All language subtitles for H T L T o t T R S01E03 The Third Reich 1080p HULU WEB-DL DDP5 1 H 264-FFG (1)_track3_[eng]

I think the
first thing we need to
say about Hitler's roots is,

there's relatively
little we know about them.

He has Austrian roots,
he doesn't deny them but

he doesn't celebrate them.

There had always
been an aura of doubt about

Hitler's ancestry, just who was
the father of Hitler's father

and whether there was a Jew
somewhere in the background.

We know that he was
the fourth child to be born to

his father and mother, but
the first to survive infancy.

We know that his mother
was his father's third wife,

and she was
actually also his niece.

His family had come from
very poor, rural Austria,

so it is astounding,
the rise that he made.

Here is the Austrian
who then goes to Germany,

starts off as a
low infantry man,

gets involved in politics
has trouble breaking in but

then ultimately is
appointed Chancellor.

Sieg! Hail!

Hitler is such
an oddity, such an outsider.

I think to his
detractors, to his opponents,

he appeared not only
ultimately very dangerous but

certainly kind of ridiculous.

Not just German media,

but world media
treated Hitler as a clown.

Historians have called it,
"The underestimation syndrome."

Hitler had always intended
to destroy the democratic system

once he came to power, and
he put this desire very much in

the context of returning
Germany to greatness.

The story of the Hitler
is still important today because

it shows what's possible.

What makes it urgent
is that the rise of Hitler,

the Third Reich
and the Holocaust,

these things happen
much more quickly than

we would think they do.

.

In 1933, when
Hitler becomes Chancellor,

he is governing with
a minority government.

For people who are not familiar
with a multi-party system,

that means that there is a
coalition between parties that

often have more
dramatic differences than

the Republicans and the
Democrats do right now.

Never did the majority of
Germans in any free elections

vote for the Nazi party, and
Hitler himself was quite aware

that his support
was not anything that

he could take for granted.

In 1933,
the mystery Reichstag fire

offered an excuse
for a ruthless purge of

the opponents of Adolf Hitler.

And, in the aftermath,

Hitler mobilized
against the opposition,

claiming that the
Republic was under attack and

Hitler is the only person who
could possibly protect democracy

from these Communist agitators.

Germany was at the
verge of civil war.

The streets of Berlin
were riddled with violence.

So, Hitler
presents the Reichstag,

the German parliament, with
this proposition to basically

outfit him with dictatorial
powers indefinitely to oversee

the recovery of
the German economy,

the return of stability,
the return of law and order.

He basically
asks the parliament to
vote itself out of existence.

The Enabling Act would
allow Hitler to pass legislation

without the parliament.

However, for an Enabling Act
to come into effect, it required

two/thirds of a
vote in parliament.

And how are you
going to do that?

Well, you ban
the Communists from

participating in
the vote, right.

They were being arrested or
they were fleeing the country,

and Hitler made sure that
there were Storm Troopers and

other right wing paramilitaries
in the chamber in case anybody

had second thoughts about
which way they were gonna vote.

The Reichstag votes to
give all of its lawmaking powers

to Hitler's administration.

At that point, the
Reichstag is no longer

any kind of power
factor in German politics.

When the Enabling Act
is passed, Hitler has

really unquestionably
become a dictator.

Very quickly,
Hitler begins setting up what

will become a very,
very extensive system
of concentration camps.

Initially, you would find
mainly political enemies there,

so members of
the Communist Party,

Social Democrats.

Contrary to
what we might imagine,

the concentration camp
system is not kept secret.

Indeed, they are in
newspapers reported as opening.

Jews were incarcerated
in those early camps only if

they were also
Socialists or Communists.

There was no move yet to
systematically target Jews and

place them into
concentration camps.

Once Hitler
consolidates his power,

he still has to get everything
within his own party in align,

and one of the notable
elements of potential resistance

the he sees is that coming
from the SA and Ernst Röhm.

.

The SA, the Stormtroopers,

are this four million
strong paramilitary army,

headed by a particular
nasty figure named Ernst Röhm,

who was a World War I veteran,

one of Hitler's oldest,
most loyal associates and

supporters and, increasingly
they are uncontrollable.

Ernst Röhm has this
ambition to make of this rough

and crude but large band
of SA fighters the core of

the new real people's army.

