All language subtitles for hitler.germanys.fatal.attraction.s01e03.1080p.web.h264-cbfming

(dramatic music)

(crowd cheering)

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] In 1933, Adolf Hitler

was made Chancellor of Germany.

This allowed the Nazi regime
to seize complete power.

The Wall Street crash, the Reichstag fire,

and the death of Ernst von Grass

all enabled the Nazi's
to further their tyranny.

German military rearmament
was prioritized,

and in 1935, the Wehrmacht
saw its reincarnation

following the disarmament
after World War I.

Britain and France turned a blind eye

to this contravention of
the Versailles Treaty.

(dramatic music)

The German people were
excited by the prospect

of the country becoming great again.

Exploiting all aspects of the media,

Joseph Goebbels masterminded
the slick propaganda

which was fed to the population.

(man speaks in foreign language)

- Goebbels' great insight was that

the best propaganda is
disguised as something else.

It's carried on the back of entertainment.

- [Narrator] Coupled with
this the violent persecution

of all those opposed to the regime

became progressively worse.

- A strong powerful street presence,

uniformed marching men and
boys and a lot of them.

The repetitive power of
violent, brutal street theater

when it came to dealing with opposition.

- Terror played a very important
part in the dictatorship

throughout its entire length.
(crowd cheering)

No political dissent would be tolerated.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The Nazi party delivered

on their promise of higher employment,

and although the German
nation was not oblivious

to the violence and persecution,

they allowed it to continue in the hope

that Hitler would restore their pride.

(dramatic music)

(crowd cheering)

- The only real long-term
aims were to stay in power,

win back territory for Germany,

and to win back respect for Germany.

- I knew there was a lot of unrest,

but I didn't think it would
blossom into all out war.

(bombs exploding)
(plane engine roaring)

- [Narrator] The second
World War would see

the height of Nazi popularity,

but it would also be
their ultimate downfall.

(bombs exploding)

- His idea is to refight
the first World War

but on a better basis.

His aim very early on is
to conquer Eastern Europe.

- Once it became clear

that victory was not going to be easy,

then a great many German people realized

that this had been a gamble
and that they'd lost.

- He maintained his faith
because it was a matter of will.

- He'd come to believe that he was

a Messiah blessed by providence.

He just believed that there was something

of the divine about him.

(dramatic music)

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] To fully
understand the outbreak

of World War II, we have
to look back to 1936

and the start of the Nazi re-occupation

of land lost from the Versailles Treaty.

(dramatic music)

- One of the fundamental
principles of the Treaty

of Versailles had been
national self-determination.

Every nation should have its state.

So the Habsburg Monarchy
had been broken up.

The Austrians, Hungarians, the Czechs,

Yugoslav's they got their own.

Why should this be denied to the Germans?

- Hitler certainly sets out
an agenda for moving into

the Rhineland which had
become a demilitarized zone

under the terms of the Versailles Treaty.

- [Reporter] German soldiers
again breaking a treaty

marched into the demilitarized Rhineland.

- The Rhineland was
sovereign German territory.

It's a re-militarization.

It's having military installations on it.

It had been occupied up to 1930.

The deal was that the Germans

would have it under their own control.

That the occupation forces would leave,

but that there would be no
military installations in it.

In 1936, of course,
Hitler sends his troops

into the Rhineland and
a big military show.

(crowd cheering)
(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] On March 12, 1938

the German army marched into Austria.

They were met with cheering crowds

as they crossed the border.

Hitler's appeal was growing rapidly.

- The Anschluss is popular with
a lot of people in Austria,

perhaps not as many as it looks

because the previous regime
of Dollfuss and Schuschnigg

had done the work for Hitler
by banning the left in 1934.

The social democrats had been banned.

They were underground,

so there's no opposition
really in Austria either.

I mean it's a dictatorship as well.

(crowd cheering)
(dramatic music)

- Hitler said that he had
no desire on any territory

which had not had a historical
memory of a German presence.

The Germans were a Pan-European tribe.

They were not a nation in a country

as the rest of us really are.

