Original subtitles

Summer 1944.

Almost five years after Adolf Hitler triggered World War Two.

Allied forces pushed the German army out of Normandy

while the Soviet advance in the East seemed unstoppable.

Despite this, the Fuhrer appeared relaxed.

Hitler is presenting an aura that suggests,

“Everything is just a little setback on what is a destined providential path.”

The Fuhrer’s belief in victory was at odds with his top generals.

Many of his senior commanders are beginning to ask themselves more and more,

“What are we going to do about Hitler?”

"If you go on fighting the Germany going to be destroyed."

Hitler, who was the man behind the monster?

There were just so many parts of this story that didn't add up.

Teenage loner turns national hero.

He was the Messiah for the German people.

How was he able to achieve it?

All of it was an act. All of it was a show.

This is the definitive guide to the most hated man in history.

HITLER THE DOWNFALL

In July 1944, Adolf Hitler was under siege.

The allies were closing in and his own forces were plotting his demise.

As the endgame approached, he launched a reign of terror

and retreated into a fantasy world.

But for the moment, he still believed in certain victory.

7th of July.

Adolf Hitler arrived at Klessheim Castle in Austria.

To help reassure Germans that they would win the war,

the Fuhrer’s propaganda team staged events for him to inspect

what he called Wunderwaffe, wonder weapons.

A constant refrain of Hitler's in the late period of the war is that,

“Hold on the wonder weapons are coming.”

Certainly, by bringing forth the possibility of wonder weapons,

he is giving his officers, his men, and his people a reason to stay in the field

until the bitter end.

Nazi scientists had been developing the next generation of weapons,

including a jet fighter ME-262,

giant U-boats, and a nearly 200 ton tank.

But the most fearsome was the vengeance weapon 2, or V2 rocket.

These photographs by Walter Frentz reveal a test of the world's first ballistic missile.

Development of the V2 was so secret,

Hitler banned Frentz from making the photographs public.

You probably could say he is falling into some kind of self-delusion.

None of these secret weapons individually were going to turn the tide of the war.

Unlike the German people, some members of the army didn't fall for Hitler's vision.

That opposition is not from the highest reaches of the officer corps.

It is not Hitler's generals. It is what we would today call

field grade officers. Hitler's war has led them all into disaster,

and Hitler's recent decisions have been particularly catastrophic.

20th of July 1944.

The Wolf's Lair, Hitler's headquarter on the Eastern Front.

The Fuhrer was on his way to meet his senior military advisers.

At 12:30 p.m., the meeting began with a discussion on how best to use the army units

currently based in Germany.

Hitler is just leaning over this massive oak table

upon which there’s a map of the military situation.

The whole table just vaporizes beneath him.

At 12:42 p.m., an explosion killed four men and destroyed the conference room.

But the target of the bombing plot escaped alive.

The blast blew a lot of Hitler's clothes off, such was the magnitude of it.

It seems to be a miracle, at least certainly in Hitler's eyes, that he's survived.

Just over two hours later, a defiant Hitler put on a show of invincibility.

He doesn't even cancel his events for the rest of the day.

Mussolini is on the way to a visit, Hitler greets him

and takes him on a tour of the building in which he had almost just been killed.

Since becoming Nazi party leader there had been over 40 attempts on Hitler's life,

though none had come as close as this.

12 hours after the blast, the Fuhrer made a radio address

to the nation to prove he was alive.

The impromptu speech was the first time in over a year

that he had spoken directly to the German people.

His voice is unmistakable.

Indeed, some of the plotters listen to the radio broadcasts

and they say to themselves, “It's all up, we failed.”

The plot to kill Hitler was led by Army Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg.

Removing Adolf Hitler as this borderline insane guy

who was going to run Germany into the ditch and replace him with more rational statesmen

and military leaders who will wind down the war

and try to preserve German power intact.

Stauffenberg had placed a briefcase bomb within yards of Hitler's feet.

Hitler's death was to be the signal for an army coup.

By the time Hitler was on air, Stauffenberg

and three of his coconspirators had already been executed.

Others would soon meet their fates.

In the meantime, Hitler made another public appearance,

this time visiting those wounded in the blast.

There's cotton wool stuffed in his ears to protect his eardrums

after they've been burst by the blast.

