Original subtitles

This programme contains some violent scenes

and scenes which some viewers may find disturbing.

During the 1930s, the ownership of cine cameras became widespread across Germany.

This was welcomed by the Nazis because it allowed ordinary people

to record their Thousand-Year Reich.

With history being made all around them, many Germans couldn't wait

to load their cine cameras and begin filming.

Others preferred to record their thoughts in the time-honoured form

of the personal diary.

After many decades of these diaries and films being hidden away,

they are starting to find the light of day as new generations come

to terms with Germany's Nazi past.

What emerges is a unique insight into life under the swastika.

A record that starts with optimism bordering on hubris.

Few know it yet, but by the end of 1941, Nazi Germany is teetering

on the brink of catastrophe.

Christmas traditions are precious for Germans,

who gave the world the Christmas tree

and some of its favourite carols.

A time for family, frivolity, and fun.

These are glimpses of small human moments in between the grand sweep of war.

This is the Bersche family from Berlin.

Putting on a Christmas display lovingly captured by husband Hans.

The traditions of the Christmas tree,

that is a tradition you share as a German.

And that's something very problematic, too.

When you see it used in the same context that you're familiar with,

it feels almost like everything was misappropriated by the Nazis

and it's your own culture that you share with them.

Because that's the most important family gathering of the year.

I don't know, they look very pleased with themselves and in a staged way to me.

It looks like there was a certain purpose somehow to this film.

I think when you look at photographs of films from that period,

you get these in-between moments that make you realise

seemingly banal scenes of celebrating Christmas,

you understand that not everything about that time was about Nazi ideology or the war.

That, of course, people lived their lives.

And because of that, it was probably not always apparent to them

that many decisions they made on an everyday basis were political decisions.

And the gender roles.

Woman is knitting something, man is reading.

And the train set.

Everything's under control.

It's meant to signify that there was money there to be able

to give something like that as a Christmas gift.

Here, the gingerbread house that's...

I think every German has fond feelings for in some way.

And it's uncomfortable to see that reflected on the children's face that lived at that time.

So, I think the intimacy of these private moments really make you...

..connect to these people, but in an uncomfortable way.

People chose to live in a certain way that rings true today as well.

So, the gifts are a little bit questionable here, too.

A helmet and the soldier's swastika flag...

You know, a movie that's staged like a home movie,

but it's propaganda. It's pure propaganda in a way.

Ah, clearing the snow.

Pushing a handcart.

Of course, the weather is a huge factor in the whole war.

Particularly when the Germans go eastward

because it's wonderful in the summer.

But once you start getting these terribly cold winters,

it's so difficult for people to survive without coal, without food.

And as the war starts to bite, not only are the peoples

of Eastern Central Europe affected, but the Germans themselves come to be affected.

It's not the case here - people are still well-fed.

Energetic little kids are helping, clearing up the snow.

Although many of the people look healthy, the population's view

of the war is changing.

50-year-old Hans Eggers lives in Hamburg, and by February 1942,

his diary is preoccupied with food and the weather rather than military successes.

VOICEOVER: It is -40 degrees today and we have restrictions

on the supply of electricity and gas.

Our nutrition has become worse.

Hard, frozen cabbages and turnips are all we have for lunch.

Most of the grain is wintered out.

Many potatoes are frozen in the rents.

Some are not harvested even in autumn

because there was a lack of manpower.

We've all become skinny as dogs.

This looks like the Winterhilfswerk collection for fur coats

because the troops on the Eastern Front,

Hitler thought it was going to be such a quick victory.

He didn't provision the troops for winter weather.

And so they had a call for pelts, fur coats, and winter equipment.

So, there's skis and sleds going,

those will be going off to the front for the soldiers.

Wehrmacht soldiers freezing outside of Moscow.

A lot of the soldiers commented on getting these fur coats

and finding things like lipsticks inside the pockets.

Clothes being loaded onto the back of lorries to be sent off

for the troops outside Moscow because they had gotten to almost

within the tram lines in Moscow.

