- Hello, I'm James Holland, and I'm a historian of
the Second World War. History Hit is a bit like Netflix, but purely for history. We've got hundreds of hours
of historical documentaries going all the way back to Classical times, right through to the Cold War and beyond. Use the word WARSTORIES, all one word, for a massive
discount when you join up. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] The Nazis
go hunting for dinosaurs. (dinosaurs roaring) Hitler goes ballistic to beat the Brits. Formations of flying tanks
glide over the front lines, (planes roaring) and the U.S. retaliate with
an army of Darth Vaders. (dramatic music) A new kind of war. Conflict on a scale never
seen before or since. (dramatic music) - This is war at its weirdest. - [Narrator] Incredible experiments. - This has got to be one
of the most bizarre weapons ever looted in the history of warfare. - What is even crazier
is that it seems to work. - [Narrator] Mysterious events. - This is brilliant.
(suspenseful music) You couldn't make this up. - [Narrator] Unexplained phenomena. - This is all crazy. And I kinda don't even know
where to begin with this. - [Narrator] When a world
goes to war with itself, things get really weird. (Adolf speaking in German) (dramatic music) (plane roaring) (dramatic music)
(plane roaring) (bombs booming) The Nazis aren't just
busy running World War II. They also have other things on their mind. - It's like children playing dress up. - True Teutonic warriors,
hunting with spears. - [Narrator] And they want
their very own "Jurassic Park." - A mythological fairytale landscape. - [Narrator] With the biggest beasts. - These are animals of the Ice Age, the megafauna, the mega beast. - Nazi dinosaurs. It's Göring at his finest. (dinosaurs snarling)
(dramatic music) (dramatic music) (triumphant music)
(hooves clicking) - [Narrator] The Nazis are
infamous for their desire to engineer human beings and obsessed with creating the Ubermensch. (soldiers speaking in German) - They put in place a very
brutal scientific program in order to do so. But it's not just humans, it's also animals being tested. - [Narrator] Their desire to
create the genetic destiny of both people and animals
begins back in the 1930s, before the Nazis take over. - But the program goes full steam ahead when Göring comes into power. In addition to help run World War II and being Hitler's second in command, he also has a bit of a side hobby. (gun roaring) - Göring has this enormous
passion for hunting. And a big Aryan superman like him wants some big super game to hunt. (bright music) He wants this primal forest, festooned with huge deer
and elk and big bulls. A mythological fairytale landscape in which he can strut his stuff. (bright music) - These animals that Göring dreams about, they're the animals of the Ice Age. The megafauna, the mega beast. Göring wants to go back
to prehistoric Europe so he can be the Ubermensch, the hunter, the man that conquered nature. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] And the first
animal he's got his eyes set on is a real killer beast. The aurochs, an ancient cow. (bright music) (cow snorts) - Even though the project
to bring back the aurochs had been formulated long before
the Nazis had come to power, it does capture the imagination of Göring, who, of course, loves the idea of these big super cows walking
around the German landscape. - Nazi dinosaurs slash
recreating extinct species is them at their most bonkers. It's Göring at his finest. (silly music) If it was me, I'm going T-Rex. I'm going something awesome. He goes for "Jurassic Park" with cows. (cow moos) (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] In their heyday, aurochs were essentially
furry cows with massive horns. - They can be nearly two meters high and their horns can be
nearly a meter long. They're very fast. They're very aggressive. I mean, these are cows,
effectively, on steroids. - The aurochs had these horns that were massive weapons for both defense and defending your territory
and going after rival male. This is perfect representative
animal for the Nazi party. - There's one problem with the aurochs. It's extinct. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] Undeterred,
Göring hopes he will be able to bring to life a new
generation of these wild beasts. - Göring can't do this on his own. To my knowledge, he was not versed in genetics
or anything like that. So he finds these two
zoo director brothers. - [Narrator] He turns to
Lutz and Heinz Heck for help, as they have previously
dabbled in reincarnation. And he is especially fond
of the older brother, Lutz. (dramatic music) - Lutz is a fully paid-up Nazi. And he comes to believe that
the resurrection of the auroch is central to the Nazi ideal. Lutz and Göring become great friends. - They both believe in
