitler, one of the most studied men in history, obviously one of the most evil, his reasoning was that the fundamental nature of human struggle was a struggle between the races. And in line with this, the Soviet Union represented the combined evils in his words of Bolshevism and Judaism, and was the greatest threat to the Aryan race.

Narrator: Stalin, on the other hand, was a megalomaniac who just wanted power.

Sergei Khrushchev: Stalin was different. Stalin was a tyrant, like Ivan the Terrible. He was a genius of the intrigue. He was like Wizard of Oz, but very evil Wizard of Oz.

Narrator: Sergei Khrushchev’s father, Nikita, knew Stalin well. Nikita would one day become leader of the Soviet Union himself. But during WWII, he served as Stalin’s political officer, and was a member of Stalin’s Military Council. He was a firsthand witness to the dictator’s decisions.

In 1939, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler. It effectively gave the Nazis permission to launch an assault on Poland.

Stalin’s pact was a calculated risk—an attempt to buy himself some time. In 1939, the Soviet military was no match for Germany’s war machine. So Stalin wanted Hitler distracted elsewhere while he built up the Soviet defenses.

Sergei Khrushchev: Stalin was a realist and he understood that sooner or later Hitler will attack him. He was not ready in 1941. And then everything was torn apart because Hitler defeated France and Great Britain in weeks in 1940. And when Hitler occupied Paris, Stalin looks like a rabbit sitting in front of a snake.

Narrator: Walter Guenther was a German soldier who fought in France and the Balkans as the Nazi Army cut a path across Europe. He was then deployed to Romania. By 1941, it was clear to him that Hitler was preparing for an attack on the Soviets.

Walter Guenther: We saw more and more German units move to the Romanian-Russian border along the Black Sea. And said, well oh, I hope nothing will happen but June 22nd Hitler attacked.

Narrator: The offensive was called Operation Barbarossa—the largest invasion in history. Over four million Axis soldiers poured into Soviet territory. By September, they had captured more than three million Soviet soldiers and destroyed 20,000 tanks.

No nation or empire had ever endured such losses without falling.

Ten weeks into the operation, Nazi forces had occupied the majority of Eastern Europe, including the Ukraine—the most industrialized area of the Soviet Union.

The next target: Moscow.

But autumn rains brought paralyzing mud, and the Germans were forced to wait for the November freeze before beginning their assault.

The delay gave the Red Army time to call in thousands of Siberian troops, and launch a counterattack as the Germans pressed towards the Capital.

Hitler hoped to deliver a quick, knockout blow. But the Soviets dug in. It was soon clear this would be no easy fight. By late winter, the weather had turned bitterly cold and the Germans were exhausted.

Operation Barbarossa stalled—then faltered—as the Nazis failed to capture Moscow.

But Hitler was not deterred. Believing the Red Army was on the brink of collapse and would never survive another offensive, he began preparations for a new, large-scale campaign. He called it Operation Blue.

David Glantz: He was bound and determined to launch a new campaign in ’42 to finish the job in defeating the Red Army and destroying the Soviet Union. Unlike in ’41, in ’42 he chose to deliver his attack in Southern Russia, a narrower sector. Believing that with the power he had at his disposal he could actually accomplish his objectives.

Kevin Farrell: Case Blau, Operation Blue, the German offensive to be launched in the summer of 1942 was really Hitler’s plan to not just regain the initiative but to remove the Soviet Union from the war.

Narrator: Operation Blue was intended to encircle and destroy the entire Red Army in Southern Russia. That task fell upon German Army Group South.

Hitler divided South into two armies. Army Group A was ordered to seize the caucus oil fields, after Army Group B moved Eastward to secure the Volga river.

The drive to the Volga would be led by the German 6th Army, which Hitler had declared could storm the heavens.

The success of Operation Blue would ultimately depend on one man: General Freidrich Paulus.

David Glantz: General Paulus had commanded 6th Army since the beginning of 1942. Paulus’ strength was his calmness as a commander. The man was an excellent planner, he had planned many of the previous German operations.

Kevin Farrell: He had absolute faith in Adolph Hitler. In fact he was a stern believer in authoritarian rule and this is one of the things that led to his demise.

Narrator: The buildup to Operation Blue was massive. In the spring of 1942, 68 divisions, 3,000 tanks and the largest air force of its day began assembling in southern Ukraine.

One of the men who deployed outside the city of Kharkov was 6th Army Lieutenant Wigand Wuster. He had fought on the Western front, and was confident that the Nazi’s would be victorious.

Wigand Wuster (Translator): As we had unloaded and marched into the city, the German soldiers said: “Don’t be so proud, don’t boast so much. Within a few days you will be much quieter.”

Narrator: Wuster’s fellow soldiers were right. The Eastern Front would not fall as easily as the West.

Stalin had recognized the buildup, and realized that Hitler was aiming to take the Soviets out of the war with one decisive action. He ordered a pre-emptive attack to knock the Germans off balance.

David Glantz: Ultimately Stalin insisted upon some offensive operations if only to disrupt the plans the Germans had for renewed offensive operations for the summer of ’42. This produced 2 local Soviet offensives. The first to be conducted in Kharkov in May 1942 and the second to be conducted in the Crimea.

Narrator: The Kharkov offensive was a full-scale attempt to decimate Hitler’s forces. For two days, the Red Army drove decisively west into German-controlled territory.

It seemed that the Soviet strike was working. But then, the tide turned.

Lieutenant Wuster remembers watching the Red Army advance.

Wigand Wuster (Translator): The Russians broke through near Kharkov. We were thrown into battle as we had unloaded at the station. And there I shot down several Russian tanks with my 10th battery.

Narrator: Wuster wasn’t the only one shooting down Russian tanks. Germany’s superior firepower took its toll. Within days, the Kharkov offensive was turning into a disaster for the Red Army. It was soon strung out over 70-miles—an increasingly difficult line to defend.

To make matters worse, the Soviets saw German tank divisions amassing on both flanks, threatening to encircle their offensive.

Soviet intelligence advised Stalin to order a retreat.

But for Stalin, retreat was not an option.

The Red Army’s Chief of Staff went to Nikita Khrushchev—the ranking member of Stalin’s Military Council—hoping he could change Stalin’s mind. Nikita later told his son about the exchange.

Sergei Khrushchev: His tears are going on his face and he told Comrade Khrushchev you have to understand what’s happening. If we will not pull our troops out we would lose everything. And then my father told I call Stalin and Stalin was at his country house sitting with his close associates. Comrade Stalin told my father, don’t put your nose in the military affairs, you understand nothing and he hang his telephone. And the next day the Germans start this offensive on both sides, they encircle half a million of the soldiers and they lost everything.

Narrator: To the south, Stalin’s offensive on the Crimea Peninsula also ended in disaster. The Red Army attack was no match for Nazi General, Eric von Manstein.

Von Manstein was a hero in Germany for his work in the West. He was the commander of the 11th Army, which had steamrolled across France in a matter of weeks.

He had little trouble repelling the Russian attack.

David Glantz: The impact of these defeats was catastrophic for the Soviets. Because it meant that on the eve of German Operation Blue, the German summer campaign, the Red Army was deprived of something like 500,000 troops defending in Southern Russia. They had no troops to plug those holes.

Narrator: On the morning of June 28th 1942, Operation Blue began.

German Army Groups A and B attacked with a staggered offensive. First to strike was Group B—which included Paulus’s 6th Army.

Then came Group A, heading to the all-important oil fields in the Caucuses.

The staggered attack meant the German Air Force could provide deadly air cover to one Army Group and then the other.

The Nazis quickly opened up a 200-mile gash in the Red Army line. For the German soldiers pressing forward, it was almost too easy.

Walter Guenther: You saw infantry to the right and to the left. At least the feeling you are not alone in an unknown country and, uh even being attacked there is help to the right as well as to the left of you.

Wigand Wuster (Translator): We marched on. For a long time we were only marching, and our horses got exhausted. Then we used Russian tractors or tanks we had taken. We were like a group of gypsies moving eastward.

Narrator: The lead-up to Operation Blue has been well-documented. But how the ensuing battle actually played out is not as well known. It is here that the newly uncovered records are overturning accepted wisdom.

David Glantz: What’s unique about the battle of Stalingrad in terms of source materials today is that we now have ground truth on the battle. I mean the records of those armies and soldiers who participated in the fighting. For example, in the case of the German records we now have daily records of German 6th Army, which had been lost for over 50 years.

Narrator: Many of the 6th Army documents have only recently been located.

And on the Soviet side, all but the most heavily-censored accounts were hidden from Western historians until the USSR dissolved.

David Glantz: Whatever books were published were generally politically oriented books published to proclaim the glories of the Red Army’s victories, explain their defeats, but in so far as possible cover up the blemishes and warts on that military record.

Narrator: For years, crucial documents were stuck behind the Iron Curtain. But in 2000, nine years after the fall of the Soviet Union, they were finally released.

David Glantz: If you examine these records, records that weren’t available to previous historians, you can identify certain misconceptions that pertain to how and why the battle was conducted, and the outcome of the battle overall. We can now take these misconceptions and convert them into truths.

Narrator: The most poular of these misconceptions deals with Stalin’s strategy as the Nazis advanced. History tells us that Stalin ordered his men to fall back, luring the Germans into a trap within the confines of the city.

The plan looks like military genius—a great achievement that has made its way into Soviet lore.

But David Glantz has discovered that this popular story is false.

David Glantz: There are 2 fundamental myths that have been destroyed by the new archival releases. The first is that Stalin deliberately, once the Germans began Operation Blue, ordered his troops in Southern Russia to withdraw.

Narrator: In fact, the archives reveal Stalin gave strict orders for his men to hold their positions at all costs.

David Glantz: This volume of Stavka orders and directives contains orders from the Stavka regarding Stalin’s desire that his armies stand fast and fight. I quote from a 9 July order “there can be no sort of withdrawal.”

Narrator: Stalin believed that under no circumstances should his men fall back. And if they were driven back, they were ordered to execute a “fighting withdrawal”—battling tooth and nail for every inch of ground they gave up.

But no matter how adamant Stalin’s orders, the Red Army was no match for the overpowering Nazi advance.

David Glantz: The armies that conducted those stand-fast operations and fighting withdrawals were largely destroyed by the German juggernaut as it advanced across Southern Russia.

Narrator: Red Army Commander Anatoly Merezhko, who was moving westward with his cadet company, witnessed the Soviet front collapsing around him.

Merezhko saw men retreating to stay alive, not an organized effort to draw Hitler’s Army into a trap.

Anatoly Merezhko (Translator): We went to the crossroads of the fields and there we met groups of people who were running away from Kharkov, dragging along, hopeless soldiers from the Red Army. They were all so depressed and hopeless that they sometimes gave us their weapons.

Narrator: Merezhko and his company did their best to slow the Germans and conduct fighting withdrawals. But each day, they would lose miles to the ferocious Nazi onslaught.

Around them, the Russian soil ran red with the blood of their countrymen.

Anatoly Merezhko (Translator): Often we retreated leaving the dead unburied; we just left them on the ground seized by the Germans. The hardest thing was to look into the eyes of old people, women and children, who asked us why we were leaving them. You understand how hard it was to listen to those pleas. The tears appeared in the eyes, but we really could not stop the Germans.

Narrator: The emboldened Axis forces pushed forward, using both guns and psychological warfare to break the spirit of the Soviet soldiers.

Anatoly Merezhko (Translator): The Germans were dropping leaflets with the following inscription: “Stalin’s little devils, fight against your commanders; surrender or else you will be destroyed.” And on one of those days the distance between our positions was 300 meters, the Germans announced from the speakerphone: “Look what will happen with you if you do not surrender!” We saw how they took out five half-naked people at the fortifications and shot them down.

Narrator: The Nazi methods were working. Despite Stalin’s orders to stand and fight—or at least battle in retreat, the Red Army was in disarray. Men on the run, just trying to survive.

Stalin was livid when he heard the news from the front.

Sergei Khrushchev: when they saw this magnitude of this defeat and when there was all these Germans rolled through there and there was no possibility to stop anybody, Stalin called Khrushchev, my father, he told come here to Moscow.

Narrator: As the ranking member of Stalin’s Military Council, Khrushchev knew he would bear the brunt of Stalin’s ire.

Sergei Khrushchev: Khrushchev, my father, came to Stalin’s Dacha. Stalin asked him, comrade Khrushchev do you remember what happened to the Russian Imperial General who lost that battle in East Prussia from 1914? And my father told yes I remember it was General Somsonov he committed suicide. And then Stalin answered please eat your soup and answered nothing. But my father did not want to commit suicide. Really he did not think it was his fault, it was Stalin’s fault.

Narrator: Today’s military strategists agree. Most believe that if Stalin had ordered an organized retreat and given his men time to regroup, they could have re-established their defenses and avoided much of the slaughter that took place.

But the iron-fisted Stalin refused to back down.

In fact, recently-discovered archives show just how far he was willing to go to stifle the Nazi offensive. In Stalin’s eyes, resistance was the highest priority. His troops had to keep fighting.

On July 28th, 1942, Stalin resorted to draconian measures. Order 2-2-7, issued by the Commissary of Defense proclaimed: “Not One Step Back.”

Stalin would not let his forces retreat.

To enforce 2-2-7, he ordered each army to create “blocking detachments,” with instructions to shoot panicked soldiers who were abandoning the front.

Merezhko hoped the blocking detachments, and new arrivals like his cadets, would stem the tide of fleeing men.

Anatoly Merezhko (Translator): We thought that we would stop the retreat. In the end though the order set up the barrier but the retreats continued. But we needed to stop the panic, which almost all the divisions were overwhelmed with. Especially those, who took part in Kharkov’s operation. They were frightened not only by the infantry, tanks, and aviation but even just the word, “Germans” made them run away.

Narrator: The blocking detachments were placed under the command of the NKVD—the Soviet police forces. One report reveals that they detained more than 600,000 troops, arrested more than 25,000, and shot as many as 10,000 of their own countrymen.

Ironically, the NKVD did a better job of pulling Soviet soldiers out of circulation than the Germans. The initial success of Operation Blue had left the Nazis unprepared for the vast numbers of captured men.

Hitler had enough troops and firepower to defeat the Red Army, but not enough to round up prisoners and transport them away from the front.

David Glantz: Although the Germans destroyed in the neighborhood of 6 Soviet armies, and encircled many of those forces, they simply did not have the infantry strength to police up, to capture those individuals that they encircled.

Narrator: Many potential prisoners escaped. Those who didn’t were kept in outdoor cages, where freezing conditions and lack of food meant almost certain death.

But for the Nazis, prisoners were a minor concern. Operation Blue was proceeding as planned, and what was left of Stalin’s Red Army was being pushed steadily eastward.

By early July, a jubilant Adolph Hitler proclaimed: ‘The Russian is finished.”

Anticipating the impending collapse of the Soviet Union, Hitler modified Operation Blue. First, he ordered the 6th Army to seize Stalin’s namesake—the city of Stalingrad.

The rest of Army Group B was split off to take the Caucuses, while a major portion of Army Group A was sent north to attack Leningrad.

Hitler’s confidence was premature. He was proclaiming victory before the battles had been won.

He was spreading his forces too thin, pulling much-needed mechanized support away from his infantry.

The 6th Army was hardest hit. As the men prepared for their assault on Stalingrad, the 4th Panzer—their supporting tank Army—headed to the Caucuses.

