Original subtitles

Adolf Hitler.

He is the architect of one of the greatest disasters

the world has ever seen.

The most photographed leader of the early 20th century.

He spent hours in front of a mirror practising different poses.

Every photo is a performance.

Hitler was photographed from boyhood to the Blitzkrieg...

He wants to be at the front,

he wants to share the excitement, he wants to smell the cordite.

..to the bunker.

These images reveal the secrets of Hitler's inner life

and the people he led.

Hitler comes in and he tells you you are important.

He tells you he has a plan

and he tells you he knows what's gone wrong and he can fix it.

Featuring rarely seen and newly digitised images,

this is the story of the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler,

picture by picture, frame by frame.

I think Hitler created an image of political celebrity

that never existed before.

The manipulation of media, the presentation of himself,

you can draw a line from that to what film and rock stars

are doing today.

August 1st, 1936.

The opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics.

Over 4,000 athletes from 49 nations process around the stadium.

CHEERING

The torch relay, a Nazi innovation, reaches its climax.

What the Nazis did was to look at the pageantry

of the Olympic movement,

they coupled that with the pageantry of Nazism.

"We can blend the swastika and the Olympic rings

"both literally and metaphorically,

"but also what we can do is to show the world

"that with our sporting prowess,

"that is indicative of our now... our political and economic prowess."

The star of the show is the German Fuhrer.

100,000 cheer his arrival.

The cameras are all on Adolf Hitler.

This image is taken from the Berlin Olympics in August, 1936,

and what you have is Hitler, as head of state,

is patron of the Games. That was his formal role.

And you've got a member of the German Olympic Committee

on the right of the shot and you've got the head

of the Olympic organisation on the left of the shot.

They're wearing their kind of chains of office

and they are looking, these other two men,

like a very old form of European statesmen.

And then you've got in the middle, you've got Hitler

in his paramilitary uniform.

And around him you've got a selection of men in army uniforms

and you've also got men in SS uniforms,

somewhat more sinisterly here.

This tells the story of the new European order that is emerging.

And Hitler knows that the eyes of the world are not going to be

on these grey-haired old men who are members of the Olympic Committee

or the German Olympic Committee, he knows that the eyes of the world

are on him. He's in the middle, he's in charge.

The Olympics effectively have become a Nazi games.

CHEERING

Just eight years earlier,

Hitler's fortunes were very different.

The Nazis were just one of many small political parties.

Control of Germany was a distant dream.

There's an election in 1928

and Hitler's Nazi Party gets 2.6% of the vote,

which is irrelevant figures, really.

This is someone who's way on the fringes of politics

and is not really commanding much attention at all.

But of course, the following year,

you have the Wall Street crash in October of 1929,

which pulls the rug out of the German economy.

And with that goes that political stability

that had been gained through the mid 1920s.

In July, 1930, the German parliament - the Reichstag,

was dissolved and an election called.

The Nazis swung into action.

Hitler gave 20 big speeches running up to polling day.

By Hitler's side was the man responsible for shaping his image.

His official photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann.

This is one of many unseen, newly-digitised images.

Another Hoffman, taken at Nuremburg, of an election rally.

And what you get from the picture is everyone is staring at him.

This is a Messiah type figure.

The mist in the room

adds a tension for me.

And you get this lone figure in the middle,

presumably all the crowd are on the other side,

he's isolated by this mist, by this fog.

It must have been a damp day

and people breathing probably caused this mist.

But it's very, very austere

and kind of scary.

In many ways, the people here that we see in focus

are in the bad seats because they can only see his back.

The big crowd is on the other side but the camera doesn't pick that up.

His black suit stands out.

Everybody else seems to be in light colours.

Maybe it was a spring day.

There's a guy here in shirt sleeves. There's a sort of summer hat.

But he's in the sombre black suit,

which all adds to the theatre of oratory.

And he's obviously saying something very serious at the time

and also winning votes, getting support.

What Hitler offered was a way out of the depression.

He promised that he would turn around Germany's economic fortunes

and also turn around political life to make Germany great again.

The election result was the biggest shock

in German parliamentary history.

The Nazis went from 12 seats to 107

and became the second largest party.

No-one, including Hitler,

had expected such success.

But he was not yet in power.