But they couldn't get any further, and then the weather intervened,

and they were absolutely in dire straits.

Frozen in the snow, their supply lines vastly overextended.

But the number of soldiers out in the Eastern Front who were dying

or being terribly affected by frostbite, for example,

toes and fingers and ears being frozen off.

This was a terrible, terrible winter.

There's still time to...

..play in the snow, have some fun.

And somebody's going to go skiing down the sidewalk of their town.

Southern Germany, somewhere.

For Victor Klemperer, a Jew living in Dresden,

the cold and lack of food, are part of the daily horror of life

under the Nazis.

Klemperer has avoided deportation so far thanks to his marriage to Aryan wife Eva.

But many of his friends are not so lucky.

Before a deportee goes, the Gestapo seals up everything

he leaves behind.

It is all forfeit.

Yesterday evening, before he was evacuated, Paul Kreidl brought me

a pair of shoes that fit me perfectly and are most welcome given

the dreadful condition of my own.

The latest transport includes many of the elderly, weak, and sick.

It is unlikely that many will still be alive on arrival.

Across the Reich, thousands of Jews await their fate.

But one German married to a half-Jewish woman hatches

an astonishing plan to persuade Nazi officials

to change the racial status of his wife.

This is Helmut Machemer, who is also a prolific film-maker.

To do this, he must win an Iron Cross first class.

A medal that, according to an obscure bit of Nazi law,

might entitle his family to be recertified as German.

I think the story of Machemer is essentially one

of, in a sense, a bewildered human being who is married to the daughter

of a Jew and can't find a way out other than

to go to the front and try to become a highly-decorated soldier

in the belief that this will protect his family at home

even though by implication he would be up to his neck

in the slaughter of innocent people.

His division is sent to Ukraine.

The fighting here is not only savage, it soon includes the murder

of tens of thousands of non-combatants - many of them Jews.

So, one of the interesting things about this footage

is its provenance, and in particular the fact that the doctor who made it

didn't have to serve.

He was already old enough not to have to volunteer, but chose to

partly to protect his Jewish wife.

He couldn't know whether the marriage would be dissolved.

In fact, the Nazis never got around to dissolving marriages.

They put a lot of pressure on Aryan partners to divorce their Jewish partners,

but they didn't actually dissolve marriages.

And yet there was a constant fear that they would do so.

He essentially sees himself as a patriotic German who is...

..shadowed by the fear of being classified as being Jewish

or as being somehow connected to being Jewish?

Dr Machemer throws himself into his dual mission,

saving the wounded and rescuing his family.

This is my father now who is just...

..giving the narcosis to a wounded man, you know, he is moving in pain.

This must be a scene within the truck for wounded people

where a young man with a bloody arm

is being treated.

Just imagine, my father was a trained eye doctor but, of course,

he had also basic training in work of general physicians.

And you see so many helping soldiers.

And that is the wounded man who is now happy.

Well done.

So, he gets out of the truck, the next is coming.

If he would be a very brave and successful medic and soldier,

he might have a chance to get a so-called...

SPEAKS GERMAN

..by the Fuhrer.

That would mean that his wife and his children

would not be treated as Jews.

A chance to save his wife, who was half-Jewish,

and his children.

For instance, myself.

So, everything looks very peaceful.

The feelings of the people looks quite relaxed.

HE LAUGHS

So, this is near the end of the story

because after he had received

in early May 1942, this...

..Eisernes Kreuz Erste Klasse,

and was extremely happy.

A few days later, he was killed...

..in his car while he was driving across the battlefield

in order to collect wounded soldiers.

And the enemy, that is the other Soviet side,

was lucky just to set a grenade near to his car.

And he was...

He was dead instantly.

That was on the birthday,

the fifth birthday of my youngest brother Peter on the 18th, May of 1942.

Wooden crosses of those German soldiers who had "fallen",

as we say,

who had died in combat.

In the middle, there is the captain of the company

who is talking to the soldiers.

Oh, and now is he...

What is it about?

They are just saying goodbye to some dead comrades.

