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They are hidden, closely guarded, and only a few have access. Germany is full of places that hide a secret: military research laboratories, closed temples, meeting places for insiders, underground hospitals, mysterious places of worship. The film “Secret Germany” shows our homeland in a way that hardly anyone knows.
Higher faster further? That no longer applies - today the slogan is “Deeper!”. More and more people are overcoming the natural primal fear of darkness, damp caves, fragile tunnels and ghostly catacombs - many out of daring and a thirst for adventure, but most out of sheer necessity. ZDFzeit descends with mine rescuers, subway builders and cave goers down into the Orkus, but also travels to where no one has been before: to the center of the earth. And that's not all. Under many German roofs, a creeping, fatal danger lurks from the depths. So it is time to discover the mysterious underworlds.
For years they had been waiting for the “most beautiful day” of their lives: When the English Crown Prince William showed his Kate to the altar in April 2011, the cheers were boundless, a picture-book wedding according to plan. At the princely wedding in Monaco two months later, things didn't go quite as smoothly. Even before the wedding there had been rumors: Charlene Wittstock, the bride on hold, allegedly wanted to leave Monaco head over heels shortly before the wedding because she had learned of the existence of another illegitimate offspring of the prince. In fact, the bride looked strangely absent on her wedding day. What happened? Who was interested in torpedoing the marriage between Prince Albert and the South African Charlene Wittstock? At least not the people. That was happy with the newly wed princely couple.
Eleven years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Germany is targeted by Islamist terrorism. Security authorities expect terrorist attacks by tiny cells and individual perpetrators, so-called "lone wolves". They are recruited from Salafist groups who call for battle in Germany under the banner of Al-Qaeda. Not least, they are incited by right-wing extremist groups who network across Europe and, with their tirades of hatred against Islam, create fertile ground for a clash of cultures. Are the seeds of Osama bin Laden growing now, eleven years after the attacks in New York and one year after his death?
"Secrets of the Second World War", part 1: Rudolf Hess was Hitler's deputy, landed surprisingly in Scotland in 1941 and remained in captivity until his death in 1987.
“It lay in front of us like a ghost ship”, Vilfredo Schürmann remembers the moment when he saw the first pictures that the diving robot sent from the depths in March 2012. For nine years, the German-born Brazilian and his team had searched the coastal waters of Brazil for traces of German submarines that crossed there 70 years ago - since Brazil entered the war on the side of the Allies. After years of searching, he was there: At a depth of 130 meters, Schürmann discovered the wreck of the U 513, a German long-range submarine of the type IX C, which had previously been considered lost.
How sick was Hitler? This question has preoccupied physicians, psychiatrists and historians for more than sixty years. "A man who started a criminal war and had six million Jews murdered has to be examined for his health," says the medical historian Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Neumann.
Nothing caused the Allied strategists more sleepless nights in the last months of the war than the “Alpine fortress”. As early as the autumn of 1944, US chief Allen Dulles had been collecting disturbing reports in Bern and wired them to Washington: The Germans were in the process of transforming the Alpine region from Lake Como to Wiener Neustadt into an almost impregnable "Reduit" with underground factories and command centers , Missiles and jets, hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened soldiers and supplies for years.
"It's a duel between very unequal opponents: an extremely powerful, strong and ruthless state and a small, anonymous, unknown private individual." He witnessed a dramatic upheaval that ultimately threw his life off course. In his memoirs he described internal and external conflicts between himself and the Nazi regime. His best friend had to flee quickly and his love for a young Jewish woman broke. Sebastian Haffner was less and less able to escape the vortex of terror and seduction. His life became a dangerous balancing act between adaptation and rejection. Haffner (then Raimund Pretzel) emigrated to London in 1938.
