Original subtitles

In the 1940s, in Spain,

one of the most important pilgrimage routes

in the whole of Christianity's history was a ratline,

and down that is moving Nazi war criminals.

The Catholic Church were heavily involved.

Wow. Look at this.

This space was renovated to accommodate somebody.

This is one of the greatest stories never told.

Perfect place to hide.

If we could find an additional tunnel,

it's very feasible

that Hitler could have gotten out of Germany by aircraft.

Oh! Stop right there, Jeorg.

What's that?

- You hear the sound? - We've got a tunnel here.

It takes me right to the airport.

We think that Hitler lived and got to Spain.

Were the Nazi criminals using Vigo to escape from Europe?

Oh, big pop! We got a pop.

If that submarine is down there,

it will be a treasure trove of evidence.

Oh, there we go. We've got something man-made.

male narrator: In 2014, an executive order

declassified over 700 pages of secret FBI documents,

revealing that the U.S. government

was investigating Adolf Hitler's whereabouts

months and years after he was believed dead.

In these files, there are thousands of leads.

This is report, after report, after report.

narrator: Bob Baer, 21-year CIA veteran,

and one of the most renowned intelligence minds

in the world, has reopened a 70-year-old cold case:

The death of Adolf Hitler.

All the witnesses are dead.

There's no fingerprints.

There's no decent forensics.

We are not gonna make our conclusions in advance.

I just want to do

the definitive investigation on Hitler.

For once and all, settle this damn thing.

narrator: In the waters of southern Argentina...

The speed's good now.

We're at 3 knots speed over ground.

narrator: Tim Kennedy, U.S. Army Special Forces,

and a team of world-renowned marine archeologists

are on the hunt for a sunken U-boat

that may have been Hitler's escape vehicle to South America

as reported by a 1945 FBI file.

Can you loop back and go back over that spot?

Okay.

narrator: After three days of searching

with state-of-the-art sonar,

the team locates mysterious metal debris

on the ocean floor.

It's a solid straight line

with at least one right angle in it.

That's a good size target.

I think we got something for you guys to dive on.

- Yeah! - Whoo!

- That's absolutely a target. - Oh, yeah.

That's for sure a man-made object.

Yeah, there's a man-made object. It's definitely hard.

You can see that the bright return,

which is a lot different than the geologic background.

Joe, do you have any idea what that is?

I don't. Man, it's hard to say.

It's surrounded by so much other features,

that I think the only way to really know

is to put eyes on it.

We have a metal object underwater.

We know it's man-made. We're excited.

Yeah, we got to get in the water

and see what this is. - What do we do?

Well, we're getting towards the end of the day.

Sunset's at 6:15.

So I think we wrap it up now and regroup tomorrow morning,

and put some divers in to see what it actually is.

All right.

Tomorrow morning, we're gonna come back.

We're gonna dive on it and we're gonna see what's there,

and I think we're gonna find something.

- Throw it now. - Throw.

narrator: They drop a buoy

to mark the location of this underwater anomaly

and will return at first light to search for what could be

the final remains of a German U-boat.

- I'm a little excited. - See what's there.

Nice job, guys.

It's definitely metal. It's definitely man-made.

It fits in the parameters of a U-boat.

narrator: Bob Baer and war crimes investigator

John Cencich review the findings

from the team off the coast of Argentina.

If there's a U-boat down there, I can tell you

that the potential for forensic evidence is enormous.

We also need to look at where the U-boat

supposedly left from, and that would be Vigo.

narrator: After establishing that it was indeed possible

for Hitler to have escaped Germany,

and uncovering declassified FBI files

that cite Hitler seeking safe harbor in Spain,

the team has determined

the port town of Vigo would have been the ideal location

for him to board a U-boat out of Europe.

Vigo was an excellent exit point for Hitler,

but what we don't know is his entrance point into Spain.

You simply don't want to take the airplane

you flew from Berlin

and land it where you're catching a boat.

It's too obvious.

I would put the plane down early

and then go on a land route.

The question is, once he lands on the ground in Spain,

how does he move? He's most vulnerable.

