Original subtitles

[narrator] In Panama,

a jungle stronghold built to defend a prized American possession.

[Alicia] The Nazis knew that if they destroyed what this protected,

they could potentially defeat the Allies.

[narrator] In Italy, the hilltop haunt of a mad scientist.

[Jaega] There's grates to an underground dungeon

and shackles on a wall, as if you're in a torture chamber.

[narrator] And in Germany,

a ghostly structure divides a city fractured by conflict.

Families were torn apart, and this became a staging post to fight back.

[narrator] Decaying relics...

Ruins of lost worlds...

Sites haunted by the past...

Their secrets waiting...

to be revealed.

In northern Panama,

dense rainforest hides vestiges of an imperial age.

We're in the muggy, steaming jungle

and in between the trees you see these buildings

that, from a distance, you might almost think were Mayan ruins.

But these are clearly modern man-made structures.

These are very solid, lots of reinforced concrete.

Things built to last.

[narrator] Exploring deeper into the complex yields few clues

as to this site's original function.

There really isn't anything left.

It's dark and it's dingy.

[Geoffrey] But you can imagine this was once bustling

and filled with people whose job was to man the facilities here.

[narrator] A distinctive rectangular structure

suggests this was a stronghold built to defend against attack.

One of the buildings is red and white.

It's got these kind of, porthole-like windows,

it says, "Battery Baird."

[Geoffrey] It's facing the sea,

so it's clearly some kind of a military fortification.

[Meigs] Today, this is just a crumbling outpost in the jungle.

But there was a time when this place was pivotal to the defense

of one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in the world.

[narrator] Joe Berger lives in the nearby city of Colón.

When he was growing up, this was his playground.

My parents were working here from the '80s and in the '90s,

and the guys would dress me up with military fatigues

and they'd put all the military makeup on your face

so you could, like, blend in into the-- into the jungle and all that.

It was towards the end of the American presence here.

[narrator] Joe's ancestors first came to Panama

from Pennsylvania over a century ago.

Not as part of the military,

but to help construct one of the world's most ambitious engineering projects.

My family came down in 1907

to work on the Panama Canal, to build the Panama Canal.

[Alicia] It really is impossible to overstate

how significant this was to global history.

For as long as Europeans have been colonizing the Americas,

they have been looking for a shortcut

to connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean.

[narrator] In the late 19th century,

the French were the first to try and cut through Panama.

[Meigs] They discovered an area that was full of mosquito borne diseases,

especially yellow fever and malaria.

It's estimated the French lost about 20,000 people

in their effort to dig the canal.

By 1899, they'd given up.

[Geoffrey] But then, along comes the United States

and says, "We need a Panama canal

to connect our East Coast and West Coast

and unite the continent and to give us ready access

to Asia and Europe from either coast."

[narrator] The American government

purchased the abandoned French assets

and rights to the canal for $14 million.

Construction began in 1904,

but only after US engineers

figured out how to succeed where the French had run into trouble.

There was a big river called the Chagres River

that runs from the Panama highlands down to the Atlantic.

And sometimes it floods, it caused a lot of problems for the French.

So the American, they build this huge dam

called Gatun Dam

and formed a giant reservoir

in the middle of Panama that feeds the canal.

Without that water, the Panama Canal cannot operate.

[narrator] By 1914,

the 50-mile-long waterway was open for business.

[Alicia] Effectively, the Panama Canal project

cost about $375 million.

And obviously, when you spend that much money,

you want to protect your investment.

[narrator] This is Fort Sherman.

It was made up of seven defense batteries

intended to protect the Atlantic entrance to the canal

and the Gatun Dam.

You've got, like, 14-inch guns, 10-inch guns,

all these battery positions ready to absolutely pummel

any adversary that closes up on the canal.

This is Battery Baird, and over there, that's Battery Howard.

In order to triangulate the places where they're gonna hit,

they'd have a viewing point over on one side

and a viewing point over on the other.

