Original subtitles

In Germany,

a therapeutic country retreat commandeered for a disturbing goal.

Gebhardt becomes a credible contestant for the title of

The Most Twisted Nazi Doctor.

In Malaysia,

an engineering workhorse drawn into a colonial conflict.

This is a story of conquest, greed and exploitation,

and it doesn't end well.

A rural site in Texas that affected the lives of millions,

for better and for worse.

It wasn't until years later

that I really understood what I had participated in.

And a remote Italian community ravaged by Mother Nature.

It was a beautiful, if quiet life here

but little did the residents know

that disaster was just around the corner.

In the sleepy German town of Lychen,

70 miles north of Berlin,

is a collection of magnificent buildings

tainted by an unspeakable tragedy.

We're away from the city here.

We're out in the fresh air of the countryside.

We've got charming German-looking buildings.

It could be a boarding school.

It could be a barracks.

It could be a spa.

I mean, you go down to the lower level

and there are these big, sort of, bathing pools.

When you take a closer look,

you start to see hints of what this place was.

We see the tiled floors,

the tiled walls.

This place is designed

so that whatever splatters on the walls

can be scrubbed down and disinfected.

It has all the hallmarks of an old hospital.

Under the influence of a fascist regime,

this hospital would do more harm than good.

Historically, this site has many layers,

but it's the role it played during World War II

that is particularly chilling.

This was meant to be a place of healing.

It turned into a place of terror.

What happened here is the stuff of nightmares.

The first day I was here in Lychen,

it was the same weather as today.

It's beautiful in the summer here.

It's beautiful in the winter.

Developer Max Siegmann bought this property in 2021.

He was drawn to its potential

as a peaceful retreat for busy Berliners.

He also understood it as a site burdened by its past.

For us, it's important that the history will not be forgotten

and we are responsible for this place,

even the dark historic.

In the beginning, its purpose couldn't have been more different.

The facility was originally founded in 1902 by the German Red Cross

to treat patients suffering from tuberculosis.

People were breathing bad air and their lungs were becoming infected

and it was believed that you had to remove them

from the urban environment and get them into a clean place

where they would breathe clean air.

We have patient rooms with a lot of windows.

They have a lot of space compared to modern hospital buildings.

It was a very famous place.

It was called the Hohenlychen Sanatorium.

In the decades to come, it would become infamous.

The history of this site

was transformed by the activities of Dr Karl Gebhardt.

When he emerges in the '20s and '30s,

he's seen as a very innovative surgeon.

He served in the First World War.

He became fascinated with treating battlefield injuries.

After the First World War,

there were these militias, called Freikorps,

of people who were trying to exert political power

through violence

and Gebhardt and

Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS,

were buddies from that period

and Gebhardt becomes someone who earns his credibility with the Nazis

by having been in from the beginning.

And so, he's then recognised

as being this leading surgeon by the Third Reich.

Himmler adopts Dr Karl Gebhardt as his personal physician.

As Hitler consolidated his grip on power in the 1930s,

he began removing Jewish people from positions of authority

and replaced them with trusted Nazi allies.

The Jewish physician that ran this sanatorium was one of those

stripped of his role.

In 1933,

Gebhardt was given control of Hohenlychen.

Under his leadership,

it became the first sports medicine clinic in Germany.

It was all part of the Nazi vision to create a superior master race.

So, Karl Gebhardt was revolutionary in his methods.

He believed in physiotherapy.

He believed in treating the injured with open air and physical exercise.

He's a sports scientist.

He's all about taking sports injuries, like a torn meniscus,

and repairing it and making excellent sports people

better sports people.

We are now in the operation rooms where the surgeries took place

and as you can see behind me,

we have a glass window so trainee doctors could watch the operations.

At the Berlin Olympics in 1936,

Gebhardt got the chance to parade his achievements to the world.

Dr Gebhardt became chief physician of the Olympic Games

and this facility became the main hospital for the Olympic athletes.

The site here grows again in that time period

and they built a swimming hole.

They built a sports hall.

The controversial games are best remembered for the American sprinter,

Jesse Owens, winning a record of four gold medals.