From my experience supervising undercover operations,

I'd have to say to get from point A to point B

he's gonna have to be disguised.

All we have to do then,really,

is to look in this U.S. embassy report.

"The following Germans left for Argentina from Vigo

under the disguise of a priest."

Well, that sounds like a ratline to me.

narrator: After World War II,

an intricate system of escape routes known as "ratlines"

were established to help Nazi war criminals flee Europe.

These ratlines were supported by both the Red Cross

and the Catholic Church in Europe by providing

false documentation and places of refuge.

Many of these routes travelled through Spain.

A lot of Catholics during World War II

thought that Hitler was preferable to Joseph Stalin.

So what we have here is a network of supporters

to provide him with an infrastructure in Spain.

If we could zero in on the ratlines around Vigo,

what are the most likely spots?

Could lead us to the airplane.

What I've done is undertaken an analysis

of the Catholic churches and monasteries.

What really brought my attention

is the largest monastery in the area.

It's 125 miles from Vigo.

It's in Samos.

What's interesting about the Samos Monastery

is that it was built in the 7th century.

It's large. It's private.

It's secluded.

It has 200 subject churches

that can be translated into 200 potential safe houses.

If this was truly a ratline,

you will find witnesses there,

or documents that Germans were coming through.

- Yeah. - I think we're really

gonna make this connection back to Berlin through Samos.

It's key to the investigation.

This must be it here. Look at the size of this place.

narrator: Lenny DePaul,

former commander of the U.S. Marshal's Fugitive Task Force,

and Gerrard Williams, investigative journalist,

arrive at the massive monastery that has sat above the town

of Samos, Spain, for nearly 1,400 years.

The monastery itself is huge. At its height,

there would have been hundreds of Benedictine monks here.

Sanctuary is something the Catholic Church

has always offered to people.

But in this case, we have to find out

if sanctuary was offered to Adolf Hitler.

Guess this is Xavier.

Hola. all: Hi.

narrator: The team makes contact with Galician historian

Xavier Quiroga, who has spent years

writing a book about the Samos monastery.

The place is amazing, but we're here to look

at the movements of Germans-- escaped criminals--

through Spain at the end of the war.

This place has lots of history.

- In that period? - Yeah.

Okay.

Mauro had a lot of power

because it was supported by Franco.

What we have here is an abbot

very close to a very close associate of Adolf Hitler--

General Francisco Franco, the dictator here.

When the German war ends, 1945...

After the war.

They began to come to the monastery.

Here in the monastery,

there's a lot of German military dressed like monks.

He said that Germans come here

in the monastery because it's the way to Vigo.

The route of the rats. - The route of the rats.

La ruta de las ratas.

And they used to do a false documents

to give them a new identity.

This isn't just a part of a ratline--

the escape route for Nazis. This is a hub

that connects to submarines waiting in the city of Vigo.

Next stop, South America.

Also, he was talking with many monks of that time.

- Of that period, yeah. - Yeah.

And a man who worked here when he was 18 years old,

he said that he saw here with his eyes Hitler.

- Here? - Here, yeah.

Yep. - When? When was that?

He said that the 1st of May of 1945.

- Hitler was here? - He said so.

A man who worked here said that he saw Hitler

here in the monastery. - Hitler was here?

- He said so. - Sí. Sí.

narrator: Newly declassified FBI files stating that Hitler

could have fled Germany and sought refuge in Spain

have led the team to the Samos Monastery,

where an eyewitness places Hitler

less than a month after his alleged death.

The team has also discovered that the monastery

may have been a hub on the ratlines,

an underground railroad for fleeing Nazis.

There's some bits about this story that,

for me, are just fantastical. - Right.

However, you can never knock an eyewitness.

We have a place you can hide in plain sight.

We have a date that fits in with the end

of the war in Berlin.

And then you chuck an eyewitness in who says

he saw Adolf Hitler here.

You can't erase history.

You can still see the imprint if you look really carefully.

What we're here doing is looking really carefully.

- Wow. - Yeah.

Is there any documentation that I can see

that supports all this that you're talking about?

- Of course there was. - Yeah.

