Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny (2025) s01e10 Episode Script
Unholy Alliances
1
Throughout time, governments
and the people who work for them
have done strange
and even terrible things
in the name of national interest,
and sometimes they turn
to unlikely allies for help.
Tonight, a partnership with the FBI
transforms a small time gangster
- into Boston's kingpin.
- It's crazy.
You have this
combination of this FBI deal
and a crooked agent
giving bulger the power
to take over the Boston mob world.
The CIA commissions
assassins from the underworld.
They have to get Castro
out of the picture permanently.
It's a bold and risky move.
The idea of the CIA
partnering with the mafia
is so outrageous that no
one will possibly believe it.
And a pharmaceutical
company partners with the Nazis
to create super soldiers.
They take the entire
country in five weeks.
It's a crushing victory.
It's time to bring these
unholy alliances to light.
It's 1945.
World war ii is coming to an end,
and the allies are hunting
down Nazi war criminals,
but when many of
the fuhrer's henchmen
escape to freedom in South America,
it's clear someone is aiding them.
Who could be helping the Nazis escape?
When world war ii ends,
the allies are obviously desperate
to capture every surviving Nazi
and put them on trial
for their horrific crime,
but amongst the Nazis trying to flee
are hundreds of thousands
of displaced refugees,
all on the move and all in search
of a new life abroad.
To prevent Nazis escaping, every road,
train, and boat leaving
Europe is being watched.
Nothing and no one leaves
without being checked.
They tightened up the travel restrictions
to the extent that really there
was only one Avenue available,
and that was obtaining a red cross visa
that would allow you to get out.
Despite the allies capturing hundreds
of high ranking Nazis, many of Hitler's
most senior officers are missing.
The U.S. believes someone
is helping them escape Europe.
But who?
In 1947, an American attaché
in Rome named Vincent
la vista is put in charge
of monitoring this situation
to determine whether or not
former third reich officials
or military members
were attempting to use the red cross visa
to escape from justice.
La vista starts the
investigation at the red cross.
And that's when he hears
that there's something called
the papal refugee center.
Apparently, some refugees there
are able to get a Vatican issued letter
of recommendation
to leave, which means
they can skip the red
cross's background checks.
La vista asks his contacts
if there's been any suspicious activity
at the refugee center.
One name starts to
come up again and again,
a mysterious German based
in Rome known as Dr. Nix.
What la vista discovers is
that this mysterious doctor
is one of the leading characters
facilitating these pathways
that are being used
by former third reich officials
to escape out of
Germany and into Rome
and then South America.
Dr. Nix and his collaborators
are using escape routes called ratlines,
a reference to rats
getting off a sinking ship.
But even more shocking
is who is protecting nix.
An anonymous source
tells la vista that nix,
he's being sheltered inside the Vatican.
Apparently, nix not only has
the protection of the Vatican,
he's actively working for the Vatican.
The theory is that nix is
sheltering the Nazis in Rome,
and he's connecting
them with catholic bishops
who can assist them
in obtaining these letters
and identity paperwork that are critical
for them to achieve the red cross visas
that will allow them to leave Italy.
The Vatican is working hand in hand
with Nazi war criminals
because the church and the
Nazis share common ground.
They both despise communists.
In the aftermath of the conflict,
there are major communist movements
in czechoslovakia and
France and also in Italy.
Communism was in direct conflict
with the Roman catholic church
because it is atheistic at its core.
And the catholic church is concerned
that communist leaders will take over
Europe and Latin America.
South America is almost entirely catholic.
The Vatican is absolutely
terrified about anything
that might hinder its influence
among catholic
populations around the world.
Anyone that opposes
the spread of communism
is someone that ought to be supported.
And surprise, surprise,
if there's anybody in 1945
that has a reputation
for being anti-communist,
it's the Nazis.
So someone gets the idea
to give them free passage
out of Europe and set them up as allies
to fight communism and
save the catholic church
across the globe.
La vista sends everything he has
on the Nazis and the Vatican
back to the U.S. government,
but the report disappears.
It will be 37 years before
the Vatican's dark secret
and U.S. silence will be revealed.
In 1983, historian and
renowned Nazi hunter
Charles r. Allen Jr. files
a freedom of information act request.
It unearths a really dark
chapter of Vatican history
helping Nazis escape justice.
The story is picked up
by "the New York times"
and becomes a global news sensation.
All eyes turn to the
Vatican demanding answers.
The Vatican strongly denies
being involved in this process,
and that instead, a series of
rogue bishops acting alone,
they were responsible for doing this
and that they were all
stripped of their positions,
and they're no longer a problem.
The U.S. doesn't just turn a blind eye
to the Nazis on the run.
It gives them jobs.
They recruit hundreds
of German scientists
to fight on a new frontier
against the Soviets in space.
In July of 1969,
650 million people tune in to watch
Ignition sequence start.
The enormous saturn v rocket
launch American astronauts out of orbit
and towards the moon.
Then four days later,
they make it to the moon
and Neil Armstrong etches
his name into the history books.
One of the most proud viewers
of the launch of the saturn v rocket
was the man that was
at the heart of its creation,
wernher Von braun.
He was the face of the
American rocket program
for more than two
decades, and the saturn v
was the culmination of a lifetime spent
inventing and testing rockets.
By the late 1960s, wernher Von braun
is a household name
in the United States,
and he's even been on the
cover of "time" magazine.
But very few people know what he did
before building rockets for NASA.
In 1985, "the New York times"
exposes the truth
about Von braun's past.
The article takes a deep
dive into declassified files
that were produced as a result
of a freedom of information act
request by a journalist
named Linda hunt.
Hunt found that Von braun
was a commissioned major
in the waffen ss, a branch
of the German military
notorious for being a place
where the true believers went.
Ss major Von braun's past
shocks the American public,
but not the U.S. government.
They knew about it all along.
He's not some disassociated scientist
who's just inventing rockets.
His production facilities for the rockets
that he's so devoted
to employ slave labor,
and those slaves are
literally being worked to death,
and Von braun is well aware of that fact.
At the same time, they're
prosecuting Nazi criminals
at nuremberg, the American government
were prepared to Bury their morals
just so they can beat the
Soviets in the space race.
The contradiction just blows your mind.
Von braun is far from
the only Nazi scientist
working in the U.S.
It turns out there are more like him.
Hunt reveals a top secret
operation called paperclip
that president Truman authorized
during the closing weeks
of the second world war.
Operation paperclip is a program
to try to capture as many Nazi scientists
and engineers as possible.
Germany was regarded as
the mecca of hard science.
So the Nazis we really
want are the Nazis
that are a part of their
high technology programs,
and we'll do almost anything to
get our hands on those people.
We're going to have to hold our noses
and accept any help
that we can potentially get
from these Nazi inventors
in order to be able to offset
the rising power of the Soviets.
Secrets fester if left uncovered,
but thanks to Linda hunt,
the truth about Von braun
and operation paperclip is revealed.