They were everywhere.

They are not in the Iberian Peninsula.

They were not in the British Isles,

but they were everywhere else
stretching deep into Russia.

- So, there's no resistance in Europe

to the German takeover of
German-speaking Austria.

The German demand for the
incorporation of two million

German speakers on the western
boundaries of Czechoslovakia

in 1938 is acceded to because
it fulfills that principle.

- [Narrator] On September 30, 1938

Germany, France, Britain, and Italy

signed the Munich Agreement,

which attempted to
appease Hitler's designs

on Czechoslovakia following
the Anschluss of Austria.

- [Reporter] Meanwhile at
Munich misguided statesmen

were lulled into believing that Hitler

would cage his storm troopers in return

for a sizeable hunk of Czechoslovakia.

They signed away the Sudetenland

in a move to appease a rattlesnake,

a rattlesnake who having
once glutted himself

on the rich food of another nation's lands

would become ravenously
hungry again and again.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] The agreement handed Hitler

the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia,

which left the country weakened,

and on March 16, 1939 Germany
took control of the country.

- I think it may be true
that Hitler felt he had been

cheated of his war over the Sudetenland.

He had a peculiar hatred for the Czechs.

I'm not entirely sure why.

Maybe it was just Czechs
and Poles as Slavs.

It seems as if he may
have felt denied a war

in the Autumn of 1938
at a time when he felt

his potential adversaries
were too weak really.

(dramatic music)

- The re-militarization of the Rhineland,

Anschluss of Austria 1938,
the Czechoslovak crisis,

they're all solved
basically without bloodshed.

That gains Hitler a reputation
and popularity in Germany

but not because he's being militaristic.

- [Narrator] The sequence
of territory gains made by

the Nazi's in the late
1930s won back the majority

of land lost by the signing
of the Versailles Treaty

after the first World War.

- Winning the foreign policy
successes of the 1930s

without having to resort
to war was a major gain

that was appreciated by a lot of people

and restored German pride in a big way.

- The turning point
only comes in March 1939

when Hitler marches into
the rest of Czechoslovakia

which is inhabited not
by Germans but by Czechs.

At that point there's a general

realization in political elites

in other countries in
Europe that he's after more

than simply recreating a
kind of German nation state.

- Hitler gambled on the
fact they'd get away

with doing these things without war,

and his gambling instinct served him well.

Britain, France, the Western democracies

did not respond militarily
for all kinds of reasons.

The real gamble was 1939

when it came to the move against Poland.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] Signed in 1939 in Moscow

the Non-Aggression Pact would establish

Nazi Germany and Russia as allies.

- By then he knew he
could get away with it,

or he did by early August
after the extraordinary

turnaround in the Reich's
policy of signing a mutual,

Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union.

That was the moment at
which the field was cleared

for Hitler to move against Poland.

- [Reporter] Germany invades Poland

and the free state of Danzig.

The efforts and hopes of
diplomats for peaceful settlement

are transformed into the roar of gunfire.

Warsaw is bombed, blasted, and shelled.

Poland is in ruins.

(tense music)

- Where the gamble went wrong
was that Britain and France

honored their treaty
obligations to Poland.

Hitler had never thought
they would do that.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The eve of war
was upon the German nation.

It would be a conflict
which would bring about

the demise of the Nazi regime,

but it would also
facilitate mass genocide,

brutal murder and bloodshed on a scale

which no one could have imagined possible.

(dramatic music)

Territory gains made by the Nazi regime

were carried out with minimum
of bloodshed and resistance.

The German nation was buoyant.

Their Fuhrer was delivering.

- [Reporter] War has struck again.

- [Narrator] However,
on September 1, 1939,

Germany invaded Poland.

(bombs exploding)

(dramatic music)

With regard to the Treaty of Versailles,

this attack proved a step too far

for Britain and the allies.

- [Neville] I have to tell you now

this country is at war with Germany.

(alert blaring)
(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] The second
World War had commenced.

- The wrong of Versailles
had been righted.

They hadn't got Alsace-Lorraine back.

They could live without them.

