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00:00When I rode on the Hindenburg on that day, it was good weather, so there were no clouds around it, so I saw the earth.
00:11It was the most luxurious way to transport passengers.
00:16Both the Titanic and Hindenburg stories do share a certain sense of hubris.
00:21People thinking that they could build a ship that was invulnerable.
00:24This wasn't just a military accident, this was a civilian disaster.
00:31This was the first time that a disaster had ever been recorded as it was happening.
00:35The delay in landing put pressure on the crew.
00:39The obvious question is what happened.
00:47You're watching this gigantic aircraft burning and you know that it's filled with people.
00:54My name is Viola Puss and I'm the great-granddaughter of Max Puss, the commander of the Hindenburg on its final flight.
01:04He and others just jumped out of the cabin onto the ground.
01:10His upper body and his face were terribly burned.
01:13He was in hospital for many, many months after this.
01:17Many people at the time were members of the Nazi party, as was my great-grandfather.
01:22It would have been incredibly embarrassing politically for the Germans to have had a German airship destroyed by sabotage on an American military base.
01:35You can see the flame that it pretty much completely consumed the tail.
01:39There was somebody on board that had the intention to do something to the Hindenburg because it flew with a big swastika.
01:45There's a portrait of Adolf Hitler. He was definitely a presence on the ship.
01:49The Germans said, we'll go back to Germany and we'll sort it out ourselves.
01:52They arrested my dad, took him down to Gestapo headquarters. My dad figured that was the end of it.
01:58Captain Pruz, for the rest of his life, believed that it was Joseph Spahr who sabotaged the Hindenburg.
02:04Hitler says something, they go and they get the guy and that's the end of him.
02:08Hitler had many of his rivals eliminated.
02:11Just disappear.
02:12The investigation of the FBI alludes to conspiracy.
02:16This is an absolute treasure trope.
02:18Folder 13, box 18.
02:20Oh, whoa, look at this.
02:23Charles Rosendahl is the one who told the Hindenburg, land now.
02:26So much happened right here in this house.
02:29You would think that this took place somewhere in Germany.
02:32This took place in New York City.
02:34These things are death traps.
02:36We actually were exposed to the fragility of technology.
02:39Yeah, look at these.
02:41No matter how hard you try not to, facts get exaggerated.
02:44Actually, this fabric itself tells the story.
02:47Totally gone.
02:48In 34 seconds.
02:50The only possible explanation was sabotage.
02:53We're finally starting to see some answers in our research.
02:55He was leaning out the gondola window filming and threw the camera down on the ground.
03:01For the first time, we're looking at long-lost footage of the crash shot from inside the Hindenburg.
03:07This was not an act of God.
03:09This was a cover-up.
03:11Something will happen to the Hindenburg, and indeed, it did happen.
03:14May 6th, 1937.
03:29Minutes after the Hindenburg's deadly disaster.
03:33The colossal Nazi airship lies a smoldering hulk of twisted metal.
03:37Sirens blare as naval officers and first responders search for life amid the flames.
03:44Shaken and terrified, WLS Chicago reporter Herb Morrison is at the airfield.
03:50I've sort of recovered from the terrific explosion and the terrific crash that occurred just as it was being pulled down to the mooring mass.
03:57They're still smoking and flaming and crackling and banging down there.
04:01My name's Holly McClelland, and I'm a researcher and archivist.
04:04I found the full, unredacted version of Morrison's tapes.
04:08So many accounts from that day have been passed down, and details have been lost or changed.
04:12But this, this is a first-hand account, and it was recorded exactly as it was spoken.
04:16It occurred in the tail surfaces, in the fins, the part that was highest, after it had nosed in to go down to the mooring mass.
04:26Within mere hours of Herb Morrison's historic and oft-analyzed words being recorded,
04:32the Nazi government puts together a German investigation commission.
04:36They will head to New York on an ocean liner to join an American commission that has already begun investigating.
04:44Dan Grossman has been one of the world's most recognized airship historians for over 30 years.
04:50As soon as the Germans arrived in America, they raced to Lakehurst,
04:55and the Germans and Americans began working together to interview witnesses,
04:59study meteorological charts, conduct experiments, and conduct hearings to try to figure out what happened.
05:06Among the German commission is the famed airship pilot Dr. Hugo Eckner,
05:11the head of the company that built Hindenburg.
05:14Dr. Eckner was an economist and a journalist.
05:17He became a business leader of the Zeppelin company.
05:21He became the public face in Germany and around the world of Zeppelins.