For decades, James whitey bulger
runs Boston's
underworld with an iron fist.
He's in that position
because the authorities
who should be taking him down
are actually working with him.
It's January 1995.
It's early in the evening and
workers are headed home,
but the day has only
just begun for the FBI
and the Massachusetts state police
sitting in unmarked cars,
staking out a restaurant.
For the last six years,
the FBI and the state police
have been trying to build
an airtight case against
two of the city's most
reputed mob leaders,
James whitey bulger and his
number two, Stephen flemmi.
Bulger is not above utilizing any means
to consolidate power in the city.
He's connected to some 19 murderers
and is seen as a vicious
and ambitious gangster.
The task force is finally
ready to make their arrests.
The plan is for the
Massachusetts state police
to grab flemmi while
the FBI simultaneously
takes down bulger.
The state police were able to
corner the unsuspecting flemmi.
But when the FBI swoops
in to arrest bulger, he is gone
and nowhere to be found.
This isn't the first time
he has slipped through the net.
Very few people knew
about the coordinated arrests,
so the state police want to know,
how does bulger keep getting away?
They become so
suspicious that they start
to actually think that someone in the FBI
is tipping bulger off.
The FBI was actually
starting to get frustrated
by these accusations that
were being made against them
by the state police.
So in a show of good faith,
they have now joined
forces with the state police
to lead the investigation into bulger.
The FBI investigation does not say
how bulger evades capture.
That only comes out three years later
at the trial of his right
hand man, Stephen flemmi.
When Stephen flemmi takes the stand
at his racketeering trial,
he's got a bombshell secret to share.
He reveals that he and bulger
had been recruited by the FBI
in the early 1970s, and have been
protected informants ever since.
Flemmi's testimony forces the FBI
to admit their alliance with bulger.
They confirm that bulger
was recruited in 1975
by FBI agent John
connolly to help take down
one of Boston's most powerful
mafia families, the patriarcas.
The deal was simple.
If bulger was to feed the FBI
enough intel on the patriarcas,
they would turn a blind eye
to all his criminal ventures
and provide him with
immunity from prosecution.
Just like that.
According to flemmi, the FBI isn't just
turning a blind eye to bulger's crimes.
At least one fed is actively helping him.
Flemmi's testimony is damning.
He tells the court that every time
law enforcement built a
case against him and bulger,
they were tipped off by an insider,
which allowed them to stay
one step ahead of the law.
The man on the inside, flemmi lets go,
is actually their FBI
handler, John connolly,
who's been working with the pair
for more than 20 years.
The Boston FBI is caught
completely off guard.
They discover that connolly and bulger
had actually grown up
in the same neighborhood
and developed a personal relationship.
They were old pals.
The revelation is just mind blowing.
But why would FBI break
bread with a notorious gangster?
Because of their close
ties, once bulger becomes
a confidential informant,
connolly is easily corrupted by him.
So in exchange for bribes,
connolly is feeding bulger information
about the police investigations.
The relationship with connolly and bulger
is exactly what empowers
bulger to basically become
the kingpin of the mob world.
It's crazy.
You have this
combination of this FBI deal
and a crooked agent
giving bulger the power
to take over the Boston mob world.
They made a monster.
By 1999, the FBI has
gathered enough evidence
to arrest connolly.
He's eventually convicted of racketeering
and second-degree murder
and is sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Meanwhile, bulger remains a fugitive
on the FBI's most
wanted list for 16 years.
In 2011, they finally
take whitey bulger down.
At his trial, he is
sentenced to life in jail.
But seven years later,
bulger pays the ultimate price.
For all those years as an FBI informant,
an ex-mafia hitman
murders him in his prison cell.
It's 2019 in Berlin.
A man is gunned down in cold blood.
The dead man is a
well-known enemy of Russia,
and his killer's name is a mystery.
An assassin is in the bushes
waiting for a Georgian national
to come walking by in
a public park in Berlin.
His target is zelimkhan khangoshvili,
a longtime enemy of the Russian state
who has fought against them in two wars
in the '90s and was now
living in exile in Germany.
Khangoshvili walks past.
The hitman emerges from the bushes.
He fires, and khangoshvili dies instantly.
After the assassination,
despite trying to blend in,
the German police find this
guy and quickly arrest him.
The assassin is carrying
a Russian passport
under the name of vadim sokolov,
but neither the passport
nor its holder is real.
When the assassin is apprehended
and they find his passport
under the name vadim sokolov,
they go searching through the records
but aren't able to find this guy.
He's a ghost. It isn't a real name.
It isn't a real passport.
The German police
announce to the world
that they have arrested a killer,
but they have no idea who he is.
The news explodes around the world.
Everyone wants to know,
who is this mysterious assassin?
Who is he working for,
and has he killed before?
A group of European journalists
start investigating this murder,
and they go out looking
for other assassinations
that there are similar methods used,
and they find one that's
eerily similar to this.
Six years earlier in Moscow in 2013,
a Russian entrepreneur is
gunned down in the street.
Like the Berlin murder,
it looks like a professional hit job.
The killer shot his victim multiple times
and fled on a bicycle.
The prime suspect in the case
is a man named vadim krasikov.
The investigative
journalists want to know,
are krasikov and
sokolov the same person?
Back in 2013, Russian
police quickly launched
a worldwide search for him
and a red notice warrant
was filed with Interpol.
There's an interesting
thing about this red notice.
It has a picture on it, and that picture
is almost identical to the person
that they know as vadim sokolov.
So they discovered that sokolov is
actually a guy named krasikov.
In December 2019,
the journalists hand over
their findings to German investigators
working on the assassination
of zelimkhan khangoshvili,
the man killed in the Berlin park.
Because of the efforts
of these journalists,
krasikov is put on trial
in 2021 in Germany
and is convicted of the
murder of khangoshvili.
The German government sentences him
to life in prison.
Krasikov is identified,
but there is still one question.
Who is he working for?
As the judge delivers the verdict,
he makes a shocking disclosure.
The court believes krasikov was acting
on a state contract authorized
by Vladimir put in himself.
When that information comes out,
the kremlin vehemently denies that.
The Russians really
categorize these allegations
as absurd and unproven.
Three years later, cameras capture
the largest high profile
prisoner exchange
between Russia and
the west in recent history,
and the truth is finally
available for all to see.
The U.S. and other western countries
have agreed to the release
of 15 people held in Russia.
They will be swapped
for Russian prisoners
held in the west.
A middle aged man in a
tracksuit walks down the steps.
When he reaches the bottom,
he receives a warm embrace
from president put in.
The man being greeted like
an old friend is vadim krasikov.
The cozy hug between tyrant and hitman
confirms what the world knew all along.
Vadim krasikov is
working for Vladimir put in.
Putin is blatantly making
a mockery of the west,
because he first publicly denies
having any kind of
relationship with krasikov,
and then here he is rolling
out the red carpet for the guy,
effectively confirming the alliance.
