All language subtitles for the_ss_blood_and_soil

The Berghof, mountain retreat of Adolf
Hitler.

Here, senior party members and their
families relax away from the frantic

activity of the capital.

Yet, even in the peaceful setting of the
Bavarian Alps, amongst the tranquil

scenes of domestic life, there is an
unsettling presence.

The racial elite of the new order.

The SS.

How can we arrest racial decay, asks
Adolf Hitler?

Shall we form a select company of the
truly initiated?

An order, the Brotherhood of Templars
around the Holy Grail of pure blood?

By 1934, almost ten years after its
creation, the SS is in the process of

becoming Hitler's Brotherhood of
Templars.

The hand -picked, disciplined, and
fiercely loyal bodyguard of the Fuhrer

being transformed into an Aryan elite, a
mystical order dedicated to the

creation of an empire.

In the strange and terrifying doctrines
of National Socialism, the Aryan is the

race of the future.

Providence has decreed that the Aryans
will subjugate all other peoples.

In the vanguard of the Nazi mission will
be the black -clad ranks of the SS.

This carefully selected elite is
intended to be the stock from which will

new and superior breed of human, the
Superman, a caste of men born to rule.

It is Heinrich Himmler who will forge
Hitler's guard into a racial

Under Himmler's leadership, the SS will
become a state within a state.

Obsessed with secrecy and bound by
solemn ritual, the SS will become a

unprecedented power and authority.

The origins of this, the most sinister
of all Nazi creations, do not lie in the

personal visions of Heinrich Himmler or
his Führer.

The roots of the SS go deeper even than
national socialism itself.

By 1900, the cities of Germany and
Austria have changed beyond all

Millions have abandoned the poverty of
peasant life, to slave in the mills and

foundries of the Industrial Revolution.

As their populations swell with the
influx of labour, Elegant centers of

commercial and aristocratic life become
teeming industrial slums.

It is in the cities that the values of
the old order are challenged.

Calls for democracy and socialism
threaten the traditional power of the

elite.

Established religious beliefs are
undermined by science and a rising tide

materialism. To many, the new world
seems fractured and chaotic.

Amongst the aristocratic and educated
classes in the first decade of the 20th

century, the overriding mood is one of
nostalgia.

There is a powerful yearning for a
vanished past, a past believed to have

more harmonious, orderly and spiritual.

All over industrialized Europe, new
movements arise.

devoted to the search for simplicity.

In Germany, the movement calls itself
Lebensreform, life reform.

It is pledged to the restoration of a
more natural way of living.

Tens of thousands of German youth join
the Wundervogel, the birds of passage.

Its members share a mystical love of the
German countryside and revere German

folklore and ritual.

While science and medicine are rejected
as products of the Industrial

Revolution, vegetarianism, herbal
healing, nudism, communal living and

meditation become fashionable pursuits.

In every major city, cults devoted to
spiritualism, astrology, magic and the

occult flourish among the disciples of
life reform.

Of all the doctrines favored by the
movement, none will be more influential,

than those preached by the Russian
adventurers and telepath, Madame Helena

Blavatsky.

In 1888, Madame Blavatsky claimed to
have travelled to Tibet, and there to

have been initiated into the secrets of
spiritual masters she calls the Hidden

Elect.

In the doctrines of occultists, the
Hidden Elect or the Great White

are believed to be humans who, by
initiation and self -denial, have risen

become adept.

They have gained powers and knowledge
beyond those of ordinary mortals.

In Britain, Alastair Crowley, a magician
of the Hermetic Order of the Golden

Dawn, claimed in 1909 to have crossed
the abyss and to have returned as an

adept.

Madame Blavatsky did not claim to be an
adept in her own right, but she did

claim constant telepathic communication
with her hidden masters.

They had revealed to her, their chosen
one, the occult history of the human

race.

According to Madame Blavatsky, each
round of the cosmic cycle has associated

with it seven root races.

The first root race to evolve on Earth
she calls the Astral Race.

It was a race of pure spirit, the
highest form of existence.

The second race she calls the
Hyperborean Race.