It happens that I saw my mother sitting at the desk of my father.

In front of her, a white piece of paper, and she was crying.

I never had...

Excuse me.

I never had seen my mother crying.

So, I was shocked, and she was hitting her fists in desperation...

..on the table.

And this was the moment I'll never forget.

That I knew my father is dead.

In due course, his bravery earns a posthumous declaration

from Hitler's office declaring that his wife, Erna,

has been reclassified as an Aryan German.

It is the only known instance of this ever happening.

Yeah.

I have...

..a high appreciation of his decision...

..to risk his life to protect his wife and his children.

It would have been very easy for him just to get divorced

from his family, from his wife.

And in fact, many Germans did this.

And, so, I think he was a very...

..brave and loving father, that he was willing to risk his life for us.

Machemer saves his family but seems unquestioning about the racial hatred that underliesit.

He is also part of an invading army

which brought untold misery and death.

Just...

..dead corpse.

Horrible.

Dead, frozen corpse.

Yeah, I think that's enough.

Back in Germany, the cruelty of Nazi racial hatred is affecting Klemperer in shocking new ways.

Jews with the star are forbidden to keep pets.

This is the death sentence for Muschel

whom we have had for over 11 years.

He is to be taken to the vet tomorrow so that he is spared

the ordeal of being fetched and put down with the others.

The little creature plays happily and does not know

it will die tomorrow.

Is there someone out there who knows tomorrow you will die?

In November 1942, a major deportation of Dresden Jews begins.

Klemperer is not on the lists, but these Jews being moved

into a transit camp include many of his friends.

They can communicate while they await trains to the East.

They are taking people to the Jews camp at Hellerberg.

Eva said this kind of evacuation is so shameless

because everything happens so openly.

Eisenmann called it catastrophic, unimaginably crowded,

and barbarically primitive, especially the latrines,

but also the narrow beds.

The carpenters who build barracks for Polish prisoners of war stated

they were luxury hotels compared to this Jews camp of sand and mud.

Although we don't know who shot this footage,

it has to have been filmed by a German in authority.

The camera angles from above.

He obviously had some privileged vantage point.

We get to see their luggage labelled as Jews were forced

to give themselves either "Sara" or "Israel" as a given name.

Jew with his star on.

Suitcases.

You know, we always think of Dresden as being that innocent place

that was bombed needlessly in February 1945.

It's often forgotten that it was an absolute hotbed of Nazism.

Over 130 factories producing war material as well, a major rail hub.

And also the way they dealt with their Jewish population

was as brutal as anywhere, really.

Yes, it's just so wrong, isn't it?

You know, you look at these families with their kids.

I mean, Jesus.

Looking quite clearly distressed.

Oh, dear.

You wonder how many of these living people in this footage,

you wonder how much longer they were.

Their shoes have been stolen from them,

and they're been replaced with wooden clogs.

So, "Get rid of your shoes.

"We'll have those, thank you very much.

"Put on these cheap wooden shoes, instead."

You know, you are lesser citizens that you have...

You're not even citizens at all. You're outcasts.

It's really grotesque.

Checking for lice.

In Bielefeld and Minden in November 1941,

within ten days of the first Jews being deported,

rumours came back as to what had happened to them.

Those who had been able to work had been put to work

in former Soviet factories, and that those who couldn't work,

the elderly, women, and small children, and the ill,

had all been summarily executed.

God, it's just so undignified, isn't it?

Germans watching on and laughing.

Jewish men just being made to stand naked together.

Boys and adults together.

This is deeply humiliating for them because, of course, you know,

you live in a society where it's not OK to be naked.

You know, for these older gentleman to be there like that,

that would have been deeply humiliating.

All wearing their wooden clogs struggling to walk in them,

cos they don't fit properly.

They're too big.

You know, it's muddy, it's wet, it's cold...

You know, it's little details like that that often get forgotten

when you're thinking about the Holocaust.

It's really disturbing.

You know, you just think about the death camps.