Krasikov was, I guess,
the perfect person
to become putin's personal hitman.
Putin joining forces with a contract killer
made headline news, but
Russia isn't the only nation
to do a deal with a killer.
In order to eliminate a
common enemy on foreign soil,
the CIA will join forces with the mob.
In 1959, fidel Castro leads
his communist party to power
in the Cuban revolution.
The island of Cuba is barely
100 miles from america,
but it's a threat too close for comfort
for the U.S. government.
The CIA want communism out of Cuba,
so that means they have to get Castro
out of the picture permanently.
It's a bold and risky move.
The CIA does not want to
be tied back to the crime.
The CIA reaches out to a fixer,
someone who has connections
to the U.S. criminal underworld.
And he comes back with the names
of two potential collaborators,
mobsters John roselli
and Sam giancana.
It's a serious gamble to
try and approach them,
but in a way, it's kind
of a masterstroke too.
The CIA is confident
that if word gets out,
the idea of the CIA
partnering with the mafia
is so outrageous that no
one will possibly believe it.
The mobsters agree
to meet with the CIA.
It seems they have their own agenda.
Roselli and giancana
have their own interests
in seeing Castro removed from Cuba,
as he's been shutting
down their lucrative casinos
in the island nation as well.
The mob don't just hate Castro's politics.
The Cuban leader is
also bad for business.
The CIA offers them
$150,000 to do this hit.
And they don't just decline the offer.
They offer to do it for free.
Giancana and roselli
are happy to take this on
without compensation
because they believe
that this will constitute
a get out of jail free card
for them later on.
This is doubly crazy.
You've got the CIA trying
to take out a foreign leader
and the mafia turning
down money for the hit.
These mobsters want to
take a more subtle approach.
They don't want to shoot Castro.
They want to take a lethal pill
and put it into his food or his drink,
and the CIA actually gives this operation
basically a rubber stamp.
Finding someone in Cuba
who's willing to poison Castro
is the easy part.
Roselli knows an anti-communist worker
at Castro's favorite restaurant.
In April 1962, he arranges for poison pills
to be delivered to the assassin.
The months pass, and
Castro still isn't dead.
It could be because Castro
never went to the restaurant.
It could be because the guy
took the money and disappeared.
Or it could be that Castro
is just too well protected.
The delays make CIA's top
brass increasingly nervous
about relying on the
mafia to do their dirty work.
So in October 1962,
the CIA and the mobsters
agreed to abandon the plot
and keep their alliance top secret.
This was one deal that was
never meant to be made public,
but in 1974, the truth was revealed
with fatal consequences.
"The New York times"
publishes an exposé
which accuses the CIA of being involved
in assassination attempts
against foreign leaders
like fidel Castro.
A government investigation
is immediately launched.
During the investigation
into plots to kill Castro,
roselli and giancana are identified
and summoned to testify.
But before giancana can
take the stand, disaster strikes.
He's shot dead in his Chicago home.
Roselli fears he will be next.
But rather than go into hiding,
roselli risks his life to
tell the senate the truth.
"The New York times" was right.
The CIA did recruit him to kill Castro.
But just weeks later in Miami,
his body is found
stuffed inside an oil drum.
Who killed the two hit men?
Well, someone knows,
but they're not telling.
To this day, no one's been
charged with either murder.
In the run up to world war ii,
Hitler believes his blitzkrieg tactics
require troops with superhuman stamina.
So he strikes a deal with
a pharmaceutical company
to supply his soldiers
with a brand-new drug,
methamphetamine.
What German scientists
discovered in the 1930s
is that methamphetamines can be used
to treat a whole host of conditions.
Things like narcolepsy, weight loss,
but they can also enhance
athletic performance.
The Germans are hosting
the Olympics in 1936,
and Adolf Hitler wants to show
the superhuman capabilities
of German athletes.
Methamphetamine tablets
are prescribed to these athletes.
The third reich decides
to go one step further.
German military doctor
named Otto rank believed
that methamphetamine could be used
to turn soldiers into super soldiers.
Drugging a whole
army with amphetamines
doesn't sound like a very wise plan,
but Hitler is convinced
that it is his path to victory.
In 1939, Germany is
planning an invasion
of Poland, the event
that will ignite world war ii.
Germany since world war
I has been thinking about
how to potentially fight the next war,
and they have figured out a better way
to use the materials at hand,
and that way is blitzkrieg.
Blitzkrieg means lightning war.
It's all about speed and mobility.
In 1939, there are a million men
in the German military,
a force that is soon to be
launched across the world.
So how does the third
reich get enough pills
to supply every soldier
within a matter of months?
The high command strikes
a deal with Germany's
biggest pharmaceutical
company, temmler.
Temmler make a type
of meth they call pervitin.
For temmler, this represents
a money making opportunity
because they're going
to produce tens of millions
of doses of pervitin.
For the Nazi regime, they're going to
chemically create the
superhumans that Hitler
already believes Germans to be.
It's a match made in financial heaven.
On the Eve of the
invasion of Poland in 1939,
the German troops
are issued pervitin pills,
and the result is that
they are able to hike
35 miles without stopping.
They're able to persist for three days
without stopping to sleep.
They take the entire
country in five weeks
and kill 100,000 Polish
soldiers in the process.
It's a crushing victory.
But these are the early days of the war.
To keep the blitzkrieg going,
they're gonna need a lot more pills,
so temmler agrees to ramp
up production of pervitin.
Between April and July 1940,
the temmler factories produce
over 800,000 pervitin tablets every day,
and that turns into 35 million tablets
across the entire German military.
The use of pervitin is
going to fuel Nazi armies
to conquer the low countries.
In a matter of only a few short weeks,
German armies drive the
British off the continent.
The speed of the advance
is mind-boggling to the west.
In 1941, the Nazis discover that soldiers
using their wonder drug
are facing dire consequences.
They become addicted to pervitin.
Some even die from
heart failure and suicide.
But despite the risks,
the drug continues to be given to troops
for the remainder of the war.
The alliance between the
pharmaceutical company
and the Nazis remains hidden until 2015,
when author Norman ohler
unearths lost military documents.
Even after world war ii ends,
temmler continues to produce pervitin
all the way until 1988.
Macon, Georgia, 1932.
A medical experiment
is about to be launched.
On the surface, it looks fine.
A government agency working
with a respectable university
to research a life-threatening disease,
but the truth behind their
partnership is much darker.
Life in the U.S. in the early 1930s
is incredibly tough. The
economy has collapsed.
Millions of Americans
are struggling to get by.
Macon, Georgia is one
of the poorest regions
in the nation in the 1930s.
It's also predominantly African American.
In the fall of 1932,
signs began appearing in macon offering
free blood tests and medical treatment,
particularly for African American men.
Charlie pollard is one of the men
who takes up the offer.
Like many African
Americans in macon county,
he has never had
access to medical care.