This left the 6th Army vulnerable as it moved towards the city.

The Panzer Mark III’s were workhorses of the Nazi Army. Designed by Daimler-Benz, the heavily-fortified, 23-ton tanks could reach speeds of up to 21 miles per hour.

Another variation was the Sturmgeschutz III, built on the chassis of the Panzer. This artillery weapon, known as the StuG, sat low to the ground and was equipped with a powerful 75-millimeter gun. It was a true “tank killer.”

The German tanks outgunned and outmaneuvered their Soviet counterparts. Stalin was relying on the T-26, a slow-moving, lightly-armed vehicle. In 1941, the Nazis destroyed more than 20,000 Soviet tanks.

Kevin Farrell: We tend in the West to think of our own technological supremacy, but we often overlook the fact German Panzer design, if you will the advances that they tried to push and they did succeed achieving remarkable advances in their armored fleet, these were designed to combat Soviet numerical advantage but also Soviet technological advantage.

Narrator: The 6th Army would be more vulnerable without the Panzer Army’s support, but at that time, it hardly seemed to matter.

In July of 1942, Soviet resistance was crumbling, and Hitler’s troops were driving towards Stalingrad.

The rest of the world was falling as well. Continental Europe was under Nazi control.

In Africa, legendary Field Marshall Erwin Rommel had driven British forces back into Egypt and was poised to take Cairo.

And Nazi subs were prowling the US coastline, menacing the Allies newest partner.

David Glantz: Operation Blue was proceeding so well that Hitler now wanted his new prize, the city of Stalingrad. While not as strategically important as the oilfields in the Caucuses, taking Stalin’s namesake city would be a body blow to the Soviet Army. Like the misconception of Stalin’s retreat, it was once again believed that the road to the city was a simple one.

Narrator: It turned out to be anything but.

As the Nazis rumbled toward Stalingrad, the Soviets were regrouping as best they could. Stalin began deploying newly formed armies into the Don Bend—a section of the Don River that formed a sideways “U.” It was an ideal spot to make a stand.

This desperate gambit has been known about for years, but only recently have we realized how effective it was.

And how many German soldiers it killed.

David Glantz: Stalin ordered those forces to conduct multiple counter-strokes and strategic counter-offensives.

Narrator: The fighting was fierce. This was the first major Red Army counter-offensive since the start of Operation Blue. The two sides engaged in Voronezh, a city near the Don. The Soviets had a new weapon.

David Glantz: Stalin committed a brand new tank army, the first the Red Army had ever employed, the 5th tank army, into action Northwest of Voronezh.

Narrator: This was a deadly unit, boasting Stalin’s latest tank, the T-34. The Soviet’s finally had an answer to the German Panzer.

Production on the T-34 had begun in 1940, but only in ‘42 had it begun to dominate the battlefield. Just in time to throw fear into the hearts of complacent German soldiers who had gotten used to success.

Kevin Farrell: The T34 was the most numerous Soviet tank of World War 2. Of all types they made about 83,000. This was produced in large numbers, it was easy to produce, and quick to produce. Generally considered the best general-purpose tank of the Second World War. It had sloped armor, it had wide tracks. All these things made it extremely survivable and fast maneuverable in virtually any type of terrain. A 12 cylinder diesel engine, it was quite powerful for the time and gave it a cruising speed of well over 30 miles per hour. It was equipped with a 76 millimeter gun and two 7.6 mm machine guns.

Walter Guenther: There was only one thing everyone was afraid of and that was the Russian tank T34. Even the regular gun did not penetrate the Russian front of the tank. But they had to use the 7.5 cannon, which was originally used against the airplanes.

Kevin Farrell: To destroy a T34 with say a 37mm anti-tank gun, it would literally bounce off the front and the side slope of the tank. So as far as a tank went, it was reliable, it had sufficient firepower and it offered great protection for its crew.

Wigand Wuster (Translator): With the T-34 they could do what they wanted, we had nothing to counter it. It was really bad.

Narrator: The Germans best hope for defeating a T-34 was with a combination of airpower and close-quarter combat. Ground troops needed to be within 250 yards to have any chance of stopping it.

Kevin Farrell: They would have to get very close and they would aim for vision slits or they would aim for the engine compartment and try to reduce the tank that way. Once it would be immobile, dismounted soldiers could approach from the rear and climb on top of the tank, ideally tossing a grenade into the crew compartment, or slinging the grenade even under the main gun system and immobilizing it that way. The typical tank engagement in the Second World War, even on the Eastern Front, took place at less than 300 yards. So we are already describing close engagement ranges. When we are looking at soldiers destroying a T34 up close, we are talking literally getting along side it.

Narrator: On the road to Stalingrad, Wigand Wuster came face-to-face with numerous T-34s. Sometimes, it was only luck that allowed him and his men to survive.

Wigand Wuster (Translator): I sent out a soldier to look round the corner to watch when the Russians were coming and soon one was approaching, only a single one. I think he was lost and didn’t know where to go. The soldier informed us and we aimed at the corner. When it appeared we fired and it was torn into 1000 pieces.

Narrator: Wuster and his men won that battle, but going after lost tanks was not a repeatable strategy. What had once looked like a cakewalk into Stalingrad, had become a titanic struggle.

The 6th Army, attempting to clear the Don Bend alone, was surprised by the ferocity of the Soviet defense. Without the 4th Panzer to assist them, the Nazis were taking a beating from the Red Army and its T-34s.

David Glantz: When Paulus’ 6th Army attempted to move Eastward, this operation, in which the Soviets committed not only their 62nd Army but 2 new tank armies inflicted heavy losses, perhaps as many as 10,000 men on German 6th Army and prevented 6th Army from fulfilling it’s mission for upward of 3 weeks.

Narrator: These losses were far more severe than previously believed. The Soviets’ counter-offensive was exacting a heavy toll.

Walter Guenther: There was one very bad experience, a young lieutenant who knew everything better and could not be convinced that you had to be very careful even if you don’t have contact with the Russians. He took his unit, about 50 people to the right and to the left of him, 25, and advanced somehow through the Russian line, we didn’t know exactly where they were. And the Russians waited until the Germans approached them with 50 feet and killed all of them. So out of 50 people 2 people survived.

Narrator: The Army that Hitler had famously boasted ‘could storm the heavens,’ was being driven into the ground of Southern Russia.

The 6th Army was severely depleted by the time it finally arrived on the banks of the Don.

David Glantz: That meant that when Paulus began his drive on Stalingrad he did so with forces drastically reduced in strength and that ultimately would tell on the effectiveness of that drive.

Narrator: But here, poised on the bluffs overlooking the Don River, it seemed that the German war machine was regaining momentum, finally back on a role.

Paulus’s next objective was to capture the land-bridge that let into Stalingrad.

This time, he would get help. Hitler, infuriated by the 6th Army’s slow progress in the Don Bend, had recalled the 4th Panzer Army from the Caucuses.

Paulus planned a two-pronged, pincer attack, sending the 6th Army at the city from the north, while the 4th Panzer attacked from the south. They would close in on Stalingrad along the banks of the Volga.

On August 22nd, the first German units crossed the Don, establishing a bridgehead on the east bank. At dawn on the 23rd, the armored vehicles followed.

With complete air superiority overhead, Paulus’s army broke the early morning silence with the roar of tank engines. The final drive on Stalingrad had begun.

Anatoly Merezhko (Translator): We heard the rumble on the steppe. A lot of the enemies’ tanks moved forward. The Germans attacked with a tank corps, which destroyed the defense of our 2 small divisions. That corps, not facing any resistance, moved in parade form, marching on Stalingrad. Our right-flank battalion of cadets got caught under the thrust of that corps. A small number of tanks separated from that parade march and buried the cadets alive in them. That happened approximately one kilometer from us. All the cadets were weeping from futility. Our friends were dying and we could not help them.

Narrator: By late afternoon, the 6th Army gazed down upon the Volga from Stalingrad’s northern suburbs.

Paulus unleashed the German air force.

Anatoly Merezhko (Translator): At 4 p.m. there appeared an armada of aircrafts, which moved in several tiers toward Stalingrad. The bombing of the town had begun. The black puffs of burning fuel were coming up several kilometers into the sky. At night there was the solid glow in Stalingrad.

Narrator: The bombing continued for days. The civilian death toll exceeded 200,000. More civilians died in the battle of Stalingrad, than in the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The city was reduced to rubble.

Hitler awaited his prize.

In Moscow, Stalin was enraged by the failure of his forces, and the seemingly unavoidable fall of his namesake city. True to form, he directed his ire at his commanders, both military and political.

Nikita Khrushchev believed he was about to be purged.

Sergei Khrushchev: Stalin looked at him, go back to Front. And my father told that I have no doubt that he will arrest me in the car. Because it was a Stalin tradition to arrest people when they left his place. So he told, what I can do, I travel to the military airfield and nobody arrested me. Then I entered my plane and I flew to Front. And I safe only when I landed at Stalingrad. So at that time it was much safer in Stalingrad than in Moscow.

Narrator: For Khrushchev, fear of Stalin trumped the fear of Nazi bombs.

The bombs kept coming. And German ground troops drew ever-closer to the smoking ruins of the city. It was almost time for the bloody urban fighting that would be so well-documented after the war.

Less well-documented were a series of hard-fought battles north of the city. David Glantz has discovered that these forgotten confrontations were a turning point in the war. They decided Germany’s fate before the Nazis ever set foot in Stalingrad itself.

It is here, at a place called Kotluban, that the Russians would make their greatest stand. Here, not in Stalingrad, where the tide of the campaign would turn.

David Glantz: Beginning in late August, continuing in September and into October the Soviets launch four offensive operations collectively known as the Kotluban Operations, named after the village of Kotluban, nestled in the broad steppe region northwest of Stalingrad. In those operations the Soviets commit between two and four armies in near suicidal attacks against the German northern flank.

Narrator: Hastily coordinated and poorly controlled, these attacks resulted in more than 200 thousand Red Army casualties.

They were haphazard, dangerous missions that slowed the German assault, but left Soviet soldiers like Anatoly Mersezhko scrambling for their lives.

Anatoly Merezhko (Translator): On August 24, we were told that we would counterattack the Germans in order to cut off the 8 kilometer long corridor. Neither our regiment, nor any in the artillery and the aviation trained for this attack. We attacked blindly. We cut off the corridor, but suffered large losses. After 2 days the Germans sent additional forces and threw us back.

Narrator: The heavy losses and eventual German success have relegated these battles to the footnotes of history—another Soviet failure in the run-up to Stalingrad.

But there is another side to the story.

David Glantz: The Soviets suffered appalling casualties at the battle of Kotluban, both in terms of personnel and in terms of tanks, however, the net effect of this was that Paulus’ 6th Army now faced the dismal prospect of reducing Stalingrad city primarily with infantry since 14th Panzer Corps’ tanks were tied up elsewhere.

Narrator: The battles at Kotluban had pinned down Paulus’s tanks, leaving the German 6th Army to advance once again with little mechanized support. Glantz believes this gave Stalingrad a chance to survive.

On September 13th, 1942, the 6th Army finally attacked in force. The battle for the city was on.

David Glantz: In essence Stalingrad becomes a giant meat grinder. Into which 6th Army commits 1/3 of its force early September, by late November in will commit its entire army.

Sergei Khrushchev: And they fought against everything in each basement, in each flat in the apartment building and you can have one stage it was Germans, then Soviets, then Germans, then Soviets.

Narrator: Without the rugged treads and heavy guns of their tank units, the Germans were forced to fight street-to-street, building-to-building.

David Glantz: What happens is a German division will come in. It will come in with an average strength of medium-strong in terms of combat rating, within two weeks after entering combat it’s reduced in strength to weak or exhausted. On the other side of the firing line the Soviets are doing the same thing, but they are doing so in economy of force measure, they are feeding in just enough troops to keep the fire, fires of combat burning in downtown Stalingrad.

Narrator: The Soviets were holding on, just playing for time. Because north and south of the city, Red Army reinforcements were preparing to launch another major attack.

David Glantz: The Germans are trying, trying against time, fighting time and Soviet will, to squeeze out those final pockets of Soviet resistance. They will never do so because on the morning of 19 November German troops in the city of Stalingrad can now hear distant guns to the Northwest and to the South. Those guns are announcing the sounds of the opening of a Soviet offensive.

Kevin Farrell: Operation Uranus was the, the Soviet effort to close the gap, to conduct 2 massive pincers. One from the north and one to the south. The Soviets had done their intelligence and knew where the German lines were weak and they penetrated them.

Narrator: More than one million Red Army soldiers converged on the German troops. Three days later, the Soviet pincers closed near the city of Kalach, trapping over 270 thousand men.

For the Germans, one hope remained. The High Command turned to Field Marshal von Manstein, whom Hitler had previously sent north to Leningrad. Now, he was asked to head back south, and scrape together a rescue operation.

On the morning of December 12th, the 6th Army heard the distant sounds of battle as Manstein’s men approached.

But the Field Marshall, whose battle plan had conquered most of Western Europe, could not break through the Soviet ring.

As the guns of Manstein’s relief force faded into silence, reality set in for the encircled 6th Army.

The Soviets began their final assault with the largest artillery barrage in history. The Germans were on their last legs.

In January, Adolph Hitler promoted General Paulus to Field Marshal. But it was hardly an honor.

No Field Marshal had ever surrendered. It was the Fuehrer’s way of telling Paulus to fight to the death, or commit suicide. For Hitler, surrender in the city with the name of his nemesis was just not an option.

But Paulus, for the first time in his career, was unsure about following Hitler’s commands. He saw the carnage all around him. Two thirds of his 270 thousand men were dead. Those who survived were starving, freezing, and certain of defeat.

So on January 31st, 1943, Paulus defied his Fuehrer and walked into captivity. The battle for Stalingrad was effectively over.

Wigand Wuster (Translator): We got out of a destroyed house, out of the basement; some Russians were standing there with their machine guns. So we had our arms up of course. We were so exhausted that somehow we didn’t care. I was rather apathetic that I wasn’t even afraid of anything.

Narrator: A thousand miles away in Germany, the unthinkable news that the fabled 6th Army had fallen, sent shockwaves through the country.

Kevin Farrell: Throughout Germany once news of the defeat at Stalingrad was announced to the German people, that hundreds of thousands of German families that had soldiers engaged in the battle, they knew what that meant. They knew they had lost their sons, they had lost their husbands, that he was not coming home, in a way that no other battle or campaign had touched all of Germany at once on such a vast scale.

Narrator: The Battle for Stalingrad lasted more than seven months. It resulted in more than 750,000 Soviet casualties, and more than 850,000 from the Axis lines.

Of the half a million civilians who had once populated the city, only 1500 remained.

It was the winter of 1943, and while victory in Europe would not be official for more than two years, the inexorable German slide into defeat had begun.

The Soviets defended Stalingrad, and within 26 months put Berlin under siege.

The D-Day invasion turned the tide in the west, but if the Soviets had not turned the Nazis back at Stalingrad, the war might have reached a very different end.

David Glantz: The impact of the battle of Stalingrad on the course and outcome of World War Two, in particular the Soviet-German portion of the war is fundamental. It is fundamental because the battle of Stalingrad clearly indicated to all involved that Germany was going to lose the war.

END

Narrator: The summer of 1940. With Europe falling to the Nazis, Great Britain is in desperate need of American aid. But President Roosevelt has little faith in Winston Churchill. He worries that the new British Prime Minister lacks the mettle to stand up to Hitler. Churchill needs to prove him wrong.

