All language subtitles for H T L T o t T R S01E01 The Austrian 1080p HULU WEB-DL DDP5 1 H 264-FFG (1)_track3_[eng]

TOLAND'S DAUGHTER: I was
very young when my dad was

doing this research.

His office was at the far
end of the house and

I was definitely not
to disturb him.

But then, at the end of the
day, he would emerge,

but he would close his door.

So, I asked my dad, you know,
what was in the office.

And he's like, "Oh well, where
that's where uncle Adolf lives."

And so I believed that there
was a person living in my

house that I'd never seen.

I don't remember the exact
moment I had the epiphany but

I was, I was like,
I kind of felt oh God,

oh, that was uncle Adolf.

I found these people
were fascinated by the fact

that all I was trying to
do was tell the facts.

And by the way,
I taped it all.

The story of the
rise of Hitler is an important

story for any time, but I do
think there is a particular

urgency in
understanding it now.

The story of Hitler
shows that a seemingly obscure

person can come to
take nearly total power.

It shows what a
democracy can become.

It shows that the order that
we take for granted can change

rapidly, from one
day to the next.

Hitler launched
history's most destructive

and terrible war.

The fact that he so completely
targeted Jews for murder,

the sheer scale of the
atrocities he committed,

figure it's important for us to
understand that Hitler was not a

different species from us,

and to understand him
as a human being.

I don't think to do that
is to make excuses for him.

I think to do that is
to really try to better

understand ourselves.

Adolf Hitler is more
alive today than he ever was,

and unless we keep reminding
people of what Adolf Hitler was,

an American Hitler
could come up.

He would be 100% American,
he'd look charming.

But there's one thing to
beware, folks, if this man

says I'm going to do all this
for you and the end justifies

the means, he is a
potential Hitler.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I shall start.

When Hitler came,
in March of '38,

I was nine-years-old.

I still, was still
going to school.

Children didn't, didn't speak
about, "I am a Jew," or,

"I am not a Jew."

They, they were
playing together.

In the moment Hitler came,

it, it started all the things

Hitler was doing
on Jewish people.

I was very anxious.

I, I was running home
right away and,

and I'm glad when

I make a bigger
distance to this Hitler.

Germany
is in full control of
Austrian affairs tonight.

The Nazi swastika flag is
flying from the government

buildings in Vienna
and other cities.

Austria was
declared to be a state of the

German Federation,

a state of the German Reich.

There is a festive, glorious
weather spreading in all

directions, I might say, becaus
the sunshine is so glorious.

It's a day filled with
happiness in the

souls of all the people.

The annexation of
Austria really seems to be a

crowning achievement at the
moment when it occurs in 1938,

for Hitler's trajectory.

Hitler had had a
complication relationship

with his home country.

But now here comes this
native son, bringing the

German-Austrians, as they
called themselves,

into this greater Reich.

When he appears there,
the remarkable thing is

it all was easier than he
thought it was going to be.

From Hitler's point of view,
it's a sign that,

"I was right all along."

He stated today,
"I announce the return of my

own home country into
the fold of the Reich."

And then he closed...

.

My ears, it was fixed.

Hitler shouting and the
people also shouting, "Heil."

Hitler was already in Germany
and he was doing bad things

to Jewish people.

So, the Jewish people in
Vienna did know that he was,

was thinking about killing us.

Hitler's baby
picture is the scariest

picture of them all.

There's no way you could say
that baby is going to turn

into a genocidal monster.

It's a baby.

And what that really means
is that if you think about

its implications
for human nature,

any child has within him

the possibility of
turning into a Hitler.

Hitler was not the product of
a bad father or a bad mother.

Hitler was the
product of bad ideas.

From an early age,
people who knew Hitler

described him as very
strong-willed, as stubborn,

as irascible, and we can see
signs in retrospect of a

narcissistic personality.

I think to
understand Hitler's particular

German identity,

we really have to think
about Hitler's Austria

is an empire that is
sort of backwards looking.

Austria has not kept up
with much of Europe,

and certainly not kept
up with Germany proper

in any technological, military,
economic sense at all.

Hitler, of course, very, very
much wants to be German,

in the sense of belonging to
the German nation state.

Hitler's father, Alois
Hitler, died rather suddenly

in 1903, when Hitler
was in his mid-teens.

Hitler does not seem to have
mourned his father too much.

They had fairly typical
father-son conflicts,

at least according to Hitler,
about what kind of direction

Hitler's future life
was going to take.

Hitler wanted to be an artist.

His father wanted him to be a
civil servant and follow

in his own footsteps.

So, in a way, Alois' death may
have sort of cleared Hitler a

little bit to follow more of
the path that he wanted to

follow and try to
become an artist.

The paintings are mostly
street scenes in Vienna or

Munich, and they're
often quite good in terms of

renderings of street
scenes and buildings.

What is striking is that they
either don't have any people

in them, or the people
are very badly drawn.

Hitler could draw
buildings well,

but he couldn't draw people.

Although it's a bit
impressionistic, I think this

tells us something important
about Hitler, about how his

mind worked, about
where his priorities were.

