NAZI Germany may have developed an atomic bomb which could have been carried by a 'flying saucer' in the dying days of the Second World War.

A German TV documentary revealed the Nazis were incredibly close to developing the weapon of mass destruction.

According to the documentary, called 'The Search for Hitler’s Atom Bomb’, the research was so advanced that Russian prisoners of war were sacrificed to test the bomb's efficiency.

The documentary, which aired on the ZDF channel, quotes sealed records from Russia and the US which suggest that frenzied research brought the Third Reich within inches of producing the bomb.

It quotes Nazi scientists' interrogation reports, eyewitness accounts and records left behind by researchers.

Historian Matthia Uhl claims the race to create the A-bomb intensified in the last year of the war - with Germany being defeated on every front.

The programme centres on S.S. general Hans Kammler who was in charge of the race for nuclear fission.

Kammler - who one of a handful of Nazi officials who answered only to Hitler - was handed 175,000 concentration camp inmates for slave labour in the V-weapons factories, tank production lines and for building secret bunkers.

One of Kammler's main projects was the Jonas Valley in Thuringia, east Germany, the alleged site of the Nazi's nuclear and space programmes.

One test was reportedly conducted at the beginning of March 1945.

The US has placed a 100-year secrecy order on the files concerning the valley and what went on in the secret tunnels the Nazis carved into it.

Conspiracy theorists believe the Americans found two things in the tunnels - a primitive nuclear bomb and a flying saucer designed to deliver it.

In the later stages of the war there were apparent sightings of flying saucers - dubbed "foo fighters".

ZDF quoted Soviet documents from Russian military intelligence agents who spoke of two nuclear tests in Thuringia.

They said: "The Germans are in the throes of making and testing a new secret weapon, which has a large destructive force.

"The available bomb has a diameter of 1.5 meters. It consists of interlocking hollow balls.”

Another Russian report said: "Communicated by our reliable source from Germany: the Germans have conducted two explosions in Thuringia with great force.”

One report added: "[Russian prisoners of war] in the centre of the explosion were killed and often no trace remained of them. Also a strong radioactive effect has been observed".

However the documentary was unable to find where the uranium the scientists would have needed came from - admitting many pieces of the story are still a mystery.