A sample of his blood is taken,
and when the results return,
he is told that his blood is bad
and that the cause is unknown,
but doctors promise
to monitor the situation.
But the doctors know
exactly what's wrong
with pollard's blood.
He has a deadly infection called syphilis.
It affects one in ten Americans,
and there are almost half a
million new cases every year.
Its symptoms can be
managed with treatment,
but there is no cure,
and, right now, little is known
about how it progresses.
Syphilis is extremely infectious,
and it can start with a painless rash
that may not even be noticed.
But over time, it eats away at your body,
your brain, your spinal
cord, your heart, your aorta.
It can be life-threatening.
What pollard doesn't
know is the United States
public health service has set up
a clandestine experiment
using African American men like him
as human Guinea pigs to observe
the long-term progression of the disease.
They won't try and manage the disease.
Instead, they simply monitor
their worsening symptoms
and prescribe them with placebos.
The U.S. public health service
can't carry out the study alone.
They need a site and they need people
whom the community will trust.
Just a ten minute
drive from macon county
is an African American college
named the tuskegee institute,
and it's the perfect place.
The public health service
approaches the institute
and offers to underwrite the study.
For an African American
institution in the 1930s,
funding is scarce.
It's an offer they can't turn down.
And so this unholy
alliance is basically forged
by the fact that the United States
public health service has the funding
to provide to tuskegee, and in exchange,
the U.S. public health service promises
that they'll be on site to
direct all the experiments,
to provide the medical treatment
for the test subjects.
The deal is done.
Now all they need is people.
And they ultimately
focused their attention
on African American men.
Given the existence of
segregation at the time
and the belief in the inherent
inferiority of black people,
it seems natural that they'll be able
to conduct the study on black men
with few consequences.
With the local men
duped into participating,
the tuskegee study of
untreated syphilis begins.
Patient Chris pollard is not alone.
Over the next 11 years,
he and 600 other patients
will regularly make trips to
tuskegee for medical treatment.
But in 1943, syphilis is rendered curable
with the arrival of the life-saving
antibiotic penicillin.
Despite this, the U.S.
public health service
decides to continue
the tuskegee experiment.
So they're going to
continue to let people die
when their syphilis could
be cured by penicillin
almost instantly.
This is just extraordinary.
It's tantamount to murder.
The project continues
for another 29 years,
until 1972, when journalist Jean Heller
exposes the alliance between
the government and college
after documents detailing the experiment
land on her desk.
The United States public health service
has violated the most fundamental tenets
of its mission to promote
and protect public health,
and in this alliance with
the tuskegee institute
has wreaked havoc and suffering.
It is a major betrayal of the public trust.
The world knows the awful truth.
The government is forced to act.
Three months after the article,
an advisory panel is formed
who finds the experiment
medically unjustified
and is finally terminated.
Pollard and the other
surviving members of the study
launch a class action lawsuit,
and, in 1974, they are
awarded $10 million
with free medical treatment
for the rest of their lives.
In the last days of the second world war,
an extraordinary alliance
forms between enemy soldiers
to fight against fanatical
ss stormtroopers.
In may 1945, the war
in Europe is almost over.
Hitler has taken his own life
and the allies are
heading towards victory.
In the Austrian alps, there are still
active units of the waffen ss,
the reich's most zealous defenders.
For them, the prospect of defeat
only increases their lust for blood.
The waffen ss are
Hitler's elite shock troops.
They are the most
hardcore, fanatical Nazis.
They have no intent of surrendering,
even as the war is
clearly about to be over.
They want blood,
and they're out to find suitable victims.
The ss have a target,
castle itter, an alpine hotel
turned prisoner of war camp.
Castle itter had once been a luxury hotel,
but it was taken over
by the Germans in 1938.
It was converted into
a 19-cell prison in 1943.
The prisoners in castle itter aren't just
your run of the mill pows.
These are fairly high-ranking individuals.
With rumors of a German
surrender approaching,
the commander at castle
itter decides to take his life.
Their commander
dead, the prison guards
fear they will be captured
by the Americans,
so they abandon their posts.
When the commandant of
castle itter commits suicide,
news of his death quickly
spreads through the area.
There's a group of about
150 ss troops in the woods
in the vicinity, and they realize
that now castle itter is no
longer under Nazi control.
They start moving
toward the strong point
with mayhem on their minds.
The prisoners in the castle
know that the ss is out there.
They're nearby,
and the prisoners are
understandably quite concerned
that if the ss comes to the castle,
they'll execute all the prisoners.
They know if they're going to survive,
they need to take drastic action,
so they send the prison cook to find help.
He takes an sos letter
to American troops
who are rumored to have captured
the nearby town of worgl.
When he gets there, he
realizes that the Americans
have not yet taken the town after all.
The cook encounters
another German officer
named sepp gangl.
He hands the letter over,
but to his shock, gangl isn't hostile.
He's a battle-hardened major
who is disillusioned with the Nazi cause
and tired of all the bloodshed.
Gangl has troops with him,
but he doesn't have enough
to put up a defense against the 17th ss
as they move through the
area, and gangl understands
that if we're gonna save these guys,
we're gonna need help.
We're going to have to reach
out to the American troops
that are known to be nearby.
What gangl decides to do is to proceed
under a flag of truce,
essentially waving a white flag.
Slowly and carefully
approaches the Americans.
In front of him is
27-year-old captain Jack Lee.
When captain Lee spots a
German soldier approaching,
he's on high alert.
He has no idea if this is a trap.
After a bit of back and forth,
Lee becomes convinced that gangl
is exactly what he claims to be,
and the two of them
agree to combine forces.
After years of conflict,
it's an unimaginable partnership.
Gis and Germans work together.
These guys have been
machine gunning each other
and throwing grenades
at each other for years,
and now suddenly, they're erstwhile allies
in defending against Hitler's
most fanatical soldiers.
But they're heavily outnumbered.
Even with the American reinforcements,
there are only 24 armed
men capable of resisting
an ss force of 150 fanatical Nazi troops.
But they do have an advantage in that
they are in a prepared
defensive fortification.
And all of a sudden,
the ss assault begins.
The chatter of machine guns,
the explosion of mortar rounds.
These troops are under siege.
After hours of bitter fighting,
somehow the alliance holds strong.
The ss are defeated and
withdraw from the fight.
The action is not without loss.
While trying to rescue
one of the prisoners, gangl,
he's caught in a crossfire
and shot by a sniper.
He's the only casualty of the action.
The operation is a success,
but the involvement of major gangl
and his countrymen is not mentioned
in American newspapers,
only in classified military reports.
It's more than 70 years later, in 2013,
when gangl's role in one of
the strangest alliances of the war
makes international headlines.
A full account of the
battle of castle itter
is finally published by
historian Stephen Harding.
When nations vie for power,
foes can turn into friends
and former allies can become enemies,
but as these files reveal,
secret and unholy alliances
can influence history.
I'm David duchovny.