And with their calculations, they'd be able to triangulate

where the ship was heading.

And then right here is where those calculations,

those coordinations would pop up for the people down there,

operating the mortars to be able to line it up accordingly.

[Alicia] Altogether, Fort Sherman was really

this formidable ring of concrete and firepower.

[narrator] In the decades to come, it would be put to the test.

In 1939, Europe went to war,

and from the start,

Americans feared that the canal could potentially be a German target.

[Meigs] It was absolutely vital

to be able to move forces and trade between the two oceans.

And if an enemy could take it out,

that could be their path to victory.

The US had to do everything they could

to keep enemy aircraft from ever reaching it.

[Joe] As the United States got involved in the Second World War,

they saw the necessity for more troops.

These are where the soldiers would be stationed.

[Alicia] Fort Sherman was well prepared.

So in order for an attack to be successful,

the Nazis knew they would have to use a different approach.

[narrator] During World War Two,

Fort Sherman was on high alert.

US Military leaders feared Nazi Germany

had plans to destroy the Panama Canal,

which the fort was built to protect.

[Alicia] Under the code name Operation Pelikan,

the Germans made an audacious plan.

[Geoffrey] They had this idea,

"We're gonna put a couple of JU 87 Stuka dive bombers

in pieces on U-boats.

And we're gonna, like, sail up to this little island

just off the coast from Panama,

and then we're gonna, like,

put them together, load them up with, like, a dam busting type bomb.

And then we're going to bomb the Gatun Dam."

[narrator] A successful strike may have altered the course of the war.

[Meigs] If you could knock out that dam,

it would take years

for the Americans to rebuild and reopen the canal.

[Geoffrey] Ultimately, what happened to that plan?

We don't really know.

I mean, the Stukas never appeared over Panama,

never dropped bombs on the Gatun Dam.

[Meigs] Fortunately, the canal was never attacked,

and eventually the Army came up with another use

for this outpost in the jungle.

[Alicia] Many of the soldiers who were destined

to go to the Vietnam War,

did their jungle training here.

So, there was even a mock-up Vietnam village

that was set here for them to train in.

[narrator] Former Lieutenant Colonel Dan Smith

served in the US Special Forces for almost 20 years.

[Col. Smith] When I came here, I was 23 years old.

First, they would give you basic living,

plants that were poisonous, things you could eat,

poisonous snakes, non-poisonous snakes.

And then they would teach you how to build a jungle refuge.

[narrator] Learning to survive in the jungle was the easy part.

Soldiers were also trained to withstand potential enemy torture.

[Col. Smith] This area I can remember

because they had a different torture in every room.

We were brought here blindfolded,

and immediately stripped of all of our clothing.

And... they would send you in for an interrogation

and... if f you refused to answer, they would send you out

and you could go into the bird cage,

which was about that high.

It was made of barbed wire.

I went to Vietnam in 1967,

and it was challenging.

But I think my training was good.

[Alicia] After the Vietnam War,

this facility was still used for jungle training,

but Fort Sherman's end was in sight.

[narrator] On December 31st, 1999,

the US surrendered control of the canal to Panama,

ending its 150-year presence in the country.

The American government tried to retain Fort Sherman,

but the Panamanians like, held firm,

and they said, "No Yankees on Panamanian soil."

So, the Americans handed it back.

But it just sort of fell into disuse.

And so it's been taken back by the jungle in the years since.

[Meigs] My grandfather helped build the canal.

So, I've been steeped in the lore of the canal

since I was a little kid.

Going back and seeing a fort like this,

all the work that went into protecting that canal,

to save it from being attacked or destroyed,

it's a reminder to us of how crucial this kind of infrastructure can be

can be in our civilization.

[narrator] On the outskirts of Bologna, Italy,

an eclectic structure defies explanation.

There's gold leaf onion domes,

minarets, towers and turrets.