Germany, world champion in bread-baking. German bakers have almost 3,000 different types of bread on offer, and every household consumes an average of 52 kilograms of bread per year. When it comes to bread, Germany is world class in every respect, and “German bread” is even set to become a world cultural heritage. But the good, traditionally made baker's bread is on the decline. More than 70 percent of the Germans eat industrial bread, made in huge bakery factories. How much good can there be left of our bread? Star chef Nelson Müller takes care of the question: How good is our bread? Every customer can read that bread from the supermarket contains many additives. On the packaging, irritating substances such as guar gum, caramel syrup and various glycerides are listed - in the small print.
In Germany, the price counts for customers; food has to be cheap above all. The discounter industry is booming: there are 16,000 low-cost branches, and the share of sales is over 40 percent. The price war is raging more and more violently. And at the same time, Aldi, Lidl & Co. are increasingly relying on the “quality” factor in their advertising: more and more branded goods, a wider range of products, fresh goods - including fresh fish. For star chef Nelson Müller, the question arises: How good are discount food products? Are they really cheaper than branded goods? And who suffers from the low price: the environment, the employees or the product quality? Star chef Nelson Müller attaches great importance to the freshness, taste and quality of food. But of course he also has to pay attention to the price.
Nelson Müller asks: Can Lidl, Penny or Netto score against market leader Aldi? Quality, prices, working conditions - which discounter is the best? Whether it's the Super Saturday at Lidl or the Saturday cracker from Netto: On which days can you actually shop for the cheapest? And where? The price policy of the discounters is examined in a Germany-wide comparison. With surprising results. Aldi - no discounter makes more sales in Germany. But the competition is catching up. Nelson Müller wants to know: Does Aldi hold the top position or have Lidl, Penny and Netto long since caught up? Who delivers the best quality? The olive oils found negative results in the test; there are roundworms in frozen salmon.
Many would like to eat a diet rich in vitamins, low in fat or meat-free. What tricks do food manufacturers use to address health-conscious customers? "ZDFzeit" explains. With entertaining experiments and astonishing tests, food technician Sebastian Lege provides an insight into the clever technical processes that are used to manufacture mass-produced goods for the health-conscious. Sometimes at the expense of quality, but not always. Healthy food - we associate it directly with freshness, nutritious vitamins and a low number of calories. But very few eat only fruit and vegetables or freshly bought meat or fish.
Sebastian Lege reveals the secrets behind hearty dishes, full-bodied wines and crispy snacks. Some clever industrial tricks even protect the environment. When vegetables are bombarded with laser beams and vanilla flavor is created from waste wood, it sounds scary. But when manufacturers do without glutamate, we are happy. Where is mistrust actually appropriate, and where can we still access it without hesitation? The competition on the supermarket shelf is merciless. In the battle for customers, food manufacturers can use any legal means. The result are always new high-tech products and production processes.
Even 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is a dispute about how well or badly the institution did its job. The second part of the inventory is devoted to the years 1991 to 1994 under Treuhand President Birgit Breuel. Successful but still failed The example of Christopher Schwarzer from Munich shows that not only East Germans had bad experiences with the trust in the 1990s. He analyzes for Treuhand Ostbetriebe. He is so enthusiastic about the underwear manufacturer VEB Elastic Mieder that he quit his job and joins as an investor. The turnover triples, the company is considered a showpiece. Then the trust demands the loan: three million D-Marks. The company's financial situation becomes critical. Schwarzer hopes to be accommodated, after all, it is about the jobs of 200 employees. But the trust remains tough. In the end there is bankruptcy.
In 1932 Germany was still a democratic constitutional state, two years later a dictatorship. The film shows how Hitler found influential helpers who brought him to power. The election success of the NSDAP in 1930 made Adolf Hitler a power factor in the right-wing camp. Democracy opponents around President Hindenburg want to use it for their own purposes. In the end there was a “devil's pact”, which paved the way for the Nazi leader to join the Reich Chancellery in 1933. The two-part documentary is based on the BBC series "Rise of the Nazis", which was extensively reworked by ZDF - for the German version. At the center of this episode is the "Devil's Pact" between the national conservative power elites and the emerging National Socialists.
