Original subtitles

[narrator] In Poland, a fairy tale castle

at the heart of a modern day treasure hunt.

The world's media descended,

and what brought them all here

was the promise

of Nazi gold.

[narrator] In Georgia, the millionaire's mansion

caught in a web of controversy.

We're talking about insurance claims

and alcoholism,

murder.

[narrator] And an Irish country estate

drawn into a brutal fight for freedom.

Owned by one of the most hated men in Ireland,

some say that this house was cursed.

[narrator] Decaying relics...

Ruins of lost worlds...

Sites haunted by the past...

Their secrets waiting...

to be revealed.

In southern Poland is a commanding residence

rumored to harbor a precious secret.

[birds chirping]

[Alexis Pedrick] Up on the hilltop kind of above the tree line

is this grand, majestic structure.

[Rob Bell] Inside, that splendor continues.

Red carpeted staircases

lead up to huge hallways with marble floors.

[narrator] Yet this opulent citadel

contains hidden depths.

Behind an ordinary-looking door

is a secret subterranean world.

[Bell] As your eyes adjust,

you start to get a sense

of just how large this space is.

It's like you're walking through a railway tunnel.

[Pedrick] Some of the tunnels even

seem to have collapsed or have been

deliberately destroyed.

Perhaps to hide something.

[narrator] For decades, tales were told

of a brutal regime's riches

that went missing in this exact area.

In 2016,

it appeared the truth

would finally be revealed.

And everybody's waiting for the moment

when we finally get to see

the thing we're looking for.

Nazi gold.

[Pedrick] There's been some

sort of fortification here since the late 1200s.

But over time it's been destroyed

and rebuilt.

[Bell] In the early 1500s, the Hoberg family took control

and their descendants owned it

right up into the 20th century.

But in 1941,

the Nazi regime confiscated the castle from its owners.

[narrator] When the Germans invaded

and occupied Poland during the Second World War,

they seized many lavish residences.

This one is called Ksiaz Castle,

and it served as the Fuhrer's imperial headquarters in this region.

[Bell] They wanted to make it a palace

fit for Hitler himself,

and in 1943, work began

on remodeling the interiors to fit his tastes.

[Dr. Lynette Nusbacher] The Nazis are going to rip out

everything they think of as

decadent or overdecorative.

[narrator] But it was below ground

the biggest changes were made.

[Bell] To ensure his safety,

a private escape elevator was installed

just opposite Hitler's bedroom door.

[narrator] The elevator led to

a vast underground network.

Excavated at great human cost

by inmates from a nearby concentration camp.

The sheer scale of the tunnel system

suggests it was much more than just a place

for Hitler to hide.

[Dr. Nusbacher] Germany is under immense stress by this point in the war.

Scarce war materials like concrete,

reinforcing bar, all of these things

which could be used anywhere in the German Reich

are being used here.

What is it that justifies their use...

in this place?

[Bell] Historians have theorized that they could have been anything

from bombproof underground factories

to chemical or even nuclear research labs.

[narrator] There is another theory that might explain

what these tunnels were used for.

Ksiaz Castle...

has long been linked to a legend

forged in the dying days of the Second World War.

It began when the Soviet Red Army

approached the Nazi-occupied city of Breslau,

sixty miles from here.

It's said that during the chaos of the evacuation,

an armored train was loaded up

with more than 330 tons of gold,

a vast array of jewels,

weaponry, and priceless works of art.

So the train supposedly left the city

just before the attack

and started heading down the line nearby

that ran to the castle.

[Dr. Nusbacher] The legend has it that this armored train

rattled through one station,

but never came to the next station.

[Bell] But huge armored trains don't just disappear.

The story goes that there was a railway line

leading into these tunnel networks.

And that once the train had passed through,

the entrance to the tunnel was blown up,

hiding the train inside.

[narrator] Piotr Koper is a treasure hunter

who has spent over a decade

searching for Hitler's lost gold.

He suspects the tunnels below Ksiaz Castle

were a secret underground train line

once connected to the main railway line,

only two miles from here.

This connection is not a matter of faith,

or just a story.

