How Did Nazism Spread Across Germany? DD

They invaded peaceful nations. This is a criminal regime. Slaughtered innocent people. They’re performing murder and terrible crimes, but at the same time trying to make it look as though it’s correct. Committed genocide. He likened the Jews to a virus. But how did Adolf Hitler and his small band of criminal conspirators persuade the German people to follow him on this horrific path? He’s clearly insane, but his mouth would foam with rage as he’s like a sort of a rabid dog.

This series offers a unique perspective on the Third Reich. It shows how Hitler and his inner circle created an illusion of justice and legality while behind the scenes they subverted democracy and planned a monstrous secret conspiracy based on a warped ideology and phony science. [Music] It’s the story of a gangster regime that used not only violence and suppression, but which carefully groomed the German people into willing complicity in the worst crimes in history.

[Music] The story of the rise of the Nazi party begins in the final days of World War I. A young soldier called Adolf Hitler is in hospital. He has been blinded in a mustard gas attack and is recovering from his wounds. With mustard gas, you’d get irritation of the eyes. There would be blisters coming out over your body.

You’d suffer from nausea. You’d be vomiting. He had burning eyes as he described it, like burning coals in his head. Austrian by birth, Hitler makes Germany his home. He feels such a love for this country that he celebrates in his adopted town of Munich when Germany declares war in 1914. He signs up for the army and he serves his emperor and his country, running messages under fire at the front line.

He’s brave and wins the Iron Cross first class and second class, but he’s also distant. He is seen by his colleagues as a peculiar misfit. They thought he was a weirdo, uh, an odd fish. He never made friends easily. He wasn’t a sociable person. He never had been. He never becomes one. He was like sort of somebody who was a loner.

People thought he was a bit strange and a bit odd. He is compulsive in his cleanliness. With an aversion to smoking, drinking, and women, his comrades call him the white crow and the woman hater. They found him unwilling to engage in the normal social activities that soldiers do. Gaunt, weak and delirious, half blind from gas.

This is a very different Adolf Hitler from the man who will terrorize Europe. This is Hitler at his lowest eb. Then, as he lies recuperating, there comes news that would shape his life forever. One day in November, a priest comes into the ward and the priest says to them, “The war is over. We’ve lost. We’re going [Music] home. World War I is over.

Germany has surrendered. Germany somehow had lost it without the French or the British ever being on German soil. Hitler is utterly distraught. The idea that you’ve suddenly been told that you’ve lost this war and it seems to have come completely out of the blue is of course going to make you absolutely berserk.

And Hitler, as we know, was always the type of man who would go berserk at the slightest opportunity. The painful question for Hitler is how could he have been betrayed like this? Who could be responsible for this outrage? crippled by despair. In his own words, he is plunged once again into blindness. He would later state, “I buried my burning head in the covers and pillows.

” He said he cried more than he’d even cried on the day his mother died. In his delirious state, the culprits swirl through his mind. He starts to blame those he sees as responsible. the Jews, the communists, the left-wing politicians back home who had meekly surrendered, even though the German army that Hitler had fought in was undefeated.

He later says, I felt intense hatred, intense hatred for the people who had done this to us. And the most convenient theory to subscribe to was this idea that people like him had been stabbed in the back. He had been defeated not through failure of military arms but by the stab in the back by ee politicians and corrupt Jewish bankers and financiers betraying the German people, betraying the great German army.

Hitler later wrote about how this moment transformed him forever. When I was confined to bed, the idea came to me that I would liberate Germany, that I would make it great. I knew immediately that it would be realized. There is another version of how he acquires his destiny. The story goes that during his hospital stay, Hitler was hypnotized by a psychologist, Professor Edmund Fer.

Fer was treating Hitler’s blindness, which he diagnosed as hysterical. In other words, caused by some mental trauma rather than physical injury due to gas. And for said, “Sit up, man. How dare you give into weakness.” So he sits up and he said, “Lesser men will stay blind, but greater men, titans, they’ll overcome their blindness.

Are you a Titan?” Using a candle, he convinces Hitler that if he could see the flame, then it would be proof of his uniqueness as a human being and his destiny one day to lead Germany to greatness where he’s got this fengali figure hovering over him saying, “Adolf, one day you will be the future rabble rousing leader of Germany and you will lead Germany back to becoming the greatest power in Europe.

[Music] It works. Hitler sees the flame and his sight quickly returns. Something has been awakened in Adolf Hitler. You’re thinking, “Actually, yes. You know what? Maybe I am that type of man. Although contended by some, this encounter goes a little way to explain Hitler’s conviction that he will go from a simple corporal to a great [Music] leader.

Just days after the German surrender, Hitler emerges bewildered and battered into a world in total chaos. The once proud German people are wretched and [Music] downtrodden. There’s poverty and [Music] starvation. The emperor he had fought and suffered for has abdicated. Law and order is breaking down. A revolution is sweeping across the country.

For a patriotic German soldier, there is nothing The German army is being disbanded. He has no education, no social standing, zero prospects. He returns to his chosen home, the Bavarian city of Munich. Munich was in total political chaos at the end of 1918, beginning of 1919. What he witnesses from his dingy apartment in the city is frightening.

There had been a socialist revolution. A Marxist was running Bavaria. The socialists were in power. The old order is out. Chaos reigns. Leftist thugs are fighting running battles with militants from the right. Violent confrontations between the two sides are commonplace. [Applause] There were fights, bitter fights on the streets every night.

Bloody battles. I mean, hundreds done. There are 700 deaths in something like 8 months. To Hitler, the hated Marxists are the enemy within. They are dangerous as they are part of an international movement with no sense of patriotism. Communism despises the very idea of nationhood and has no respect for the German nationalism that Hitler so admires.

Then comes something that makes a bad situation even worse. A spark that risks igniting it all in the summer of 1919. Across Europe, the victorious allies are gathering in Paris. On the 28th of June, 1919, they and Germany sign a momentous document, the Versailles Treaty. There is widespread rejoicing on the streets.

But for Germany, Versailles spells catastrophe. The treaty demands revenge for World War I. It’s a further humiliation which deeply affects Hitler. He cannot accept that Germany deserves such unjust treatment. Nobody could have believed that Germany would receive such a harsh settlement in the Treaty of Versailles. [Music] Germany is ordered to pay a huge 226 billion gold marks penalty for starting the war.

It’s the equivalent of $860 billion in today’s money. That sum is made even harder to stomach by a massive reduction of territory. 13% of Germany’s territory is lost. 6 million Germans lose their citizenship and are forced to become part of new countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland.

1/if of German industry is taken over by the Allies. And here they were being truncated, being damaged and being deprived of a large section of the population. So that added to the shame of defeat meant that Germany the people themselves individually felt a very deep sense of pain. Hitler’s anger grows. The former star of Europe and rising industrial powerhouse has been crippled.

In Germany, most people just breathe deeply and try to get on with life. A new democratic government takes shape. It is called the VHimar Republic and is named after the German city where it was founded. Created in August 1919, it is designed to replace the autocratic militaristic rule of the Kaiser and his generals.

Hitler regards the VHimar Republic as an abomination. To him, it is weak, dominated by the very same Jewish and liberal politicians who had stabbed Germany in the back and surrendered in World War I. But at this stage, he can do nothing about it. He has no connections with politics at all. Then an unlikely job offer comes along.

The one body that’s going to give Hitler any chance of employment is the army in which he’s still technically serving. And one day he’s approached by a man called Carl Mayer who is the officer in charge of the kind of Bavarian army’s information department. Mayor sees something in Hitler. He gives him the job of spying on the numerous new political parties that meet in the city’s beer halls and cellers.

[Music] Beer halls are an essential part of southern German political activity. These beer halls will become a political forums. Nationalists will go around them and give speeches. So would socialists. Mayor sends him to observe a fringe right-wing group, the grandly named German Workers Party. This was basically two blo and a ferris.

It was amateur hour. It was yet another one of these very small, noxious, febral, anti-semitic, angry groups of men meeting in beer halls and venting their spleen. At that time, it was nothing special. In the autumn of 1919, Hitler attends their meetings, taking notes for mayor.

What he hears begins to inspire him. It just so happened on that night something snapped. Something spoke to him. He likes the party’s communist bashing rhetoric and the hatred of the Jews and the socialists. and rather than simply observe and report back, he then joins in. He is quickly noticed by the party leader, Anton Drexler.

Drexler said, “What’s your name?” And he said, “My name’s Adolf Hitler.” He said, “Would you be interested in joining this party?” Adolf Hitler’s journey into politics has begun. Quickly, he is made propaganda chief. He begins to dominate the small leadership committee of seven that meet and within a very short time people like Anton Drexler realize this is the man we can’t do without him.

This this is the man who’s going to carry us forward. It was very much about Hitler seizing uh the moment in those Munich beer halls jumping onto tables and giving impassioned impromptu speeches which carried people along. So he dominates in a way that his colleagues in the war would have been astounded at.

The leadership he shows, the skill, the ability to steer things his way. Remarkable. In Munich, Hitler develops what will become the foundation of the Nazi party’s ideology, a 25point manifesto. The 25 points remain sacrianked all the way through. This was what we were rallying around if we were Nazis. They’re like tablets of stone.

They’re like something out the Bible. They’re like commandments. It was against unfettered capitalism. It was against Jews. It was against anarchy. It was against bulcheism. Foreign policy goals were simple. to seize back all the lands the allies had taken at the Treaty of Versailles and an end to reparations, the crippling payments for the war demanded by the Allied powers.

Hitler’s great achievement, his genius, I think one is fair to say, was to know what simple ideas to put across. Alongside his new manifesto, he gave the party a new name and a new emblem. A blood red flag with the swastika at its heart. One of Hitler’s great elements of his political genius is to recognize the power of iconography.

