History's Greatest Mysteries (2020) s06e13 Episode Script

1
Tonight, the curious
case of missing files
from one of history’s most
influential inventors.
Nikola Tesla is the epitome
of what some would
call a mad scientist.
His ideas were
insanely creative,
potentially world changing,
but none more exciting
than the death ray.
Tesla supposedly
had 80 trunks full
of designs in his life’s work,
but only 60 of them
have been accounted for.
The big question is,
what happened to
these other 20 trunks?
To this day, the fate
of those lost trunks
and what might have been
in them remains a mystery.
How did these things disappear
with no one being the wiser?
People began to speculate.
Is there some sort
of coverup going on?
Now, we’ll explore the
top theory surrounding
who might have stolen Tesla’s
missing files, and why.
Tesla always worried about
what his inventions would do
if they fell into
the wrong hands.
1943 was the middle
of World War II.
Anybody would’ve been
interested in technology
that could turn the tide.
Tesla knew that
some of his inventions
could be used to destroy
the earth itself.
Maybe Tesla, knowing
that he’s nearing the end
of his life, destroys
his own files.
What really happened to the
missing files of Nikola Tesla?
January 8th, 1943.
It’s a bitter cold
morning in Manhattan.
At the New Yorker Hotel,
a maid ignores the
do-not-disturb sign
that always seems to
hang outside suite 3327.
Inside, she makes
a grim discovery.
The lifeless body
of the man who’d lived
in these rooms for years.
World famous inventor,
Nikola Tesla,
dead at the age of 86.
The cause of death
was later determined
to have been a blood
clot in his heart,
but because of the
do-not-disturb sign,
no one had entered the room
for several days
after his death.
There’s no front-page
coverage of Tesla’s death.
When Tesla passes,
he’s forgotten.
It’s a lonely death
for someone who is responsible,
perhaps more than anyone,
for putting electricity
in all of our homes.
He had been living this
secluded life for many years.
He had withdrawn
from public society.
He didn’t even keep a
close cohort of friends.
His death contrasts wildly
with his earlier life,
where he was a very
well-known person.
A life that
begins on July 10th, 1856
in a small, rural village
in what is now Croatia.
There’s family legend
that Tesla was born
during a lightning storm,
and that this provides
a powerful explanation
for why, later in life,
he would be so infatuated
with electricity.
From a very early
age, people recognized
that he was different.
He was a genius.
And in particular, he was a whiz
when it came to
matters of science.
We’re talking about a man
who could reportedly
speak eight languages,
who had a photographic memory,
and had an almost
supernatural capability
with electrical engineering.
This is a man who could not
only imagine the future,
he could build it.
Tesla hones
these skills as a student
at the Imperial Royal
Technical College in Austria,
where he focuses on
experiments with electricity.
At the time, the emerging
electric power industry
is experiencing growing pains.
By the 1870s,
electricity is powering
streetlights in some cities,
but it has problems.
It’s prone to outages and
sometimes even explosions.
By 1880, Thomas Edison’s
light bulb comes out
and that makes lighting, using
electricity, a lot safer.
But the infrastructure
for illuminating huge city
blocks is just not there yet.
After finishing his education,
26-year-old Tesla works
for two years in Paris
at the Continental
Edison Company,
then moves to New
York City in 1884
where he continues
to work for Edison.
New York and New
Jersey are where all
of the great experiments
about electricity
are being conducted.
So it’s the perfect
place for him to go
to play out his destiny.
The problem is he has a
pretty significant disagreement
with Thomas Edison.
Edison is clinging to the idea
of power distribution through
the use of direct current.
Tesla is working
toward a better way
for transmitting
electrical power.
This idea that he has
come up with himself
of the alternating current.
As direct current
is transmitted,
it very quickly loses
all of its power.
We would have to have an
electrical transmission
station every mile.
We would have more electrical
transmission stations
than gas stations.
The system that Tesla
ultimately develops,
alternating current,
is something
that, over great distances,
does not lose its intensity.
Frustrated by
his conflict with Edison,
Tesla quits after six months
to start his own company.
There’s now this competition
between Edison’s DC,
direct-current, system,
backed by JP Morgan,
versus Tesla and his AC
system, or alternating current,
and he’s backed by the
Westinghouse Company.
The bitter rivalry becomes known
as the War of the Currents.