The Polish corridor was the
big issue territorially.

They had that.

They had Austria.

People would have been very
happy to leave it at that

but the war was not concluded,
and you do get complaints

even in the autumn of 1939.

This war has been going on too long.

- [Narrator] In the winter of 1939,

Hitler would unleash his
Blitzkrieg upon western Europe,

and over the following
months Germany would go on

to conquer many more countries.

- One victory after another.

The fall of France, the fall of Belgium,

the fall of Holland, the fall of Norway,

all of this is a kind of ecstasy.

(dramatic music)

- I think the euphoria is partly

that now it really is all over,

and we've done really well.

People were pretty pleased
with that and Hitler.

It had been done under his leadership,

so he got a lot of credit for that.

- The prophet is what he says he is.

He is real.

He is an earthly God by this stage,

and, of course, the trouble is he begins

to believe his own mythology.

- Very rapid conquest, with
relatively little bloodshed

and not much loss on the German side,

very short war all of this was treated

with huge enthusiasm by the German people.

Partly because they then thought
the war had come to an end.

- That was certainly enough

for the overwhelming majority of Germans.

- I think that all those
crowds you see in the newsreels

waving flags and screaming it's all true.

I mean, they couldn't believe it.

That in a few weeks
they'd defeated an enemy

they couldn't defeat in
four years of grueling war.

- Hitler was one of the
few people in Germany

who welcomed another war.

He wasn't scared.

The first World War had made him somebody,

but for other Germans,
two million German men

had been killed during the first World War

and an awful lot had been wounded.

You just had to look at the

the maimed ex-servicemen on the streets.

So it was a terrible prospect
for an awful lot of people.

(dramatic music)

- [Reporter] In a drive as
speedy as that to the Channel,

Nazi units pushed southward
and rapidly outflanked

the famous French Maginot Line.

- Following the French surrender,

Hitler arranged for the armistice
between Germany and France

to be signed in the same train
carriage in the same location

which 22 years previously had been used

for the signing of the Armistice of 1918.

(gentle music)

Reaching the English Channel in May 1940

and outmaneuvering the British,

causing the retreat to Dunkirk,

the German army looked to be
the far superior aggressor.

Britain was on the brink of
seeking terms with Germany

but Winston Churchill argued

that nations which went
down fighting rose again,

but those which surrendered
tamely were finished.

- Hitler gave a rather empty
speech, offering peace terms

which weren't very specified to Britain,

and when Churchill rejected them,

there was universal outrage
and incomprehension in Germany.

Churchill knew that a peace
with Germany at that point

would mean German control over Britain

would get greater and greater.

He would probably be ousted.

Fascists like Mosley would
become the Prime Minister.

That it would be, in effect,
a surrender in stages.

He was quite right to reject
this very vague peace offer.

- But an interesting aspect of
this is his view of Churchill

whom he respected as a fellow artist,

and for a long time
his plan for Churchill,

in the event of German victory,

was to just leave him in a country house

where he could paint and not string him up

like all the others or put
him in a concentration camp.

(plane engine roaring)
(dramatic music)

- Trying to bomb Britain into submission

over the winter of 1940, 1941
was a huge miscalculation.

They did not have the
offensive air power to do it.

- Hello America this is Edward
Murrow speaking from London.

There were more German planes

over the coast of Britain today

than at any time since the war began.

Anti-aircraft guns were in action

along the southeast coast today.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] Fought in the
air the Battle of Britain

would start on July 10th

and would finish on October 31, 1940.

(plane engine roaring)
(guns firing)

- I was speaking to Captain Eric Brown

who interrogated Goring.

That Goring at Nuremberg told him

that the Battle of Britain was a draw.

- I said to him what are your views

on the outcome of the Battle of Britain,

and he said, "I think it was a draw."

And I said, "How did you
arrive at that conclusion?"

He said, "Well, if you
look at the analysis

"of the final weeks of
the Battle of Britain,

"the last week we were in the ascendancy."

"In other words we had less pilot

and aircraft causalities than the Brits."

Now if you look at the analysis
this is perfectly true.