In 1932, Hitler ran for Reich President

against 85-year-old Paul von Hindenburg,

who had just completed a seven-year term of office.

Now, Hindenburg is the anointed icon of all Germans.

He's really more than a president, he's a monarch.

He's their greatest general of World War I.

He is the personification of Germany

and how do you as an ex-corporal stand against a Field Marshal?

But this time, the Nazis had a new propaganda tool.

The aeroplane.

Despite his fear of flying,

it enabled Hitler to give 20 major speeches

from the Baltic to Bavaria in less than a week,

speaking to almost a million people.

Of course, today, we look at this black and white news reel footage

of Hitler in his aircraft and we may think of it as being old-fashioned.

Forget all that. At the time, in the early '30s,

a politician travelling around a country in an aeroplane,

this is new, this is bold,

this is very radical, this is very modern.

Hitler looks like the future.

Heinrich Hoffmann accompanied the Fuhrer everywhere

and took photographs for newspapers across Germany and the world.

He also provided a photograph for a stark

and innovative election poster.

Hitler is looking at you

and he's asking you to have a relationship with him, to trust him.

And there's lots of influences here. Silent movies, of course.

He was a very big consumer of them.

The sort of powerful impact of the white face on the black background.

One note, one message.

Here is the face of future Germany.

It's simple. Dare I say it, trustworthy.

"This is what I am. Check me out. I hide nothing."

Not looking at me from below or above

but straight at you - equal, eyeball to eyeball.

Hindenburg won the election.

Over 19 million Germans voted for the old soldier.

Hitler came an impressive second.

13 million people bought into the Hitler cult.

Hitler is about selling a fantasy.

Hitler is about selling a story to the German people

and all he needs is for them to buy it.

Whether it's realistic doesn't matter.

What does Hitler want?

He wants power and he'll say anything to get it.

In 1932, Germans went to the polls five times

for presidential or general elections.

Political divisions meant that Germans had the choice

of 62 parties.

The Weimar Republic was in disarray.

As the leader of the largest single party,

no-one could govern without Hitler.

Right-wing parties thought they could use him

to defeat communists and social democrats.

So what the establishment politicians are doing in late 1932

and then early '33 is wanting to try and bring Hitler

and that sort of dead weight, that mass of Nazi deputies

in the chamber, bring them on side into some sort of conservative

coalition government so that they can control parliament

and they can get their agenda through.

So they think they can use Hitler.

He knew that power was within his grasp.

In January, 1933, Heinrich Hoffmann met Hitler in a hotel in Berlin.

For a decade he had used Hoffmann and his camera

to test out new suits, new hats, new uniforms.

Now Hitler wanted to see how he looked wearing something

appropriate for an establishment politician.

We see Hitler looking quite uncomfortable,

a little bit out of place.

I think the reason for this is that here he is wearing

this very formal dress

complete with a top hat,

that would've been much more the attire of the aristocracy

or the higher circles in German society

and Hitler didn't come from that background.

Hitler's a bit like a wolf in sheep's clothing.

So here he looks respectable, he's in formal dress,

he looks like perhaps he could be trusted,

and yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Soon after this picture was taken,

conservative politician Franz von Papen

persuaded President Hindenburg to make Hitler Chancellor,

with himself as Vice Chancellor.

To keep Hitler in check, the Nazis would be outnumbered in the Cabinet,

with just two members.

Von Papen made a fatal error.

He said he would have Hitler in the coalition government

and he would squeeze him into the corner so tight

that the pips would squeak,

fundamentally underestimating how canny an operator Adolf Hitler was.

Hitler was sworn in as the head of the government, or Chancellor,

on the morning of the 30th January, 1933.

Later that evening, he watched from the Reich Chancellery

as hundreds of stormtroopers marched past in celebration.

Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels

described the day as a fairy tale.

But for Germany and the world,

it was the start of a nightmare.

On the 27th of February, 1933,

less than a month after Adolf Hitler had been sworn in as Chancellor,

a young Dutch communist crept into the German parliament,

the Reichstag, with four packets of firelighters

and set it ablaze.

A disaster for German democracy,

An opportunity for Hitler.

Although Chancellor, he was hamstrung

by being part of a coalition government.

The fire was an opportunity for the Party to change all that.

So they portray it as an attempted coup

against their Nazi coalition government.