the big, scary cow thing and they bond and they
become incredibly close. They dress up in lederhosen like Teutonic warriors and
go hunting with spears. - [Narrator] The program to recreate the aurochs gets a green light. - The Heck brothers think that they can recreate the aurochs through a process called back breeding. Now that's gonna try and
recreate the phenotype, the kinda look of the aurochs through selectively taking other cattle. And they're gonna put
these cattle together and hopefully breed this
new big type of bull. (dramatic music) - They go to the Spanish fighting bulls. They go to the Scottish Highlands. They go to the Hungarian longhorns. It's like a scavenger hunt across Europe for this mythical animal
that doesn't exist. - [Narrator] Lutz and his brother Heinz finally present the
reincarnated creature to Göring, who is very pleased with the outcome. (suspenseful music) (cow moos) - The auroch has risen and has been released
back into the Third Reich. (cow mooing) - The Lutz brothers are
successful up to a point. It's not genetically
the same as the aurochs that died out in the 17th century. In that respect, the project is a failure, but they do create a large,
aggressive form of cattle. (cow mooing) - They take their big scary cows to near the Lithuanian
border in Northeast Poland, which presumably is instantly transformed into a primordial forest. - Göring is thrilled. You know, why wouldn't he like it? It's something that kinda plays into the mythology of Nazism. The old Germanic way of doing things. The noble huge, powerful beasts, hunted by noble, huge,
powerful men like Göring. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] And having recreated these magnificent creatures, they shoot them. (gun roaring) - It seems like the
worst waste of time ever. I back bred, a giant scary
cow and then I killed it. Look at me. I just... Oh, I love it. If they weren't so heinously evil, they'd be the best comic source ever. (silly music) - Picture in your head if you can, a fat bombastic, half-drunk Göring who thinks he's the Ubermensch. Lutz, I'm not quite sure
what he looked like, but if he's buddies with Göring, they're probably peas in a pod. Prancing around out in the forest. It's like adults playing dress up. Only this guy is the
second-in-command of the Nazi regime. - [Narrator] And it's not just the aurochs that Göring and the Heck brothers want to bring back from the dead. - The Heck brothers aren't finished. Surely by now, you'd be thinking T-Rex or at least like a saber-tooth tiger. But no, they go for an
extinct Eurasian horse called a tarpan. - [Narrator] Lutz Heck
steals horses from zoos all over Nazi-occupied Europe. (silly music) - They applied the same
process of back breeding as they did with the aurochs. Again, they're sort of
partially successful. - They claim it's a tarpan, but who's alive to question them? Who's gonna question them,
'cause they'll get shot? - They're creating an animal that may superficially look
like these prehistoric animals. But biologists are really skeptical that they were actually
able to achieve this because just the size of an animal or it's visual characteristics don't imply that you've actually recreated this lost species.
(suspenseful music) So their success is highly disputed. - [Narrator] The war ends in 1945. And with that, the raiding of zoos and the de-extinction program. - There's a consequence. Lutz loses his position at the Berlin Zoo. And we don't really hear much about him after the end of the war. - This whole project is not just scientifically
incredibly dodgy. It's also ethically
incredibly problematic. - [Narrator] And the aurochs
don't fare much better. - [Guy] Most of Lutz's aurochs die in bombing raids in Berlin. That's the end of them.
(suspenseful music) - [Narrator] But there is one
silver lining to the story. - The Heck brothers
weren't completely bad. I mean, they did bring back this horse called Przewalski's horse. - They were extinct in the wild, but because 13 of them remained in zoos in Prague and in Germany, they've made it possible for scientists to bring that species back
from extinction into the wild. So not a complete waste of time. Just 99.9% a waste of time.
(suspenseful music) - [Narrator] Hundreds
of Przewalski's horses still exist today, happily roaming, the
plains of Europe and Asia, thanks to the Nazis.
(dramatic music) - At least one good thing came of it. But they were essentially
lunatics roaming Europe, kidnapping everybody's animals and trying to make mutant
animals out of them. (dramatic music) - I think the whole story
of the Heck brothers and the aurochs and the various breeds
they tried to bring back is an example of how the
Nazis enabled junk science. And the Nazis loved all that.