His right arm and hand are an obvious massive amounts of discomfort.

He has serious balance problems and in fact urges

that he not be put in front of an audience at any time in the near future

because he might just keel right over.

As Hitler left the hospital, an adoring crowd awaits him.

Part of an upsurge in Pro-Hitler sentiment.

Many ordinary Germans really did feel a great sense of relief that Hitler had survived.

There are lots of demonstrations across Germany of support for Hitler,

enthusiasm for Hitler, letters saying, “Thank God, you've been saved.”

But the adulation did nothing to heal the emotional scars.

He is very, very scared by what's happened

and he becomes increasingly paranoid that something like this will happen again.

He therefore orders that nobody near him can wear a pistol.

In many ways, Hitler becomes like one of those mad Roman emperors

who's obsessed with people trying to poison him.

Hitler forced 15 women, taken from local villages,

to taste his food before every meal.

After they'd eaten it and survived, they'd burst into tears with relief

because they were so kind of wound up that this could be their last mouthful.

Hitler's paranoia knew no bounds.

There have been traitors at every turn; traitors in his entourage,

traitors in the party, traitors in the upper reaches of the officer corps,

traitors all over the place.

Many of Hitler's most experienced generals were replaced with yes-men.

To demonstrate their loyalty, the Wehrmacht made the Heil Hitler salute

compulsory for all servicemen.

The military was no longer capable of staging a coup to oust him.

And now Hitler wanted vengeance.

He was ready to launch a reign of terror.

It was two weeks since Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg’s attempt to kill Adolf Hitler.

The Fuhrer was intent on revenge.

Any of Stauffenberg’s coconspirators, who hadn't yet committed suicide,

was subjected to show-trials in the so-called People's Court.

Hitler wanted what became known in Germany as blood vengeance.

Hitler has a vengeful personality, we've seen that in the past.

Here he can really let his vengeance,

his sense of vengeance go because here are real plotters,

real threats to the German people, real threats to the German future.

He orders them all to be hung up with piano wire, which is the most gruesome death.

What makes it even more gruesome is that Hitler has it filmed.

According to Albert Speer, Hitler watched films of the executions night after night.

Meanwhile, Heinrich Himmler's Gestapo executed anyone, perceived as a threat.

A new kind of criminal justice is now put into play - Sippenhaft.

The arrest of those who are disloyal to the regime and the punishment of their families.

It leads to massive reprisals all across Germany,

as Hitler now pursues his sick revenge fantasies against anyone

even remotely suspected of connection to this plot.

7000 Germans are arrested, 4980 killed.

Along with this repressive state came a heightening of repression

within the armed forces.

Tens of thousands of German soldiers are put on trial

and shot in this last year of the war,

usually at specious charges of desertion or cowardice.

For an army whose manpower reserves had become so limited

this was the last thing it needed.

24th of August 1944, as Hitler ordered the execution of his own troops,

allied forces liberated Paris.

Within three weeks, US troops became the first invading force

to set foot on German soil since the war began.

Most Germans are despairing, they know the war is almost assuredly lost

and yet the Hitler myth precedes. There are enough people who believe

that Hitler still might have one last trick in his bag.

On the 6th of September 1944, the first V2 rocket was fired at Paris.

But like the rest of Hitler's wonder weapons,

it failed to stop the advancing allied forces.

Six weeks later, the Red Army crossed the German border into East Prussia.

Nazi propaganda seized on evidence of atrocities.

We have now Goebbels and Hitler pressing the notion that if you don't fight harder,

if you don't ward off those Asiatic hordes from the East,

they're going to exact horrifying revenge.

The Red Army wanted revenge for the Soviets civilians murdered during Hitler's invasion.

Yet the Fuhrer rejected any suggestion of a peace deal.

The rumors of the awful things, in fact, they're did the same things

that German soldiers and security men have been doing in the East of course for years.

But for the German people is horrifying that this could happen to us.

And I think for a great many German men, for example,

that they see that they're one task now is somehow defend their families

and so on from the red terror.

Hitler was driven by memories of the so-called stab in the back.

His belief that socialist politicians betrayed Germany

by surrendering at the end of World War one.

One of the significance of the belief of the stab in the back

is a determination that it will never happen again.

And so that when we move forward to the Second World War,

defeat destruction with honor is preferable to surrender.