Thanks for watching
"secrets declassified."
Throughout time, governments
and the people who work for them
have done strange
and even terrible things
in the name of national interest,
and sometimes they turn
to unlikely allies for help.
Tonight, a partnership with the FBI
transforms a small time gangster
- into Boston's kingpin.
- It's crazy.
You have this
combination of this FBI deal
and a crooked agent
giving bulger the power
to take over the Boston mob world.
The CIA commissions
assassins from the underworld.
They have to get Castro
out of the picture permanently.
It's a bold and risky move.
The idea of the CIA
partnering with the mafia
is so outrageous that no
one will possibly believe it.
And a pharmaceutical
company partners with the Nazis
to create super soldiers.
They take the entire
country in five weeks.
It's a crushing victory.
It's time to bring these
unholy alliances to light.
It's 1945.
World war ii is coming to an end,
and the allies are hunting
down Nazi war criminals,
but when many of
the fuhrer's henchmen
escape to freedom in South America,
it's clear someone is aiding them.
Who could be helping the Nazis escape?
When world war ii ends,
the allies are obviously desperate
to capture every surviving Nazi
and put them on trial
for their horrific crime,
but amongst the Nazis trying to flee
are hundreds of thousands
of displaced refugees,
all on the move and all in search
of a new life abroad.
To prevent Nazis escaping, every road,
train, and boat leaving
Europe is being watched.
Nothing and no one leaves
without being checked.
They tightened up the travel restrictions
to the extent that really there
was only one Avenue available,
and that was obtaining a red cross visa
that would allow you to get out.
Despite the allies capturing hundreds
of high ranking Nazis, many of Hitler's
most senior officers are missing.
The U.S. believes someone
is helping them escape Europe.
But who?
In 1947, an American attaché
in Rome named Vincent
la vista is put in charge
of monitoring this situation
to determine whether or not
former third reich officials
or military members
were attempting to use the red cross visa
to escape from justice.
La vista starts the
investigation at the red cross.
And that's when he hears
that there's something called
the papal refugee center.
Apparently, some refugees there
are able to get a Vatican issued letter
of recommendation
to leave, which means
they can skip the red
cross's background checks.
La vista asks his contacts
if there's been any suspicious activity
at the refugee center.
One name starts to
come up again and again,
a mysterious German based
in Rome known as Dr. Nix.
What la vista discovers is
that this mysterious doctor
is one of the leading characters
facilitating these pathways
that are being used
by former third reich officials
to escape out of
Germany and into Rome
and then South America.
Dr. Nix and his collaborators
are using escape routes called ratlines,
a reference to rats
getting off a sinking ship.
But even more shocking
is who is protecting nix.
An anonymous source
tells la vista that nix,
he's being sheltered inside the Vatican.
Apparently, nix not only has
the protection of the Vatican,
he's actively working for the Vatican.
The theory is that nix is
sheltering the Nazis in Rome,
and he's connecting
them with catholic bishops
who can assist them
in obtaining these letters
and identity paperwork that are critical
for them to achieve the red cross visas
that will allow them to leave Italy.
The Vatican is working hand in hand
with Nazi war criminals
because the church and the
Nazis share common ground.
They both despise communists.
In the aftermath of the conflict,
there are major communist movements
in czechoslovakia and
France and also in Italy.
Communism was in direct conflict
with the Roman catholic church
because it is atheistic at its core.
And the catholic church is concerned
that communist leaders will take over
Europe and Latin America.
South America is almost entirely catholic.
The Vatican is absolutely
terrified about anything
that might hinder its influence
among catholic
populations around the world.
Anyone that opposes
the spread of communism
is someone that ought to be supported.
And surprise, surprise,
if there's anybody in 1945
that has a reputation
for being anti-communist,
it's the Nazis.
So someone gets the idea
to give them free passage
out of Europe and set them up as allies
to fight communism and
save the catholic church
across the globe.
La vista sends everything he has
on the Nazis and the Vatican
back to the U.S. government,
but the report disappears.
It will be 37 years before
the Vatican's dark secret
and U.S. silence will be revealed.
In 1983, historian and
renowned Nazi hunter
Charles r. Allen Jr. files
a freedom of information act request.
It unearths a really dark
chapter of Vatican history
helping Nazis escape justice.
The story is picked up
by "the New York times"
and becomes a global news sensation.
All eyes turn to the
Vatican demanding answers.
The Vatican strongly denies
being involved in this process,
and that instead, a series of
rogue bishops acting alone,
they were responsible for doing this
and that they were all
stripped of their positions,
and they're no longer a problem.
The U.S. doesn't just turn a blind eye
to the Nazis on the run.
It gives them jobs.
They recruit hundreds
of German scientists
to fight on a new frontier
against the Soviets in space.
In July of 1969,
650 million people tune in to watch
Ignition sequence start.
The enormous saturn v rocket
launch American astronauts out of orbit
and towards the moon.
Then four days later,
they make it to the moon
and Neil Armstrong etches
his name into the history books.
One of the most proud viewers
of the launch of the saturn v rocket
was the man that was
at the heart of its creation,
wernher Von braun.
He was the face of the
American rocket program
for more than two
decades, and the saturn v
was the culmination of a lifetime spent
inventing and testing rockets.
By the late 1960s, wernher Von braun
is a household name
in the United States,
and he's even been on the
cover of "time" magazine.
But very few people know what he did
before building rockets for NASA.
In 1985, "the New York times"
exposes the truth
about Von braun's past.
The article takes a deep
dive into declassified files
that were produced as a result
of a freedom of information act
request by a journalist
named Linda hunt.
Hunt found that Von braun
was a commissioned major
in the waffen ss, a branch
of the German military
notorious for being a place
where the true believers went.
Ss major Von braun's past
shocks the American public,
but not the U.S. government.
They knew about it all along.
He's not some disassociated scientist
who's just inventing rockets.
His production facilities for the rockets
that he's so devoted
to employ slave labor,
and those slaves are
literally being worked to death,
and Von braun is well aware of that fact.
At the same time, they're
prosecuting Nazi criminals
at nuremberg, the American government
were prepared to Bury their morals
just so they can beat the
Soviets in the space race.
The contradiction just blows your mind.
Von braun is far from
the only Nazi scientist
working in the U.S.
It turns out there are more like him.
Hunt reveals a top secret
operation called paperclip
that president Truman authorized
during the closing weeks
of the second world war.
Operation paperclip is a program
to try to capture as many Nazi scientists
and engineers as possible.
Germany was regarded as
the mecca of hard science.
So the Nazis we really
want are the Nazis
that are a part of their
high technology programs,
and we'll do almost anything to
get our hands on those people.
We're going to have to hold our noses
and accept any help
that we can potentially get
from these Nazi inventors
in order to be able to offset
the rising power of the Soviets.
Secrets fester if left uncovered,
but thanks to Linda hunt,
the truth about Von braun
and operation paperclip is revealed.
