It was the start of a chemical arms race, reaching its peak in the 1960s and ’70s with LSD as the mind-control secret weapon of both sides, intended to cripple the enemy without firing a shot. The US showed drugs experiments in army-sponsored TV documentaries, while in Czechoslovakia — the drugs laboratory for the whole Eastern Bloc – the state-controlled movie industry was enrolled to shoot surreal feature films portraying the drugs experience.
Besides biological and chemical weapons, both Americans and Soviets routinely exposed their own soldiers to nuclear fallout in A-bomb tests. According to General Jan Sejna, the highest-ranking military defector from the East, the Soviets even tied living prisoners of war to stakes as human guinea-pigs in their nuclear tests.
The film has a moving and shocking interview with a Japanese doctor who operated on unanaesthetised prisoners. A captured US pilot is seen making an apparently false confession in Korea. A Czech military chemist explains how chemical weapons are deployed, and a victim of a drug-fuelled interrogation describes the experience. The man who debriefed Czech defector Jan Sejna describes the terrifying network of experimentation behind chemical, biological and atomic weapons. The Cold War is over, but weapons development — and testing — continues.
Besides biological and chemical weapons, both Americans and Soviets routinely exposed their own soldiers to nuclear fallout in A-bomb tests. According to General Jan Sejna, the highest-ranking military defector from the East, the Soviets even tied living prisoners of war to stakes as human guinea-pigs in their nuclear tests.
The film has a moving and shocking interview with a Japanese doctor who operated on unanaesthetised prisoners. A captured US pilot is seen making an apparently false confession in Korea. A Czech military chemist explains how chemical weapons are deployed, and a victim of a drug-fuelled interrogation describes the experience. The man who debriefed Czech defector Jan Sejna describes the terrifying network of experimentation behind chemical, biological and atomic weapons. The Cold War is over, but weapons development — and testing — continues.