All language subtitles for The World at War 31 - Hitler s Germany Total War.en

(band plays military tattoo)

(man speaking German)

(narrator) April 20, 1939.

Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday.

A giant military display.

On parade the army looked invincible,

but it had never been tried in battle.

lts generals didn't think
it would be ready for war for years.

Not enough weapons, not enough fuel,
not enough experience.

One unit had been tested in combat:
the Condor Legion,

Air Force volunteers
returned from the Spanish Civil War.

(cheering)

Airmen who had bombed Spanish cities,
killed Spanish people.

(cheering)

(starter gun fires)

(translation) A world record

anh three new German record
performances have been achieveh.

(narrator) Another test
for next year's Olympic Games.

War threatened.

Germans cheered their sportsmen

and hoped that Hitler would win
another bloodless victory.

(applause)

(woman) I think that one could say

at that period in August

there was the same doubt
as to whether war would come,

whether it could be avoided,

and a general hope and wish
that it would.

Hitler had got away
without a war that far

and there was great hope
that he would get what he wanted

without a war this time.

(narrator) But Hitler was eager for war.

His army had been ordered into position,
ready to attack Poland.

The German people did not know this.

(Bielenberg) The general feeling
about a war in Germany

amongst the ordinary public
was one of great horror,

there's no doubt about that.

And it mustn't be forgotten
they'd lost the First World War

and war was a really... traumatic,
terrible feeling for them

that another war would break out.

(fanfare)

(narrator) Germans saw this newsreel
during the last week of August 1939.

(translation) Germany is ready
to assert her right and her freedom

by all means.

A strong Wehrmacht,

invincible on the water,
on the land and in the air,

protecting Germany's borders,
her honour and her security.

The German people live under
the protection of the German sword.

(man) The tone of the German press
was absolutely hysterical.

It was much more so than a year ago,

when the Czechoslovakian crisis
had been.

And I had the feeling,

"Now Hitler means it in earnest."

"And he's preparing the nation
by that sort of press,

propaganda and news,

he's preparing the nation for war."

(men sing in German)

(narrator) Last scenes
from that last peacetime newsreel.

(men sing in German)

We were very young then.

But we didn't feel happy.

A year before,

when Chamberlain came to Munich,

my father made a speech
and we drank a glass of champagne.

We were so glad
there was no war coming.

And when it really came
I was engaged to be married,

my husband and father
went with the soldiers.

It was a dreadful feeling.

(engines start)

With my girlfriends I went by bicycle
through the other villages,

because we were quite sure
anything must happen now.

Maybe bombs will come also.

And nothing happened
and we were very much astonished.

And we thought, "What is that war?"
Later we knew.

(narrator)
Not all Germans believed they would win.

Some even welcomed the idea of defeat.

(man) When the war started, we thought
very soon Hitler would come to his end.

So our attitude
to the starting of the war

was a little bit ambiguous.

On the one hand, we were horrified
by now another war.

On the other hand, we thought all our
hopes now lay in the defeat of Hitler.

By becoming politically interested
in opposition,

we had to become so disloyal

to our own country's government,

even in the war.

In the beginning of the war
in our group

it was such a matter of course,
we didn't really discuss it,

it was a matter of course that
we wished the defeat of Hitler's armies.

Which is a horrible thing
to say for somebody

who has not gone through this kind
of disloyalty to your own country.

(narrator)
Loyalty was defined by the government

and reinforced
by the propaganda machine.

Any criticism of the war
was forbidden.

The press relentlessly
drove the message home.

(man) A person
who has never lived in a dictatorship

can't understand
the power of propaganda.

If you just hear always the same,

if you always read

in every newspaper the same,

and if you have very few possibilities
for other information,

then you become very impressed
by the things which you are told.

And it's very difficult to make up
your own mind and be critical.

(brass band plays)

(narrator) Loyal Germans
had little to be critical about.

The military campaign
against Poland was over in a month.

Here was victory's first fruits,

a display of real guns
captured from a real enemy.

(man speaking German)

(narrator) Children loved it.

(men sing in German)

I myself was quite happy
when I was called up

early in 1940 for the army.

And that suddenly left behind

all the oppression I had every day.

Being a soldier,
you don't read newspapers,

you don't listen to the radio,

you're not always under the stress
of the propaganda,

which was pointed at you every hour
during the Nazi time.