Andrew Lambert: Churchill knew that if the American’s aren’t on side, the British are finished.

Narrator: The Prime Minister tries reason, diplomacy and threats…all to no avail. So on July 3rd, 1940, after only 55 days in office, he resorts to desperate measures—ordering a controversial and deadly mission (boom) against his allies, the French.

Robert Philpott: It was dreadful what we had to do.  I don’t have any pride in being part of it.

Narrator: Churchill’s decision that day… will change the course of history.

Narrator: On May 10th, 1940, Nazi armies simultaneously invade Belgium, Holland and France.  On the same day, Winston Churchill becomes the new Prime Minister of Britain. When Churchill takes office, he is confident that Germany will soon be defeated by the combined might of Britain and France.  The two nations had mobilized more than four million troops, and had signed a treaty stating that neither country would surrender to Germany, unless the other agreed.

Andrew Lambert: Well, on May the 10th, it doesn’t look too bad.  If the French can hold the Germans on the German/French border, the British will fight a naval and air war, blockading and bombarding the Germans, and eventually the Germans will be defeated.  It could be worse.

Narrator: But the allies are woefully unprepared for Hitler’s Blitzkrieg attack. Only five days after becoming Prime Minister, Churchill receives a phone call from the French high command.  Nazi tanks have broken through the French lines and are threatening ports less than 25 miles from the English coast.

Churchill is looking at the very real possibility of a German invasion of Britain.

Instantly, the Royal Navy becomes a crucial barrier to the Nazi advance.

Britain has the largest navy in the world, but in May of 1940, it is scattered around the globe protecting a vast empire.

Martin Gilbert: We simply didn’t have sufficient naval power to guarantee that we could stop a German armada crossing the Channel & the North Sea.

Narrator:  Desperate for reinforcements, Churchill turns to American President, Franklin Roosevelt.  Both are Navy men, a bond not lost on the incisive Prime Minister.

Andrew Lambert: For Churchill, who you have to remember is half American, the thing that matters in 1940 is the Americans.  From the start, in September ‘39, he’s writing to President Roosevelt, using this neat trick that they’ve both been in naval administration earlier in their careers, and he’s sounding Roosevelt out about coming to the assistance of Britain. He’s trying to make Roosevelt understand that this is democracy’s last throw, that if the British go down, America is next.

Narrator: Within hours of receiving the call from France, Churchill sends a telegram to Roosevelt with an urgent request for American warships.

Churchill: The scene has darkened swiftly. You may have a completely subjugated Nazified Europe established with astonishing swiftness, and the weight may be more than we can bear.  Immediate needs are the loan of fifty of your older destroyers.

Narrator: In Washington, Roosevelt is privately sympathetic.  But he is gearing up for an election, and has pledged to the American people that he will not embroil the nation in another European war.

Roosevelt: The United States of America shall and must remain un-entangled and free.

Galen Perras: Newspaper people are constantly making claims that Roosevelt is a closet interventionist, and he could lose the election. Public opinions polls consistently in the summer of 1940, consistently say we wish the allies would win, we don’t want American boys to die.

Narrator: With public opinion set against intervention, it is politically impossible for Roosevelt to send ships to Britain.

Two days after sending his request for aid, Churchill receives Roosevelt’s reply.  There will be no American warships. It is a major blow for the new Prime Minister.

He has been in office for just one week, and during that time, Hitler’s panzer divisions have advanced deep into French territory; the British forces in Europe have been cut off and are retreating toward the coast, and the French army is in disarray.  The prime minister can’t take “no” for an answer.

In his next telegram to Roosevelt, Churchill combines an appeal to American self-interest, with a thinly-veiled threat.

He warns that if Britain falls to the Nazis, his successor will be forced to give Hitler the Royal Navy in exchange for a favorable armistice agreement.

Churchill: You must not be blind to the fact that the sole remaining bargaining counter with Germany would be the fleet. Excuse me, Mr. President, putting this nightmare bluntly.

Galen Perras: He very much is trying to blackmail the Americans, he’s trying to impress upon them, we want to fight, give us the tools to fight, because If you don’t, the consequences are too horrendous to contemplate.  If the Germans can now get their hands on the best navy in the world, then Germany is capable of threatening the United States in a meaningful way.

Newsreel: The jaws of the Nazi whale were set to swallow Jonah. Churchill isn’t the only one foreshadowing a German invasion.

Newsreel: Conquer Britain.  Force the surrender of the British fleet.  Then, with the combined sea power of Germany, Britain, Italy, France and Japan, he could control the seas and tell us where to head in.

Narrator: But Churchill’s attempt to scare Roosevelt into action backfires.  Rather than seeing Britain as a viable ally, Roosevelt presumes it is only a matter of time before the British fall to the Nazis.

So instead of jumping to Britain’s aid and sending ships, the President begins preparing for a British defeat.

In Washington, Roosevelt summons Canadian diplomat Hugh Keenleyside for a meeting.  The President suggests that American and Canadian safety must now be the number one priority.

Since Canada is still technically part of the British Empire, Roosevelt requests that the Canadian prime minister, Mackenzie King, persuade Churchill to send the Royal Navy to Canada rather than surrendering it to the Nazis.

Warren Kimball: If the British fleet is in a Canadian port, Roosevelt has a finger in the pie.  That’s pretty shrewd, it was pretty secret.

Narrator: King is stunned by Roosevelt’s suggestion.

Galen Perras: It seemed to me that the United States was seeking to save itself at the expense of Britain. That it was an appeal to the selfishness of the Dominions at the expense of the British Isles. Those are pretty strong words. Mackenzie King is horrified.

Narrator: King sends a telegram to Churchill explaining Roosevelt’s position.

It is now abundantly clear to the Prime Minister how little faith Roosevelt has in Britain’s ability to defend herself.  Churchill recognizes that he will get no meaningful aid from America unless he can prove his country is capable of putting up a fight.

Meanwhile, the news from the front is getting worse.  The British army is being forced to retreat, and has to be evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk.

Then Italy shocks the Allies and enters the war on the side of the Germans.

Roosevelt: The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.

Narrator: As the Germans advance toward Paris, the French army collapses.

The government flees the capital, along with millions of refugees.

With Nazi storm troopers entering the city, French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud warns his British counterpart that France is on the verge of defeat.

Churchill finds himself confronting the same naval threat to Britain that he previously conjured up to scare America.

Galen Perras: Churchill was faced with the fact that if France surrenders, and it looks like it would be an abject, unconditional surrender, given the situation, what will happen to the French fleet, which is substantial?  Aircraft carriers, battleships.  If the Germans can get their hands on that undamaged fleet, their ability to threaten British interests goes up exponentially.

Andrew Lambert: The French fleet is the most powerful fleet in European waters after the Royal Navy, and it really does hold the balance of power.  If the French fleet goes over to the enemy, with Italy and Germany, the British are outnumbered at sea, and they will lose the war.

Narrator: Desperate for ships, Churchill sends another telegram to Roosevelt. He warns the president that the French fleet’s surrender is imminent, and that the threat to America is growing.

Churchill: This revolution in sea power might happen very quickly and certainly long before the US may be able to prepare against it. American interests are at stake in our battle.

But in Washington, Roosevelt is still convinced that sending warships to Churchill would be a terrible mistake.  His fears are fuelled by dispatches from Joseph Kennedy, his ambassador in London.

Joseph, the father of John F. Kennedy, is a vocal advocate of appeasing Hitler, not confronting him.

Joseph Kennedy: I don’t want to see this country go to war unless we’re attacked.

Andrew Lambert: Kennedy is a defeatist. He’s convinced the British will fall, and he’s convinced that Britain should not be backed, that the Americans would be well advised not to get any closer to the British. The British are beaten.

Warren Kimball: Roosevelt has this dilemma.  Do you send aid, and maybe it gets captured by the Germans?  Or do you keep it for yourself, and prepare to defend yourself?  And that’s going to take some time for him to decide.

Narrator: But Churchill has no more time. With no help from America, he will have to try and secure the French fleet before it is captured by the Germans.

The alliance between Britain and France states that neither country can surrender unless the other agrees.  Churchill now makes it clear that he will only allow the French to seek peace with the Germans under one condition:

Churchill: “Provided, but only provided, that the French fleet is sailed forthwith for British harbors.”

Narrator: But that night, the French prime minister resigns and a new, pro-German government forms in the south of France.  Ignoring Churchill’s request, they break the agreement with Britain, and ask Hitler for an armistice.

Churchill then makes a final appeal, directly to the head of the French Navy, Admiral Francois Darlan.

Martin Gilbert: Darlan had commanded the French fleet for many years and was highly respected in Britain, Churchill knew him quite well.

Narrator: Darlan inspires absolute loyalty in his men, and has told Churchill at a previous meeting that he will never surrender his ships to Hitler.

So Churchill sends a British envoy to suggest to Darlan that he order his fleet to Britain before the armistice with the Germans is formally signed.  Darlan repeats his solemn assurance that he will never let his fleet fall into German hands.

Churchill hopes this means the ships will soon be on their way.  But as the days pass, the French Navy remained doesn’t move.

William L. Shirer: This is William L. Shirer speaking from the forest at Compiègne, where Adolf Hitler today is handing his armistice terms to France.

Narrator: Hitler’s terms are clear—the French can continue to administer unoccupied southern France, but the rest of the country will be controlled by the Nazis.  Additionally, all French ships must return immediately to their home ports, where they will remain under German supervision.

The new, collaborationist French government agrees.

It takes several hours for the news to reach London.  Churchill is horrified to read what his French allies have signed.

Martin Gilbert: Churchill was absolutely astonished, he was very frightened.  At first he didn’t believe it, he couldn’t believe that the French would agree to such a thing.  He felt betrayed in many ways by Admiral Darlan.

Narrator: Admiral Darlan is still trying to keep his promise to Churchill.

On hearing the armistice conditions, Darlan sends a message to every captain in the French Navy, ordering them to scuttle their ships if the Germans make any attempts to take control.

By issuing this order, Darlan believes he is honoring his pledge, and trusts that Churchill will agree.

Martin Gilbert: The War Cabinet had a long discussion about what should be done.  And the top secret annex of the war cabinet minutes has Churchill’s response: “The Prime Minister said that in a matter so vital to the safety of the whole British Empire we could not afford to rely on the word of Admiral Darlan.”

Narrator: Many ministers are in favor of negotiating directly with individual French captains in hopes of persuading them to ignore the armistice with Germany and join Britain’s war effort.  Churchill is already contemplating more drastic measures.

Martin Gilbert: Churchill wound up the meeting with the following words: “The prime minister agreed but stressed that in no circumstances must we run the mortal risk of allowing these ships to fall into the hands of the enemy.  Rather than that, we should have to fight and sink them.”

Andrew Lambert: Churchill really wasn’t interested in papers, promises, the words of Admiral Darlan.  This is a total war for national survival.  If the Germans win, Britain is finished.

Narrator: As frantic preparations are being made in Britain to resist the German invasion, Churchill continues to plead with President Roosevelt for American warships. But after seeing how France had fallen and believing the British will soon follow suit, Roosevelt is less inclined than ever to send ships.

Instead, he asks Congress for four billion dollars to bulk up the U.S. Navy, believing it might soon be called upon to defend America from German forces bolstered by French and British ships.

Churchill sums up his frustration in a telegram to his ambassador in Washington.

Churchill: “I don’t think words count for much now.  Only force of events can govern them.”

Narrator: But the window of opportunity for action is closing.  Under the terms of the armistice agreement, the French ships will be under German control within days.

With no time to lose, Churchill makes a fateful decision.

Narrator: Churchill orders the Admiralty to draw up a plan for securing the French fleet.  By persuasion…or by force.  The mission is called Operation Catapult.

Andrew Lambert: Operation Catapult is high stakes.  If it goes wrong, if it goes badly wrong, Churchill’s finished, Britain’s finished, the war is over.  This is Churchill saying, we need to do this to stay in this game.

Narrator: Operation Catapult will involve simultaneous actions around the world. In coordinated dawn raids, the British Navy will seize the 14 French warships, several submarines, and almost 200 smaller ships that are sitting in British ports, preparing to return to France.

At Alexandria, in Egypt, a battleship and four cruisers are trapped inside a British base.

But the most important targets are in French Algeria, within the fortified harbor of Mers El Kébir, near Oran.

Moored inside is the main French battle fleet, including the two ships that Churchill fears the most.

The Dunkerque and the Strasbourg are modern battle cruisers that can outclass most British ships. At Mers El Kébir, they are supported by two older battleships, six destroyers and at least two submarines—a deadly strike force.

Hoping to avoid a dangerous confrontation, Churchill personally drafts an ultimatum for Marcel Gensoul, the French Admiral in charge of Mers El Kébir.  It presents three choices.

Churchill: A) Sail with us and continue the fight, B) Sail to a British port, C) Sail to a French port in the West Indies or to the United States. If you refuse these fair offers, I must with profound regret, require you to sink your ships within six hours.

Narrator: Off Gibraltar, the British assemble a fleet to deliver the ultimatum.

It is called Force H and includes the world’s largest battleship, the HMS Hood.

In command is Admiral James Somerville.

The night before setting sail, Somerville voices his reservations about the mission, and the likely French reaction.

But as Force H travels through the night toward the Algerian coast, Somerville receives Churchill’s uncompromising reply.

Churchill: “If the French will not accept any of your alternatives, they are to be destroyed.”

Narrator: Operation Catapult gets underway at dawn.

Troops begin boarding all French ships in British ports.

In Plymouth, England, one of the targets is the Surcouf, the world’s largest submarine.

Hearing noises upstairs, the French captain wakes his men and goes to investigate.

As the British search the Surcouf, the ship’s engineer destroys records and codebooks, while the captain confronts the intruders.

Narrator: Moments later, violence erupts.

The French engineer and three British servicemen are killed.

Although the remaining French crew eventually surrenders, it is an inauspicious start for Operation Catapult.

As the sun rises over the Mediterranean, Force H arrives at Mers El Kébir, ready to present Churchill’s ultimatum.

Robert Philpott is a 20-year-old gunnery officer-in-training on the British flagship, HMS Hood.

Robert Philpott: Really it was all very peaceful. Nobody was doing any firing; there was a fairly happy mood on board. We all firmly believed that the ships would come out and join us. We know the French sailors were just anxious to get on with the war. So we didn’t think there would be a great problem.

Narrator: Many of the enlisted French sailors are equally optimistic.

André Jaffre is an 18-year-old gunner on the battleship, Bretagne.

André Jaffre (in French): Our officer scrutinizes the horizon, then looks for his binoculars and smiles.  What is it, captain?  The British have arrived!  Really?  Yes. We were happy!  We thought they’d come to get us to continue fighting against the Nazis.

Narrator: Leon Le Roux is a 19-year-old messenger aboard the French flagship, Dunkerque.

Leon Le Roux (in French): Rumors traveled fast, so we found out quickly that there was a British fleet outside the port of Oran.  And we heard that a small torpedo boat, the Foxhound, had entered the harbor and so we thought it was a bit odd.

Narrator: The Foxhound is sent ahead to open negotiations while the rest of the British fleet waits offshore.  On board is Captain Hooky Holland, a fluent French-speaker who had served as the naval attaché in Paris.