- Although the British
had claimed victory,

Hitler's popularity within
Germany was still strong.

The Nazi commanders were
all firmly behind Hitler.

However on May 10, 1940
one would take action

which would signal
fractures within the regime.

- Hitler retained his
charismatic control over

the second rank of Nazi
leaders, Goring, Goebbels

and so on during the war.

Hess was the only exception,

because he was really eased out

of the central decision
making circles of Nazi's men.

He thought he'd try and get back

in a rather muddle-headed way.

- One of the great
mysteries of World War II

there is some speculation as to whether

Hitler in fact authorized it.

Because if we take Hitler
as actually wanting

a negotiated peace with
Britain not a conquest,

it would actually make sense.

- [Reporter] In the most
bizarre and astounding event

of the war so far, Rudolf
Hess, number three Nazi,

seen here going about his
activities as confidant

and chief party leader for
the Nazi warlord Hitler

is now a prisoner in Scotland,

after a mysterious solo
flight from Germany.

- Hess had simply got into his head

that to restore his status with Hitler

he would fly to Britain
and negotiate a peace.

- It was very easy for the Nazi

media to project Hess as deluded,

and indeed what he did was remarkable.

Firstly, he learned to fly
specifically for this purpose.

- [Reporter] The Nazi leader
took off from Augsburg

and headed straight for western Scotland

where an old friend of
his, the Duke of Hamilton,

has an estate.

His mission: who knows.

- He flew and crash landed on the estate

of the Duke of Hamilton in Scotland.

The choice of landing was
significant because Hamilton

had actually been very sympathetic
to Germany before the war

and some suggested a kind
of crypto-fascist himself.

But by this stage he's very
anxious to clean up his act,

so he delivers Hess
straight to the authorities.

- Hitler was furious because, of course,

he didn't know about it.

Furious, particularly because it was just

before the invasion of the Soviet Union.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] As Goebbels and
the Nazi propaganda machine

were covering themselves
from the Hess debacle,

Hitler was implementing the
start of another battle.

Led by arrogance and
self-belief, he would soon embark

on the largest invasion
in the history of warfare.

The attack would stretch
along a 3,000 kilometer front

and would send four million
soldiers into Soviet territory.

It would mark the beginning
of the pivotal phase

in deciding the victory of the war,

which would see Nazi
popularity plummet in Germany.

It would bring death and
destruction to millions of people.

(dramatic music)

1940 had seen the height of Hitler

and the Nazi regime's
popularity within Germany.

The Battle of Britain
had been unsuccessful,

but support was still strong

despite Hess's flight to Scotland.

What would come next,
however, would be a battle

led by prejudice and vanity
on the part of Hitler.

His own self-belief convinced him

to march on Moscow and conquer Russia

the very campaign that Charles XII

and Napoleon had failed to achieve.

(tense music)

- [Reporter] In a sudden
coup German's military might

has been thrown against
her former ally Russia,

in a gigantic attack by
land as well as by air

along a 2,000 mile front from
the arctic to the Black Sea.

- At first he was lucky.

His self-confidence paid off.

Took the Rhineland and walked into Austria

all that built up his self-confidence,

not only with the people but with himself.

This was the dangerous thing.

(dramatic music)

(guns firing)

- There were two reasons why

Hitler attacked the Soviet Union.

First of all, it was a way
of bringing Britain to terms

because he thought, already in 1940,

that he wasn't going to
conquer Britain by force.

He was gonna have to leave
Britain totally isolated

without any allies at all,

and if he conquered the Soviet Union,

the British surely would see sense.

They'd have the entire
continent against them.

- Secondly, his derision
of the Bolsheviks,

they're being inherently incompetent,

and his racial dismissal of the Russians

he believed it would collapse
like a house of cards.

- The Bolshevik state
was rotten to the core.

You had only to kick the door in,

and the whole edifice
would come crumbling down.

That's what they thought,

and, I think, flushed with success

from the Blitzkrieg in western Europe,

they thought all they
had to do was attack.