(dramatic music) (crowd shouting in German) - [Narrator] Coming up.
(suspenseful music) The Nazis are bigging up their arsenal. (artillery booming) - This super gun is gonna
fire one shell every minute. This could be devastating. - The shell would emerge from the gun at such a speed that it would
be projected much farther than any projectile ever had been before. (artillery booms) - This could be the war
winning wonder weapon that Hitler's been looking for. (explosion booms) (suspenseful music)
(plane roaring) (bombs whistling) - [Narrator] Allied bombs are
devastating German cities. In revenge, Hitler pins his
hopes on the V rocket program. (rocket whooshing)
(suspenseful music) - The V-1 and V-2 rockets were supposed to win the war for Germany. Hitler called them Wunderwaffe. Wonder weapons. - [Narrator] But they failed
to take off as expected. - Hitler's V-1 and V-2 rockets
certainly did instill fear into people in Britain, but they were possible to shoot down. - They weren't the weapons
that they were intended to be. If the Nazis are going to
get the Allies to surrender, then something absolutely
enormous has to take place. (explosion booms) (dramatic music) - [Narrator] 1943.
(suspenseful music) The Germans are losing the war and are desperate to find
a weapon to turn the tide. German engineer, August Cönders,
is set the impossible task. - Cönders is one of the
Nazis' top notch bomb makers. He specializes in artillery shells, but this is his big project.
(suspenseful music) - Was he up to the task? Was anybody up to the task? - [Narrator] Cönders has a daring idea. A massive super gun,
(suspenseful music) able to crush the enemy
from a great distance. (artillery booming) - Now this is not a new idea. In fact, for decades,
for almost a century, people have been coming up with ideas for a huge, supercharged gun. - Most super guns are just that. They're big guns. They fire a shell down a barrel. - The shell would emerge
from the gun at such a speed that it would be projected much farther than any projectile ever had been before. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] The first
such long-range weapon was attempted back in
America during the 1860s. - You've got this long barrel. And then there are what can
really only be described as udders hanging underneath. - Frankly, the whole thing
looked a bit like a pregnant cow. And actually it performed about
as well as a pregnant cow. (silly music) - [Narrator] But the idea didn't die. It was picked up by the French who gave it a dash of Gallic panache. - A French engineer called
Louis-Guillaume Perreaux develops this multi-chambered gun. And it's got eight propellant
chambers on either side that are activated by trip wire as the shell passes alongside it. Now, this should work brilliantly. He presents his idea in 1878 at the World Exhibition in Paris. Now, the French Army look at it, but they take ages to pick up on the idea. - They were still working on this during the First World War. But the First World War came to an end before they managed to
bring it to fruition. - [Narrator] Fast forward to June, 1940 and the collapse of France.
(suspenseful music) - Perreaux's plans fall
into the hands of the Nazis after they invade France in 1940. And, in fact, they specifically
fall into the hands of one or August Cönders
who's the chief engineer of the Röchling steelworks in Germany. He's absolutely convinced that these plans will enable the Nazis to
develop their own super gun. - [Narrator] Cönders builds a scaled down multi-chambered gun using
the machinery at his factory. (steam hissing)
(suspenseful music) - Actually the first tests
are very encouraging. But what Cönders needs in order to fully develop
this gun is money. - He shows what he has to Albert Speer, who's Minister of Ammunition
and War Production. Speer is interested. And so, as things work in Nazi Germany, it goes up the chain until it arrives with Hitler.
