All language subtitles for The World at War - Season 1 episode 30

(narrator) To Germany,
after defeat in the First World War,

came ruinous inflation, massive
unemployment, political disorder.

By 1932,
one man in three was out of work.

(speaking German)

(translator) I remember at the bottom
of our street every day were workers.

I mean, they weren't workers
because they were out of work.

They'd go to the labour exchange
and collect their unemployment pay.

And it was a gloomy, grey,
forlorn army, you could almost say,

of people who went there each day and
then came back again just as miserable

because they never found any work.

These are childhood impressions

that have stayed in my memory
to this day,

that are still very real to me.

I think in 1930 or 1929,

I don't remember,

we went to Berlin and we took a taxi

and arrived at a shop
or at another house

and a man,
nice-looking but very poor-looking

opened the door of the taxi,

was very polite and helped my mother
with the parcels and so on,

so she gave him two marks.

And he looked at it and said,
"l think it's an error."

"You gave me two marks."

And she said,
"No, it's fine. Keep it."

So he started... he wept

and said,
"It's such an amount of money,

I really can't understand
how you are able to give this to me."

"Now I can sleep
and buy something to eat."

(woman) Every weekend,
I remember very well,

the political marches
took place in Hamburg

and the Nazis used to march
through the communist districts.

The communists then answered

by coming
into the other parts of the town

and there were fights and deaths,
shootings, practically every weekend.

And so the political situation
was, I think,

very much so
that people wished for something,

some strong man
who would clean up the place.

I think that was the beginning of...

"We've got to get out
of what we're in."

"Anything is better than this
situation we're in at the moment."

I heard about Hitler's coming to power
in Berlin.

I was at that time in Berlin,
studying in the university,

and in the morning of January 30

we got the news

and nobody went to the lectures
any more.

People went out of the university
and listened

and I bought newspapers and so on.

Well, I knew

that a new period of German history
was just beginning

and, as I thought,
a very dangerous period.

(band plays march)

(narrator) When Hitler
was named Chancellor,

his followers were astonished
by how smoothly it happened.

His Stormtroopers,
the uniformed men of violence,

were expecting a bloody struggle,

not a polite invitation
to form a government.

Now that Hitler was in office,
they meant to revolutionise Germany.

February 10, 1933.

The new regime's first public rally
was held in the Berlin Sportpalast.

(crowd chanting)

National Socialists were a minority
in the new cabinet.

The first speaker, Dr Goebbels,
was not even in the government.

(translation) The National Socialist
Movement will now show you

how you really should have done this.

(cheering and applause)

(cheering)

(van Kleist) Because in '33 many people
did not know what would happen,

and there were some

who were very critical

but there was also a great number

who were quite hopeful

and expected that the new government
would do something good.

So I would say a great majority
hoped that it would become better

than it had been in the past.

This actually is one of the reasons
why they came to power.

(narrator) Adolf Hitler then spoke.

He was 43 years old, the youngest
chancellor in German history.

(cheering)

(speaking German)

(narrator) In the audience,
some of the 400,000 Stormtroopers,

brutal, ill-disciplined
street fighters,

Jew-baiting, communist-hating,

scornful of the idle rich
and the middle classes,

seething with anger
against their enemies.

But Hitler had other supporters too.

(cheering)

(speaking German)

(translator) I saw how,
particularly in bourgeois circles,

particularly among the middle classes,

hope was placed on this man Hitler,

who had indeed promised to lead
Germany to a new position of respect.

In short, he would deliver us from
all the evils that had befallen us.

(translation)..in our living space
and beyond the borders

and shout from our hearts:

(band playing / crowd singing)

(narrator) No one knew how to end it
or when to salute...

..but the rally was over.

(speaking German)

(translator) It seemed to be
the only hope at that time,

in the middle of a world which knew
nothing but emergency decrees,

unemployment, despair.

(narrator) February 28, 1933.

Berliners gathered to look at the ruins
of the Parliament building,

the Reichstag,

mysteriously destroyed by fire
the night before.

President Hindenburg came too.