He will never allow any of his soldiers to surrender,

and he certainly won't surrender himself.

When the Fuhrer's inner circle urged him to rally public support,

Hitler ignored his people's plight.

For ordinary German people is a problem, who are we fighting for?

I think for a lot of soldiers, a lot of ordinary workers and so on,

they are increasingly fighting for Germany now, not fighting for Hitler.

Hitler's public presence faded as his sole focus became turning the tide of the war,

which he believed only he could achieve.

If he doesn't do something now, sooner or later,

he's going to be squeezed between the vice of the Western allies on the one hand

and Russia on the other. In his view,

the better chance of succeeding is taking on the Western allies.

He doesn't have a hugely high regard for American troops.

Using his panzer divisions, Hitler wanted to attack between American

and British forces in the Ardennes’s forest and take the Port of Antwerp,

the crucial supply line.

This is Hitler's last big roll of the dice.

If he can split these armies, then this will vastly slow down

the allied deployment to Western Europe, allow him to defend them off

and then turn everything he has against the Soviet Army moving in from the East.

Hitler's generals knew they didn't have enough fuel or military hardware

and were woefully underequipped for such an assault.

They told him even if they did reach Antwerp, there was no way of holding the port.

He just disregards at all and says, “Believe me, it's going to work,

we're going to unhinge the enemy in the West as we unhinged them in 1940.”

Hitler launched his operation Autumn Mist,

a conflict more famously known as the Battle of the Bulge.

Initially, the allies were caught unprepared.

But Germany lost 300 planes and 100.000 men in just 40 days fighting.

Hitler's gamble was a disaster.

As his generals feared, Germany's forces were unable

to cope with allied air superiority and troop numbers.

Hitler demanded a showdown with his military commanders.

Hitler reacts to the failure of field of the Ardennes offensive

really rather characteristically, of course, that he blames everybody except himself.

It's the fault of the German generals and the German troops,

who simply didn't live up to his high expectations.

“I decorated them and I spoil them with everything and they've just betrayed me.”

Hitler's failed attack left both ground and air forces critically weakened.

Germany could no longer fend off the allies from the West

or the Soviets from the East.

There's a bleep moment of truth.

Hitler realizes that there aren't any more gambles, there's got nothing else to play.

Hitler responded in typical fashion.

He threatened to kill himself.

Just like in 1923, in the wake of the failed Munich putsch

and in 1931 on learning of his beloved niece Geli's death.

But as Colonel Below later recalled, Hitler changed to another course of action.

“Will not capitulate, never, we can go down, but we'll take the world with us.”

His propaganda mastermind, Joseph Goebbels,

the man more responsible than any other for the Hitler's rise,

begged his Fuhrer to speak to the people.

Despite Goebbels exhortation’s, “Come on Mein Fuhrer, go out there, rally people.”

Hitler knows it's there's nothing there. There's nothing to defend.

Conceding that his dream of a Thousand Year Reich was over,

Hitler found someone new to blame - the German people.

He feels they have let him down and they've let themselves down.

In his own racial fantasies only the strong survive and if the Germans

are now going down to defeat it is because they are not worthy to survive.

The once feared German war machine was now retreating further back into the Fatherland.

As the net closed in, Hitler was now committed to sacrificing his people

in an act of spite against the German nation.

On the 31st of January 1945, Stalin's Red Army reached the Oder River.

They were just 43 miles from Berlin.

In the past seven months, hundreds of thousands have died

defending Hitler's Germany from invasion.

They are now having to call up young boys and old men.

This really the last throw of the dice.

In a rare moment of honest reflection, Hitler dictated his thoughts

to his private secretary, Martin Bormann.

"The situation is serious, very serious."

"It seems even to be desperate."

What he makes clear is that the current Germans have let him down,

but there will come a new Germany. New generations will come.

"Whatever reverses, we may suffer in the days that lie ahead of us,

but the German people will draw fresh strength from them

and whatever may happen today, it will live to know a glorious tomorrow."

Hitler retreated to a bunker complex beneath the Reich Chancellery.

Hitler could go anywhere he wants,

he can order up a plane you can fly to over Salzburg,

he can go to the American’s zone in the hope

that he'll be taken by them. So remarkably, Hitler stays in Berlin,

stays right in the path of the Red Army that's coming to get him.