Its home was a now -vanished continent
in the Northern Ocean.

The third race was the Lemurians.

Blavatsky is clear about the reason for
the fall of the Lemurian race.

It had interbred with animals.

The fourth race in the history revealed
to Madame Blavatsky is the race of

Atlantis.

The Atlanteans had possessed psychic
powers and had constructed giant cities

using an energy source of mysterious
origins.

The Atlanteans were destroyed in a great
flood.

The fifth root race Madame Blavatsky
sees as the race of hope.

The race that had once founded the
culture of ancient Greece, and soon

return man to the pinnacle of
spirituality.

That race she named the Aryan.

By 1914, Blavatsky's mystical doctrine
of the destiny of Aryan man has spread

throughout Germany and Austria.

The opening days of the Great War.

There is little sense of impending
cataclysm.

All over Europe, news of war is greeted
with unqualified enthusiasm.

In all the warring nations, the emotions
of militant nationalism are given free

reign.

In the ranks of the Austrian and German
armies, there is a widespread belief

that the aspirations of a generation may
be satisfied at last.

the unification of German -speaking
peoples and the creation of a Germanic

empire.

To the frontline soldiers of the
Imperial armies, the teachings of the

clairvoyant Guido von List are an
inspiration.

List believes that in the Germans more
than in any other people, runs the blood

of the mythical race called by Madame
Blavatsky the Aryans.

To Liszt, the Great War is proof that
the modern world with its materialism

its democracy is destroying itself.

But out of war and destruction will come
the victory of the German cause and the

beginning of an Aryan millennium.

Liszt revives the prayer of the 16th
century philosopher and heretic Giordano

Bruno.

O Jove, let the Germans realize their
own strength, and they shall not be men,

but gods.

Like Alistair Crowley and Madame
Blavatsky, Liszt's psychic researches

him to believe in the existence of a
hidden elect.

His visions of the ancient German tribes
have revealed to him an elite class of

priest rulers.

Liszt calls it the Armanenschaft.

The role of the Armanenschaft was to
preserve the occult knowledge of the

Germans' Aryan ancestors.

Liszt claims that the imposition of
Christianity on the Teutonic tribes and

persecution of the followers of the old
religion forced the Armanenschaft to

continue its traditions in secret.

Their law had lived on in the rituals
and symbols of a network of secret

societies.

The store of occult knowledge had been
preserved down the centuries by

Freemasons, Rosicrucians and chivalrous
orders such as the Knights Templar.

So great is List's influence among
German and German -Austrian nationalists

many army officers have joined the
secret occultist organization inspired

teachings.

The German Order, founded in May 1912,
has lodges in ten German cities.

The government of the Order is by a
secret 12 -man council of initiates,

itself the Armonist Assembly.

The future Aryan Empire will, according
to List, be governed by a similar

council of initiates, a new
Armanenshaft.

In the design of the future SS, List's
Armanist assembly will not be forgotten.

prediction that the Great War would see
the victory of Imperial Germany over its

democratic and degenerate enemies will
not be fulfilled.

By 1918, the German economy is in ruins
and the Kaiser's armies are crumbling.

To the men at the front, the failure of
the Imperial war machine is

inexplicable. In 1918, Germany had won
several major battles.

The Russian enemy had already collapsed.

Theories of a conspiracy abound.

Many believe that Germany has been
betrayed from within.

The blame is placed squarely on the
shoulders of the traditional targets of

German nationalist movements,
capitalists, democrats and Jews.

To the followers of Guido von List, all
that is valuable seems irretrievably

lost.

A government of unknown politicians has
accepted the humiliating terms of the

Versailles Treaty.

Worst of all, the Kaiser and the German
princes have abdicated.

Germany has become a democratic
republic.

The abdication of the Kaiser is a
stunning blow to the occultists of the

order.

Guido von List had taught that the
aristocracy of Germany had been founded

ancient times by the Armannenschaft
itself.

In the aristocracy was to be found the
purest of Aryan blood, and with it the

strongest remaining traces of the Aryan
psychic powers.