You forget about the processes of deep humiliation, degradation

that is going on in the process up to them arriving

in concentration camps and death camps.

Horrible.

Across Europe, millions of Jews now live under Nazi occupation

and dread the day their names appear on the deportation lists.

Some have gone into hiding, notably Anne Frank in Amsterdam,

the most famous diarist of the war.

But less than a mile away from where she writes, another group

of Dutch Jews are also in hiding from the Germans.

Cooped up for months on end, they turned to the cine camera

to stave off despair and boredom.

The film-maker is called Harry Swaab.

Notice, obviously...

..Jews wearing the star of David.

Beautifully dressed, doing acting.

Acting - play acting.

This is a Jewish group in hiding in Amsterdam,

living above a cafe of the man who's hiding them.

And they're putting on a play recreating life

as if it was normal life.

Welcoming guests into their supposed cafe or house,

cutting up ration coupons. So, this is normal life for those who are not

in hiding in Amsterdam. And it actually is very, very comfortable.

I'm struck at the beautiful clothes, hairstyles.

The humour, playing cards, the food, the sorts of things

that would simply be unthinkable in Eastern Europe at this point.

There's a certain amount of normalcy even to it.

The idea is to alleviate boredom to have some fun,

despite all the horrible things that are going on.

Now, you have to hide because the time has come to wake up and...

..and go into your hiding place.

So, here's an amazing piece of footage of a hidden door

behind a closet, and you roll it back in front of the hiding place.

And there's another hiding place in the cupboard or oven

in the kitchen.

It's all fake so that people can hide.

And avoid being discovered by the SS.

Which, of course, despite the humour in this,

and despite the sort of jolly nature of it all,

you know that death hangs over each and every one

of these people if they're discovered.

So, although they can make light of it, they can amuse themselves,

try to make it look as if things were OK,

they all know - you can tell in their faces.

Here's a hat with 1942, 1943.

How many more years do they have to live like this till the war ends?

But despite the jolliness of it, you can see...

There's the sort of mimicking the "Heil Hitler" sign, mimicking...

..the crazy idiots who are following Hitler like dolls.

Picture of Hitler.

Incredible footage.

Four months into 1943, the Jews hiding above Cafe Alcazar

are betrayed by pro-fascist Dutch collaborators who scour Amsterdam

for hidden Jews on behalf of the Gestapo.

All but two of the people in Harry Swaab's film are captured in this way.

The Nazis pay the Dutch collaborators a bounty worth £47.50

for each countryman they betray.

Meanwhile, in Russia, the war has taken a catastrophic turn

for the Germans.

In Stalingrad, they are surrounded and starved of supplies by Soviet forces.

After a three-month siege, 91,000 men of the Sixth Army surrender

and begin a descent into Hell.

Fewer than 6,000 of these men will ever return to Germany,

and the last of them not until 1956.

The surrender at Stalingrad is the first major defeat on the Eastern Front.

And it sends shock waves throughout the Reich

as Hans Eggers notes in his diary.

Stalingrad has fallen and the Sixth Army has been destroyed.

The whole Eastern Front is apparently in strong retreat.

This year will be a very difficult one for us.

The total mobilisation of all workers in the homeland is ordered.

Men up to the age of 65 and women up to the age of 45 are called upon

to do war-related work.

From that moment on and following the fall of Stalingrad,

Joseph Goebbels does his very infamous speech in the Sportpalast where he goes,

"What is it you want? What we need is total war."

SPEAKING GERMAN

Suddenly, everything that the Germans are doing

has to be in this war of survival.

And it is painted in those sort of cataclysmic terms.

It is the Thousand-Year Reich, can you survive and you can somehow,

SOMEHOW, find the will, the triumph of the will, Nazi slogan,

to kind of somehow fight back or it's Armageddon.

And instead of going into the Soviet Union to be victorious,

this is now even more a battle of survival for the very nature

of the Teutonic, Aryan, German peoples.

And that is how it's depicted.

So, there is this huge psychological blow where suddenly those in Germany are thinking,

"Yikes, we are really up the creek without a paddle."