In a way it was a bit silly actually

because that had been
the mentality of 1914.

- With a bit of luck
if he had gone earlier,

he may have succeeded in
temporarily conquering Russia.

- [Reporter] Today American
news agencies report

Russia is strongly counterattacking,

and that less than 150th of Russia's

vast area has been invaded.

These pictures show them the beginning

of the Blitz that turned into a siege.

- There was some encouragement.

In that, Stalin had done a
great deal of damage to his

armed forces through the
purges of the mid, later 1930s.

- But how Hitler would ever police it

for the rest of his time I don't think

he'd even begun to think it through.

(guns firing)

- [Reporter] Panza troops in action.

From the Baltic to the Black
Sea great clashes between

Russian and German tank
squadrons have been reported.

- In the autumn of 1941,

the Germans were on course
just cutting through butter,

going to take Moscow, going to Leningrad,

and they didn't and they were stopped.

(dramatic music)
(bombs exploding)

- [Narrator] Operation
Barbarossa would be a definitive

turning point in the
fortunes of the Nazi regime.

The march on Moscow was
the end of what had started

as a successful campaign.

Hitler had gained many
territories in Eastern Europe,

but it was the harsh Soviet winter

and the tough belligerence of the Red Army

that would finally see the Nazi's defeated

and home support of the
regime finally turn.

- [Reporter] Here apparently
the Germans got their

first sight of the Russian's
scorched earth tactics.

Scorched earth tactics
that American reporters say

should be even more effective
now that winter has set in,

and Hitler's photogenic army must face

general snow and general mud.

(tense music)

- Once you get into 1942,
(gentle music)

they're now fighting on
quite a number of fronts.

Army leave is being canceled.

So people aren't getting home.

Food rationing is getting more stringent.

People are becoming
depressed and disillusioned.

- [Narrator] It was not
just the German population

who were becoming despondent,

many officers in the German army

were also starting to question
their Fuhrer's actions.

- Throughout the war there were

attempts to assassinate Hitler,

many of them orchestrated by

anti-Hitler generals and soldiers,

but they could none of them manage it.

- All the former social
democrats and communists,

I say a third of the electorate
in the last free election

in 1932 they had effectively
been brought in line.

Their resistance movements
mostly distributing leaflets

and kind of keep the
flame going as it were,

they'd all been suppressed by the Gestapo.

It was very difficult to
resist in the Third Reich

because denunciation was widespread.

If somebody overheard you or got a clue

that you were doing X,
Y and Z, then they would

go down to Gestapo
headquarters and turn you in.

- So the only people
who could really resist

as a group were the senior army officers,

with a few conservative
politicians attached,

and they're the ones who then prepared

the assassination of Hitler
as things were beginning

to go really seriously
wrong in 1943 to four.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Claus von Stauffenberg

was a general in the German army

who had been injured
serving in North Africa,

losing his right hand,
two fingers on the left,

and also his left eye.

- Von Stauffenberg was a
most unlikely assassin.

He'd been seriously injured.

He could prime the bomb
only with great difficulty,

and so on, but nobody else
could be found to do it.

And he was determined now
that his German patriotism

could only be expressed
by destroying Hitler.

Hitler would destroy Germany.

If you were a patriot, your
job was to destroy Hitler.

(bombs exploding)

- [Narrator] Although
the bomb von Stauffenberg

detonated killed four people,

Hitler was shielded by a solid oak table

and was only left with minor injuries.

Von Stauffenberg was found
guilty of high treason

and subsequently executed.

Having survived the assassination attempt,

Adolf Hitler was still convinced

that the war was for winning,

even though the German
nation suspected the worst.

- He's always hoping when
he looks back at history

that something will happen,

something will happen politically.

The alliance will fall apart,

or Germany will invent
an amazing new weapon

or somehow or other you can pluck

victory from the jaws of defeat,

just as his great hero
Frederick the Great had done.

I'm not sure there's ever a point actually

which Hitler says I recognize it.

I failed, we're going to be defeated.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The battle
on the Eastern front

turned into a long war of attrition.