[Selwood] There are endless medieval Arab, Moorish decorations,

in a labyrinth of towers, staircases and courtyards.

It's clear this is the creation of a very wealthy individual,

one whose face is immortalized in the stained glass.

Here, he came up with his greatest invention.

[Alicia] He set out to cure cancer,

and the famous and the desperate

made pilgrimages to the sanctuary.

[narrator] The creator of this peculiar world

won international acclaim.

But, his monumental legacy

would become his prison.

[Selwood] At the heart of it all is a drawbridge,

not at the front of the building, but inside it.

You must have a certain frame of mind

to build a drawbridge

on the outside of your private quarters.

He descended into paranoia.

He felt like everyone was out to get him.

[narrator] Carlotta Rubini grew up in the shadow of this looming mansion.

[Carlotta] We always got used to this mysterious castle

on top of the hill that we didn't know much about.

But I could never see the castle from the inside

because it closed before I was born.

[narrator] For decades, rumors circulated in the local area

about the eccentric man who once lived here.

In August 2015,

Carlotta got to find out the truth.

[Carlotta] I remember the first time I walked in here.

I was like, pinching myself

because I couldn't believe I finally got to set foot inside this castle.

We were able to learn the real story

of the Count Cesare Mattei.

My most measures, Cesare Mattei led an enviable life.

But it wasn't without hardship.

[narrator] Born to a wealthy Bologna family in 1809,

illness influenced his life from an early age.

He was just 21 when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer,

a disease which lingered on for 15 years before killing her.

Disappointed by incompetent doctors,

he decided to take matters into his own hands.

His purpose was to find a new medicine

that could cure everything,

from simple cold to cancer.

[narrator] In 1850,

he acquired this hillside to build a residence

that would house his growing obsession.

Cesare didn't trust anyone else with the design

and was the architect of his own outlandish vision.

It became known as Rocchetta Mattei.

The Count loved the Moorish style,

which is prominent inside the castle.

"Eccentric" is a good word to describe it, I think.

It's very peculiar.

[narrator] But it was more than just Cesare's folly.

Here he would atone for his mother's drawn out death.

He came up with an alternative form of medicine

called electro homeopathy.

[Carlotta] This is the room of divisions,

where the Count claims to have had

the original idea for his medicine,

uh, which he then had painted on the wall there.

[narrator] Cesare believed his unique plant-based method

could cure diseases

by balancing electrical charges and chemicals inside the body.

He turned to grinding various plants

into pulps and mixing them in vials.

[Carlotta] It was made of 33 types of granules and five liquids,

that, mixed together in different dosages,

were supposed to cure everything.

[narrator] He administered his herbal concoctions

to the sick of Bologna without charge.

Word spread, and patients soon came from all over the world

to take the supposedly magical medicine.

But in 1873, after surviving a horrifying train crash,

he became increasingly reclusive

and gradually withdrew into his house on the hill.

Although his electro homeopathy empire was thriving,

he was withering inside the Rocchetta.

[narrator] In late 19th century Italy,

Count Cesare Mattei was becoming increasingly isolated.

In his eccentric hilltop mansion,

he lived childless, single and alone.

Meanwhile, the plant-based electro homeopathy treatments he'd invented,

increased in popularity.

At the height of his empire,

there were some 107 distribution centers throughout the world,

from the UK, to America and China.

There's even mention of the remedies

in a novel by the famous author Dostoevsky.

[Alicia] But Cesare was getting older

and he had no named heir.

[Selwood] Increasingly aware of his legacy,

Cesare turned to his closest family to maintain his empire.

But a betrayal would threaten to destroy everything he'd built.

[narrator] The count's state of mind was deteriorating,

which led to the fateful decision of allowing his nephew,

Luigi, to run the business.

His nephew was originally supposed to inherit everything.

But his nephew liked to gamble,

and he had embezzled a lot of money.

[narrator] Luigi brought Cesare to the edge of bankruptcy,

and the Count had to rely on a long-time collaborator,

Mario Venturoli, to save him from ruin.