For Nazi leadership, it is a turning point.

It is time the German people share the truth about their plight.

ALL: Sieg Heil!

It's an important moment in March 1943 where Goebbels writes down

in his diary that he's talked to Goering and they've agreed

together that it's not a bad thing for the German people to know

what has happened to the Jews because they will realise

that they've burned their bridges. And as he reflects,

"A society which has nowhere to retreat to

"will resist and fight all the more fanatically."

And that idea of holding out and fighting fanatically

is the touchstone for Goebbels of what a successful war effort amounts to and he continues

with this right to the very end, until 1945.

The total war speech comes at a time when ordinary German civilians

need few reminders of how dire things have become.

In the early years of the war, the British bombing inflicted little damage.

But as it intensifies during 1943, the authorities call up those born

in 1926 and '27 to man the guns.

Young boys of just 15 and 16 years old.

These child soldiers come from near Leipzig.

It is May 1943.

The Wehrmacht assumes boys will be less effective than adults,

so initially allocate 100 boys to replace 70 men.

The boys turn out to be far more energetic than their elders,

and before long are in sole charge of Flak batteries.

Children like these are about to face Armageddon.

Well, Hamburg was quite simply the worst ever series of raids on a single city ever

in the Western world.

Colour footage of buildings burning...

I mean, 42,600 people killed in Hamburg

over a number of raids at the very end of July - 3,500 heavy bombers.

80% of the second city in Germany completely destroyed.

Just horrendous.

Wow! Look at that...

Firemen trying to subdue the fires, but...

You know, we're...

In Britain, it's all about the Blitz and the bombing of the East End.

But it's just absolutely nothing compared to this.

Wow.

This is unique film footage that Hans Brunswick shot

of the Hamburg firestorm.

And these images became famous as a set of atrocities

that had been inflicted on the German population by...

..not just the RAF, but by...

..the Jewish lobby operating in Washington and London.

In the words of Goebbels, the "Jewish terror attacks".

And this idea that this is terror bombing, that these are terror raids...

..finds its ultimate confirmation in Hamburg as these dazed evacuees

from the city spread their stories as they were evacuated

in open trains in the summer heat.

The city of 1.2 million - Germany's second largest city.

800,000 of its inhabitants flee.

Oh, it's just a shell.

Absolutely ruined.

Look at that.

I mean, you know, that's like Manchester being 80% destroyed or something.

It's just totally unimaginable.

Lots of refugees.

Standing around bewildered.

Sitting on boxes.

Just nothing left.

Wounded man, bandages around his head.

Trucks going out with...

Wow. It's amazing, really, it's...

..sort of exodus of people.

I mean, how do you cope with that?

You have dead lying where they are.

Oh, dear.

Wow.

Yeah, it's pretty gruesome.

I mean, lots and lots of dead bodies.

It becomes extremely political because people quite quickly ask

themselves the question, "Why is this happening to us?"

And they don't just talk about the British air raids.

They also talk...

..about this as retaliation for what they have done to the Jews.

And this picks up a crucial element of official propaganda,

which has been peddled since the spring of 1943,

that the Jews abroad who have somehow captured the governments

of Churchill and Roosevelt are pushing for a war of annihilation against Germany.

This is repeated by Goebbels, it's repeated by Goering.

Goering makes a famous speech a few months after the Hamburg raids in which he says,

"Do not imagine if we are defeated that they will make any distinction

"between Nazis and non-Nazis, between people who supported these things and people who didn't."

And he says, "This is not the Second World War.

"This is the Great Race War."

Hamburg is destroyed as if an earthquake had passed over it.

The violence and heat of the conflagration was so great

that many people left the cellars and were killed by the rain

of the phosphorous bombs.

The streets are full of buried and burned people.

Thousands more are still lying in the cellars, burnt,

suffocated, or crushed.

Hamburg is finished for many years.

The fire chief who organised the filming wasn't just recording

the enormity of the firestorm.

He was telling Germans they are now victims, too.