In 1950, the area where the Germans used to live

and the library next door all burnt down.

- I want to talk to you. - We're just gonna have a chat,

and then we'll have a chat with you guys.

Whole thing went up like a...

That part of the history and more

went up in a puff of smoke.

There's absolutely no doubt in my mind

this is a safe haven for somebody that's trying to hide.

Completely.

It's not like you'd keep a ledger going,

"Nazi in. Nazi out."

But now nothing.

I bet there's more than one way into this place.

There would be ways only known to the Abbot.

So there are secret tunnels in and out of this building?

Of course, of course.

narrator: The team heads off to investigate one

of these mysterious tunnels that could have provided

clandestine access to the property.

So this goes outside of the walls of the monastery?

Yes.

Okay.

We don't know where that leads to?

- Not yet. - All right, let's take a look.

Time to be a tunnel rat.

Got about 50 yards on the tunnel that was up top,

and now there's a smaller one underneath it,

which you had to crawl through.

Wow, this thing goes pretty far. Okay.

Not much air in here, guys.

This thing ends right here.

It's bricked up.

Ah, I bet if I could have got through that wall,

I'd have been on the other side of the wall of the monastery.

Knowing that the Germans were here,

they were comfortable, they were welcomed,

to have now a tunnel underneath the monastery

is pretty significant.

I want to find out where this tunnel ended up.

What'd you find?

- There was a tunnel. - Okay.

I probably crawled 100 yards.

Boom, brick wall.

You could see where somebody had blocked it off.

I had to have been on the other side of the monastery,

on the other side of the wall. - 100 yards would take you--

Easy.

Is there any other building

that was owned by the monastery outside of the monastery?

Si. It's very, very close.

narrator: 50 yards beyond the wall in the tunnel

sits a building that was owned by the monastery in the 1940s.

After 1943, it became a station

for Franco's paramilitary police.

- Guardia Civil. - Yeah.

- Right. So it's not army... - Okay.

But it's a paramilitary police force.

Similar. Yep.

- All right. Military. - Yeah.

These are the tough guys.

These are the guys who run Franco's Spain for him.

Why would they man this place with paramilitary personnel

outside of the monastery?

You don't have to answer that question,

'cause I believe I have the answer.

It's a police station,

but the Guardia Civil are far more than police.

The Guardia Civil are men who owe allegiance to Franco.

You really don't want to meet these guys.

- Oh, look at this. - Holding cells.

- Yeah? - Yeah.

Huh.

There were cell blocks downstairs in the office space.

So I was looking in the cell blocks

and every floor was cemented.

Look at this.

That certainly has been covered over.

In one cell,

there was a floor that had been cemented in a perfect square

about 4x4, and part of it was kind of broken.

That's a straight shot to something right there.

You can see it.

I was able to dig in a little bit.

I could see straight down.

It was definitely a tunnel to someplace.

Ah, this has been filled in with all kinds of dirt

and stone, very loose gravel.

Definitely a hole here. Look at this.

The puzzle's starting to come together.

With the possibility of Hitler being here,

concentration of Nazis, General Franco,

and now we found this tunnel,

there's a good possibility that was utilized

to escort the Germans in and out of the monastery.

You got to remember, I went about 100 yards

in a tunnel which would have led right to the building

that the Civil Guard resided in.

Was some sort of an escape route or in for somebody.

As an investigator, you don't have

to hit me with a ton of bricks.

Good possibility that's what that tunnel was used for.

That should be all I need. So I'll swap out

and put the guardian onto this? - Yeah.

narrator: 7,000 miles away,

Tim Kennedy and a team of marine archeologists

prepare for an open ocean dive

to identify the mysterious metal objects

they detected on the ocean floor.

We're gonna be extremely conservative.

We're not gonna come anywhere near our limits.

We're super-remote out here, and we want to make sure

that we're extra safe because help is far away.

Sounds like a good plan.

narrator: Dive leader Joe Hoyt prepares for an expedition

that could put them face-to-face with the U-boat

the declassified FBI documents

claim delivered Hitler to Argentina.

All right. Let's go find a U-boat.

Let's do it.

That's good.