For the army and
the high command of the army,

that's a mortal threat.

And the conflict steadily
escalates and, by early 1934,

Hitler's feeling the
pressure from both sides.

His priority was
to end the economic crisis,

rearm Germany,
destroy the Versailles Treaty,

prepare Germany for war,
and the existence of Röhm and

this gigantic paramilitary army,

essential as it was
in the early years,

had become an outright
threat to his position.

So, Hitler's looking at
this tension between the army

and the SA, and he knows he's
going to have to take action.

And then there's
this weird lull.

It's a typical Hitler pattern
to wait and wait and wait,

and delay and delay and delay
until the last possible moment

and then, when he strikes,

to strike really
ruthlessly and brutally.

It's known as the
Night of the Long Knives.

And somewhere in the area
of 80 to 100 of the leaders

of the SA are arrested and shot.

Röhm was one of the very
few people Hitler was actually

really close to,
but when it came to it,

ultimately Hitler is about power
and he was certainly ruthless,

and so he, he did
what power demanded.

Hitler afterwards emerges,

taking full
responsibility, saying,

"Yes, I did this.

I did this for
the German nation."

The word "Führer,"
the German word for, "Leader,"

goes from a matter of fact
description of Hitler's position

in the party to mean something
much grander that reflects this

self-belief of
Hitler as the man chosen
by destiny to lead Germany.

In the 1920s
and in the early '30s,

there's a sort of technological
revolution on a bunch of fronts,

really very much like we
feel today with the internet

and social media.

Hitler was really
interested in film,

and his propaganda
minister, Joseph Goebbels,

was really interested in film,

and so it was a kind
of natural thing for them

to explore how
they could use film to

effectively put
out Nazi propaganda.

And so it seemed, I think,
to them fairly intuitive that

filming a Nazi party rally
would be an effective statement.

Sieg! Heil!

The Nuremberg rallies
take on a bit of the feeling of

an American political
party's convention,

serving roughly
the same purpose,

a kind of choreographed
political commercial,

designed to ramp up the base,

create a falling
of mass involvement,

create mass enthusiasm.

And Hitler had
film director Leni Riefenstahl

film the party rally
at Nuremberg in 1934,

the famous Triumph of the Will.

The movie is about
Hitler's deep relationship with

the masses of the German people.

It served a really
clear point to emphasize

Hitler's elevated, heroic,
almost divine role in

the movement, to really
celebrate Hitler as the leader.

Riefenstahl was
given unlimited resources.

Nobody had ever made a
documentary like this.

Triumph of the Will starts
with shots of Hitler's plane

landing in Nuremberg.

It's conveying this sense of
Hitler as almost a kind of God,

descending to Earth
to speak to his people.

In scene after scene after
scene in Triumph of the Will,

you see Hitler really
as the sole focal point.

It's Hitler and the masses.

.

It is the
ultimate statement of
the Great Man Theory,

just a sort of document
that enshrines our understanding

of what a leader is better
than any other document that

I have seen.

Hitler is presented
as a leader that can and

should bend the
world into shape.

Riefenstahl said,
"Basically all I did was

film the event.

It's nothing more than that."

But particularly
in the way that the footage

was edited, Riefenstahl
presented a completely

inaccurate picture of Nazism.

There was none of this
undertone of expressionism,

none of this harsh
racial ideology that
would become deadly.

That was edited out.

Leni Riefenstahl
made Hitler a movie star.

Hitler and Goebbels
were absolutely delighted.

Triumph of the Will won awards

at International Film Festivals.

It became a huge success.

Millions of Germans went
to go see it voluntarily.

Hitler never had
another film made like it,

and I think that
says something about

Hitler's perception of himself
and his regard for this film.

This was how he wanted
the German people to see him,

then and in the future.

The school in which I
was involved at the age of six

was one of Hitler's special
schools which he had set up for

the training of his
future leadership elite.

In this school,
Jews were depicted

as fat, rapacious, ugly,

with large hooked noses,

and those pictures I think
stayed with me longer than

any verbal impression that
could have been given to me.

The culture of the
Third Reich in the 1930s was

very much one in which
the group, the race, the nation,

took precedence
over any individual.

So, any individual who stuck
out in some way, not conforming

to the Aryan ideal,
they could be targeted.