What Germans have done to the Jews is clearly on the moral deficit.

It's not something to be proud of and yet people talk about it

because they do think that it is linked to the Allied bombing

of German cities, which they also think is a moral aberration.

It's something which just goes beyond the pale.

And so the bit of the rhetoric that works is the idea

that these are Jewish terror attacks.

And that ONLY Jewish terror could explain why German civilians

are exposed to what they have to endure in Hamburg.

It's only in the spring and summer of '43 as the war comes home to German cities

in this most extraordinary and destructive form of aerial bombing

that they start to see themselves as caught up in an impossible cycle of destruction.

For millions of Germans, a sense of their own suffering deflects

questions of guilt for what had been done to the Jews.

By the middle of the war, for the average German worker, say,

the hardships that they were experiencing and the danger, if they were living in a city

like Hamburg or Berlin, was very significant.

They were probably more caught up in the day-to-day struggle to survive.

They were probably largely indifferent to what was happening to Jews.

I think to a significant degree, if they reflected on it,

many of them would still be buying into the anti-Semitic tropes

that they had probably grown up with and thought, "But the Jews probably have this coming,"

or, "This is good because then we can get their stuff."

And of course, one of the big issues around deporting the Jews

was the economic value of what they left behind.

And that ordinary German citizens could benefit from that

by taking the furniture or taking over the flat or the house or whatever.

So, in my imagination, the dominant attitude would be,

"I don't really care. I've got enough problems of my own here."

And, "Jews were never very good and we're glad to see the back of them."

By 1944, making home movies is no longer possible or even desired.

But even this late on, the borders of the Reich stretch across Europe.

And, for some, life under occupation is just about tolerable.

Fernand Bignon filmed this near the town of Thierville in Normandy.

Bignon was a member of the pictorialism photographic movement

whose members regarded photography as an art form.

Well, large parts of the Atlantic coast are... You know, it's a pretty comfortable place to be.

I mean, if you're German, it's pretty cushy. I mean...

These are rich agricultural areas and because the transport systems are so impaired by 1944,

completely dependent on trains, there's not much petrol.

So, there's not much trucks going around.

A lot of the food that's being developed has to be eaten there.

I mean, it's nowhere else for it to go. It's not being shuffled off to Paris or to, you know,

the main cities or anything like that.

So, being on the coast is cushy.

You're going to get much better fed than you would if you were back home in Germany.

And there's not an awful lot going on.

And unless you're unfortunate enough to be in Normandy itself,

you're sort of OK.

I mean, nearly 90% of the Atlantic Wall was never involved in combat.

And if you're French there, again, you're not going that hungry

for the same reasons. The food is staying there,

you're a secondary citizen compared to German troops

and occupation troops but it's perfectly possible

to sort of keep your head down and,

you know, survive and battle it out, frankly.

Normandy, up until the beginning of June 1944, is not a bad place

to be - cut off from the rest of France.

Yes, you're occupied but again,

if you keep your head down, it's sort of OK.

There's rising civil war, of course, because the French forces

of the interior, the resistance movement is growing

because they know there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

And because of the obligatory work orders which means young men have

to go and do labour service in Germany and lots of people don't want to do that.

So, the alternative is to run to the hills and join the Maquis, join the resistance.

So, if you're a young man at this time, you know, the choices are few and far between.

And it's getting tougher and tougher but if you are a sort of ordinary person,

you can mind your P's and Q's and you can sort of keep your head down

and you're sort of going to be OK.

It is absolutely the case that while the Germans are hogging

all the food because of this lack of transport,

a lot of food has to stay in Normandy.

And, actually, it's as good a place as any.

In April 1944, another group of young men arrived in the area.

Jo Dahms is a member of an elite German paratroop regiment.

Here to strengthen the defences along the Atlantic Wall.

The positions were built in such a way that you could stand up

in the pit and be well camouflaged, protected from shrapnel

and covered with wood and earth to hide our position.

One day in May, we were told Field Marshal Rommel

would be inspecting the position.

A moment of excitement will break up the monotony of the daily routine.