COMMENTATOR: The Buckeye Bullet stepped into his destined role

to win in the phenomenal time of ten and two-fifths seconds,

breaking all existing world record.

Yet, Owens' triumphs were not enough

to stop the Germans from winning the most medals

and Gebhardt was lauded for the success.

After the Olympic Games,

Dr Gebhardt's position rises.

Next to Heinrich Himmler,

all other high-ranked Nazi persons got their surgeries here.

Even Hitler visited this place.

But after the outbreak of the Second World War,

Hohenlychen was turned into a military hospital

and the type of operations carried out here by Gebhardt

would follow a much darker path.

They are the kinds of activities

that are so extraordinarily abhorrent

that they stand against the very notion

of what we think a doctor should be capable of doing.

Hohenlychen's fall from grace began

when a high-ranking SS official named Reinhard Heydrich

was badly injured in an assassination attempt by the Czech resistance.

They chuck a grenade into his car

and Heydrich's body is filled with bits of springs and dirt

and Heydrich is dying of sepsis.

Who'd better to try to bring him back to life than Dr Gebhardt?

At the time,

German doctors had access to an early antibiotic

called sulphonamide.

But Gebhardt was sceptical about its effectiveness

and declined to use it.

And so, Heydrich dies.

He might have died anyway. His injuries are pretty severe,

but Gebhardt's rivals inside the Nazi state start saying,

"Oh, you see, Gebhardt killed Heydrich

"cos he wouldn't use sulphonamide on him."

Gebhardt was facing ruin.

He had to prove that his methods

weren't the reason for Heydrich's death.

Himmler advised him to conduct human experiments

to prove that sulphonamide would not have saved Heydrich.

Gebhardt gets women from Ravensbruck concentration camp,

women who are going to be killed by the Nazis anyway.

He breaks their legs.

He drives bits of wood and hair into their bodies.

These poor victims fester for days on end

as the infections develop and gangrene develops.

Gebhardt then administered sulphonamide to some of the patients,

leaving others as a control group.

But the experiment was rigged

to ensure Gebhardt got the results he wanted.

Gebhardt creates a house of horrors.

They are tortured to death with infection.

In total, 84 women were put through this sickening ordeal.

21 of them died, either from infection

or because they were murdered to cover up the evidence.

Gebhardt didn't stop there.

His experiments continued,

this time with amputee soldiers.

He, basically, takes concentration camp prisoners,

and he says, "Hey, you know, this German soldier needs an arm.

"Why don't I just take your arm

"and try to attach it to this German soldier?"

The German authorities regarded all of these activities as justifiable,

because they regarded those that were being experimented on

as being genetically and racially inferior.

The terrible crimes perpetrated here

continued until Stalin's Red Army defeated the Nazis

at the Battle of Berlin in 1945.

The Soviets then took control of Hohenlychen

to use as an army hospital...

..but Karl Gebhardt's shocking experiments

were not forgotten.

Miraculously, many of the poor concentration camp inmates survived,

and they would testify against him after the war

when he was brought to justice at Nuremberg.

JUDGE: Karl Gebhardt.

They lived to see Gebhardt executed.

Their character was stronger

than the Nazi death machine.

Importantly, the case also led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code,

a set of principles which still guides doctors today.

The doctor's trial drew a line

under what was right and wrong

about human experimentation.

The end does not justify the means

in medical research.

What happened at Hohenlychen will never be forgotten.

Now, Max Siegmann is working towards a brighter future.

In the past, we have a dark history,

but because of the beautiful architecture,

it's worth saving this place.

We will develop a wellness resort.

We have holiday flats.

It's a place for everybody here.

In the Malaysian state of Perak

is a technological heavyweight

that helped build a nation.

We're in a swampy, tropical area

and this massive structure

is floating in the middle of this body of water.

It must be 200ft long,

five storeys high.

At first glance, it could be a giant fishing trawler,

but there's only one problem with that.

The ocean is over 30 miles away.

In fact, this entire waterway is landlocked.

How did this hulking beast get here in the first place

and what was it for?

Inside, the cavernous interior

is lined with an array of heavy machinery.

There are massive cogs,

thick metal cables.

These are all telltale signs of a massive industrial enterprise.

