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Arts & Culture

SECRETS OF THE DEAD: Bugging Hitler's Soldiers

Re-enactment: The generals cast from "Bugging Hitler's Soldiers."
Courtesy of © October Films
Re-enactment: The generals cast from "Bugging Hitler's Soldiers."

Airs Thursday, September 4, 2014 at 11 p.m. on KPBS TV

Part detective story, part true-life drama, SECRETS OF THE DEAD explores some of the most iconic moments in history to debunk myths and shed new light on past events.

Re-enactment: The generals are seen relaxing below the microphone hidden in the chandelier.
Courtesy of © October Films
Re-enactment: The generals are seen relaxing below the microphone hidden in the chandelier.
Re-enactment: MS Listeners working at desks. Jewish refugees who had escaped Nazi Germany during and at the start of the war were recruited by MI19 to serve as listeners and translators. Their job was to listen in to the POWs conversations and when something of interest occurred to start recording. Women were also employed to work as typists and translators.
Courtesy of © October Films
Re-enactment: MS Listeners working at desks. Jewish refugees who had escaped Nazi Germany during and at the start of the war were recruited by MI19 to serve as listeners and translators. Their job was to listen in to the POWs conversations and when something of interest occurred to start recording. Women were also employed to work as typists and translators.

Using the latest investigative techniques, forensic science and historical examination to unearth new evidence, the series shatters accepted wisdom, challenges prevailing ideas, overturns existing hypotheses, spotlights forgotten mysteries and ultimately rewrites history.

"Bugging Hitler's Soldiers" - Spied upon by MI19 in a bugging operation of unprecedented scale and cunning, 4,000 German POWs revealed their inner thoughts about the Third Reich and let slip military secrets that helped the Allies win WWII.

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The film tells the story of how those conversations were recorded and how they can now reveal, in shocking detail, the hearts and minds of the German fighter. Only now have more than 100,000 hours of these secret recordings been declassified, researched and cross referenced.

The documentary includes intense, full-dialogue dramatic reconstructions that use the verbatim transcripts of these bugged conversations to reveal the dark heart of the Nazi regime as never before.

SECRETS OF THE DEAD is on Facebook.

Bugging Hitler's Soldiers

"Spied upon by MI19 in a bugging operation of unprecedented scale and cunning