05:25But I am convinced under all weather conditions, even on the most unfavorable,
05:32we will be able to make the flight in all regularity and safety.
05:38Hugo Eckner had always viewed the Zeppelin as a sign of international goodwill, international peace.
05:44It was an ambassador between nations.
05:48He took his airship around the world and thought that airships and travel and greater communication would unite the world.
05:58In the early 1900s, there's a race to rule the skies.
06:03Guillaume de Sion is a historian and author of the book Zeppelin, Germany and the Airship.
06:09In the early 1900s, until World War II, there were two paths to flight.
06:14One was the airplane, a little bit like this one.
06:16The other one was the airship.
06:18While they are renowned for their speed, airplanes are viewed by the public as expensive flying death traps.
06:25Down there in mountain snow lie 19 persons dead.
06:28Altogether, 135 lives have been lost in the last two years.
06:32Between 1930 and 1939, there are over 30 recorded crashes of commercial airplanes around the world.
06:42Airships, with their size, stability, luxury, and comfort, have the advantage over airplanes.
06:47The Germans are at the cutting edge of aviation.
06:50For Hugo Eckner, the head of the German Zeppelin company, the future will always be airships.
07:00Germany in 1937.
07:03The country has been taken over by fascism.
07:07Hitler has declared himself Fuhrer.
07:10Dissidents are being silenced.
07:12Jews are being persecuted and killed.
07:15The Second World War is imminent.
07:20After Hitler and the Nazis solidify power, they nationalize the Zeppelin company and create a new airline,
07:28the Deutsche Zeppelin Raederei, known as the DZR.
07:33The Zeppelin company will build the airships.
07:36The DZR will operate them.
07:38At the helm of the DZR, the Nazis place one of their most loyal airshipmen, Captain Ernst Lehmann.
07:47Ernst Lehmann was a very experienced airshipman.
07:51But what he really brought to the Zeppelin enterprise was that he was very willing to be accommodating to the Nazi leadership in Berlin.
07:58And that's why they put him in a position where he was the preeminent person running the German airline that operated Hindenburg.
08:06The Nazis could not remove Eckner.
08:08He was too important a person.
08:10However, they could proverbially kick him upstairs, give him a seemingly important post of responsibility,
08:15but one that had, in fact, far smaller outreach.
08:19May 3rd, 1937.
08:23Hindenburg is preparing to depart the Rhein-Main airfield from Frankfurt for its first North American flight of the 1937 season.
08:31It's business as usual for the crewmen.
08:33The only difference?
08:35This time, there's a crowded control car.
08:38In total, there are six qualified Zeppelin captains in the control car.
08:42Captain Ernst Lehmann and Captain Anton Wittemann are on board as observers.
08:49Captain Albert Zompt, Captain Heinrich Bauer, and Captain Walter Ziegler are also on board as watch officers.
08:56Max Pruess is the Hindenburg's official commander.
09:03Growing up, my grandmother had pictures of the Hindenburg and of Max in my grandfather's office.
09:09So I would play in there and I would walk in there and I would always see those pictures.
09:14And I just remember vividly looking at them.
09:17There's this one photo that I loved all my life and it's the Hindenburg over Rio de Janeiro and it's just palm trees and this airship Zeppelin in the sky and it's quite a beautiful photo.
09:33In Germany, Nazis are firmly in control.
09:36Hitler has initiated more assertive military maneuvers, including the remilitarization of the Rhineland, a daring violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
09:44Nearly 4,000 prisoners are sent to fully operational concentration camps.
09:50Despite a growing anti-Nazi sentiment around the world and in the U.S., Hindenburg sets off for the 1937 season displaying glaring red and white swastikas on its tail.
10:02By 1937, the Zeppelin Company was receiving more and more bomb threats against the Hindenburg.
10:07One person from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had written a letter to the German ambassador in Washington that something will happen on the first flight of the Hindenburg to the United States.
10:22And indeed, it did happen.
10:24Ernst Lehmann tucks the letter into the pocket of his flight jacket.
10:28He makes no mention of it to Captain Max Pruss.
10:31In standard procedure, the Nazi government sends SS officers to inspect the ship the day before takeoff.
10:39The Hindenburg passes Nazi inspection.
10:42Boarding proceeds as usual.
10:45The Hindenburg primarily catered to wealthy business travelers who needed to get across the ocean quickly.
10:52The Hindenburg could fly from Frankfurt to Lakehurst, New Jersey in about two and a half days.