We were all excited at the thought of meeting a greatness like Rommel,

and to answer his questions in the right way.

But he stormed through the positions like a driven man,

and we only caught a brief glimpse.

He still had a huge amount to deal with that day.

We were only the first stop.

Little did Jo Dahms or the Bignon family know,

they are on the front line of one of the most monumental moments of the war.

Despite all our efforts at camouflage today, we got a visit

from a very threatening combat aircraft of the Royal Air Force.

It was a three-fuselage aircraft of the newest type,

with the characteristics of a fighter plane

and the firepower of a bomber.

It flew over the positions at low altitude.

We could see the guns in the nose and rockets

on the wings simultaneously opening fire.

Only a timely jump into the cover of a sunken path saved us.

I learned later the plane was the terror of all infantrymen,

a Lightning of the aircraft builder Lockheed.

The Bignon family filmed these same fighter planes, P-38 Lightnings.

On the 6th of June 1944,

Jo Dahms is dug in just five miles from the D-Day beaches.

He is soon in action.

Suddenly, there was enough fire from an unknown donor

who had us covered from behind with strong rifle fire forcing us

into full cover.

The projectiles flew in close just above our heads.

Peter couldn't stop himself from hissing into my ear.

"Those aren't German carbines."

After overcoming a second of shock, I had to act decisively.

Without waiting for any instructions,

I told my MG 42 from the ground and simply shot from my hip

with several bursts of fire into the undergrowth

from which the shots came.

From the other side came icy silence,

which we used to find better cover.

It was impossible to make out who we were facing.

They have no time to film themselves but this official footage

shows his unit in bleak and desperate combat with Allied forces.

By the time Dahms' regiment leaves Normandy, they are reduced

from 4,600 men to just 500.

Back in Thierville, Fernand Bignon has his camera out again,

filming secretly as the Germans finally start to retreat.

After four years of occupation, liberation is finally upon them.

Fernand Bignon no longer has to film in secret.

He and his family are at the roadside exchanging kisses

and flowers with their British liberators.

Back in Germany, the news of the invasion brings

a new round of propaganda.

But Hans Eggers' diary shows he is no longer convinced.

The long awaited invasion of the West began.

According to an official statement of the Army leadership,

it will end with a complete destruction of the enemy.

The battle in Normandy is raging.

In the night from the 15th to the 16th,

we have begun as retaliation to shower southern England and London

with new high-explosive devices.

Both events, which we've been told are coming many times

and whose occurrence has often been doubted, have now become fact.

How will both have an effect?

In Dresden, Victor Klemperer hangs on,

one of just a handful of Jews left in the city.

He, too, watches the invasion but longs for a very different outcome.

The English have held on for three days and are near Caen and Bayeux.

The landing itself, therefore, is successful.

But how will it go now?

And at what pace?

I can no longer hope for anything.

I can hardly imagine living to see the end of this torture

of these years of slavery.

With the Allies closing in, some in Germany were working

to topple the regime.

In July 1944, an attempt is made on Hitler's life

at his Wolf's Lair headquarters.

The bomb plot fails.

Worse, it hardens many Germans' support for the Nazi regime.

Fanaticism like this means Klemperer is in mortal danger

and can see that time is running out.

Worn out and depressed because I had been running around

as the bearer of deportation notices, Waltman told me

that those being deported on Thursday were being sent

to their deaths and the rest of us will be disposed of in the same way

in a week's time.

Then, a major air raid warning sounded.

"If only they could destroy everything,"

said Frau Stuhler bitterly.

This raid on Dresden is a rerun of the horrors of Hamburg.

25,000 dead are left dead.

But for Klemperer, the chaos of the raid offers salvation.

At first, I covered the Jewish star with a blanket.

Then, I removed it from my coat. I had no choice.

Wearing the star, I would be immediately spotted and killed.

After that, I sat in restaurants,

I used both train and tram.

As a Jew in the Third Reich, all of it punishable by death.

I constantly told myself, "Surely nobody could recognise me."