The German army was ill prepared for this,

and the Russian army, with
the far greater resource,

would in 1944 finally defeat
the attacking German army.

(somber music)

The paradox of the attack eastwards

was that the more territory Hitler gained,

greater was the Jewish
population he acquired.

- The war changed everything,

and Germany's victories across Europe

and then in the east after June 1941,

from having a population
of 600,000 Jews in 1933

the number of Jewish
people under the Reichs in

inverted commerce
administrative military control

soared to many millions of people.

- Hitler's problem,

self-inflicted problem,
is he attacks Poland,

and the largest concentration

of European Jews falls into his hands,

and as he moves elsewhere
in Eastern Europe

more Jews come under his rule.

The original idea had been to
expel German Jews from Germany

and Jews were expelled
into Poland for example,

but that doesn't solve the problem

once you've invaded Poland.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] The Madagascar
Plan was an idea to establish

a Jewish colony on the
African island of Madagascar.

It was subsequently shelved in 1942.

- I don't think anybody
ever asked Madagascar

to settle a Jewish colony there,
to ship out European Jews,

but that was, I think, was never really

going to come to anything.

- There had been talk
about enforced deportations

of a captive Jewish
population out of Germany,

out of Europe.

How were they going to do that?

That, by its very nature

would have been a brutal,
murderous exercise.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The Wannsee
Conference was a meeting

of Nazi officials in
Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin,

to establish a final solution
to the Jewish problem.

- They formalized the
operation of the holocaust

while it was already under way,

while it had already started.

People like Eichmann, Heydrich showed up

to take the decisions in a
chillingly managerial way.

No need for Hitler to be
present they didn't need him.

They knew Hitler would sanction
what they were going to do.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] The extermination
camps would eventually

operate around the clock.

In the last acts of this brutal conflict

Adolf Hitler would
unleash one final command

that would order the futile resistance

of his party faithful.

(dramatic music)
(guns firing)

War on the eastern front
was a battle too far.

It signaled the end for the Nazi regime.

The German nation was heavily rationed

and those dwelling in the
urban centers were facing

ever increasing bombing
raids by the allied forces.

Hitler however remained defiant.

- Later on Hitler lived in
a fantasy world` of his own.

Even in the last days of
the war he was conjuring up

in his own mind imaginary
armies, secret weapons,

extraordinary make believe scenarios.

- He maintained his faith.

Because it was a matter of will.

The 1934 party rally was
called Triumph of the Will,

and Hitler and Goebbels
to a very great extent,

and some other close followers,

maintained this belief that
their will would prevail.

- Nobody had the nerve
to try to disabuse Hitler

of his fantasies even in the last days.

- In the Autumn of 1944,

a group of generals come
to Hitler's headquarters.

The generals go in and say to Hitler,

"We are convinced that the war is lost."

They're in there for about, I don't know,

an hour and a half or something,
and they come out again.

Their eyes shining saying, "The Fuhrer

"has convinced us that
we can win the war."

- By then, he'd already decided

that the German people had betrayed him.

They had proved unworthy
of their great destiny

and deserve the fate that
was descending upon them.

Extraordinary mental and
moral universe to inhabit.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] June 6, 1944
saw the D-Day landings

and would be the start
of the allied invasion

of occupied western Europe.

Germany found they were
retreating from all fronts

as the Red Army marched from the east.

Close to defeat, Hitler issued

what became known as the Nero Decree.

On March 19, 1945 an order was sent out

that all German infrastructures
must be destroyed

to prevent the allies
utilizing them as the advanced.

It also called for every last house

and street to be fought for.

- It happened in small villages,

which had nothing to do with the war,

they had to stand and fight
when American tanks came.

That kind of thing it just
was absolutely criminal.

- So he blamed reverses and defeats

on a lack of willpower in his generals,

not on the lack of material or
the superiority of the enemy.

- It had terrible
repercussions for Germans

because it meant that the whole of Germany

had to be invaded, fought over,
occupied by foreign troops,

in a way that had not happened
in the first World War

because Hitler wouldn't surrender.