The visceral image of black on red does have a powerful impact on the psyche. There is some genius in the simplicity of its message. The flag becomes the calling card for the new party. It incorporated the colors of the old German empire with the ancient Aryan image of the swastika. So its colors were a nod to the past, but its symbol felt modern.

It plays, of course, on the tradition of the Christian cross. Germany still at this point is an incredibly religious society. It’s a very brutal, simple brand. From its beginning, it was a rallying brand. It’s a clear symbol with bright colors and it did look good on flags and it did look good when they marched down the streets.

So, he given them a clear identification. Along with the emblem comes a new title, the National Socialist Workers Party or Nazis. The Nazi Party is born. Hitler tried to fuse the two forces of socialism which obviously had an enormous appeal to the German working class and nationalism together in one.

By 1921, Hitler becomes leader of the Nazis. At this stage, his new movement does not believe in democracy. He wants to seize power by force. This approach resonates with a new man in the audience at party meetings. A man who will help him take the Nazis to their greatest heights. Hairman Guring. Guring is misfit number two. Guring is obviously sympathetic to all these rightist ideas.

And obviously in the Munich of the early 20s, there’s one man who’s starting to dominate uh this political scene and that’s Adolf Hitler. Guring, like Hitler, is a veteran of World War I. But unlike Hitler, his war record is the stuff of legend. He was a star. He was wellknown. He was a flamboyant character. In those early days, he hadn’t yet become the caricature fat man that we we are so familiar with today.

He was lean and mean and handsome. At first, he served as an infantryman, but then he becomes a pilot and commands not just any squadron, but the most famous of the war, the Red Baron’s Flying Circus. He shoots down 22 enemy aircraft and even wins the German Empire’s highest award for gallantry, the Blue Max Medal. Then in the dying days of World War I, the war hero is beaten up by a leftist gang.

It is something that will mark him forever. The humiliation gets worse after the war. He is unemployed, spending his days hunting for a job. Like Hitler, he becomes appalled at the state Germany now finds itself [Music] in. The former air ace is eventually forced to make a living on the road as a comedy stunt pilot performing arerabatics. And then one Monday night he turns up and sees Hitler talk and Gurring’s just blown away.

and he says finally I’ve come across someone who’s got a clear and definite aim and suddenly it’s this kind of moment of epiphany for going this is the [Music] man a day after first seeing Hitler talk the two men who will become the most powerful Nazis in history meet Hitler signs Guring up straight away recruiting him into the party when Hitler and Guring met there was a really good fit what Guring represented to Hitler was a kind of war hero he had always been looking for. As for Guring, he doesn’t buy into

all Hitler’s policies, but he is seduced by the prospect of power. A shrewd self- reggarding individual who sees in the politics of the Nazi party a means of self-promotion. Together, they start to bring the fledgling Nazi party out of the shadows and into public life. Hitler starts to move into the open but on a very small scale.

He refineses his oratory skills in the beer sellers and halls of Munich. Hitler emerges very very quickly. He basically knows how to whip up a crowd. He can read a crowd. He’s very sensitive to the mood of crowds. He knows when to be quiet. He knows when to be loud. He knows how to manipulate. He knows what the crowd wants to hear. He gives them what they want.

But rabble rousing is not the only way he will get his message [Applause] across. In December 1920, he buys a weekly paper, Levisha Bea. He begins to realize that he needs to operate on a bigger scale. He purchases the shares in the focus of Ubakta where the effective use of big headlines, attentiongrabbing content and images is combined to forge the image of a party which is simultaneously reactionary in content but incredibly modern.

And this illustrates, I think, the Nazis way of using every form of modern media communication before other parties actually latched onto it. The paper now becomes a major tool in pushing the Nazi message to a wider public. Circulation rises from 8,000 to 25,000 readers. But the Nazis are still only a small fringe organization. If they are to fulfill Hitler’s plan of seizing power by force, they need more than newspapers. They need muscle.

He’s conscious on the streets in disturbed Germany. You need the heavy mob. We got to remember that politics in Germany at that time was violent, very much militarized. Enter the SA, the Stom Tailong, Hitler’s brown shirted heavies. The SA are very much the anti-intellectual movement of the Nazi party.

They are disaffected people who have fallen through the cracks of the Vhimmer system. A lot of them are young men who are unemployed and for whom the promise of Vimar capitalism hasn’t really come true. The recruiting message is simple. Come and join our cause. We’ll give you a [Music] uniform. We’ll let you bash heads. We’ll let you kick communists and Jews.

We’ll have a whale of a time, lad. And we provide the beer as well. The uniformed SA get involved in street wars. They eject hecklers from meetings. They intimidate opponents. But they are also ill disciplined. [Music] Now Hitler has the perfect role for his trusted ally Herman Guring. In 1923 he is put in charge of the SA.

The former war hero soon knocks the brown shirts into shape. Hitler would later state, I gave him a disheveled rebel. In a very short time, he had organized a division of 11,000 men. By now, Nazi party membership is still small, but expanding to 14,000 members from the 2,000 Hitler started with.

For the first time, there are offices outside Munich as the party expands its base. Then member number 14,33 signs up, Hinrich Himmler, who joins the party in the summer of 1923. Himmler is an altogether less impressive character than Gurring and Hitler. He presents himself as a heroic figure, a dashing fencer and officer cadet. But in truth, he is anything [Music] but.

He is a former chicken farmer who studies aronomy at Munich University. His hobbies include diary writing and stamp collecting. One of the things that drives Himmler is the fact that he’s a bit younger and he hasn’t properly served in the war. He’s born in 1900 and towards the end of the war he’s only in a training battalion and so he never actually sees service on the front and this really annoys him.

But he comes out of the war almost ashamed that he hadn’t done more. His life is sad to put it in in short terms. He seemed to be looking for a cause, something he could relate to, something he could put his great energies into. Himmler is drawn by Hitler’s populist message and right-wing beliefs, but he is also driven by his personal loathing of the Jews.

In his diary, which has survived, we see him talking about the Jewish question all the way through from about 1918 to 1922. And he talks about the Jews as the scourge of humanity. They have to be removed from society. So he’s very strong on the anti-semitic policy of the Nazis. And of course, Himmler goes on to be the leader of the SS, which eventually plans the final solution.

At first, Himmler remains on the margins of the Nazi party in a paramilitary group loosely connected to Hitler. There are few indications that he will become the most murderous and feared Jew hater of them all. Nevertheless, the three major Nazi players, the three misfits who would shape the Nazi party’s future are now in place.

All they need is an opportunity to strike. Now events conspire to help them. Germany plunges into economic disaster. Hyperinflation is gripping the economy. Grotesque mismanagement of the nation’s finances means that a loaf of bread rises from 165 marks to over 1 billion in the space of 10 months. For ordinary Germans on fixed wages, that’s an unimaginable increase.

It is the workers who suffer most. He can buy less. His wife in the shops can buy less. His children have less. So for the working class, it was a deeply disillusioning time. A pound of meat rises to 9 billion marks, a beer to 52 billion. The middle classes were also affected. Those who had been carefully saving for a secure future saw their hopes ruined.

The tragedy for the middle class was that most of them had invested were still investing in pensions and they found that these were almost wiped out within 2 or 3 days given the pace of inflation. So the stability the middle class buy into through their pensions and their income their investments that was that was shattered.

So the middle class feel their moorings of their lives are being taken away from them once more. Unrest returns to Germany’s streets. For the VHimar government, it’s a disaster. Germany defaults on its reparations payments to the Allies. In lie of payment, French and Belgian troops seize the only asset Germany has.

They occupy the Ruer, the industrial heartland of the country. The ruer was the main center of industrial activity in postwar Germany and for that to be occupied by the French was a shattering blow. They actually took away the basis of their economy for that period. Foreign troops boots are on German sovereign territory. There’s nothing worse for a proud people than to be occupied.

It reminded them of just how vulnerable they were to the vindictiveness of the allies. These allies are determined to hold back the German economy. They’re taking our money. They want total humiliation from the German people. So this was a rallying call, if you like, for nationalism. [Music] In Munich, Hitler has now risen to head of the Bavarian Campbund, a loose affiliation of fellow right-wing revolutionaries.

The so-called combat league, a set of disperate nationalist group, militarist groups in the early 20s. The group is united by one thing. The VHimar Republic must go. Hitler thinks this is his moment. There’s chaos. This is the perfect time for our battle group to actually seize control. The only question is how. The inspiration comes from abroad.

Europe’s most successful fascist, Bonito Mussolini, storms to power in Italy just months before in October 1922. He has acquired huge popular support and marches on Rome with his 30,000 black shirts. Mussolini gets this band of fascist supporters. They then march through the streets. They go to the palace of the king and then Mussolini takes power.

So this is a very romantic notion of how you can overthrow a major government and take power. Mussolini and Hitler had many parallels. Like Hitler, he was a former soldier. He had also been wounded. Like Hitler, Mussolini, a former journalist, understands the power of the press. And while Mussolini has his black shirts, Hitler has his brown shirts.

Hitler hears about this and he thinks, “This sounds like a good idea. We could do this here. We could take power in Munich and then march to Berlin. And as we go to Berlin, we can get all the people who want to get rid of the old democratic government and overthrow it. That’s the idea. So the plot starts to hatch.

It hatches in little secrets of meetings and dinners. The first challenge is who to lead the revolt. Hitler is well aware he is too unknown to unite the whole of Germany. He needs a figurehead. He has a suitable person in mind. General Eric Ludenorf, national hero of the German right and one of the great commanders of World War I.

So Ludenorf had this military position which was highly attractive to the Nazis. They were so pleased he joined their cause. He pressed all the right buttons, we might say. In many ways, you can see Ludenorf as the kind of titular head, the kind of symbolic head of this movement. And whereas Hitler is often referred to as the drummer.