He was able to make the Count get back most of the money he had lost.

As a thank you, the Count adopted him

and made him his heir.

[Selwood] He brought Mario to live with him in his castle

and gave him his own private quarters in a separate wing.

[narrator] But Cesare was growing increasingly deluded

and became convince that Mario and his wife were trying to kill him.

Cesare Mattei did not like her,

and accused her of trying to poison him through coffee.

The claim was never proven.

But whether it was true or not,

the story says much about the state of Cesare's mental health.

[Carlotta] It got worse.

And it got to the point where he trusted no one,

except for his maid.

[narrator] Cesare's paranoia becomes evident

in his castle's innermost sanctum.

This was the entrance to the private quarters of the Count.

There's a drawbridge here

in the middle of the stairwell,

which is a bit bizarre.

But, he built this so that he could isolate himself

from the rest of the castle.

He actually passed away on his own,

inside these quarters,

and he was found a few days later

after they pulled down the drawbridge.

[narrator] Mario inherited Rocchetta Mattei in 1904.

But, one crucial piece of information was missing.

[Carlotta] Mario Venturoli, could never replicate the same medicine.

The Count never shared his recipe with anyone.

He and the maid were the only people

who made the medicine in here.

She survived the Count, she never shared the medicine

with Venturoli or anyone else.

[narrator] Even so,

Mario managed to keep the practice of electro homeopathy

going until the mid-20th century, using his own method.

As modern science developed,

the appetite for homeopathy and pseudo-scientific remedies waned.

[narrator] Mario stayed in Rocchetta Mattei

until his death in 1937.

Over the following years,

the building changed hands several times.

It briefly opened as a tourist attraction.

They branded it as a medieval castle

and they brought in torture chambers

and these unsettling statues.

[narrator] In the late 1980s, it was deemed unsafe and forced to close.

In 2015, after almost a decade of restoration,

the castle was open to the public once again.

[Carlotta] The interest in the tourists' faces

and people coming from completely different cultures,

they have no idea what went on in Italy.

I feel, like, a lot of pride in my hometown.

[narrator] In the breathtaking sierras of central Bulgaria,

the sharp lines of a brutalist structure

slice through the fresh mountain air.

[Bell] All you can see for miles around

is the rolling landscape and thick forests.

This is a place of calm and tranquility.

And then you see it.

[Geoffrey] It's like dagger shaped,

and it goes on and on and on and on.

It's curious to have a building of this size

just plunked down in the middle of nowhere.

[narrator] The remote location holds the key

to this structure's function.

[Hadley] You're as far away as you can get

from the smog and smut of a big city.

[Geoffrey] It could be a hotel, like an outdoor resort.

But inside, it has more of an institutional feel.

There are what appear to be lots of dormitories.

[narrator] The distinctive design hints at its origin.

You've got rooms with books just falling off the walls.

There's what looks like a cinema and a gymnasium.

And then you see things that gives the game away.

Surgical rooms, X-ray machines, lab equipments.

This was clearly some kind of medical facility.

[narrator] The unlikely visionaries behind this complex

were ahead of their time.

This place was built by not one but two enterprising women.

At a time when the rest of Eastern Europe was suffering

under an oppressive communist system,

this complex was in its golden age.

[narrator] But when seismic change rocked Bulgaria,

this all came to an abrupt and chaotic end.

It's clear that whoever left here, left in a hurry.

[narrator] In Bulgaria is the ruin of an inspirational structure.

Valentin Nedkov is on a mission to save it from destruction.

[Valentin] It's like heaven for me here.

This was a place where people arrived ill

and left well.

And for my mother, this building is sacred.

We should never forget all the good that people did here in the past.

[narrator] The story of this innovative sanctuary started almost a century ago.

In 1930, Tsar Boris of Bulgaria

marries an Italian princess, Ioanna.

She was known as a very charitable woman.