Hitler was clearly decided that he wants to somehow create the final drama

the way he wants it and the final drama is that he will be there in the German capital,

in his chancellery, defending the Reich to the last against the encircling enemies.

The Great Dictator, who once ruled from an opulent headquarters in the Alps,

now spent most of his day in a nine by 12 foot room.

From early February he spends all his time inside the bunker,

and I think in a way his ability to do that reflects the way

in which his surroundings are actually not important to him.

That's not what matters.

He's not a man who seeks great comfort or luxury,

or even anything particularly pleasant in his surroundings.

It's damp, it smells of diesel, there are noisy generators,

it’s an unpleasant place to be.

Hitler's only glimpse of daylight was during his daily walks

in the Reich Chancellery garden with his faithful dog, Blondie.

His health was failing rapidly.

He looks like an old man.

He's acting like an old man.

He's doddery, he's incoherent, he rages more and more.

People close to him find it difficult to know exactly

what he's thinking as he totally despairing, or does he still have hope?

As German forces collapsed in both the East and the West,

Hitler withdrew into a world of fantasy.

Is he planning new strategies to get Germany out of the problem it's in?

Is he opening negotiations with the allies?

He's doing none of these things.

He's peering at models of an architectural rebuilding of Linz.

Hitler's personal cameraman Walter Frentz captured him

unveiling an intricate model of his beloved hometown in Austria.

It was a moment Hitler had waited for since commissioning the project five years ago.

There he is, like a little boy.

His kind of long term childhood passion reignited, and he's staring at every detail.

His thoughts turned to his jubilant homecoming during the Anschluss in 1938.

Since then, his armies had looted monuments from across Europe to adorn Linz.

His old hometown is going to be the recipient of this great treasure,

so that Linz will finally outshine Vienna

and really be the city of the cultural future.

Hitler still talked of retiring to Linz after the war.

It was a dream that was clearly a delusion and which was shattered just days later.

Hitler heard news of the Yalta Conference, where allied leaders Winston Churchill,

Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin were meeting to discuss postwar Europe.

The three leaders agreed there would be no negotiated end,

only unconditional surrender and war criminals would be put on trial.

Armaments Minister Albert Speer recalled Hitler's defiant response.

“I have always said there can be no question of capitulation."

"History does not repeat itself.”

It doesn't really matter if everyone's dead at the end of it,

but certain words, they've never surrendered all the support to Hitler.

On the 24th of February 1945, Hitler's most loyal Nazi bosses,

the Gauleiters, was summoned to Berlin.

The Gauleiters, who haven't seen him for about six months,

a pretty shocked at his appearance. He's in a hell of a state, he looks haggard,

he's kind of dragging his feet along the floors, he's got bags under his eyes,

even saliva is dribbling from his mouth.

They come from the four corners of Germany, expecting to hear some explanation,

some plan for how Hitler is going to get them out of this mess

and what they hear is profoundly disillusioning.

Hitler repeats and rambles and rehashes.

Hitler fondly recalled his first speech as Chancellor

when he commanded the attention of the nation.

For hours he relived past triumphs with barely a mention

of his country's present nightmares.

For the first time since the early days of the party

these staunch Nazis are no longer convinced by what he has to say.

Both mentally and physically, he can no longer inspire them,

and he probably can't save Germany.

It's a bit like turning up the wake, it's a wake for the funeral of a Third Reich.

The war is lost and not just lost but catastrophically lost,

and everything they've struggled for has failed.

In a rare excursion from his bunker,

Hitler visited Army headquarters on the Eastern Front, now just 40 miles from Berlin.

Months of military setbacks have taken their toll.

All films of Hitler would be very carefully monitored

for whether they showed any signs of his physical deterioration.

In his penultimate appearance on camera it's very clear to see

that his left arm is shaking.

For at least two years, Hitler had shown an uncontrollable trembling in his left arm,

a jerking left knee, and a shuffling gait.

Now, at just 55 years old, the symptoms were so severe they undermined his authority.

People don't respect him. Once you hold this shot right here,

we see in the old days Hitler would be standing,

he would command the room, people will be looking at him.

And in this particular situation, he's sitting down and the high difference means

that these people here are now looking down to Hitler

versus Hitler looking down to them, which a leader does.