And I felt quite suddenly in the army,

as much as I disliked being a soldier,

I suddenly felt much healthier
than I did in the years before.

(singing in German)

(narrator) Everything for the soldier.

Radio was the link between them
and the folk back home.

Germans were forbidden
to listen to foreign broadcasts

and risked going to prison if they did.

Authorities had trouble

finding enough wholesome
German material for them instead.

(translation) Go.

(narrator) When Jewish subversive music
had been eliminated

there wasn't much left
but Die Fledermaus.

(all sing in German)

(narrator) It was performed again...

..and again...

..and again.

A web of fear and denunciation
enveloped people in Germany.

If you went to a party

it was the duty of your host
to warn anybody coming to that party

if there was one person there
whom he did not trust

or did not know about.

And when that happened
the whole conversation changed

and the whole party altered
its atmosphere, really,

to beware of this one person.

(engine chugs)

(woman speaking German)

(translator) We really were completely
surrounded by unseen evil spirits

who watched what you did
and then denounced you.

For instance, once I took in
the baby of a school friend.

Both the father and mother
were leading communists

and were taken away.

I had the baby less than an hour
and they came to search my house

to find out about the child.

I told them openly,

"It's the child of my friend who was
rounded up as a communist leader."

But then the mother sent me some baby
things and they learnt about that too.

My home was searched to find out
what was in the boxes. Baby clothes.

They really couldn't take the baby
away from me.

Perhaps a year later
they might have taken the baby.

We lived in Grunewald in a little house

with three little children,

the eldest boy was seven

and the others were smaller.

And near to us lived a lonely woman

with her about nine-year-old daughter
or so.

And this Mrs Leidig was interested
in spiritualistic matters

and she always had clairvisions
and so on.

And after the attempt on Hitler

in 1939 in Munich, ja,

next morning
she said to her little daughter,

"You see, I knew before
that that would happen."

And little Helga proud on her mother,
of her mother,

told that in school to her classmate,...
classmates.

And one of these girls
told that at home to her father.

And that father was a party member.

And he felt the chance to win
some Ansehen in the party.

The next morning
the little girl came to school

and said to Helga, "l told my father
what you said about your mother,

that she knew what would happen."

"And now they will come
and take your mother."

"You will see, she comes in prison."

And Helga, of course, desperate
and in tears, didn't know what to do.

She couldn't call home
because the Leidigs had no telephone.

So she called me and I said,
"l don't know what to do,

but come to my house and I will go
over and see what I can do."

And I went over and I told Mrs Leidig
who didn't know anything about this

and was extremely... desperate.

And we arranged that at first
she should go out for some hours

and I offered to stay in her house
and die Leute zu empfangen,

see who will come
and speak with them,

to receive them if they came.

It wasn't clear
if they really would come,

because it was children's talk, yes?

And she went out and I went over

and took my little daughter
of five years

and my knitting work
and sat in her living room

expecting what would happen.

And, indeed, after a quarter of an hour
the bell rang and I opened the door

and the local policeman
with a dog came

and with him a nice young man
in civilian clothes.

They asked for Mrs Leidig
and I said,

"She's not in but she will come
in a few minutes. Please come in."

And then we started a conversation
and they asked what I was doing here.

I said we were good neighbours
and when I need her help,

then she comes to me
and when she needs my help,

when she has to go shopping

and her daughter might come home
that time and have her lunch,

then I sit here and wait for
her daughter to prepare her lunch.

"You see, we realise here
what the Führer wants,

real Volksgemeinschaft
and good neighbourship,

Gemeinnuntz geht vor Eigennutz and
help each other," and so on and so on.

I started some phrases
and so we came into the conversation

and I spoke about the school
which was so wonderful

and I asked the policeman if his
daughter also went to that school.

And he said yes. I said, "lsn't it
a wonderful spirit in that school,

the nice songs they learn
and the discipline?"

"l think it's really nice for the
children today what they experience."

And that way we talked and talked
and after a while, half an hour or so,

they felt
they shouldn't wait any longer.

And... as they were about to leave,

they looked through the ajar door

and saw on the night table
near the bed of Mrs Leidig

a thick book with a red binder, ja?