The Foxhound signals to Admiral Marcel Gensoul that Captain Holland wants a meeting.  Gensoul is immediately offended that the British are sending a mere captain to confer with him.

He orders the Foxhound to leave the harbor immediately.  But Holland has orders to deliver the ultimatum, and sets off toward the French flagship in a small motor launch.

Andrew Lambert: One of the big problems at Mers El Kébir is that French Admiral Gensoul is really not a man to take decisions.  Gensoul doesn’t have any judgment, he refuses to even meet Captain Holland, who was well known to him.  Just obstructive, negative.  Gensoul either doesn’t want to believe, or refuses to understand that the British are serious.

Narrator: Holland is intercepted in the middle of the bay.  Prevented from meeting the French Admiral in person, he hands over the written demands.  The French are given six hours to accept one of Churchill’s options, or face a British attack.

The deadline is set for 3:30 pm.

When Gensoul finally reads the terms, he is incensed.  He orders his ships to raise steam and prepare for action, then sends a hand-written reply to Captain Holland, stating that the French fleet will meet force with force.

André Jaffre (in French): My friend who works on the bridge. He says, ‘The English have sent us an ultimatum and we are not moving. We are staying here.” Now us simple sailors didn’t really know what was in the ultimatum. Then there was a message: return aboard immediately. We were being recalled to the ship. And then we receive the order, everyone to combat posts.

Narrator: From the HMS Hood, Admiral Sommerville watches the sudden French activity as he receives Gensoul’s reply.

Under strict orders to prevent the French ships from escaping, Sommerville orders planes from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal to drop mines at the entrance to the port.

Leon Le Roux (in French): At 1 o’clock, I was on deck stretching my legs and I could see some British planes flying overhead. They were laying mines at the mouth of the harbor.  We thought; this is beginning to smell like trouble.  We wondered why they were blocking us in.  We were trapped.

Narrator: By now, Gensoul has relayed the situation back to his superiors in mainland France. Insulted that Churchill did not trust him to keep the French fleet out of German hands, Admiral Darlan authorizes a call for reinforcements.

All French forces in the Mediterranean are ordered to Mers El Kébir to support Gensoul.

Narrator: With the deadline of 3:30 fast-approaching, Gensoul receives word that reinforcements are on the way.  Playing for time, he invites Captain Holland aboard.  The British suspend their deadline to allow negotiations to proceed.

Robert Philpott: I think the French Admiral was doing a certain amount of bluffing. I don’t think he really thought that we would, when it came to it, open fire.

Narrator: When Holland boards the French flagship, Gensoul shows him. Admiral Darlan’s message from ten days earlier ordering all French sailors to sabotage their ships if the Germans try to take control.

Like Darlan, Gensoul believes the missive should be enough to allay British fears.

But in London, the British Admiralty intercepts Darlan’s call for back up and warns Churchill that French reinforcements may arrive at any time.  Churchill quickly decides that the time has come for action.  He issues a final message to Admiral Somerville.  His orders are short and direct.

Churchill: Settle matters quickly.

Narrator: Somerville immediately signals the French flagship that if no agreement is reached within 30 minutes, he will open fire.

Robert Philpott: This, of course, was pretty devastating news to the lower deck, on which I was at the time.  We couldn’t imagine opening fire on our friends and allies.

Narrator: The deadline comes and goes without an accord.

This photograph captures the moment when Captain Holland says goodbye to Admiral Gensoul. He later reports ‘our leave taking was friendly.’ But Holland knows that feeling is about to change.

There are only a few men left alive who remember what happened next. Almost 70 years later, they still carry the emotional scars of the battle of Mers El Kébir.

At 5:54 PM, Admiral Somerville unleashes one of the most concentrated big gun broadsides in history.  A French camera crew films the entire attack.

André Jaffre (in French): What’s going on?  We didn’t have time to take a breath. Another salvo and a third.

Leon Le Roux (in French): I can’t describe what it was like.  There was fear, terror, a deafening noise that makes your ears bleed and you think about yourself, of course, but you also think about the others.

Narrator: Unable to maneuver inside the harbor, the French ships are sitting ducks.

Robert Philpott: It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Narrator: The 15-inch shells from the HMS Hood are devastatingly effective.  The third salvo scores a direct hit on André Jaffre’s ship, the Bretagne.

André Jaffre (in French): A flaming ball, a shell, flew across my battery. It exploded below me, right amongst the fuel and the ammunition. I looked around me and saw a friend of mine who had put his head too near the gun cover, and had his head blown off. He was completely decapitated, the blood dripped off me. I wanted to be sick. I was still next to my gun and I began to singe, my feet were burning.  My shoes were on fire and I was pleading with the Lord and the Virgin Mary: “What’s happening to me?  I don’t want to die aged 18.” The shells kept on falling. I remember men shouting “Kill me, kill me” because they were so badly burned, or they had lost limbs. They were asking to be finished off.

Leon Le Roux (in French): It’s just panic, total panic. So many shells and you wonder how much damage is this causing and how many more will they kill?

André Jaffre (in French): I saw the water. It was black with smoking oil and small flames, not like gasoline, but like a deep fryer, bubbling away. In there, were men who were struggling and screaming. It was horrific. They continued the shelling so I decided to jump in. I wanted to go as deep as possible to be sheltered from the gunfire. But when I jumped in, I fell into boiling oil, so I let myself sink.  I was so burnt.  It was so painful, so I tried to swim underwater as far as possible from the boat, but I needed to breathe, and every time I surfaced I came up into boiling oil.  So I had to breathe in smoke and oil and dive again. I did that for as long as I could.

Narrator: As André struggles in the water, he turns to see the fate of his ship, the Bretagne, and its crew of more than a thousand men.

André Jaffre (in French): Eventually I found an area with no oil. I turned onto my back and from there I saw an appalling sight.  The Bretagne was capsizing completely.

Leon Le Roux (in French): It happened quickly.  In 20 seconds she capsized.  20 seconds!  On the Bretagne there were almost 1,000 dead.  Everyone was killed. Everyone. And that, that was the end of those poor men.  That’s what I saw. Terrible and apocalyptic things that I wish with all my heart I will never see again.

Narrator: After only ten minutes, Admiral Somerville gives the order to cease fire.

Robert Philpott: It was shattering to see, to see what we had just done.  There was smoke, fires burning everywhere.  It was a scene of utter devastation. I think the whole crew were very upset.  It was not something we were very proud about.

Narrator: The carnage is massive. Admiral Somerville had sunk the Bretagne and disabled the battle cruiser Dunkerque, as well as other, less important ships.  But on closer inspection, the British realize they have failed to complete their mission.

The powerful battle cruiser Strasbourg and five of the destroyers had somehow slipped through the minefield and escaped.

And within the harbor, the casualties are horrific.  1,297 French sailors are dead, and three hundred and fifty others are wounded.

The death toll is higher than that of any single action taken against the Germans since the war began.

Elsewhere, Operation Catapult is more successful. At the base in Alexandria, the British demobilized the French Squadron without any bloodshed.  And in Britain, almost 200 vessels, including the submarine Surcouf, were seized and now lay under British control.

Not surprisingly, the French are incensed.

Andrew Lambert: There really is a risk that the French will declare war.  Had Admiral Darlan had his way, the French would have gone to war straight away.  He’s apoplectic.

Narrator: The French respond with a retaliatory bombing raid on the British naval base in Gibraltar.  But they inflict little damage and cause no casualties.

Still reeling from the German occupation and overwhelmed by the millions of starving refugees who had fled south, the French government is ill-equipped for any further military action.  Instead, they sever diplomatic relations with Britain for the duration of the war.

Leon La Roux: (in French): We thought, ‘Who are these English savages?’  It was hate, just hate.  Allies the day before and enemies the day after. They come and sink us.  What do you expect the French to think?  It was betrayal, yes. But not only a betrayal, it was murder.  When you have your hands tied behind your back and the barrel of a gun is pointing at you.  Would you call that a crime? Yes, it’s a real crime.  It’s murder.

Narrator: The Nazis use the attack to sow anti-British sentiment in occupied France. Posters soon appear showing a drowning French sailor, and depicting Churchill as an octopus, grasping at the French Empire.

Churchill himself is horrified by the scale of the French casualties.

Martin Gilbert: When Churchill got the news of Mers El Kébir, he was physically sick, he was devastated.  He obviously had great difficulty in knowing how to explain it, because he thought that there would be outrage in the commons that we had fired upon an ally.

Narrator: On July 4th 1940—only his 54th day in office—Churchill makes a speech to the House of Commons justifying his decision. It is later broadcast to the nation.

Churchill: The transference of these ships to Hitler would have endangered the security both of Great Britain and the United States. We therefore had no choice but to act as we did.

Narrator: John Colville, Churchill’s private secretary, writes about the speech in his diary.

“He told the whole story of Oran and the House listened enthralled and amazed.  Gasps of surprise were audible.  I heard him say ‘this is heartbreaking for me.”

Martin Gilbert: When it was over, he started crying, he began to cry, he was quite overwhelmed.

Narrator: The reaction from the House is not what Churchill expected.

Martin Gilbert: He was astonished that the house went berserk, with cheers and enthusiasm, and of course with relief, a tremendous sense of relief, that these damned warships were not going to be the stepping stone, one way or another, of a German invasion of Britain.

Newsreel: “The problem of the French fleet has been solved in the only way we could allow it to be solved.”

Narrator: The British press and public thoroughly approved of the attack.

Newsreel: “From the royal navy and from the nation, there is wholehearted support for the government’s action.”

Narrator: But for Churchill, the most important reaction will come from America.

Martin Gilbert: Roosevelt, when he heard of what Britain had done, finally laid to rest his lingering doubts that Britain didn’t have the strength or the guts to carry on. Mers El Kébir showed that, in a curious way, we weren’t beaten, we could hit back, we could act in what we considered to be our national interest i.e. survival.

Andrew Lambert: It impresses the hell out of the American political class. It shows that what Joe Kennedy says is wrong.  If the British are going down, they’re going to go down in flames they’re not going to surrender.  Churchill is showing the Americans that the British mean business. This is Churchill saying I’m Winston Churchill and we’re going to finish this.

Narrator: There is even some evidence that President Roosevelt knew Churchill’s plans in advance, and encouraged him to go ahead with the attack.

The British war cabinet minutes from July 3rd 1940 reveal that as the negotiations were taking place in Mers El Kébir, Churchill received a telegram about Roosevelt from Lord Lothian, Churchill’s ambassador in Washington.

“I asked him if American public opinion would support forcible seizure of these ships.  He said certainly.”

Martin Gilbert: Lord Lothian asked President Roosevelt for his opinion, and he expressed it at a crucial moment: 11.30 on the morning of July 3rd.  It made a tremendous impact on the War Cabinet, that the President of the United States, on whom they knew, everybody knew, we were totally dependent if we were to continue at war, wanted us to take action to prevent the French fleet from falling into German hands.

Narrator: It was only after receiving this message that Churchill gave the order to ‘settle matters quickly.’ The timing has led some to conclude that Churchill only acted to win Roosevelt’s approval.

Andrew Lambert: The French will often say that Churchill only did this to impress Roosevelt, to get the Americans on side.  I don’t see that as a criticism.  If the Americans aren’t on side the British are finished.

Narrator: The question is, did Roosevelt realize that Churchill would authorize an all-out attack if the French failed to surrender their ships?

The evidence lies in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, where a forgotten letter has recently been uncovered.

The letter was sent to Roosevelt by Ambassador Lothian one day after the attack.

Warren Kimball: Scrawled at the bottom of the note: ‘You will see that Winston Churchill has taken the action in regard to the French fleet which we discussed and you approved.” Churchill has shelled, or authorized shelling, of the French fleet, Roosevelt agreed with Lothian that forcible seizure of the French fleet was the way to go.  Did Roosevelt know ahead of time that Churchill was going to shell the French fleet? You decide.

Narrator: Whether Roosevelt knew about the attack beforehand or not, it had a profound effect on his attitude toward Britain.

Newsreel: This is the record of one of the most momentous transactions in our history.  The taking over of some the 50 destroyers from the United States.

Narrator: Just two months after the attack, Roosevelt gave Churchill his ships.

Newsreel: It is the cooperation of the two great English-speaking peoples, in the fight against Nazi aggression.  These destroyers now belong to Britain, and in exchange American warships will have the use of certain British bases.  Thus at one stroke, a double edged sword is created to hold off the menace of Hitler.

Warren Kimball: What the shelling of the French fleet set in motion was an ever stronger American belief that helping the Brits was worth the effort.  We weren’t going to be throwing away American war material that could be desperately needed in the event this war continues, which seemed likely.  That they were reliable. That when they said they were going to fight, they fought.  Maybe they fought dirty.  But they fought.

Martin Gilbert: As a result of Mers El Kébir, Roosevelt said ‘these people are not going to give in.’  Therefore, I can send them the supplies they desperately need. The guns the ammunition, the aircraft, the tanks, because they’re not going to give in.

Roosevelt: I ask this congress for authority and for funds.

Narrator: In effect, Mers El Kébir paved the way for the steady flow of American aid to Britain.

Roosevelt: Our most immediate role is to act as an arsenal for them as well as for ourselves.

Newsreel: Ships, planes, tanks, guns, that is our purpose and our pledge.

Narrator: But despite the positive outcome for Britain, Churchill’s actions remain deeply unpopular in France.

The French believe history has proven that Admiral Darlan and his Navy would never have submitted to German control.

In November of 1942, the Nazi’s occupied southern France and attempted to seize the remaining French ships from their base in Toulon.

After surviving Mers El Kébir, André Jaffre was stationed in Toulon when the Germans approached.

André Jaffre (in French): In the middle of the night everyone was woken up. In the distance, we could hear the Germans, the clicking of the tanks.

Narrator: True to their word, the French sailors immediately carried out the order Admiral Darlan had given them more than two years earlier.

Using fire, explosives and brute force, they sabotaged their ships.

André Jaffre (in French): I was there when we scuttled the fleet.  I sabotaged my equipment and my 90 mm gun.  I gave it a hammering.  I broke the fuses and smashed the magazines. And then the Germans came.

Narrator: The French disabled close to 70 ships before the Germans could stop them.

André Jaffre (in French): They arrived all pleased, thinking we’re going to have a nice fleet, and schtt, nothing!  We scuttled everything. They were furious.  They had trekked for miles to get these boats. We were laughing!  I remember laughing with a friend, but a swift hit with a gun butt in your kidneys, a kick, and they were hitting us on the ground. Bastards!

Narrator: For many in the French Navy, Toulon was the definitive proof that the attack at Mers El Kébir should never have happened—that the French fleet would never have ended up under German control.

Within days of the scuttling, Churchill received a scathing letter from Admiral Darlan.

Darlan: “Prime Minister, you said to me: “Darlan, I hope you will never surrender the fleet.”  I replied, “There is no question of doing so.” It seems to me that you did not believe my word. The destruction of the fleet at Toulon has just proved that I was right.”

Narrator: Seventy years after the attack at Mers El Kébir, some French survivors still remain bitter.

Leon Le Roux (in French): Winston Churchill should have believed the orders given to the French fleet and signed by Admiral Darlan. I do not forgive Churchill, I do not forgive the British government.  I will never forgive.

Narrator: But others, like André Jaffre, bare no grudge toward the British sailors.