Obviously, the most important thing is to get

a positive ID on what's down there,

but let's actually get

hands-on 100% knowledge of what that is,

and hopefully it's what we've been looking for,

or at least a clue to it.

That moment right before you roll back into the water,

that is the most exciting point

because you know that you're about to go see something

that maybe nobody's ever seen before.

Maybe something incredible.

17.

Ready? Set. Go.

All three divers are go.

I've dove all over the world.

As a Green Beret,

we spend almost our entire lives in the water.

But being in here and then having the real possibility

that this a U-boat off the coast of Argentina,

it's hard to really put into words

how powerful that type of moment is.

We got to the bottom.

The visibility's not fantastic,

and we start a search pattern.

narrator: At a depth of 40 feet,

and battling poor visibility,

the team executes a circular search pattern

in order to locate their target.

narrator: They will increase the search circle

by 15-feet every rotation,

in order to thoroughly cover the area

where they believe their targets will be.

I copy that top side.

Hey, come this way. I think I, uh...

Say again, say again. You came in broken.

narrator: Off the Argentine coast,

the team's state-of-the-art sonar

has come across a significant hit.

narrator: Tim Kennedy and Joe Hoyt lead a dive

on a metal object they believe could be part

of the debris field left by a scuttled German U-boat.

Roger, I copy.

You've come across a steel I-beam.

So definitely not U-boat wreckage.

It's pretty clear right away what those objects were.

Solid metal beams, you know, on the ocean floor.

You know, it's just this big punch to the gut.

What you have to do is keep executing

until you find real evidence.

narrator: After an extensive search of the sea floor...

narrator: The team finds more modern debris

but no U-boat wreckage.

You know, you're hoping to see that gun

off the deck of a U-boat.

Pretty disappointing.

Right now, we're stuck with modern trash.

Well, the good the thing is that it shows

that the equipment and the survey that we're doing

is just completely comprehensive.

I mean, we found four tiny little pieces of metal out here

in the open ocean.

narrator: With only half of their survey grid complete,

the team resets course

to continue their hunt for the scuttled U-boat.

The only real way to do a survey like this

is to do it systematically, and we built a survey area

based on the best information that we had.

So we're gonna go ahead

and just continue to see if there's anything there.

So hopefully the weather will hold out for us

and we'll be able to complete that entire planned survey grid.

- Good dive? - Good dive.

Obviously, it was a major disappointment that it wasn't

what we were looking for, but it doesn't change anything.

We still have to go back to our search area and keep looking.

This was a small battle

and we're gonna keep fighting the big war.

You know, we pledged from the outset of this investigation

that we would pursue any leads. It's a good lead.

narrator: While the team in Argentina continues

their search for a sunken U-boat,

Bob Baer and John Cencich

discuss a bombshell lead from their investigation in Spain.

I guess somebody would bound to have seen Hitler

if he'd escaped from Berlin, and anybody who claims

to have seen him, we got to talk to.

Absolutely.

narrator: An eyewitness who claims

to have seen Hitler in the Samos Monastery

is alive and has agreed to speak with them via Skype

from Venezuela, where he now lives.

Why was he in a position to be able to see Hitler?

I mean, that's really what it comes down to.

Who is this person?

How did he know the information?

Did he actually see it?

And why should we believe him?

Okay. Hello.

Thank you so much for your time.

We have some questions for you.

If we go back for a moment, how old were you in 1945?

What were you engaged in?

Okay, great.

What I'd like to ask you, just in general terms,

what you saw--if anything--

related to Germans or Nazis in Spain?

And these Germans were Nazis?

Yes.

So just for clarification, which month?

Tell me about the airplane.

I went up to another town.

Did anybody that you know saw Hitler

get off that plane and told you this?

So Hitler was on that plane. Is that what you're saying?

Si.

Where exactly was the location of this plane?

In a little small town...

Perfecto. We have to stop right now so,

muchas gracias por todo. Hasta luego, yeah?

What I find interesting here is the fact that our team

is in this monastery, they see these secret compartments,

and this gentleman built those compartments.

It fits very well.

We have a witness which places Hitler there in 1945.