He’s the one beating on the march. He’s the one who’s making it go and it’s Ludenorf at its head. And that’s kind of how you should see the two roles. But Ludenorf is a very, very important figure. Next, the plotters discuss the mechanics of how to seize power. The aim is to challenge the Bavarian government in Munich as the first step towards challenging the government of Germany overall.

First, Hitler will hijack a major political meeting of the leaders of Bavaria. Present will be the state prime minister, Gustav Vonar. He would force Vonar and the leaders of the state police and military to join the coup. Ludenorf would be critical in persuading the three men to come on side. If someone as senior and as distinguished as Ludenorf supported the Nazis and Hitler, then that gave Hitler enormous prestige.

With von Carr and the two others on his side, Hitler believes he can get the army and police to join the revolt. Simultaneously, units, including Himmler’s SA Group, will take control of the key military and police buildings in Munich. The date is finally [Music] set. Hitler makes his way to a public meeting at Munich’s massive burger brower.

It starts on the evening of the 8th of November at around 8:15 when Hitler turns up in a red Mercedes at the Burger Bal Keller in Munich. Inside, Gustav von is addressing the crowd. With him are the two chiefs of the Bavarian police and army. So all the three triumpvirate men who were running Bavaria at that time were in this one beer hall at the same time.

He decided to go to the burger brow keller and to seize the initiative at the meeting and to pin von car down and the triumvirate to backing the revolution. All across Munich, SA activists get the call to dawn their uniforms and head to assembly points around the city to be issued with rifles. Soon, SA men armed with rifles and steel helmets arrive at the beer hall by truck.

Together with 600 SA men, Hitler storms the 3,000 strong meeting. Hitler is very theatrical. He then marches up to the stage with a pistol in his hand. He declares, “The National Revolution has broken out. only it hadn’t. The leader of the revolution, Ludenorf, wasn’t even there. He was late. Hitler now takes the three state leaders into a back room and desperately tries to convince them himself to join the coup.

But of course, the barbarian triumpvirate weren’t ready or prepared to allow this gutter snipe or to take over. As Hitler argues, Nazi sympathizers and brown shirts, including Himmler, continue moving in on military buildings around the [Music] city. Hitler has to turn the situation [Music] around.

Hitler needs these people on side if he’s going to succeed. pistol in hand, he threatens to kill them, but they won’t budge. You then have hours of these negotiations going on in which the Bavarian politicians are very reluctant to join Hitler, but Hitler desperately needs them on side. He realizes actually even though he’s got a pistol as a negotiating tool, it’s ultimately it can’t really be fired at these people. That’s not going to work.

So he storms back into the main hall of the burglar to address the crowd. In a desperate speech, he tries everything to win their support. When he makes his impassion speech in the beer keller and says, “The government is willing to give way to us. They’re willing for us to form the next government.” They weren’t.

They hadn’t agreed to it, but he claimed that was the case. And he said, “Outside, the army and the police have come to our side.” They hadn’t, but they cheer and clap and bore with [Applause] delight. Finally, Ludenorf arrives. The mood is electric. [Applause] With Ludenorf in the room, the three leaders of Bavaria agree to join the coup.

Eventually, after quite a lot of dithering and twoing and throwing, they agree. Meanwhile, across Munich, SA units, including Himmler’s outfit, have set up barricades and surrounded the army and police buildings. Some army and police units even agree to join the uprising. It seems the coup really might work.

But at other army barracks, soldiers refuse to side with the Nazis. With the coup in the balance, everything depends on what Adolf Hitler does next. He then leaves Hitler. He leaves the hall leaving Ludenorf to keep control of things. As Hitler heads across the city to check on the progress of his push, Ludenorf allows the Bavarian leaders to go.

Ludenorf very unwisely accepted the word of Fon Carr and his two military and police cohorts that they would um be good boys and support the push and let them go. Instead, von Carr rallies troops against Hitler. Carr goes back on his word and says, “No, I’m here to control things.” Hitler now returns to the beer hall and makes a critical error.

Rather than go out and try to win over more army and police units, he waits. Convinced they will come on side anyway. He remains there passive for several hours. They stay in the beer keller for some time, hoping that those outside will come around to their way of thinking. By then, people have sobered up and it’s never quite the same.

[Music] Meanwhile, as Hitler dithers in Berlin, news of the push reaches the government. It immediately issues a proclamation declaring Hitler and his supporters guilty of high treason. It was high treason. You got to remember that to engage in treason attacking a sitting government was no small beer. The conspirators back in Munich are now all staring at the death penalty, but it is Ludenorf who takes charge.

And at one point, you have Ludenorf in this fantastic Prussian where he goes, “Vashiran, we will march.” Finally, with 2,000 men, including Ludenorf and Guring at his side, the Nazis march on central Munich. But the authorities are waiting for them and have prepared defenses. It is the moment of truth. 16 Nazis are killed. Guring is among the wounded.

[Music] In later years, the official Nazi account would tell a very heroic version of these events. Few mentioned the four dead policemen. Nor did people dwell on how Hitler and Himmler fled the field of battle. Hitler escapes in an ambulance, runs away from the scene of the crime, if you like.

not really that heroic when you look at it. And he ends up being arrested a couple of days later and then of course he’s put on trial for high treason. So really why it’s called the beer hall pooch is that Hitler for a little bit took over a beer hall. It was very clear that Hitler didn’t really know what to do. And of course, you know, in in later retellings by the Nazi party, this was a very definite pre-arranged uh purposeful night.

But of course, it was just a muddle. It was a muddle by amateur revolutionaries who really didn’t have the means or the ability to actually mount a proper coup. And so the push becomes a cause for celebration in Nazi mythology and an annual act of remembrance in the Nazi calendar. And he erected these enormous shrines to them right in the heart of Munich very close to where they had been shot down.

And on the anniversary of the push, each year on November the 9th, the Nazi leaders getting steadily more portly dressed themselves in their old brown uniforms that they’d worn at the time of the push, gurring and Hitler in the front rank of the marchers and would parade through the streets of Munich. And this became a piece of theater to the muffled drum rolls.

No one was allowed to speak. There was just total silence as the Nazi leadership paraded through and reenacted the push. Each year they did this and they continued to do this right up until uh 1939 when a lone would be assassin, a left-wing worker called Gayog Elsa detonated a bomb in the beer hall where the porch had started almost wrecking it.

And after that the marches were discontinued. But back in 1924 it seems as if it is all over for Adolf Hitler. He is arrested. His Nazi party is disbanded for starting a coup. His newspaper, the vulkisher baobobacttor, is also banned. Nevertheless, even though he seems to be facing disaster, Hitler has learned a crucial lesson that will ultimately carry him to power.

Being on the fringe of politics won’t work. Most people don’t support parties that try to seize power through force. If he wants to fulfill his destiny and become the leader of Germany, he will have to find another way. The main lesson that Hitler learned from the push was that violence doesn’t work, especially unsuccessful violence. He realized that if he was going to come to power, he’d have to do so legally.

You do it constitutionally by using the electoral system. We’ll carry people with us. We don’t need a majority even. We just need to be dominant in our thinking. So even though Hitler’s coup looks like a total failure, in fact, the rise of the Nazis is only just [Music] beginning. In 1930, Germany is in the midst of the Great Depression.

Factories are closing. Unemployment is at 4 and a half million. People are starving. Chaos has returned to the streets. One man has predicted this all along. Adolf Hitler, the one-time jailbird, looks like a prophet. And he says there’s only one solution. Put him in charge. But do the German people really know what they’re getting.

This is the story of how Adolf Hitler subverts the democratic process and finally seizes power in Germany. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] as Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party prepare themselves for the 1930 general election in September. Germany is in economic meltdown. Hitler blames it on the democratic VHimar government imposed on Germany after the First World War. He’d warned about the dangers of

relying on American loans before the Wall Street crash. Now the loans have been called in. The country is in a desperate situation and all the government can offer is austerity. The policy is cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts, and more cuts. And this depresses the economy and makes things worse and increases the unemployment.

Germany looks like it’s in a neverending cycle of boom and depression, misery, and high unemployment. But for Hitler, this disastrous situation is an opportunity. The person who’s cheering the most is Hitler because he now looks like a guru. He’s actually predicted that this would happen and it’s actually happened. And of course, a lot of people are swayed when somebody is proved right.

Hitler and his propaganda man, Joseph Gerbles, have a master plan to win power in Germany by democratic means. Gerbles throws himself into a campaign designed to appeal directly to the suffering German people. It was very blunt and very simple. So bread, work, freedom, direct slogans offering a lofty and noble vision of things that were lacking in Germany.

There’s a famous poster and it just shows a series of people who look in the middle of depression. It says Germany’s last hope, Hitler. As part of his strategy, Gerbal sends Hitler on speaking tours across the country. Traveling from town to town, using his newly polished skills as an ortor, they convince people they can make Germany strong again.

You’ve got to look at the position of your average German citizen who’s feeling impoverished. The future looks very uncertain. How am I going to feed my children? Am I going to keep my job? And you look at this new fangled VHimar form of government and you’re thinking it’s not really giving the answers. Gerbal’s brilliantly orchestrated campaign allows Hitler to present himself as new and different.

None of the Vimar politicians had an ounce of the charisma that Hitler brought to the party. They were essentially uh bourgeoa, middle of the road conventional politicians. Hitler swept all that away. He looked different, especially when he was in speaking mode or standing in a car saluting his stormtroopers marching past. He looked little less than a god.

And Germans had never seen anything like this before. Creative in any way, whatever you want. It’s not just his image. Hitler has radical new policies. He promises to turn the economy around by refusing to pay war compensation to the allies as set out in the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War. And he promises desperate farmers in the countryside who’ve seen the collapse of agricultural prices a better life.