Hitler applied twice to the
Academy of Fine Arts, in Vienna.

The first time, his
application made it through to

the second round before they
decided that his skills were

not adequate to get
him into the class.

When he applied again, he
was rejected at the first cut.

This coincides with the period
of his life in which his

mother became ill with cancer,
in 1907, and so all these

disasters are hitting him
more or less at the same time.

Hitler, by all accounts, cared
for her with a devotion that's

both striking and
maybe somewhat unusual.

And he was absolutely stricken
with grief when she died.

'Cause it seems to be after
her death that he really

kind of loses direction.

And this opens up that period
of about seven years of his

life where he's just drifting.

I think what's
significant about Hitler in

his younger years is
Hitler's aimlessness,

or lack of direction.

Hitler had left Austria
as a man who, in that phase of

his life, had been a failure.

He'd been living at basically
a men's homeless shelter in

Vienna, and eked out just a
bare, bare living,

painting pictures
mostly for tourists.

This very, very
young man, by most estimations,

doesn't seem to really be
anyone particularly special.

Vienna was a very
multi-ethnic city, by the

standards of
Europe in the day.

Very, very diverse.

Vienna has a very
clear Jewish culture to it.

Depending on how you calculate
it, it has an eight, nine or

10% Jewish population.

And many members of
that community are really

artistically and
culturally prominent.

Hitler doesn't have
the economic resources.

He doesn't have the
obvious artistic talent.

He's just not able to
get into that circle.

So, he's starting to stir up
grievances about what he sees

as a kind of established
cultural elite,

which is not open to him.

As a German nationalist,
Hitler leaves Austria finally

because he knows that he's
soon gonna get caught up in

having to do his compulsory
military service in the

Austro-Hungarian army.

Because of the ethnic ad
religious diversity of

Austria, he doesn't wanna
have anything to do with that.

So, he basically flees Vienna
in 1913, and moves to Munich.

Hitler was very
happy when the war broke out.

He rushed to enlist
in the Bavarian army.

In Berlin, the
Germans know the hour of glory

is at hand.

In Vienna, Hitler was
a rather aimless character.

It's not really until the war
that we see that Hitler

seems to find some
sort of place.

This ability to enter into a
war, to show Germany's might,

very clearly excited him.

Hitler served with a
unit that became quite famous,

known as the Litz
regiment of the Bavarian army.

His job was to carry orders
from the regimental headquarters

to the headquarters of
the various battalions.

His billet, if you will,
was not in the trenches,

it was in the relatively
more comfortable

regimental headquarters.

That also means his service
was less dangerous than it was

to be a rifleman
in the trenches.

In August of 1918, the
military high command realized

that they were going to lose
and there wasn't much point

in keeping on fighting.

Having been subjected to four
years of propaganda saying,

"We're just about to win.
We're just about to win,"

the German people cannot grasp
that they've actually lost.

And it was in this environment
that several of the army

commanders very deliberately
formulate a complete fairytale.

The collapse of the
German army is justified by

the generals at the time by
saying we were stabbed in the

back by the
socialists and the Jews.

Antisemitism was very
central in Germany at that time.

It's normal to see the
expression of the idea that

Jews should be excluded, Jews
should be completely out,

that everything literally
is the fault of the Jews.

All of this was a
fantasy, but it had a powerful

psychological hold for Germans
who didn't quite understand

how they could have lost the
war and so that myth really

gained widespread
belief in Germany in
the inter-war years.

The Treaty of Versailles
was the legal instrument

that formally brought
World War I to an end.

It included losses
of territory, certain clauses

that, for example, disallowed
the unification between

Germany and now Austria.

But the thing that
really infuriated almost all

Germans was that Germany
was obliged by the treaty to

accept sole responsibility for
the outbreak of World War I,

and then as a consequence of
that, to pay reparations to

the powers that
had defeated it.

And it was widely
seen as unfair, punishing

beyond all reasonableness,
indeed to the point where it

would not allow
Germany to survive.

With the end of
World War I, in the way that

it ends, the utter devastation
he feels, realizing that that

intense sacrifice was
to amount to nothing,

he does seem to
finally find an aim.

This devastating moment is
actually what sets him on his

path towards becoming the
leader of the Nazi party and

ultimately he
Chancellor of Germany.

While the
war may have stopped,

the violence doesn't.

There is blood running in
the streets, essentially.

You see political
assassinations happening

quite frequently, both of
left-leaning figures and

right-leaning figures.

And what we also see if
that all of the various

political parties then
get paramilitaries.

These armed members are going
out and fighting with their

fists, fighting with knives,
fighting with guns,

producing bloodshed that is
really just built in to

the turmoil of the period.

Hitler started to come
under the wing of an officer

who was heading up basically
an educational unit for

soldiers, really trying to
school them in kind of more

right-wing and
nationalist politics.

Hitler, who is still
in the army, is sent as almost

an informer, to go and look
at public assemblies that are

being held by various
groups in Munich at the time.

And the real concern here is
to make sure that radical left

groups don't gain a foothold.

On one occasion, Hitler
goes to a meeting of a group

called the German
Workers' Party, or DAP,

in its German abbreviation.