The big prize that they’re
both going for in 1893
is the opening of the
Chicago World’s Fair.
It’s announced beforehand
that the World’s Fair is
going to be illuminated
by 100,000 incandescent
light bulbs.
The question is, whose
system is going to power it?
The side that gets
the contract is likely
to be the one that provides
power to America’s cities.
Ultimately, it is Westinghouse
and Tesla who win the contract.
And when President Grover
Cleveland presses the button,
100,000 bulbs light up.
It is an amazing display
of electrical power.
By the early 1900s, AC
systems are the standard
for electric grids.
So this means that
Tesla essentially won
the War of the Currents.
He’s set up to be one of the
most successful inventors
of all time.
The problem with Tesla is,
even though he is
a stone cold genius
when it comes to
electrical engineering,
he’s a terrible businessman.
In 1888, Tesla
sold all his patents
for his AC technology to
Westinghouse for $60,000.
So Tesla’s work made
another person super rich
while the money he received,
he used it for more
research and development.
His life is dominated
by other people becoming
wealthy off of his innovations.
For example, Tesla
was the first person
to invent radio technology,
but he wasn’t the
one who cashed in.
That was Marconi.
Marconi ultimately creates
a wireless radio system
based on innovations that were
developed by Nikola Tesla,
and by the turn of
the 20th century,
almost everyone’s using it.
And yet, Tesla doesn’t
see a penny of that money.
Marconi becomes fabulously
wealthy and Tesla does not.
In 1916, he has to
declare bankruptcy,
and that really becomes the
end of Tesla’s public career.
His mental health, which had
been precarious from the start,
takes a turn for the worse.
He’s plagued with
feelings of paranoia,
very serious headaches.
He has terrible insomnia.
Tesla also exhibits
obsessive-compulsive tendencies
that set him even further
apart from the people
that surround him in daily life.
Despite his challenges,
Tesla still claims
that he’s creating new
fantastical inventions,
one for teleportation,
one for time travel,
a generator that can
take down a building.
He had this idea for
what he called teleforce
that can take down airplanes
and can take down bombs,
as many as 10,000 at a time.
He thought that
this could end war.
What it ends up being, of
course, is called a death ray.
While Tesla’s new inventions
are never fully realized,
it’s believed plans for
them are kept in his files.
Tesla has told his friends
that he has 80 trunks
full of his designs
and technical schematics
for all of his inventions.
Essentially, all
of his life’s work.
It’s believed that all of
those secrets are locked either
in the hotel room with him
or in storage somewhere
else in Manhattan.
But after his death in 1943,
it’s nine years before
those trunks are shipped
to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade.
And when they get there,
there’s 60 of them.
What happened to
the other 20 trunks?
Some have noted
that, when Tesla died,
there is a significant interval
between the time when the maid
finds him in his hotel room
and when people come
to retrieve the body.
Enough time, some speculate,
for somebody to potentially
go into the apartment
and steal something.
According to some
Tesla researchers,
there was a group who were
determined to make sure
that Tesla’s inventions
never saw the light of day.
We know that there are stories
from this period
of representatives
from the oil industry sabotaging
promising new technologies
that would’ve
challenged the place
of the oil industry
in the economy.
Tesla has a bold
vision of a future
where electricity
is free to everyone
and can be transmitted
wirelessly.
He has this idea
for the Tesla Tower,
using a tower to pump
the natural electricity
from the earth in a way
that it can be transmitted
across the world.
Tesla’s tower project is funded
by the great financier and
industrialist, JP Morgan.
This would’ve been
a huge step forward
in his plans to bring free
clean power to the world.
Unfortunately,
Morgan pulls the plug
on Tesla’s tower project.
But why?
There’s a rumor that Morgan
eventually pulls his financing
from Tesla because he could
see the direction it was going,
and it was going
in this direction
of free power for everyone.
And Morgan was all about,
let’s make some money.
So, why would he continue
spending money on something
that’s just gonna give
it to everyone for free?
So JP Morgan pulled funding
and told other investors to
pull their funding as well.
So many big businesses,
big oil especially,
tried to keep Tesla down.
They sued him.
They called him a madman,
threw him into the
dirt, stepped on him,
and never allowed him
to get back up again.
But if big
business titans sought
to make Tesla’s
revolutionary ideas go away,
how could they have stolen
his designs after his death?