And that gentleman
in civilian clothes said,

"Oh, I see
there is also Mein Kampf by Hitler."

I said, "Of course. ls there any German
house where you can 't find Mein Kampf?"

And so they left.
And when I had closed the door

I looked at that book and it was
Knauer's Conversation, a dictionary.

Well! But I didn't feel well
after having lied so much.

It was a bad feeling.

And... of course,
it was necessary to help her out.

But I remembered what a friend
of mine had said once,

"What is freedom? Freedom means
you are not forced to lie."

(narrator) In the spring of 1940,
the German armies marched again,

this time against France.

The generals expected a fierce struggle.

The German people
feared a long bloody war.

In six weeks the campaign was over.

It was a lovely, sunny afternoon.

We went out to a coffee garden

out in the woods.

And about three or four o'clock -

it was very crowded because it was
a sunny, lovely day -

the loudspeakers were turned up

and a special announcement
came with a great fanfare,

"Now France has capitulated."

Now Hitler had done it.

And the whole crowd rose
and they jumped on the... chairs

and the German national hymn
and the Horst Wessel Lied was being sung

and everybody was crying
and singing and raising their hands.

I was totally paralysed by that
and stood there with my hands down.

And then Dietrich shouted at me,
"Will you raise your hand?"

And then slowly I did. After that
we went out of the coffee garden

totally disturbed and he said to me,

"You were crazy not to put up your hand.
Now we have to do something different,

not just protesting
by not raising the hand."

We had to show, in order to plot,
how good Germans,

how good maybe even Nazis, we were.

(laughter)

(cheering)

(Tucking) I just went shopping
when somebody told me,

"Don't you hear the noise?"

And then I saw part of the army
coming back just near us,

so I bought a bowl of cherries
and ran there.

We all were so glad.

We had heard so much
of the First World War

with those dreadful battles
and the many dead.

I felt a sort of national pride
that we ended the war so quick.

(cheering)

(singing in German)

(narrator) Triumph beyond belief.

(whistle)

(narrator) As the booty rolled home
to the Reich, Germans exalted.

Their Führer had sought no more
than simple justice for his people.

He had made them
masters of Western Europe.

Their one remaining enemy, Britain,
had been driven from the continent.

Surely they must make peace soon.

The masters began to rule,

taking whatever they wanted
or thought they needed for the Reich.

The conquered enemies themselves
delivered up the loot.

The war was as good as over.

(woman singing in German)

(screaming)

(narrator) The Nazis rewarded those
who had helped to make victory possible.

At the Krupp armaments factory

the Führer's Award to lndustry
for Outstanding Achievement.

German industry had grown rich
building Hitler's war machine.

lts captains looked forward
to a new European future.

(applause)

It was a job well done.

Heil Hitler.

(man) Just about August,

it was ordered that a lot of
production was stopped or minimised.

And there was a kind of a euphoria

that the war was, so to say, over.

I didn't believe in that at all.

No, I thought I knew the British

and I had the opinion
that they would see this thing through.

(narrator) The British did fight on
in the only way they could.

A handful of aircraft dropped bombs
on cities at night, blindly.

That winter Germans
mourned their first few civilian dead.

The war was not over.

Secretly, from the first moment
of victory in the West,

Hitler had been planning

the greatest historical confrontation
the world would ever see.

On April 20, 1941,

he celebrated his birthday
with his commanders in the field.

The decision had been taken.

The time was ripe to conquer
and destroy the enemy

which had always obsessed him,

the enemy he feared and loathed
above all others.

Hitler believed that his destiny
was to lead his people

into an apocalyptic struggle
with the Soviet U nion.

The victors would dominate the world.

"When the great confrontation began,"
he said,

"the world would hold its breath."

On June 22, 1941,
Goebbels broadcast to the German people.

German people.

At this moment
an advance is in progress

which stretches beyond anything
the world has ever seen.

(narrator) The German people, too,
held their breath.

1941. The third year of the war
for the German Reich.

Street collections for Nazi charities.

Giving money to show solidarity
with the men at the front.

(laughter)

As winter approached,
the collections became more serious.

U niformed party officials
went from house to house.

In December they were grim and earnest.

Germany's leaders had promised

the war with the Soviet U nion
would be over by Christmas.