10:59Business travelers loved this.
11:01You had to be of means to be able to afford the premium fare on the Hindenburg.
11:05It was $450 one way in 1937 across the North Atlantic, which was comparable to a first-class cabin on the Queen Mary.
11:16This was about $8,000 or $9,000 in modern money.
11:20In October of 1936, during Hindenburg's first season, 72 affluent guests are invited for a day-long cruise over New England's fall foliage.
11:32The exhibition cruise, known as the Millionaire's Flight, features powerful financiers like Winthrop W. Aldrich, Nelson Rockefeller, U.S. and German government officials, naval officers, and other industry leaders.
11:45Hugo Eckner and Ernst Lehmann steer the ship as the celebrity passengers dine on swallow nest soup, cold rind salmon, tenderloin steak, chateau potatoes, beans a la princesa, carmen salad, and iced melon.
12:01Picture actors, celebrities of various kinds, a few politicians, and generally captains of industry all coming together.
12:10So it's an elite among the elite.
12:13Seven months after the Millionaire's Flight, by May of 1937, an emboldened Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government have begun full-scale militarization, ready for war.
12:25Moments before Hindenburg departs Frankfurt on its final flight, one more passenger boards the airship.
12:33Joseph Spa, traveling with his dog Ulla, will become the focus of a sabotage investigation after the disaster.
12:40One of the few people that survived the Hindenburg was my dad, and we were there to meet him, my mother, my older brother, myself, and my sister.
12:55Born in Strasburg, Germany, Joseph Spa emigrates to the United States at a young age, where he begins performing as a contortionist, and then as a vaudeville acrobat, under the stage name Ben Dove.
13:09In 1937, Joseph Spa performs in cities across Europe for over six months.
13:14His agent got him a date to appear at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, which was a big deal.
13:25Spa settles in the passenger deck while his dog is loaded into the belly of the ship.
13:30At 8.16 p.m., Max Preuss shouts, up ship!
13:35Hindenburg lifts off.
13:36Hindenburg, in order to compete with the first-class transatlantic liners of the day, like Normandy and Queen Mary, had to give its passengers a high degree of comfort.
13:50There were cabins.
13:51There was a lounge.
13:53There was a smoking room.
13:55There was a bar.
13:56There was, of course, a dining room.
13:58All the things that a passenger would expect on a transatlantic voyage.
14:03But it also provided two things you couldn't get on a ship.
14:05One, of course, was speed.
14:07It was twice as fast as any ship.
14:09But the other is, you didn't get seasick.
14:13Hindenburg's smoothness and interior amenities provides an unmatched luxury experience for its wealthy passengers.
14:20Throughout the three-day journey, passengers read in the lounge, write postcards in the writing room,
14:25mingle on the promenade, and some even spend the whole trip at the bar or in the smoking room.
14:32Apparently, some passengers spent the entire trip, two and a half days to the United States and maybe two days back to Frankfurt, in the smoking room.
14:42Located on B-deck at the bottom of the ship, Hindenburg's smoking room is separated from the rest of the passenger cabins by a double-door airlock.
14:51It is pressurized, so no hydrogen enters the room.
14:54People who had to cross the Atlantic were often rightfully terrified that they were going to spend five days green with seasickness on a ship tossing around the North Atlantic.
15:06And Hindenburg's secret weapon, in terms of attracting passengers, wasn't that it was more luxurious than Queen Mary, because it wasn't.
15:15It's that it was faster and you didn't have to worry about getting sick.
15:20And that made a lot of difference to people.
15:211 a.m., May 4th, 1937.
15:26Hindenburg's four 16-cylinder Daimler-Benz engines roar over the Atlantic.
15:31The ship has just left the European mainland after crossing over the Netherlands and the English Channel.
15:37Max Pruce steers the ship west-southwest at a cruising speed of 76 miles per hour at an altitude of 650 feet.
15:45With wealthy passengers counting on them, timeliness is everything on this flight.
15:50As the flight progressed, they encountered headwinds over the North Atlantic.
15:55And by the second day out, it became obvious that they were not going to make their 6 a.m. landing time on Thursday, May 6th.
16:04The weather was always going to be the intangible that the designers of Hindenburg could not foresee.
16:10From the very beginning, it would be the biggest consideration when it came to designing airships.
16:16Summer, 1898.
16:22Near the small town of Friedrichshafen on the banks of Lake Constance, Germany's quest to rule the skies officially begins.
16:30Retired military officer Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin begins designing the world's first airship.