André Jaffre (in French): It’s not betrayal.  It was war and everything that comes with it. Have you ever seen an intelligent war?  Let’s say I was sad, deeply sad to know that our English friends had sunk us, but what can you do?  I speak as an equal, as a French sailor to a British sailor.  It’s our bosses who decide.  And it’s always the same ones who suffer.

Martin Gilbert: In his speech in the house of commons, Churchill said that history would be the judge. What has history decided?  For the French it was almost a war crime that Britain then killed more than 1,200 French sailors. For the British it was the only way that Britain could survive.

Robert Philpott: We had no choice. If the Americans had been in the war at that stage, we could have perhaps coped. But the Royal Navy wasn’t big enough to cope with the German fleet and the French fleet so, distressing it was, but it had to be done. And in wartime, one has to do distasteful things.

Narrator: And although there were terrible consequences for all the men involved in the attack, Churchill’s decision provided the foundation for the powerful alliance between America and Britain.

Without that, the Nazi menace might never have been defeated.

Program Transcript:

NARRATOR: Spring, 1946.  Ten months after the end of World War II, an explosion rocked the Pacific off the coast of Hawaii. America had just destroyed one of Japan’s most advanced weapon systems.

CARLO CARLUCCI: I was a lookout. When I got to look through the periscope.  It was a monster, believe me.

NARRATOR: Rather than a belated attack against the defeated Japanese, the sinking of this top secret submarine was a preemptive measure for the looming Cold War—A brazen decision by the Americans to keep the sub out of Soviet hands. The plan worked, and the weapon lay undisturbed at the bottom of the ocean for six decades, until a team of underwater explorers from the University of Hawaii located its remains. The discovery sparked a new examination of the long-forgotten supersub.

ERIC GROVE: It can go around Cape Horn and then go around the Cape of Good Hope.

CARL BOYD: Thirty seven thousand miles.

ERIC GROVE: That’s right, this gave you enormous strategic options.  You could basically attack anywhere in the world.  This was a global weapon system.

NARRATOR: A system that defied conventional design, and married the tactical advantages of sea and sky. As America scrambled to build nuclear bombs, and Germany experimented with powerful rockets, Japan hoped its secret weapon would change the course of the war.

TITLE: JAPANESE SUPERSUB

NARRATOR: 1941. Six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Imperial Navy dominated the Pacific.

ERIC GROVE: The Japanese strike in December, 1941 because they see it as a window of opportunity. Japan temporarily has the most powerful Navy in the Pacific, let’s cash that in.

NARRATOR: The Japanese plan was simple.  Hit hard, and knock the Americans off balance.  They believed this would force an American retreat—leaving Japan as the sole superpower in the region. The architect of Japan’s Pacific strategy was Harvard-educated Admiral, Isoroku Yamamoto. Yamamoto had mixed feelings about the campaign.

OSAMU TAGAYA: In terms of his own personal opinions, he was very much against a war with the United States, which he felt was essentially unwinnable.  But at the same time, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the combined fleet, he felt he had to come up with some kind of strategy to make a Japanese war on the United States a viable proposition.

ERIC GROVE: But nobody realizes more than he how wrong it can all go. And his gambler’s instinct tells him that it will have to be very long odds.

OSAMU TAGAYA: He wants some capability of, say, taking the war to American home waters, really shock the American populace by some bold gesture.

NARRATOR: His gesture:  The bombing of Pearl Harbor. The attack sank five battleships, three destroyers, and several small ships. But the Japanese mistimed their mission, because on December 7^th, all three American aircraft carriers were at sea—and out of harms way. Japan also miscalculated America’s will to fight back. One day after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. declared war against Japan. The fight was on.  Both nations scrambled for advantage. The U.S. cranked up its industry and relied on its manpower—aiming to overwhelm the Japanese with superior numbers. But for Japan, the challenge was different.  Knowing he would soon be outmanned and outgunned, Admiral Yamamoto needed more surgical strikes. In the months following Pearl Harbor, he strategized about how to bring the war across the Pacific to America—54 hundred miles away. He looked to the success of the German U-boats—the deadly Nazi subs that were preying on ships in the Atlantic. From February to May, 1942, the U-boats sank 348 vessels, preventing millions of tons of American supplies from reaching Europe. Several of the ships were torpedoed within sight of New York City and Boston. If German subs could terrorize the U.S. East Coast, could Japanese subs do the same in the West? To find out, Yamamoto ordered a series of test missions. He sent a sub to fire shells at a refinery in California.  It didn’t cause much damage, but did trigger fears of a Japanese invasion.

ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE AUDIO: Along the Pacific, the hunt is on for the Jap submarine that brought the war to U.S. soil. Lying offshore, the marauder opened up against oil refineries near the beach at Santa Barbara. A piece of shell made in Tokyo: it did little harm, but it was the first fired in this war against our own shores.

NARRATOR: The following day, coastal artillery brigades fired at what they thought were enemy planes. The guns were shooting at shadows—no sightings were actually confirmed. But the panicked American reaction did signify to Yamamoto that his instincts were correct.  If he could strike the Americans at home, he might make them think twice about an all-out war with Japan. To instill such fear, he would need more firepower than a few small subs could deliver. An aircraft carrier and fleet of bombers would be ideal, but with the U.S. on high alert, no carrier could sneak up on the West Coast. Yamamoto needed something unexpected.  His solution: A superweapon that would unite the firepower of an aircraft carrier with the stealth of a submarine. If it could be built, his machine would rewrite the rules of warfare. The concept of putting a plane on a sub wasn’t new. But conventional submarines of the day were only capable of carrying one small plane for reconnaissance and targeting. Yamamoto wanted sub-launched airplanes that could be used as an offensive weapon, not just a scout. He ordered another test mission. This time, a small, submarine-launched aircraft dropped fire bombs over Oregon in the hopes of sparking a forest fire. The fire failed to catch, but like the Santa Barbara mission, it confirmed that a submarine could slip past U.S. coastal defenses and strike unsuspecting civilian populations.

STEPHEN McFARLAND: To be able to reach your destination and launch an air attack undiscovered, undetected, would give the Japanese an advantage that no other Navy, that no other Air Force had during the war.

NARRATOR: Yamamoto ordered his engineers to design a fleet of underwater aircraft carriers capable of sailing undetected across the Pacific…launching squadrons of high-tech bombers to attack West Coast cities…then disappearing without a trace. The admiral even expected his subs to be able to reach the East Coast. He hoped to terrorize America with attacks on New York City, and possibly even Washington DC.

ERIC GROVE: So you’ve got a whole potential here for attacks in the coastal area where of course a large proportion of the American population is concentrated.

CARL BOYD: That’s right.

OSAMU TAGAYA: And New York City for example. It’s the dense concentration of population.

ERIC GROVE: And if you’re attacking with a few tens of aircraft as in the original plans, you could perhaps go for important communications and indeed iconic targets.

NARRATOR: The Admiral names the sub the I-400, and declared it top secret. But still to be determined was whether Japanese engineers could bring Yamamoto’s ambitious vision to life. Their window for success was a small one.  In America, the U.S. had accelerated its own work on a super-weapon that could change the course of the war. The effort was code-named The Manhattan Project. It was headed up by Robert Oppenheimer, a professor of physics at U.C. Berkeley. Oppenheimer gathered the nation’s top engineers and physicists—challenging them to overcome the enormous technical challenges of splitting the atom and creating an atomic bomb. The Americans worked at a furious pace, fearing that the Germans and Japanese were moving forward with nuclear bombs of their own. Meanwhile, Japan’s super-submarine was running into obstacles.  In Tokyo, naval architects were struggling to find a design that could fulfill all of Yamamoto’s needs.

ERIC GROVE: You’re going to need a very large and impressive submarine indeed.  You’re going to have to go into new territory, in fact, as far as submarine design is concerned.

NARRATOR: The standard submarine at that time was shaped like a cigar, with a cylindrical hull up to 300 feet long. But no one knew whether that conventional design would be able to support a heavy hanger and three attack airplanes.

ERIC GROVE: You’re going to need a very large hangar beginning there, moving past the super structure and ending up about there. What do you do with the navigational area here—you have to move it to the side of the ship and on top as well so that’s a lot bigger. These contain very large aircraft, that’s not long enough so you need a much, much longer flying-off deck and therefore you need a much, much bigger submarine. This is a transformation in the whole concept of the submarine.

HAROLD VINCENT: When we assemble these pieces, we’ll end up with a scale-model submarine that’s about the same as a full-size submarine, which is ten times longer than it is wide.

NARRATOR: Dr. Harold Vincent is an ocean engineer at the University of Rhode Island.  He has his doubts about the practicality of the design.

HAROLD VINCENT: This tube represents the watertight hangar, the three aircraft, and the bombs that the aircraft carry. So we’ll seal off the end of the hangar here, so let’s see what happens when we put it in.

STUDENT: So that tilts right over with that on top.

HAROLD VINCENT: Capsizes right over and sinks. So therefore they had to come up with some other method to be able to put a heavy hangar with all that aircraft up high out of the water.

NARRATOR: Adding the hanger to a conventional sub clearly wasn’t the answer.  The next, seemingly obvious approach would have been to scale up the size of the central cylinder to lower the center of gravity.

CARL BOYD: Well, a large single cylinder would be extremely heavy in weight, would have to have very thick walls in order to withstand sea pressure down to three hundred or three hundred and thirty feet in order to hold this above the surface part of the submarine totally stable was simply impossible having this traditional submarine design.

HAROLD VINCENT:  Tape up the other end, and then we can tape these…

NARRATOR: The Japanese came up with an innovative alternative.

HAROLD VINCENT: Harold: So now we’ll try this twin hull design. Now, it’s pretty stable!

Student:  All right, so it rights itself now instead of just tipping right over.

NARRATOR: A twin-cylinder hull gave the giant sub the necessary width to carry the extra weight.

ERIC GROVE: So you have these two cylinders which are broader and stronger.

CARL BOYD: The two cylinders at mid-ship of course lent to greater stability.

ERIC GROVE: Absolutely.  Well you can see it’s much flatter and more stable clearly.

NARRATOR: With the largest design problem solved, construction plans were drawn up for the new, monster sub. The I-400 went into production in January of 1943. Yamamoto needed it fast. The Japanese were losing ground in the Pacific. The previous June, Yamamoto had ordered a surprise attack on the American fleet at Midway Island, hoping to sink the aircraft carriers he had missed at Pearl Harbor. But the Americans had cracked the Japanese naval code, saw the attack coming, and were able to set an ambush of their own. In three days of bitter fighting, American bombers sank four of Yamamoto’s aircraft carriers.  It was a devastating defeat for Japan. Their carrier fleet was decimated and thousands of soldiers were dead. The I-400s were now even more vital. But with serious shortages of steel and manpower in Japan, Yamamoto could only commission eighteen of the giant submarines. With work on the first I-400 underway, the Japanese Navy began development on the secret bomber that would be carried in the watertight hanger on the deck of the sub. The plane was called the Seiran, meaning “mist on a fair day.”

ATSUSHI ASAMURA: Like the name indicates, the plane would appear suddenly like a mist– carried by a submarine that would surface once it comes near a target, moving like a ninja. That is how it came to be named “Seiran.” This is a very poetic name.

NARRATOR: Lieutenant Atsushi Asamura is the only living member of the elite Seiran squad. At an annual Shinto ceremony, he honors his lost comrades.  He still recalls the excitement of being part of the top-secret project.

ATSUSHI ASAMURA: We were very surprised when we saw the Seiran for the first time. I thought, “Is this really a plane that can be loaded onto a submarine?”

I believe not too many people knew about Seiran even in the Japanese Navy. The many tests and repeated experiments were done in top secret.

NARRATOR: With a maximum speed of more than 200 miles per hour and the capacity to carry a seventeen hundred pound bomb, the newly-designed Seiran would be an intimidating warplane. But the Japanese aircraft designers first had some technical puzzles to work though. Although the I-400 was wider than any other submarine of its day, the airplane hangar was only eleven feet in diameter.

OSAMU TAGAYA: Here is the hangar on the I-400 into which this aircraft has to fit.  And here we have a head-on view of the Seiran.

ERIC GROVE: In the same scale.

OSAMU TAGAYA: In the same scale.  You know, the fuselage will fit in there, but gosh, you’ve got the wings, you’ve got the tail plate and it just doesn’t fit.

NARRATOR: To accommodate the tight quarters, the Japanese designed wings much like those on the Grumman Hellcat—the most potent aircraft-carrier-based fighter in the U.S. arsenal. To minimize the Hellcat’s profile for storage below-decks, the wings rotated ninety degrees and folded back flat against the fuselage. The Seiran went even further. It had a tail fin that folded down to reduce height.

OSAMU TAGAYA: Osamu: When you do all of that, it fits, very neatly.

NARRATOR: But there was still one major problem the Japanese designers had to solve. Before the Seirans could be launched, their engines had to be warmed up—a process that took up to twenty minutes. Starting the engines in the hangar with the vessel submerged would have exposed the crew to deadly carbon monoxide fumes. But warming the engines on the surface meant exposing the sub to radar and air attacks. Once again, the engineers needed an innovative solution. At a small airport in Connecticut, former air force gunner Craig McBurney knows all about the problems of warming an engine before takeoff. This is his pet project, a rare, 28-cylinder Corsair engine.  It’s larger than the Seiran’s engine, but shares similar characteristics.

CRAIG MCBURNEY:Okay, I’m going to clear prop.

CREW:  Clear prop.

NARRATOR: As with many World War II-era aircraft, starting the engine cold is a haphazard and messy affair.

CREW: Right about now is when we start using bad language.

NARRATOR: The problem is the viscosity of the cold engine oil.

craig McBurnEy: You can see how thick the oil is because it hasn’t been heated up and you know how critical the tolerances are inside the aircraft engine, how tight they are, and how small the passages are, so it would really make a significant difference trying to pump that heavy, thick oil through an aircraft engine.

NARRATOR: Warming the oil makes a noticeable difference.

craig McBurnEy: We heat it up to about 60 or 70 degrees Celsius, which is 140, 160 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s the same oil that’s just been heated up with the preheater.  Right through it. Almost, like pouring water. What a difference. And you can imagine how critical that would be to have the engine heat up that much faster, especially in a combat situation.

NARRATOR: McBurney uses an external tank to preheat the oil.

CRAIG MCBURNEY: Inside this container, we have the main engine oil tank here for feeding the engine oil. Then we’ve also installed our own pre-oil tank with a heater on it. And with the pre-heater on it we’re able to raise the temperature quite a bit – we can get the temperature up to about 120 degrees. So we need to open this valve. And we’ll go ahead and open the engine oil tank valve as well.

NARRATOR: The warm oil can be pumped directly into the cold engine.

CREW: Clear prop. Go ahead and engage the starter.

NARRATOR: The results are easy to see.

CREW: That’s incredible; temperature is already at the takeoff temperature.

CRAIG MCBURNEY: Amazing difference, can you imagine in a combat situation?

NARRATOR: McBurney’s warming method was the same one Japanese engineers turned to for the Seirans.  It’s actually borrowed from a German design.With the engine oil pre-warmed, the plane could be rolled out of the hangar onto the launch ramp.

The engine started…

The wings, tail and horizontal stabilizers unfolded and locked into position…

The floats attached….

And the Seiran launched into the air…

ATSUSHI ASAMURA: We would train very hard trying to shorten the time it takes for the launch, even by a second.  The first plane launches, then the second, and then the third.  The goal is to launch all three planes as fast as we can.