In the aftermath of the Great War, faced
with the twin threat of democracy and

socialism,

traditionalists eagerly embrace Liszt's
mystical belief in the German nobility.

But by now, a new concept of aristocracy
is in the process of development.

Side by side with the teachings of
Liszt, it will become the cornerstone of

ideology and the future SS.

Since the mid -19th century, The
evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin

challenged religious beliefs held sacred
for centuries.

But by the end of the Great War, many
physicians, scientists and politicians

have come to see in Darwinism a formula
for social and political action.

Belief in the equality of man is seen as
simply unscientific. The new slogan is

the survival of the fittest.

In Darwin's The Descent of Man,
published in 1871, he speculates on the

of modern medicine on the future course
of human evolution.

With savages, the weak in body or mind
are soon eliminated.

We civilized men, on the other hand, do
our best to check the process of

elimination.

Thus, the weak members of civilized
society propagate their kind.

This, argues Darwin, must be highly
injurious to the race of man.

Excepting in the case of man himself,
hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow

his worst animals to breed.

In Britain, the family planning
movement, led by the scientist Marie

preoccupied with the supposed threat to
the health of the race posed by

uncontrolled breeding.

Marie Stopes' work on birth control,
Wise Parenthood, first published in

is dedicated to all those who wish to
see our race grow in strength and

Stopes is concerned with the tendency
revealed by the national census for the

lower classes to produce more children
than the upper classes.

The numbers of our population, she
states, increasingly tend to be made up

the less thrifty and the less
conscientious.

In America, the compulsory sterilization
of the mentally handicapped, of

alcoholics and of persistent criminals
has been legal in certain states since

1907.

Marie Stopes advocates similar policies
for Britain.

including the sterilization of male
children with an epileptic or mentally

handicapped parent, uncle or aunt.

The family planning movement is part of
a broader movement aimed at directing

and accelerating the evolution of the
human race by selective breeding.

This new science calls itself eugenics.

By 1918, eugenics has become so
influential that the British Medical

publishes an article in which a noted
physician can write, there is no

in nature among children nor among
adults.

And if there is to be a much needed
improvement in the race, we must breed

the physically, morally and
intellectually fit.

From Britain.

Eugenics spreads to Germany, acquiring
the new name racial hygiene.

University departments and institutes
are founded devoted to the new science.

By the 1920s, eugenics has won
widespread support amongst the German

establishment.

It has also had a profound effect on the
doctrines of the German occultists.

In 1919, Guido von List, a prophet of
the Aryan millennium, dies in Berlin at

the age of 70.

His place as Germany's leading mystic
and Aryan visionary has been taken by

Lanz.

Lanz, an ex -Cistercian monk and
respected biblical scholar, will have a

profound impact on the development of
Nazi ideology and on the structure and

ritual of the future SS.

Lance has blended the Aryan occultism of
Guido von List and the principles of

the science of eugenics.

He calls his new doctrine theozoology.

Theozoology is an occult religion of
race.

Inspired by Madame Blavatsky's mystical
history of racial evolution, Lance

claims... that the decline of the Aryans
occurred because they had committed

bestiality with a sub -human species.

The result was the creation of many
mixed races, races whose very existence

threatens the rightful dominance of the
Aryans.

Like List, Lance believed that the early
Aryans possessed the power of

telepathy.

Interbreeding with racial inferiors had
led to the loss of their paranormal

abilities.

Why do you seek a hell in the next
world, Lance asks?

Is not the hell in which we live and
which burns inside us sufficiently

dreadful?

To Lance, the hell which burns inside is
the impure blood in the veins of even

the purest of Aryans.

The teachings of Jörg Lanz are
propagated throughout Germany and

own journal, Ostara, founded in 1905.

Lanz claims that over 100 ,000 copies of
Ostara a year are sold.

He even claims that amongst his eminent
subscribers is the British general

Kitchener.

In the pages of Ostara, And in a series
of widely read essays, Lance develops a

terrifying prescription for the
purification of the race.

He proposes polygamy to increase the
birth rate of the racially purest.