On the front, you've got these huge, rusting buckets

which seem to be designed for scooping stuff out of the ground

and you can only assume

that was something valuable.

It would transform the economy,

making this place one of the most profitable countries

ruled over by the British.

The resources' incredible value

also made it a target.

We're talking invasion by the Japanese

and violent attacks by communist guerrillas,

all of which played their part in the downfall

of the world's biggest empire.

If you looked around this region half a century ago,

you'd have seen over 50 machines like this dominating the landscape.

Today, this rusting relic is one of the last.

What we see here is a great example

of taking an industry that had been around for over 100 years

in a low-tech way

and then mechanise it and even supersize it.

That industry was tin mining

and it was one of the reasons the British Empire became so powerful

in the late-19th and early-20th century.

To understand Britain's complex relationship with Malaysia,

you have to rewind to the 1700s.

Back then, Malaysia didn't exist

and this region was part of the Malay Peninsula,

which comprised of multiple regional kingdoms.

This was an era when much of Europe

was trying to establish different empires.

The British were desperate to get a foothold in Southeast Asia,

to protect and dominate trade with China.

To expand their colonial reach,

England turned to the services of the East India Company,

who operated with special rights and privileges

due to a royal charter.

East India Company was possibly

the most powerful corporation in history.

The English crown said,

"You can have an exclusive contract to venture out there,

"trade with the natives, subdue them if you have to,

"and bring back anything of value."

After that, it was only a matter of time before the Empire's tentacles

spread further across the region,

until eventually, they controlled all the Malay states and Singapore.

This was classic colonialism,

and for its time, it was very, very successful.

At first, the British made their money through taxation and trade,

but that all changed after the discovery of large tin deposits

in the mid-1800s.

Tin is valuable partly because it resists rust very well.

So, when you hear the phrase "tin can,"

it's not, actually, a can made of tin.

It's a steel can coated with tin.

Initially, the British leased the mining operations to the Chinese,

who had fled from their own country to escape instability and poverty.

Local museum curator, Jacky Chew,

is an expert on the history of tin mining in this region.

In the year 1860,

we have about 20,000 Chinese miner

and another ten years down the road,

40,000 Chinese mining.

In the early stage, the Chinese mining method, basically,

is human, labour-intensive,

without any help of the machineries.

Even so, they still produced a large amount of tin,

which made the British a small fortune.

About a quarter of the demand came from the United States of America

in the late-1800s.

The British soon realised

they could get an even bigger share of the revenue

by taking more control of the industry,

and they knew that, in order to maximise profits,

they needed to mechanise.

Central to the British Empire's plans

was the Tanjung Tualang Tin Dredge No. 5

or TT5 for short.

This one first began operating in 1938.

The dredge has a long series of large buckets

connected on a chain

that can roll down into the water,

scoop up the material

and then bring it up and dump it inside the structure.

This was then transported along the length of the dredge,

where heavy machinery would separate out the valuable tin from the waste

which was dumped out the back.

So, the purity of the tin ore would be as high as 70%.

All this tin ore will be pumped out from this two outlet

to this big metal bucket.

It was a tough job with long hours

and in return, the workers were well-paid

and their families received education and health care.

But soon, the TT5 would grind to a sudden and dramatic halt.

War was coming and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

Many people believe that Japan's first major attack of World War II

took place at Pearl Harbour,

but 90 minutes earlier,

the Japanese launched a surprise invasion of Malaya.

The British troops were not remotely prepared for this attack.

The British have, uh, wrong strategies to defend Malaya

because they always assume the Japanese will invade from the sea

from Singapore.

Instead, the Japanese launched simultaneous operations,

invading from the north of the country near the Thai border.

They then fought their way south,

inflicting heavy losses as they went

despite their numerical inferiority.

It was a total bloodbath.

In the end, 85,000 troops were captured.

Churchill described the defeat as the greatest disaster

that has ever befallen British arms.

One of the motives for the Japanese invasion

was to take control of the tin industry,

which they needed for their war effort and economic self-sufficiency.

The British knew exactly what the Japanese were after

and did everything they could to destroy the tin mining operations

as they retreated.