The deed was part of a communist plot,
Hitler claimed,

and issued an emergency decree
to enable him to crush the communists.

Hindenburg countersigned it.

Hitler's reign of terror was legalised.

He could suppress newspapers,
search without warrant,

imprison without trial

without accounting to anyone
except Hindenburg.

No one protested much,
not even non-Nazis in the cabinet.

March 21. The state opening
of Parliament, the first day of spring.

Hitler called it
the Day of National U nity

and led a procession of men

whose hatred for each other
had seemed irreconcilable:

Nazi atheists
and Catholic conservatives,

ministers and revolutionaries.

(band playing / crowd cheering)

Nazi Stormtroopers
detested the old regime,

yet they formed a guard of honour
for the President.

Hindenburg hardly seemed to notice.

(crowd cheering)

(band plays march)

The Berlin Guard Regiment marched too,
delighted to be part of the parade.

(speaking German)

(translator) Then came reports
that one person after another

who I knew had been in opposition

had been hauled off to a camp.

There was talk of places
like Osthofen, concentration camps.

(narrator) The Stormtroopers
locked up their enemies,

communists,
social democrats, liberals.

There was no secret about these camps.

At Oranienburg, near Berlin,
they even had themselves filmed.

(translation) Line up. Get ready.

(translation) Morning.

(Pusch) They saw to it

that rumours about those concentration
camps spread all over the nation

so that people were really frightened.

And on the other hand,

they had a very widespread
sort of propaganda.

You know, with those two means,
propaganda and terror,

a grip on the nation.

Right from the beginning,

after the arrests of Jews
and communists and social democrats

early in '33,

people were so afraid
of the Nazi terror

that they just didn't dare to talk,
let alone to take action.

(speaking German)

(translator) Perhaps we could still
have had a general strike.

It was considered then.

But a general strike
would have cost a lot of blood.

We mustn't forget that the majority
was on the other side and was armed,

and most of the professional class and
the working class, they weren't armed.

They would have had to use
knives and forks or pitchforks

to defend themselves in a strike.

And the political people
who stood against Hitler,

they didn't have the courage to risk

what would have turned out to be
an enormous massacre.

(narrator) The only demonstrations
that cold, wet spring

were by those
who supported the new regime.

(singing)

The young party activists expected
still more violent revolutionary acts.

Most of Hitler's older supporters
yearned for stability and order.

(crowd) Heil!

(narrator) Hitler had to satisfy both.

When he... Hitler had come to power,

we all felt... the left-wing people

felt something had to be done

and they tried it in different ways.

I joined
an illegal underground organisation

which called itself New Beginning.

And there was a friend of mine
in Breslau,

a Jewish friend
who now lives in London, by the way.

We formed a theory

and according to this theory

we said class struggle

is a basic law
of history and social life.

So if the National Socialists
are going to suppress

all organisations of class struggle,

for instance trade unions
and left-wing parties,

this basic law
would go on nevertheless,

and if class struggle had no means

of expressing itself by organisations,

it would take part
within the Nazi organisations.

So we thought it possible

that parts of the party
and parts of the SA

one day might turn

against the upper classes

and we thought it would be important

to observe that process
and probably influence it, even.

And so that was the reason

that I joined
a National Socialist organisation,

in this case the SS.

They never checked up
about my political past.

But we had no real idea
what a totalitarian organisation was.

The rank and file of the organisation
hadn't anything to say at all.

There were no discussions,

there was no possibility of revolt
or anything of the sort.

It was just as if you'd tried
to do that in an army.

So I had joined the organisation

and it was all useless

and the following years
I always tried to get out of it again,

but that was very difficult.

(chanting)

(speaking German)

(translator) Then they began
to call things by new names.

Suddenly one learned
what an Aryan was.

At first I didn't know
what that meant.

They are people, how can I say it,
who are not of the Jewish race.

To tell the truth, I still
don't quite know what an Aryan is.

And then I think the shops
had to put on their doors

a sign that said "Aryan shop".

And if the sign wasn't there, this
made it clear it was a Jewish shop.