16:37He came to the United States during the American war between the states, during the American Civil War,
16:43and was attached to the Union Army as an observer so he could learn about military tactics and then take his knowledge home to Germany.
16:52But while he was in the United States, he had an opportunity to see a balloon rise, and he was captivated.
16:59He saw his Zeppelin as a weapon of war.
17:03Count von Zeppelin presents his idea to the Society of German Engineers.
17:09They essentially laughed at him.
17:11It was a completely wacky idea.
17:13Two years later, in July of 1900,
17:17Count von Zeppelin and his own team of engineers make the airship dream a reality.
17:22It was an amazing achievement at a time when there were no airplanes.
17:27There was really no way for a human being to fly from one place to another on purpose.
17:36And then Count Zeppelin created this aircraft that could do that.
17:42It was three years before the Wright brothers first flew.
17:45And there was a lot of national pride.
17:47This was almost a purely German invention.
17:50Even the first of these was 400 feet long.
17:53And then they got progressively larger and more impressive.
17:55The government offers Count von Zeppelin a contract for his airships on one condition.
18:01He must fly his airship round trip in 24 hours from Mainz in western Germany to Friedrichshafen in the south.
18:08The first two-thirds of the flight went fairly well.
18:10He had to do a couple of landings.
18:12But it is on what would have been the second to last landing that his airship was pushed by the wind into a pear tree and caught fire and exploded and thereby ruined the hopes of Count Zeppelin for a government contract.
18:31And lo and behold, things didn't quite go that way.
18:35By the next morning, money had just begun to pour into his offices in Friedrichshafen to the tune of 6 million marks, which was about $42 million in modern money.
18:47And this was completely spontaneous.
18:50The people of Germany did not want this venture to fail.
18:53With newfound support, Count von Zeppelin opens the first airship construction facility, the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin.
19:02Count Zeppelin was a retired military general.
19:05So when he conceived of his airship, he thought of it immediately as an air weapon.
19:10By the time World War I tears through Europe, German airships completely revolutionized warfare.
19:17These were scary, dangerous things to be flying over your town.
19:22The British called Zeppelins baby killers as part of a very aggressive and understandable anti-German propaganda effort.
19:32Zeppelins started hitting cities.
19:34They often missed their targets.
19:36And so instead of hitting what might have been a legitimate strategic target, a factory, they hit homes.
19:42And these homes are not meant to withstand any kind of explosion.
19:47The result is that you have entire families wiped out.
19:51Imagine how terrifying it would have been for an English family, perhaps living in the country, knowing that they're far away from the front.
19:58They have no worry about an army invading them.
20:01They feel safe.
20:02They're on an island.
20:03They've been safe on their island for hundreds of years.
20:06And yet all of a sudden, for the first time in history, they would hear a sound in the sky.
20:13And they would go out in their garden and look up.
20:15And they could see this gigantic thing flying in the air.
20:21And they knew that it could drop bombs on them in their house.
20:26This was brand new.
20:27And you can only imagine how terrifying it was.
20:29At the height of the First World War, the British and the French set their sights on producing better and faster airplanes.
20:38Equipped with incendiary bullets, Allied planes begin shooting down German airships.
20:43This was exactly what the Germans did not want because, of course, their airships were filled with hydrogen.
20:51And if you shot a burning bullet into one, chances were it was going to go up in flames and everybody aboard was going to die.
21:00Before the end of the war, Count von Zeppelin dies.
21:03The fate of the airship industry falls firmly in the hands of his best apprentice, Dr. Hugo Eckner.
21:13Germany suffers a crushing defeat in World War I.
21:16As the country sinks into depression, the Zeppelin Company sinks with it.
21:21The situation in Germany after World War I is desperate.
21:24It's no longer an empire.
21:26The Kaiser has abdicated.
21:27A young republic has been declared with wonderful potential.
21:31However, they are also unstable.
21:33There are a lot of people who are unhappy about losing the war.
21:37Under one of the most controversial armistice treaties in history, known as the Treaty of Versailles,
21:44Allied countries force Germany to reduce the size of its military, accept blame for the war,
21:50and pay crippling war reparations, which include handing over their beloved airships.
21:57One of the conditions of Versailles was that Germans could never operate airships again.
22:01The British, the Americans, the French, they never wanted German strategic airship bombers over their cities again.
22:09And they wanted to destroy the German airship industry.
22:12The Zeppelin Company is allowed to continue building airships on the condition that they hand them over to the Allied powers.
22:19The first five years that follow World War I are very difficult for Germany.