He's a broken man and he knows the end is near.

On the 7th of March 1945, the woman who had stood by Hitler for the last 13 years,

Eva Braun, arrived in Berlin.

People are shocked because they know that Hitler has ordered her not to come.

Hitler wants her to stay safe, away from Berlin,

but she's decided that she wants to be with Hitler.

She knows that Hitler is never going to leave that bunker alive,

and she wants to be there with him.

Hitler received a memo from his armaments minister, Albert Speer,

saying the German economy faced imminent collapse,

which would leave them unable to fight the war.

Four days later, Hitler summoned Speer to the bunker.

He was determined to destroy Germany rather than surrender.

Hitler demanded Speer destroy Germany's infrastructure

by implementing a scorched earth policy, later known as the Nero Decree,

after the Roman emperor, who was believed to have burned Rome to the ground.

Finally, hearing that the war is lost, liberates Hitler

to be the radical he always perceived himself to be.

In Mein Kampf Hitler states that Germany will be a world power

or it will be nothing and when he realizes that the war is lost is as good as his word.

Power plants, factories, roads, dams, they are all to be destroyed.

They are to leave the German people with nothing,

even for a true believer like Speer and he is a true believer,

the Nero order goes too far.

Speer worked to persuade the army and local party chiefs to ignore Hitler's demands.

He was the first Nazi minister to openly disobey the Fuhrer,

a clear sign Hitler's absolute control was waning.

In the bunker, he's absolutely out of touch.

He can't see what's happening across his country.

I don't think he even knows that he's being disobeyed.

The last surviving footage of Hitler.

A man whose rise to power was made by the media

and who for the past 12 years had insisted every major event be filmed.

He was meeting a group of Hitler Youth who were fighting to protect Berlin.

Hitler makes a big thing that the Hitler Youth are really loyal to him,

and he praises them for defending Berlin.

There are teams of people going around and arresting anybody

who tries to escape and stringing them up on lampposts.

To preserve Hitler's credibility, the sensor cut this camera angle from the film.

Hitler's hand shook violently as he concealed it from view.

One minute he snatches at the piece of news and thinks that might be a positive thing.

At another moment, of course, he is plunged into despair.

By this stage, Hitler hope that Providence has got something up its sleeve.

Hitler's hope of divine intervention was dashed.

Stalin directed the brutal power of the Red Army towards Germany's capital.

He's asking for updates. How long till they get here?

How many hours from the center of Berlin are they?

Four days later, on Hitler's 56th birthday,

the Soviets were just 10 miles from Berlin.

For the first time as Fuhrer, he shunned all celebration.

Throughout his life, Hitler has made a big thing of his birthday.

But on this final birthday, he's too depressed.

Those around Hitler were now contemplating the end.

In the final weeks and days in the bunker,

people begin talking about the best method for committing suicide,

whether it's to take a cyanide capsule or whether it's to shoot yourself

and it's a kind of hideous environment in which again and again,

people come back to this subject.

Hitler learned the third SS Panzer Corps hadn't carried out the counteroffensive

he ordered, an act, he considered betrayal.

For the first time ever, Hitler publicly admits that he's given up,

the facade has just gone, it's crumbled completely,

and all you're left with is this husk who's just admitting

that the battle is lost. And this surely is the moment

when he decides he's going to end it all and he says as much.

There are those like the Goebbels

who have every intention of following the Fuhrer to the death

and are also preparing for suicide

and preparing to kill their six children but there are many others.

The majority of others who are thanking Hitler for the cyanide tablet

but thinking, “How can I get out of here in life?”

And for a lot of people at the very end, their survival instinct kicks in.

Hitler told his staff he would stay in Berlin and kill himself.

Then have his body burned.

In reply, he received a surprising telegram from his deputy Hermann Goering.

He suddenly gets news from Goering, who's managed to flee to Bavaria, saying,

“Dear Fuhrer, you're locked up in Berlin, you can't do anything very much."

"So I think I better take over.”

Goering wanted Germany's top job.

For Hitler, that's absolutely unacceptable. There is only one Fuhrer.

He then discovered SS Chief Heinrich Himmler

had been attempting to negotiate with the allies.

He's furious, because Hitler's loyalty to him is a critical characteristic.