(narrator) Newly labelled Aryans were
set against newly identified Jews.

Stormtroopers organised a boycott
of Jewish businesses.

(woman) I'll tell you the experience
of my husband's grandmother.

She was 90 years old
on the day of the Jewish boycott,

which was April 1, 1933, I think.

She lived in the Bonhoeffer family
but she cared for her breakfast herself

and so she had to do
some shopping every day

and she went to her Jewish shop
to buy some butter.

And in the door was standing
an SA man with his gun,

and he asked her rather roughly,

(speaking German)

"Have you just to buy at the Jew?"

And she took her stick and pushed him
a little bit on his leg and said,

(speaking German)

"l buy my butter
where I buy my butter every day."

She was from south Germany
and I want to tell it in German dialect

because it's so typical.

But she was 90 years old
and so she could enter

and she bought her butter.

She was the single,
the only customer that day.

Nobody dared.
There was standing a man with a gun.

(singing)

(narrator) The men with the guns
dealt with literature too.

In May 1933 Dr Goebbels
decided to purge German letters

of all that was
foreign, Jewish, un-German.

All over Germany students
and Stormtroopers burnt books.

The biggest blaze was in Berlin,
in front of the opera house.

Hitler's own book, Mein Kampf,

revealed all
any loyal German ought to know

about literature, politics or culture.

Munich. Here National Socialism began.

And here the Nazis
built their House of German Art

to display the great works
National Socialism would inspire.

(♪ "The Mastersingers of Nuremberg" -
Wagner)

As the cornerstone was laid,

the orchestra played Richard Wagner's
hymn to the purity of German art.

Then the procession.

(band plays march)

The Nazis liked to think of themselves
not as destroyers,

but as preservers of all that was best
in Germany's past.

Their parades and pageants were meant
to teach Germans a history lesson

and to entertain.

Every September the National
Socialists came to N uremberg

for their annual party rally.

This was their first
since taking office.

Visitors from abroad came to join them
for a week of celebration.

Speeches, marches, military displays,

each day devoted to a different branch
of the National Socialist family.

It was a vicious, quarrelsome family.

The Stormtroopers,
commanded by Ernst Röhm,

were the most awkward and menacing.

There were now three million of them.

Against Hitler's wishes they wanted
to take over the job of the army,

to replace
the reactionary professionals

with their own
fierce revolutionary volunteers.

Göring and Goebbels
loathed each other.

They could scarcely bear
to be seen together in public.

No one was supposed to know
of this tension beneath the surface.

The face the party
presented to the world

was united, powerful, monolithic.

Adolf Hitler had been in power
just eight months.

Everything he had done or would do,
he said, had only one aim :

to restore the nation to greatness,

to serve and to glorify
the German people.

(translation)
The National Socialist Party...

(cheering)

(man speaking German)

(narrator) Spring 1934.

A Hitler Youth camp in a park
right in the centre of Berlin.

Parents' day.

(cheering)

Joining Nazi youth organisations
wasn't compulsory yet,

but children who belonged
to the League of German Girls

or the Hitler Youth

were made to feel part
of the exciting new Germany.

Organised sports, organised games.

Even organised horseplay.

(speaking German)

(translator) As children
we couldn't understand each other.

We were against each other

just because our parents
had different political views.

And suddenly we were brought together
through the Hitler Youth.

There we sang together, went hiking,

we made things
for kindergartens and old people.

We made things at Christmas time.

And suddenly
everything was a community.

(speaking German)

(translator) This hiking,
night hiking,

wearing uniforms, singing songs,

for the children, that wasn't anything
political, and they gladly joined in.

(singing)

Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg heil!

(narrator) Three and a half million
German children

already belonged to the Hitler Youth
in 1934.

Hitler gloated, "When an enemy of mine
says, 'l will not join you,'

I reply calmly, 'But your child
has joined us already."'

"'Who are you? You will pass on."'

"'Your children
are in our camp already

and soon they will know nothing else
except our new community."'

(speaking German)

(translator) It was a time...