(suspenseful music) - Hitler looks at this gun and realizes it's got enormous potential. - That's gonna change
the course of the war. So he gets excited at the thought of this. And the idea that he is
going to be responsible for the biggest gun ever. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] As all of this is happening, the Nazi V-2 rocket center
is devastated by RAF bombs. (bombs whistling)
(suspenseful music) - The Germans have no time to play with. They're desperate. They
need something now. So Cönders is given no real
time to test it properly. He just has to get the thing
built and put into action. - This is really frustrating for Cönders, 'cause he's spent, you know, nearly three years trying
to convince the Nazis to develop this thing. And now he's finally able to do so, everything's gonna have
to be done on the hoof. - The Nazi chiefs basically ordered him to produce two full-size guns immediately. They are now being called the V-3. - [Narrator] Inevitably,
there are problems. - Just making a weapon like this is an enormous technological challenge. You gotta lob this huge shell, you know, all the way across the Channel,
potentially, and hit London. You know, that's scores of miles. (artillery booming)
(suspenseful music) - The furthest the gun
had reached was 58 miles. So quite how he expected it
to travel the next 50 miles, whether he expected the
shell to arrive in Britain and then catch a train. How he expected it to get to London, it's not entirely clear. - The V-3 needs massive re-engineering. But the Nazi top brass
simply don't allow it. (dramatic music) - Because it was so vulnerable
and so much could go wrong, they didn't just build one gun. They built two guns in parallel. Hitler wants to put
them as close to London as he possibly can.
(dramatic music) - [Narrator] They locate
them in Northern France, in the limestone Hills of Mimoyecques. It's just five miles
from the French coastline and only 103 miles from
the British capital. (suspenseful music) - They have two construction
sites at Mimoyecques called the western and
the eastern complex. - Now in theory, it's
all very well to say, we're going to site a gun near the coast and we're gonna fire it at that. And that all sounds very nice. But, of course, it's not that simple. You've got to, first of
all, disguise the gun. - So all this limestone rock
has to be dug out by hand by hundreds, if not
thousands, of slave laborers. This is incredibly dangerous
and many die in the process. - This of course was
an enormous operation. It needed railway lines running up to it to bring supplies and ammunition. - And the Nazis estimate they'll need at least a thousand troops to run this entire complex. If it works as well as Hitler hopes, this super gun is gonna fire one shell every minute on London. This could be devastating. (explosion booms) - [Narrator] Hitler thinks
that the sheer atmosphere of terror surrounding the V-3 will turn the course of
the war in his favor. But he's reckoned without the
extensive Allied spy network. - So you've got the French Resistance, who are observing what's going on. They're reporting back to the Allies. - So they send over planes to reconnoiter the area, photograph it. That goes back to the
intelligence department. So they look at it and go,
yep, that's something big. That's something nasty. We need to do something about it. What are they gonna do? They're gonna bomb it. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] November, 1943. The Allies rain down 4,100
tons of bombs on Mimoyecques. - The first raid does
a great deal of damage. In fact, it effectively
puts the western gun, the western battery out of action. That is then abandoned by the Nazis. They decide to focus all their
efforts on the other battery. - The eastern complex
with the second V-3 gun is a much tougher nut to crack. - Up to this point, the Germans think they're all right because the gun is so heavily protected. The tunnels are so heavily protected. There's so much concrete. There's so much limestone. Nothing can get through.
(suspenseful music) - [Narrator] The second V-3
gun is buried deep underground, beneath tons of reinforced concrete. It is totally impervious
to conventional bombs. Plugging the barrel of Hitler's super gun will be a very tall order for the Allies. (suspenseful music) - So what they come up with in June, 1944 is effectively a new type
of bomb called the Tallboy. This is the creation of the British bomb manufacturing
legend, Barnes Wallis. This, of course, is the man who made the famous bouncing
bomb of Dam Busters fame. But this bomb does quite the
opposite to a bouncing bomb. In fact, when it hits the ground, it just goes straight down into it. Today we'd call it a bunker buster. (plane roaring)
(suspenseful music) - [Narrator] Eight Tallboys
are dropped from 15,000 feet over the eastern V-3
complex at Mimoyecques from specially-modified Lancaster bombers. (plane roaring)
(suspenseful music) (bomb whistling) (bomb booms) - It would bury itself where
it would explode underground with a sideways force and basically cause an
earthquake underground. (suspenseful music) - When these bombs hit, boy,
do they cause a lotta damage. The whole eastern side of the complex is completely knocked out. - They wreck Hitler's machinery. They wreck all of the infrastructure that goes with building a super gun. And they're quite simply
put out of action for good. - The Nazis had wanted to
develop a big bang of their own. But of course, what happened
is the Allies got there first with an even bigger bang. (explosion booms) (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] Coming up. How do you get tanks into battle? - Tanks were a very crucial weapon. - But the big problem is getting these great big, heavy
beasts to the front. - [Narrator] The Soviets
have a weird idea. - Ideally, they want to fly
them straight into battle. - Imagine how big a
parachute is for one person. Now imagine something that
weighs a thousand times a person. - What if you can glide
them onto the battlefield? Just strap a pair of big wings. - You can only guess how well that ended. (suspenseful music) (explosions booming) - [Narrator] 1942. The Russians are desperate
for tanks on the frontline and they need them now. - Ideally they want to fly
them straight into battle. - The Soviets tried parachuting them in. That didn't really work.