The Japanese occupation of Malaya lasted three-and-a-half years

until their surrender in 1945,

after which the British quickly returned

and rebuilt the mines.

But there was a much bigger problem that now had to be faced.

The British Empire was losing its power

and its colonies were growing restless.

The image of the British, the mighty British,

start to crumble after the Japanese occupation in Malaya.

In 1947,

India gains independence from the British

and this sets off a chain reaction all over the empire.

Tensions in Malaya's multicultural population had reached breaking point

and the tin-mining industry would, yet again,

be caught in the crossfire.

So, 37% of the country was the Chinese

and they lived in the poorest conditions

and had the fewest civil rights.

The Communist Party of Malaya and their armed wing,

the Malayan National Liberation Army,

took advantage of their discontent to start a rebellion.

On the 16th of June 1948,

the first shots were fired.

The Malayan National Liberation Army fighters, known as the MNLA,

killed three British rubber plantation managers.

What followed became known as the Malayan Emergency.

The MNLA targeted police stations, derailed trains

and attacked rubber plantations and tin mines,

including tin dredges like this.

The use of tin in canned goods

generated so much money for Britain's struggling economy,

the government had to do everything in their power

to protect the industry.

As these insurrections got more violent,

Britain decided to bring in troops to defend its operations.

By around 1955,

many of the insurgents had been killed or captured,

but the MNLA refused to give up.

The British command realised that they needed to win hearts and minds

and so promised to grant independence to the country

once the guerrillas were defeated.

The plan worked.

With the support of Malay battalions, the insurgency was crushed

and on the 31st of August 1957,

Britain granted Malaya its independence.

In 1960,

the new Malaysian government declared the Emergency

officially over.

Throughout the conflict, the TT5 remained operational.

In 1976,

almost 20 years after independence,

a Malaysian-owned mining corporation took control for the first time.

This was a significant and symbolic step for the country.

But this new era of Malaysian-run mining

didn't last long.

In the 1980s, a perfect storm of reduced demand and rising costs

led to the complete collapse of the global tin industry.

In 1982, the owners of the TT5 ceased all tin-mining operations

and retired the dredge.

The effect was devastating for the local community.

For so many years, it had been such a stable employer.

When we have tin industry,

Perak is the richest state.

After 1985,

we are the second poorest state in the country.

After the collapse of the tin industry,

most of the Malaysian tin dredges were dismantled and sold for scrap,

but not the TT5.

That survived.

Then in 1997, it was donated to the state government

so it could be turned into a historical site,

a way to preserve some of the history of this region.

In West Texas, near the city of El Paso,

is a dilapidated ruin

where hope and hardship collided.

Right on the edge of town

is a strange compound of single-storey adobe buildings.

Initially, you're thinking this might be some kind of ranch

with the central space used for horses or other farm animals,

but there's something odd, almost prison-like,

about the layout.

Over time, the role of this site would change from a place of shelter

to a den of exploitation.

One structure in particular symbolises the level of mistreatment.

It looks like you would have been forced to walk

through this long, windowless metal tube.

Hundreds of thousands of people came.

They didn't know what to expect.

They were often very young. They were scared.

Those who arrived here did so by choice.

For some, it was a decision they lived to regret.

This was the start of a national programme

that changed the face of America forever.

However, many of the people were treated like animals

and faced racism from the very people they were here to help.

Yolanda Leyva is a historian at the University of Texas.

She grew up near this dusty border site with a complex past.

It feels intensely sad to me

because I just think of all the stories of

the men that came with such hope

and then they found this very humiliating system.

They went through very extensive medical tests while they were here.

When first conceived,

it was part of the solution to an unprecedented state crisis.

The original reason this place exists

dates back to the Civil War era.

Of the 70,000 or so Texans that served,

about 24,000 were killed outright.

Suddenly, Texas had more widows and orphans than ever before

and this was well before any type of social programme

like Social Security.

So, counties would set up what were called poor farms for poor people,

and basically, it provided them room and board,

but they would have to work.

This poor farm, which opened in 1915,

catered to elderly people and children

and it was run by the O'Shea family.

They called it the Rio Vista Farm.

Life was tough,

but for many, it was their best shot at survival.