Nazism advanced an
understanding of race that was

grounded in biology,
very much in line with

19th century scientific racism.

It was an understanding of race
that was grounded in differences

that could be coded visually.

There was quite
a strong influence from
American Jim Crow laws.

Hitler very openly
admired the Americans

and he wrote, actually,

that they had figured out how to
have a real, as he called it...

.

Meaning, it's hard to translate,

but racialist, nationalist, uh,
political entity through their

citizenship and
immigration laws.

The basic consensus,
which was accepted in

the United States after
the 1870s, was that we were

going to allow African Americans
to be second class citizens

in order to keep
southern politicians
happy inside the larger union.

And it's not so
uncommon when listening to

Holocaust testimonies to
hear a Jewish survivor who

emigrated to the
United States say,

"My experience was rather
similar to the experience of

African Americans
under Jim Crow laws."

And that connection they're
making is not only intuitive,

it's also historically accurate.

So, the
Nuremberg Laws make German Jews

second class citizens.

When it comes to

Nazi antisemitism,

there's nothing remotely

scientific about any of it.

And the regime even had to
print out these flow charts

that it provided to the
public to explain all of this;

who is Jewish,
who is not Jewish,
who's partly Jewish.

At that time, I was
going with a nice young lady,

and we were out camping.

I remember very well,
I had a kayak, and there

was a fellow near us.

He wanted to make a date
with this young lady that

I was going with, and she
didn't want any part of it.

He reported me to the Gestapo,
and I was arrested for going

with a Gentile girl.

After the Nuremberg Laws,

anti-Jewish legislation
sort of ebbs off.

There is kind of like a pause.

Now, let's focus on the economy,
let's focus on foreign policy,

let's focus on
projecting Germany's image

to the rest of the world.

When
Hitler comes to power,

he is coming in at a good time
in terms of the conditions of

the Great Depression
generally improving.

However, we can see
certain things that Hitler did

very specifically
linked to what, by 1936,

was virtually zero unemployment,

things like the autobahn,

public works projects,
the National Labor Service.

And we have to pause
there for a moment and imagine

what this meant to a country
which just four years before

that had suffered one in
three unemployed to have

virtually zero unemployment.

Hitler also
slowly but surely dismantles

one of the most
hated documents, uh,

among all Germans,

the Treaty of Versailles.

He pulls out from the
World Disarmament Conference.

He takes Germany out
of the League of Nations.

He declares openly
his plans for rearmament.

And then in 1936, he
remilitarizes the Rhineland,

something that was
supposed to be a buffer for

the safety of France.

Cologne Cathedral
marched the German troops as

the invasion of the
demilitarized zone begins.

Men and guns pour in.

For the first time in 17 years,

the city's streets
resound to the goose step.

frenzied nationalism as
the city gets the news that,

once again, German troops have
taken up the watch on the Rhine

The western powers
would have been justified in

taking some kind of action,
but they chose not to.

Nobody wants to
have another war.

Germans at
the time experienced

the Treaty of Versailles
as a massive insult.

So, for Germans to
see Hitler make good on

his promise of
making Germany great again,

that appealed to people
across the political spectrum,

and that accounts for
the sense of invincibility

that the thereafter displays.

are held in Berlin,
which Hitler has transformed

into the show place
of the Third Reich.

On this occasion, he
intends that foreign visitors

be impressed by
Nazi efficiency and

the material
achievement of his New Order.

Adolf Hitler had
no interest in sports,

but he was finely attuned to
political and diplomatic and

propaganda opportunities, and
the Olympic Games presented one.

There had been a
number of significant

diplomatic developments that
were making more and more people

outside of Germany nervous
about Hitler's intentions;

Rearmament, trashing
of the Versailles Treaty,

remilitarization
of the Rhineland.

Here was an opportunity, then,
to demonstrate to the world that

Germany was a proud nation,
but Germany was also a stable

and peace-seeking nation.

The signs on parks
and swimming pools and so on

that said, "No Jews allowed,"

were taken out.

Germany was really kind of
putting on a happy face for

its international visitors.

Hitler
was extremely nervous
when German athletes ran.

He'd sit in his seat and rub his
thighs and move back and forth.

He was thrilled, overjoyed,
smiled when German athletes went

to the winning podium.

When other athletes competed,

he just sat there
quietly and observed.