Hitler's headquarters had to be connected directly to the railway line.

We believe that the train is waiting for us

in one of the tunnels linked to Ksiaz Castle.

[narrator] In August 2015,

Piotr and his business partner made an exciting discovery

under an earthen embankment,

adjacent to the main railway line.

We started our investigations here

because of the testimonies of witnesses who said

that they saw a tunnel entrance in this area.

[narrator] The fortune hunters used ground-penetrating radar

to build up an image of what was hidden below ground.

The result showed clear railway composition.

It was hard to say because there's a lot of pipes

and iron here.

But it also showed train carriages lined up

one after the other.

[Dr. Nusbacher] It's so exciting the idea that at long last,

after decades of tales of Nazi gold,

we're finally gonna find some.

[narrator] For decades, the tunnel network below Ksiaz Castle

has been linked to the legend of a buried Nazi gold train.

In 2016,

Piotr Koper believed he had found it,

entombed at a spot two miles away from the castle.

Local authorities gave him just seven days

to complete his investigation.

Because the train line running next to the excavation site

had to be shut down during this time.

On August 16th, the dig began.

[Pedrick] The world's media descended. I mean,

they were following every moment.

[Bell] There was a lot on the line

for Piotr and his partner.

Not only had they invested

a reported $131,000 in the dig,

their reputations were also at stake.

After about 20 feet,

we hit an unbreakable rock.

We tried another three trenches.

But always at the same depth,

it was completely solid.

[narrator] The clock was ticking.

We prepared the drilling rig for the next day.

But it was raining heavily.

The drill operator said that it was impossible to drill

until the ground had hardened.

But we just didn't have time,

as that was the last day of our permission.

[Pedrick] So after seven days of digging,

they found... nothing.

No tunnel, no gold, no train.

[narrator] In the spotlight of the world's media,

Piotr and his team were forced to give up.

[Koper] As the Polish saying goes,

"Success has many fathers,

and failure is an orphan."

Unfortunately, the second one has happened to us.

[narrator] Although Piotr's hunt for the Nazi gold train

didn't go as planned,

the media attention did provide an unexpected boost

to the region's economy.

An official from a nearby town

actually admitted that during the year of the dig,

tourism was up 44%.

And who knows?

Perhaps the Nazi gold train

is still out there.

Waiting to be found.

[narrator] In Atlanta, Georgia, is an extravagant abode,

built from the riches of one of the world's

most famous business empires.

[Gutierrez-Romine] We are in the leafy

suburban neighborhood of Druid Hills.

And if you go about 500 feet back

from the road, there is this enormous mansion.

[Sascha] It sits on Briarcliff Road,

in an area known as Briarcliff Village.

I'm guessing that Briarcliff has something important

in the history of this region.

But what does it mean?

Inside are these huge rooms with carved wood paneling.

A grand, like, Gothic ballroom,

numerous bedrooms.

And on the top floor,

there seems to be a hidden door

in one of the wall panels.

[narrator] The curiosities of this mansion

can only be explained

by the eccentricities of its owner,

the heir to a vast fortune.

He was often at the center

of a lot of different controversy.

He did whatever he wanted,

and he didn't care.

This story's sort of like a real-life version of Succession.

I'm talking...

powerful people, narcissism.

Greed, sibling rivalry

and abuses of power.

All of which left a permanent legacy

in the city of Atlanta.

[Sara Butler] I moved to Atlanta in 2000,

and I lived here for about 15 years

before I read about this abandoned mansion in the suburbs

and thought I gotta go out and see it.

[narrator] Sara Butler is an author and expert

on the history of this century old property.

Her first visit inspired

a five-year journey of discovery.

[Butler] I found all of these stories about the man who built it.

And the stories were kind of wild.

Everything in this house was designed to impress.

In order to understand the man,

you have to understand the house.

This is the home of

Asa Griggs Candler, Jr.

Or, as his friends and family

referred to him as Buddy.

He had a life of immense privilege,

given that he was the second son

and namesake of Coca-Cola founder,

Asa Griggs Candler.

[narrator] But the journey that motivated Buddy

to build such a sprawling estate

was not as simple as it might appear.