Eugenic convents are to be established,
in which chosen women he calls

broodmothers will produce children for
pure -blooded Aryan males.

While the racially impure and the
physically or mentally unfit are to be

sterilized, other races, deemed
inferior, are to be deported to

used as slave labor.

In the future Nazi state, all of Lance's
proposals will be given the most

serious consideration.

Some will be put into practice.

A massive compulsory sterilization
campaign will be directed at those

physically, mentally or racially
inferior.

The deportation of German Jews to
Madagascar will be discussed in the

echelons of the party.

The SS will plan for the official
introduction of polygamy and will found

own SS breeding program.

To your glance, the legends of the
Knights of the Holy Grail are more than

products of the medieval imagination.

Lance believed that they were the
Knights Templar, founded in the 12th

and famed for their part in the
Christian Crusades.

Lance believed that the Crusades were an
attempt to hold back the inferior races

of the East.

The Holy Grail was an electrical force.

representing the psychic powers of the
pure -blooded Aryans.

The search for the Grail was the search
for racial purity.

In 1907, Lance formed an occult society
dedicated to a new crusade.

He called it the Order of the New
Templars.

In the castle of Bergwerfenstein in
Upper Austria, Lance founded the Order's

first headquarters.

Other order priories soon follow.

The occult rituals of the new Templars
are based on Lance's monastic

and his own specially composed psalms,
prayers, and readings.

A constant theme is an appeal to the
Arian Christ, for salvation from racial

impurity, and for the extermination of
inferior races.

The aims of the Order are explicit.

To harmonize science, art and ethics
into an occult religion, devoted to the

purification of the Aryan race in all
countries of the world.

In anticipation of the practices of the
SS, prospective members and their

marriages are racially vetted.

For Lance...

The new Templars are the beginning of a
new order.

No longer will parliaments determine the
fate of the people, Lance proclaims. In

their place will rule wise priest kings
and leaders of chivalrous and spiritual

secret orders.

In reality, it will not be the
occultists of the new Templars who will

the Aryan aristocracy of the future.

The mystical doctrines preached by Lance
will be put into practice by others,

above all, by a man who since the age of
20 has been an avid collector of

Ostara.

In the closing months of 1918, Corporal
Adolf Hitler, holder of the Iron

Cross First Class, will come to the
attention of his superior officers.

A near mutiny at the demobilization camp
at which Hitler is stationed is brought

under control by his powerful oratory.

In September 1919, Hitler, now a
civilian, is called upon once more by

army command, this time to spy on an
insignificant nationalist group calling

itself the German Workers' Party.

Within months, Hitler has joined the
party and has begun to speak at

By January 1920,

he has been elected head of propaganda
and has drawn up a new party

constitution.

The army intelligence captain who had
first recruited Hitler as a spy has been

retired. His replacement as Hitler's
army sponsor is the 32 -year -old

Ernst Röhm.

Rome is held in high regard as a
courageous frontline officer and an

organizer.

The Bavarian army command has given Rome
the task of circumventing the arms

restrictions imposed by the Treaty of
Versailles.

He is to establish secret arms dumps and
organize the many nationalist

paramilitary groups in Bavaria into an
unofficial army reserve.

One such group of irregulars is the
parcel force commanded by ex -naval

Hermann Erhardt.

The Erhardt Brigade has played a major
role in combating socialist revolution

Bavaria. It is Ernst Röhm who brings
together Erhardt and Adolf Hitler.

Public meetings of the early Nazi party
are defended by stewards known as the

Athletics and Sports Detachment.

In the summer of 1921, Ernst Röhm
arranges that officers of the Erhardt

should become the commanders of a new
party defence force, the SA Storm

Detachment.

To Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, the
function of the SA is to protect party

speakers and make an impressive show of
force when the occasion demands.

But the SA has another role.

It is an unethical part of the German
army. It is trained by army officers,

numbered in army mobilization plans, and
controlled by Rome and Erhard.

Hitler is well aware that the allegiance
of the SA does not lie with him or with

the party.

He knows that as party leader, he needs
a force upon which he can rely utterly.