NARRATOR: To get the Seirans back on board, the engineers designed a hydraulic crane to pluck the airplanes from the sea and hoist them onto the deck. With all the design problems solved, it looked as if the Japanese would be the first to get their super weapon into the war. But then, in April of 1943, the I-400 program—and the Japanese Navy—suffered a devastating loss. American code-breakers discovered that Admiral Yamamoto was planning an inspection tour of the Solomon Islands. U.S. fighters intercepted and shot down his plane, killing the man behind the Pearl Harbor attack.

STEPHEN BUDIANSKY: It was such a crushing blow to the Japanese Navy that it was a full month before they even announced Yamamoto’s death to the Navy, much less the Japanese public. Without the backing of the powerful Admiral, the I-400 program quickly slipped on Japan’s priority list. Before any subs were completed, the order was slashed from 18 to 9. It would take another year and a half before the first of Yamamoto’s I-400s made it out to sea. In December of 1944, the first I-400 was finally commissioned. A few months later a second sub, the I-401, was ready to sail. The supersub carried three dive-bombing Seirans in a 65-foot-long hangar.  An 85-foot ramp and steam-powered catapult launched the planes into action, even in rolling seas. The I-400 wasn’t just the longest sub in the ocean at 400 feet; it was also the most heavily armed. On the aft deck sat a giant 140-millimeter gun—one of the largest ever mounted on a submarine. Four anti-aircraft guns defended against aerial attacks. And, the sub also boasted 8 torpedo tubes in the bow. The man appointed to lead the I-400 program was Tasunosuke Ariizumi.  Ariizumi had been in charge of the midget submarine attack on Pearl Harbor. The I-400’s crews were picked from the navy’s elite—and were very well-treated.

TSUGIO YATA: The corridor was filled with cans of food and other food staples. You couldn’t even see the floor. I was never unhappy with the food – for example we even had expensive food like cow tongue and lots and lots of fancy stuff. I remember it well.

NARRATOR: Morale among the crews was strong, but Japanese High Command was not as jubilant.  In the three years since the I-400 project began, the state of play in the Pacific had changed.  America now dominated the region, and the original mission of the subs—to bomb U.S. cities and instill fear of a Japanese invasion—was outdated. They just didn’t have enough firepower. With each sub carrying three planes and each plane carrying only one bomb per flight, they could do little real damage. By comparison, Nazi bombers dropped an average of 330 bombs per night for 57 nights during the London Blitz. And still, the British didn’t surrender. With a conventional bombing raid on U.S. cities out of the question, the Japanese needed another mission for the I-400s. They considered all options.

NORMAN POLMAR: As the Japanese were becoming frantic for any means of inflicting more pain on the United States, in an effort again to slow our advance or get us to negotiate a peace, the Japanese considered using germs against American cities. This was discussed and the obvious means of delivering these would have been by submarine-launched aircraft from the I-400s, from other submarines.

NARRATOR: In the spring of 1945, Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa proposed a top secret, controversial plan.  He suggested using the Seirans to unleash biological weapons on the U.S. West Coast. Such an attack could kill thousands, and create panic across America.

NARRATOR: Japan’s biological weapons program was not new.  Under the command of a military doctor named Shiro Ishii, a secret team had been experimenting on the Chinese since the 1930’s. Plague-infested fleas bred in their lab has been unleashed into Chinese villages. They had infected prisoners with anthrax and cholera. And they had injected men and women with venereal diseases. As many as 200,000 Chinese died as a result of these horrific experiments.

ERIC GROVE: The Japanese Army was doing a lot of work on this in Manchuria, in pretty awful circumstances actually, and certainly the Japanese Navy seems to have been interested in the use of Anthrax in bombs.

CARL BOYD: And the most radical elements within the Army or the Navy would advocate such a, well I would say insane plan.

NARRATOR: There was little doubt that biological weapons dropped on an American city could cause enormous casualties. And sow panic among the American population far more effectively than conventional bombs. But a month later, cooler heads prevailed. General Yoshijiro Umezu of the Imperial Army, canceled the operation and declared: “Germ warfare against the United States would escalate to war against all humanity.” With a biological attack off the table, the Japanese High Command found a new mission for the I-400s: An attack on a key strategic target.

CARL BOYD: The Panama Canal was absolutely crucial to the transferring of the Atlantic Naval forces to the Pacific Ocean.

ERIC GROVE: Which is why the Japanese wanted to attack it.

OSAMU TAGAYA: Exactly.

CARL BOYD: Well, of course. And we understood that. Any logical military scenario would want to attack the Panama Canal.

NARRATOR: If Japan could take out the Canal, it would bring ship traffic to a halt and force the Allies to use the much longer route around Cape Horn. Japanese military planners and intelligence experts worked together to map out the attack.

ERIC GROVE: The plan went something like this.  This flotilla of submarines, four submarines carrying ten aircraft, would come keeping a due distance, having come a long way across the Pacific.

OSAMU TAGAYA: Coming a long way across the Pacific.

ERIC GROVE: 8000 miles or so…until they come to their launch point off Ecuador, roughly about there. Then they surface, and they launch their planes, the six aircraft, as quickly as they can. And so as to surprise the enemy completely, they go off in completely a different direction. They fly across Colombia, then they turn sharply, over here, and then suddenly, and they perhaps dive to low level, they come down here towards the canal and hit it on its northern end in the locks here.

NARRATOR: The mission would be extremely hazardous for the I-400 fleet. Before striking the Canal, the subs would have to navigate through waters swimming with Americans.

STEPHEN MCFARLAND: By the summer of 1945, essentially the Pacific was an American lake.  And so that meant it would be relatively difficult to get any kind of vessel safely into the area of the Panama Canal.

NARRATOR: But the Japanese did have one ace up their sleeves—a secret technology that the I-400’s designers had borrowed from the Germans. A technology that could help them elude enemy sonar.Sonar works by bouncing sound waves off hard objects like ships. By measuring the time it takes for sound waves to travel to the target and back, the system can calculate the location of the target ship. But the I-400s, like some German U-boats, were equipped with a new stealth shell, designed to absorb sound waves instead of reflecting them. Called an anechoic coating, it was made up of rubber and asphalt tiles that dampened the sonar fingerprint of the suba as they slid through the water.

ERIC GROVE: These anechoic coatings did work remarkably well and their details are still highly classified.

NARRATOR: For the I-400s, getting across the Pacific undetected was only step one.  Their targets—the Gatun Locks on the Panama Canal—were heavily guarded by anti-aircraft guns. The Seirans could come in above the guns’ range, but that would make hitting the targets almost impossible.

STEPHEN McFarland: Those locks, the walls, were incredible structures of reinforced concrete that at the base were 50 to 60 feet thick, at the top maybe 8, 10, 12 feet thick. The gates themselves maybe 90 feet wide, they were six, seven, eight feet of steel thick.  But from 13,000 feet, they would have looked like just a hair from that kind of altitude.

NARRATOR: The challenge of high-altitude bombing is easy to see.  When a B-29 outfitted with a World War Two-era bombsight drops a half-dozen water bombs on a stationary target in the California desert…not a single bomb hits home.  The closest lands more than 500 feet away.

STEPHEN MCFARLAND: For a target like the Gatun Locks, anything less than almost a direct hit within a foot or two or three of the target would be a waste of energy. Given the relatively primitive bombsights that the Japanese were using, their chances of being able to hit a target like that were pretty slim.

NARRATOR: And with only six planes carrying one bomb each, the Japanese knew there was no room for error. Keeping with Japanese military tradition, a decision was made to turn the attack into a one-way trip.  The pilots were ordered to go Kamikaze.

OSAMU TAGAYA: By that point in time, just about all Japanese air missions were being flown as kamikaze missions, one-way missions, and the plan was to do the same here.

ATSUSHI ASAMURA: Given our lack of resources at the time, in Japan, we had no choice but to go Kamikaze. I know it is controversial, some people are against it. But I think we had no choice at the time. We knew we probably couldn’t hit the target even with multiple bombs.  So going kamikaze was our only chance.

NARRATOR: The I-400s’ crews prepared for the Panama Canal mission, but the window of opportunity for the strike was closing fast.  By the Spring of 1945, America was already deciding on potential targets for the atomic bomb. Then, the war arrived on Japanese soil when Allied forces invaded the island of Okinawa. 82 days of brutal fighting left more than 100,000 Japanese troops dead, and thousands of aircraft and combat ships destroyed. Vice Admiral Ozawa realized that a raid on the Panama Canal would be too little, too late. The majority of American forces were already in the Pacific.  So Ozawa changed the I-400s’ mission yet again. The new target was Ulithi Atoll—a staging area for the massive U.S. fleet preparing to invade Japan.

ATSUSHI ASAMURA: Ulithi was the likely base for the units that attacked Okinawa and perhaps also those that were to be sent to the final confrontation on the mainland; supplies were probably sent from there as well. In the photo I saw several U.S. aircraft carriers. Headquarters ordered us to attack as many of them as possible.

NARRATOR: Three and a half years after the I-400s were conceived, the two giant subs were finally ready to engage.  They traveled separately, with orders to rendezvous off Ulithi, where they would be joined by two smaller subs. Once they reached their target, six Seirans would be launched in a kamikaze attack. To deepen the surprise, Commander Ariizumi ordered the crew to disguise the bombers with U.S. markings—a clear violation of international law.

OSAMU TAGAYA: Pilots themselves objected to having the planes painted in American colors.  They felt it was dishonorable and they were ready to die, they knew they weren’t coming back.

NARRATOR: What they didn’t know, was that their mission was once again short on time. Four days before the I-400s set sail, America had successfully exploded the world’s first atomic bomb. A second bomb was already on its way to Japan. To make matters worse, Ariizumi’s mission was plagued by problems. On the way to Ulithi, one of the smaller subs was spotted and sunk by a U.S. warship. All 140 crewmen perished. Then, in an effort to avoid enemy ships, Ariizumi decided to change his route, and the agreed-upon meeting point. But the message never got through to the other ships, and they missed the rendezvous. As the I-400 and I-401 scrambled to regroup and renew the attack, shocking news came over the radio. The American super-weapon had blown the war wide open. On August 6^th, 1945, an American atom bomb annihilated the city of Hiroshima, killing as many as 80,000 people. On August 9^th, a second bomb decimated Nagasaki.  40,000 died and the city lay in ruins. Six days later, Japan surrendered to the United States.

SURRENDER SPEECH

NARRATOR: In his radio address to the nation, the Emperor never mentioned defeat or surrender. Instead, he told his people: “we have to endure the unendurable and suffer the insufferable.”

ATSUSHI ASAMURA: The next day on the 16^th, we received a telegram ordering us to cease fire. Receiving this unthinkable telegram, we gradually grasped the reality. From then on, the real drama began on board.  There was no concept of surrender and remaining in the Japanese Imperial Navy at the time.

NARRATOR: The Captains of the two I-400s reversed course, and raced back toward Japan. Neither wanted to give up his prized ship, nor suffer the humiliation of being captured in enemy waters. Worried about retribution, Ariizumi ordered the crews of the two subs to dump their U.S.-marked Seirans into the ocean.  They did so, destroying the evidence just in time. On August 28^th, two U.S. destroyers discovered the I-400. The Captain surrendered peacefully.  20-year-old Harry Arvidson was one of the first Americans to board the giant sub.

HARRY ARVIDSON: As we approached the submarine and saw what it was, I thought to myself ‘Man that’s the biggest thing I ever seen.’

NARRATOR: The next day—August 29^th—the American submarine USS Segundo located the second giant sub.  The I-401 was carrying Fleet Commander Ariizumi—a man who didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘surrender.’ Carlo Carlucci was a quartermaster on the American sub.

CARLO CARLUCCI: It had to be three or four o’clock in the morning, before daybreak.  That was when they picked it up on the radar. They didn’t know what it was until they got fairly close.

NARRATOR: Tsugio Yata was a young sailor on the I-401.

TSUGIO YATA: We didn’t want to give up this magnificent ship to the U.S.  We thought it’s a shame for it to be captured.

NARRATOR: Though the war was over, surrender did not come easy for the prideful Japanese sailors.

CARLO CARLUCCI: Things were hot and cold.  You never know yes or no, were they going to shoot, not shoot.

TSUGIO YATA: We were heading back to Japan but we talked about how to prevent the Americans from taking the sub so we talked about sinking it near the coast.

NARRATOR: But before the Japanese could carry out their plan, the sub’s engines temporarily failed. The Segundo signaled for the massive sub to surrender.  Ariizumi refused. Several tense hours passed with the Segundo’s weapons trained on

the I-401. Muneo Bando remembers the capture.

MUNEO BANDO: They pointed their cannons at us and ordered to have one officer sent to their ship.  We thought, “What do you mean, ‘Send someone.’ You send someone to come get us.” We insisted on displaying our pride and dealing with them man to man.

NARRATOR: Because Bando spoke some English, he was picked to negotiate with the Americans.

MUNEO BANDO: I said, “If you force us to surrender, we will commit suicide.”  They said to me, “Harakiri, no good.”  They understand the term harakiri.

NARRATOR: Tokyo ordered the I-401 to surrender to the Segundo.  Eventually, Commander Ariizumi bowed to the inevitable.  He had the black flag—the international naval signal of surrender—raised on his sub. For the proud Commander, the humiliation was too much to bear.

TSUGIO YATA: I went to get a cup of coffee and had just sat down, I heard a loud bang. That was the suicide. The Captain and I rushed inside, and we saw he’d taken his own life.  I heard the Captain say “He finally did it!”

NARRATOR: Nearly 200 Japanese servicemen were taken prisoner that day—sailors, pilots, and support crew. The American submariners seized control of the giant sub, and quickly realized it was unlike any vessel they had ever seen. For machinist Paul Wittmer, the double-hull design was a particular surprise.

PAUL WITTMER: Lo and behold we get to the engine room and there’s a doorway to the neighbor’s room next door.  What the heck is going on here?  We take a peek in there and there’s another set of engines in there.  The port and starboard engine rooms.  We find out that there were two hulls bolted together—two submarines along side each other.

NARRATOR: The Japanese crew remained on board, but with six Americans now in command.

CARLO CARLUCCI: I had a 45, we all had 45s and I had an extra clip of bullets in my jacket pocket.  If I had to use it, I would have used it.

PAUL WITTMER: It was very tense, no one trusted anybody.  We didn’t know what to expect. We could have been overtaken, lickety-split, because we were way out numbered.  And if they decided to dive the boat we couldn’t have gotten out.

NARRATOR: The Americans chained the hatches open to prevent the Japanese from diving.  But as time passed, tensions slowly eased between the former enemies. They now had a common goal: Getting the sub safely back to Tokyo.

PAUL WITTMER: In the engine room, we have to learn how to communicate with the Japanese. They had to teach us and we had to teach them. We needed to know some of the words to describe an engine. Basic elementary, grade school type communication, and trying to strike up a rapport and learning their symbols and their words for what’s the name of this, what’s the name of that.

NARRATOR: Both subs made it back to Tokyo, where the prisoners were released.  For the Americans, the next step was to bring the unusual ships home for further study.  In November of 1945, they departed Japan for Hawaii. They arrived in Pearl Harbor just after New Year’s Day, 1946. Navy engineers immediately began inspecting and recording every detail of the supersubs’ design. But by the spring of 1946, a new, post-war reality had taken hold, and the I-400s were once again shrouded in secrecy.  This time it was the United States hiding them from the Soviet Union.