The newspapers of the political left are all banned overnight,

the Communist Party is outlawed, so those politicians

of the Communist Party are sent to the concentration camps.

Socialists are also put under heavy restrictions at the time.

On the 21st of March, Joseph Goebbels orchestrated

a special ceremony showing Hitler as a statesman -

the man unifying the nation.

In the 1920s, Heinrich Hoffmann had faked a picture

to make Hindenburg and Hitler seem close.

He'd simply stuck a picture of the President...

..onto a picture of Hitler.

Now Hoffmann had both men together in his viewfinder.

No trickery was needed.

Two days later, the Reichstag assembled at the Kroll Opera House -

their temporary home.

Intimidated by the SS outside, the deputies passed an Enabling Act

that gave Hitler the right to make laws without Reichstag approval

for the next four years.

They had voted for their own abolition.

So already by the summer of 1933,

he effectively has dictatorial power over Germany,

which is quite a remarkable turnaround in less than six months.

The anti-Semitism at the heart of the Nazi Party was now unleashed.

Assaults on Jewish businesses and the beating-up of Jews

by the paramilitary stormtroopers, the SA, became commonplace.

The moment a party takes over

a government which supports

anti-Semitic ideas, these anti-Semitic ideas

became somehow legalised, legitimised,

and therefore also more attractive.

You now can do things without being ashamed of.

Before that, beating up Jews, you know,

you would cross a borderline.

After 1933, no.

It's very difficult for me to understand.

Actually, I can't understand it.

How can you beat up Jews and sleep well at night?

Or, to take a more radical example,

how can you kill Jews and sleep at night?

Photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, himself an arch anti-Semite,

was not interested in capturing images of SA violence

and thuggery.

This photograph was taken in the cellar of the Brown House-

the Nazi HQ in Munich.

This is almost as kind of Nazi as it gets

in terms of being surrounded by his most loyal

and faithful comrades.

Some of them would have been called the Alter Kampfer -

the old fighters, and I would suggest that this man here

looks relatively old, but a lot of them are quite young.

And a lot of these guys may have joined the party

a little bit later, but they're all wearing brown shirts.

So what we know is that they're all in the Sturmabteilung, or the SA.

They look slightly uneasy

because, you know, Hitler is this sort of God-like figure to them.

They're nervous. Clearly they're nervous.

And they're also feeling honoured.

They look a bit stiff. A little bit formal.

But they certainly are going to be dead proud to be in this shot.

Look at that expression. What does that remind you of?

That reminds me exactly of that picture of him at school.

It's the same expression.

That friendless kid in the back of the class

is now the ruler of Germany.

This is a man who's recently become Chancellor

and there's a look in his eyes that realises

the enormity of what he's achieved and who he's done it for.

And he knows that all these men in this room

are desperate for him to succeed.

It's quite a tableau.

Hitler wasted no time in consolidating power.

His aim? To gain control of all sections of German society.

So through 1933, '34 and into '35, you have this process

that's known as Gleichschaltung, or Coordination,

which is where any sort of rival or even independent sources of power

within politics, within society, are swiftly either removed,

outlawed, banned or Nazified.

So it would have effective oversight over trade institutions,

sporting institutions, sports clubs. It didn't matter what it was.

So you have this process by which the tentacles of the Nazi state

spread into every aspect of life.

So this is the building of the Nazi dictatorship.

The government department responsible for shaping

public attitudes was the Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda,

headed by Joseph Goebbels.

The mass rally was a key propaganda weapon,

held at a purpose-built parade ground in Nuremburg,

featuring music,

speeches and displays of military might.

It starts with the build-up,

where stormtroopers go down the aisle,

filling the air with eau de cologne, spraying it.

And you have the music, the orchestration

the marching along, the bearing of standards, the singing,

but you also have the special effects.

Hitler on his podium has all these light work buttons

where he can create all these lighting effects.

Hitler was always the star.

The focus of adulation and the cameras.

Sieg Heil!

Film footage of the rallies help explain Hitler's charismatic power.

The ranting Hitler is the only Hitler which we know

but it's not actually what happened.

What you see is a process of seduction.

He'd begin very softly and he'd only gradually work up to the rant.

So it would be a brilliant dramaturgic display

of gesture and vocalisation.