The shock troop Hitler is the prototype.

For the SS.

November 1923.

Adolf Hitler is jailed for his part in
an attempt to overthrow the government

Bavaria. The Nazi party and the SA are
banned.

Hitler's shock troop bodyguard is
scattered.

During his imprisonment, Hitler writes
his political testament, Mein Kampf, and

ponders the future of the party and of
the SA.

It is clear that eventually he must
revive the SA, but he must also reform

strengthen his own personal guard.

Hitler's requirements for his new force
are clear.

I told myself then that I needed a
bodyguard, even a very restricted one.

but made up of men ready to march
against their own brothers.

On December the 20th, 1924, Hitler is
released from prison.

He has served only nine months of a five
-year sentence, but his trial and

imprisonment have made him a national
figure.

Two months after his release, Hitler
formally reconstitutes the Nazi party

reforms the F .A. under a new commander.

Rome and Hitler have argued and parted
company.

In April 1925, Hitler orders his
chauffeur and ex -bodyguard, Julius

form a new force for the defense of the
Führer and the protection of party

headquarters.

It is the Schutzstaffel Protection
Squad, the F .S.

To set themselves apart from the SA, the
SS wear black caps bearing a silver

death -head insignia.

To the intense irritation of the SA, the
SS is soon behaving as an elite.

SS entry requirements are far stricter
than those of the SA.

SS discipline is more severe.

The SS attend all party meetings but
never speak.

Already, its unofficial motto is...

The aristocracy keeps its mouth shut.

On July 4th, 1926, Hitler confirms the
SS as his elite organisation.

At the second party rally at Weimar, he
gives the SS guardianship of the party's

most sacred relic, the flag drenched in
the blood of party fighters killed in

the coup of 1923.

As custodians of the blood banner, the
SS are entrusted with the Nazi symbol of

martyrdom in the struggle for Aryan
supremacy.

The transformation of the SS from the
elite guard of the Führer into the

mystical order it will eventually become
will be the work of one man.

He is Heinrich Himmler, the most
enigmatic of all Nazi leaders.

Himmler is a devoted follower of the
Aryan occultism of Guido von List and

Lanz. He too dreams of a Germanic empire
ruled by a mystical order of the Aryan

elite. He is determined that this elite
should be drawn from the ranks of the

SS.

The Superman, the new breed of Germanic
ruler, is to be created from the stock

which he will select.

Himmler is appointed head of the SS in
January 1929.

For almost a year, he and his wife have
been smallholders and poultry farmers.

Since early youth, Himmler has been an
eager convert to the teachings of the

movement for life reform.

The land, he believes, is the origin of
all that is good.

Cities are the source of all that is
unhealthy, corrupt and immoral.

The yeoman on his own acre, writes
Himmler, is the background of the German

people's strength and character.

Himmler has long been associated with
the Ottoman League, a nationalist and

-Slavic movement of city youth committed
to life on the land and the expansion

of German farming to the east.

The oath of the Ottoman League is sworn
by blood and soil.

In the Ottoman League, Himmler has met
the man who will transform the oath by

blood and soil into a central doctrine
of the SS.

To Walter Darre, an ex -official in the
Prussian Ministry of Agriculture, the

relationship between German blood and
German soil is a source of mystical

Questions of agriculture are not
questions of economics, but of race and

destiny.

In 1930, Himmler's fantasies of an Aryan
future are the least of Hitler's

concerns. The unity of the party and
Hitler's own future as its leader are

threat.

With the economic depression at its
height, Germany's unemployed flood into

ranks of the SA.

The stormtroopers now number 100 ,000
men.

To the radicals of the SA, National
socialism promises the destruction of

traditional German ruling classes.

In the eyes of the stormtroopers, the
industrialists, army officers and

aristocrats, who are the Nazi party's
most influential supporters, are no more

than contemptible parasites.

In protest at the political alliances
which Hitler has formed, many SA

commanders withdraw their men from the
party's service.

Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief,
warns Hitler that a split within the SA

within the party is imminent.