ERIC GROVE: Large aircraft-carrying submarines intended for strategic attack on their enemies are exactly the things you don’t want the Russians to have.

CARL BOYD: And this is now the Cold War.

ERIC GROVE: The beginning…

OSAMU TAGAYA: The beginning of the Cold War.

NARRATOR: Worried that the Russians would demand to inspect the subs, the U.S. Navy made a hasty decision. On May 31st, 1946, they sunk the I-400 off the coast of Pearl Harbor. Two days later the I-401 joined it at the bottom of the sea. Two powerful weapons that never made it into battle. That never had the chance to truly prove their worth.

OSAMU TAGAYA: If the question is would the I-400 operation decisively change the course of the Second World War?  Ultimately, no I don’t think so.

CARL BOYD: It would have made things worse in 1942, but not in 1945.

ERIC GROVE: And Japan surrenders because of the overwhelming material superiority of the United States. The United States has got the willingness and the desire to deploy that overwhelming power.

NARRATOR: Ultimately, the I-400 arrived too late in the war to make a difference.  But while its timing was flawed, its technology was ahead of its time. The innovative design became a model for future Cold War submarines, and changed military thinking about how they could be deployed. In the 1950’s, a new type of U.S. submarine—the Regulus Class—began patrolling the seas. It bore a striking resemblance to Japan’s World War II supersub, though it launched missiles, not airplanes from its deck-mounted hanger.

NORMAN POLMAR: I don’t believe anyone previously had looked at submarines as a means of attacking an enemy’s cities. And this idea we see today in the primary nuclear weapons of the United States, France, Britain and even Russia being submarine-launched missiles to attack with nuclear warheads, an enemy’s cities.

NARRATOR: Though we hope that their lethal force is never needed, each one of these powerful, stealthy submarines is a living testament to one of the greatest weapons that never did battle.

Archaeologists make a grisly find:

Four hundred skeletons buried in a mass grave. The bodies have lain undisturbed for 500 years, since the time of the Spanish conquest.

But this is no ordinary gravesite. The remains suggest these people met a gruesome end at the hands of the Aztecs, who ruled Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.

But who were the victims and why were they killed? Archaeologist Elizabeth Baquedano has come to find out.

What she uncovers will rewrite history, shatter our understanding of the Aztecs, and reveal the shocking secrets behind the massacre at Zultepec.

TITLE: AZTEC MASSACRE

With a population of more than 28 million, Mexico City is the largest metropolis in the western hemisphere—the second biggest city in the entire world.

It’s a vibrant and chaotic mix of movement and color. But these teeming streets once had a very different look.

Five centuries ago, this was the center of the Aztec world.

A wandering tribe of Aztecs from the north settled on this swampy part of central Mexico in the 1300’s.

From migratory beginnings, they rose up to rule an Empire for three hundred years.

The Aztecs were fierce warriors, who ruthlessly conquered and subjugated neighboring peoples to become the dominant force in the region.

Their power and ferocity is well documented, but the scope of the killings at Zultepec has shocked even the most knowledgeable Aztec experts. At the invitation of scientists from the site, Elizabeth Baquedano has come to investigate how these bodies ended up in this mass grave, and how the massacre fits into our understanding of Aztec history.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: What I am hoping to do is not only find out who these people were or how they died, but to answer a much bigger question.

NARRATOR: That question will lead Elizabeth to an unlikely story of colonial invasion, armed resistance, and human sacrifice.

Records show that sacrifice was central to Aztec culture. The Aztecs practiced the ritual with great frequency, using their enemies as the sacrificial lambs.

Could the bodies at Zultepec be evidence of some massive religious ceremony? To find out, Elizabeth must leave Mexico City, and head to the excavation site itself.

The N16 follows an ancient trade route that once connected what is now the Mexican capital and the Atlantic coast.

60 miles down the busy highway, barely noticeable at the edge of the road, lies the scene of the massacre. Once an Aztec stronghold, this is all that remains of the town of Zultepec.

Enrique Martinez has spent more than 15 years as lead archaeologist at the excavation site. His biggest breakthrough was the discovery of the mass grave. It was an incredible find. Even after 500 years in the ground, the bodies have stories to tell about how they ended up here.

So far, 400 have been identified, and the archeologists continue to unearth more remains as they excavate. Each bone contains important clues about the person it came from.

DR. ENRIQUE MARTINEZ: SP: We found something here that’s not just a corpse. Its position implies that after it was sacrificed it was mutilated. The pelvis would have been cut along with the femur and we see that those parts are no longer there. Without doubt the lower limbs have been laid out in a special position.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: We can see that some vertebrae are missing here. The pelvis is missing; we also have the femur bone missing so we have clear signs of dismemberment here.

NARRATOR: Other bodies show similar signs of dismemberment. And comparisons reveal a consistent pattern of missing bones. Skeletons had been decapitated, and specific bones had been removed.

These were no ordinary burials.

DR. ENRIQUE MARTINEZ: SP: From the upper vertebrae to the coccyx the bones are disordered. We see that there is no cervical vertebra. After having been sacrificed in the temple this individual was taken here to be mutilated and for people to begin selecting their trophy bones.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: The warrior was allowed to keep certain parts of the body as signs of prowess in the battlefield and he could keep those bones for instance the femur bone. He could hang that bone outside his house in order to show that he was a successful warrior and that he had been able to capture an individual in the battlefield.

NARRATOR: All the bodies display evidence of this kind of ritual killing and post-mortem dismemberment. But they reveal few obvious signs of their identity, or why they were killed in such large numbers.

To our modern eyes, human sacrifice seems like a barbaric practice. But to the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican societies, it was crucial to their very existence. The Aztecs believed the gods had sacrificed themselves to give mankind life, so the ritual was a form of renewal and repayment.

Here in Zultepec, even the location of the bones within the town points to some kind of central ceremony.

DR. ENRIQUE MARTINEZ: SP: This is the south plaza. We can see here the greatest concentration of localized bone evidence. 280-300 individuals.

NARRATOR: Some of the bodies were carefully laid out, while others were grouped together in seemingly random piles.

The majority were buried in shallow graves close to the large temple that had once stood as the centerpiece of the town. The temple was where sacrifices and other religious ceremonies would have been carried out.

Victims usually died on the altar, which was at the top of the structure. The area around the temple would have been walled off, so that only the priests had direct access.

But even so, the entire population would have known what was going on. The rituals were as much for them as they were for the priests, and the killing of this many people would have been a major event in a town like Zultepec.

Today’s half-excavated ruins do little justice to the original scene.

After five centuries, it is up to the bones to reveal what took place.

The remains are brought here, to the Anthropological Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Artifacts found with the bodies dated the bones to the early 1500s, but scientists are hoping to find out much more about them than just their age.

Forensic anthropologist Magali Cevera has been focusing on one particular analysis:

MAGALI CEVERA: These bones were sent here to the lab just to access the ethnic characteristics. Most of them are shown in the skull.

NARRATOR: When she first started her forensic work, Magali expected to find that all the bodies were indigenous—belonging to members of local tribes who had been captured by the Aztecs.

The skulls of these indigenous people would normally have a broad forehead and wide cheekbones.

But intriguingly, some of the skulls from Zultepec don’t fit that profile.

MAGALI CEVERA: You can see for example the shape of the skull. And in this case it has a very long head with a very narrow forehead and we have also the short orbits very quadrangular shape and also you can these cheek bones which are in a way very light. Also it’s important the shape of the palate and the size of the teeth.

NARRATOR: Civera’s analysis leads her to a shocking conclusion. The skulls could not have belonged to local tribes. Their facial characteristics point to an entirely different ethnic and geographic origin.

MAGALI CEVERA: All of these traits make us think that these remains belong to a European.

NARRATOR: Of the 400 skeletons found so far, as many as 40 seem to be from Europe. The discovery is completely unexpected, and immediately raises questions about how the bodies got there.

Back in Zultepec, the results force a re-evaluation of the grave site. New finds not only corroborate the existence of Europeans, they further narrow the field to Europeans from Spain. The illuminating objects are pieces of iron with telltale signs of Spanish construction and design.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: This is the first iron object to be found at Zultepec. And we know that iron was not actually used by the Aztecs. There is evidence that the horses were with them as well. There are stirrups and we know that the Aztecs didn’t have horses; the horses did not exist in the Americas so this is yet another proof that the Spaniards were here at Zultepec.

NARRATOR: The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in Mexico. They landed on the Gulf Coast in 1519, searching for wealth and glory. The initial invasion force was made up of just five hundred and fifty men, sixteen horses and a few canons.

PROF. MATTHEW RESTALL: They’re not really professional soldiers. Some of them are, but most of them are regular Spaniards they’re from middle ranks, the leaders are lower nobility. They are artisans, professionals of that kind, notaries, tailors, carpenters and so on. I like to think of them as armed entrepreneurs. They were entrepreneurs in that they all invested in this company and that’s what the Spaniards called it a company and they invested what they could. So if they were well off and they could provide ships, horses, cannons and so on then they did that even cash investments. If they’re poor then they bring themselves, that’s their investment, it’s a personal investment in their willingness to fight and sacrifice themselves in order to carve out a new province or colony for the, for the Empire.

NARRATOR: Cognizant of a powerful civilization in the Mexican interior, the Spanish Conquistadors didn’t linger on the coast for long.

They soon set of inland, and as they traveled, the caravan began to swell. Local people were eager to take up arms against their oppressive Aztec rulers.

After weeks of marching, the column arrived in Tenochtitlan, capital of the mighty Aztec Empire. The Spaniards must have been shocked by what they saw.

Tenochtitlan, with its impressive boulevards and magnificent architecture, had a population of more than 200,000. In the very center of the city was the most significant of all its buildings, the Templo Mayor. This was where the most important Aztec rituals and ceremonies took place.

Today, all that remains of the massive structure are these ruins in the heart of Mexico City. They are dwarfed by the metropolitan Cathedral and the surrounding buildings. But back then, they would have presented an imposing sight.

PROF. MATTHEW RESTALL: For me this is one of the great moments in human history. Two civilizations meeting for the first time. Imagine the Spaniards coming through the pass between the volcanoes, and they look down and they see the city laid out before them. Spectacular, beautiful, amazing city, larger than any city in Europe, larger than any other city in the Americas, one of the greatest cities in the world. Tenochtitlan sitting on an island, all the towns around the edge of the lake, combined population of hundreds of thousands of people, they come in to the city, absolutely an incredible moment, cinematic moment.

NARRATOR: Tenochtitlan stood as a testament to the wealth and power of the great Aztec empire.

Into this grandeur walked the Conquistadors. It was to be a fateful confrontation between two very different civilizations.

The Aztecs were ruled by the powerful Moctezuma.

The Spanish were led by the wily and determined Hernán Cortés.

Their first meeting was peaceful but tense.

Cortés was a maverick in his day. He’d already conquered Cuba for the Spanish, but after falling out with the Cuban governor, he had lost his government’s support for the mission to the mainland. The lack of backing did little to quell his confidence.

ADRIAN LOCKE: He was not a particularly well educated person he certainly didn’t come from the elite, he was just an ordinary working class kind of person really and he was someone who realized quite early I think, the stories that were coming back across the Atlantic were very enticing and he thought well I want a piece of that action you know I want to get out there and I want to grab myself some money and maybe some fame and see what happens, you know.

NARRATOR: Moctezuma, on the other hand, was a sophisticated leader born of Aztec royalty. He was unsure what to make of Cortés and the Conquistadors.

He had been warned of the Spaniard’s arrival, and was unsettled by this white-skinned man riding a strange, unknown beast. Moctezuma thought Cortés’s appearance might be the fulfillment of an ancient prophesy about a returning Aztec god.

ADRIAN LOCKE: There was part of him that really wanted them to just go away, he didn’t want to have to deal with this problem at all and he spent vast amounts of energy trying to encourage the Spanish to just disappear. But there was also part of him that was convinced that this was the return of Quetzalcoatl who was said to have disappeared over the seas in the East and would be returning. Moctezuma was clearly unable to make a definitive decision so he decided the first course of action really would be just to pacify these strangers and give them small gifts.

NARRATOR: These gifts had a profound effect on Cortés and his men.

CORTÉS LETTER: After we had walked a little way up the street a servant of his came with two necklaces, wrapped in cloth, made from red snails’ shells, which they hold in great esteem; and from each necklace hung eight shrimps of refined gold almost a span in length. When they had been brought he turned to me and placed them about my neck.

NARRATOR: Though wary, Moctezuma made a great effort to play the perfect host, showing his guests around the city and entertaining them with lavish banquets.

But despite the regal treatment, Cortés remained suspicious—sure that the Aztec leader was planning something sinister. Cortés made the decision to act first…and took Moctezuma captive.

The story of what happened next, is still cause for debate among modern-day historians. One version of the events is depicted in extraordinary murals on the walls of the national palace.

Famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera, painted the murals in 1929. He used historical sources to make them as accurate as possible.

They represent the traditional view of what happened after the Conquistadors arrived. The paintings illustrate how the great warrior nation of the Aztecs put up little resistance to the invaders, and quickly ceded control of their kingdom to the Spanish.

In this retelling, Moctezuma took too long to admit that the Conquistadors were not resurrected Aztec gods, and that he had chosen the wrong course of action by welcoming them into his realm.

He finally realized they were ruthless enemies, driven by greed and an insatiable thirst for power and wealth. Of course by then, the damage had already been done…

ADRIAN LOCKE: The traditional view of the conquest of Mexico is one great kind of law written into great victories if you like, military victories of world history, how a group of illiterate, largely illiterate, untrained soldiers could march into a nation of some fifteen million individuals and basically lay waste to them and capture the great prize of Mexico, Tenochtitlan and rule over them as if by magic almost. This of course is a very rose tinted view of the reality of the situation.

NARRATOR: It’s a classic case of history being written by the victors. But the discovery of the Spanish skeletons at Zultepec, means history might have to be rethought.

The bones have only begun to reveal their secrets. A facial reconstruction lab at the Anthropological Institute is providing additional details about who the victims were.

Edgar Gayton is the forensic artist doing the difficult reconstruction work.

He is painstakingly building a profile of each skull. His endeavors have led to the biggest breakthrough since the discovery that many of the victims were European.

EDGAR GAYTON: SP: Every human is different and the same characteristics that were recognized in life are reproduced in the skull. In this case we can see that this skull is more masculine and this one feminine. It has much more rounded features.

NARRATOR: The analysis has revealed that at least ten of the skulls belonged to European females.

It’s an important revelation, because it narrows down the exact time frame in which the massacre could have taken place.

From Cortés’ letters, Elizabeth determined that when he first arrived, he led an all-male crew. There were no women at all in his original convoy.

But soon after, a second party of Spaniards followed Cortés to Mexico. They were sent to arrest him, since he had left on his mission without Spanish consent. This group did have women with them.

ADRIAN LOCKE: He’d secured this passage without the knowledge of the governor and the governor was fairly sort of unhappy about the whole thing because he had no control over Cortés or this mission really. I think that this was a very competitive kind of moment and everyone was quite keen to get out there and be the first to get in to the action if you know what I mean and make the most of the opportunities that were presenting themselves.

NARRATOR: When Cortés heard about the second convoy, he had no choice but to confront them.