It's
Ohio's Jesse Owens who leads

the way and, like a
streamlined express,

he sets the pace for
America's sweep to victory.

When the
Black athletes went to

the winning podium,
Hitler was gone.

I'm very
glad to have won my three event

in the games here at Berlin,
a wonderful competition here,

a wonderful stadium
and a wonderful crowd.

The 1936 Olympics
were a tremendous success for

Hitler and Germany.

Much of that was based on a very
false sense that Jews were not

persecuted nearly as harshly
as we know them to have been.

Some people interpret this as,

"Finally he's
come to his senses."

That, of course,
was completely false.

They would
target people who were

considered asocials,
inconsistent with the idea

that Hitler has of a
racially pure society.

Obviously the most
persecuted are the Jews.

But you also find
the Roma and the Sinti,

also known as the gypsies.

You also find gay men, you
find the Jehovah's Witnesses,

various political groups.

All could end up in these
concentration camps as well.

Hitler was ultimately
very much removed from

the nitty gritty of
day to day politics,

because he wasn't a
politician at heart.

He was a visionary, that's
how he would describe himself.

Heinrich Himmler,
on the other hand,

was someone who had a
very clear understanding of

how to implement a racial state.

Himmler was constantly
improving the operations of

the camps with Hitler in mind.

Hitler the Austrian was
much more comfortable in Bavaria

or near Austria
than he was in Berlin.

He would retreat
to Berchtesgaden with

his entourage, his inner circle.

GÖRTEMAKER: And he distanced
himself from the Nazi elite to

his inner circle now
belonged his girlfriend,

Eva Braun, who
constantly shot films,

so we have a notion
of how they acted there.

Eva Braun tended
to stay at Berchtesgaden,

where she was sort of
the first lady there,

and insiders knew that,
but Hitler never made

their relationship public.

GÖRTEMAKER: For Hitler,
often perceived as a loner,

this relationship with
Eva Braun shows that he wasn't.

Hitler needed a
circle of friends.

He needed emotional support.

Now, Hitler was surrounded
by men and women who didn't

criticize him and who constantly
told him that he is the Führer,

that he is a genius, that he can
change and conquer the world.

for Mussolini.

The destiny of Europe rides
with the dictator of Italy,

nearing Munich in triumph
on his momentous conference

with fellow dictator, Hitler.

Benito Mussolini,
the dictator of Italy,

and Adolf Hitler
had a interesting,

evolving relationship.

Hitler, at an early stage,
very much admired Mussolini.

There were multiple ways Hitler
and the early party emulated

the look, the
organization and the actions

of Mussolini's
fascist Blackshirts.

Mussolini liked
to see himself as kind
of the senior dictator but,

as Hitler's rule in
Germany was consolidated,

Germany was just by
natural weight likely to be

a stronger power than Italy
because of its population and

its industrial clout, and
so Hitler starts to become

the dominant partner
in that relationship.

Hitler needed to impress
Mussolini with German power and

eventually secure an assurance
of Italian participation on

Germany's side in
the event of war.

Hitler had always
wanted to bring German Austria

into what he called
the Great German Reich.

There was a coup attempt
by Austrian Nazis in 1934,

but Mussolini
saw Austria, oddly,

as kind of his protectorate,
and so Mussolini actually

started threatening Hitler
with war if Hitler were to

take any active
steps to annex Austria,

and Hitler
backed away from that.

He was a little bit afraid
of Mussolini at that point.

By 1938, things had changed.

As
German troops swarm across

frontiers in their
first offensive since 1914,

Italy has apparently
given Germany an okay,

and Hitler has almost
fervently thanked Mussolini.

Hitler and the Nazis
go in without firing a shot,

and they're met
by cheering crowds.

And we see sometimes in
the pictures people crying;

those are not tears of sadness,

those are tears of joy.

Hitler,
protected by a bodyguard of

nearly 4,000 troops and police,

is preparing tonight
to go from Linz to Salzburg,

and from there to Vienna,

on a roundabout triumphal
tour of the land of his birth.

We have to keep
in mind that Austria,

like Germany in
the interwar period,

had gone through a
time of, uh, economic chaos,

conditions
approaching civil war.