And later, second-hand, this guy hears

about an airplane that lands near the monastery.

The timeline and the airplane

fit our theory of how he got out of Germany.

If we can find evidence of how that plane landed,

we can fit how he got into Spain,

and how he left from Vigo.

This could be our missing link.

There was a plane that landed there.

Undoubtedly we'll find it. - Yeah.

To get to South America, you need to come through Spain.

This is a conduit right to South America.

Yeah. Completely.

narrator: Lenny DePaul and Gerrard Williams head

for Corneas, Spain, in search of evidence

that could corroborate an explosive eyewitness report.

Hitler was on that plane. Is that what you're saying?

Si.

narrator: If a plane did land in this area,

it would provide the team a crucial puzzle piece:

How Hitler could have entered Spain

before boarding a U-boat in the port town of Vigo.

What's up?

Yeah? Did you?

Good stuff.

Good job, Pablo.

narrator: The team's local contact

has uncovered a second eyewitness

who could provide key corroborating testimony

to the events surrounding this plane's landing.

One of the most difficult things about handling

an investigation like this 75 years on,

is that there are very few, if any,

living witnesses to what actually happened.

If we're gonna tell the story properly,

we need to speak to people who were witnesses at the time.

He was fishing by the river.

Did the plane crash?

What markings were on the aircraft?

There was no paintings at all.

Who was on the airplane?

He saw the pilot stepping out the plane...

- Okay. - And a few soldiers.

Hey, Pablo, you think they could show me on my map

where the plane had landed?

You have to walk the ground, meet people, talk to locals...

This is where the plane landed?

¿Aqui? - Aqui. Aqui.

And what we're getting here...

Thank you very much.

Are German planes landing in northern Spain.

It's worth investigating.

All right.

narrator: Lenny heads to the location

specified by the eyewitness

to see if the terrain would allow for a plane landing.

You know, for a plane to come down

in the middle of a field,

I want to be able to put that together for myself.

Taking a look at the field and the AO, we call it--

the area of operation-- that this went down in is gonna

give me a good look at whether or not everything is accurate.

So we'll see. It'll be good to be there.

narrator: Five miles away,

Gerrard makes contact with journalist Serafin Terrajorres,

who has information about German military activity

in the same area as the reported plane landing.

So there were Germans based here during the war?

- Is that a barracks? - Yeah. It is.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Correct.

narrator: For decades, this site

has only been known to locals.

If a plane wanted to come to Spain,

this would be seriously important to them?

They'd know where to find this?

That's just mind-blowing.

- Even in 1945? - Yeah. Yeah.

This is a neutral country during World War II.

But this communications setup

with a German radio antenna in it,

it's got to be central to the Nazi war effort.

What's more important

is it's central to the Nazis after the war.

This is a nasty nest of vipers right in the middle of Europe.

Wow. This is pretty hilly. Boy, I don't know.

Hell of a place to land an airplane.

narrator: Lenny arrives at the location

where the eyewitnesses claim to have seen the plane land.

Right here. Okay.

From a tactical point of view, it's wide open.

It's miles and miles of open area,

but it's surrounded by rough terrain.

So it would have made it very difficult to land here.

narrator: Lenny is armed with a state-of-the-art survey tool

in order to make his determination.

Now, I'm gonna map out the topography

and see if this aircraft possibly could have landed.

narrator: The Trimble TX5 3-D scanner

uses razor-thin lasers

to create 360-degree topographic maps so accurate

it can reveal details down to a single blade of grass.

The team will use this terrain survey

to determine if a plane could have feasibly touched down

based on the elevation, level of the field,

and the dimensions of this open space.

Now I'm gonna download all this stuff,

have it evaluated back at the situation room,

and see what they come up with.

narrator: Gerrard heads to investigate an antenna

that has just been revealed as the heart

of this nearby German military base.

Okay, what happened to it?

- A hurricane put them down? - Yeah.

- 120 meters? - Correct.

So this instillation was built with German technical help?

both: Telefunken?

Telefunken, one of the most important

communications industries in Germany

at the time and post-war, as well.