She funded many, many charitable organizations,

including a children's hospital

in the capital of Sofia.

[narrator] When Giovanna took the throne,

the country was in the grips of a deadly epidemic.

[Hadley] Bulgaria has one of the highest

death rates from tuberculosis in Europe.

Tuberculosis, or TB as it became known,

is a bacterial infection that mostly affects the lungs.

Over 20,000 people died of the disease every year.

[Geoffrey] And so, there was a feeling inside Bulgaria

that we have to confront this.

We have to come up with strategies to solve

the problem of tuberculosis in Bulgarian society.

[narrator] Tsarina Giovanna took a personal interest in the project

and championed the construction of a specialized hospital.

The Bulgarian government commissioned a team

to find the ideal location to build it.

They researched bioclimatic conditions for 20 months.

And came to the conclusion that the mountains here

have the best conditions for treating lung diseases.

[Geoffrey] The air is clean and fresh and dry.

So they choose this place

for a state-of-the-art Bulgarian sanatorium.

[narrator] A competition was launched to find the best architect

to bring Giovanna's vision to life.

It was won by another groundbreaking woman of the age.

[Hadley] Victoria Angelova-Vinarova was one of the first famous

female architects in Bulgaria.

[Bell] She was awarded the contract

for the construction of what would be

her most significant architectural project.

[narrator] Within the year, Victoria Vinarova

had created a state-of-the-art brutalist design.

[Geoffrey] They break ground in 1939.

But the construction almost immediately has to be halted

because of the outbreak of World War II.

Bulgarian tsar opportunistically allies with the Germans.

But when the Soviet Red Army crosses the border

to liberate Bulgaria in 1944,

the communist partisans quickly take over power in Bulgaria

and they make Bulgaria a satellite state

of Stalin's Soviet Union.

[narrator] By 1946,

the Bulgarian monarchy had been overthrown,

and a new Soviet-style government installed in the country.

[Hadley] Luckily, the new communist rulers

placed an enormous importance on public health.

So construction continues

and the hospital is eventually finished in 1955.

[narrator] When the doors

of the Raduntsi Specialized Hospital for Prolonged Treatment of Lung Diseases

finally opened, its visionary architect was missing.

[Hadley] What's really sad is that Angelova built a hospital

for tuberculosis patients

and ended up dying of tuberculosis before the hospital opened.

[narrator] Her creation, unrivaled in its time, lived on.

[Geoffrey] The hospital at Raduntsi

was the longest hospital in the Balkans.

It housed 200 male patients, 100 female patients and 100 children.

[narrator] Valentin's mother came to work here

as a specialized nurse.

This is the main operating room of the hospital.

During the 1980s, thousands of lives were saved here

using various complex treatments for TB.

[Hadley] They also had the latest cutting-edge medical equipment

and everything they needed to get their patients back in working order.

[Geoffrey] The Raduntsi Hospital had a golden age

when, you know, not only Bulgarians,

but people from all over the Soviet bloc

came to this hospital to be treated

for tuberculosis and other lung ailments.

[Valentin] We are currently standing in one of the two X-ray rooms.

And behind me are the remains of the X-ray machines.

Everything was controlled from this room,

the office of the head physician.

Over 60 years,

decisions made in here saved thousands of lives.

[narrator] But when Soviet communism collapsed in 1991,

Bulgaria had to rebuild its government,

putting the hospital in jeopardy.

[Bell] The Bulgarian transition to a capitalist democracy

had been marked by corruption, cronyism and depression.

All of the state-owned enterprises that were, effectively, property

of the people were sold off at bargain prices.

The decline of the hospital began with the fall of communism.

This is when the number of beds were cut from 650 to just 180.

Then they started shutting down all the departments

until there were only three left.

[Bell] In 2015, things really came to a head

when the hospital had its electricity cut

with patients still in it because of unpaid bills.

[narrator] But this shocking turn of events

wasn't the end of the suffering at Raduntsi.