Now, here comes this native son,

who has proven himself
so successful in Germany,

bringing the German Austrians,

as they called themselves, into
this Greater Reich and this,

I think, for many
non-Jewish Austrians seems to

be a moment of
national vindication
and national success.

Hitler goes to Vienna, and
he kind of surprises everybody

and surprises himself by
spontaneously reacting to

the enthusiasm that he sees and

declaring Austria's
going to be annexed.

It's not even just that
there will be some sort
of dual state relationship,

but Austria will be straight
up politically part of Germany.

Seeing those crowds, that
obviously had been whipped up by

the very large and
domineering Nazi party,

was something that made Hitler
feel as though providence had

been fulfilled, as though
his dream or fantasy, um,

was validated in
this particular moment.

says tonight that at
least 150 prominent Jews,

bankers and
businessmen have been arrested

by Nazi Brownshirts
acting as auxiliary police.

The cry of antisemitism
is being taken up in

the Austrian streets.

In many ways,
Austria's Jewish population has

to suffer this shock of
Nazi control even worse than

Germany's Jewish population,
because it doesn't come slowly,

it comes all at once.

We had no
possibility to go out,

to run away.

And then one day
they knocked on the door,

loud and ugly.

It was two Nazi.

They had a black uniform,
they had these black shoes,

and asking for my grandfather.

I could cry as long as I
should but it just doesn't help.

The Nazis had
taken him to Buchenwald.

In October of 1938,
one day the teacher came into

our classroom and said, "Would
all those children whose parents

had immigrated from
Eastern Europe and Poland

in particular,
please leave the room.

Your parents would
like you to come home,"

or whatever she said,

she certainly didn't
say that they were going

to be deported
that very same day.

In the fall of 1938,
Heinrich Himmler orders

the collective deportation of
thousands of Polish Jews back

to Poland, and among them are
Herschel Grynszpan's parents.

Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish
Jew who was living in Paris,

was incredibly distraught
by this turn of events,

and he makes a decision that
he's going to take a pistol to

the German embassy in Paris and
shoot the first embassy official

that he can.

Ernst von Rath
does not die immediately.

He dies of his
wounds a few days later,

and this happens when
Hitler is in Munich at this

very meaningful celebration of
those who lost their lives in

the Beer Hall Putsch.

Hitler is looking for
an excuse to take an action,

and it is propaganda gold
for them that it is a young Jew

who shoots this
embassy official in Paris.

On Kristallnacht,
or the Night of Broken Glass,

we see the
burning of synagogues,

the destruction of Jewish shops,

the raiding of Jewish houses,

as well as the physical beatings
and murder of Jews themselves.

What I saw was hoards
of people standing in front of

our beautiful synagogue and
throwing stones through these

magnificent colored windows.

We ran past the
place itself, the noise,

the shouting, the screaming.

People were burning
books and dancing around it.

I turned up my collar and
put my head down and said,

"God, somebody
should recognize me,

I'd be torn to pieces."

It was an
absolutely shocking event.

It gets its name, the
Reich's Kristallnacht,

the Night of the Broken Glass,
because of all of the glass that

had been shattered
in these attacks on
Jewish-owned businesses.

The Stormtroopers were involved,
German police were involved.

We know that there was
also civilian participation.

Over
100 Jews are killed,

and ultimately about
30,000 Jewish men are

rounded up and sent
to concentration camps.

I was arrested
on the 10th of November,

like all Jewish men in
Germany under 50 years old.

I had not committed any crime.

The only crime was
that I was born Jewish.

We were told that we
were going to be interned

in the
concentration camp of Dachau.

Kristallnacht really does
mark a kind of turning point.

Hitler has moved away from being
too concerned with presenting

his country as peaceful and
stable and non-threatening.

In his speech to the Reichstag
on the 30th of January 1939,

Hitler issued
what he later always
referred to as his prophecy.

This is a clearly
voiced genocidal intention

towards European Jews,
coming still a few months

before the start of
the Second World War.

And what's really important
here is he's linking the idea of

world war and
annihilation of the Jews.

In April 1939, he's in a
desperate hurry to start a war.

.

He's making alliance
with the Soviet Union in order

to start a war
which ultimately is about

destroying the Soviet Union.

But then planning
morphs into something much more,

in a sense, evil.

We couldn't
believe that the whole world

was running away before Hitler.

.

Captioned by
Cotter Media Group.