In 1940, the radio transmitters made

by Telefunken--we're talking a seriously powerful kit.

This communications array is pumping out a beam

that you can hone in on.

It's RDF. It's radio direction finder.

narrator: RDF, or radio direction finding,

is a key tool still used to help

military ships and aircrafts find navigational points.

At ranges in the thousands of miles,

these three advanced radio antennas allow for aircraft

to triangulate their position much like modern GPS.

This technology would have been one of the only ways

to facilitate the secret landing of an inbound aircraft

in the remote potato field five miles away.

So you're a German pilot who takes his bearings

from this and the other two around here.

You're flying in fog, you can line up on this damn thing

and know exactly where you're going and where your target is.

This is a lighthouse-- it's a beacon.

Spain is turning out to be full of surprises,

some of them really big.

There's a Spanish military here with German technicians

sending out signals to Nazi aircraft,

telling them exactly what position they're in.

Another wonderful example

of Franco's neutrality during World War II.

From what we're seeing on the ground here,

there's no reason at all why Adolf Hitler with the aircraft

at his disposal could not have transited through Spain.

This is not what you get in the history books.

Okay, show me the scans that Lenny did.

narrator: Bob Baer and John Cencich

review the 3-D laser scans from the field in Spain

to determine whether Hitler's airplane

could have feasibly landed at that location

as claimed by two eyewitnesses.

8,052 feet.

1,405 across.

Condor takes about 6,000 feet to land.

I've surveyed enough of these fields to tell you,

even at a slope like that, it landed there.

Of course, you got to be able to find the field

in the middle of the night.

The team has found, approximately five miles

from this location, Nazi RDF equipment,

or radio direction finder equipment,

which certainly could have been used

to aid in the landing of an aircraft.

Well, yeah, you fly the airplane right down the signal.

You take these witnesses,

and they seem pretty fantastic,

but once you go to the location they give

and right next to it is a radio base--

a Nazi radio base--

that adds an enormous amount of credibility

to what they're saying.

I feel really good about getting Hitler to Spain...

landing him, getting him across Spain, getting a U-boat out.

But what bothers me is this distance

is 6,700 miles down to Argentina,

and we know that the U-boats that did make that,

people got off very sick.

narrator: After the war, two German U-boats--

U-530 and U-970--surrendered off the coast of Argentina.

When these sailors disembarked from their long journey,

they could barely stand due to malnutrition, dehydration,

and breathing uncirculated air.

We know that his physical condition

was deteriorating in general.

His personal physician is providing a lot of details

that Hitler was in great pain.

We look here.

Hitler was suffering from asthma and ulcers.

I mean, what are the chances

he would take a U-boat ride from Vigo, Spain, to Argentina?

It's not some place

you would like to spend a couple of weeks underwater.

U-boats were very small. Confined space.

These things were coffins.

I would want to do this in stages

if I had a choice.

Let's say you split up the trip. How would you do it?

There's really only one location.

That's the Canary Islands.

narrator: At the end of World War II,

the Allies controlled nearly every coastal country along

the Atlantic Ocean, leaving the Spanish Canary Islands

as the only territory friendly to Hitler.

Years earlier, in 1940,

Franco and Hitler had met in Hendaye, France,

to discuss secret Nazi use of these strategic islands...

although they officially remained neutral

during the war, along with mainland Spain.

It's perfectly logical you put the guy on a U-boat here,

take him a thousand miles to the Canary Islands,

you resupply the boat, take care of him.

You could stay there a couple days

until he's feeling better and then move him again.

So the question that needs to be answered is,

could a U-boat have been resupplied in the Canary Islands

and could a high value target like Adolf Hitler

have used that location to recoup, to regroup,

and then eventually make his way to South America?

We need to get people out there right now.

See if this is feasible.

Next stop, Canary Islands.

Where does he go when he gets here?

Who protects him?

Somebody's gonna see him, you know?

narrator: The team lands in the Canary Islands,

an isolated group of volcanic landmasses

in the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of miles

from the coastlines of Europe and Africa.

What's this area here, Pablo?

This is Las Palmas de Gran Canarias.

The capitol city of Gran Canaria.