Especially as we were going further and further away from Dresden.

Klemperer and wife Eva lose themselves amid the refugee columns

fleeing Dresden and start to head west.

During the spring of 1945, the regime enlists all ages

to join the fighting.

Hans Eggers, now age 54, is one of those called up.

Although I'm rejected by the Wehrmacht as completely unfit

because of my war injury, I'm called up to the Volkssturm.

The situation is now such that we must expect English troops hourly.

This footage, shot northeast of Berlin, is amongst the last taken

from the German side in the war.

It is filmed by a newsreel cameraman called Gerhard Gahms.

He knows none of what he films will make it onto the newsreels.

Instead, he records the last-ditch stand as an epitaph

to a regime in its death throes.

These last battles on the Oder front were really the last Soviet attacks

into Germany before the final assault on Berlin.

It's really, really interesting why it is that German people keep fighting as long as they do.

There's a number of reasons. First of all, there is the iron will of the Fuhrer

who has this unbelievable hold over people.

And this is really the last stand of the Germans,

the sort of desperate attempt to try and keep the Soviets from breaking through in toward Berlin.

This very young boy must be...

..14 if he's even that.

This tragedy of this very old men and very young boys

by now were being called out because Himmler had created the so-called Volkssturm,

which was made up of young kids and men who were in their 50s and 60s.

The second thing is, what choices?

There's kind of a fight on and somehow come to some settlement.

But the alternative is Armageddon.

It is the end of everything you know - destruction, defeat, marauding...

"Ivan's coming across from the east."

These very young kids.

It's tragic...

..that the Germans just didn't stop.

They just kept on calling up anybody they can find by this point.

A lot of them didn't even have uniforms - they just had arm bands.

And old guys who really couldn't fight.

And this is just the very end of the war.

The Germans were so short of fuel and ammunition that everything

they fired and everywhere they went had to be so carefully planned out

because they simply couldn't spare any men or material at this point.

And the third reason is sort of fanaticism.

It's this fanaticism of a certain proportion of the population

who will just keep fighting to the end and ensure that everyone else does as well.

So, you have ludicrous situations of Nazis in towns about to be overrun

executing people who they consider to be traitors,

even though they're about to be overrun

by the Allies half an hour later.

I mean, it just makes no sense at all.

So, I think it's a combination of factors that keeps them fighting.

I think the biggest factor of all is fear.

It is fear of the alternative and that's what keeps them going.

Hans Eggers is under no illusions about what this means.

Berlin seems to be on the verge of collapse.

About 85% of the Reich is in enemy hands.

Every resistance is meaningless and useless.

By the 28th of April 1945, Victor and Eva Klemperer are taken in

by a family in a village outside Munich.

Suddenly, the familiar sound of artillery fire

became explosions very close by.

Eva even heard the whistle of bullets.

We sat cowering in the corner of the kitchen which seemed the safest.

A last small group of soldiers put up resistance for a few minutes

before even they fled.

The American attack had rolled over our village.

The war was behind us.

Klemperer died peacefully in 1960, aged 78.

His diaries were published in 1995.

They became a literary sensation.

Hitler dreamed of building an empire.

He encouraged his people to film every step along the way.

What they filmed was only ever intended to be viewed

by victorious Germans.

Instead, what they chronicled was their country's descent into the abyss.

The Allies take Germans from the towns near the camps

to see what has been done in their name.

Fittingly, there is a cine camera on hand to record the moment.

It is not enough these German civilians confront Nazi crimes.

Posterity must see them doing it.

When the camps were uncovered and these terrible scenes were revealed

of mass death and people starving and so on,

I think the effect on the Allies was very profound.

And they wanted to confront the local population

with these realities.

But, also, this has to be recorded.

And one thing if you're a German citizen watching a column

of people going off to a railway station and you know

that they're never coming back.

But it's a very different thing to confront the immediate physical evidence

of what was done to these people after they got on that train and were taken away.

The Germans knew a lot, but they didn't know that last bit

of what went on in these camps.

And they needed to know that.