For decades, James whitey bulger
runs Boston's
underworld with an iron fist.
He's in that position
because the authorities
who should be taking him down
are actually working with him.
It's January 1995.
It's early in the evening and
workers are headed home,
but the day has only
just begun for the FBI
and the Massachusetts state police
sitting in unmarked cars,
staking out a restaurant.
For the last six years,
the FBI and the state police
have been trying to build
an airtight case against
two of the city's most
reputed mob leaders,
James whitey bulger and his
number two, Stephen flemmi.
Bulger is not above utilizing any means
to consolidate power in the city.
He's connected to some 19 murderers
and is seen as a vicious
and ambitious gangster.
The task force is finally
ready to make their arrests.
The plan is for the
Massachusetts state police
to grab flemmi while
the FBI simultaneously
takes down bulger.
The state police were able to
corner the unsuspecting flemmi.
But when the FBI swoops
in to arrest bulger, he is gone
and nowhere to be found.
This isn't the first time
he has slipped through the net.
Very few people knew
about the coordinated arrests,
so the state police want to know,
how does bulger keep getting away?
They become so
suspicious that they start
to actually think that someone in the FBI
is tipping bulger off.
The FBI was actually
starting to get frustrated
by these accusations that
were being made against them
by the state police.
So in a show of good faith,
they have now joined
forces with the state police
to lead the investigation into bulger.
The FBI investigation does not say
how bulger evades capture.
That only comes out three years later
at the trial of his right
hand man, Stephen flemmi.
When Stephen flemmi takes the stand
at his racketeering trial,
he's got a bombshell secret to share.
He reveals that he and bulger
had been recruited by the FBI
in the early 1970s, and have been
protected informants ever since.
Flemmi's testimony forces the FBI
to admit their alliance with bulger.
They confirm that bulger
was recruited in 1975
by FBI agent John
connolly to help take down
one of Boston's most powerful
mafia families, the patriarcas.
The deal was simple.
If bulger was to feed the FBI
enough intel on the patriarcas,
they would turn a blind eye
to all his criminal ventures
and provide him with
immunity from prosecution.
Just like that.
According to flemmi, the FBI isn't just
turning a blind eye to bulger's crimes.
At least one fed is actively helping him.
Flemmi's testimony is damning.
He tells the court that every time
law enforcement built a
case against him and bulger,
they were tipped off by an insider,
which allowed them to stay
one step ahead of the law.
The man on the inside, flemmi lets go,
is actually their FBI
handler, John connolly,
who's been working with the pair
for more than 20 years.
The Boston FBI is caught
completely off guard.
They discover that connolly and bulger
had actually grown up
in the same neighborhood
and developed a personal relationship.
They were old pals.
The revelation is just mind blowing.
But why would FBI break
bread with a notorious gangster?
Because of their close
ties, once bulger becomes
a confidential informant,
connolly is easily corrupted by him.
So in exchange for bribes,
connolly is feeding bulger information
about the police investigations.
The relationship with connolly and bulger
is exactly what empowers
bulger to basically become
the kingpin of the mob world.
It's crazy.
You have this
combination of this FBI deal
and a crooked agent
giving bulger the power
to take over the Boston mob world.
They made a monster.
By 1999, the FBI has
gathered enough evidence
to arrest connolly.
He's eventually convicted of racketeering
and second-degree murder
and is sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Meanwhile, bulger remains a fugitive
on the FBI's most
wanted list for 16 years.
In 2011, they finally
take whitey bulger down.
At his trial, he is
sentenced to life in jail.
But seven years later,
bulger pays the ultimate price.
For all those years as an FBI informant,
an ex-mafia hitman
murders him in his prison cell.
It's 2019 in Berlin.
A man is gunned down in cold blood.
The dead man is a
well-known enemy of Russia,
and his killer's name is a mystery.
An assassin is in the bushes
waiting for a Georgian national
to come walking by in
a public park in Berlin.
His target is zelimkhan khangoshvili,
a longtime enemy of the Russian state
who has fought against them in two wars
in the '90s and was now
living in exile in Germany.
Khangoshvili walks past.
The hitman emerges from the bushes.
He fires, and khangoshvili dies instantly.
After the assassination,
despite trying to blend in,
the German police find this
guy and quickly arrest him.
The assassin is carrying
a Russian passport
under the name of vadim sokolov,
but neither the passport
nor its holder is real.
When the assassin is apprehended
and they find his passport
under the name vadim sokolov,
they go searching through the records
but aren't able to find this guy.
He's a ghost. It isn't a real name.
It isn't a real passport.
The German police
announce to the world
that they have arrested a killer,
but they have no idea who he is.
The news explodes around the world.
Everyone wants to know,
who is this mysterious assassin?
Who is he working for,
and has he killed before?
A group of European journalists
start investigating this murder,
and they go out looking
for other assassinations
that there are similar methods used,
and they find one that's
eerily similar to this.
Six years earlier in Moscow in 2013,
a Russian entrepreneur is
gunned down in the street.
Like the Berlin murder,
it looks like a professional hit job.
The killer shot his victim multiple times
and fled on a bicycle.
The prime suspect in the case
is a man named vadim krasikov.
The investigative
journalists want to know,
are krasikov and
sokolov the same person?
Back in 2013, Russian
police quickly launched
a worldwide search for him
and a red notice warrant
was filed with Interpol.
There's an interesting
thing about this red notice.
It has a picture on it, and that picture
is almost identical to the person
that they know as vadim sokolov.
So they discovered that sokolov is
actually a guy named krasikov.
In December 2019,
the journalists hand over
their findings to German investigators
working on the assassination
of zelimkhan khangoshvili,
the man killed in the Berlin park.
Because of the efforts
of these journalists,
krasikov is put on trial
in 2021 in Germany
and is convicted of the
murder of khangoshvili.
The German government sentences him
to life in prison.
Krasikov is identified,
but there is still one question.
Who is he working for?
As the judge delivers the verdict,
he makes a shocking disclosure.
The court believes krasikov was acting
on a state contract authorized
by Vladimir put in himself.
When that information comes out,
the kremlin vehemently denies that.
The Russians really
categorize these allegations
as absurd and unproven.
Three years later, cameras capture
the largest high profile
prisoner exchange
between Russia and
the west in recent history,
and the truth is finally
available for all to see.
The U.S. and other western countries
have agreed to the release
of 15 people held in Russia.
They will be swapped
for Russian prisoners
held in the west.
A middle aged man in a
tracksuit walks down the steps.
When he reaches the bottom,
he receives a warm embrace
from president put in.
The man being greeted like
an old friend is vadim krasikov.
The cozy hug between tyrant and hitman
confirms what the world knew all along.
Vadim krasikov is
working for Vladimir put in.
Putin is blatantly making
a mockery of the west,
because he first publicly denies
having any kind of
relationship with krasikov,
and then here he is rolling
out the red carpet for the guy,
effectively confirming the alliance.