22:26Not only do they face the havoc of the immediate post-World War I era, they go through a hyperinflation in 1922-23.
22:33In October 1924, the third airship built since the Great War, the ZR-3, also known as the USS Los Angeles, makes the 81-hour journey across the Atlantic.
22:55The German crew hands the airship over to the U.S. Navy.
23:01Hugo Eckner keeps the Zeppelin Company afloat and helps put Friedrichshafen on the map.
23:08Still, left without funds from the bankrupt Weimar Republic, he goes on a nationwide tour, raising money for his next project,
23:18the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, what he calls a machine of peace.
23:23In the 1920s, when the airships began to fly again, it was a great hopeful sign to a people who had been badly defeated that, hey, we can still do something great.
23:38And there was a tremendous national pride, especially when LZ-127, the Graf Zeppelin, started flying in the 1920s
23:46and did things like flying around the world at a time when airplanes couldn't do that, carrying passengers across oceans.
23:53And the Germans were able to look at this and think, yeah, we can do some stuff.
23:58Like, it gave them a new sense of pride.
24:00Echner captains the Hindenburg's predecessor, the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin, on many of its most impressive journeys,
24:09including its first intercontinental flight, its celebrated flight around the world, and its first Arctic flight.
24:17Alongside him is the young American airshipman, Commander Charles Rosendahl.
24:21To distant corners of the globe, they take messages of unity and peace, and their unwavering belief in airships as the future of aviation.
24:31Germany sort of became Zeppelin crazy, and the man who at that point was most associated with Zeppelins,
24:40who was Hugo Eckner, became one of the most famous men in the entire world.
24:45When Graf Zeppelin flew around the world, it was international headlines.
24:51People in movie theaters all around the world, around the world, from Asia to South America to North America to Russia,
24:57all of these places, they would go to the movie theater, and they would see the ship flying.
25:03And the headlines would talk about the ship's progress as it crossed the ocean.
25:09It was amazing that an aircraft carrying passengers could fly around the world.
25:15So the success of Graf Zeppelin in crossing the Atlantic Ocean received not only so much attention in the United States,
25:21but so much affection and so much interest that Americans gave Eckner and his crew a ticker tape parade in New York City.
25:29That's only done for big events, right?
25:32It was done for Charles Lindbergh when he crossed the Atlantic.
25:35But that's how big a deal Eckner and the LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin were at the time, even in America,
25:43even though it was a German airship with a German crew.
25:47With dreams of uniting the world through air travel,
25:50Hugo Eckner becomes a national hero in Germany, the most famous man in the Weimar Republic.
25:57Meanwhile, a young World War I veteran turned bloodthirsty politician named Adolf Hitler starts gaining popularity.
26:05Hitler did not like Eckner very much.
26:08Eckner was a conservative, arch-conservative even, but he was not a Nazi.
26:12Eckner became so famous that he even ran for the presidency of Germany in 1932.
26:18He withdrew when a member of his own party, Marshal Hindenburg, chose to run again for president.
26:25But Hitler never forgot the affront that someone else besides him would want to be president.
26:31Of course, as far as Hitler was concerned, the more important thing was to become chancellor.
26:35The president in Germany is nominally in charge of the army, but it is the chancellor who runs the show.
26:40By 1930, the mood in Germany is grim.
26:44The Zeppelin Company is running low on funds.
26:48Meanwhile, in the United States, construction has begun on what will become the world's tallest structure,
26:55the Empire State Building.
26:56Adorned with a towering mooring mast for the purpose of docking airships,
27:03its true purpose, historians believe, is to raise the building's height,
27:07ensuring its status is the world's tallest building over its rival, the Chrysler Building.
27:12In March 1931, Hugo Eckner, the world's most respected airshipman,
27:18visits the newly completed Empire State Building.
27:21He leaves skeptical of the dirigible docking project,
27:25saying Zeppelin landings require dozens of ground crewmen
27:28and ropes securing both the bow and stern of the ship.
27:32He calls it impractical.
27:36When the building is completed in May,
27:38the winching device meant for securing Zeppelins has not been installed.
27:42No airship ever successfully docks on the Empire State Building.
27:48Today, the 200-foot spire is still referred to as the mooring mast.
27:54Back in Germany, Eckner begins plans for the LZ-129,
27:59an airship even bigger than the Graf Zeppelin.
28:02By 1931, the project LZ-129 is in the works.
28:08But it's going to linger.
28:10Why? Because Germany is hit full thrust by the World Economic Depression.