Beautiful.

narrator: They will investigate whether Hitler could have used

this highly strategic location as a pivotal point

in his escape to the shores of Argentina.

We know there were now two operations in mainland Spain.

Are they gonna be here too?

We got to work your sources to death.

We got to find out anybody that has any knowledge

of what went on 70 years ago.

You know, for the stuff we're looking for,

it's not gonna be in the official histories.

If we can find somebody who's actually spot-on

in the 1940s, we're gonna learn a lot.

We've been looking for the footprints of Adolf Hitler

coming down from Berlin all the way to Argentina.

Today, we get into one of the most important points

in that whole journey out:

This jump-off point to South America.

This is key to the Nazi escape route.

It's very much like seeing the top of a very big mountain.

There is still a huge amount more to be discovered.

Let's go. - Let's go to work.

Hooah!

This group of islands

is strategically really important in World War II.

Mm-hmm.

narrator: Lenny DePaul and Gerrard Williams

have arrived in the Canary Islands

to investigate whether Hitler

could have used these remote Spanish islands

as a stopping point in his U-boat escape

to the shores of Argentina.

Why don't you speak to him

first, okay? - Yep.

narrator: Through local contacts,

they have tracked down a crucial lead.

narrator: Francisco Kampof, whose family owned

one of the largest German businesses

on the island in the 1940s--

a shipping company known as the Warman House.

His grandfather was the Chief Director of the Warman House.

So when a German U-boat

arrive here and anything that need to be fixed,

they did it.

He's telling me that they did not just repair the U-boats.

Okay.

They also supplied with food and guns and torpedoes.

Apparently, there was on the island a storage

for torpedoes, some tunnels.

I couldn't believe what he was saying.

With respect to the U-boats,

they were just popping up here in the harbor.

General Franco's military wasn't even in the war

and they built tunnels

that apparently torpedoes were stored there.

So they were able to go inland and replenish,

bring some food, get on board and get back out of here.

But ask him though. This is a big secret going on.

Nobody knows about this. How did they communicate?

One second, uno secundo.

He mentioned a word, enigma. - Enigma.

Is he telling me there was an enigma machine?

Enigma was seriously important.

That was the German's almost impossible to break code.

The Nazis would have used Enigma

to get their information back to Nazi Germany

and also to get orders and instructions

from Nazi Germany.

To find four of them here.

They were planning on something huge.

narrator: The team heads to the tunnels rumored

to have been an ammunition dump to supply Nazi submarines.

Secret U-boat bases.

A communications network. We need to go there.

We need to find out exactly what we can.

We're close.

It could have been turned into an escape route

for Adolf Hitler.

Pablo, you spoke to Javier on the phone, right?

Yes.

- He knows we're coming? - Yeah.

He should be waiting for us.

Javier Duran,

he was the first person to be able to explore these tunnels,

to take a look at what was here,

why it was here, and how it got here.

7,000 meters of tunnels around here.

They have natural ventilation

and mechanic one. - Okay.

narrator: Less than a mile from the sea,

these tunnels would have been a short drive to potential

U-boat landing points, while the surrounding hills

would camouflage the tunnels themselves.

You can drive trucks through this thing?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That tunnel from there, that's the torpedo one.

Can we--can we take a look at those tunnels?

These are entrances here? These two?

It's quite incredible.

We're surrounded by military installations.

The Nazis build underground like cathedrals above ground.

They're serious in their scope and size,

and this feels very Germanic.

It's incredible.

We have no idea what was going on on these islands

in the dark days of World War II.

It has an amazingly dark history.

It's something that must be told.

This is not a vacation home. This was built for a reason.

Everything points to this being used

to get a high-ranking Nazi officials out of Germany

and to safety.

Something like this costs millions.

Germany's fingerprints are all over this place.

It just goes on forever.

I mean, this place was gearing up for war.

I don't care whose name the title was in.

It was a German base.

So is it possible to see the house?

We better not go over there, you know?

I think we will go there.

If I'm gonna hide a high value target, this is perfect.

We have to get on here. We can't be compromised.

Stop, stop, stop. Now you got somebody coming.

.