[Pedrick] As the story goes, Buddy was a troubled kid.

He was mischievous.

According to everyone, he was just really difficult to discipline.

[Butler] Around the time that he turned eight

was when his father closed the deal

to take full ownership of Coca-Cola and really take it on.

And that's where he needed his attention to be.

The only solution they felt was to send him away

to an all-girls school.

The reason for that is Asa, Sr.,

his sister, ran the school.

His status as the black sheep of the family

only got worse as time went on.

[narrator] During college, Buddy moved in

with his older brother, Charles Howard.

The younger sibling soon developed

a reputation for bad behavior.

[Butler] He made so much trouble

that his brother, whose grades were great during his freshman year,

started going down.

So he was kind of dragging his brother down with him.

His father wrote a letter that said,

"I don't know what I'm going to do with Buddy,

but I gotta find something to do with him."

And they shipped him off to California for a year.

[narrator] Fresh out of college,

Buddy was given a shot at running

the family business on the West Coast,

overseeing manufacturing, orders,

and fulfillment.

It didn't go well.

[Gutierrez-Romine] It probably didn't help that

he spent most of his time drinking and partying.

[Butler] Asa Candler, Sr. never let him have a part of Coca Cola

as a business ever again.

His older brother was always...

the son who did things right.

And Buddy was sort of the son who did things wrong.

And... that put Buddy in a position

of always trying to outshine him.

[narrator] That motivation prompted Buddy to build

an attention-grabbing property,

just to compete with his brother.

But he'd made so many failed investments

that he didn't have the money

to buy the land to build his new house on.

Yet Buddy always found a way.

[Butler] So in 1911, a big fire broke out in his garage

and destroyed all of his very valuable cars,

all insured.

And conveniently, within about a month,

he's moving his family out to this property

that he couldn't quite afford to close on until that moment.

[narrator] Buddy may have owned the land, but he still

didn't have the funds to build his dream house.

He would have to wait

until the Coca-Cola Company was sold in 1919,

when each of the Candler siblings

was paid out handsomely.

Buddy finally got the cash he needed

to start building the house

that would put his siblings in the shade.

[narrator] It was called Briarcliff Mansion.

And by 1922,

when Buddy was 42 years old,

it was ready for he and his family to move into.

[Butler] One of the things that I love

is that his brother already lived on this road.

He built this house and renamed the road.

So he renamed his brother's address. Briarcliff.

It was a nice little, kind of finger to his brother.

[laughing]

[Gutierrez-Romine] The name "Briarcliff" actually

comes from Buddy's most

beloved sports car,

the Lozier Briarcliff.

This, surprisingly, was one of the few cars

to survive the mysterious fire in his garage.

[Gutierrez-Romine] In 1925,

Buddy was still not content

with his home, and so he decided

to build a music hall

that included an in-home organ.

[Butler] The organ, for me,

is a really key part of the story to understand Buddy.

It was a little bit bigger than his brother's.

Which was a little bit bigger than their fathers.

So I like to say in this family,

there was an organ measuring contest,

but the organs were actually organs.

[narrator] But Buddy was never satisfied for long and always needed

a new hobby to occupy his time.

In this case, that exciting new hobby was magic.

[Sascha] He filled a room

with his magic tricks and would regularly take

an airplane to New York City just to buy more.

[narrator] His devotion didn't stop there.

On a family vacation to the Philippines,

he met a local magician named Jose Cruz.

[Pedrick] Buddy was so impressed that he actually

took him back with him to America.

Cruz was officially employed as a butler,

but his real job

was as Buddy's personal magic tutor.

[Sascha] But soon, a terrible scandal

was going to engulf Briarcliff Mansion.

And Buddy's love of magic

would be the least of the casualties.

[narrator] In Atlanta is the former mansion

of Coca-Cola heir, Buddy Candler.

On January 18th, 1931,

he was woken with the news his butler

and magic teacher, Jose Cruz,

had been found dead

on the grounds of the property.

[Gutierrez-Romine] But this wasn't an ordinary death.

Jose's body was found

next to a young woman named Gladys.

And Gladys was also his lover.