You could almost describe it

as a springtime, a time of hope,

with good resolutions
to improve everything,

to revive the economy.

A new feeling, a people's community.

(band plays march)

(narrator) The people's community.

The Nazis talked about it,

their parades and marches
celebrated it relentlessly.

All Germans together.

(crowd cheering)

(speaking German)

(translator) Economically
nothing changed much.

The unemployed were still there.

But there was hope that unemployment
was going to disappear.

(speaking German)

(translator) He accomplished things
which no one thought possible,

and in a fairly short time.

So all these people

who had been vegetating
without hope, without any future,

it was now clearly shown to them.

"Your life does have some meaning
and you have something to do."

"You can support your family again,

not by social security
but by your own work."

(speaking German)

(cheering)

(speaking German)

(translator) And in the schools
and in sport, everywhere they wanted

to bring out a community spirit.

And for the most part they succeeded.

And one could see people are enjoying
themselves, it's getting better.

A feeling of relief and also of hope
was widespread, I would say,

in '33 and into '34.

(excited shouting)

(band plays march)

(band plays waltz)

(narrator) Relief and hope.

And fun and games.

And political murder.

Ernst Röhm had been
Hitler's loyal comrade and friend,

but his Stormtroopers
were challenging the army

and Röhm
was challenging Hitler's authority.

Hitler has him murdered
at the end of June.

The men who murdered Röhm

belonged to a tiny elite force within
the Stormtroopers themselves, the SS.

June 30, '34

was a very, very important day

because it became obvious

that this government, as a government,
started to become a murderer.

You remember that
they shot a great number of people

without any bringing them to court.

They just killed them.

And not only direct enemies of Hitler
in that moment,

not only Röhm, the head of the SA,

but also other people
who they felt were unpleasant.

And they just did it at the same time.

And this, I suppose,
was easy to realise

because it was actually written
in the newspapers,

so everybody could have read it.

And it was said in the newspaper
that the government had to shoot them

because it was an emergency case.

But quite obviously
it's very difficult to understand

if they are all taken as prisoners.

Where's the emergency case
for the government?

(narrator) The SS
formed the guard of honour

when Hitler came to the Reichstag
two weeks later

to explain why
he had ordered them to kill.

The Stormtroopers had plotted
to overthrow the government.

The plot had been crushed.
Order had been restored.

Loyal Germans
had nothing more to fear.

(cheering)

The army had not protested

although generals
had been murdered too.

They saw the Stormtroopers,
their hated rivals, destroyed,

and Hitler himself
had done the work for them.

(cheering)

(solemn music)

In August, the army's protector
and patron in the Nazi state,

Field Marshal von Hindenburg, died,

and with him the only authority
in the state above Hitler.

Hitler immediately proclaimed himself
president in Hindenburg's place.

While the whole nation mourned,
the army had to swear a new oath,

not to the constitution
but to Adolf Hitler personally.

(translation) I swear by God.

I swear by God.

(man) Adolf Hitler.

(all) Adolf Hitler.

(man) Adolf Hitler.

(all) Adolf Hitler.

(man) Adolf Hitler.

(cheering)

(narrator) Wehrmacht Day at the 1934
party rally only a month later.

The army on display
to its new masters.

Baffled by politics,

the soldiers returned to perfecting
their professional techniques.

(gunfire)

The decision to introduce conscription
in March 1935 was taken without them.

The Minister of Defence, General
von Blomberg, merely endorsed it.

(speaking German)

(narrator) The generals were delighted
that their army,

limited by international agreement
to 100,000 men,

was going to grow.

Von Blomberg blandly echoed
Hitler's claim

that this would be a contribution
to the peace of Europe.

(speaking German)

(band plays march)

(narrator) The old generals,

the old regimental banners
were paraded once again,

but this army belonged not to the
professional soldiers but to Hitler.

(bells ringing)

Hitler tried
to make the churches his too.

N un, bishop and SS man alike

would have a place
in the Nazi Christian community

led by Nazi men of God.