(dramatic music) (gun popping) - [Narrator] Then they have a great idea. - Why not just get the tanks
to fly themselves into battle? (dramatic music) (film reel clicking) (artillery booming) - [Narrator] With World
War II in full swing, the Russians are working
on ways to drop soldiers and artillery behind enemy lines. (dramatic music) - People and weaponry they've got. But Russia, let's not forget,
is an enormous country and it takes days, weeks, to get stuff from one end to the other. So what's a solution? - The Soviets began experimenting with simply dropping men
off the wings of aircraft into big snow banks. You can only guess how well that ended. (plane roaring)
(suspenseful music) - [Narrator] But the Russian military keeps on experimenting. - The Kurkowski Special
Design Bureau comes up with alternatives to
try and land men en mass out of cargo planes. - They experimented with delivering troops to the battlefield
using special air buses. They also even designed
a special hydro bus. - Which is designed to land lots of men at the same time onto water. Big problem with the hydro bus? It bursts on impact. Not great. - [Narrator] Apart from troops, they also desperately need tanks. - Tanks were very crucial. They were often partnered
with infantry units and would be the sort of tip of the spear, taking out any other armored units while the infantry soldiers
cleared a battlefield. - Tanks have proved to
be a real game changer on the field of battle ever
since the First World War. But the big problem is getting these great big, heavy
beasts to the front. - Typically they were moved
from one place to the other using either trains or ships. Both methods being frustratingly slow. - [Narrator] So they're
thinking how to speed things up. (tanks roaring)
(suspenseful music) - What if you could kind of
drop them onto the battlefield? And better still, what if you could actually parachute them behind enemy lines? - [Narrator] There's
just one small problem. - You can imagine how big a
parachute is for one person. Now imagine something that weighs a thousand times a person. - Chucking a tank out
the back of an airplane with a load of silk above it is gonna be about as successful as the Russian experiments
with dropping people into snow. - [Narrator] But the
boffins have a brainwave. (planes roaring)
(suspenseful music) - What if you just glide the
tank onto the battlefield? You have none of the negatives associated with trying to suspend it under a big piece of parachute silk, but then it gets to the battlefield and it's ready to fight within minutes. (planes roaring)
(suspenseful music) - [Narrator] The Soviets
weren't the first toying with this idea. - In America, you've
got this tank developer called Walter Christie who's basically working on a flying tank. He wants to attach a pair of biplane wings and then a rudder. And the whole thing's powered
by the tank's internal engine. - Christie even told
"Modern Mechanics Magazine" in 1932 that a flock
of these flying tanks, if they were unleashed on the battlefield, they would bring the
battle to an abrupt finish. - Now there's a bit of a problem
with trying to fly tanks. Tanks are quite heavy. (tank creaking)
(suspenseful music) The U.S. military look at
it for about two seconds and realize the whole thing
is a waste of time and money. - [Narrator] But the Soviets still believe the idea could take off. (suspenseful music)
(tank rumbling) - In 1941, to try and
counter the Nazi Blitzkrieg of Operation Barbarossa, Soviet airborne units were even issued with the lightweight T-40 amphibious tank. - These vehicles could be
dropped out of the back of a Tupolev TB-3 bomber just
from a few feet off the ground. - The gear box would be in neutral. So the vehicle would roll and go with the flow, absorbing some of that force of impact until it came to a stop naturally. - The problem with doing
this is that the crew had to be delivered separately. And this would cause a delay in the crew reaching the vehicle. So if you could bring a tank in by glider, the crew arrives with the vehicle. And then the system also
minimizes the amount of time that the towing aircraft could potentially be
exposed to enemy fire. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] The Soviet
engineers take the tank to the next level. (plane roaring)
(suspenseful music) - The Soviet air force orders Oleg Antonov to come up with the gliding tank. - He comes to the conclusion that instead of building a
glider to carry the tank, he'll turn the tank into a glider. (suspenseful music) - He adds a detachable cradle
to the T-60 light tank, a pair of biplane wings,
and then a twin tail. He calls it the Krylya Tanka, literally meaning the winged tank. - Now all the tank driver has
to do is to control the glider in the same way as he controls the tank. He can rotate the turret left and that makes the plane turn left. Right makes the plane turn right. The turret is basically
controlling the ailerons and the tail. - It could then safely glide
to a landing on a battlefield, drop its wings and the tail. And then it was off into
battle within minutes. (tanks rumbling) - [Narrator] On the
2nd of September, 1942, the A-40 Krylya tanker is put to the test. (suspenseful music) - The tank crew before takeoff are manically removing
everything that's heavy that is not absolutely essential. - They've only filled it with
a minimal amount of gasoline so as to reduce the weight of the vehicle as much as possible. - And yet it still comes in
at a really hefty 7.8 tons. That's gonna be one heavy glider. - [Narrator] The flying
tank is about to take off for the very first time.