There was no hope of that now.

lnstead there was a call
for warm clothes, boots, skis,

to keep the army in Russia
from freezing.

(Tucking) We went to bring our skis
and pullovers and...

I didn't have a fur coat,

so I couldn't bring it.

And we heard that
the soldiers were only dressed

in their original summer uniform,

and winter,
we knew winter was very hard,

so we hoped they would get it.

(narrator) No great sacrifice to give up
an old fur wrap or a pair of skis

to save a son or brother
from the Russian winter.

It was the fact that they were needed
at all that was so ominous.

The war would be long and hard,

and there was more ominous news
to come.

On December 11, 1941,

Hitler declared war
on the U nited States.

He had not conquered Russia,
he couldn't invade Britain,

and now he made an enemy of
the world's greatest industrial power.

His generals
couldn't believe their ears.

(music)

Official confidence was boundless.

1942 would be another year of
German triumphs, Germany victories.

(chorus sings)

Few victories, no triumphs.

First the British, then the Americans
sent their bombers over Germany.

Sometimes a thousand at a time.

1942 was the year
the war came home to Germany.

Like the Londoners
they had bombed a year before,

Germans discovered they could take it.

Death from the skies
seemed to spur morale.

Factory buildings were shattered.

But they could be re-built,
and they were.

In spite of the bombs,
production increased.

Every worker sent to the army
had to be replaced.

One way was with forced labour
from the conquered lands.

Frenchmen or Poles or U krainians.

(Stern) I saw those girls

and I knew
they were the same age that I was,

and I was thinking about,
"ls this right

that the girls
must come to Germany to work?"

"They are pupils like I am a pupil."

"And maybe this is wrong."

But finally -

very often happened this -

I thought, "It's war now,

and they are our enemies."

I personally have always thought

that it was a crazy and wrong idea,

an insane idea really.

It was sensible to let them work
where they lived.

There was no necessity
to bring them into our country.

We could have called up

much more women than we did

and had our own people
working on the armaments.

(narrator) German civilians
were not ordered into war production.

lnstead, housewives and Hitler Youth
were told to volunteer

and newsreels were told
to show them happily at work.

(German newsreel)

(narrator) It took courage to resist
the constant pressure to "volunteer".

(Beese speaking German)

(translator) In 1942 my children were
summoned to work in a munitions factory

instead of going on holiday.

I forbade it.

So my daughter said at school,
"My mother won't agree to it."

And we went off on our bicycles
to the Liepnitzsee near Bernau.

When we came home,
five weeks later,

we were visited
by three Nazi Party officials

who informed me that my children
were to be taken away from me

because of upbringing
hostile to the state.

My daughter was not to be allowed
to take her exams,

she was to be sent to
a National Socialist family,

and my son was to go off to
a National Socialist school in Silesia.

Now, as I was not completely ignorant
of legal procedure,

I asked them to produce
a court order in writing first.

They balked at that.

Then, since there was
nothing else I could do,

and they kept calling me
a Marxist, I said,

"Very well. You mean to say
that the Führer was lying

when he said not long ago that there
are no Marxists in Germany any more?"

"Then tomorrow morning,
I'll go to the Chancellery

and present myself to the Führer."

"After all, he's my Führer, too,
not just yours."

"And I'll ask him if you have the right
to take my children away from me."

Well, they said I couldn't do that.
What could I be thinking of?

So then they went off rather perplexed

and a quarter of an hour later

two slips of paper were stuck through
the letter box

and on them were numbers
for my children,

who were thus meant
to be members of the Hitler Youth.

I threw the slips away.

My children were old enough to say for
themselves whether they wanted to join.

And I said to them,
"lf they still force you,

then the uniforms will be hung
on the steps outside the front door."

"ln my home there will be
no Hitler Youth uniforms."

But no one came back.
They'd had enough of us.

(hooter)

(narrator) The raids kept on.

War workers learned to maintain
production even during attacks.

Machines could be left running

under the eyes of key workers
sheltering on the shop floor.

Their workmates
took refuge in cellars and bunkers.

(air-raid siren)

When American planes attacked,
they bombed by day.

The British bombed by night.

Both had the same purpose - to destroy
Germany's capacity and will to fight.

(Tucking) Sometimes you went
to the cellar three times a day.