(speaking German)

(narrator)
Concert-goers were preached at too,

by the Minister for Propaganda
and Ethnic Enlightenment.

(speaking German)

(♪ "Hallelujah Chorus" - Handel)

♪ Hallelujah

(narrator)
Christian form and Nazi substance.

The marriage of Hermann Göring
to Emmy Sonnemann,

the greatest social event of 1935.

Hitler was best man.

(bells ringing)

(crowd chanting)

N uremberg, 1935. Hitler Youth Day.

(crowd cheering)

(speaking German)

(band plays march)

Radio loudspeakers
on the streets and in their homes

brought the sounds and excitement
of the rallies

to the people who couldn't be there.

(speaking German)

(translator) We'd heard somewhere,

perhaps it was on the radio,

that the Rhineland

was going to be remilitarised.

The thing was
that after the Versailles Treaty

there was a demilitarised zone of 30km
on the right bank of the Rhine.

No soldiers could be garrisoned there

and I don't even think
they could set foot there.

Now, some time after conscription
had been reintroduced,

Hitler suddenly announced

that the Rhineland
was going to be remilitarised.

The troops began to move in.

Some friends and I were around.

We didn't have much else to do
so we went out into the street

where we thought
they'd have to come past.

We knew they had to come from the east

because the Rhine
was towards the west.

(band plays march)

(narrator) The units which marched
across the Rhine bridges that day

were among Germany's best,
but there were very few of them

and they had no heavy weapons.

Yet the troops were under orders
to fight if they met resistance.

(speaking German)

(translator) The question was,

well, what are the Allies
going to do about this?

And, well, they did nothing.

And we were relieved.

We'd made another step forward
and it worked.

Another step forward
towards sovereignty.

Sovereignty over our own country.

(Pusch) Hitler thought it to be useful
to have an election afterwards.

It wasn't at all necessary
for the regime,

it was just one form of propaganda,

indoctrinating the people
and giving him an opportunity

to make speeches in all big places.

As a member of the SS

we had always the task

to look after security, you know.

So there was, I think,
a dozen of young men.

I had to go behind a big curtain,

a black, big curtain

and we had, the other young men too,
had made little holes in the curtain

and we looked through
from the dark into the hall.

Hitler wasn't very far from me,

about ten metres, I think,

and for a while I thought, "That
would be an occasion to shoot him."

"l am in the dark
and I would have the time,

and if I had a machine gun
or something like that."

But I had none

and of course I should have lost my
life afterwards, that was quite clear.

And, well, I listened to his speech

and I felt that more and more
excited atmosphere in the hall

and for some seconds again and again
I had a feeling,

"What a pity
that I can't share that belief

of all those thousands of people,

that I am alone,
that I am contrary to all that."

It was very funny.

I thought, "He's talking all
the nonsense I know he always talks."

But still I felt it must be wonderful

just to jump into that bubbling pot

and be a member
of all those who are believers

and who are very happy at that moment.

(narrator) Those who were believers
had a great deal to be happy about.

Three years of National Socialism
had transformed Germany.

No longer weak and despised,

but dynamic
and deserving everyone's respect.

(crowd chanting)

(translation) I herewith declare open
the Berlin Games

in celebration
of the 11 th Olympic Games

according to
the new calculation of times.

(cheering)

(narrator) At these Olympic Games
in Berlin in 1936,

Hitler showed off his new Germany.

The world came to see.

(speaking German)

(translator) It was so magnificent,
the Olympic Games. It was...

Today one could say

it was a huge deception
by Herr Goebbels.

There were no anti-Jewish measures
to be seen anywhere.

And I came
as a modest Austrian student.

I was a bit of an athlete myself.

And I sat in the American sector
for three weeks,

or however long it lasted.

Now, if you could have seen how
enthusiastic those Americans were.

And there sat Hitler
in the box of honour

and it didn't occur to me
to question any of it.

The sporting nations,
the young people.

And I too, I was a young man then,
I was 21 years old,

so I was unbelievably excited
by the whole thing.

You must see that.