He says, “All of this misery that is heaped on rural communities is due to the Wall Street crash. Come to the Nazi party and we’ll give you a new deal. A new deal for the rural voter.” Above all, he vows to put the unemployed back to work. But he also uses the opportunity to focus on his real agenda, the Jews.

He blames the economic crisis on them. He said it was all the Jewish plot. This notion has always been there. Our problems, they might be less at times, more intense than others, but they’re always there and they’re always Jewish in origin. The great bankers of the world are Jewish. It’s a world international plot of the Jews to bring cultured civilizations under their control.

People were ready to believe it. And of course, he can say, “Get rid of the Jews. Then your jobs will come back.” When the election results come in that September, the Nazi strategy works. They win almost 6 and 12 million votes. At the last election in 1928, they’d managed only 810,000. Their representation in the Rashtag, Germany’s parliament, grows from 12 seats to 107.

It’s just 36 seats fewer than the biggest party in the ruling coalition, the Social Democrats. The Nazis are now the second most popular party in Germany. With the governing coalition riddled with instability and infighting, Hitler knows that there will be another election soon. So he and Gerbles set about capitalizing on their success.

By increasing the Nazi party’s profile, Hitler said, “I want to be noticed. I want Germany to notice us.” He said, “Propaganda comes first, ideas come second. Their very best propaganda tool is the rally. Since 1927, the Nazis have held their annual rally in the medieval city of Nuremberg, a 100 miles north of Munich. It’s one of the areas which is the most sympathetic to the Nazi cause.

[Music] By the early 1930s and in the years that follow, the rallies reach a truly colossal scale. [Music] Hitler seemed to know instinctively what would work and what would hit the masses. Venues decorated with flowers and Nazi symbols are surrounded on all sides by the uniformed SA brown shirts.

You would have men marching in immaculate ranks in perfect uniforms. You would have red and white swast stickers on huge banners down to the smallest detail of insignia medals, songs, music, marching. They paid great attention to all of this and they sought through this to portray the Nazi party as one of order, unity, of loyalty, of discipline.

For added drama, many of the rallies reached their climax at night. Nazis made very effective use of special lighting effects at nighttime. There were torch lit processions. This was not just a formal political event. It was a spiritual coming together of the nation and the culmination of an almost religious experience.

With the masses in eager anticipation, finally comes the main event, the arrival of Hitler. It’s another piece of carefully constructed audience manipulation. I don’t there’s any record of ever starting a speech at the scheduled time. He may be sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes 40, sometimes an hour, hour and a half.

Heighten the expectation. When will he come? Is he coming? And then the whisper would go around. Yes, he’s coming. He’s approaching. And this buzz would go around the great auditorium. [Music] Then from the back of the arena, Hitler would walk in. The flood lights would come on him. After an accompaniment of drums, fanfairs, and Nazi salutes, Hitler then starts his speech.

[Music] He whispered to begin with, and people strained to hear him. He knows how to conduct the crowd. It’s kind of quite quiet. You need to turn the volume up. Is he stuttering? You’re kind of worried that he’s forgotten what he’s gonna say. So, you feel slightly sympathetic towards him and then build up build up get slightly faster.

[Music] Then the gestures would come on. the flung out arm, the hand going back and that he to do [Music] that as if there was an intensity in him that had to be expressed. This is all perfect theater and it looks so powerful and no one else has really done this before. [Music] Of course, if you’re halfway towards him anyway, it’s in rapture.

[Applause] At the end of the speeches, Hitler is left drained and bathed in sweat. He gives the impression that he has given all for his congregation. Floating voters who have been skeptical of the Nazis are one over. Nearly all those who observed this said you you were carried away by it. You could not but be impressed.

You came as a doubter. You went away as a devote. But if the adoring fans think they know him, they don’t. Behind the scenes, a scandal is brewing in his personal life which is about to threaten his new found popularity. [Music] Hitler’s public image may be one of a man selflessly devoted to his cause, but the reality is very different.

In private, Hitler has fallen in love. The object of his affection is the 23-year-old daughter of his halfsister Angala. Her name is Gaye [Music] Rael. In 1929, Angala had come to work for him at his plush new apartment number 16, Prince Regenton Plots. Originally, Gayy’s mother was brought from Austria as Hitler’s housekeeper, and Gaye came along as part of the deal.

But Hitler soon became totally obsessed by this young [Music] woman. He was very, very fond of her. He took her everywhere. They would go out to a cafe in town and she would be there. Um, wherever he went, you know, there would be Gelli Hitler even supports his niece’s musical aspirations, paying for Gaye to have singing lessons.

[Music] This relationship, despite the fact they’re basically related, and there’s two decades between them, almost seems to be actually a fairly nice, wholesome, sweet relationship. They’re going for drives together, they go eating out together. [Music] Even today, the precise nature of the relationship remains the subject of speculation. It seems it wasn’t sexual.

It may sound odd to say that, but it was possession without the sex bit, if there can be such a phenomenon. Fascinating that a man with that degree of power should have been so restrained in that way. It maybe simply was asexual. But by 1931, Hitler’s relationship with Gae starts to turn sour.

Naturally flirtatious and vivaceious, Gael’s behavior makes him jealous. She was a normal red-blooded young woman. Wanted to go out, wanted to dance, wanted to wear makeup. All these things were anathema to Hitler’s ideas of what a woman should do, should look like, should conduct herself. he starts to take too much interest in who she’s talking to.

For example, um his chauffeer Emile Morris starts to become close to GI. Hitler when he finds out about the relationship goes berserk. Now Hitler’s well known for going berserk and Emil Morris is on the receiving end. Hitler, you know, threatens to shoot him. This is the turning point in the relationship clear between him and Gay.

From now on, everything Gaye does has to be monitored and controlled. If Gaye leaves the apartment, Hitler makes sure she’s chaperoned and home early. But as Hitler’s possessiveness grows, so does Gay’s unhappiness. By September 1931, the situation reaches ahead. Gi has become increasingly despondent and miserable, as indeed you would be if you were imprisoned by a man that she would describe as a monster.

Um, Hitler wouldn’t let her go anywhere. And it seemed that she had somehow developed a relationship with a young man from Vienna. It’s not just that she’s met a young man, it’s who he is. The biggest crime in Hitler’s eyes about this young man was that he was Jewish. So, this is obviously not a fantastic relationship for Gelli to be trying to have behind the back of Hitler.

matters reach crisis point on the 18th of September. Hitler is preparing to leave for a Nazi meeting in Nuremberg when Gaye becomes hysterical. She wants to go and do singing lessons in Vienna. It all builds up. People start to hear blazing rows inside the flat. The next door neighbor says at one point Hitler leaves the flat, turns round as he gets into his chauffeur driven Mercedes and shouts back, “You’re not going to Vienna and that’s the end of it.

” For Gaye, the consequences of the argument are [Music] [Music] fatal. The tragic death of the 23-year-old music student makes news [Music] worldwide. Immediately, rumors circulate about the rising politician’s relationship with his niece. There were reports that she had bruises over her body that may have come from being punched.

These weren’t authenticated or corroborated, but it’s possible that he lashed out at her. I wouldn’t say that’s proven, but it’s possible he did that. Um, it does fit his possessiveness. Rumors detailing Hitler’s sex life are also leaked. She was supposed to have told Emil Morris that Hitler made her pose for pornographic pictures naked uh standing over him and even defecating on him that Hitler was a copiliac.

These rumors were seized upon naturally by Hitler’s political opponents. especially by the Social Democrats and they were published in various social democratic magazines never proved. I must emphasize that. Worst of all are the suggestions that Hitler has either had Gaye murdered or that he’s killed her himself. For the wouldbe furer and for the Nazis, the potential political fallout from Gael’s death is enormous.

So the party’s propaganda team act quickly to prevent a scandal. To save Hitler’s reputation, members of his inner circle say that Gaye had been playing with a gun and had accidentally killed herself. But behind closed doors, Hitler is devastated by Gael’s death. Friends fear he might give up politics altogether.

Some that he might take his own life. Confessing to those close to him that Gaye is the only woman he has ever truly loved, Hitler commissions sculptures and portraits of her and orders that her bedroom is preserved exactly as she left [Music] it. Hitler turned the room where Gilly died into a shrine for her. He would actually go into the room and spend long hours contemplating her picture and thinking about her.

She was, you could say, the one love of his life. And it’s maybe a testament to Hitler’s perversity that the one love of his life was a a girl young enough to be his daughter, who was in fact his niece. [Music] 2 days after Gay’s funeral, a heartbroken Hitler visits Gay’s grave. And to the relief of those around him, he finally shakes himself out of his anguish.

In public, the party’s PR strategy seems to work. The German people give Hitler the benefit of the doubt. And he emerges from what could have been a scandal virtually unscathed. And to avoid anything like this happening in the future, Hitler ensures he’s never seen to have any sort of close relationship with a woman again.

[Applause] The death of Glly made him realize that actually if he was going to set himself up as this kind of messiahike figure, he really couldn’t be publicly associated with [Music] women. He felt that had he had a a wife or female figure in his life, it would have reduced his appeal to German women at large.

In keeping with his strategy, Hitler’s next girlfriend will be hidden from all but his inner circle. Ava Brown is kept in the background. She is never seen in any photographs with Hitler. For the public, Hitler is married to Germany. As Hitler readies himself for the next phase in his quest to seize power, he’s more determined than ever.

His propaganda machine relaunches him, this time aiming at the highest office in Germany. Hitler stands in the presidential elections. His key rival candidates are communist Ants Talman and the existing president, Germany’s most illustrious statesman and most famous war hero, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg.

Hitler’s grown enormously in self-confidence with every success that the Nazis have had. Here is a man, an unknown Austrian, a foreigner in many people’s eyes, standing against the wooden titan of Hindenburg, the great gigantic figure larger than life, who had loomed over German lives ever since World War I.