28:15It certainly hit Germany very badly,
28:17and there just was no money for this sort of thing.
28:20But then, of course, the National Socialists, the Nazis, took over in 1933.
28:26January 30, 1933.
28:29Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany
28:32after a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party.
28:35He joins a coalition government alongside President Paul von Hindenburg.
28:42The Zeppelin Company, under the tutelage of the world-famous Hugo Eckner, languishes.
28:48Left without funding by an ailing Weimar Republic,
28:52Eckner struggles to complete the construction of the latest and biggest airship yet,
28:57the LZ-129, what will soon become known as Hindenburg.
29:01When Hitler comes into power, he establishes a dictatorship within four months.
29:07By spring 1933, he is dictator of Germany,
29:10but he still has to resolve quite a few things.
29:13And his method of ruling is often by pitting his closest associates against each other
29:20to see what one can do for him and the other can do for him.
29:23And so you often see in the history of Nazi Germany these tugs of war between Hitler's closest associates.
29:29This is the case between Goebbels and Goering.
29:32June 30, 1934.
29:35Nazi SS soldiers march across Germany, killing hundreds of Hitler's opponents.
29:40Hitler's most famous critic, Dr. Hugo Eckner, is commanding the Graf Zeppelin on a flight back from South America at the time.
29:57He returns to Germany unscathed.
29:59It is a dangerous time to be critical of the Nazi party, but Eckner is saved by his popularity with the German people.
30:09Hitler knows that eliminating him would mean political suicide.
30:13Instead, his Nazi advisors see a great opportunity for the airship as a propaganda tool.
30:19Hermann Goering, who is the head of the nascent Luftwaffe, the German air force, doesn't particularly like the airship,
30:27but he feels that he must control all things that are aviation-related.
30:32The other person who sees a potential in the airship is Dr. Goebbels, who was Hitler's minister of propaganda.
30:38They all wanted to be Hitler's favorite.
30:40They all wanted power.
30:42It was maneuvering within this court that all circled around Adolf Hitler at the head.
30:47In a power play to impress Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda,
30:54donates 2 million marks to continue the construction of the Hindenburg airship.
30:59Not to be outdone, Hermann Goering of the air ministry donates 9 million.
31:06And so just as Goebbels thinks he's going to supply the budget to build the Hindenburg,
31:11Goering, in quick succession, by 1935, establishes something called the Deutsche Zeppelin-Rederai, the DZR,
31:19which is essentially an airship airline, but it's under his control.
31:23Five years after its inception, construction of the mammoth airship is finally complete.
31:29Both Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goering go down in history as Adolf Hitler's most loyal accomplices.
31:37They are the masterminds behind a growing Nazi war machine.
31:42By the time the coming Second World War ends, Goebbels and Goering will have overseen the murder of over 6 million Jews,
31:49as well as millions of Allied soldiers.
31:52After rising to power, the Nazis nationalized the Zeppelin Company,
31:59replacing Hitler's outspoken rival, Dr. Hugo Eckner, with Nazi loyalists.
32:07March, 1936.
32:10In an act of defiance against the Treaty of Versailles,
32:13a bold Adolf Hitler sends Nazi troops to the demilitarized strip of lands between Germany and France known as the Rhineland.
32:22As a way of legitimizing the move, Hitler holds a referendum, a single-question vote for the German people.
32:29These elections in 1936 are a way of reaffirming the power of the Nazi party.
32:34The ballot that everybody got simply had Hitler's name and a circle that you could put an X in.
32:42That was your ballot. That was your ballot for the entire election.
32:46Essentially, you either voted yes or you did not check anything off.
32:51Well, on top of that, the Nazis, for the most part, took unmarked ballots and counted them as yes votes.
33:00Since these elections are staged, there is no alternative to vote for.
33:05How do you whip up enthusiasm?
33:08One way is to have, for example, the Hindenburg and the Graf Zeppelin fly around Germany.
33:11And aboard the Hindenburg in particular, there is a live broadcast of radio.
33:15It is actually a Burien propaganda coup.
33:18Nazi officials order a three-day propaganda flight of Germany's two premier airships.
33:24Hugo Eckner refuses to participate.
33:27Ernst Lehmann steps up to fulfill Nazi orders.
33:30Despite strong shifting winds the day of the first flight, Lehmann mans the helm of the brand-new Hindenburg airship.
33:37As he guides it out of the hangar to rally support for the Fuhrer, a gust of wind crushes the ship's lower tail fin against the ground.