(cheering)

(applause)

(narrator) German athletes
won 33 gold medals,

more than anyone else.

Nazis claimed victory for their sport
and for their way of life.

(fanfare)

(singing)

Germans looked forward to repeating
their triumphs at the next Games

in four years' time.

In 1940.

(cheering)

The Nazis loved to organise festivals.

This was the annual harvest festival
for the peasants,

the folk Hitler called
the backbone of the nation.

A million people might come,
camping out, sleeping rough,

in order to be there on the day.

These great meetings
brought comradeship and colour

and a chance to see the Führer.

(fanfare)

(chanting)

(speaking German)

(translator) I came
from a farming family

and we were all so enthusiastic

because since Hitler had taken power,

he'd done so much for the farmers.

Before that, things were going
very badly for people on the land.

Farmers were heavily in debt

and many farms had been auctioned off.

Now suddenly we could breathe again

and we had some reward for our work.

(man shouts names in German)

(band plays march)

(narrator) The Arbeitsdienst,
the national labour service.

Less a serious attempt
to fight unemployment

than a way of moulding Germans
into good, soldierly citizens.

(speaking German)

(translator) This labour service aimed
to bring together the rich and the poor

so that the privileged people
and people from the simplest backgrounds

could come to know each other
by working together,

to learn at first-hand
the meaning of Hitler's precepts.

The community interest
before self-interest. Work is capital.

(narrator) Everyone was liable
for service in the labour corps.

Mothers and sweethearts
kissed the boys goodbye

as if they were going off to war.

The labour service was a model
for the national community.

Hard labour, rough fellowship.

Women cheerfully serving the menfolk.

Dedication, sacrifice, comradeship.

A people's community.

The German people were not expected
to work forever without reward.

(excited cheering)

Hitler wanted every German
to have a car,

to drive on the new super-highways
being built by their labour.

The people's community
in the people's car. The Volkswagen.

Hitler helped to design it himself.

These were the prototypes.

The real ones wouldn't be ready
for delivery until 1940.

Thousands were sold
on the instalment plan.

Berlin, September 1937.

The largest city
on the European continent.

The first day of school
in Germany's capital.

(bell ringing)

The teachers
were National Socialists now.

The schools were run
according to the Führerprinzip,

the leadership principle,

just like the country.

There were natural leaders,
the teachers,

and natural followers, the children.

Don't question, copy down.

Don't be different.

(speaking German)

(translator) All the unpleasant jobs
in school, in the classes,

had of course to be done
by the children

whose parents wouldn't support Hitler.

For instance my son had to pick up
all the rubbish in the school yard

during the breaks,
for years, it seemed.

Things like that went on all the time.

But of course there were many teachers

who, after the takeover of power,

tried to behave as if they'd been
National Socialists all their lives

in order to keep their jobs,

but who still maintained
an inner resistance

and didn't treat the children too badly.

But gradually they faded out.

Some were pensioned off

and others were dismissed
when it was discovered

that they weren't enthusiastic enough,
or they were transferred.

Educational priorities
got completely turned around.

The most important subjects were now
German history and physical training.

(narrator) In the people's community

there was no getting away from sports
and games and happy outdoor play.

The official slogan was
"Strength through joy".

(children shouting and laughing)

Young people enjoyed their own bodies
and each other's.

(ballroom music)

Ordinary folk comrades
had ordinary pleasures.

Dr Goebbels enjoyed the dancers
at the Scala theatre.

(applause)

(jaunty music)

The army enjoyed
showing off its equipment too.

In 1937 visitors like Mussolini
were interested and impressed.

But the German generals were uneasy.

Their cautious plans for expansion
had been swamped

by Hitler's eagerness to rearm.

Their weapons were only prototypes,
their conscripts not yet trained.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor
came to visit the new Germany.

Nazis preached unity and equality,

that no folk comrade
was better than any other,

yet they fawned
on visiting celebrities.

The ex-king of England
at a concert for workers.

(rousing music)

Factory hands obliged to drink deep
at the spring of German art.

Enthralled, perhaps,
or just sullenly present?