Helen O'Shea Keleher would go to El Paso every Monday

and go to court

and see what children were being taken from their mothers,

usually because the mothers were not able to provide for their kids

and she would bring them here.

So, several thousand children went through this place.

Helen O'Shea Keleher's kindness

meant Rio Vista became a beacon of hope for those that needed it.

But in the early 1940s,

America's involvement in a global conflict

began the process of turning it into something far more ominous.

With the onslaught of World War II, there were new challenges

and one of those was related to labour.

Thousands of young men were shipping abroad to fight

and American farms were facing a desperate shortage of workers.

The US was in danger of running low on food

and the government was forced to turn to a former rival for help.

Mexico agreed to assist with a temporary worker programme.

They saw this as a way to assist the war effort

and boost their own economy.

It became known as the Bracero Programme,

a Spanish term meaning manual labourer.

They worked on farms throughout the country,

making it possible for the US economy to face the challenges

imposed upon it by the war.

When the Bracero Programme first started in 1942,

it was very celebrated.

There were parades for the braceros

and they called them "soldiers of the fields."

The programme was so successful,

it continued even after World War II ended.

By 1951,

a new site was needed to house the US headquarters,

and Rio Vista's location next to the border

made it the perfect base.

Celia Castro Berton was a secretary here when it first opened.

When I started working at Rio Vista, I was 19 years old

and we were asked to ask questions of the braceros

and type the contract up.

The contract included, like, the name, the address, age

and where they wanted their money to be sent.

This agreement included basic provisions for living conditions

and wages, specifically 30 cents an hour for agricultural workers.

People waited by the thousands at these recruitment centres,

hoping for a chance to cross the border.

It's estimated that some 880,000 Mexican workers

were processed through this farm.

But none could have predicted the hardship and trauma

that awaited at their arrival.

It was an ordeal that began when the programme first started

during the Second World War.

This hut is the most important building here because

this is what the men remember.

When they talk about it, they cry.

In this purpose-built metal hut,

they were fumigated with toxic chemicals.

This was supposedly to de-lice the men.

The government had the men sprayed

because there's been this long stereotype

that Mexicans who come or immigrants who come

are dirty and infected.

The men who sprayed them were instructed to spray them

in their hair, to spray in their ears, to spray in their genitals.

There's one story of a man who came as a first-time bracero,

an 18-year-old,

and he came with his father, who had been a bracero for years.

And when they got to the point where they had to take off their clothes,

he remembered how ashamed he was.

But his father told him,

"Don't worry. Today you became a man

"because you were willing to do this for the betterment of your family."

This process was not just humiliating for the men,

but extremely dangerous.

While the officials wore masks,

the workers were offered no such protections.

We know that it was DDT,

which in the '70s was banned because it's carcinogenic.

What the men always remember is that that was the beginning

of feeling like they were treated like animals.

At the time, the effects of DDT were not well recognised.

Even so, much of what happened

was kept hidden from the women working in the contract rooms.

I don't believe that this was part of

what they wanted to be known to the public.

It wasn't until years later that I really understood and knew what was going on

or what I had participated in.

After being processed and fumigated,

the braceros were relocated to farms across the United States.

Even when the men left Rio Vista, their mistreatment continued.

While this programme offered certain protections,

the cracks would soon begin to show.

The working conditions were often cruel and inhumane.

Many came to see the Bracero Programme

as a form of legalised slavery.

Despite the regulations, many farmers tried to get around them,

providing crowded, slum-like housing

or even charging people rent for lodgings that should have been free.

So, I have actually seen a paycheque of a bracero that was one cent

after they took away all those charges

that the employer charged them for.

Over time, the programme began to come under fire,

drawing more and more criticism for worker exploitation.

It would take a tragic accident to draw national attention

to the abusive Bracero Programme.

In September 1963,

58 workers were riding on their employer's crudely-made bus

in Chualar, California.

When crossing a set of railroad tracks,

the makeshift bus was hit by a freight train.

32 people were killed and 25 more were injured.

It's said to be the most fatal car accident in all of US history.

The Chualar bus crash shone a light on the poor treatment of braceros,

proving that their employers did not care about their well-being,

even to the point of providing safe transport.