ADRIAN LOCKE: He had to do something. He realized he had something pretty special within his grasp really, and this was not something that he wanted to share with anyone and it certainly wasn’t something that he wanted taken away from him in terms of the control. Cortés of course leaves Tenochtitlan to go back to Veracruz to find out what it is that the secondary group of Spaniards that had followed him, followed him with the aim of finding out what he was up to and probably to wrestle control from him.

NARRATOR: Leaving a small garrison in charge of the Aztec capital, Cortés marched east with a band of his finest soldiers. He arrived back at the coast and went to battle—quickly vanquishing his would-be captors.

Not wanting to stay away from Tenochtitlan any longer than necessary, Cortés immediately gathered up the defeated soldiers and their entourage of women and slaves, and set off on his return trip.

His urgency was well-warranted. According to most accounts, word reached him during the march that Moctezuma had died. To this day it is unclear whether he was killed by his captors or by his own people, but either way, Cortes recognized the precariousness of his situation. He needed to get back to the Capital.

ADRIAN LOCKE: He knew the situation was tense. He didn’t know what was going to happen next but he had seen the city, he had been living in the city, and he knew that there was a lot of wealth there and by you know, by no way was he just going to give that up. He wanted to get back there and claim his rightful share.

NARRATOR: The route Cortés took can still be followed today. It’s a long trail that meanders through the Mexican countryside. As had happened on his original journey, the caravan’s numbers swelled with locals who were eager to enlist in a campaign against the Aztecs.

With few horses and an ever-growing number of men and women in tow, the column’s progress slowed to a crawl. The group had safety in numbers, but they weren’t moving fast enough to suit the anxious Cortés.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: They traveled through this rugged terrain towards the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. They had great advantages. The use of weapons of fire and horses.

NARRATOR: These tools must have comforted them, because as they moved farther inland, they could feel the growing Aztec unrest.

Later, Cortés wrote about the journey. He described how he eventually made the crucial decision to leave the slow masses behind, and move ahead faster with just a small group of soldiers. He never mentioned the convoy again.

Cortés knew that if he delayed any longer, he risked a full-blown Aztec uprising and the loss of all the wealth and recognition he so desperately craved.

Hundreds of men and women—both local and Spanish—were left to fend for themselves in ever-more-hostile Aztec territory.

The large group, abandoned by Cortés and still moving slowly, had little choice but to continue making its way west towards the capital. Despite their numbers, they had few weapons and even fewer trained soldiers. They must have seemed like an easy target for the well-trained Aztec warriors.

There are no records about the final attack, but it was only a matter of time before the convoy was overrun. The Aztecs had an intimate knowledge of the area, the element of surprise, and a prowess for ambushing in the dark.

The travelers didn’t stand a chance. As was their custom, the Aztecs would have captured their enemies alive. Their fates would be sealed on the altar, not the battlefield.

ADRIAN LOCKE: For the Aztecs warfare was much more of a ritual that was related to their religious worship. They tried to capture the more exalted and honored members of their opposing society and these captures, these captives they would take back to their city where they would be kept and then ritually sacrificed when the time came.

NARRATOR: The Aztecs were known to keep their victims prisoner for months.

For the Conquistadors and their entourage, the wait must have seemed interminable.

The conditions would have been wretched. Little food, little light, and the growing certainty of incomprehensible horrors to come.

The Spanish had no basis for understanding human sacrifice as anything other than an agonizing and barbaric way to die. But for the Aztecs, the ritual was a necessity for survival. To them, sacrifice was not a form of punishment, but the ultimate opportunity to do one’s part for the perpetuation of the universe.

The spectacular city of Teotihuacán was one of the Aztec centers of human sacrifice. The magnificent temples and pyramids were all built in devotion to the gods. Each year, hundreds of thousands of visitors would flock to the city to pay tribute to the deities.

Teotihuacán was known as “the city of gods.” It would have been a stunning backdrop for the sacrificial ceremonies.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: Human sacrifice was very important to the Aztecs, because they believed that without it the gods would go unnourished and the world would come to an end.

NARRATOR: Each of the Temples lining the avenue was dedicated to an individual god.

There were gods for each season, and for important festivals in the Aztec calendar.

Every god was connected to some aspect of the natural world. They required frequent offerings in their honor.

The Aztecs presented food and animals. But the ultimate gift was the sacrifice of a human life.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: According to myth, the gods gathered here at Teotihuacan to create the sun and the moon. Everything was in darkness. It was necessary for the gods to sacrifice themselves. In order to do that they had to throw themselves into a huge fire. In turn, men had to do the same. They had to sacrifice themselves to keep giving that precious nourishment, those precious hearts in order to have the sun moving, in order to have the cosmos in balance.

NARRATOR: The entire Aztec world revolved around this need. Human sacrifice was required to keep their world turning.

One by one, living victims would be brought before the priests.

The actual death blow was forcefully abrupt—it was crucial for the severed heart to remain beating as it was offered up to the gods.

ADRIAN LOCKE: What of course is very difficult for us to understand culturally is what human sacrifice was all about and how it took place and why it was acceptable, because of course to us, human sacrifice seems the most unacceptable of all kind of activities. It’s very difficult to look at that in a very kind of realistic way but certainly the Aztec concept of the world and their understanding of the universe and their right to live in it, to participate in it, was based on the sacrifice of the gods themselves.

NARRATOR: Cortés witnessed the bloody ritual with his own eyes.

He recorded every graphic detail of the ceremony in his letters.

CORTÉS LETTER: They take many girls and boys and even adults, and in the presence of idols they open their chests while they are still alive and take out their hearts and entrails and burn them before the idols, offering the smoke as sacrifice.

NARRATOR: What Cortés didn’t see, was that his own abandoned people were receiving the same treatment.

Back in Zultepec, the Spanish had become the latest offering to the Aztec gods.

DR. ENRIQUE MARTINEZ: SP: This is where they carried out the sacrifices of their captives. Here they suspended people, held by four priests, they removed the heart and offered it up to the sun.

NARRATOR: The sacrifices were only performed by specially trained priests, who were adept with both the ritual…and the knife.

This was their sacrificial altar.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: The victim was laid out on the platform. Four priests were at the back holding each limb, and a fifth priest would actually insert a knife, cut the chest open, tear the heart out and offer it to the sun. The heart was placed on a sacred vessel and then the vessel was brought down the steps. The victim sometimes was rolled down the steps and priests were receiving the victim at the bottom of the temple. When the heart was taken out and it was offered up to the sun, to the god, it was the most precious of all the offerings humans could give to the gods. We know that this very stone witnessed each and every sacrifice at the temple.

NARRATOR: The altar stone remains, and Enrique has even discovered a blade that might have been used in the ceremonies.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: This is the only sacrificial knife that has been found in this ceremonial area.

NARRATOR: The knife was made of flint, with an edge sharp enough to cut through a human chest in a single plunge.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: It had a special box so it was kept and safeguarded every time it was used for human sacrifice.

NARRATOR: The ritual was carefully orchestrated. All the sacrifices at Zultepec took place high on the temple mount. Only the priests took part in the ceremony itself.

But once the killing was over and the human offering had been made, the macabre remains were put on show for the general public to see.

DR. ENRIQUE MARTINEZ: SP: They have pieced together this timber rack to reflect what the original Tzompantli would have looked liked. Tzompantli is the Aztec word for a skull rack. Once the victims were sacrificed to the gods their heads were hung here like trophies.

NARRATOR: In preparation for being displayed, each head was punctured through the left and right temple.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: The skull rack was an altar which normally was placed in front of the main temples. The skulls would have been placed on these beams like beads on a necklace.

NARRATOR: More than two dozen of these pierced skulls were found at Zultepec. At least half of them were of European origin.

The mutilated Spanish remains have provided a clear picture of what befell this unfortunate band of Conquistadors. The next step for Elizabeth is to see if she can find any historical records that corroborate the physical evidence.

The place to go for such records is back in Mexico City. The Library of Anthropology houses priceless and beautiful codices—painted books that document Aztec stories. Most of the manuscripts that still exist were created by early Spanish settlers, but many of these are based on older Aztec pictograms.

DR. CARMEN AGUILERA: I think I have here the Florentine codex. That has, well the Florentine codex is three volumes, but there are several scenes of sacrifice.

NARRATOR: Historian Carmen Aguilera has some interesting images for Elizabeth to see.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: So which one are you going to show me first?

DR. CARMEN AGUILERA: Well, I think the Florentine picture, because it’s very illustrative of how 16th Century people represented human sacrifice. Here we have a picture of sacrifice by taking out the heart of the captive.

NARRATOR: This simple ink drawing, penned by a European scribe not long after the conquest, clearly depicts an Aztec sacrifice of a local victim.

But what Elizabeth wants is any references to the sacrifice of Spaniards.

Carmen can’t go back to the original codices, which are kept in temperature-controlled vaults to keep them from disintegrating.

But she does have facsimiles of the important works, and thinks she knows just where to look for entries about the Spanish.

DR. CARMEN AGUILERA: This is the twelfth book of the Florentine codex.

NARRATOR: Buried within this five hundred page tomb is an illustration that, until now, has never truly caught Carmen’s attention.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: Yes!

DR. CARMEN AGUILERA: Oh you found it. Instead of showing the heads of the Indians it shows horses’ heads and human heads.

NARRATOR: This tiny, crude illustration contains two important clues.

First is the horse heads on the skull rack.

The Aztecs didn’t have horses, so they must have been captured from the Conquistadors.

But even more telling is the depiction of the human heads on the rack.

They are heavily bearded.

Since the locals had little facial hair, the beards were a defining characteristic of the Spanish soldiers.

For Elizabeth, this is just the corroborating evidence she has been looking for. It’s a direct link between the historical records and the Zultepec bones.

But not all her questions have been answered by the codicies.

In the fleeting but tempestuous period of Spanish invasion and Aztec uprising, had there been more to the sacrifices than religious tradition?

Warfare expert Ross Hassig, believes the Aztecs may have had political motives for sacrificing their enemies.

ROSS HASSIG: It’s painted as religious, but in fact it was being used for political purposes and the primary purpose of this was to solidify the empire.

NARRATOR: It’s well-documented that the Aztec warriors terrorized their weaker neighbors, and governed their empire with intimidation and fear. They exacted heavy taxes from their subjects, and gave them little freedom.

Not surprisingly, the Aztecs flourished under this system. But they also worked hard to consolidate and maintain their power. And that, says Ross, is where the other purpose of human sacrifice came in.

ROSS HASSIG: When they had the opportunity, the Aztecs would take captives and make a public display of them. They actually took the skin off the face and their hands, tanned it and sent it around to a lot of these wavering cities. The whole purpose of this kind of display, sacrifice and display, is to intimidate your friends and your enemies and so the Aztecs would have killed these people publicly, displayed their remains publicly, as a way of ensuring the loyalty and fealty of a lot of towns that may have been wavering in their support.

NARRATOR: Could this have been the motive behind the massacre at Zultepec?

ROSS HASSIG: It maybe really was this incident in 1520 where they had all these Spaniards and they were able to sacrifice them at leisure, display them publicly without fear of any reprisals and then send these materials around to a lot of their allies.

NARRATOR: One can only wonder if Cortés and his men in Tenochtitlan caught wind of what was happening to their brethren in Zultepec. If they did, it would have been a chilling warning at a time of escalating violence between the Aztecs and the Conquistadors.

What we do know, is that Cortés did not stay in Tenochtitlan for long after the death of Moctezuma. With the city in chaos, he was forced to retreat.

The Spanish in Zultepec didn’t have that option. And further examination of their bones is revealing that their desecration continued, even after death.

The unfortunate victims had been captured, imprisoned, sacrificed to the Aztec gods and dismembered. Their still-beating hearts had been ripped from their chests.

And now there is evidence they were eaten as well.

Enrique Martinez‘s storeroom contains thousands of artifacts found at Zultepec.

He has obsidian blades and rare pottery burial pots.

Everything has been carefully sorted and catalogued.

One of Enrique’s most prized relics is a stone chamber that was used to hold human hearts during the ritual sacrifices.

But even among all these priceless treasures, it is the bones that provide the most information about the massacre.

Whole skeletons tell one story, but individual bones tell another.

Once the captives had been sacrificed, their bodies were dismembered and ritually prepared.

The long bones were given to the warriors as trophies. But first, they had to be stripped of flesh and treated.

DR. ENRIQUE MARTINEZ: SP: They put the remains in lime to stop them putrifying and eventually they would be displayed in people’s houses.

NARRATOR: Other bones appear to have been cooked at high temperatures.

DR. ENRIQUE MARTINEZ: SP: Some of the bones have been cremated; they would have been put directly on top of the fire.

NARRATOR: The preparation of all these bones suggest that the sacrificial killing was just step one, followed by cooking…and eating…

DR. ENRIQUE MARTINEZ: SP: As well as being ingested the bone has been chewed and eaten too… bit by bit. This is another characteristic that you will notice in the preparation of the bones.

NARRATOR: They display all the hallmarks of having been cooked and consumed.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: We can see some of the marks. These marks actually are of human beings when the person chewed the bones. And we know that the marrow was ritually eaten. It was taken out and eaten.

NARRATOR: Historians have long suspected that the Aztecs indulged in cannibalism.

But according to Enrique, this is the first time that actual archeological evidence has been found to back up the claim.

Once again, the discoveries at Zultepec are corroborated by illustrations in the Aztec codices.

This time, it’s eerie images of Aztec warriors cooking and devouring their enemies.

ADRIAN LOCKE: There were also rituals in which human flesh was eaten. Now whether this was done to strike dread into the hearts of the Spanish, or whether it was done because the Aztecs felt that it might drain the power of the Spaniards. Maybe they felt very strongly that they’d upset the gods and the only way that they could appease them would be to offer the highest form of sacrifice which would be to capture a Spaniard or his horse and sacrifice it, is open to question, but certainly sacrifice of the Spaniards did occur.

NARRATOR: At long last, the full story of the massacre at Zultepec has been wrestled from the bones.

What began as a bold foray into the new world by a band of Spaniards ended up in a bloody execution that defied their European comprehension.

With 21st Century hindsight, the episode sheds new light on the confrontation between the Aztecs and the Conquistadors.

ELIZABETH BAQUEDANO: In my opinion it is certainly a good time to reconsider this important chapter in the history of the conquest of Mexico.

NARRATOR: The widely accepted view, is that the Conquistadors took on the mighty Aztec nation, and brought down their Empire with little resistance. But this history, of course, has been written by the victors.

The truth is not as clear-cut. After fleeing from the Aztec uprising in Tenochtitlan, Cortés and his men regrouped. But it took two long years before they finally conquered the Aztecs. By then, Cortés was back in the Spanish King’s good graces, and was appointed governor of the new territory.

In his new role, he demolished the great Aztec capital and laid the foundations for what is today Mexico City. His metropolis soon became a beacon of European influence in the Americas.

The Aztec resistance was all but forgotten, until the ruins at Zultepec provided some balance to the history.

ADIAN LOCKE: I think it’s important because it tells an aspect of the story that is not often told. One of those really is to perhaps lay bare the myth that the Spaniards just simply moved in and the Aztecs rolled over and if you like just gave up because we know that they didn’t, they fought hard.

NARRATOR: There can now be little doubt that the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was a bloody affair for both sides. Each nation relied on its own tactics, traditions and beliefs.

The Spaniards eventually triumphed, but at least at Zultepec, there is definitive archeological proof that the Aztecs fought back…

END