Original subtitles

Tom ward (narrates): A French town drenched in infamy.

Everything is in the same state of decay

and yet it's also well-tended.

This isn't just a ruin, it's something more.

In San Francisco bay

a facility famed for breakouts subjected to a daring break in.

In this case the idea of who is the invader

and who is the invaded is pretty blurred.

And a micro nation of the coast of england

stormed by a band of mercenaries.

So, sealand was now occupied by a gang of Germans

with guns and plenty of money.

Decaying relics ruins of lost worlds,

sites haunted by the past,

their secrets waiting to be revealed.

(Theme music)

(Dramatic music)

Hugging the banks of the river glane

in west central France

is a settlement that appears derelict

yet tenderly preserved.

This looks like the perfect place to have a very happy,

very productive agricultural village.

So, why is there no-one here?

What's striking is how everything

is in about the same degree of decay,

as if this town was abandoned

and destroyed all at once.

You come into the church and you see this giant bell,

but it's not right, it's been melted

and you can't imagine

what kind of heat must have done that.

Nearby in the village's cemetery

rows of neat headstones seem unremarkable

until you look closer.

Many of the graves share the same date

and many of the graves belong to children.

Your heart just sinks.

It makes you wonder what on earth happened here.

(Suspenseful music)

Phillippe lacroix has been mayor of this area since 2014.

His village and these desolate ruins share the same name,

oradour-sur-glane.

Its ghostly streets disguise a prosperous past.

Day trippers, shoppers, and pupils

attending the village's two schools further swelled its numbers.

Among them were members of Phillipe's family.

So, why has this thriving community vanished?

One clue is this ancient car

that's sitting in a very prominent location

gradually rusting away.

This is a very particular type of car,

it's a peugeot 202,

a model that was introduced

just a couple of years before world war ii.

The fate of oradour is wrapped up in the chaos

and destruction of the second world war.

But this relatively tranquil part of France

never echoed to the sound of battle

or the waves of bombers that pounded Europe from the skies.

The village lay in the so-called free zone of France.

While the Germans occupied the north and west of the country,

this was an area administered by the vichy regime,

French collaborators who ruled on behalf

of their German masters.

Life in vichy France was a very tenuous affair,

in theory they had a certain amount of governmental autonomy

and yet the German military

was always there hovering over everything

and always suspicious of the local population.

They're going to be essentially left alone

as long as they do what they're told,

as long as they collaborate

or at least don't actively fight

against the Germans that are in the area.

Not every French citizen was so compliant,

bands of guerrilla fighters collectively known

as the resistance disrupted the German war effort

in any way possible.

You can imagine the fault lines of distrust

running through French society during this period.

For four years oradour-sur-glane existed

under this uneasy atmosphere,

but then events far away on the beaches of northern France

would change everything.

The date was the June 6, 1944. D-Day.

The liberation of France had begun.

Seeing the German defeat

imminent galvanises the French,

it fires up the French spirit.

The French resistance is ramping up their activities.

They're becoming more aggressive and taking even more risks.

The sense of excitement must have been overwhelming.

Here finally after years the allies were coming

to save the French from the Germans.

The villagers must have thought they can only hold on

until the allies get there.

But on the June 10, 1944, that was all set to change.

Four days after d-day, German soldiers arrived.

The villagers had no idea why.

Phillippe recalls speaking to eye witness Robert hebras

about how he felt during this mysterious visit.

Unfortunately, these were not the typical German troops

Robert had lived alongside for the last four years,

these were members of the second ss panzer division das reich.

The ss is in a sense

the Nazi party's own army.

Its Hitler's own army.

It separate from the older,

more traditional German army.

They were the fanatics of the German army,

trusted to carry out Hitler's barbaric orders without hesitation.

The unit that crossed the village's bridge that warm

afternoon were ominously known as der fuhrer regiment.

Led by ss commander Adolf diekmann

and hard bitten from years of fighting

in hellish conditions on the eastern front.

They had been resupplying in the area

when the received the order to move north to reinforce

their beleaguered comrades in normandy.

The whole German armed forces operating in the Soviet union

have been brutalised.

Their humanity is gone.

These are no longer soldiers

in wartime,

these are monsters in uniform.

They weren't just passing through.

They came like they had a mission.

The ss troops said

they needed to check peoples' papers.

They started rounding everybody up,

pulling them out of shops and homes and assembling them

in the central square.

It was all a lie.

In fact, diekmann and the der fuhrer regiment

were carrying out a murderous plan

they had used throughout the eastern front.