(plane roaring) - The TB-3 tow plane was barely able to work up enough speed to
get the tank glider behind it off the ground. And then as it climbed out, its engines began to overheat as it strained under the weight. - The airplane towing
this thing is carrying an eight-ton anchor, literally, with the aerodynamics of a brick. The crew members were fast thinking and they cut the rope very quickly. - The A-40 tank is let go. And suddenly the pilot is
flying the winged tank. - It didn't fly for long, but it flew long enough
to land in the field. The man behind the wheel then detached the wings and the tail, turned the tank around, and
drove it back to the airfield. - The test was kind of
very partially successful. Yes, the tank flew, but was
obviously un-aerodynamic. - The conclusion of this kind
of brave engineering project was that they just didn't have a plane with enough horsepower to get
eight tons of tank in the air. (suspenseful music) - The flying tank really doesn't work out. But, you know, the Soviets
are endlessly inventive. And so they think, well, if we can't make our tanks
fly to the battle front, we're gonna have to stop the
enemy tanks getting to us. - So instead, they create
the greatest flying machine in military history. The most produced aircraft ever. And ironically it is also
called the Flying Tank. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] The Ilyushin II Shturmovik was an aircraft designed to destroy tanks from treetop height. (plane roaring)
(suspenseful music) - Now the Shturmovik is
one hell of a weapon. It's a tank buster beyond compare. (plane roaring)
(suspenseful music) - This was probably the most
important Russian aircraft of the Second World War. Joseph Stalin wrote an angry letter to the armaments factories producing them when, in 1941, they lagged in production. - And tells 'em to step it up a gear. And he says, if you don't,
this is my final warning. Now we all know what a final
warning from Stalin means. You know, when you get
one, you're stepping up. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] These planes become a staple of the Soviet air force. But they have to make one concession. (suspenseful music) - The back turret where the gunner sits had to be made out of wood to compensate for the weight of the armor. - The use of wood made it
possible for the aircraft to carry more weapons. And since it was made of wood, you could modify it easily in the field to add an additional gun. - Now that might be all right. If you're not sitting in the back. - [Narrator] The Shturmovik is an effective anti-tank weapon as long as there's a gunner
at the back of the plane. - You've gotta pity the rear gunner because he's sitting there
trying to defend the plane against marauding enemy aircraft. And all this protecting him is the wood. I don't wanna be in his shoes. - This wasn't a very popular
assignment among soldiers. Nor was it a very lengthy one. - [Narrator] Apart from that minor issue, the planes were very hard wearing. (suspenseful music)
(plane roaring) - There's a couple of
these still flying around, which is actually pretty good compared to most World War II airplanes. - [Narrator] Fast forward a few decades, the flying tank concept
eventually comes to life. - Flying tanks sound really stupid. But actually these are
perfectly sensible solutions. The concept of a heavily armored vehicle able to fly around behind
enemy lines is obviously today in the form of massive attack helicopters. (suspenseful music)
(helicopter whirring) - Soviet Union ultimately makes this beast called the Mi-24 that is
a tank-busting helicopter. And the U.S. Air Force operates this magnificent aircraft
called the A-10 Thunderbolt II. (plane whooshing)
(suspenseful music) These modern aircraft
probably wouldn't exist today were it not for the
development of the IL-II, the tank glider, and all of the activity that
the Soviet Union invested in coming up with a means of busting tanks during the Second World War. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Coming up, the U.S. military hears bizarre reports of Soviet super soldiers. - It sounds like something
from science fiction. But in the fevered
reality of the Cold War, even the weirdest stories
are taken seriously. - [Narrator] These
psychic troops are deadly. - They communicate with their submarines. They can see into the future. - They wouldn't even
have to leave the office and they'd be able to defeat America. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] When the war goes