Hitler is supposed to just be
there to observe and to take

notes and to report back.

But what happens at this
meeting is a man stands up and

gives a speech in favor of
Bavarian separatism from

Germany, and this is
too much for Hitler.

He sort of spontaneously
stands up and unloads on this

person with a full kind of
Hitlarian tirade, and he

really impresses the leaders
of the DAP, especially the

main leader of it, a
man named Anton Drexler.

And Drexler is reported to
have said something along the

lines of, "This guy has
really got a mouth on him.

We could use him."

And at this moment, you know,
Hitler really seems to be

kind of launched on his way.

Nazi ideology is
such an amorphous, toxic soup.

Hitler didn't really
mobilize for anything.

Initially Hitler is
just basically providing a

diagnostic of all that he
sees is wrong with the world.

He is slapping groups left and
right who he finds suspect,

dangerous, alienating.

He would resort to the
Treaty of Versailles as

everything that his ideology
was mobilizing against,

because it provided such a
broad-sweeping consensus

amongst the German population

that it basically
deprived Germany of its

destiny to become one
of the great powers.

He understood what
people would react to, and

that was really his gift, is
that he could talk in a way

that people responded to

and then he could
build on the response.

People who came to hear
Hitler talk about the economy,

they would focus on
those things and they would

deemphasize all the
antisemitic hate speech

that came along with
that, and said,

"Well, that's just for
the stupid masses.

He has to convince some of
those people, that's why he's

talking that way.

He's never actually
going to do this."

Reeling from
the loss of World War I,

angered by the dictated peace,
going through things like

hyperinflation where, you
know, people who had saved

their entire lives then saw
it wiped out literally in a

couple of months, and in that
context, someone who had this

ability to somehow find always
the right message, always what

one wanted to hear, that
person's voice, in the form of

Hitler's speeches, had
resonance to a lot of people.

I'm sorry
if I have to laugh at that.

I don't think Putzi Hanfstaengl
cared about Jews

one way or another.

Certainly not enough that
he would put off by it.

Hanfstaengl was a big and
important supporter of Hitler.

Hanfstaengl really plays
down how much he reacted and

responded enthusiastically
to Hitler's antisemitism.

It's a post-war justification,
much like most of the other

major Nazi figures or military
figures, writing at a later

post-war date.

Every single one is
going to have someone who is

trying to separate
himself from Hitler's evil.

Yeah.

In between 1919 and
1923, Hitler's own profile

as a speaker has, has shot up.

He's become kind of a
local celebrity in Munich,

and he's starting to
develop a big following.

He speaks typically in
Munich's beer halls and he can

draw bigger and bigger crowds,
and so that draws more people

to this fledging
National Socialist Party.

In these early years
after the end of the monarchy

and the beginning of what we
now know as the Wiemar Republic,

it's hard for us to imagine
the level of uncertainty

in what the political system
was gonna look like

a week later, a month later,
a year later.

You had multiple
attempts to topple the

Wiemar Parliamentary Democracy

from both the
right and the left.

Munich certainly was a
hot spot of this activity.

The beer hall putsch
was an attempt by Hitler to

essentially take over not only
Munich, but ultimately

the German government.

At a political meeting
at a beer hall in Munich,

Hitler has gathered together
some of the leading figures

in Bavarian politics.

He launches this whole
proceeding by jumping up
on a table in the beer hall,

grabs his pistol and he
fires up into the ceiling.

He basically takes the
other Bavarian leaders hostage

and says we're all gonna work
together and we will start

from here and we will march on
Berlin and we will take power

in the Reich.

His Nazis are
stopped by troops.

The army and the police actually
crush Hitler's revolt.

This banal incident
helped to delay Hitler's

final suicide by the fateful
stretch of 22 years.

The outcome of the trial
was that Hitler was given what

was actually a very mild
sentence for what he had done.

For the crime
of high treason,

which he was found guilty of,

he only gets a small sentence
of about five years.

The composition
of the court was quite
favorable to Hitler.

The judges were, were pretty
right-wing and it seems clear

that they developed a
fair admiration for him.

In the course of the trial,
one of the judges was heard to

say something like,
"What a tremendous chap,
this Hitler is."

On the one hand,

this is a complete
and utter failure.

But at the same time, now
more people know who he is.

The trial is, in a way,
Hitler's kind of coming out on

the German national stage.

It's the trial that makes
Hitler a national figure

for the first time.

After the trial,
Hitler gives a speech,

"You may convict me but the
goddess of history will tear up

your conviction and smile."

Hitler is defeated, but many
of his core supporters are not

only still around but they're
reformulating the Nazi party.

From this, it's
extraordinarily unlikely that

this particular man could
rise to a position of very

considerable power, and
yet it is going to happen,

along with years of crisis,
of bloodshed and terror.

To Hitler, truth
was not something that
you proved with evidence.

To Hitler, truth was
something that you feel.

Hitler was very insecure,

he needed the huge
circle around him.

I think it's hard
for us to imagine someone

being on trial for treason made
Chancellor of the country.

This is the most
catastrophic political

miscalculation in
modern history.

Captioned by
Cotter Media Group.