The ss comes up onto this village

and they're very clever about the way they do this, right?

They come in one end of the town, but only half of them do.

The other half goes to the other end and surrounds the town

so that no-one can escape.

They began to divide the town's people up into groups.

The women and children were taken

and ordered inside the local church, the biggest building in town.

Groups of men were taken

to a variety of barns and other buildings

in smaller groups and ordered inside those structures.

You can only imagine the anxiety,

the fear that was going through these people's minds,

but I doubt they really expected what would happen next.

The terrible events here shocked the world

and posed questions that many

are still struggling to answer today.

Once the villagers were all spilt up the murdering began.

This was one of the six killing sites,

the lordy barn.

Here after the initial volley of fire,

the German soldiers passed among their victims

shooting anyone that moved.

Then they set the building on fire.

Five men including Robert hebras played dead

before escaping the inferno.

As similar horrors unfolded in the other barns,

more than 400 women and children huddled together

in Saint Martin church.

There is no mercy for them even in a house of worship.

They attempted to set of some kind of smoke bomb or a gas bomb

to kill the people inside.

Once they'd subdued most of the occupants,

the ss piled wood on top of their bodies,

some still alive, and set the place ablaze.

In the chaos some sensed an opportunity.

A local woman madame rouffanche,

she saw her own daughter killed when the shooting began.

She knew that

there was a step ladder behind the altar.

She got the step ladder and propped it up

climbed out of the window and dropped ten feet to the ground.

Elsewhere soldiers searched the village for anyone

that had evaded the initial round up and finished them off.

Then they set up camp.

They don't leave, they don't march away

as they set these buildings on fire,

instead they find a nice space and spend the night.

They had no remorse, they had no feelings

that they needed to escape from the thing that they had done,

they stayed there and almost celebrated

the devastation that they had just caused.

By the time the ss departed

only seven people are thought to have survived the horror.

643 had been brutally murdered.

As the ruins smouldered, one question remained,

why was oradour-sur-glane targeted?

The commanding officer of the der fuhrer regiment

was angry that a German officer

had been captured by the French resistance,

and the response was to kill the local population

as a demonstration of German power.

But normally when that happens

there is a lot of grandstanding

and verbalisation that this is why and... and messaging,

but there was none of that.

There is no good explanation other than just pure cruelty.

(Eerie music)

Even some of the battalions ss superiors were appalled

by their actions,

diekmann faced a court martial,

but soon he and many of his murderous comrades

were killed in the battles raging in normandy

and the matter forgotten.

Eventually in 1953

some of the soldiers from the ss unit were tried

for their parts in the massacre.

Two of them were sentenced to death,

while the others were given a prison sentence

of only 8 to 12 years.

Survivor madame rouffanche having spent a year

recovering from five gunshot wounds was there to give evidence.

But the death sentences were never carried out

and the men released soon after.

General Charles de gaulle decreed

that the village should never be rebuilt,

but remain a memorial to French suffering and sacrifice.

A new village was built nearby

where madame rouffanche remained until her death in 1988.

Its present mayor Philippe has his own deep connection

to this harrowing site.

(Sombre music)

Today, these haunting ruins and their tragic story

attract people from across the globe.

(Dramatic music)

Off england's east coast is an outpost

once declared terra nullius, nobody's land.

As you come up on this,

this looks like an abandoned oil platform or something like that

with these two big towers that are kind of rusting,

but it's too small to be a modern oil rig.

There is no dock, there is no jetty.

You just pull your boat up, tie it on

and ask the people above to haul you up on deck.

Once you're on board you can see that

the whole thing is just bodged together.

It's got masses of rusting old metal,

rivets that are decades old,

and everything just slathered in black paint.

But inside are signs of recent habitation.

The structure in the middle

looks like it's been randomly thrown together,

its steam punk meets Swiss family Robinson.

The fact that we have evidence

of stuff left lying around says that perhaps

there was no organised departure from this place.

Perhaps people left in a hurry,

perhaps they haven't left at all.

What makes this rusting platform so precious

that it would find itself

in the middle of an international conflict?

Liam bates knows this place better than most.

It was a lot less welcoming back then.

There were heavy machine guns all over the place.

It was... it was very much an active working fortress.

It would have been quite a... Quite a frightening place to be.

There were... There were mines here

some of which scraped by the inside of the towers,

but didn't luckily explode

otherwise we wouldn't be stood here today.

This is a maunsell fort built when britain faced invasion.