How could someone actually go
about sneakily
removing 20 trunks
from Tesla’s room
without anyone noticing?
It turns out that
there’s actually a tunnel
underneath the New Yorker Hotel
that leads right
to Penn Station.
This opens
up another possibility.
Perhaps the culprit might be
someone much closer to him.
It might be the
person responsible
for the disappearance
of all of these drawings
is someone in his family.
When Nikola Tesla dies in 1943,
the cause of his
death is obvious,
a blood clot in the heart.
But one mystery remains,
who took his missing
files and why?
In 1943 we’re in the
midst of World War II.
It’s still not clear how
long it’s going to take
to defeat Nazi Germany
and Imperial Japan.
There is a huge
technological race on.
Just look at the
aircraft, for instance.
There’s still biplanes being
used pretty commonly in 1939.
By 1945, it’s the jet age.
There are a number of
different governments
who are looking for an edge.
Nikola Tesla may be the man
who could offer them that edge.
The passage of time had sort
of driven 86-year-old
Tesla toward irrelevance,
but maybe the circumstances
of the Second World War were
going to change all of that.
People following
his life’s work knew
how revolutionary his ideas are,
but they also understand how
dangerous his ideas could be.
To governments, Tesla’s
not irrelevant at all.
And the question is, who’s
been poking around in his stuff
and looking for things
after his death?
And there is one person
that we know for sure,
and that’s his nephew,
Sava Kosanovic.
Sava Kosanovic was a diplomat
in exile from Yugoslavia
because, at the time,
Yugoslavia had been taken
over by Nazi Germany.
Sava Kosanovic was
politically motivated, maybe,
to take some of that material
out of the New Yorker hotel.
And it might be that
his political motivation
was actually a reflection of
oncoming Cold War politics.
Yugoslavia is already beginning
to move toward the orbital
pull of the Soviet Union.
And as we know in the aftermath
of the Second World War,
Yugoslavia will become a
Soviet satellite nation.
- Even members of the U.S.
- government are concerned
with Kosanovic’s motivations,
and even more seriously his
connections back in Europe.
Shortly after
the death of Tesla,
Sava and a couple other
possible representatives
from the management of the
New Yorker enter Tesla’s room
in order to break into the safe.
Sava suspects that
someone had rifled
through Tesla’s belongings.
Kosanovic claims that
he’s only interested
in family photographs.
It’s hard to swallow that
and accept it for its
suggested innocence,
because God knows
what was in that safe.
Sure, there were probably
some family photos in there,
but was Sava Kosanovic really
just there for family photos?
Or was he there
for something else?
Tesla’s nephew, the one
who is making all the noise
about these missing trunks.
It’s possible that Kosanovic
himself grabs these things
and then says, hey,
what happened to them?
To throw suspicion off himself.
But why is
Tesla’s nephew so desperate
to get his hands on
his uncle’s files?
According to FBI files,
the Soviets show interest
in Tesla’s work
prior to his death.
The Soviet Union
were looking for ways
to be able to possibly shoot
German aircraft out of the sky.
According to Tesla,
his weapon is able
to do just that,
destroy 10,000 enemy
planes from 250 miles away.
As the war carries on,
Hitler’s air force
looked unstoppable.
It’s obvious that
the Soviet Union is
in Hitler’s crosshairs.
Of course they would’ve
been interested
in Tesla’s potential weapon.
The United States
government was positive
that the Soviet Union
was extremely interested
in his device.
There’s an old legend
that the Soviet
government reached out
to Tesla over this death beam,
and that they even
offered him $50,000.
But the legend goes
that Tesla refused it.
So when Tesla dies in 1943,
it would make sense for the U.S.
to think that the
Soviets are trying
to get their hands
on Tesla’s files.
The war is far from over,
and even though the U.S.
and the Soviets are allies,
the cracks are already
starting to show.
Both the U.S. and the
Soviets are anticipating
there’s gonna be a
post-war face off
after Germany is eliminated.
And so both sides
are rapidly pursuing
powerful new technology that’s
going to be world changing.
But is there solid proof
Tesla’s nephew smuggled some
of his uncle’s secret
files to the Soviets?
The FBI is watching Kosanovic.
They come up with enough
evidence to move in and arrest.
Because, after all,
Kosanovic is an agent
of a friendly
foreign government,
so you have to be
very careful there.