And, at first, it appeared that the two had died

in what appeared to be a double suicide.

Gladys's parents disapproved of the relationship

because Cruz was Filipino.

The suicide note suggested that the couple

felt death was the only way

they could be together forever.

But things didn't quite add up.

[Butler] Ultimately, what was determined by a jury

pulled together very quickly

was that it was a murder suicide.

Jose Cruz was very troubled,

and he killed her and killed himself.

It made national news.

[Pedrick] The whole affair kinda...

left a bitter taste in Buddy's mouth.

So he gave up magic completely.

Um, the one thing though, he did not give up,

was the bottle.

It's even rumored that the start of his next adventure

came because he was drunk

and at a circus in Europe

and bought a bunch of animals.

[narrator] In order to fund his newest hobby,

he began charging admission

for people to come visit his private zoo.

[Butler] We're not just talking elephants. We're talking...

lions, tigers, black panthers,

uh, Shetland ponies,

a whole pack of bears.

But like many of his other projects,

this one was doomed from the start.

[Butler] What he didn't anticipate was how expensive it was

to run a zoo on your own lawn.

A dime a person was never going to make him

enough money to make this viable.

So within a year,

he was already running in the red.

Within two years,

he was starting to lose his temper with people.

This is heavy in the drinking years.

[narrator] Buddy was so disheartened

he gave away many of the animals

to what would later become Atlanta City Zoo.

His life was spiraling out of control,

and something had to give.

[Butler] At some point, late 30s, early 1940s...

he has this realization

that he's an alcoholic

and he can't live like this anymore. And he decided

to get right with God.

All evidence points to him successfully

giving up alcohol completely.

So he spent that latter part of his life completely sober.

But by then, much of the damage had already been done

to his health and his finances.

[Alexis Pedrick] In 1947, he was, by his standards, short of cash.

And so he was forced to sell off Briarcliff.

You know, according to those who knew him,

it was a pretty crushing blow for him to give up his beloved mansion.

[narrator] Six years later, in 1953,

Buddie died from liver cancer at the age of 72.

[Alicia Gutierrez-Romine] The irony is that Buddie's Mansion ended up

turning into Georgia's first alcohol addiction treatment center,

and it functioned in that capacity through the 1980s.

After that, it was abandoned.

In 1998, Emory University purchased the 42-acre estate

that included Buddie's Mansion from the Atlanta government.

[narrator] Now a multimillion dollar renovation is in the works.

Gary Hawk is Emory University's historian.

[Gary Hawk] Given the importance of the Candler family

to the development of modern Atlanta,

I think it's really vital to preserve the building as it is and to restore it

perhaps as it once was.

[narrator] In County Limerick, Ireland, stands a fallen symbol

of the nation's troubled history.

[Sascha Auerbach] What we see is a patchwork of fields with cattle grazing.

It's quiet, idyllic,

a picturesque part of the Irish countryside.

[Dominic Selwood] But right at the center of it all

is an unusual, imposing structure.

It could be a ruined Roman temple, abandoned for 2000 years.

But the Romans never made it to Ireland.

Whoever built this at tremendous expense by the look of it,

didn't expect it to end up in the middle of a cow pasture.

[narrator] Yet the sparse interiors still retain a glimmer

of the property's faded prosperity.

You can still make out the outlines of big baronial fireplaces,

big heroic staircases lining up to a second story.

It's got corridors and doorways everywhere,

with countless rooms and underground vaults.

So this was clearly .a stately home of wealth and distinction.

[narrator] The actions of its influential owner

made him one of the most hated figures in Ireland.

He did everything in his power to prevent the emancipation of Catholics.

Inside this building, policies were formulated,

decisions were taken that would lead to, you know,

an absolute bloodletting across the country of Ireland.

Little did he know that he would end up sowing the seeds

for the destruction of his own home.

[narrator] In Ireland are the dilapidated remains of a bygone era.

David Hicks is an architectural historian

with a passion for large country homes like this one.

There were said to be 22 bedrooms,

five reception rooms, a six-acre walled garden,

and what is very interesting is the people inside this house

had a huge influence on the wider community,

a huge influence on the Catholic population nationally.