- [Narrator] In the
closing stages of the war

a large number of the
Nazi faithful realized

that the war was effectively lost.

This resulted in mass
suicides throughout Germany.

(dramatic music)

- There was this feeling of got a dimmer

from the twilight of the
gods we all die together

because life after the
Reich isn't worth living.

Now that's an extraordinary sensation,

and I think one can't fully explain it.

You have to understand
the extraordinarily rigid

hold the regime had on people.

(somber music)

- A great many of the party
faithful committed suicide

because they simply couldn't
face the idea of German defeat.

They'd been fed propaganda for years,

but defeat would mean
the partition of Germany.

It might mean the
deliberate impoverishment.

There were rumors that all
German males would be castrated

and all kinds of extraordinary
things went around in 1945.

- Historians have tried
to quantify the numbers,

but in the ghastly
chaos of the Third Reich

in its final days mass murder,

nihilistic orgies of killing by

the Nazi state in its death throes

it's hard to know what the
actual figures really were.

- [Narrator] Knowing that the Soviets

were advancing swiftly towards his bunker,

Hitler gave his last will and testament

making Joseph Goebbels as Reich Chancellor

and naming no one as
his successor as Fuhrer.

The next day April 30,
1945 Hitler shot himself.

- Two of Hitler's immediate circle,

Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann,

remained loyal to him right to the end.

They stayed in the bunker in Berlin.

For Goebbels there was nowhere else to go.

He felt that if the Third Reich collapsed,

if Hitler was killed that
was it, everything was over.

- An extraordinary sense of apocalypse

seemed to overtake them
and they felt that,

that was the only course
of action open to them.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] On May 1st Joseph Goebbels

and his wife Magda committed suicide,

but before doing so
killed their six children

by drugging them and then
poisoning them with cyanide.

Both Himmler and Goering
would commit suicide as well,

but this was not before they were

interrogated by the allies.

Captain Eric Brown, posted to Germany

to look for jet wind tunnels,

was tasked with the job
of identifying Himmler

and was able to interrogate Goering.

Himmler was arrested
near the Danish border

with false papers.

- The warrant officer phoned
headquarters at Luneburg

and said, "We've picked up somebody

"who we think might be Himmler.

"Could you come up and identify him?

"You said when you saw
Himmler in civil life

"that he used to walk with
a slightly peculiar gait,

"and could you come up and
try and identify this guy?"

So I went up to banister.

As soon as I walked in,
I knew it was Himmler.

I mean, even without making him walk.

Absolute coward.

I think he was frightened out of his life.

(dramatic music)

Always trying to evade anything

that directly threatened him.

- [Reporter] Accompanied
by these two SS men

Heinrich Himmler, most
hated man in Europe,

was captured by British
troops outside this town.

Concealed in Himmler's mouth

was a tiny vial of deadly poison.

While being examined, he swallowed it.

(tense music)

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Goering
was in American custody

and Eric was able to ask him key questions

about Nazi aircraft strategy.

- He was charismatic, very intelligent.

He came out of World
War I with great honor,

had a huge reputation in Germany.

A good man who went very wrong,

he was corrupted by the system he joined.

And he lost all his qualities of honor,

and began to really lust
for power and luxury,

and that of course was his total downfall.

(tense music)

- [Reporter] At Luneburg
Germany before a British

military court the greatest
mass murder trial in history.

These Nazi's were guards at notorious

Belsen Concentration Camp where
four million prisoners died.

- [Narrator] The end of the
war signaled the beginning

of peace for many across Europe
and the rest of the world.

There was a tangible sense
of relief in the air,

but as occupied land was liberated,

the full horror of the
Nazi regime was revealed.

Eric Brown was part of the
liberation of Bergen-Belsen.

- Piles of dead bodies.

Piles of walking dead really.

Just a horror story.

- [Reporter] Now Belsen,
the human slaughterhouse

where numberless victims
were once burned to death,

is itself put to the torch.

Nearby, Nazi women guards
are lined up for questioning.

- [Eric] He wanted me to interrogate

the camp commandant who
was called Josef Kramer

and the lady camp commandant Irma Grese.