It was so difficult to lead
your ordinary life,

to do your housework or to feed
your children or to go shopping.

(narrator) At Christmas there was
a special effort by everyone.

The short-wave radio
brought greetings to the homeland

from the troops
fighting on the distant fronts.

(German radio broadcast)

This is a U-boat base in the Atlantic.

This is the Mediterranean
frontline and Africa.

(♪ "Silent Night")

(narrator) Home for Christmas.

A cold winter and rumours of disaster.

2,000 miles away, a German army,
a quarter of a million men,

freezing, bleeding, starving to death.

In February the last survivors of
Stalingrad surrendered to the Russians.

The defeat of Stalingrad was a kind of

underground shock for the nation.

But nobody really accepted it
by really reflecting about it.

It was a kind of shock you experience

but you forget it
as soon as possible again.

You don't reflect,
you were not allowed to reflect.

All your reflections about it

were put into a certain direction

by Josef Goebbels, by the papers,

by the broadcasts,

and the influence of that propaganda
was rather effective, I think.

Do you want total war?

(cheering)

(narrator) This was the Sportpalast,

February 10, 1943.

Are you determined

to follow the Führer
in the struggle for victory

no matter how hard
the personal sacrifices?

(narrator) A hand-picked
audience of Nazi supporters.

(crowd chanting)

(Goebbels) Then let our cry be -

people arise and storm break forth!

(narrator)
Their optimism a triumph of their will.

Now at last, some women
were mobilised for war work.

(♪ "Rakoczy March" - Berlioz)

In the factories
a kind of people's community -

sacrificing and sharing, not for
each other, but for a war machine.

The concerts took place
among the half-built tanks.

Germans were surprised
that so few bombs fell on factories

and so many on houses.

They didn't understand that the British
were bombing that way on purpose.

If enough houses were destroyed
and enough people killed,

German civilian morale would break

and they would turn on their leaders
and the war would end.

(woman speaking German)

(translator)
The reaction was first of all fear.

And after the first terror had passed,

then people began to grumble,

some about the English, others about
the Nazis, depending on their views.

But I must say, opinions really didn't
matter at all in times of distress

because everyone helped everyone else.

The help from neighbours was enormous,

which had nothing at all
to do with political beliefs.

(Bielenberg) If you were
all under the same bombs

it didn't really matter whether your
neighbour was a Nazi or what they were.

You went in, helped save their children,

helped...

remove their furniture if you like,

and suddenly you discovered
they were Nazis.

(narrator) lndustrial towns
were the hardest hit.

After each raid,
there was first aid for stricken cities.

(speaking German)

(translator) The Nazi Party,
really they organised all the work.

Everything was done through the party.

Setting up feeding stations,
fire-fighting units.

That was all under the control
of the party.

(narrator) One of the first priorities
was food.

With gas mains shattered
and water pipes wrecked,

townspeople couldn't cook for themselves

even if they still had a roof
over their heads.

Special rations were sometimes
distributed to survivors.

(man speaking German)

(translator) Cheese and butter
were distributed

and everyone gobbled them up.

They tried to distract people
from the misery

and many people thought,
"It's over now."

They were told,
"lt won't happen like that again."

They didn't entirely believe that
but they hoped it was true.

(narrator) In July and August, 1943,

Hamburg was bombed day and night
for over a week.

No single city
had ever been bombed like that before.

Storms of fire swept the city.

Scorching heat killed thousands.

(Witter speaking German)

(translator) You have to imagine
it was very hot.

On the streets in the summer
it was hot.

The fires made it hotter still

and in the bunkers it was just as hot

because the ventilation system
had completely broken down.

Hot, hot. It didn't cool off in there.

And most people fled out of the bunkers
and out of the cellars

and these great communal shelters

right out into the streets.

Because inside the bunkers
many people had gone mad.

They were screaming
and they were confused.

They just wanted to get out.

And many of the air-raid wardens
wouldn't let them out.

So that many people also suffocated

in the bunkers or in the cellars.

Some strong people
forced a way to the outside

but outside everything was burning.

(narrator) The British fired the city
by night with incendiaries.

During the day
Americans bombed with high explosives,

disrupting rescuers and fire-fighters.

Three quarters of Hamburg was destroyed.

Over 40,000 people were killed.