cold, it gets even weirder. During the 1960s, the superpowers
start a whole new war. (eerie music) - The Soviets are training
super psychic soldiers. - The Americans retaliate
with an army of Darth Vaders. (eerie music) - [Narrator] This is
about to get truly weird. - This is a ridiculous story,
but it will blow your mind. (eerie music)
(bomb booms) (film reel clicking) (plane roaring) - [Narrator] 1969. American intelligence sources
receive disturbing reports. - The Soviets have developed
some sort of training program to cultivate those with psychic ability and create super psychic soldiers. - It sounds like something
from science fiction. But in the fevered
reality of the Cold War, even the weirdest stories
are taken seriously. - The Soviets have found a way to get inside capitalist brains and used that as a means of
espionage to take them down. - [Narrator] These weird
reports swirl around a mysterious figure named Dr. Vasiliev. (eerie music) - Leonid Vasiliev is a
professor of physiology at Leningrad University. He sits there doing experiments on psychokinesis, mind reading. I don't know, moving
pencils with your brain. - Dr. Vasiliev thinks that if soldiers have these capabilities, then they can be used in
espionage and spy craft. If these are all true, he wants to use them to
support the Soviet Union. (eerie music) - [Narrator] It's not the
first time the Soviets have investigated the paranormal
for military purposes. - In the 1920s and 30s
in the Soviet Union, the idea of second sight gained
a great deal of popularity. - Mysticism has always
held a certain attraction to the Russian nobility and ruling class. And going as far back
as the tsar's family, who consulted with a
psychic named Rasputin, and into the modern era. They have experimented
with psychic capabilities all the way along. - Stalin wasn't having it. He thinks it smacks a
superstition and nonsense. And so their funding goes away. Along with them, their
families, everyone they knew, and their neighbors probably as well. - [Narrator] Fast forward to the Cold War, the Soviet interest in
paranormal intelligence gets reignited after a
story about American subs. (suspenseful music) - The French magazine "Science and Life" publishes an article titled
"The Secrets of the Nautilus." In it, they claim that the
U.S. thought that mind reading was the perfect way to communicate with its nuclear submarines
while they were underwater. - Which obviously is completely convincing because the Soviets are
sure that this is possible. And that this is an advantage that the Americans now have over them in terms of espionage in the Cold War. - [Narrator] Yuri Andropov, head of the Soviet secret
service at the time, takes this article very seriously. - Obviously the Soviets
don't wanna get left behind. So Yuri Andropov comes up
with the fantastically named Psychotronic Warfare Unit. And the Soviets are now, they're gonna up their game and get involved in this as well. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] And he knows
who he's gonna call. Doctor Vasiliev. - If anyone can communicate
with super psychic soldiers, Vasiliev is your man. He believes that parapsychology can push the Soviet
military ahead of the West. - Essentially what Andropov
wants is an office full of mind readers telling him
about top secret American sites, thousands of miles away, just by, I dunno. How do you do it? Stare at the wall and just visualize? (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] Vasiliev gets
funding from the state to conduct outlandish experiments, apparently costing a
whopping $500 million. - I suppose, if you're
bonkers and paranoid and convinced that
America's out to get you, then you will investigate
any way to take them out. I mean, what's 500
million if it could work? - [Narrator] But when the
U.S. military gets wind of these experiments,
they're not laughing. - American spies are feeding
these stories back to the CIA. And it may sound like witchcraft, but it was all taken very
seriously at the time. (suspenseful music) - The Americans aren't gonna be outdone. They love crazy names. So they come up with
Operation Gondola Wish. (goofy music) - The program took three psychics
from military intelligence and trained them in the
art of remote viewing. Seeing people, places, and objects from a distance without any contact. (silly music) These psychics are unleashed on the world to act like super agents. - Why do they have to go out? Surely you can do this