Workers at concerts,
managing directors at trestle tables.

This was the picture
Nazis liked to show

of the people's community in action.

Once a month everyone
eating the same simple lentil broth,

giving the money they save

to the great Nazi-run charity,
the Winter Help.

(all laughing)

Housewives too, rich and poor,

sacrifice their time
for the people's community.

The Winter Help campaigns
were launched by Hitler himself.

(speaking German)

(narrator) No one was too grand
to rattle the tin cup.

The contributions weren't compulsory,

but towns and even offices published
lists of those who refused to give.

The money was supposed to go
to needy folk comrades.

In fact it went
to impoverished Stormtroopers,

party favourites, greedy Nazi bosses.

The people gave and gave.

Their leaders amassed great fortunes
and indulged their private lives.

Adolf Hitler had his private life
far away from Berlin.

(man singing in German)

♪ Adolf Hitler's favourite flower

♪ ls the simple Edelweiss

(narrator) Germans knew that Hitler
had a mountain retreat in Bavaria.

There he relaxed in private
with friends.

♪ (translation)
Travel, song, across the land

♪ Pass from mouth to mouth

♪ Carry a piece of the German soul

♪ Around the whole world

♪ Announce it in hearts everywhere

♪ To laud and praise the Führer

♪ Adolf Hitler's favourite flower

♪ ls the simple Edelweiss

♪ Adolf Hitler's favourite flower

♪ ls the simple Edelweiss

(narrator) Hitler had a mistress,
Eva Braun,

who sometimes brought
her family and friends to visit.

Party cronies were invited too.

Life at Berchtesgaden
was informal, domestic.

(translation) ♪ ls the simple Edelweiss

(narrator) Brutal politics
were never far away.

These were the masters of the SS,
Hitler's bodyguard,

embodiment of the terror
which sustained the Third Reich.

Hitler had great political ambitions

and the greatest of these, he said,

was to make all Germans in Europe
part of his Reich.

He started with the country
whose borders began

only a few miles
from his mountain retreat.

Austria was where Hitler was born.

lts people spoke German
but it was an independent state.

In March 1938
Hitler bullied the Austrian government

into accepting Anschluss,
total union with Nazi Germany.

(chanting)

(Höttl speaks German)

(translator)
When Hitler came to Vienna

there was a sort of mass hysteria.

People in such ecstasy,
hundreds of thousands of people.

And Hitler stood there up on the
lmperial Palace and said, "Here I am."

I'm not sure of his exact words.

"The greatest achievement of my life,

the uniting of my homeland, Austria,
with the Greater German Reich."

That was really overwhelming.

No one standing there at that moment

gave a thought
to the thousands of poor people.

After all, there weren't so many yet
who were going under.

I'm not saying, as others do,
that I was against it from the start.

Not at all.
I was really in favour, 100 per cent.

(speaking German)

(translator) There was an enthusiasm
like nothing else.

It didn't matter whether this man
was an Austrian or a German,

we didn't make the distinction
any more.

It was just one people, eh?

And one race, if you see what I mean.

(narrator) April 1938.

Hitler returned to Berlin
from his triumph in Vienna.

(cheering)

His fellow Germans
wept tears of ethnic joy

at Austria's union with the Reich.

Hitler called it the greatest thing
a German chancellor had ever done.

But he was not satisfied.

There were other Germans
outside the fold,

other folk comrades
to be brought home to the Reich.

September 1938.

Prime ministers from Britain
and France came to Munich

to appease Hitler's ethnic appetite.

They agreed that he could take over
the Sudetenland,

German-speaking Czechoslovakia.

(cheering)

These may have been Czech citizens,

but Germany
was where their hearts lay.

Now they too
were part of the people's community.

(band plays march)

I hadn't thought of National Socialism

in ideas of foreign policy before

and I got quite a surprise

that things developed
in Austria and Sudetenland,

but I was very pleased about it.

(narrator) In November 1938

Nazis organised
a wave of anti-Semitic terror.

Synagogues were burnt.

Shops were smashed and looted.

