Nazi Megastructures

This episode relates the development of the first ever space missiles used by the Nazis as destructive wonder-weapons to bomb the Allies into resignation and the rocket engineer who set the groundwork for the moon landing.

The story of Nazi engineers tasked with fulfilling Hitlers megalomaniac demand for the construction of a land battleship weighing 1,000 tons.

April 1945. Safe in his heavily fortified Führerbunker in the center of Berlin, Hitler prepares for the Allies final attack.

The Bismarck and Tirpitz were battleships of record breaking proportions, ultimate status symbols of the Third Reich and hunted by the Allies.

In retaliation for Allied bombing raids, Hitler ordered the development of the V1. The first cruise missile, it changed the face of war forever.

The campaign to breach Hitlers 400 mile-long Siegfried Line took more than six months and cost the American forces 140,000 casualties.

It’s June 1940 and the Nazis have taken the Channel Islands, where Hitler orders some of the most fortified structures in the Third Reich.

Hitler planned a submarine to outperform all others. The Type 21 was the worlds most advanced submarine: Hitlers sea-faring super weapon.

In 1945 Japanese generals construct a network of defences and tunnels on Okinawa, creating a devastating killing ground for American troops.

Railways were key to the planning and implementation of the Final Solution, used to bring victims to the death camps from all over Europe.

After invading Norway in the spring of 1940, Nazi armed forces proceeded to fortify the entire country for war against Britain and the Soviet Union.

The German air force was the most powerful and largest in Europe at the beginning of World War II, and it played a key part in Hitlers conquests.

June 1944, Japanese fighters are preparing for a battle. But if they lose, a deadly weapon will be aimed at their country for the first time.

September 1944 on Peleliu, Japanese soldiers build an island-wide structure creating a killing zone that lead to the death of thousands of Americans.

This is the story of Japans final months in WWII - when America threatened to invade and Japan unleashed a terrifying new weapon, suicide bombers.

Hitlers fight for the skies sees the Reich adopt a policy of Total War. With every man woman and child pushed into producing ever more aircraft and munitions. The result is one of the most effective air defence systems the world has ever seen. One that came very close to destroying the might of the US 8th Army Airforce.

1942, Japan has captured oil rich Burma to secure its growing empires future. But with its navy decimated at the Battle of Midway it needs a new supply route. The result is a 258 mile railway cut through the toughest terrain known to man. All built using the blood and guts of 200,000 Allied POWs and local laborers. Half of them will die on the tracks or in the terrible camps nearby.

When allied spies plant false documents on a corpse, they are carrying out one of the most audacious deceptions of World War II. Operation Mincemeat ensures that the allied invasion of Sicily takes the Nazis totally by surprise. With few reinforcements, German troops must now make clever use of the islands rugged landscape to attempt a fighting retreat to the Italian mainland - and safety.

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