So, this platform was built was built during world war two

with the idea that

it was going to be a defensive position,

something that is going to keep the Germans

from laying mines in the area

and its going to be a forewarning

if German aircraft come towards the shore.

There were loads of these built in the north sea,

but after the war most of them were demolished,

but not this one apparently.

So, this room in war time in the second world war

would have been for the officers to spend time in.

It was part of the honour of, you know,

a higher ranking officer to able to actually spend some time

up on the deck level

because the... the marines and sailors

would have been spending the vast majority

of their day down in the towers.

During the war there would be anything

from 100 to 300 royal marines

and naval personnel stationed here.

For the size, that... that's a lot of people.

But things have changed

since this was a royal Navy Garrison.

This is the home of prince Liam of the principality of sealand.

In 1966,

Liam's grandfather Roy bates lived in the UK,

he ran a pirate radio station.

In britain back in the '50s

and right on through the '60s commercial radio

wasn't really a thing.

And people created illegal commercial radio station

called pirate radio stations

by putting them on top of buildings in city centres

that would be hard to detect.

Roy bates made money broadcasting pop records,

but it was against the law.

And the British government did everything they could

and used every law in the book to shut them down

and for intense and purposes they did.

So, my grandpa not being the kind of man

that could take no for an answer.

He thought well where is the next jurisdiction?

Where is out of the UK government reach?

Roy put his young family on a fishing trawler

and sailed to a site outside British territorial waters.

They get to this platform and claim it as their own,

they raise a flag that they've designed themselves,

declared themselves prince and Princess

of the new principality of sealand.

And he thought well this is no man's land

and no-one has jurisdiction.

This is mine.

Prince Roy declared it a principality

mainly for practical reasons.

He couldn't declare it a kingdom and call himself a king

because the queen of england

might have had a thing or two to say about that.

I think it was excuse for another big adventure,

so, off he went further out to sea.

From sealand, prince Roy could broadcast radio signals

outside the law,

but the outpost also became a home.

So, this is a bedroom.

It's got all the creature comforts you would expect

anywhere in the world.

We've got our power outlets

which are actually powered by over 95% renewable energy.

The... the decoration in here isn't really to my taste,

but there is all kinds of characters and people

from all walks of life stay here.

I don't know if you can hear,

but that's actually the waves

lapping up against the side of the tower

which is lovely and relaxing

when you're trying to get off to sleep.

And if you follow me through here...

We have another bedroom.

Apart from being one hell of a conversation starter,

sealand was the real long-term home of prince Roy and his family.

But they also found a way to work the land

as a data storage centre for companies and individuals

that didn't want governments prying on their information.

Well, trying to sum my grandfather up

in a few words is a bit challenging, hard as nails, larger than life.

And he just had this sheer passion for adventure.

Yet, sealand was about to receive some unwelcome guests.

In August 1978 they arrived unannounced,

and Liam's father prince Michael was home alone.

(Dramatic music)

A helicopter approached

from the direction of Europe over there.

And as they approached he was trying to persuade them not to land,

you know, and waving them away

when he... he recognised who they were.

On board was a German, a business associate of his fathers

and the man said he had just done some business deal

with Michael's father

and now needed to come on board to sign some paperwork.

The main defence is very rudimentary,

it's actually just this mast that you can see here,

and that will prevent helicopters from being able to land

'cause it's quite a small space anyway.

Michael is not feeling really good about this,

but is... is...

There was just enough truth to the story

that the German's were giving him that he said ok,

and lowered the defences.

A group of man stepped onto sealand,

each of them armed.

The invaders grab hold of Michael and they lock him up.

I think his main concern as he's told me over the years

was that he was put in this room with no food or water.

And no... nobody knew he was here

apart from the guys that had thrown him in here.

There is no way out,

the whole room you are standing in now

is made of steel that's nearly an inch thick

designed to withstand you know, strafing from the luftwaffe.

So, I mean, there... there literally would have been no means of escape.

Sealand had been conquered

and prince Michael was a prisoner in his own home.

The mercenaries inspired by the idea of an international take over

had grand plans to expand sealand with additional forts,

a bank, hotel, and casino.

Yet, after just three days and without explanation

they let prince Michael go.

The German's agree

to put Michael out of the cell and onto a boat.

They ship him to the Netherlands without his passport

making it very difficult.

Whatever the reason releasing him would soon backfire.

A few days after my father was released from captivity,

him and his father hatched a plan to recapture sealand.

They codenamed it 'operation trident'.

Fortunately for Roy he has a friend

who is not only a stunt person

but flies helicopters for shows like James Bond.

