Channel 4 unveils secretly-recorded Nazi POW confessions

Channel 4's Commissioning Editor for History, Julia Harrington has commissioned October Films to produce What the Nazis Really Thought (working title). The programme is based on research conducted by a team of leading German and Austrian historians scientists who have collated and analysed the verbatim conversations of German prisoners of war.

This unprecedented record of loose talk between battle-hardened soldiers was secretly recorded while they were incarcerated in British POW camps during WW2. Uncensored and unmediated by any self-editing or interrogation, these stolen conversations provided key intelligence that helped the Allied war effort and reveal in more chilling detail than ever an insight into the hearts and minds of the German fightesr.

In total, over 100,000 hours of these secrets recordings were made. Only now have they all been declassified, researched and cross referenced. They represent a startling new body of evidence with which to revisit events of the war and show how Nazi ideology and brutality was embraced by the Generals, officers and rank and file of the German army; perhaps the most damning proof yet of their complicity in Nazi war crimes.

Julia Harrington, Commissioning Editor for History, Channel 4 says: "It's extraordinary that there is still a big, new and important film to make about WW2 and the Nazis - but this is it."

Adam Bullmore, Creative Director, October Films says: "These stolen conversations are some of the most chilling and personal accounts of WW2, indeed any war, I have ever read. The scale of the bugging operation was extensive and painstakingly conducted and what they overheard was totally raw and uncensored. The conversations are like a time portal back into the minds of the prisoners; both shocking and terrifyingly human. The result is a genuinely new perspective on the war and the German soldier. It is one of the most exciting projects October has had the privilege to be involved with."

The programme is being written by Simon Berthon and directed by Chris Spencer. Adam Bullmore is  executive producer for October Films.