Hitler's solution is to recall the only
man he believes capable of reuniting the

SA, Ernst Röhm.

Röhm will succeed in the task Hitler has
set for him.

He will pay for success with his life.

As Rome sets about the unification and
expansion of the SA, Himmler takes a

different road.

His strategy is not one of rapid
expansion.

Instead, he concentrates on careful and
systematic selection.

In 1930, Himmler had won a valuable
concession from Hitler.

The SS would be allowed to recruit from
the ranks of the SA.

Himmler proceeds to put into practice
his theories of breeding.

We went about it like a nursery gardener
trying to reproduce a good old strain

which has been adulterated and debased.

I started with a minimum height
requirement.

I knew that men of a certain height must
somewhere possess the blood I desired.

On December 31, 1931, Himmler
establishes the SS... Race and

Resettlement Bureau.

It is to be headed by his old friend,
Walter Dari.

Dari is awarded the rank of Honorary SS
General.

The task of the Race and Resettlement
Bureau is to prepare for the future

colonization of the East by pure
-blooded Germans.

It is also instructed to conduct
research into racial ancestry.

biological selection, and the history of
the areas.

Its staff of leading academics and
medical men are ordered by Himmler to

stricter requirements for SS entry.

Bureau physicians assess the degree of
racial purity of each applicant by

physical examination.

Only those considered pure or
predominantly Nordic are acceptable.

The applicant's physique is also judged
on a nine -point scale.

The examiners are instructed to take
into account the attitude and bearing of

the candidate.

Himmler has decreed, in his attitude to
discipline, the man should not behave

like an underling.

His gait, his hands, everything should
correspond to the ideal which we have

ourselves.

To Himmler, selection is only the first
step in his plan to reclaim the Aryan

blood latent in the German people.

The second stage is the control of SS
breeding.

The Race and Resettlement Bureau is
charged with the task of racially

marriages.

Prospective brides of SS men are
required to prove the purity of their

blood back to the year 1750.

By 1933, the Bureau will be examining
almost 2 ,000 SS marriage applications a

month.

It is the beginning of the largest and
most terrifying eugenics experiment in

human history.

From 1935, the Race and Resettlement
Bureau will be empowered to vet the

marriages of the entire civilian
population of Germany.

is so confident of success that he
predicts that in 120 years the entire

people should once more be pure -blooded
Aryans.

Hitler knows that the realization of his
Aryan vision depends above all on the

SS becoming the most powerful
organization in the Nazi party and in

state.

Already Hitler has given the SS the role
of carrying out police and intelligence

duties within the party.

Himmler is quick to seize the
opportunity to expand his power.

In 1931, Himmler recruits a 33 -year
-old ex -naval officer, Reinhard

to found an SS security service.

The establishment of the SD will be the
first stage in Himmler's creation of an

Echer state within a state.

In 1932, two elections for the
presidency of Germany delivered to

the national vote.

In the July parliamentary elections,
Hitler campaigns in 50 cities in the

of two weeks.

His efforts are amply rewarding.

The party wins over 13 million votes and
230 seats in the Reichstag.

Hitler demands the post of Chancellor.

Parliament refuses.

Yet another election on November the 6th
sees the Nazi vote fall by 2 million.

The Communists increase their vote by
almost 1 million and win 100 seats.

With no party having an overall
majority, the Conservatives in

an alliance with the Nazis.

Hitler's price for cooperation is the
Chancellorship.

This time, he has not refused.

In spite of his growing power within the
party, Heinrich Himmler is not awarded

a ministerial post in the new
government.

But the man Hitler calls, my loyal
Heinrich, does not complain to his

Himmler's ambition extends far beyond
the control of a mere government

department.

During his youth, Himmler had spent
three years as a student of agriculture.

In the college -fencing fraternity to
which Himmler belonged, Jörg Lanz's

occultist periodical Astara was widely
read.

Of all the prophecies made by Lanz, one
would become Himmler's obsession.

On astrological grounds, Lanz foretold
the invasion of Europe from the east.

Himmler comes to believe that it is the
destiny of the SS to repel the coming

assault.