They take the doors off,

they bring ropes with them and they arm themselves,

they fly out to sealand.

To approach sealand stealthily

they made sure that they approached into the wind

and that would suppress the sound of the helicopter to a great degree.

They also flew very close to the sea

and the absolute maximum speed that the helicopter would allow.

When they arrived over sealand they noticed that

the German's had put the anti-helicopter defences up,

so, Roy and his team rappelled from the helicopter

down onto sealand and they were armed with shotguns.

I don't think they ever stopped to consider

they might get killed, obviously, it was... it was risk.

They went armed to the teeth,

even the pilot had a revolver in his jacket, you know?

As they just single-mindedly came out here to do a job.

They rappelled down to the platform

and they fire one shot of a rifle and this big boom.

(Gunshots)

My father launched himself off of the helipad

down onto the deck here

at which point the butt of a sawn off shotgun hit the deck,

let a round off right next to his head

and all of the invaders ran out of the building

with their hands in the air in surrender.

The invaders decided that

they weren't so into this fight after all.

They weren't willing to go down fighting for the glory of sealand,

but Roy was.

The prince had retained the throne of sealand,

but there would be retribution for crimes against the crown.

Prince Roy let most of the Germans go,

but not the one who had masterminded the coup and beaten up his son.

His name was putz.

Putz was tried for treason by my grandfather.

He was sent to the jail down the bottom of north tower here.

Apparently they took good care of their prisoner,

he was fed and watered and allowed up to the surface

for fresh air every now and then,

but it was a very small and shabby jail cell

and he was kept there for three months.

The UK government were contacted by the German embassy to say

look this has happened

on what they considered British territory.

And the UK government responded by saying this is...

This is outside of our jurisdiction you must deal with this yourself.

It gets to the point where Germany sends a diplomat

from their London office to sealand to negotiate for the release

of this German national.

Of course, bates does release the prisoner and lets him go.

He would have been here indefinitely I'm sure,

if the German ambassador hadn't negotiated his release,

I mean, the...

You know, the punishment for treason is a lot more heavy

in every other country.

Since 1978 sealand has never been invaded again,

but if anyone should try, Liam's family will be ready.

We have various contingency plans

and plans drawn up for that kind of thing,

so, yeah, we're prepared.

Today, the sovereignty of sealand remains an open question.

In a strictly legal sense

sealand is part of the archipelago of Great Britain

and so has no independent sovereignty,

but the longer it's tolerated and not interfered with

arguably the more rights it and its people may acquire.

And the invasion may have had an unintended benefit,

when price Roy hosted the German ambassador.

He uses that point from that moment forward

that Germany is essentially recognising

the principality of sealand as a legitimate nation,

and that is the tool that they are able to use

from that moment forward.

Quite a moment for sealand in a political sense,

you know, there are many international politicians

who have said that is de facto recognition.

In San Francisco bay on a tiny outcrop

is a complex everyone knows.

The setting in iconic,

you can see the San Francisco skyline.

There is no doubt about where you are.

Known as the rock

it's possibly the most infamous prison in the world.

Everybody knows it as one of the most remote

and secure prisons in all of history.

Surrounded by icy waters,

escape stories both real and imagined have become legendary,

but once upon a time a determined group

actually decided to break in.

This is a lesser-known story about Alcatraz,

but equally as significant as the rest.

Alcatraz became a place of symbolic resistance.

In this place the line is blurred

between who are the invaders and who are the invaded.

Its hail and farewell to Alcatraz at redrock in San Francisco bay

plays host to the press on its closing day.

Shut down in 1963,

it was designated surplus land by the federal government.

Six years later though a group set out on a mission

that would capture the world's attention.

As one journeys through this once penal institution,

one sees the signs of recent occupation.

These signs indicate that this became a place of resistance.

There is writing on the water tower.

And then you go to the cell blocks,

and there's writing and it's names of American presidents.

Why are their names written in these prison blocks?

Those responsible for this scrawling

saw this as a place

where a great injustice could be challenged.

Elijah oakes' family was among them.

So, when the occupiers first arrived on the island,

my grandfather and my family ended up staying right over here,

the second window from the sign.

Elijah's grandfather was one of 14 indigenous Americans

who made it past the coastguard on a cold night in 1969.

They called themselves the Indians of all tribes

and when they landed on Alcatraz

they dispersed in all directions to assume control.

They had real plans.

They wanted to start an American Indian cultural centre,

they wanted to start a school,

they wanted to make this something special.