(speaking German)

(translator) I came to the house and
all the houses nearby had collapsed.

Next to the house was a doorway

and there were bodies lying there.

I looked for my grandfather
but I couldn't find him at first.

My grandmother was
quite a heavy-set woman, rather fat.

There lay a fat dead woman
without a head

and I wondered who it might be
and came to the conclusion it was her.

I didn't find my grandfather
until later,

in a hospital, the Harbour hospital.

Many unidentified bodies had been
brought there, and parts of bodies,

because everything
had to be taken away, even pieces.

There were basins there
and in the basins were bits of bodies,

and I looked through all of them

and in one basin there lay a stomach
with a watch peeking out

and it was my grandfather's watch.

So that's all there was left of him.

That was the remains of my grandfather.

(narrator)
Bewildered and panic-stricken,

nearly a million people fled Hamburg
in three days.

People were shocked and stunned.

Those that remained in the city
gathered in the parks

or wandered aimlessly
through the broken streets.

(Witter speaking German)

(translator)
The soldiers going back to the front

reported what it was like here.

And that was dangerous
because the troops realised now

that things were not going at all well
on the home front.

For the war leadership
that was problematic and dangerous.

(narrator) Germans prepared
for grim times ahead.

Children were evacuated from the cities.

They were Germany's blood
and Germany's future.

In the eastern lands,
safe from the bombs,

they could escape from the war,
for a while.

(German children singing)

(boat hooter)

As the Reich came under siege,
some Germans came home.

Badly wounded soldiers,
ex-prisoners sent back by the Allies.

The new slogan was "Total war".

That made more sense now
than "Strength through joy"

or "A healthy body means a sound mind".

The young men still offered themselves
eagerly for the Führer and Fatherland.

But their Führer
was nowhere to be seen.

lnstead there was Heinrich Himmler to
tell them victory could still be theirs.

(band plays march)

If they should fail, Bolshevik hordes
would sweep across Europe.

If they won,
Western civilisation would be saved.

Goebbels was more down to earth.

He visited the ruined cities,
kept spirits up,...

..told the Germans to hang on.

(singing in German)

(narrator) 1944.

The fifth year of the war.

In the bombed cities,
Germans still carried on.

People had enough food to eat
and clothes to wear,

but their future was dark.

The German armies were in retreat
on every front.

But people still trudged along
to rallies

to hear Nazi speakers boast of
wonder weapons that would turn the tide.

U nless they came soon, Germany would
be a nation of widows and orphans.

There had been an attempt
to end the fighting.

Military conspirators,
convinced the war was lost,

tried to kill Hitler and make peace.

They failed.

The war went on.

There was a new slogan -
"Now we mean it, fight on to victory".

Suddenly the enemy
was almost at the gates.

The men were all at the front.
Boys dug anti-tank ditches.

Teenagers and old men
were taught to use the Panzerfaust -

the wonder weapon
that would stop the tanks.

(translation)..behind them
marches the Hitler Youth.

All are ready
to fulfil the German oath.

I may die, but be a slave
and see Germany enslaved,

that I can never do.

(cheering)

(narrator) A slogan, a gun
and a pat on the back,

and off they went
to fight the Russians.

(band plays march)

By December, Germans
were outnumbered five to one

on the Eastern Front
and eight to one in the West.

Some believed that with new wonder
weapons, victory would still be theirs.

Hitler demanded
that his armies stand and fight.

Again and again
they were forced to retreat.

The Germans were the refugees now.

The master race was fleeing
back within the borders of the Reich.

Near the end of the war I had to travel
from Berlin to the Black Forest

and I happened to travel

in the same carriage as an SS man.

A raid had just started
and the train moved.

Most of the people had left the carriage

when I heard this voice saying,
"l think it's better we stay put,

because the train will probably move out

and we'll have the carriage
to ourselves."

And indeed I had it to myself

with this SS officer
for many hours on this train journey.

He explained to me
that he was on his way to the front now,

that all he wanted to do
was to get killed,

and... but...
he had tried again and again

but always he'd seemed to survive
every battle he'd been in.

He'd transferred to the Waffen SS,

which was the military arm of the SS,

who were always in the thick
of the battle, but he'd survived.

He told me that in Poland they had...