Once somebody breaks the bond than for Hitler

that's the worst thing somebody can do.

Unable to reach Himmler, Hitler ordered the execution of his top aide, Hermann Fegelein.

Guilty by association.

Less than a year before Hitler hosted Fegelein’s wedding

to Eva Braun's sister, Gretl.

Despite Eva’s pleas and the fact that Gretl was about to give birth

to Fegelein’s child Hitler characteristically showed no mercy.

He had Fegelein shot for desertion.

He is always capable of absolute ruthlessness

and he will always carry out his own wishes,

and he will not submit to the desires of other people.

On the 23rd of April 1945, Stalin's vengeful troops stormed into Berlin.

Their target was Hitler's bunker.

Towards the very end, when Albert Speer visits him just a few days before the very end,

he's really shocked to see that even right down in the Fuhrer bunker,

there are people who are visibly drunk, people smoking;

things that Hitler absolutely disapproves of.

The discipline is going and chaos has broken out.

For Adolf Hitler the game was nearly over.

There was only one card left for him to play.

Adolf Hitler was trapped in a bunker below the Reich Chancellery

as Soviet troops wreaked havoc in Berlin.

Here he learned that his old friend Mussolini had been murdered

and his body strung up alongside his mistress in a Milan square.

Hitler is desperately anxious that it's not going to happen to him.

Absolutely confirms his decision that he will take his own life.

Hitler turned his thoughts to Eva Braun, the most loyal person in his life.

He had always resisted her desire to marry,

claiming it would distract him from his life's work.

Now he had decided on suicide. There was no reason to deny her wish.

Hitler recognizes this incredible loyalty and devotion

that Eva Braun has given him and he agrees to marry her.

The simple ceremony took place in Hitler's conference room

in the bunker just past midnight.

They swapped rings which have been stolen from prisoners in the Gestapo jail,

and they sign their wedding certificate.

Eva Braun seems to be flustered, she signs Eva B

and then crosses that B and puts Hitler.

That night, Hitler and his secretary, Traudl Junge,

withdrew to his study where he dictated his final will and testament.

He instructed that once he was dead, Admiral Karl Dönitz should become president.

Then he reaffirmed the obsessive belief, he first expressed in Mein Kamp

over 20 years before.

This is what Hitler says at the end in the bunker,

“Above all I pledge the leadership of the nation and its followers

to the scrupulous observation of the racial laws

and to an implacable opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples,

international Jewry.” These are Hitler's last words.

For Hitler the war was started by the Jews and lost by his army Generals.

He accepted no responsibility for himself.

Soviet forces were now just a third of a mile from the bunker.

At 3:00 p.m., Hitler asked his valet for his gun.

He's always had the idea that it’s success or death, there's no middle way.

Suicide is a fitting gesture for a hero such as himself.

His wife, Eva, had chosen to take cyanide and die with.

On the first of May 1945, German Radio announced the death of Adolf Hitler.

To preserve the myth of his heroism, the broadcast said he died fighting the Soviets.

A wave of suicides followed the announcement.

Nazism is a death cult. It's an ideology that stresses loyalty

and selfless devotion to an ideal and to a leader and of course,

what better way for humans to demonstrate

that kind of loyalty than to take their own lives?

With their messiah now gone the cult of Hitler quickly disintegrated.

For many Germans, the magic spell is over. The bond is cut, Hitler is dead.

They're released, in a sense, from their commitment.

As images of the Fuhrer were publicly burned,

his followers scrambled to erase their association with Hitler and the Nazis.

On the 6th of May 1945,

the remnants of the Nazi regime sent General Alfred Jodl

to sign Germany's unconditional surrender.

Across the world, 60 million men, women and children lay dead;

7,5 million of Hitler's own people.

Victims of battle, of death camps,

of one man's warped vision.

Hitler had this incredible magnetism, he had this ability

to speak to Germans deep in their soul.

Such was the power of Hitler's legacy that only in 2015

was reprinting allowed of his poisonous manifesto, Mein Kampf.

We're told not to see the world in black and white,

always recognize that there are various shades and gradations.

But in Hitler's case, it's difficult to see him as anything else

but the embodiment of evil.

Transcribed danel32. Ready for job-offers /eng.to.est@gmail.com/