However, as nephew of Tesla,
Kosanovic is sort of
the heir apparent,
so it’s natural
that his materials we’re
gonna go to Kosanovic.
And Kosanovic wants to get all
of them back to Yugoslavia.
Eventually a Nikola Tesla
museum opens in Belgrade
and the contents of those
60 trunks become the basis
for the museum’s exhibits.
That museum opened in 1955.
Tesla died in 1943,
so that means that Kosanovic
had more than enough time
to take care of whatever
papers he needed
and leak ’em to the Soviets.
But then again, there
are those that say
that the reason why the U.S.
laid suspicion on Kosanovic
was to cover up
their own schemes
for getting at Tesla’s work.
At the time
of Nikola Tesla’s death,
the outcome of World War
II hangs in the balance.
There’s still a long way to go
from January, 1943 to the
end of the war in Europe.
If Tesla can offer any
technology that promises
to hasten the end
of the conflict,
anything that might bring
more of an advantage
to the Allied cause,
well, governments are
definitely interested in that.
The Soviet Union
were in the process
of kicking the Germans
out of Stalingrad,
but D-Day was still months away.
The United States
still needed that edge.
Any possible new weaponry
that the United States
could come up with
would be to their benefit.
J. Edgar Hoover
and the FBI are on the alert
for enemy spies
operating in the U.S.
It’s by no means a
foregone conclusion
that the Allies are
going to win this war.
Any kind of technology
that might give the Allies
an advantage over the Axis
is likely to generate a
great deal of interest.
More importantly, it’s making
sure no other country had it.
Including some
advanced technologies conceived
by the late Nikola Tesla.
So we know the U.S. government
is intensely interested
in Tesla’s inventions.
And this isn’t surprising
because, at this point of time,
we know that he’s claimed he
has these dangerous weapons,
one of which, of course,
is the death ray.
They want to know if
the death ray is real.
They also hear that Tesla may
have invented other things
that could be used as weapons.
Rumors have it that the
United States kept FBI agents
in rooms on the same floor
that Nikola Tesla lived.
They would’ve had
ample time after he died
to sneak into his room,
even before his
body was discovered,
and search for documents before
the death was widely known,
Which would explain why,
when Kosanovic
ultimately gets there,
he says it looked like the place
had already been rifled through.
This sequence of events
leads to the theory
that the FBI rushed in
and cleared the apartment
in the interests of
protecting national security.
Although we might not
know exactly what happened
to some of this material,
some of this played
out in the public
as a matter of public record,
because two days
after his death,
some of the property that was
at other hotels across Manhattan
was seized under the
Alien Properties Act.
This is an act that was created
during the First World War
to seize assets belonging
to foreign nationals
of enemy nations in
the United States.
Why the Office of Alien
Property would be called upon
to dispose of Tesla’s
materials is mysterious,
given that Tesla was
an American citizen.
Even the Office of Alien
Property isn’t sure
that this is really within
their sphere of jurisdiction.
The government’s
explanation is that
this is done to prevent material
from falling in the
hands of Sava Kosanovic,
someone who was known to be
working for a foreign government
that had contact with
the Soviet Union.
J. Edgar Hoover, as
the head of the FBI,
could justify anything if it
served the greater interests
of preventing it from falling
into the hands of
the Communists.
Because Sava was not
an American citizen,
it was feared that this
material would be turned over
to the Soviet Union.
And this is something
that the United States simply
could not allow to happen.
The FBI even suggested that
Sava Kosanovic could be arrested
for burglary for getting
into Tesla’s safe.
But ultimately, the FBI
just doesn’t have enough
on him to arrest Kosanovic.
But there’s still a concern
about what he might do
with his uncle’s documents.
- The U.S.
- government assigns an expert
to analyze the
seized Tesla files.
The United States government
hired MIT Dr. John G. Trump,
who is an expert in electronics.
Trump spent two days
going through the material
that was only found
in Tesla’s room.
Afterwards, he wrote
a memo stating nothing
of it was of
scientific interest.
Now, many experts
have questioned
that any scientist could,
after just two days,
go through all of Tesla’s papers
and come to this conclusion
To those who might be
conspiratorially minded,
this sounds like a smoke
screen now, doesn’t it?
Because it sounds like
exactly what you would say
if you suddenly were
delivered this mother lode
of incredibly important
innovative technology.