This was the Kristallnacht,
the night of glittering broken glass.

Officially the consequence
of the people's spontaneous anger

against the Jews.

(speaking German)

On my way to work, I was an apprentice
learning my father's trade,

well, I could see some fires burning.

I can see myself in my mind's eye

standing in front of the synagogue
which had been burnt.

Maybe some of my workmates
were with me, I'm not really sure.

Anyway, I see this man coming out.

"You know him,
he lives in our building."

It was an SA man and he was saying,

"That thing just won't burn right."

And so of course it was quite clear

that what we read afterwards,

that this was the spontaneous anger
of the people at work,

wasn't true at all.

It was the SA at work.

And it must have been clear
to everyone at that point

that something very wrong
was going on,

but the means to oppose it
really did not exist.

(speaking German)

Well, in my view this whole Jewish
question was stirred up by Goebbels.

At that time
I was with my wife in Munich.

In the morning as I got to the office,

I saw that the windows
had been smashed in and I said,

"This really is too much.
Why do they do such things?"

"lt really isn't necessary.
We'll have to pay for it all."

That's what I said.

You see, I think,
as far as the Jewish problems went,

that they should in any case have been
removed from official positions.

The civil servants and so on,
but otherwise...

And then there was that plan
to send them to...

What do you call that French island?
Madagascar. You know.

But then nothing came of it.

That would have been
the right thing to do,

to resettle the people over there.

I had nothing to do with the Jews and
so on in that way, not the slightest.

I condemned it, you know.

I didn't agree with it
because it wasn't right, you know.

But this scoundrel Goebbels,
it was his doing.

The Führer didn't agree with it either,
you know,

but he couldn't do anything,
he had to go along with Goebbels.

In practical terms that's how it was.

I remember that my brother-in-law,

the husband of my sister Lena,

when he went in the morning
after the Reichskristallnacht,

Crystal N ight or how you say,

he went by train
to his office downtown

and between the stations
of Savignyplatz and Zoological Garden

there is the Jewish synagogue

and he saw that it was burning.

And he murmured, "Kulturschande. "

That is, "lnsult to our culture."
"Shame to our culture."

Well, right away a gentleman
in front of him turned his Revers

and showed his Parteiabzeichen -
party badge, ja?

And took out his papers
that he was a man of the Gestapo.

And he had to show his papers,
to give his address

and was ordered to come to the party
office next morning, nine o'clock.

When my brother-in-law
came home in the evening,

he told my sister what had happened
and she said,

"Couldn't you keep your mouth?
What will happen now?"

"They will take you in a concentration
camp and we will be rid of you."

All of us were very excited

and next morning
he had to go to the party

and he was investigated
about what he had meant

and he tried to sich herausreden...

I don't know how...

Herausreden,
to talk himself out of it.

And the result was
that his punishment was

that he had to arrange
and to distribute

the ration cards for the area,

beginning of each month,

for years, until the end of the war.

That was in '38, yes?

So each end of the month

the family had to arrange the cards
for heavy working people,

for men, for women,
for children, for little children

and all these special cards.

They had to arrange at home

and then he had to go,
he had to go alone to do it,

he was not permitted
to have the help of his children.

He had to do it alone. For years.

They observed him and he couldn't risk
arranging any help for him.

That was the way
they broke the back of the people.

(narrator) March 1939.

Hitler sent his troops into Prague,

capital of what remained
of Czechoslovakia.

He blotted the nation from the map.

It became a German protectorate.

The Wehrmacht was in a foreign
country, unasked, unwanted.

For the first time in a generation
Germans were invaders,

their troops an occupying force.

Not a shot had been fired.

We were in a rather optimistic view
after the first six years

because everything succeeded
as we thought it should succeed

and there was no war
when we entered the Rhineland,

there was no war
when we entered Austria,

there was no war
when we entered Sudetenland,

so there was hardly a reason

why war should come upon us.

(bell clanging)

(narrator) A bold leader.
A unified nation.

A Germany at peace
in a peaceful Europe.

(singing)