Lost German Enigma Machine Codes Uncovered! | Expedition Unknown

we walk and walk
and soon i realize we’re passing through
a grid of empty streets
yadak i don’t see a city
everything is gone
everything
all of it did the soviets flatten it yes
soviets destroyed the whole city here
literally destroyed everything i’ve
never seen this before the place is
completely flat

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this was once a thriving city today its
only residents are empty avenues
basements without houses even a church
without walls
there was once a soaring castle here
today it is simply a set of stairs
the town has been called the polish
pompeii because preserved in its ashes
is a potential bonanza of artifacts from
the very final days of the war

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every home shop and office here was
repurposed by the nazis for the defense
of berlin
and now jerich has gotten exclusive
access to excavate in the ruins
this is the first time anyone has
excavated this part of the town and we
you and i are here to see it
also on site is pavel piatkovic fresh
from working on the mru tunnels nearby
he’s here to support his friend jarek in
his own excavations good to see you
again yeah how are you the objection
good okay so what are we working on here
there was once a building here but this
was the cellar entrance where’s the
entrance what do you have
so
what’s down here
we found a few interesting things
interesting how
items that seemed military issued this
was
a command area we think it was a place
for high command officers
can i can i see the things that you
found
oh they’re still inside yes
oh they just
me me first yes oh boy
let’s go
come on
let’s do it

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oh boy
oh there’s a lot of a lot of spider webs
which is good
yes feet first
very good
okay i’m in
where does this go
no spiders it’s a big spider right there
holy there’s a whole chamber down here
whoa
look at this place ah hi josh
hi
so it’s huge how old are these chambers
just like this is very old
this is a medieval seller it would have
been used to store food but when we
opened it up there were items to suggest
the military was using it
and there’s one more thing in here i
really want to show you yeah what’s here

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is this electrical
there was no power in costume so the
germans would connect their important
buildings to generators
we also found things like this with
batteries

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we see volts here and a warning not to
throw it and to keep it away from from
water
and these are the battery cells here wow
would this have powered lights or is
this like an emergency backup you think
we think it powered our radio
are there more rooms like this that were
used by the nazis there are many but
they’ve been buried as well we need to
access them from back outside this is
not the same chamber this is another
chamber
this is near the chamber we were in but
we haven’t been able to open it yet
everything is collapsed it has been
collapsed since 1945. this looks blocked
though so how how do we get in here
you’re going to have to dig
dig with one coparca what’s a koparka
this is a kaparka
since the soviets burned this entire
town down to rubble shovels aren’t going
to cut it
this excavator should be our ticket into
the new chamber
kaparka
and it doesn’t take long to open a door
into the past
look at that
that’s a chamber
this excavator is pulling up dirt that’s
filled this cellar for decades and that
dirt may be as valuable as anything
inside
i break out a metal detector to see what
it can see

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nail
oh hey hey come here come here look at
this come here come here bobble
look look look oh josh
a container yeah
oh oh
german helmet yeah that’s a helmet
how
absolutely chilling is that
german helmet yeah in a destroyed
fortress in poland i’ve just found a
relic of the nazi occupation here that
was abandoned in the final days of world
war ii
this just connects you to this place in
such a primal way you know it’s like
a person wore this a nazi soldier wore
this helmet
it’s kind of haunting
with the red army coming through here i
can’t imagine many germans survived this
place
you’re holding history in your hands

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holy hell look at this
this goes way back home okay so
obviously
this roof is uh no guarantees here guys
so be really really cautious
we’ve got an alcove here on the
left oh my god
we got more chambers down here
look at this
oh my god we’ve got bottles
coffee cups lamps cooking pots
you could just imagine a soldier
right here
uh
uh-huh
oh wow yes yes
what would run off of this high voltage
we can’t know for sure
but this would have produced a lot of
not all energy had power supplies so
this room must have been very important
but wait there’s more well look gas mask
oh my god we’ve got a gas mask here and
here’s the
face piece
right here this is a blue gas mask it
indicates a non-magnetic mask these were
issued to people near radio frequencies
as to not interfere ah for radio yeah so
we’ve got high voltage we’ve got this
maybe radio station
yes it looks like this is the fortress’s
radio room this would have been one of
the most crucial places in the whole
city to the nazis
and it isn’t until we explore the back
of the chamber that we learn exactly how
crucial
wow look over here josh oh this
is a paper all of this is burned look at
this so we’ve got writing along the top
here different columns and rows that are
labeled what what is this
exactly these look like they’ve been
through decryption
i’m not 100 sure
but i think these are from an enigma

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enigma yeah
these were used with enigma machines
they look to me like they are
okay
wow
these papers many now burned in black
appear to be products of enigma
a complex encryption device used by all
branches of the german military to send
top secret communications
from the outside it resembled a humble
typewriter but looks are deceiving
enigma could scramble a message into
hundreds of millions of possible
permutations the consequences were
catastrophic allowing german forces
across land sea and air to communicate
their movements without fear of
compromise
it was only when british mathematician
alan turing and the team at bletchley
park england cracked the enigma code
that the tide of the war turned to the
side of the allies
to find out what these communiques were
telling the nazis i rushed back to the
surface to find our translator oliver
what does it say oliver okay this is
writing on this what does it say uh
receiving
some devices
at this at a location
so they’re receiving some sort of
devices they should receive some sort of
device there’s definitely something here
but it’s difficult to make out
listen
then
correspondence about
prisoners that have been kept here
you know i’m reading this on the fly but
um it’s it refers to the krisger fungal
lager stalag

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so something to do with the high ranking
commander
and this field post which involves
a prison camp near here yes
well we’ll photograph all the pages we
can see and i think we leave the rest
aside somebody may be able to carefully
separate the pages later i don’t want to
mess them up the paperwork likely a
transfer order for prisoners would have
been encrypted which means enigma was
nearby