Krasikov was, I guess,
the perfect person
to become putin's personal hitman.
Putin joining forces with a contract killer
made headline news, but
Russia isn't the only nation
to do a deal with a killer.
In order to eliminate a
common enemy on foreign soil,
the CIA will join forces with the mob.
In 1959, fidel Castro leads
his communist party to power
in the Cuban revolution.
The island of Cuba is barely
100 miles from america,
but it's a threat too close for comfort
for the U.S. government.
The CIA want communism out of Cuba,
so that means they have to get Castro
out of the picture permanently.
It's a bold and risky move.
The CIA does not want to
be tied back to the crime.
The CIA reaches out to a fixer,
someone who has connections
to the U.S. criminal underworld.
And he comes back with the names
of two potential collaborators,
mobsters John roselli
and Sam giancana.
It's a serious gamble to
try and approach them,
but in a way, it's kind
of a masterstroke too.
The CIA is confident
that if word gets out,
the idea of the CIA
partnering with the mafia
is so outrageous that no
one will possibly believe it.
The mobsters agree
to meet with the CIA.
It seems they have their own agenda.
Roselli and giancana
have their own interests
in seeing Castro removed from Cuba,
as he's been shutting
down their lucrative casinos
in the island nation as well.
The mob don't just hate Castro's politics.
The Cuban leader is
also bad for business.
The CIA offers them
$150,000 to do this hit.
And they don't just decline the offer.
They offer to do it for free.
Giancana and roselli
are happy to take this on
without compensation
because they believe
that this will constitute
a get out of jail free card
for them later on.
This is doubly crazy.
You've got the CIA trying
to take out a foreign leader
and the mafia turning
down money for the hit.
These mobsters want to
take a more subtle approach.
They don't want to shoot Castro.
They want to take a lethal pill
and put it into his food or his drink,
and the CIA actually gives this operation
basically a rubber stamp.
Finding someone in Cuba
who's willing to poison Castro
is the easy part.
Roselli knows an anti-communist worker
at Castro's favorite restaurant.
In April 1962, he arranges for poison pills
to be delivered to the assassin.
The months pass, and
Castro still isn't dead.
It could be because Castro
never went to the restaurant.
It could be because the guy
took the money and disappeared.
Or it could be that Castro
is just too well protected.
The delays make CIA's top
brass increasingly nervous
about relying on the
mafia to do their dirty work.
So in October 1962,
the CIA and the mobsters
agreed to abandon the plot
and keep their alliance top secret.
This was one deal that was
never meant to be made public,
but in 1974, the truth was revealed
with fatal consequences.
"The New York times"
publishes an exposé
which accuses the CIA of being involved
in assassination attempts
against foreign leaders
like fidel Castro.
A government investigation
is immediately launched.
During the investigation
into plots to kill Castro,
roselli and giancana are identified
and summoned to testify.
But before giancana can
take the stand, disaster strikes.
He's shot dead in his Chicago home.
Roselli fears he will be next.
But rather than go into hiding,
roselli risks his life to
tell the senate the truth.
"The New York times" was right.
The CIA did recruit him to kill Castro.
But just weeks later in Miami,
his body is found
stuffed inside an oil drum.
Who killed the two hit men?
Well, someone knows,
but they're not telling.
To this day, no one's been
charged with either murder.
In the run up to world war ii,
Hitler believes his blitzkrieg tactics
require troops with superhuman stamina.
So he strikes a deal with
a pharmaceutical company
to supply his soldiers
with a brand-new drug,
methamphetamine.
What German scientists
discovered in the 1930s
is that methamphetamines can be used
to treat a whole host of conditions.
Things like narcolepsy, weight loss,
but they can also enhance
athletic performance.
The Germans are hosting
the Olympics in 1936,
and Adolf Hitler wants to show
the superhuman capabilities
of German athletes.
Methamphetamine tablets
are prescribed to these athletes.
The third reich decides
to go one step further.
German military doctor
named Otto rank believed
that methamphetamine could be used
to turn soldiers into super soldiers.
Drugging a whole
army with amphetamines
doesn't sound like a very wise plan,
but Hitler is convinced
that it is his path to victory.
In 1939, Germany is
planning an invasion
of Poland, the event
that will ignite world war ii.
Germany since world war
I has been thinking about
how to potentially fight the next war,
and they have figured out a better way
to use the materials at hand,
and that way is blitzkrieg.
Blitzkrieg means lightning war.
It's all about speed and mobility.
In 1939, there are a million men
in the German military,
a force that is soon to be
launched across the world.
So how does the third
reich get enough pills
to supply every soldier
within a matter of months?
The high command strikes
a deal with Germany's
biggest pharmaceutical
company, temmler.
Temmler make a type
of meth they call pervitin.
For temmler, this represents
a money making opportunity
because they're going
to produce tens of millions
of doses of pervitin.
For the Nazi regime, they're going to
chemically create the
superhumans that Hitler
already believes Germans to be.
It's a match made in financial heaven.
On the Eve of the
invasion of Poland in 1939,
the German troops
are issued pervitin pills,
and the result is that
they are able to hike
35 miles without stopping.
They're able to persist for three days
without stopping to sleep.
They take the entire
country in five weeks
and kill 100,000 Polish
soldiers in the process.
It's a crushing victory.
But these are the early days of the war.
To keep the blitzkrieg going,
they're gonna need a lot more pills,
so temmler agrees to ramp
up production of pervitin.
Between April and July 1940,
the temmler factories produce
over 800,000 pervitin tablets every day,
and that turns into 35 million tablets
across the entire German military.
The use of pervitin is
going to fuel Nazi armies
to conquer the low countries.
In a matter of only a few short weeks,
German armies drive the
British off the continent.
The speed of the advance
is mind-boggling to the west.
In 1941, the Nazis discover that soldiers
using their wonder drug
are facing dire consequences.
They become addicted to pervitin.
Some even die from
heart failure and suicide.
But despite the risks,
the drug continues to be given to troops
for the remainder of the war.
The alliance between the
pharmaceutical company
and the Nazis remains hidden until 2015,
when author Norman ohler
unearths lost military documents.
Even after world war ii ends,
temmler continues to produce pervitin
all the way until 1988.
Macon, Georgia, 1932.
A medical experiment
is about to be launched.
On the surface, it looks fine.
A government agency working
with a respectable university
to research a life-threatening disease,
but the truth behind their
partnership is much darker.
Life in the U.S. in the early 1930s
is incredibly tough. The
economy has collapsed.
Millions of Americans
are struggling to get by.
Macon, Georgia is one
of the poorest regions
in the nation in the 1930s.
It's also predominantly African American.
In the fall of 1932,
signs began appearing in macon offering
free blood tests and medical treatment,
particularly for African American men.
Charlie pollard is one of the men
who takes up the offer.
Like many African
Americans in macon county,
he has never had
access to medical care.