33:44Hugo Eckner was furious and was overheard publicly yelling at Ernst Lehmann,
33:51how could you jeopardize our beautiful new ship for this Scheizafat or shit flight?
33:58After temporary repairs, Hindenburg sets off for a tour of Germany alongside its sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin.
34:07And so as the airship flies around on election day, people hear that the crew is voting and that the votes are being counted on board.
34:18By nightfall, the Nazi party secures an overwhelming victory.
34:22And in many ways, people forget that they are living in a dictatorship.
34:28It's the kind of notion that Germany is back.
34:31It has, in fact, recovered.
34:33It has reclaimed its armed forces.
34:36And so people feel positively towards Adolf Hitler, regardless of the other things that he's already doing.
34:43Testing the waters internationally, beginning his persecution of Jews.
34:46All these things are sort of set aside for the average German because he is enjoying a symbol of the past,
34:53something that his father or even grandfather got to enjoy.
34:57Five months later, the Nazis once again send Hindenburg on a propaganda mission.
35:03The official inauguration of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.
35:07100,000 Germans fill Berlin's Olympic Stadium as Adolf Hitler stands and salutes the crowd,
35:15officially inaugurating the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.
35:19Eager to prove Aryan dominance, 600 German athletes dressed in white march down the track and salute the Führer.
35:26Chants of Sieg Heil rain down from the crowd, and the Hindenburg airship glides over the stadium.
35:32With swastikas on its tail, the greatest symbol of Nazi power is displayed before the world.
35:39Nazi government definitely wanted to use Hindenburg as a symbol of the national resurgence that the Nazis felt that they themselves represented.
35:47And Hindenburg flew over the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which was a huge propaganda event to show the world that a defeated Germany was now back on the world stage
35:58and was now a great power under their leader, Adolf Hitler.
36:02And Hindenburg and the Zeppelins were used to reinforce that message.
36:06Following orders from Joseph Goebbels, Ernst Lehmann turns the German airship enterprise into a Nazi propaganda machine.
36:14Still, Hugo Eckner's dream of using airships for commercial travel is alive and well.
36:20By 1937, the Graf Zeppelin has completed 590 successful flights to major cities in Europe, the Middle East, North, and South America.
36:30Hindenburg has completed over 50 flights in its first season alone.
36:36They transported 35,000 passengers.
36:40Nobody ever broke anything.
36:42Nobody ever got hurt by anything.
36:44People sometimes think Hindenburg crashed on its maiden voyage, but in fact it crashed on its 63rd flight.
36:50And it had had many successful flights before then, including ordinary passenger airline flights between Germany and North America, Lakehurst, and Germany and South America, Rio de Janeiro.
37:02As Hindenburg prepares for the 1937 season, the American public grows wary of an aggressive Nazi regime.
37:10When the Hindenburg flew over the Upper East Coast in 1936 and early 1937, it did so flying the swastika over an American public that was less and less tolerant of Nazi imagery.
37:25May 5th, 1937.
37:30The Hindenburg turns southwest towards Lakehurst after passing Newfoundland.
37:34Now 12 hours behind schedule, the ship continues to battle headwinds.
37:39For better than two and a half days, they've been speeding through the skies over miles and miles of water here to America.
37:46It was due to land at Lakehurst this morning at dawn, but we learned after our arrival at Newark that adverse wind conditions had been encountered over the area surrounding Newfoundland, which slowed the speed of the ship considerably.
37:57If you are a machine founded on being speedy or speedier than a transatlantic ocean liner, then you want to be there on time because, of course, people have planes to catch that are waiting for them or they have to be in New York City for dinner.
38:13This is an important clientele.
38:15So it's possible that the delay in landing put pressure on the crew.
38:21As crewmen scramble to make up for lost time, Ernst Lehmann reveals a secret to his colleague and fellow observer, Captain Anton Wittemann.
38:30At some point during the flight, Lehmann mentioned to Wittemann, hey, we got this letter from the United States warning of a plot against the Hindenburg.
38:38The fact that this letter, a clear warning that Hindenburg could in fact meet its doom in America, was never shown to the captain of the ship, was never mentioned publicly by the Nazis.
38:51And is absent from over 1,000 pages of testimony by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
38:57Provides fuel to the theory that there was a cover-up involving both German and U.S. officials.
39:03It has been reported that Rosendahl cautioned Wittemann to keep the information to himself.
39:09There was a tremendous pressure on the people on Hindenburg's control car, the officers running the ship, to get this ship on the ground, turn it around, and take it off again.