The great battles he foresees will be a
prelude to the final victory of the

Aryans.

Already Himmler has identified the
figure of German history who will become

idol and his inspiration.

King Heinrich I, German king of the
Saxons, had in the 10th century fought

conquered the Slavic tribes of the East.

So great will Himmler's devotion to the
king become that he will make an annual

pilgrimage to Heinrich's tomb.

He will believe himself the
reincarnation of the king and the

psychic messages from the spirit of the
dead ruler.

Himmler believes that his divine mission
is to complete the work of King

Heinrich. He will create from the SS.

a knightly order which will rule the
coming Aryan Empire.

But, for a time at least, Himmler's
visions of the future must take second

to practical politics.

From 1933, Himmler's objective is to win
control of Germany's many state police

forces.

The major obstacle to his ambition is
Hermann Göring.

Göring is now Minister President of
Prussia and Chief of the Prussian Secret

Police, the Gestapo.

Göring sees himself as prime candidate
for the job of Chief of a new unified

German police force.

In Göring's campaign to eliminate
Prussian communists, and all other

of national socialism, he employs the SA
as auxiliaries to the police and the

Gestapo.

The Berlin SA are the most brutal and
the most feared storm troop detachments

Germany.

Their hatred of the middle classes
almost equals their hatred of Jews and

communists.

But Göring is unconcerned.

It is not my business to do justice, he
proclaims. It is my business to

annihilate and exterminate. That is all.

In the capital and throughout Prussia,
Göring unleashes a reign of terror in

which thousands are interred in SA
concentration camps.

The situation is fast becoming a
national scandal.

The party's supporters, amongst the
middle and upper classes are outraged.

Hitler is persuaded that command of a
unified German police force cannot be

entrusted to Göring.

Himmler has won a major victory.

One by one, the state police forces will
fall under his control.

In April 1934, Himmler wins the greatest
prize of all.

He succeeds in forcing Goering to hand
over control of the Gestapo.

Now, only one force stands between
Himmler and the power he seeks.

Spring 1934.

Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA, conducts
his own version of Hitler's flag

consecration ritual.

It is a sign to the four million strong
SA of Röhm's power and independence.

Röhm's intention is to create from the
SA a new National Socialist German army

with himself as its commander -in
-chief.

The regular army commanders become
increasingly anxious.

Under cover of inspecting a naval
exercise, Hitler holds a secret meeting

the army generals.

He gives them his assurance that in
exchange for their support, the army

continue to be Germany's only military
force.

Hitler promises that Rome will be dealt
with.

The agent of his destruction is to be
Himmler's SS.

Himmler and his deputy, Heydrich,
contrive evidence that Rome and the SA

planning a coup against Hitler.

A list of the supposed conspirators is
drawn up.

It includes not only the leadership of
the SA, but all those who have opposed

the growing power of the SS.

The bloodbath that Himmler unleashes on
June 30, 1934, will become known as the

Night of the Long Knives.

Up to 500 will be murdered by SS
executioners.

The murder of the SA leadership is
greeted with relief by the German army.

On the death of President Hindenburg on
the 2nd of August 1934 and the

confirmation of Hitler as President of
Germany, the army willingly changes its

oath of allegiance.

Loyalty is now sworn not to the German
state or to the Constitution, but to

Adolf Hitler himself.

The true victor of the Night of the Long
Lives is not the German army.

It is the SS.

On July 20, 1934, a grateful Fuhrer
decrees that the SS is to be

an independent organization within the
party.

What is more, ignoring his pledge that
the army is to be the Reich's only

military force, he gives permission for
the SS to form its own military units.

In time, The Waffen, or armed SS, will
number almost one million men.

By the summer of 1934, Himmler has won
total independence for his SS elite.

His eugenics program is established.

He has begun the process of winning
control of all German police and

services.

With Hitler's blessing, He has created
the nucleus of an SS army.

Heinrich Himmler is now free to put into
effect the next phase of his plan for

the SS.

The creation of a mystical order of
Teutonic Knights.

An order which will dominate the coming
Aryan millennium.