A sample of his blood is taken,
and when the results return,
he is told that his blood is bad
and that the cause is unknown,
but doctors promise
to monitor the situation.
But the doctors know
exactly what's wrong
with pollard's blood.
He has a deadly infection called syphilis.
It affects one in ten Americans,
and there are almost half a
million new cases every year.
Its symptoms can be
managed with treatment,
but there is no cure,
and, right now, little is known
about how it progresses.
Syphilis is extremely infectious,
and it can start with a painless rash
that may not even be noticed.
But over time, it eats away at your body,
your brain, your spinal
cord, your heart, your aorta.
It can be life-threatening.
What pollard doesn't
know is the United States
public health service has set up
a clandestine experiment
using African American men like him
as human Guinea pigs to observe
the long-term progression of the disease.
They won't try and manage the disease.
Instead, they simply monitor
their worsening symptoms
and prescribe them with placebos.
The U.S. public health service
can't carry out the study alone.
They need a site and they need people
whom the community will trust.
Just a ten minute
drive from macon county
is an African American college
named the tuskegee institute,
and it's the perfect place.
The public health service
approaches the institute
and offers to underwrite the study.
For an African American
institution in the 1930s,
funding is scarce.
It's an offer they can't turn down.
And so this unholy
alliance is basically forged
by the fact that the United States
public health service has the funding
to provide to tuskegee, and in exchange,
the U.S. public health service promises
that they'll be on site to
direct all the experiments,
to provide the medical treatment
for the test subjects.
The deal is done.
Now all they need is people.
And they ultimately
focused their attention
on African American men.
Given the existence of
segregation at the time
and the belief in the inherent
inferiority of black people,
it seems natural that they'll be able
to conduct the study on black men
with few consequences.
With the local men
duped into participating,
the tuskegee study of
untreated syphilis begins.
Patient Chris pollard is not alone.
Over the next 11 years,
he and 600 other patients
will regularly make trips to
tuskegee for medical treatment.
But in 1943, syphilis is rendered curable
with the arrival of the life-saving
antibiotic penicillin.
Despite this, the U.S.
public health service
decides to continue
the tuskegee experiment.
So they're going to
continue to let people die
when their syphilis could
be cured by penicillin
almost instantly.
This is just extraordinary.
It's tantamount to murder.
The project continues
for another 29 years,
until 1972, when journalist Jean Heller
exposes the alliance between
the government and college
after documents detailing the experiment
land on her desk.
The United States public health service
has violated the most fundamental tenets
of its mission to promote
and protect public health,
and in this alliance with
the tuskegee institute
has wreaked havoc and suffering.
It is a major betrayal of the public trust.
The world knows the awful truth.
The government is forced to act.
Three months after the article,
an advisory panel is formed
who finds the experiment
medically unjustified
and is finally terminated.
Pollard and the other
surviving members of the study
launch a class action lawsuit,
and, in 1974, they are
awarded $10 million
with free medical treatment
for the rest of their lives.
In the last days of the second world war,
an extraordinary alliance
forms between enemy soldiers
to fight against fanatical
ss stormtroopers.
In may 1945, the war
in Europe is almost over.
Hitler has taken his own life
and the allies are
heading towards victory.
In the Austrian alps, there are still
active units of the waffen ss,
the reich's most zealous defenders.
For them, the prospect of defeat
only increases their lust for blood.
The waffen ss are
Hitler's elite shock troops.
They are the most
hardcore, fanatical Nazis.
They have no intent of surrendering,
even as the war is
clearly about to be over.
They want blood,
and they're out to find suitable victims.
The ss have a target,
castle itter, an alpine hotel
turned prisoner of war camp.
Castle itter had once been a luxury hotel,
but it was taken over
by the Germans in 1938.
It was converted into
a 19-cell prison in 1943.
The prisoners in castle itter aren't just
your run of the mill pows.
These are fairly high-ranking individuals.
With rumors of a German
surrender approaching,
the commander at castle
itter decides to take his life.
Their commander
dead, the prison guards
fear they will be captured
by the Americans,
so they abandon their posts.
When the commandant of
castle itter commits suicide,
news of his death quickly
spreads through the area.
There's a group of about
150 ss troops in the woods
in the vicinity, and they realize
that now castle itter is no
longer under Nazi control.
They start moving
toward the strong point
with mayhem on their minds.
The prisoners in the castle
know that the ss is out there.
They're nearby,
and the prisoners are
understandably quite concerned
that if the ss comes to the castle,
they'll execute all the prisoners.
They know if they're going to survive,
they need to take drastic action,
so they send the prison cook to find help.
He takes an sos letter
to American troops
who are rumored to have captured
the nearby town of worgl.
When he gets there, he
realizes that the Americans
have not yet taken the town after all.
The cook encounters
another German officer
named sepp gangl.
He hands the letter over,
but to his shock, gangl isn't hostile.
He's a battle-hardened major
who is disillusioned with the Nazi cause
and tired of all the bloodshed.
Gangl has troops with him,
but he doesn't have enough
to put up a defense against the 17th ss
as they move through the
area, and gangl understands
that if we're gonna save these guys,
we're gonna need help.
We're going to have to reach
out to the American troops
that are known to be nearby.
What gangl decides to do is to proceed
under a flag of truce,
essentially waving a white flag.
Slowly and carefully
approaches the Americans.
In front of him is
27-year-old captain Jack Lee.
When captain Lee spots a
German soldier approaching,
he's on high alert.
He has no idea if this is a trap.
After a bit of back and forth,
Lee becomes convinced that gangl
is exactly what he claims to be,
and the two of them
agree to combine forces.
After years of conflict,
it's an unimaginable partnership.
Gis and Germans work together.
These guys have been
machine gunning each other
and throwing grenades
at each other for years,
and now suddenly, they're erstwhile allies
in defending against Hitler's
most fanatical soldiers.
But they're heavily outnumbered.
Even with the American reinforcements,
there are only 24 armed
men capable of resisting
an ss force of 150 fanatical Nazi troops.
But they do have an advantage in that
they are in a prepared
defensive fortification.
And all of a sudden,
the ss assault begins.
The chatter of machine guns,
the explosion of mortar rounds.
These troops are under siege.
After hours of bitter fighting,
somehow the alliance holds strong.
The ss are defeated and
withdraw from the fight.
The action is not without loss.
While trying to rescue
one of the prisoners, gangl,
he's caught in a crossfire
and shot by a sniper.
He's the only casualty of the action.
The operation is a success,
but the involvement of major gangl
and his countrymen is not mentioned
in American newspapers,
only in classified military reports.
It's more than 70 years later, in 2013,
when gangl's role in one of
the strangest alliances of the war
makes international headlines.
A full account of the
battle of castle itter
is finally published by
historian Stephen Harding.
When nations vie for power,
foes can turn into friends
and former allies can become enemies,
but as these files reveal,
secret and unholy alliances
can influence history.
I'm David duchovny.
Thanks for watching
"secrets declassified."