[narrator] This is Mountshannon House.

It was bought in the 1760s by John Fitzgibbon,

an affluent lawyer and politician from nearby Limerick.

The origin of his fortune dates back to a time

when Ireland was a country under siege.

[Professor Geoffrey Wawro] In the mid-1600s,

the English leader Oliver Cromwell led

a brutal crackdown on Catholics in Ireland

after they had rebelled against the British crown.

As punishment for the uprising,

vast tracts of land were confiscated

and given to British Protestant settlers.

[Selwood] It also ushered in an era of strong penal laws against Catholics

designed to maintain the power of the Protestant elite.

There was huge restrictions placed on Catholics

in terms of land ownership, education,

even the type of career they could pursue.

[narrator] John Fitzgibbon was raised Catholic,

and the only way he could have owned an estate of this size

was by making a great sacrifice.

[Hicks] John changed his religion in order that he could pursue a law career.

He was very successful, and he died a very wealthy man by 1780.

[Selwood] He never forgot his roots, though,

and often defended Catholics for fighting the penal laws.

[narrator] But Fitzgibbon's son and heir, also named John

was cut from a different cloth.

Being born and raised in the elite class of the Protestant ascendancy,

seemed to go straight to his head.

[Professor Wawro] And the curious thing about him,

he saw the dilemmas his father had wrestled with being a Catholic,

and instead of that filling him with a kind of compassion

and understanding for the plight of Catholics in their own land,

it made him even more bigoted, even more oppressive than the English themselves.

[narrator] Fitzgibbon Jr. rose to become a powerful politician

and enforced his beliefs without mercy.

He did everything he could to ally himself to the crown,

always desperate to fit in with the English aristocracy,

and spent his life opposing Catholic emancipation.

[narrator] By the late 1700s, trouble was brewing.

Irish Catholics, increasingly frustrated

by the injustice of the penal laws, were beginning to organize.

[Professor Wawro] There's Irish nationalist groups

like the Society for United Irishmen,

who form and say, "Look, we need to, like, unite together

and take our land back

from these British interlopers."

[Auerbach] Unsurprisingly, Fitzgibbon threw everything he could at them,

outlawing the group and forcing its members underground.

[narrator] The United Irishmen didn't give up so easily.

Inspired by the successes of the American and French revolutions,

they resorted to an armed rebellion across Ireland in 1798.

But after a few months, British troops had defeated the rebels

in battles around the country.

[Auerbach] Fitzgibbon authorized the arrest

and imprisonment of the Irish without trial.

And resorted to the most brutal torture as forms of intimidation.

[narrator] Fitzgibbon's greatest betrayal

of his fellow countrymen was still to come.

[Auerbach] The rebellion prompted the prime minister

to pass the Act of Union,

which formally incorporated Ireland into the union

of Great Britain and Ireland.

[narrator] Under the terms of the act,

Ireland's parliament was to be abolished.

Yet many British politicians felt the time had come

to grant Irish Catholics more freedom.

But fearing that more Catholic power would ruin the country,

Fitzgibbon convinced King George III not to give his royal assent,

saying it would violate his coronation oath to maintain Protestantism.

And he is famous for saying that the Act of Union

would make Ireland as tame as a mutilated cat.

[narrator] The bitter irony was that Fitzgibbon's fanaticism

would lead to his own downfall.

His rule in Ireland was so harsh

that he alienated even the British who said, you know,

this is no way to knit together Ireland

and the United Kingdom with these kind of policies,

so he wasn't kept on the government.

He returned to Mountshannon, deeply depressed.

Call it karma, but the next year he died after falling off his horse

when he was riding around his estate.

[Hicks] The people of Limerick thought it would be a suitable memorial to him

to deposit a number of dead cats

not only on his coffin but on his grave.

And this, I think, illustrates how much this man was disliked in the locality.

[narrator] Over the next century,

the Irish nationalist movement gathered pace,

fueled in part by the actions of men like John Fitzgibbon.

It would ultimately take a global conflict

to pave the road for lasting change in Ireland.

The First World War halted the passage of a new law known as Home Rule,

which was meant to give Ireland more local control.