It would be an act, a very self-conscious act,

which would climax and the climax was the harangue.

It was this demented, mad, eye-swirling, strange,

almost otherworldly hysterical performance,

which can only be understood as a climax.

Im ganzen deutschen Reich ist es nicht anders!

But if you consume the whole experience,

the whole speech, it was very, very different

to if you just see the hysterical high points.

It's very important to grasp that

if we actually look at why and how Hitler was so effective.

Die einzige Macht und alleinige Macht ist Deutschland!

What does psychology say about the way big rallies

with flags and fireworks and marches and speeches,

how do these affect the way that we think?

The research shows that this makes us feel attached to our country

but in a specific way - in the way of being attached to it as an idea,

a big, beautiful glittering idea,

but not as a practical list of things.

So you're not attached to your country in that you want to

improve taxation or infrastructure around roads or anything like that.

You're attached to your country in that you love the flag

and you love the name and you love the music

and you are the greatest country on Earth,

and you're willing to defend against corrupt people

and outsiders who make your country less great.

That's what the rally does.

It takes your mind off that miserable, practical stuff

that no-one likes to talk about and just tells you how great you are

and that you should celebrate that and fight for that

and die for that if that's what's required.

CHANTING

Not every German could attend a rally.

The cinema gave the Nazis the ability to spread the image

and message of the Fuhrer to a wider audience.

Movie-going was hugely popular.

By the end of the 1930s,

over 600 million cinema tickets were sold every year.

This was an audience the Nazis could exploit.

They understand how important the cinema is

because the cinema has this ability to engage people on tap emotionally.

And it's that emotional engagement that they want,

cos they want people to become excited by his presence.

They would send projection facilities to schools and clubs.

And you would sit there and you would watch the newsreels

or the educational films,

which were basically all about ideological persuasion,

and can be a perfect German Aryan citizen.

The 1934 Nuremburg Rally was filmed by a young actor and director

named Leni Riefenstahl.

Hitler gave her a large budget,

a crew of over 170 and suggested the title of the finished film -

Triumph of the Will.

Every shot was carefully planned.

You see Hitler arriving at the Reichsparteitag,

at the party rally, in an aeroplane from above,

coming through the sky, coming down to Earth.

And this is all what you need to know about a leader and a redeemer.

And that's brilliant from a cinematographic point of view.

The low-angle shot, looking up. We're sitting in the cinema,

we're looking up to Hitler on the screen,

behind a lectern, on some kind of pedestal.

That's reverence. This empowers us.

That gives us a strong sense of the greatness of the Fuhrer.

But then we are also given his POV - his point of view.

We can see the masses at his feet.

So we're almost empowered, we're given a sense of what he sees

and we're put in his shoes, as a movie audience.

The other great innovation, I think, that she brings

is the moving camera.

So, we see different perspectives of Hitler all the time.

It's never static.

The camera seems to be constantly in motion.

And at the same time, it's a controlled motion.

And soon enough, we realise that the camera might be circling,

but it's circling around Hitler. Hitler is anchoring this movement.

And this is important, ideologically, because

National Socialism wants to present itself as a young, youthful,

dynamic movement, but it doesn't want to be anarchist either.

Movement without control - that's anarchism.

Youthful, forward-looking, redemptive, dynamic,

but all centred on and around Hitler.

CHEERING, APPLAUSE

Triumph of the Will played to packed houses across Germany.

It was just one of many Nazi propaganda films,

many of them violently anti-Semitic, that were popular in the 1930s.

Nazi propaganda is not turning good people bad.

People had already, were already close to bad ideas

before the Nazi propaganda. Nazi propaganda fostered these ideas

and also gave them the legitimacy to go after these ideas.

People didn't have to be forced to knock down Jews

or to steal from Jews.

It's more about fostering, giving ideas more ground.

But it's not about changing people completely.

Joseph Goebbels believed propaganda was not just spreading ideology -

it was about communication and entertainment.

Radio was a perfect way to access every home.

Germans were fed a selection of music request programmes...

..and Hitler's speeches.

Radio at the time was still a sort of coming technology,

to some extent,

and what the Nazi regime did already in 1933

was to produce subsidised radio sets.

This was what was known as the Volksempfanger,

which is rather a cheap radio set.