[narrator] In Bulgaria is the derelict shell

of a once pioneering tuberculosis hospital.

For over 50 years, it provided essential health care.

But by 2015, the threat of closure loomed large.

Its last hope lay in the hands of controversial politician,

Petar Moskov.

[Bell] He once, reportedly, during a TV interview,

got the location of the hospital completely wrong.

He was out by 100 miles.

So, you can tell that he really wasn't on top

of what was going on here.

[narrator] Moskov then went on to blow the national health budget

on divisive and costly projects

like biometric technology.

[Geoffrey] And he spent so much money on all this data collection,

he had to close this hospital and others like it,

with nothing to show for it.

[narrator] In August 2015, the last patient left

and Raduntsi Hospital was abandoned.

Today, there are plans in progress

to bring the once innovative treatment center back to life

with the hope it can once again serve its original function

as a sanatorium.

[Bell] As of April 2023, the complex has new owners.

It feels like the history of this building is not yet finished.

[narrator] In northwest Berlin,

a rusting relic is a chilling reminder of the city's turbulent past.

[Hadley] There are long, straight lines of trees reaching into the distance,

splitting the neighborhoods in two.

[Onyeka] In the midst of this is an isolated viaduct

that seems stark and sharply out of place.

[narrator] Along its length are a series of battered buildings.

All of a sudden, you realize you're at a railway platform.

There are structures that might have been

waiting rooms or ticket offices.

The windows are smashed, the doorways are boarded up,

and there's debris covering the floor.

But the real question is, why isn't it still in use?

[narrator] Further down the line, a disturbing clue emerges.

[Hadley] A bridge leads out to the river,

but it's been cut off and is left marooned on the bank.

[narrator] Its destruction marked the start of an oppressive new era.

[Hadley] Families were torn apart,

and this railway became a symbol of the brutal division.

[narrator] Historian, Mathias Hiller, sifts through the remnants

of a desolate station.

[Mathias] Over there is the old sign for Platform Two,

and Platform One is hardly even visible anymore.

The tracks are loose, they are badly worn.

It's actually a sad sight.

[narrator] Mathias specializes

in the capital's citywide railroad network

known as the S-Bahn.

The Berlin S-Bahn is not just a transportation system.

Seen through the lens of world history...

it represents war, destruction, division,

and East-West conflict. It's all here.

[narrator] The abandoned track dates back to the 19th century,

when electrical engineer, Werner von Siemens,

was looking for somewhere to base his revolutionary enterprise.

The company we know today as Siemens was founded in 1847

and they started out producing telegraph technology.

By 1890, it's this huge engineering conglomerate,

and it has thousands of employees,

and they need a space for all of their factories.

[Pedrick] They found the ideal place in Berlin in 1897,

and the area was officially renamed Siemens City in January 1914.

[Mathias] By the middle of the 1920s,

there were 57,300 white and blue collar workers,

and of these, only 2,000 lived in the immediate area.

The other 55,000 needed to commute back and forth every day,

and that's why they needed their own train line.

[narrator] This is the Siemensbahn...

a little known branch of Berlin's S-Bahn.

It started close to the River Spree

and transformed the lives of thousands of workers,

carrying commuters from all over the city

into the factories of Siemensstadt.

This is Siemensstadt station,

a beautiful station that still seems very modern.

The whole line was opened on December 18th, 1929.

[narrator] When it opened, Siemens railroad

is thought to have carried up to 17,000 passengers a day.

But this boom time would last for less than a decade.

[Hadley] The Second World War hit the Siemensbahn

and Siemensstadt hard.

[narrator] At the height of World War II,

Allied bombers had their eyes on a specific site in Berlin.

The electronic factories of Siemensstadt

and the Siemens railroad that ran through it were a prized target.

Despite ferocious bombardment,

most of the Siemensbahn infrastructure survives.

[narrator] But it was the Germans themselves

who destroyed the Siemensbahn bridge

across the River Spree.