[Auerbach] In 1916, militant Republicans staged an uprising in Dublin.

It became known as the Easter Rebellion, or the Easter uprising.

[Selwood] The rebels were surrounded and bombarded.

Thousands were sent to internment camps

and 16 of their leaders were executed.

With this violent repression, mainstream Irish opinion

turned strongly against the British.

[narrator] In 1919, the War of Independence broke out.

The Irish forces united under the banner of the Irish Republican Army,

more commonly known by its initials, the IRA.

The IRA only had a few thousand men and limited supplies,

so were forced to fight a guerrilla campaign.

Their tactics included ambush, bombings, espionage, and assassinations.

And so it becomes a really nasty war.

[narrator] The southwestern city of Limerick was an IRA stronghold

which made it a target for British forces.

Mountshannon House would be caught in the crossfire.

[narrator] In Ireland lie the ruins of Mountshannon House.

By the early 1900s, the property had been drawn

into the violent War of Independence engulfing the country.

The one thing to understand in the political upheaval of Ireland in the 1920s

was that a house like this could be used as a barracks.

It sat within a demesne of 900 acres,

so therefore, from the surrounding area,

if anyone was approaching, it could easily be defended.

As well as seen as being an asset to some,

it was also seen as a threat

if your enemy took control of it.

[Auerbach] With forewarning that thousands of British troops

were about to arrive in Ireland,

the IRA set out on a campaign to destroy structures

that might be used as barracks to house these troops.

[narrator] On June 14th, 1920, John Fitzgibbon's once lavish estate

was razed to the ground.

[Auerbach] A band of IRA volunteers snuck into Mountshannon.

They planted paper and hay around the building and covered it in oil.

[Selwood] The house burned for three days,

and a massive fire could be seen from Limerick.

[Professor Wawro] There's a real circular aspect to the story

because the Mountshannon House is burned to the ground

by the very Irish nationalists that are basically fanned into life

by the repressive policies of this guy, Fitzgibbon,

back in the early 19th century.

[narrator] In 1921, a year after Mountshannon was destroyed,

the Irish achieved independence.

The terms of the deal divided the country

into Ireland, which was independent,

and Northern Ireland, which remained part of the United Kingdom.

[Auerbach] Mountshannon stands as a haunting symbol

of the turbulent history of Ireland

and its long struggle to achieve autonomy.

[narrator] In the mountainous region of Saoufar, Lebanon,

an eerie ruin commands the landscape it dominates.

[Luke Pepera] Up here, there's a blizzard raging.

As you make your way up the road,

the outline of this palatial building comes into focus.

The roof is entirely missing, and snow is just piling up on the top floor.

You can see how well built it is

that even though it's been empty for many decades,

it still stands.

[narrator] Inside, the now spartan interior

still retains traces of a glorious past.

[Pepera] In one room, there's a plush red sofa, and a mirror table.

There's no doubt this was a room for entertaining.

[Jim Meigs] In this lobby, you see these two grand curving staircases.

Clearly in its day, it was a place to make an entrance.

[narrator] In the beginning, this was a beacon for the rich and the famous.

In the end, it became a tragic victim of circumstance.

The history here wasn't all happy.

These holes in the walls look a lot like bullet holes.

[narrator] Carlos Haber's family has been the caretakers

of this site for almost a century.

Today he continues that legacy.

[Carlos Haber] I've been here for about 48 years.

I was born here.

I remember this place with all its furnishings

when it was functioning and full of life.

[narrator] The family that Carlos and his ancestors worked for

were one of the wealthiest in Lebanon.

[Pepera] The Sursocks are a Greek Orthodox Christian family,

that have lived in Beirut since the 18th century.

[Meigs] They became powerful bankers, traders,

importers, all sorts of businesses.

And, of course, along the way, they acquired a great amount

of power and influence in the political system.

[narrator] But this was not the Sursock's private home.

It was an ambitious business venture

intended to serve society's upper echelons.

This is the Grand Sofar Hotel.

It first welcomed guests in 1892.

Alfred and Michel Sursock had a vision for a lavish getaway

catering to the rich and famous of the Arab world.