Hitler wavers for a bit, should he challenge this great popular figure, Hindenburg, and in the end, he decides to do it. The Nazi party coordinate yet another campaign to indoctrinate the masses. In a never-before-seen strategy, the Nazis embark on a plan to reach almost the entire German population. Gerbles devised a campaign device called Hitler over Germany in which Hitler flew from town to town and city to city in a plane and the troops were on the ground waiting to see the furer descend from the skies like some sort of avenging angel falling down from the clouds and

it made an enormous impact. working around the clock with demonic energy. During the campaign, Hitler makes 20 major speeches in less than a [Music] week. Exhausting. I mean, he to collapse after the speech and just sleep until the next meeting. Huge physical effort on his part.

And if any point he becomes a man of the people, I think you could say that was the time. When the presidential elections take place, he sees the effects. Hindenburg polls just over 50%. The communist candidate 10%. But Hitler takes nearly 37%. He has run the much respected Hindenburg a close second. Hitler loses the 1932 presidential election, but in fact he wins it because now he is unquestionably the most popular civilian leader in Germany.

He’s now got 13.4 million people. He’s put on 7 million more voters in two years. 7 million more Germans out of their own free will have moved towards him. And he comes up with yet another new tactic to help him win people over. He produces a series of postcards and coffee table books together with Nazi photographer Hinrich [Music] Hoffman.

Their purpose is to portray Hitler as a normal man. [Music] Hoffman’s images weren’t just formal shots of Hitler standing on a podium lecturing to regimented masses. Much more frequent were pictures that showed Hitler as an ordinary man. Hitler and Bavarian folklor outfit sitting in the woods having a [Music] picnic.

Hitler playing with the [Music] dog. Hitler wearing a raincoat, an ordinary shirt and a battered hat. Doing not very much at all. It was very calculated. He wanted to be seen as someone who paused, who enjoyed the leisure to think and to reflect. Really a man of the people. After the presidential elections, Hitler sets out to build on his growing popularity.

He gets the chance because the governing coalition is terminally unstable triggering a spate of elections. In 1932, it seemed that the German people were involved in a permanent election campaign. There were so many elections national and local and this is a clear sign that there that no party could rule in the rashtag that uh democracy had run into the sand and that and it did not provide stability.

Two elections in July and November of 1932 see the Nazis virtually double their support from 1930. They are now the biggest party in the Rashtag. It’s not enough to take power, but it is enough to paralyze the government. Hitler piles the pressure on the ailing President Hindenburg and demands to be made chancellor, Germany’s equivalent of prime minister.

But Hindenburg doesn’t trust him, and he flatly refuses. [Music] Hindenburg only offers him the position of vice chancellor. Hitler turns it down. He wants power on his own terms. So he sets about wooing Germany’s most influential people. He brings together a whole group of industrialists. He said to them, you know, you have only prosperity to look forward to under us.

We are not a threat. If we join together, I as a great political leader and you as great industrialists, we have a great future together. We can work together. [Music] He meets the army leaders and tests to them, I was a soldier. I understand you. The army is critical in the new Germany that we’re going to create.

You are the strength. You are the defense of Germany. And he wins them [Applause] over. Hitler’s quest to broaden his appeal is successful. The Nazis are no longer just the choice of the working classes. [Music] White collar voters like teachers, engineers, and lawyers are turning to Hitler, fearful that a communist government will tax them to feed the poor.

It’s what some call the middle stant in German. That that middle section, the section that matters, Hitler said, respectable people, old Germans, if you like, in that sense, young in in in in age, but old in terms of their reference back to German values, German cultural standards and so on.

Someone else Hitler manages to impress is former Chancellor France von. He’s dismissed from power in November 1932 following a vote of no confidence. Though not a Nazi, he is sympathetic to Hitler and organizes a secret meeting between key members of Hitler’s inner circle and the president’s son, German Army Major Oscar von Hindenburg. This is a really important meeting because at that meeting Oscar who’s been skeptical about whether Hitler will rule without becoming a dictator, he starts to get convinced by Hitler.

Hitler charms him in return for promotion in the army and 5,000 acres of land. Oscar agrees to convince his father to hand the chancellorship to Hitler. Crucially, von reassures both President Hindenburg and his son that he can keep Hitler under control. Within a week, the president [Music] conceds.

Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany. [Music] [Applause] [Music] But the Nazis still don’t have a majority government. So Hitler quickly calls another election. To guarantee a majority, he needs to win over the left-leaning voters and overcome the communists. Within days, events conspire to help him. Just 6 days before the general election, Germany’s parliament building, the Reichag, is set on fire.

The culprit is swiftly arrested, and it emerges he’s a young Dutch man called Marinus Vanderuba. Vander Laba is a known communist. He is the classic lone nut, if you like, the kind of Lear Oswald of this situation where we don’t know whether he acted alone. All we know is that once the fire was underway, nobody was going to try and put it out because straight away the Nazis could see that this fire could be exploited against the communists.

President Hindenburg’s response to the fire is to declare a state of emergency across Germany. Hitler takes advantage. He manages to convince Hindenburg to let him suppress the communists. As chancellor, Hitler can send in the state police alongside the SA Brown Shirts and the SS. The SA and the SS are let loose with public backing because most of the public think this is a communist plot.

The burning of the right, this great symbol of German constitutionalism has been attacked by the communists. The SA and the SS are unbound. The SA are able to pretty much attack and kidnap their communist opponent, drag them off to torture sellers, and submit them to violence, terror, and extortion.

4,000 communist politicians and their supporters are beaten up, imprisoned, and murdered, destroying them as a political force. But even that isn’t enough to win Hitler power. In the general election of March 1933, the Nazis take just under 44% of the vote, agonizingly short of an overall majority. So Hitler decides to find a way around the democratic process.

What he comes up with is the enabling act in a time of crisis. It allows him to temporarily suspend the constitution and to take total control in Germany for the next 4 years. If it’s voted in favor by an absolute majority, that will allow Hitler to transfer power to himself so that he can enact law without the need to use parliament.

But to pass the act, the Nazis need a twothirds majority in [Music] parliament. Hitler now starts smooing the key German Catholic center party within the coalition. He reassures them that their party will continue to exist, that the church’s civil liberties will be preserved, as will Catholic involvement with German culture and [Music] education.

Hitler sets out his case for the enabling act in a speech to Parliament. He promises to end unemployment and pledges to promote peace with France, Britain, and Russia. When the by now sick and weakening President Hindenburg accepts the act, the Rashtag are invited to vote on it. All of Hitler’s hard work finally pays off with a massive 441 to 94.

The Nazis gain the twothirds majority they need to pass the enabling act. Ironically, the democratic process has handed Hitler the power to do anything he wants without parliamentary approval. It gives Hitler basically dictatorial powers, powers that no leader in Germany has had for a very long time. Hitler has at last got the authority he has craved for so long.

Now he must hold on to it. He starts by addressing the threats to his power both inside and outside his party. The biggest internal threat is Ernst Rome. Rome is one of the earliest Nazi party members and a close friend of Hitler. He is also the founder and leader of the SA Brown Shirts, the party’s army of thugs whose bully boy tactics have been so significant in Hitler’s rise.

There was a real bid for power from within the Nazi party uh from the brown shirts. They with some justification had seen themselves as the battering ram that had opened the gates of power for the Nazis. By 1934, the SA are 4 1/2 million strong and massively outnumber the German army.

The team around Hitler become increasingly concerned that Ram will use them to seize power for himself. Ram starts to make speeches um calling for um the SA to become a people’s army and this makes the um German army very nervous indeed. And there were rumors, strong rumors that Rome was waiting for the moment to seize power himself in a coup, remove Hitler and govern as the head of this very powerful force.

And Rome has committed another crime. Germany is still an intensely conservative country. And Rome is a homosexual. In secret, Herman Guring, now Prussian Minister of the Interior, and Hinrich Himmler, head of the SS, asked Himmler’s deputy, Reinhardt Hydrickch, to assemble a dossier to discredit Rome.

By the end of June 1934, amazingly, the evidence that Rome is a traitor has been found. There’s this documentation that shows he’s the recipient of millions of marks from the French government to try and overthrow Hitler on their behalf. Of course, it’s completely manufactured evidence. Armed with the information from Guring, Hydrickch, and Himmler, Hitler organizes a deadly trap.

He orders all the SA leaders to attend a meeting in the pretty holiday town of Bad Visay in the far south of Germany. In the early hours, Hitler, some of his entourage, and a couple of state police arrive at a lakeside hotel in the town. About 6:30 in the morning, Hitler charges into the hotel, uh, brandishing a pistol.

In a scene which would astonish the German people who believed they were voting for a respectable politician, the Chancellor of Germany can’t resist taking matters into his own hands. In a sign of his fury over RM’s supposed treachery, Hitler personally leads the team to arrest him. He doesn’t even wait for his backup, the SS, to arrive.

He makes his way to Room’s [Music] room, opens the door and says, “Get up and you’re under arrest for high treason.” A sleek, dazzled, and bewildered room doesn’t understand what’s going on. Now, in the next door room, there’s another senior SA man. And with the SA man in bed is a young SA man. [Music] And of course this is deemed to be flagrant and uh and and sign of how degraded the essay had become and how corrupt it had become.

[Music] 200 other senior SA officers are rounded up. Many are shot. Others, including Rome, are sent to Munich’s startleheim prison. But it isn’t just the internal opponents Hitler deals with. He and Gerbles have been compiling a list of political opponents and old enemies they also consider to be traitors.