"People's receiver" is the translation of its title.

And by 1939, you have something like 15 million radio sets

being produced amongst the German population,

and you also have communal listening encouraged in workplaces

and schools and so on. So, this became a crucial weapon.

So, a really integral part of that seduction of the German people

was carried out by radio.

This is a newly digitised photo from Heinrich Hoffmann's archive.

This time, no sign of Hitler,

but you sense he's in the room.

It's in a local village or local town,

everyone listening to the radio.

And you can see in the middle everyone's in focus

because a light is coming in through the doorway and the window.

They're all nice and sharp. And you can just sense their attention.

And the crowd on the edges, which are all out of focus,

cos lenses only have a few feet of depth field,

and the people in the middle are sharp.

The people on the edges are all out of focus,

but that adds tension to the picture.

And I feel from it, they're listening to something so serious.

There's no smiles. And their lives are about to change.

Hoffmann took this photo

with a revolutionary lightweight 35mm camera,

made by the German company Leica.

This beautiful camera, which has been so important to photographers

down the years, was invented in 1924 by Ernst Leitz.

The name Leica comes from Leitz - "Lei-" -

and then "-ca" for camera. Leica.

And it was an instant hit

and also promoted the use of colour film with Kodak and Kodachrome.

But this little beauty, it's tough to use,

cos you've got to remember several things.

You have a focusing ring, which you have to focus the person on.

You have to make sure you load the film.

You had to focus, you had to cock the film,

and then you took a picture with that lovely silence.

And it's a perfect piece of engineering.

And to have this one from way back in the '30 in my hand is...

..a wonderful feeling. It just feels so right.

And all these years, we haven't improved the ergonomics.

The guy was a genius.

Ernst Leitz ran a large factory in the German city of Wetzlar.

He was a compassionate employer, prepared to fight for his workers.

He liked nothing better than at 7.00 in the morning

to walk up and down the factory and speak to all the employees -

you know, "How is your family?" "You need to borrow any money?"

And he was that kind of an owner.

The Leica camera was born out of that concern

for the welfare of his employees.

In 1924, when the German economy was in ruins,

Leitz feared he would have to make staff redundant.

He thought of the project as being a way of keeping the workers engaged,

of keeping the company going.

And so 1924, he gave the decision to produce the Leica,

which was a risk.

You know, there were other 35-millimetre cameras,

but they were not commercially successful.

The camera was an instant success.

Many photographers of note bought one,

as did thousands of middle-class Germans.

Ernst Leitz's company flourished.

But dark clouds were gathering.

Discriminatory Nazi laws introduced after Hitler became Chancellor

had had an instant impact on the Jewish citizens of Wetzlar,

especially the Nuremburg Laws of 1935.

Nuremberg Laws are very important because that's the moment

when Jews were turned, "legally", in second-class citizens.

They lose all their civil rights.

Jews in the future in Germany could be legally kicked out

of very many professions. They lost all their rights.

They were not citizens any more.

Parents are bringing their sons to the factory and pleading,

"Will you help us?"

And Leitz gives them long-term apprenticeships.

Leitz didn't stop there.

Seeing the increased danger his Jewish employees were in,

he arranged for them to find jobs in Britain and the United States,

even paying the travel costs.

Not only was it difficult to leave Germany,

but countries overseas were opposed to bringing in Jewish people.

It was very difficult for Jewish people

to get into the United States.

And blue-chip American companies were anti-Semitic.

So, to get a job with Kodak was difficult,

but here was a German company with an agency in New York

that was very happily employing lots of young Jewish people.

Ernst Leitz helped over 40 Jewish employees and family members

start new lives outside Germany.

The Nazis knew exactly what Leitz was doing.

They had spies in his factory.

But Leica was important to the regime.

Ernst Leitz and his company did have some leverage -

number one, a world-famous company, a source of pride for Germany.

Number two, he was a great exporter

and the Nazis were starved for foreign currency -

and especially in the later '30s, when they were re-arming.

In a way, there's a kind of a dance or a tight rope act

in the relationship between the regime and Leitz.

The Nazis have to be pragmatic at this point

because they need the output of the factory, in terms of the armaments.

As far as the world was concerned,

Leica was a model Third Reich company,

obeying all the Nazi rules.