He had belonged to one of the commandos

which were called
the extermination commandos,

and on one particular occasion

when the Jews were standing round
in a semicircle,

with the half-dug graves behind them,

that the machine guns had been set up

and out of the ranks of the Jews
that were standing there,

a wonderful figure had come towards him.

He said, "He had long hair.
I suppose he was a priest of some kind."

"And he said,
'God is watching what you do."'

And he said. "We shot him down
before he returned to the semicircle."

Another little boy,
before they had set up this scene,

had asked him,
"Am I standing straight enough, U ncle?"

And he told me these things
he could never forget

and that he only, as I say,
now wished to die.

I travelled with that man
all through the night...

..and as the carriage had no windows,
it was very cold,

and I can remember waking in the night,

strangely enough,
my head resting on his shoulder,

and he'd covered my knees
with his sheepskin coat.

The next time I woke, he'd gone.

(narrator) By the beginning of 1945

the war was being fought
inside the Reich.

Even as troops moved in
to help defend Germany's cities,

their inhabitants fled.

Breslau,
the great German city in the East,

lay in the path of the Soviet army.

When it came under siege Hitler
expected its people to set an example

to the rest of the Reich.

They must not surrender.

They must fight the Russians
to the death

and when they could fight no more,

destroy everything
rather than capitulate.

That was Hitler's message
to his people now.

The troops pulling back
before the Soviet army

had retreated 2,000 miles,

butchering and burning as they went.

The army and the Waffen SS
had fought a war of extermination.

Now, exhausted,
they faced Russian vengeance.

(Kehrl)
They didn't have enough ammunition,

they didn't have enough gasoline,

they didn't have enough of anything,
you know.

It was only, well,

an imitation of a war.

There wasn't really any war any more

and there wasn't any possibility
whatsoever

that there could be
even a halfway decent end.

(artillery fire in background)

You were waiting maybe for food,

or you were waiting for ammunition

or you were waiting for orders,

but most of the time you didn't know
if you were behind the front line,

if you were in the front line
or what was going on.

End of February, we were...

..all, all of our platoon,

were taken to a point

where hundreds of boys
and hundreds of soldiers were

and we were driven by cars
back to Cologne.

It was about 40 kilometres,

It was a long drive for hours.

I mean, usually you always moved
only three or four kilometres,

but we didn't know where.

They said, "Yes, you go to movie."
We said, "That's fine, see movie."

But the only thing we saw
were newsreels,

or it wasn't newsreel.

They were special films

and they showed us towns and villages
in East Germany

conquered by the Russians,
and we saw the dead bodies of civilians.

(German newsreel)

(narrator) Special films and newsreels
to horrify soldiers, and civilians too.

And then somebody in a Nazi uniform,
we called them Politische Leiter,

he came and had a speech,
maybe a ten-minute speech

and said, "Look. That is what happened
when the enemy conquered Germany."

"Therefore you have to defend your home

and you have to obey...
you have to do your duty."

"This is what happens to all Germans
when the Russians conquer Germany."

(narrator) Rape and massacre.

Fight on or die horribly.
There seemed no other choice.

Children enlisted.

Total war turned to nightmare.

Unser Führer, Adolf Hitler!
Sieg heil! Sieg heil!

Sieg heil!

(narrator) Hitler still demanded
total loyalty from his people,

but he did not return it.

If they would not bring him the victory
he believed in, they deserved to perish.

(speaking German)

(translator)
The people had done everything

the leaders had demanded of them,
more than was humanly possible.

And I just could not understand.

If the people at the top
knew the war was lost,

that there was no sense in fighting
any longer, why did they keep fighting?

Why did they want to ruin
the last remains of Germany?

How could any government be so criminal?

(narrator) Faced with their conquerors,
Germans wanted to survive.

What they had done
to so many others for so long,

was done to them.

They tried to explain.

No one listened.

Their conquerors brought fire
and death, and moved on.

The lucky ones were captured.

Humiliated.

Some were less lucky.
They met their victim's vengeance.

Death on every roadside.

We suddenly realised
that we were eingekesselt,

which meant that we were surrounded
by Allies on all sides

and there were three divisions,
German divisions, locked in,

and that they had chosen our particular
valley as a route of escape.

So the very end of the war,

suddenly, a very quiet
Black Forest village

became a scene of such activity
as one could hardly believe.