Now they trigger the next purge. A codeworded phone call from Gerbles to Guring sets in motion what will become one of the most notorious events in the history of the Nazis. [Music] The following day, Hitler hosts a tea party in the garden of the chancellory in Berlin for his cabinet and their families. While this tea party is going on, the playing out of the night of the long knives is almost pure Godfather 2.

It is like a gangster film. [Music] There are people being massacred. I mean literally just butchered, shot, killed and [Music] beheaded. Amongst those killed are Gustav von Carr, one of the triumvirate who had sabotaged the beer hall push in 1923. He was hauled out of his home, taken to a forest in Dhaka outside Munich where the concentration camp was and battered to death with axes.

The former chancellor, General Von Schliker, who shot down in his own home when he answers the door, and his wife, who tries to throw herself across in front of the bullets, she’s cut down by a hail of bullets, too. [Music] A music critic called Villy Schmidt was mistaken for an SA man called Billy Schmidt and was shot down in Munich. There were lots of cases like [Music] this.

During that afternoon, Hitler gives the order to kill Ernst Rome. He’s shot dead by the SS in his cell. [Music] At one point during this tea, uh, someone’s meant to have come in and just gently informed him that everything had been carried out and he just nods. It was Hitler’s settling of accounts, the night of long lives with the right and with the left and it was serving notice on the world that Germany was now ruled by gangsters.

The night of the long knives is announced by Hitler himself in a speech to the government on the 13th of July 1934. Official records state that only 77 have died, but really it’s 400 and Hitler now justifies what he has done. In this hour, I was responsible for the fate of the German people and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people.

I gave the order to shoot the ring leaders in this [Applause] treason. Hitler’s actions and words hammer home that he is now judge and jury with the power to decide who lives and who dies. The night of long night lies gave a notice not only to Germany but to the world that you oppose the Nazis the slightest whim at the very peril of your own life.

If they were prepared to cut down those who once been nearest and dearest to them they were prepared to cut down anyone. Two weeks later the 87year-old President Hindenburg passes away. Hitler abolishes the presidency and declares himself supreme leader of Germany. The Furer. January 1933. Adolf Hitler has taken power in Germany.

He has got there by promising to be a man of peace. He has barely even mentioned the Jews. But now he can pursue his real agenda and rid Germany of his long-standing enemies. [Applause] The Jew was the enemy within. And the great Hitler, the great leader, was now pointing that out. But not all Germans are behind him. Many were upset by the ill treatment of Jews.

So he must find a way of capturing their minds to turn them to his way of thinking. This is the story of how Hitler and the Nazis bend an entire people to his will and groom them into participating in the most evil regime in history. [Music] [Music] among Month after coming to power, a nervous Adolf Hitler takes to the airwaves.

It is his first ever radio address to the German people. Germany is in the grip of the Great Depression. Faltering at first, he describes just how serious the situation is. The misery of our people is horrible to behold. Millions are unemployed and starving. Hitler explains that the task ahead is massive. Germany is suffering from the most severe crisis in the standard of living um it has experienced in the entire history of the country.

There are hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Some a third of the workforce is unemployed and the knock- on effects of that in terms of poor food, family conditions, work conditions all suffer. There is clearly a need to come up with some kind of big bang solution to unemployment. Hitler had won power by promising to make the economy his priority.

The Nazis slogan was broad and ibite bread and work. Basic things that the Germans had grown accustomed not to having. They promised to restore. The task with which we are faced is the hardest which has fallen to German statesmen within the memory of man. He signs off by asking the people to give him four years to achieve his goals.

He said, “Look, we will do what we’ve promised, but we need time to do so. So, please give us gul. Give us give be patient.” But what many German people don’t realize is that economics is not what really concerns Hitler. He has long-standing ambitions which he fails to mention in his speech.

Ideological obsessions dating back to his experiences in World War I and the 1920s expressed through his writings in mine camp. First and foremost, he wants to rid Germany of the Jews. He built the party on raid anti-semitism. He sees them as a global malevolent force with no sense of nationhood who are to blame for Germany’s crisis. This great Jewish plot to take over the world and we Germans are suffering from that.

It’s an international movement but we in Germany because of our grim conditions postwar we are the the victims. So our way forward is to get rid of the Jew. Within weeks of taking power, rather than tackle unemployment, Hitler targets the Jews. A nationwide boycott of Jewish owned shops and businesses sees brown shirts man the blockade, but it doesn’t go well.

The reaction of the majority of Germans is not as expected. They keep going to Jewishowned shops. The German people simply aren’t interested in Hitler’s brand of anti-semitism. A report from an American diplomat in Leipzig summarizes the effect of the boycott, describing it as unpopular with the working classes and the educated circles of the middle classes.

The blockade is called off after just one [Music] day. The clear lesson for Hitler is that if he is to win over the Germans to his way of thinking, then he must first gain their confidence and do something about the economy. As a result, he won’t mention the Jews again for four more years. This isn’t because he’s gone soft on the Jewish question, but because he knows that politically there’s more to be gained by a softer approach than by a harder line.

He remains resolutely anti-Semitic, but publicly he’s careful not to make that a major plank in his program. It’s for public consumption. Essentially, the apparently softer line Along with his propaganda mastermind, Joseph Gerbles, Hitler devises a new plan to win the hearts and minds of his population. They unveil a nationwide battle for work financed by a 1 billion Reichmark economic revival program.

He draws up plans for road building, for construction works, for training young men who are unemployed, training them in ways which are socially desirable. A massive high-profile construction drive begins. Gerbles makes sure the propaganda cameras capture the furer leading from the front. Hitler himself makes a great show of appearing on building sites uh moving earth.

The centerpiece are the autob barns which form the backbone of their propaganda [Music] campaign. The idea is to link Germany with 6,000 new kilometers of gleaming roadway. The autoban is the symbol of growth. It’s a symbol of bigger thinking. It’s a symbol of of outwardness. We’re going somewhere and we’re doing it physically through our road system.

The promise is that ordinary Germans can travel freely and explore their nation. Germans got very excited, as you might say today, about the idea of driving on motorways, of exploring their own fatherland. It looked like a vision of the future. It felt like a brave new world. Critically, these projects require large numbers of workers. A lot of these constructions involved unimaginable numbers of manual labor.

So, there were really large scale work creation schemes. So, let’s ask the young men who were unemployed and listless and ruthless. Let them be the pioneers who build the motorways, build the autoban. So they will be contributing something very positive and valuable to the growth of Germany as well as earning good money for themselves.

Next, Hitler reforms the inefficient German labor market with another policy. His answer is the new German labor front, the Deutsche Arbites front. On the surface, the labor front is the new form of trade unionism. They would work together. Wage rates, income, profits would be discussed communally and compromises reach that would benefit everybody.

Ostensibly, it looks like labor reform, but it is actually a smokeokc screen that allows Hitler to take on a new target, the trade unions. Prior to coming to power, he has always seen them as communists, an enemy almost as hated as the Jews. He also thinks they are a threat to the status quo of the nation, placing too much power in the hands of the workers.

So, he shuts the trades unions down, their leaders are arrested, and their funds stolen. [Music] All other unions are outlawed. Employment or trade becomes impossible without a membership card. It was the control of the workforce from above. It was the Nazi determination not to allow workers to be a disruptive element in German society.

A year in, Hitler’s regime is going to plan. He is seen as a man of action, selflessly dedicated to getting the nation working again. He is offering a modern, exciting vision of the future and is successfully steering Germany out of a crisis. Unemployment is in sharp decline, down to 4 million from 6 million. But the economic program is just the first phase.

The next step is to take the message of Nazism into every aspect of people’s lives. Hitler realizes that if he is to push through his own agenda, he must first capture their hearts and minds. Hitler’s belief in accomplishing this is unwavering. Hitler had such a strength of will. He said to one friend, “You will see. We will do the impossible.

We will work wonders. We will accomplish miracles. His faith in what his Nazi party can achieve is equally unshakable. Only the Nazi party has sufficient drive, purpose, understanding, and belief in itself to make this a reality. So he sets about a bold new keynote policy. Its name is the Folks mineshaft, the people’s community.

A social engineering project of epic proportions. Its goal is simple, to tie everybody into believing in Nazism and accepting its values. Folk mind shaft is the notion of a special people in a special nation. very powerful notion that Germany was special and the folk defined that special quality. The folk therefore was the term used to describe the German people at their best.

Hitler’s line is that only when the German people come together and move forward as one would the community achieve great things and find its way out of the crisis. The national community finding its divinely ordained destiny was one of Hitler’s favorite phrases. It’s there in all of his speeches. It’s repeated endlessly by other key orators such as Goubbles.

that emotional sense of coming together, of sharing a communal spirit, of being united by the exciting zeitgeist of a new era, but also sharing the sacrifices, standing together in solidarity in hard times as part of this community spirit that the Nazis are so effective at mobilizing and celebrating. At the head of the community is the Furer, tirelessly dedicating himself to the needs of the German people.

The Fulska mineshaft is designed to be modern, exciting, and fun. A celebration of Germany’s greatness. New national days like the Day of Solidarity and the Furer’s birthday create the sense of an uplifting national community. They bring people together in celebration. Critical to the Vogka mineshaft idea is that it takes the message of Nazism into all areas of German life, even to the dinner tables of Germany.

For example, there was the one pot stew Sunday. The idea was that people would not eat meat on Sundays. Traditionally on Sunday you would have a roast but instead they would donate the money that was saved to a public scheme, a welfare scheme to help the poor and then there would be gettogethers where people would eat together a one pot stew without meat.

The Sunday meal is no longer a family affair but a part of a wider communal effort for the German cause. The idea that families weren’t simply units individually. They were part of a greater community and that individuals took their worth not from their individuality but from their collective membership or their members of the collective to help foster the folks mineshaft.