39:17There was commercial pressure.
39:20The world was watching, hey, is this Zeppelin thing really going to work?
39:24Is it going to run on time?
39:25Can we depend on it?
39:27There was political pressure.
39:29This thing was a symbol of Nazi pride.
39:32There was an awful lot of passenger pressure as well.
39:36Throughout the flight, crew members noticed Joseph Spa entering the main hole of the ship to feed his dog on several occasions.
39:44Passengers are prohibited from entering the interior of the ship unaccompanied.
39:50And so Mr. Spa would ask the stewards, hey, I need to go back and feed my dog.
39:54Well, they couldn't always be at his beck and call.
39:57And so he started just going back there by himself to feed his dog.
40:04Storm clouds proved to be a tremendous obstacle as the foul weather puts Hindenburg's outer covering to the test.
40:10Many airships had been struck by lightning without being destroyed.
40:14Of course, you need a combination of flowing electricity and also hydrogen to ignite.
40:20So there were many airships that had been struck by lightning, just as many aircraft have been struck by lightning.
40:25But there was no circuit to close.
40:28And so it didn't really wind up causing much harm.
40:32Seven million cubic feet of flammable hydrogen rests inside 16 gas cells, all protected by a thick outer cover.
40:39Well, everyone knew that hydrogen was an extremely dangerous gas to use as a lifting gas in airships because it's highly flammable.
40:47But at the beginning of the airship enterprise, there simply was no choice.
40:50It was the only lifting gas that was practically available.
40:53When Hugo Eckner lays out his plans for the LZ-129, the ship is originally designed for helium, a rare gas that can only be found in large quantities in the United States.
41:06In 1927, the United States deems helium a strategic material, banning its export to other countries.
41:13The Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen, and the advantage is that it could carry more passengers, but of course it was more dangerous.
41:21The new Nazi government didn't exactly want to let the world know we can't do something.
41:27Their whole message is we're Germans, we can do anything we want.
41:30The idea that we have to go hat in hand to the Americans and ask for something that we don't have,
41:36that was not an appealing idea for people at the Zeppelin Company to try to sell to their Nazi masters in Berlin.
41:43And the Germans, after 30 years of experience, thought they could keep this Tiger in its tank.
41:51Dr. Horst Schirmer's father, Dr. Max Schirmer, was one of the Hindenburg's aeronautical designers.
41:58Horst recalls, as a mere four-year-old, accompanying his father into the hangar containing the newly completed Hindenburg,
42:06and witnessing the astonishing power of hydrogen gas.
42:09It weighed plus-minus 111 tons, and you get under this ship, and I ask you to lift it up,
42:18which, indeed, I followed his advice, got under this ship.
42:22I didn't understand how much a ship should weigh when it is weighed out.
42:27Actually, zero. It's close to zero.
42:30So I was under this ship and lifted it up, and he said, let it go.
42:34And the ship came back to my hands, and it has lifted again.
42:39It was fascinating to me, except I didn't understand why this was all happening.
42:46At Lakehurst, conditions remain unsettled.
42:50Hindenburg is still 12 hours late.
42:53At the Biltmore Hotel in New York, wealthy passengers, many heading to the coronation of King George VI,
43:00are waiting for a bus to Newark Airport, where they will take an American Airlines DC-3 airplane to Lakehurst,
43:06and finally board Hindenburg, headed for Europe.
43:10The timeline is shrinking.
43:12So it's possible that the delay in landing put pressure on the crew.
43:18And based on their experience, they thought that possibly they could cut corners.
43:22What corners exactly were cut, this is what's unclear.
43:24Meanwhile, in the control car, Max Preuss tells the crew he plans to have the ship ready
43:33for its return flight to Frankfurt by midnight.
43:36It will be the fastest turnaround for any passenger Zeppelin in history.
43:41At approximately 6 p.m., Hindenburg circles around New Jersey, avoiding storms.
43:48Captain Preuss waits anxiously for a break in the clouds.
43:50Now, we've been told that the airship is going to make an attempted landing in the rain.
43:56Finally, he got the message, come in as fast as you can.
44:01The weather has cleared enough that landing is appropriate.
44:06The Titanic of the skies, two and a half times the length of a Boeing 747,
44:13and loaded with highly flammable hydrogen,
44:15is about to meet its end in a spectacular, fiery disaster that will shake the entire world.
44:22But will the true cause of the calamity be covered up for more than 80 years?
44:26The analges from皮soxpinnokines.com
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