Our own little inn was occupied
by the three generals

and a stream of military vehicles
streamed up the valley.

By that time, with no petrol,

some vehicles were being drawn
by Alsatian dogs,

some of them, horses, donkeys, oxen.

Anything that you could get.
It was a very slow-moving... army.

And...

But the extraordinary thing
was, this army still stuck to its rules.

And in our inn,

where the generals were,

one evening a boy was led in
to be court-martialled

in the little dining room

where the officers,
where the generals were housing.

At the same time they insisted

or asked a local man to arrange
to do all the telephone wires.

He was an electrician. And he refused
and said he wouldn't work on Sunday.

And these two, the boy and the man,

were condemned by court martial,

were led up the hill behind our inn
and were shot.

(narrator) The death camps were opened.

Germans were confronted
with evidence of terrible things

done in their country, in their name.

These had been men and women
judged unworthy

to be members
of the people's community.

(speaking German)

(translator) We heard the terrible
things that happened in the camps

from the beginning to the end,
till the liberation.

I can't tell you the source,

but word got to us and we believed it,
we in the resistance.

But I believe that the public,
if they had been told

or if they had heard about it somehow,

they would not have believed it,

because it was so terrible,

that if a person was himself decent,

he could not possibly believe
that other people could be so bestial.

The first time I heard what was
happening in Germany with the Jews,

it was the British Broadcasting, BBC,

at two o'clock. (sings BBC signal)

And I must say I couldn't believe it.

And I was thinking
you heard so many things,

Goebbels said so many things, Germans
say so many propaganda things,

and now the British
also say they have war,

and they have war and they have
propaganda and they have propaganda.

So I didn't know what I should believe.

(narrator) But it was true.

All over the country Germans
were made not to just look at,

but to re-bury the broken bodies.

To touch, to handle them.

That way perhaps

they would never forget.

(explosions)

By April, the war was nearly over.

Only Berlin, where Hitler was,
still fought on.

He commanded his city
to fight to the death.

A quarter of a million Germans died
obeying his last orders.

Hitler committed suicide.

I was working
in the American headquarters

when there was a special news

on the wireless

that Hitler had committed suicide.

And...

l... even tears came to my eyes,

but not on the person, Hitler.

I was so disappointed that he was
such a lousy... such a rotten coward.

He had started the war.
Millions of dead people.

Everything was lost, in ruins.

Then he wanted to give up
all responsibility

and he just committed suicide,
just like his mouthpiece, Goebbels.

I still hear Goebbels in my ears, "Do
you want the total war?" The yelling!

(narrator) When Hitler died
there was no one,

nothing to fight for.

(Wortmann) I wouldn't like
to go through all that again.

Everything was shattered.

I'd lost a brother,
I've lost some uncles.

I have seen thousands
of displaced persons,

Russians, Polish,
walking through my village.

Others coming from East Prussia,
or Silesia.

They had lost their home.

I've seen young soldiers
dying in the church.

I have seen young pupils,
14-year-old boys,

they got flame-throwers
and hand grenades

during the last days of the war
to fight the American tanks.

And it was such a complete madness.

And Hitler didn't care
about the people.

He sacrificed them all
just for his madness.

(speaking German)

(translator) In Dachau

we were forced to look

at the so-called gassing installations.

They really put on a great show
for us there.

They took camp inmates as models

and put them across a table
to show how they were beaten.

They showed us
normal shower installations

that were supposed to be
gas installations.

Showed us two ovens used for the 6,000
people who were supposedly gassed.

But there were enough people in prison
with us who knew Dachau intimately,

who told us
that this was all a big show,

intended to generate a campaign
of hatred against Germany.

In Dachau, people worked.

In Dachau, no one was gassed.

The two ovens were there
to burn those who died naturally.

There were several thousands in the camp
and it did happen sometimes.

The whole business was laughable to us

and proved to us
that it was just a show going on.

In any case it was never intended
to kill the Jews.

That was a development which came
when the war was at its peak,

which cannot be justified,
and which, God have mercy,

made many enemies for us after the war.

And the result? Hardly anyone nowadays
thinks of the positive achievements

brought to Germany and to Europe
by Hitler.

(narrator) Germans had followed
Adolf Hitler for 12 years.