- [Reporter] Kramer's chief
sadist was Irma Grese,

in curls, whose name struck terror

into the hearts of Belsen's inmates.

(suspenseful music)

- She's the worst human
being I've ever met.

Cruelty was her trade.

There was nothing too
cruel for this woman to do.

When it came to interrogating her,

I asked her if she had
her time over again,

would she do all this.

She refused to answer.

After about four or five times like this

she suddenly leapt to her
feet and gave the Nazi salute,

shouted Heil Hitler, sat
down, and refused to talk.

But, we executed the lot.

You can hardly defend yourself
when outside the window

there's a pile of bodies as
high as this ceiling in a pit.

- [Reporter] Newsreel
films of the atrocities

at Belsen shocked the world.

Even death for Kramer and
his gang cannot avenge

the crimes of the beasts of Belsen.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] What started
as Hitler's strong

antisemitic beliefs in
the wake of World War I

ended as what we now
know as the Holocaust.

Six million Jews were murdered,
along with tens of thousands

of gypsies, homosexuals, communists,

mentally ill and the physically disabled.

(somber music)

In the aftermath of the
war the allied forces

would soon stake their
own territorial claims,

which would lead the
conquered nation divided.

- Germany in 1945 was
an extraordinary mess.

60% of its urban area had
been obliterated from the air.

- Germany was occupied
by the allied powers.

The Soviet Union, the French,
British, and Americans,

a very heavy military occupation.

- It was economically impoverished.

It was difficult to see, in fact, in 1945

where Germany was going to go,

how Germans were going to survive

widespread hunger, even
starvation in places.

- There were all kinds of measures

to stop any recrudescence of Nazism.

Nazi laws are revoked.

There's a re-education effort of trying

to educate Germans in the evils of Nazism,

but in a sense that's all less important

than the fact that Nazism had brought,

in the end, nothing but
death and destruction.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] After the
war the nation of Germany

would be split in two.

To the east the Soviet occupied area

became the German Democratic Republic.

The area to the west
which Britain, France,

and the U.S. occupied became

the Federal Republic of Germany.

This division was most
notably illustrated in Berlin.

- The Berlin wall was erected in 1961,

and would be a chilling visual
reminder of a nation divided.

(somber music)

- I was sent back to
Germany in the mid 1950s.

I found it difficult to
reform relationship with some

of them whom I knew what
they had done in the war.

But in general, I
realized that some of them

had been led like sheep to the slaughter.

- I think post war Germany is a great epic

in the act of remembrance and omission.

For a nation to confront
its guilt like that

is extraordinary because
a lot of other nations

have a lot of other
skeletons in the cupboard.

- [Narrator] Hitler remains
a source of intrigue

for many people throughout the world.

- Hitler exerts a kind of fascination

that you could never really imagine.

We spend so much time writing books

and programs about Hitler and so on.

I think Hitler would have
been amazed by the extent

of historical attention
that's paid to him.

(suspenseful music)

- You'll always get young bloods

who will be attracted to the
style of the Nazi regime.

- They've actually given us the image,

not of themselves, but of their ideal.

(gentle music)

- It is an extraordinary story.

How this nondescript man, stateless,

radical politician with a
whole lot of wacky ideas

in the 1920s could suddenly
become Germany's dictator

that unleashed the largest war

and embark on the biggest
crime the world has ever known.

And I think that the public 70 years on

are still fascinated by those paradoxes.

- [Narrator] Today Germany
is a nation united.

The economic miracle that
west Germany experienced

in the 1950s supported
by the Marshall Plan

gave them the basis to
develop a strong economy

and political stability.

The real miracle, however,
should be credited

to the people of Germany.

By confronting their own brutal history,

they have allowed the world to learn

from the mistakes made in their past.

(crowd cheering)
(dramatic music)

Although persecution, hatred, and war

are still a global problem,

Germany has sanctioned its history

to be used as the marker of a cruelty

which should never again be repeated.

(suspenseful music)

(crowd cheering)

(dramatic music)