Their timing could not have been better.

[Meigs] A few years after the hotel opened,

the first railroad running from the coast in Beirut

to Damascus in Syria opened.

Passengers could step right off the train

and through the doors of one of the most

luxurious destinations in the Middle East.

[Haber] It had three floors, 75 rooms,

and there used to be around 300 employees working here.

There was a band that played every day from morning until night.

Everyone stayed up late and was happy.

[Meigs] You know, you think of the Middle East

as being quite culturally conservative,

and much of it, of course, was.

But Lebanon was always different,

and this hotel really exemplified it.

You had gambling, you had drinking.

Lord knows what else was going on behind those walls.

[narrator] The hedonistic mountain retreat became the place to be

for fun loving celebrities.

[Pepera] The hotel was a destination

for big names across the Arab world.

Including the actor Omar Sharif

and the Lebanese singer Sabah.

[Meigs] The hotel wasn't just a place for nightlife

and for the rich and famous to blow off steam.

It was also a meeting place for political leaders.

[narrator] In the late 1940s, the luxury resort hosted

a gathering of presidents and kings.

The powerful group would come to shape the modern Middle East

and trigger a series of events

that led to disaster at the Grand Sofar Hotel.

[narrator] In Lebanon, the Grand Sofar Hotel was once the height

of luxury and sophistication.

Yet a meeting of Arab leaders in the 1940s

would impact the future of this entire region

and play a part in this building's destruction.

After World War II, the whole world was,

in a way, reorganizing itself.

Borders that had been established by European powers were being renegotiated.

This is especially true in the Middle East.

The Arab League was formed in 1945 as a way for the Arab states

to develop their economies

and coordinate their political aims.

In October 1947, leaders from Syria, Jerusalem, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia

all met here at the Grand Sofar Hotel.

There was a lot happening in the region that concerned them greatly.

In particular, there was the move to create the state of Israel

in a portion of Palestine.

[Professor Michele Mitchell] In the smoky rooms of the hotel,

they drafted an agreement for an Arab army,

discussed a united Arab currency

and, most importantly, pledged support for Palestine.

[narrator] In 1948, Israel declared its independence.

In response, the Arab League countries launched a synchronized attack.

After almost a year of fighting,

a fragile armistice was reached.

But over the next 25 years, hundreds of thousands

of Palestinian refugees fled Israel

and sought shelter in Lebanon.

Tension between the Muslim and Christian populations grew

until it finally boiled over.

When the Civil War erupted in the 1970s,

every aspect of life in Lebanon was upended.

Even here in Saoufar, warring militias battled throughout the town.

As the casualties mounted, they needed somewhere to house their wounded.

[Haber] The hotel closed for winter on October 15th, 1974.

In the summer of 1975, the hotel was preparing to open again.

Then the war came.

You can stop a soldier or two, but you can't stop an entire army.

They brought their injured and dropped them off here.

They used to put them under the trees

and then go out to get others and bring them back.

Even now, those scenes are still before my eyes.

I'll never forget it.

[narrator] But the Grand Sofar Hotel would soon be taken over

by another invading force.

In 1976, Syrian leader Hafiz al-Assad ordered his army

to move into neighboring Lebanon

in a supposed Arab League effort to try and restore order.

The Syrians set up their headquarters in the abandoned hotel,

and as troops so often do they wreck the place.

They stripped out the wood from the doors and windows

so that they could burn it to keep warm.

They even stripped tiles to line and reinforced their trenches.

[narrator] The Lebanese Civil War raged on until 1990.

Syria finally withdrew their troops from the country in 2005.

By that time, the Grand Sofar Hotel had been destroyed

beyond all recognition.

[Meigs] The hotel is still in the hands of the Sursock family.

Of course, it's a magnificent ruin,

but a grandson of the family in recent years has tried to restore it

as a site for artistic exhibitions.

[narrator] Carlos Haber is optimistic about what the future holds.

[Haber] We now use these rooms for weddings.

They've been held at the hotel for the last four or five years.

We have lots of reservations.

Thank God everything is fine and working, and we are not quitting.