You would of course then go, oh,
nothing practical
can be found here.
There’s a belief
that the U.S. government
actually found usable technology
that was in the Tesla files,
and that that material,
transmitted forward through the
decades into the late 1980s,
became the foundation for
what was ultimately termed
the Strategic
Defense Initiative.
Also known as Star Wars,
it was a weapons system
that could intercept
incoming Soviet missiles
and hit them with beams
that could knock
them out of the sky,
something Tesla experts see as
similar to Tesla’s death ray.
We know that the
U.S. government took
and still has many
of Tesla’s files.
In 2016, about 250 pages
of Tesla’s files
were declassified.
But that’s really just a
drop in the bucket compared
to what was there.
So, when that trove
of documents was
declassified in 2016,
interestingly a name
pops up of a person
who’s involved with Tesla
and the U.S. government.
Some researchers think
that this young man may
have had both the means
and the motive to make off
with some of Tesla’s files.
More than seven decades
after Nikola Tesla’s death,
the quest to learn more
about his missing files
has hit a dead end,
leaving historians, scientists,
and Tesla experts
alike to speculate
on what was in those documents,
who might have
taken them, and why.
Then, thanks to the 2016 release
of some long-classified FBI
files, a new suspect emerges.
One of these
declassified documents
has information about someone
named Bloyce Fitzgerald,
an Army Private.
Fitzgerald actually had
a connection with Tesla.
It was a murky one.
But he was a young
electrical engineer
and he had some
involvement with Tesla.
And he also was involved
with government research
for the U.S. Army
Ordinance Department,
and he had somewhat of a
fascination with Tesla.
We know that
Fitzgerald reached out
to Tesla multiple times
and that they
exchanged some letters,
but we don’t know whether
they ever met in person.
At the time of Tesla’s death,
Fitzgerald was working
on technologies at MIT,
the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
So it’s not implausible to think
that maybe Tesla shared
some ideas with him
or even showed him some designs.
The FBI files reveal evidence
of a close relationship
between Fitzgerald and Tesla.
We don’t know the exact nature
of what that
relationship was like.
It seems to have been friendly,
and we know that Tesla
could be very generous
with his friends.
It appears that
Bloyce Fitzgerald
may have just been a fanboy,
someone who admired Tesla.
He called him on his
birthday in 1938.
We’re aware of the fact
that Fitzgerald attempted
to arrange meetings with Tesla.
We don’t know whether or not
those meetings
actually took place,
but Bloyce Fitzgerald
was nevertheless a person
who was just
waiting in the wings
and appeared to
have this interest
in being close to him and maybe
have access to his material.
Fitzgerald is
interviewed by the FBI,
and the records of
the interview show
that Fitzgerald was
very knowledgeable
about Tesla’s
inventions and plans.
Why does he know so much?
Is it simply because he was a
friend and protege of Tesla?
Or is it perhaps because he
gained access to Tesla’s files?
Tesla may have shared
things with Fitzgerald.
After Tesla dies,
something very fishy happens.
When his nephew Sava Kosanovic
wants access to the safe,
he doesn’t have the
combination to the safe,
so he’s one of multiple
people who are present
when a locksmith comes
to open the safe.
Here’s where the
mystery deepens.
When Tesla’s nephew shows
up to open the safe,
there are two other men
in the room who claim
to be hotel managers.
One is Mr. Fitzgerald,
the other Mr. Doty.
But according to Tesla
biographer, Mark Seifer,
there’s no one with those
names who are employed
by the hotel at that time.
- It might be that Mr.
- Fitzgerald is none other
than Bloyce Fitzgerald,
and it could be that
the Mr. Doty described
was Colonel Ralph E. Doty,
who was in U.S. Army
military intelligence.
Exactly
what these men were doing
in Tesla’s room
remains a mystery.
Tesla biographer, Mark Seifer,
finds some information
that indicates
that inside the safe was a
key to a safe deposit box
that was at the
Governor Clinton Hotel
elsewhere in Manhattan.
There is a belief that maybe
the first operational example
of the death ray was
being held there.
Could it be that
Fitzgerald wanted
to be there when
the safe was opened
so he could gain
possession of the key
that opened the safety
deposit box where the plans
for the teleforce
were supposedly kept?
There are a number of reasons
why Fitzgerald may
have wanted the plans
to the so-called death ray.