at the dinner table. Anyway. Then they're brought back and
pumped for all the information that they've gathered. I don't know. Does this mean that
they need to actually go and touch something
Russian to get a vibe or? I don't know why they
have to leave the office. - The National Security Agency sends their remote viewer
testees out into the world to gather intelligence with their minds. And then when they come back, they're empirically tested in a sort of blind sampling assessment that's about as empirical as you can be if you're trying to prove or
disprove psychic abilities. (silly music) - [Narrator] Despite some skepticism, there were reports of successful missions. (suspenseful music) - In the 1970s, a Soviet spy plane goes
down in the Congo jungle. And at this point, a sort of
all-hands-on-deck race begins. - Agencies, governments,
terrorist organizations. Everyone wants to get their
hands on what was on that plane. The Americans brought
in their RV operatives. I'm not buying it, but allegedly it took them
four hours to find this plane. - [Narrator] But the Congo
wasn't the only place where remote viewing was used. Perhaps the most remarkable
claims come from an RV operative called Joseph McMoneagle. - On November 4th, 1979, he was awakened in the middle of the night and taken to a government building. - [Narrator] A U.S.
embassy had been attacked. And Joe was part of a psychic team helping identify who
had been taken hostage. - 500 pictures of individuals
are laid out in front of him. - Joe had to pick
photographs of the hostages and pin them to the wall. (suspenseful music) - And the story goes that
there's over 60 of them that they pull out. And actually, they're only wrong on one. - This was part of the
intelligence gathering regarding the Iran hostage crisis, where American citizens and
diplomats were taken hostage in the U.S. embassy in
Tehran and held for 444 days. - [Narrator] This was a big success for the psychic soldier squad. And Joe soon got another chance to show off his super talent. - There's another
instance of Joe McMoneagle apparently using his psychic ability. - Joe claims he had a dream where he saw a Soviet shipyard with the hull of a ship in two pieces being built separately
to be attached later. (tools whirring)
(suspenseful music) - And everybody laughed
at him and mocked him. And then found out that actually the
Soviets were constructing this monster-size
submarine that was capable of carrying 200 nuclear warheads. That was in two parts. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] Thanks to this, the American psychic
program gets validated and is triumphantly
renamed Project Stargate. (eerie music) - It received a huge injection of funding, over $20 million, that it used to recruit and
then train more soldiers in the art of remote viewing. - I love what governments spend money on. This department was responsible or said that they could be responsible for killing animals with their minds. (goat bleats) This is a George Clooney film, right? "The Men Who Stare At Goats." (suspenseful music)
(goats bleating) - Congress funded paranormal
research until 1995 when a CIA-commissioned report found that, while remote viewers
had visualized objects in laboratory settings, there was no evidence to
back this up in real life. (suspenseful music) - [Narrator] By then, the
Soviet and American governments had reportedly spent hundreds
of millions of dollars on a program that all started with a petite story in a
French science magazine. (eerie music) - The U.S. military years later claims that the science AV
article was a big hoax. And they laughed it off. - But the paranormal-loving
Soviets were spurred into action by the thought that the Americans had developed a new secret
weapon in the form of telepathy. - Which then spirals into the Americans putting in millions of
dollars as well to fight it. If this isn't a brilliant example of government idiocy across the board, I don't know what is. (eerie music) - This is an economic war. And so for the price of
one magazine article, we get the Russians spending millions and millions of dollars chasing down the best
psychics in the Soviet Union. And we began spending money on it as well. - There you have it. The chain reaction that created a decades-long
psychic super battle. - They say they've shut it down. But have they?
(eerie music) - Apparently the CIA no
longer does psychic warfare. I'm not a psychic. So I can't tell you if
they're lying or not. (eerie music) (suspenseful music)