[Mathias] In the last days of the war,

the Spree bridge was blown up.

It was German troops on the retreat,

trying to make it more difficult for the Russians to get here.

[narrator] At the conflict's end, the victorious Allies

dismantled Hitler's Reich...

and redrew the map of Germany, including Berlin.

[Hadley] The city was divided up between the Allies

into shared zones of control.

And the East German state railway company,

which was run from the Russian zone,

is picked to run the S-Bahn,

which included the Siemensbahn.

[narrator] Most of the railroad workers were West Berliners

who now found themselves working

for the East German-controlled company.

[Pedrick] It was a logistical nightmare,

but as long as they were still allies,

it wasn't a problem.

[narrator] But with their ideological differences,

it didn't take long for relations

between some of the allied powers to cool.

This was a division between two different worlds.

In the east, we had Soviet-style communism,

socialist societies.

In the west, we had capitalist democratic society.

Despite this, the agreement that the East German railway company

would keep operating the S-Bahn,

even though it was in West Berlin,

remained in place.

[Hadley] Railway police employed by East Germany control the stations.

The West Berlin police also have their own patrols here,

so in short, it's a total mess.

[narrator] The tense situation escalated at the start of the 1960s

when the East German authorities took a drastic step

to prevent citizens from escaping their draconian regime.

[Hadley] On August 13th, 1961, the Berlin Wall rises,

and it completely separates families,

it separates friends, it's a true tragedy.

[narrator] The residents of West Berlin were quick to vent their anger

on the communist-controlled S-Bahn

which encompassed the Siemensbahn branch line.

The railways became a symbol of East German authority,

a symbol of the oddity of the division of Germany.

[Mathias] The S-Bahn boycott was declared

and West Berliners were told not to travel on the line.

Replacement buses were brought in.

They were soon packed and hardly anyone went on the S-Bahn.

[narrator] Even though the boycott caused chaos for commuters

across the city,

West Berliners continued to protest.

[Pedrick] The network lost up to 80% of its passengers,

which really just put this already struggling railway

kinda further into the red.

They were desperate to cut costs

and eventually, the only costs that were left to cut were staff.

So, in January 1980,

they fired 78 railway workers and reduced the service,

and people were furious.

The cutting of hours and the firing of a pregnant woman

is the final straw.

[Onyeka] This is when the workers decided to strike.

They occupied signal towers, ensuring that trains

couldn't run, uh, without effective signals.

Uh, the network was brought to a halt.

[Pedrick] They abandoned the trains, blocked the tracks.

I mean, they wanted it shut down.

[narrator] Many businesses were brought to a standstill

as thousands of commuters struggled to get to work.

East Berliners could not risk taking part in the protest,

and the communist authorities were quick to enforce

their jurisdiction over the striking West Berliners.

[Pedrick] The East German railway police stormed the signal towers

and dragged out the occupiers,

and so basically, the strikes were broken.

[Onyeka] But the cost of these delays

and the whole breakdown of the system meant

that it was not economically viable to keep the network running.

[Hadley] Over 40 miles of lines were closed.

That's almost half of the S-Bahn.

[narrator] Four years after the strike,

West Berlin finally negotiated control

of its section of the S-Bahn.

But by now, a new underground line

had been built along the route of the Siemens branch,

which had never reopened after the strike

and remained abandoned.

[Mathias] When there were no more staff on the platforms here,

vandalism began.

And when there's no traffic, the trees grow again.

And look how nature has reclaimed this so quickly.

Today, there's a project to bring the Siemensbahn back to life

just in time for its 100th birthday.

[narrator] Project engineer, Dorothy Blendon,

understands that for Berliners,

this railway is more than just a means of transportation.

[Dorothy] The people in this area are really connected

to the Siemensbahn.

It's, like, their track,

and I think in reactivating it,

we're giving back something to the people.

It's important for getting this area

of the city connected to train again.