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A gigantic secret Nazi weapons factory where a NUCLEAR BOMB may have been developed has been discovered in Austria.

The 75-acre facility, located near the town of St Georgen an der Gusen, is believed to have been used to create and test weapons of mass destruction and was deemed so important to the Nazis that the head of the SS and Hitler's right hand man Heinrich Himmler, even oversaw its development.

The complex, which experts believe was the "biggest secret weapons production facility of the Third Reich", was discovered by Andreas Sulzer, an Austrian documentary maker who found reference to the bunkers in the diaries of an old Austrian physicist.

They were so well hidden though that bulldozing equipment was to needed to cut away massive granite plates the Nazis had used to hide the entrance shaft in 1945. Ground penetrating radar was also required to confirm reports of how large the facility was.

The facility is believed to be linked to the nearby B8 Bergkristall underground factory that produced the Messerschmitt Me 262, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter, that posed a brief threat to allied air forces in the war's closing stages.

(Image: German Federal Archives)

Mr Sulzer told The Times: "This was a gigantic industrial complex."

And similar to the Bergkristall factory, it relied on slave labour from the nearby Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Up to 320,000 inmates are said to have died because of the brutal conditions in the subterranean labyrinth.

In order to fully discover the meaning behind the secret facility Mr Sulzer assembled a crack team of historians and found further evidence of scientists working on the secret project, which was managed by the feared SS General Hans Kammler.

Kammler, known to be a ruthless leader, was in charge of Hitler's missile programmes, including the V-2 rocket used against London in the latter stages of the war. He was also the man who signed off blueprints for the gas chambers that killed millions of Jews.

Rainer Karlsch, a historian who worked with Mr Sulzer, said: "The SS leadership aspired to create a combination of missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

"They wanted to equip the A4 [a variant of the V-2] missile, or more advanced rockets, with poison gas, radioactive material or nuclear warheads."

Later the Russian army plundered Bergkristall removed all the technology and then destroyed and filled in the bunkers.

The second part of the site, which Sulzer has discovered, seems to have remained unnoticed by both the Americans and the Russians.

Sulzer's excavation was stopped last Wednesday by local authorities, who demanded a permit for research on historic sites. But he is confident that digging can resume next month.

"Prisoners from concentration camps across Europe were handpicked for their special skills — physicists, chemists or other experts — to work on this monstrous project and we owe it to the victims to finally open the site and reveal the truth," said Sulzer.

Artwork by former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler: