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, the Soviets destroyed the whole city here—
literally destroyed everything.
I’ve never seen this before; the place is
completely flat.

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.

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 see the things that you found?

Oh, they’re still inside!

Yes?

Oh boy!

Let’s go!
Come on!
Let’s do it!

Oh boy!
Oh, there’s a lot of spider webs,
which is good.

Yes! Feet first!
Very good!

Okay, I’m in!
Where does this go?

No spiders?
There’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?

This is very old.
This is a medieval cellar;
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?

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.

We see volts here
and a warning not to throw it
and to keep it away 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 do we get in here?

You’re going to have to dig.

Dig with one koparka.

What’s a koparka?

This is a koparka!

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.

Koparka!

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.

Nail!

Oh, hey!
Hey, come here!
Come here!
Look at this!
Come here!
Come here!
Bobble!

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.

Holy hell, look at this!
This goes way back home!

Okay, so obviously,
this roof is…
No guarantees here, guys,
so be really, really cautious.

We’ve got an alcove here on the left.
Oh my god!
We’ve 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 a 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 is this exactly?

These look like they’ve been through decryption.

I’m not 100% sure,
but I think these are from an Enigma.

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
it refers to the Krisger fungal lager stalag.

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.