In the advertisements for the Leica camera,

we see, for example, beautiful Aryan women frolicking at beaches

and all sorts of sports imagery.

Later on, we see things with more of a military emphasis.

This is the public side,

which is very much in contradict with the private side

of helping persecuted people.

Even during the war, with the borders closed,

his dangerous work continued.

Leitz's efforts turn to helping political opponents of the regime

and also employees and local towns,

people who get in trouble with the Nazis for making,

for example, remarks or even jokes about the Nazi leadership.

Leitz fought the regime until his factory was liberated

by American troops in 1945.

It had been a dangerous game, full of bitter irony.

Leitz himself is this compassionate humanitarian,

who is helping all manner of persecuted people

in all sorts of ways.

And yet his camera, the Leica, is beloved by the Nazis

and is used by their chief photographers, such as Hoffman,

to record anti-Jewish propaganda and the glories of the Reich.

CROWD CHEERING

In Germany in the 1930s,

it was impossible to escape the face of the Fuhrer.

It was part of everyday life.

Hitler's image was present in almost all public buildings -

so if you went to an office, to your town hall, local council,

in most school classrooms as well.

Hitler's image is present in all print media.

It's depicted in most newspapers,

and newspapers at this time are routinely featuring illustrations.

That might be Hitler at public events,

but it might also be these sort of features about, you know,

"Getting to know the Fuhrer as a real man,

"a good, relatable German."

Thanks to the 1936 Berlin Olympics,

Hitler's face became known around the world.

Nazi propaganda depicted him

as a benign ruler of a revitalised nation.

People came back from Berlin and said that Germany was a great place.

That was Hitler's biggest victory.

Almost all the photographs of Hitler at the Games

were taken by his friend and court photographer, Heinrich Hoffman.

One of his most famous pictures of the 1930s was one of the smallest.

And it made Hitler very wealthy.

When Hitler becomes head of state, like a lot of heads of state,

he appears on the definitive postage stamp.

In some ways, that's not that strange.

But what's interesting about the fact is that Hitler actually makes

a vast amount of money by his likeness being on postage stamps.

The portrait is taken by Hoffman

and it's licensed to the post office,

and there is a royalty collected by Hitler

on every stamp that was produced.

So, this stamp actually makes Hitler a very wealthy man.

Hoffmann claimed he saw the German Postmaster General hand Hitler

a 50 million Mark cheque, money made from the proceeds of the stamps.

I think it tells you quite a lot about the hucksterish, gangster-like

nature of the regime that Hitler, like a classic tin-pot dictator,

is trying cream as much cash out of his own people as quickly as he can.

It's the kind of quick buck morality of a gangster.

For the majority of Germans, Hitler was a trusted figure,

who held out the promise of a better future.

This scrapbook, made by the mother of a Berlin family,

shows how much Hitler and the Nazis were part of their lives.

It starts with the birth of her child in May 1935.

And it looks like a purely private kind of documentation

of family life.

And then suddenly, we see completely different themes emerging.

So, in this double spread here,

we see pictures, maps, flags about the Olympic Games,

which were in Berlin in 1936.

We have all these incredibly kitsch stickers about Christmas -

Father Christmas, little angels and so on -

but then we also have similarly kitsch stickers

that show members of the German Wehrmacht and even the SA

presented as this kind of quaint, colourful collage,

so there's clearly here a sense that the regime,

and even its military forces, can be pulled into this kind of

child-centred world of the idyllic and the perfect German life.

In the family scrapbook are also pictures of the Fuhrer,

emphasising his place in German history.

So, here, we have a postcard of Frederick the Great,

who was an 18th-century Prussian king and great military leader,

directly underneath a picture of Hitler watching the Olympic Games

and next to a postcard that shows a picture of Hitler

opening one of the first German motorways.

He's a personification of what National Socialism is about

and the fun, new times it is promising

to politically aligned families like the one who made this album.

Hitler's image was also used to sell a leisure organisation

set up in 1933 called Kraft durch Freude -

or "Strength Through Joy".

KdF organised Germans' free time

strictly in line with Nazi principles.

By the late 1930s, it had become the world's largest tourist operator.

But alongside holidays, there were a range of other activities,

sporting clubs and so on.

So, the emphasis is very much as the motto indicates -

that joy, enjoying yourself is a positive and valuable activity.