The organisers also saw it as a platform for them

to get out an urgent message

about what was going on

in native communities around the country.

Native Americans to this very day

are subject to extreme racism,

they have fewer economic opportunities

and let's not forget

that the entire continent once belonged to them.

Elijah's grandfather was Richard oakes,

leader of the revolt.

For him this small island could symbolise the fact

that this continent was once all theirs.

Indians of all tribes decided to occupy this Alcatraz

because in my grandfather's words now on one side

of the United States you have the statue of Liberty

and this is pretty much the entire opposite.

The quote from my grandfather is that

those entering golden gate will first see Indian land,

that's to be reminded of the true history of this nation.

Land once ruled by free and noble Indians.

Occupying federal land was hugely controversial,

but to many what they were doing was simply reclaiming

what was rightfully theirs.

For 400 years,

the native Americans had been robbed

and their land had been stolen from them.

The island of Manhattan for example was sold

on the basis of a few coloured beads and silk cloth.

It is this precedent that native American activists

ceased upon when they took Alcatraz

and said that they would also pay

$24 worth of beads

and some silk cloth for the island of Alcatraz

in recompense for what the Americans had done to them.

As far the Indians of all tribes were concerned

this wasn't an invasion, it was a reclamation.

The land that was once theirs would be so again,

and this place of imprisonment would become their place of freedom.

In fact, it was written into us law

that the indigenous American people had rights to this land.

So, Alcatraz had been labelled as surplus land.

And under a number of treaties,

surplus land was supposed to be available

for occupation by native American people.

This clause was probably one of those

that the writers had never intended

the native Americans would be able to act upon,

but that's precisely what these activist intended to do,

acting upon the letter of American law.

But living on an abandoned prison island

would prove challenging.

They had to establish shelter, food,

and how they were going to deal with the media.

Most of the occupiers moved into the Broadway cell block

and you had whole families living behind bars in cells

that once held america's most dangerous criminals.

Of course, this is an isolated space,

it is an island.

And they don't have the ability to grow food,

they don't have Wells for water,

so, everything has to be brought in by ships

and get around the coastguard

who is trying to actively stop them from getting supplies.

At first what they were doing was greeted with admiration by many,

money and supplies flooded in.

The occupiers found

the perfect billboard for their cause,

the water tower, easily visible for miles around.

So, they put slogans up like "welcome to free Indian land.

"Indians welcome."

Prison cells were assigned

to those responsible for racist policy,

among them governor of California, Ronald Reagan.

Their message was strong and clear

and the people of america were listening,

but something was about to happen that would change everything.

In early 1970 about six months after the occupation had begun,

there's a fire.

We don't know, how it was started,

but the warden's house is burnt down,

and importantly the lighthouse is destroyed by fire.

Now, this is going to be significant

because the lighthouse was still actively used there

in San Francisco bay

and not long after you have two oil ships

that collide and spill hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil.

So, this is a real turning point.

Luckily, no-one was killed in the fire,

but it's at that point that the headlines turned

against the occupiers and you started to see stories

about how they were anarchists, or hooligans,

or just students too lazy to work.

Though the occupiers claim they didn't cause the fire

and made attempts to fix the lighthouse,

public support waned.

And then the group were dealt another blow.

Richard oakes was such an important part of the leadership

of the occupation of Alcatraz,

but tragically his 13-year-old stepdaughter died.

What happened is that

they were playing in the outer haze building

and she had slipped and fall

while she was playing with other children.

And they called 911

and they had flown her to Oakland hospital.

And two to three days later she was pronounced dead.

And yeah, that...

At that point my family had decided that

they were going to leave.

It was too big of a tragedy.

With their charismatic leader gone, others soon followed.

The Nixon administration ceased its opportunity.

The government took the extraordinary step

of cutting off the electrical supply to the island.

At that point life on Alcatraz already inhospitable

became even more difficult.

In June 1971

the federal government finally decided to send in agents

to forcibly remove anyone still on the island.

Going against the very laws they themselves had set.

The following year Richard oakes was killed

and the white man who shot him was acquitted of all charges.

The occupation of Alcatraz

didn't turn into the kind of permanent outpost

that the organisers had hoped for,

but their message did endure.

They inspired an entire generation of American Indians,

of indigenous people to take their own charge,

to have their own voice

in the civil rights movement and the activism of the day.

It's a real sense of honour to be out here

and experience the island now.

You know, and the impact

it left for the entire indigenous rights movement.

There it's like a tremendous legacy, it really is.

It's... it's powerful indeed, yeah.

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