Under pressure from unions and other social welfare groups,

the programme was discontinued in 1964.

After this, the Rio Vista Farm was no longer needed.

It first passed into the hands of the local county

and then to the city of Socorro.

Throughout those years, the old poor farm fell into ruin.

But many of the men remained, and in the 1980s,

where there was an amnesty programme,

many of the men were able to legalise their status

and that was 20 years of being here without papers.

In 2023,

Rio Vista Farm was designated as a National Historic Landmark,

ensuring that its story will be told for future generations.

The Bracero Programme had a very important legacy for the United States.

It saved our economy during World War II,

but also, the men who stayed became US citizens

and their children were born here.

They have contributed so much to their communities.

In northeast Italy,

in the shadow of towering mountain peaks,

lies the devastating outcome of Mother Nature's fury.

In the foothills of the Alps,

as beautiful and dramatic as the scene is,

hidden among the vegetation,

eerie remains begin to appear.

Sat high above the town

is what was once quite a grand church.

But the roof is missing and entire walls have come crashing down.

So, what happened?

Inside the town's buildings

it's evident that whatever misfortune struck here

occurred quickly and with phenomenal force.

You start to see the scraps of people's lives

as furniture, shoes, clothes and children's workbooks,

open, as though they've just finished their homework,

which suggests they could have been running for their lives.

The threat was always hanging over here.

It was part of daily life,

but eventually,

some would pay the ultimate price.

Giuseppe Bulfon was born in this rural town in 1936.

For 40 years, it was the place he called home.

This is the town of Portis.

For centuries, it stood proud

with a small yet thriving community.

So, this town is really

what you would think of when you think of rural Italy.

On saints days,

people would march through the town and have celebrations and festivals.

It was a beautiful, if quiet life here,

but little did the residents know

that disaster was just around the corner.

At nine pm on the 6th of May 1976,

the ground beneath Giuseppe's feet began to violently shift.

It was a massive 6.5 magnitude earthquake

and Portis was a little over five miles from the epicentre.

Very quickly, giant cracks start to appear in the buildings.

It is obvious that the place is unsafe and people are really scared.

Giuseppe and his family were fortunate to survive.

Other members of the community were not so lucky.

Unfortunately, six people were killed as they were trying to escape,

running through those narrow streets,

when an old house collapsed right on top of them.

In addition to the town of Portis that was destroyed,

over 150,000 people across the region

were homeless overnight.

In the aftermath,

the town's residents were forced to move into temporary accommodation.

When the immediate danger had passed,

they returned to assess the damage.

They bury the dead and try to figure out what to do next.

Many hoped they could rebuild,

forget the terrible event and return to life at Portis,

as it had been before the earthquake.

The government brought in geologists to study the space.

They knew the people wanted to continue to live there but unfortunately,

the geologists knew that the town would never be safe again.

The cause of the danger was a steep-sided cliff

that overshadowed Portis.

There was this gigantic overhang of rock and the scientists found

that it had been fractured by the first earthquake

and feared that if there was another one,

the whole thing could come crashing down,

right on top of Portis.

But the residents did not want to give up their homes without a fight.

Tensions get very high with the government saying,

"You can't come home again,"

and the people of the town saying, "No, we're coming home again,"

to the point of putting giant signs up saying,

"Portis must be reborn here."

But just four months later,

the residents worst nightmares became a reality.

On September 15th 1976,

disaster struck yet again.

At the time, Giuseppe was in the neighbouring town,

catching up with old friends.

Thousands of tons of rock sheared off the mountain

and hurtled towards the town below with a deafening roar.

The landslide smashed into the church cemetery

and made it as far as the road that lies next to the town.

The town is declared completely unsafe and the line is drawn.

You will never go back to your homes again.

Giuseppe Bulfon and all the residents of Portis

had no choice but to abandon their homes and move to a nearby city.

Eventually, on December the 15th, 1978,

the authorities announced that they would found a new town,

Portis Nuova, a new Portis,

less than a mile up the road.

Some of the people that grew up there or loved old Portis

still have that connection, still want to be a part of it.

And while many of the homes are deemed too unsafe to enter,

the gardens are still tended by some,

keeping the connections to their ancestral homes alive.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media