The Nazi party permeates all levels of society. National socialism infiltrates all kinds of areas of daily life. Whether it’s in voluntary organizations or in professional life, people came into contact with representatives of national socialism. Nazism now becomes present at every stage of a German’s life. Youngsters in particular are targeted to make them subscribe to the vision.

What Nazism tried to do was try to become the political wing of the German people as a whole. And if you’re going to do that, you’re not necessarily going to convince the older generation. But what you can do is start absorbing the younger generation into your movement. So if everything you do is through or for the party, then you will become a good little Nazi.

So what’s the best way of doing that is don’t have a boy scout movement, have a Hitler youth movement. abolishing while he did it similar rival youth organizations like the boy scouts and various Catholic and Protestant religious clubs and groups. They all were put together into a Hitler youth for boys and young men and a bundian a league of German girls for young women.

Central to the sense of communal identity are uniforms. Uniforms are a fantastic vehicle for bringing people together as a group, for giving them that sense of belonging to a special community. These new Nazi organizations are fun. For the first time, youngsters can explore their fatherland and taste adventure. Weddings were Nazified, too.

Newlyweds receive a copy of Mine Camp on their marriage day. The party’s reach even extends to the workplace. A massive workers movement, strength through joy, is launched to offer benefits to workers like trips and holidays. Strength through Joy was one of the most successful Nazi organizations in propagandistic terms, providing leisure programs for workers, helping them to relax, to enjoy life, and simultaneously to indoctrinate them into the spirit of fascism.

They’re allowed to go on holidays at 50% below the market rate. Cruise liners are created as well. Also, state-of-the-art cantens are built in every factory. Even little orchestras go on tours around these factories as well. The propaganda message is clear. The Nazi party will look after you and offer you a world of promise.

The Germans buy into this dream of exciting new opportunities. But what they may not realize is that all this is part of Hitler’s secret agenda. Because there is a flip side to the Folks mineshaft. Hitler’s vision differentiates clearly between those who are inside the community and therefore of pure German blood and those who are outside it like the Jews.

It was also powerful because it had a very clear barrier between those who belonged to the national community and those who didn’t. So it made you feel valued and it had easy scapegoats that you could blame problems on when they were not part of the national community. That is why the Jews could not be part of vulk.

It was exclusive because it was Aryan. It was principled and it related to the glorious past and offered the glorious future. The Folks mine shaft is the first stage in a slow process of capturing Germans minds and making them view the Jews as an underclass. In time, Hitler and his inner circle will use this to make the Germans complicit in appalling crimes.

But for now, they must remain patient. After a year in office, things are looking good for Adolf Hitler. He is turning around the economy, creating an exciting new social model for Germany, and opening up the country via the autobonds. Above all, he is getting Germans working again. unemployment falls by 33%. So this is something that he can trumpet towards his supporters and say look I fulfilled one aspect of my program unemployment is going down.

The official line is that unemployment is down due to flagship schemes like the autobonds. In fact another force is at work. Many of the new jobs are down to something else. Hitler is secretly preparing for war. Starting in 1933, the Nazi regime spends huge amounts of cash on weapons. 35 billion Reichkes marks. It dwarfs all other forms of public spending, including all the work creation schemes.

It fits into another part of Hitler’s real agenda. In his mind, war with Russia is not only unavoidable, it is necessary. Ever since the days of mine camp, it is Hitler’s profound conviction that communism is a threat to the world. He regards it as part of an international Jewish plot. And he thinks an armed showdown with Russia is inevitable.

Hitler’s ambition, or his expectation, if not ambition, is that at some point there will be a war. The Soviet Union will have to be faced down military at some point. Our first duty is to rearm to make the nation strong through military means. Rearmament will also allow him to realize another of his aspirations conceived years earlier.

The idea of Laben’s realm or living space which he believes is essential for the German nation to grow. Laben’s ROM is the idea of living space that Germany really has too high a density of population. There are too many people occupying too small a space and therefore that’s restricting Germany’s economic development especially in industry but mostly in agriculture.

For Hitler, territorial space will solve the nation’s economic problems and help feed his people. And he believes the land he needs can be seized from those he views as inferior. From Poland on, Europe was Slav, and the East is Slav. Therefore, we have entitlement to take it over. So Laban’s realm, living space which we Germans need, will be found most prominently in the east.

As a superior people, they could take land occupied by inferior [Music] people. The problem that Hitler faces is that any talk of going to war to win land is appalling to most Germans. He has been elected as a man of peace who promised not to go to war. Memories of the horrors of World War I are still fresh in people’s minds. 2.

4 million of their countrymen were killed. Hundreds of thousands were wounded. So this presents Hitler with a problem. How to sell rearmorament to the Germans. He comes up with a justification. It’s not about preparing for war. It’s about the restoration of German pride. So this is a great program. It’s not suffering, fellow Germans.

It is an advance towards our providential destiny. The greatness, the restoration of the greatness of Germany. Rearmament, Hitler says, is an antidote to the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles. Signed by the Allies in 1919, the Versailles Treaty is when the Allies made Germany pay for World War I. It also restricts the size of the German armed forces.

Germany was required under Versailles settlement to limit its armaments production and to limit its army to 100,000 only. But he calculated correctly as it turned out that if he pushed hard enough there wouldn’t be a response. In March 1935, Hitler introduces conscription. It is in total defiance of the Versailles treaty.

The army swells from the permitted 100,000 to half a million men. He’s allowed to get away with it and that gives him more and more confidence. So rearmment is a great way of Hitler pushing the boundaries forward. Publicly he continues to reassure the people that he doesn’t want war.

He is rearming for the preservation of peace. In a speech on the 16th of March 1935, he makes this promise crystal clear. The government renews its resolve before the German folk and before the entire world that it will never stop beyond the bounds of preserving German honor and the freedom of the Reich and in particular shall never make of the German national arms an instrument of warlike aggression but an instrument confined exclusively to defense and thereby to the preservation of peace.

[Music] However, rearmament does have unexpected results. It costs a fortune and diverts resources from the German population towards the military. Wages are low and Germans are made to work longer and harder than ever before. All this takes the shine off the carefully constructed dream of a national community that fulfills everyone’s aspirations.

Hardship in a sense can be enriching or enobbling is a Nazi line. Don’t see hardship as the enemy. But of course beyond a certain point, if you’re asking people to go without, there has to be some reward for it eventually. Hitler charges propaganda minister Joseph Gerbles with keeping in touch with popular opinion.

He does this by sending out secret agents to eavesdrop on conversations and to prepare reports. It’s the only effective polling data available in a totalitarian state. What he learns is alarming. The privations they were undergoing were beginning to bite. These are unpopular. They cause a lot of muttering in cues in shops and gives rise to considerable anxiety on the part of the Nazi regime.

Despite this huge effort to win hearts and minds, it is clear that popular support is fragile. [Music] Gerbles and Hitler must find another way to bring the people behind the Nazis. So they come up with a plan to harness disscent and unite Germans against a common enemy. They will blame the economic hardship on the Jews. The scapegoat notion, the identifiable enemy within does distract from the internal economic problems, the unemployment problems which still persist.

And if they are to blame for the crisis in the first place, this is simply justice. This not retribution. This is justice. The Jews have been given what they genuinely deserve. Nuremberg 1935. The annual Nazi party rally, a massive propaganda spectacle held every year. Nuremberg is important. It was the site from the 20s onwards of the annual Nazi party rallies.

But as the pageant unfolds, behind the scenes, there’s a lastminute rewrite of the rally’s keynote speech. Hitler is desperate to show the party that he’s got something big to deliver. And originally, it’s going to be on foreign policy, but that gets pulled and a new policy is drawn up. Instead, this new policy is a raft of anti-semitic laws.

The Newberg laws are drawn up as the first major attempt to turn Germany into a racial state which was Hitler’s ambition and it obviously attacked the Jew within. The law for the protection of German blood and honor outlaws marriage between Germans and Jews. Germans were forbidden from marrying Jews, from having any sexual relations with Jews.

If Germans were already married to Jews, they were encouraged and allowed to divorce Jews without any problem at all. So they were Nazi racial theories made horrendous flesh. The Reich citizenship law strips Jews of their citizenship and makes them mere subjects unlike the rest of the population. They become legal outsiders. However, this leads to unexpected complications.

The Germans couldn’t really define who was a Jew and who wasn’t a Jew, even though they’d spent years and years and years discussing this question. So, new legislation is drawn up to sort out the confusion and define who exactly is a German and who is a Jew in the eyes of the law. It laid down that anybody with three grandparents who were Jewish was by definition a Jew and therefore not entitled to full citizenship, not entitled to employment rights, not entitled to legal rights, not entitled to education. To be a full Jew has grave

consequences. But even Germans with only one or two Jewish grandparents known as Mishlinger or Mongrels also fall foul of the law. It’s the first clear defining mark of the impossibility of being Jewish and being [Music] German. Faced with this sudden loss of rights, some Micher defend themselves while other Germans show their support.

Various organizations came into being after the Nuremberg race laws were brought in largely to defend those Jews who were only just Jews, if one could put it that way. The Mishling, an association of non-aran Christians is formed. At one point it has 80,000 members. So there’s an attempt made to provide protection for Jews.

It’s the first attempt really in Nazi Germany for a non-Jewish organization to present itself as in some way protective. At this stage, the Nazis tolerate this opposition. Eventually, they will phase it out because Hitler’s laws are accepted by the majority of Germans. They are starting to believe that the Jews are to blame and the purity of the German folk comes before the rights of the Jews.

7 months after the Nuremberg race laws, Hitler is making progress, but he still hasn’t completely captured the hearts and minds of the German population. Behind the scenes, Hitler plots a new propaganda coup to distract from the economic hardships at home. He plans to appeal once again to German national pride. Hitler decides to send troops back into the Rhineland, an area of Eastern Germany that was demilitarized after World War I.