Fitzgerald has connections
with the U.S. Army,
so maybe he wants it for
reasons of national security.
But maybe Fitzgerald
wants it for himself
to sell to the highest bidder.
This could have been
tempting for anyone,
but especially tempting for
a young electrical engineer
who understood what the
plans could be worth.
There’s some speculation
that he might have
had greater access
than everybody
thought that he did.
So there are two ways
of looking at this.
One could be that he is
just the admiring super fan
who wants to be within the
greater gravitational pull
of this great person,
or it might be that he is
secretly up to something
and that the government
put him up to it.
Of all the
alleged contents of the
missing Tesla files,
it’s his death ray that
attracts the most interest,
even before the great
scientist passed away.
We have records of an interview
in "The New York Times"
where he claims that he is
about to unveil a new technology
that’s going to
be world changing.
Tesla called his
device the teleforce.
But teleforce is not
a sexy enough name
for "The New York Times"
who dub it instead
the "Death Ray."
Much more ominous description,
completely at odds with
Tesla’s intentions.
Tesla didn’t like it to
be called the death ray.
He liked it to be called
the peace ray or teleforce.
He saw this as a
defensive weapon
that shoots out
tungsten particles,
and the idea is it can
take out 10,000 planes.
It can melt bombs.
Therefore, making the country
that controlled the teleforce
impervious to foreign attack.
The thing is though,
if you’re looking at a beam
that can do that kind of damage,
there’s no necessary
reason why it has
to be used for
defensive purposes.
Why couldn’t you
use it offensively?
And who out there
in the world in 1940
would be very
interested in a weapon
that could be used offensively?
Well, Adolf Hitler.
It is not just wild speculation
to imagine that the National
Socialist Third Reich
had interest in Tesla.
The timing is critically
important here,
because "The New York
Times" article comes out
in September of 1940.
There are cells of German agents
living in the United States
that are here to spy on
the American government
and the American military.
They’re conducting espionage
before the U.S. gets
involved in the war
and then after the U.S.
gets involved in the war,
Nazi Germany is still
very powerful at the time
when Nikola Tesla dies.
Germany might just win the war
if they have the right weapons,
banking more and more
on its technology.
Hitler’s idea was
that he had spies all up
and down the Eastern Seaboard,
and that one of them possibly
could either kidnap Tesla,
bring him to Nazi Germany,
or at least get ahold
of whatever material
Tesla had available.
So it’s plausible that
during this entire time,
even the time of Tesla’s death,
Hitler’s men were in the U.S.
and they were on the lookout
for stealing Tesla’s
technologies.
It has been speculated
by some theorists
that the German
government was trying
to get access to
Tesla’s information
in the hope of developing a
death ray for its own purposes.
This is a potential
war-winning weapon
up there with atomic power.
There is at least one
possible Nazi sympathizer
who had gotten close to Tesla.
He was Hungarian,
an eccentric guy
named Titus de Bobula.
De Bobula was actually
kicked out of Hungary
for being aligned with
a Nazi organization.
So de Bobula is
under surveillance
when he returns to
the United States.
Tesla is working with de
Bobula during the 1940s.
They’re working on the
death ray together,
and so certainly this is a man
who could tell other people,
perhaps German spies
operating in New York City,
what kind of threat
this weapon might be.
De Bobula is also interested
in extreme politics.
He had supposedly
disavowed an allegiance
with the German-American Bund,
known to have Nazi sympathies,
and although he
may have done that,
did he do that because he
genuinely disliked the ideology
of National Socialism?
Or did he do it to lay low
and fly under the radar?
Still, there
might have been other agents
that Hitler tasked
with tracking down Tesla’s
advanced technologies.
According to some researchers,
Hitler actually sent
SS officers to the U.S.
to gain access to Tesla’s
death ray technology.
It was in 1943
with one Otto Skorzeny
overseeing the mission.
He was a nasty Nazi figure
with a scar on his face,
looks like a Bond villain.
And after Tesla’s death,
he becomes a main
figure in Nazi Germany.
He leads a lot of
commando operations
and earns himself the nickname,
the Most Dangerous
Man in Europe.
After the war, Skorzeny
flees the part of Europe
where people were
looking for former Nazis,
he makes his way to Spain,
lives under an assumed name,
until 1975 when his
death is widely reported.