It contributes to your inner strength

and makes you the ideal Nazi citizen.

For all their anti-capitalist rhetoric,

the Nazi learned a lot of their lessons about political propaganda

from the techniques of commercial advertising.

So, the idea that through a product or a leisure opportunity,

we are not just buying a moment of happiness or enjoyment,

but we're also buying a sort of fantasy of how we want to be,

the fun-loving, confident person that we fantasise about.

So, this is very much what Nazi propaganda picks up on,

this idea of propaganda as a promise of a future

and a vision of a better self.

One of the most popular selling points

of the Strength Through Joy movement

was the promise of a vehicle for all, the "People's Car" -

or Volkswagen.

The Fuhrer, a long-standing car enthusiast who couldn't drive,

was used to promote it.

So, the brochures that advertised the People's Cars

always started with a kind of foreword by Hitler.

And it showed Hitler with the prototype of the car,

but it was part of a product range of the Fuhrer being seen

as the provider of the goodies for the nation.

Germans were encouraged to save money to buy the car.

Even that scheme had an ideological motive.

In order to get one of these cars, Germans had to invest quite heavily

into a savings or sort of coupon scheme.

The idea is that saving is authentically German,

a virtuous, solid activity, as opposed to buying things on credit,

which is a sign of international finance, capitalism,

Jewish banks and all that.

Through rituals like these, the desirable practice,

like saving towards an anticipated joyous future,

were embedded into everyday life.

In April 1938, motor engineer Ferdinand Porsche

gave Hitler a birthday present of a model of a People's Car,

later nicknamed the Beetle.

This picture is quite fun in some ways,

cos you've got Hitler chortling over a Beetle with Ferdinand Porsche,

and they are looking the fact that the engine's in the back.

It's one of the first things that everybody notes about the Beetle.

I think when you look at this picture of Porsche,

it does remind you of the fact that Hitler and his relationship

with industrialists was so important to him.

We always think about Hitler's mass appeal.

You know, we think of those crowds and those rallies,

but actually part of Hitler's path to power

and so much of his retention of power is related to the fact

that he actually groomed these industrialists,

he got them on side.

But of course, if you sort of step back from that picture,

from the kind of jollity,

actually, the story of the birth of the Beetle is a classic story

of kind of Nazi overreaching ambition

and actual deep incompetence.

Only 600 of the People's Cars were ever finished.

And despite its populist promise, most went to the Nazi leadership.

In 1942, the British used this photograph

in hundreds of propaganda leaflets which they dropped over German lines

in North Africa.

Below it, mocking Hitler's slogan "Strength Through Joy",

was a photograph of dead German soldiers next to the Kubelwagen,

the military version of Porsche's car.

Production of the Volkswagen stopped in 1939, as Germany geared for war.

The Nazis had been expanding the air force,

army and navy since the mid-1930s.

Rearmament was responsible for the bulk

of the nation's economic growth.

On February the 14th, 1939,

the pride of the German fleet, the battleship Bismarck,

was ready to be launched.

Hitler travelled to Hamburg for the occasion.

Even before a shot has been fired in the Second World War,

he's very much at the top of his power.

You can see the adulation on these chaps' faces.

It's like they're meeting a pop star.

These are Hitler's generation of men.

These are also Hitler's kind of social peers in many ways.

They come from a similar lower middle class,

maybe more artisanal background,

so Hitler identifies with these people and they identify with him.

For them, Hitler is their saviour. They owe him their jobs.

Look how neatly this man's jacket is pressed.

Look at that. That is not common for the time,

to have your workman's jacket neatly pressed and ironed.

You better believe that his wife knew that morning

he was going to meet his Fuhrer,

and he was going to look his darned best.

And you can see in the background here, you can just see Goering,

the familiar, sort of somewhat rotund features of Goering.

These men feel that they've turned Germany around,

and these are the men for whom they've done that.

And these men are genuinely grateful.

Just a few months later, Germany would be at war.

The loyalty of these men, encouraged by images of a benign Fuhrer

and nurtured by years of propaganda, would be severely tested.

Hitler is lucky. He is also clever.

But most of all, I think he's a gambler.

But as any gambler will tell you, you can't carry on taking big risks

and expect to get away with it forever.