Now what’s interesting
is that, in the early 200s,
you have a 29-year-old
man from Florida
who claims that his
girlfriend’s elderly grandfather
is actually Otto Skorzeny.
Now this purported Skorzeny
on his deathbed confesses
to having stolen the plans
for the death ray from Tesla
and given them to Adolf Hitler.
The idea of Skorzeny
escaping to Spain
and then faking his own
death is pretty fantastical.
But the idea of these Nazis
actually trying to get ahold
of Tesla’s designs and
any prototypes that exist,
that’s not so fantastical.
But if that’s what happened,
where’s the death ray?
If they’d had it,
the weapon would’ve been
directed against RAF
and U.S. Army bombers
that were bringing misery
to German cities
on a daily basis.
Maybe though the reason
that we don’t see the
death ray during the war is
that the technology
was all theoretical,
and that the Germans
were still working on it
when they ran out of time.
And so they were never able
to perfect Tesla’s death ray.
Some people think that maybe
the American government’s
very first conclusion
is the correct one.
There was nothing there of
value left in Tesla’s files.
And the reason why is because
Tesla himself made sure
that there would
be nothing left.
In the early 1940s,
as an aging Nikola Tesla faced
physical and mental decline,
is it possible he began to
get rid of his own files?
Tesla is nearing
the end of his life.
He sees himself as one
of the greatest
scientists in the world.
He sees himself as
better than Einstein,
of course better than Edison.
He’s given all of these great
inventions to the world,
and yet he’s been swindled
out of so much of his success.
How would he have felt
about his accomplishments
then being used after his death?
Maybe after he sat
for the interview
with "The New York Times"
about the death ray,
maybe he had second thoughts.
Maybe he destroys his own
files relating to teleportation
or the death ray so that it
wouldn’t bring greater levels
of misery and
suffering to the world
than what World War II
had already delivered.
We have to think about
Tesla’s personality
and how it changed
over the years.
Tesla was convinced
of his genius.
He thought that he was the
greatest mind in the world.
He grumbled that ignorant people
are the ones who treat
Einstein like he’s royalty.
As the years go on, Tesla
becomes increasingly convinced
that people are seeking to rip
him off and steal his ideas.
Another example of his
increasingly tenuous
hold on reality,
he had phobias.
He was afraid of
women’s jewelry.
For every meal, he ordered
three folded napkins.
He wouldn’t eat without it.
Today he would
likely be diagnosed
with obsessive
compulsive disorder.
He became just
completely isolated.
He was always locked
in his hotel room
with his do-not-disturb
sign on the door.
So maybe, in his isolated
and paranoid state,
Tesla felt that there were
just troves of people waiting
to just swoop in and steal
his brilliant designs.
Nothing will make you more
paranoid than being the victim
of people close to
you stealing from you.
And that happened over and
over again in Tesla’s life.
Just days before his death,
President Roosevelt
himself asked
for an update on
the Tesla situation.
So even the office of the
presidency was paying attention
to what this 86-year-old
man was up to in Manhattan.
There’s a rumor that
there were FBI agents
that were in a hotel
room just down the hall
at the New Yorker,
keeping an eye on him.
And perhaps that’s why, when
he was nearing his death,
he realized that,
I’m gonna make these
valuable drawings go away.
I’m gonna get rid of them
because the world has cheated
me out of money long enough
and it’s not gonna do it
to me after I’ve died.
Perhaps Tesla did it
as a service to humanity.
He knew that there
were unsavory people
who were interested in his ideas
and maybe he got rid of them
so that they wouldn’t
fall into the wrong hands.
Whether Tesla destroyed any
of his papers is not known,
but the FBI’s declassification
of their own files
on Tesla in 2016 has
led many to believe
that there are more
valuable Tesla documents
yet to be revealed.
We know that there
are files missing,
but who has them
and when the government
might shed more light
on this is really unknown
Whether the files went missing
because they were grabbed
by some government
or because Tesla
destroyed them himself.
Many researchers
have been looking
for his lost
inventions ever since.
We’re still fascinated by
the eccentric genius inventor
who is perhaps more popular
now than he was at his death.
The search for Tesla’s
missing files continues
because there’s
reason to believe
that revolutionary secrets may
be discovered in those pages.
Maybe someday they’ll be found.
I’m Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
"History’s Greatest Mysteries."