The Rhineland had been a burning issue for Germans since 1918. It was German land which the French occupied and then having occupied it declared that it had to be demilitarized. At first his generals don’t agree. Some of his generals warned him it’s too dangerous. Mine furer the French will react and the British might join them in reaction.

He grew very angry at this and he said I expect national socialist troops to be on the offensive not the defensive. He overrules them and takes a massive gamble. In March 1936, he sends German troops into the Rhineland, breaching the terms of the Versail Treaty once again. And it worked. The Ryan is occupied. Happens in a couple of days.

The French protest, but they make no move to resist. The risk comes off. with the great coup. It makes him a hero in the eyes of his people. [Applause] Then Hitler finally reveals his true agenda, the preparation for war. He states, “The German economy must be fit for war in four years.

It begins with a very public program of grand schemes, including permanent defensive fortifications and showpiece military buildings. A program of domestic manufacturer of essential war materials also begins. These include rubber, oil, and textiles. The idea is that Germany will no longer need to import these vital supplies.

Germany still relies on vast amounts of imports. The best example of that is oil. Germany imported 65% of all its oil. So really he wanted to find ways of creating synthetic oil, of creating synthetic rubber so that he could actually finance his rearmament without the need of purchasing vast quantities of overseas oil. Hitler’s most prominent deputy, Herman Guring, is brought in to run what becomes known as the 4-year plan.

Guring is brought in to produce this so-called four-year plan, one of the few programs Hitler actually initiated himself. As part of the plan, the Nazis not only championed synthetic raw materials for war, but also for the German people. They create low-grade consumer products and food stuffs for Germans. But inside German homes, the crude substitutes for imported goods lead to yet more reports of moaning and discontent.

However, on the surface, the propaganda image is one of accessible consumer goods. [Music] not least the motorc car. And Hitler gives his people a shiny new goal to aspire to. He champions the Vulks vargon or people’s car. The strength through joy car produced by a Nazi organization. Uh the prospectuses for it were everywhere and people had these lovely little savings tins that were very brightly colored with pictures of happy families driving around a pretty picturesque German countryside in these new cars.

Very inspiring, very uplifting. The notion that you could have a motor car and you could choose to go out under your own steam, your own choice. We take that so for granted, but for Germans in the 30s, what a an ambition to have to have your own car. Hitler even sketches the concept for the Volkvaragen himself and commissions automotive designer Ferdinand Porsche to make it a reality.

Hitler has now been in power for 3 years. Germany looks like a country that is going places. It’s showcasing itself on the international stage. It’s emboldened and rearmed. The Nazis are offering people new consumer goods and an attractive new lifestyle. But behind the scenes, the country is on the verge of an economic crisis. Recovery and rearmament have required huge quantities of imports.

The nation has always been short of foreign currency to pay for these imported goods. The problem of paying for imports with scarce foreign exchange never leaves uh the Third Reich. It’s a recurring nightmare. At one stage, the foreign currency reserves are down to crisis levels with just enough for a week’s worth of imports.

The reality of the economic situation starts to hit people hard, food becomes expensive, and there are shortages of clothing and household goods. Few can ever hope to afford the much vaunted people’s car or the other sweeteners trumpeted by the Nazi propaganda machine. There was a real fear by 1937 that German workers were becoming disgruntled through the relative decline in their wages.

They weren’t getting what they’ve been expected to receive and they weren’t getting what they’ve been promised. However, one thing saves Hitler and his party. World events come to their aid. In 1937, international trade starts to pick up. The global economy recovers over the next 12 months. It’s a worldwide phenomenon.

The economy in Europe picks up and Germany along with other countries begins to feel the benefit in employment terms of the pickup. That’s the luck that Hitler and the Nazis have. For Hitler’s inner circle, it’s a huge relief. They have turned the corner. From the brink of collapse, it begins to look like the plan is working.

Germany’s coffers start to refill. The Third Reich can once again afford to feed its population. Crucially, unemployment goes down to virtually nothing. It allows Hitler to seem like an economic genius. [Applause] Economic recovery is tied to political strength or the the notion of the leader. It’s the furer who’s done it. Without the fur, there wouldn’t be this recovery.

He’s now this elevated leader, this figure head that one can take pride in. the man who’s led Germany out of the crisis. With his credibility restored, Hitler now believes he can ratchet up racial policy to a new level of persecution against his old foe, the Jews. In 1937, Hitler mentions the Jews for the first time in 4 years. He tries out the line he will later use to justify the Holocaust that the Jews are the cause of their own misfortune.

He openly attacks jewelry as the cause of German difficulties and he implies very strongly the Jews have a recompense facing them given that they are trying to destroy the attempts of the new German movement, the new Nazi movement to better Germany, to improve Germany, to elevate Germany. But jewelry is plotting to destroy that.

The Jew was the enemy within and the great Hitler, the great leader was now pointing that out. In 1938, two key organs of the state become involved in racial legislation. Now the secret police and Gestapo are unleashed on the Jews. Jews are abused verbally. They let it be known that they’re anti-Jewish, that they’re out to get the Jews.

So, there’s that intimidation in the air. They let it be known they are marked people. That’s the Gestapu technique for frightening. So, the ASD essentially do the intelligence work. The Gestapu do the fright putting on the frighteners. In the face of such pressure, over 250,000 German Jews leave the country. Often their possessions and wealth is seized and used to fund the Nazi party’s own budget.

But half of Germany’s Jews remain to apply more pressure. Persecution goes a step further. Jewish businesses are aryanized. The decree for the registration of Jewish property further excludes Jews from economic life. They are banned from owning businesses. They have to sell them to Aryan Germans at knockdown prices.

Then Gerbles plots a new course of action that will take all this a stage further. His idea is to have a national day of outpouring of violence against the Jews. It will become known as Reich’s Crystal Knock. He even has a perfect justification. The shooting of a German diplomat Ernst vomat. This provided a welcome excuse for the Nazi state to unleash a torrent of anti-Semitic violence on German cities.

It had been pre-planned. They all they wanted was a pretext and the assassination was the pretext. There is a torrent of [Music] violence. The Nazis attack Jewish properties and businesses. Homes are ransacked. Synagogues are smashed. The term crystal knack, crystal knight, comes from the sound of the image of the breaking glass.

Crowds urged on by the SS wrecked German shops and smashed the plate glass and store windows and attacked and brutalized and beat up Jews. [Music] Night of the Broken Glass was the natural culmination of a political party and a regime that preached violent anti-semitism. 1,000 synagogues are burnt.

7,000 businesses destroyed. 91 Jews killed. 30,000 sent to concentration camps. To cap it all, Gerbal’s propaganda pedals the line that the Jews brought it all upon themselves. Crystal Mat is blamed on the Jews and it said that people rose up in their anger against the Jews and attacked them. And that’s the way Gerbles put it in his propaganda.

It was a popular movement movement of the people. We know of course it would work the other way. By the end of 1938, from a Nazi perspective, their policies are a success. Hitler has won the people’s hearts and minds, and he has groomed them to his way of thinking. For the first time, the Germans can see what Hitler’s anti-semitism really means, and they are starting to embrace it.

Perhaps the most interesting and most worrying feature about that one night in November was the willing participation of many ordinary civilian bystanders in the violence. [Music] It was an open demonstration of the bestiality and the hatred that the Nazis held for their Jewish population and a and and an awful warning of worse to come.

At last, Hitler has the German people where he wants them. So there’s a sense that this is a new dawn, a new age that provides exciting new opportunities for a lot of people who are very happy to go along with the violence that accompanies all of [Applause] this. Germany has been rearmed. Hitler’s enemies, like the Jews, can be persecuted with minimal resistance.

Now he is ready for war. Adolf Hitler has risen to power, pretending to be a man of peace. He tells his people he can make Germany great again without war. But behind the scenes, he’s locked in a fierce battle with his generals. They believe he’s hellbent on a suicidal war of territorial expansion. Some are even plotting to kill him.

This is the story of how Hitler lies to his people, outmaneuvers his generals, and leads Germany into a catastrophic war. [Music] [Music] On a bleak winter’s day in late 1937, Adolf Hitler summons Germany’s military leaders to a meeting at his [Music] headquarters. Present are such senior

figures as General Verer von Bloomberg, Germany’s Minister for War, and General Verer vonFrich, Commanderin-Chief of the Army. They think this is going to be a routine meeting, but Hitler shocks them at the beginning of the meeting by explaining to them that what he’s about to tell them should be considered his last will and testament.

Hitler then goes on to explain his plans for military expansion. Step one, unite the Germanspeaking people. Many of them incorporated into countries like Austria and Czechoslovakia in the carve up of Europe after World War I. Step two, move east and seize territory in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia so that the German people can have extra living space or Laben’s realm.

It’s a dream he’s been nursing for nearly 20 years. Many of Germany’s generals agree with him. But then Hitler spells out his timetable. German troops should seize Austria and Czechoslovakia possibly in less than a year. The countries further east would rapidly follow over the next few years.

It’s a hugely ambitious program. The assembled generals are alarmed. Europe’s frontiers are formally guaranteed by the military might of Britain and France. To his military commanders, Hitler seems to be rushing the country into a suicidal [Music] war. And when they leave the meeting, there is considerable distrust and disqu.

What really worried them was that they didn’t believe that the German army that the German armed forces at that stage in late 1937 early 1938 were ready for war. Indeed, they thought that they were woefully unprepared and it was decided that one or two of them at least should make their views known to Hitler. [Music] One of those who agrees to talk to Hitler is Verer von Bloomberg.

Field Marshall von Bloomberg was very much of the old school of the of the German army. Bloomberg is actually quite a a pro- Hitler uh general. He’s he’s always seen as rather sort of sympathetic to the Nazis. But even he has been shocked by what Hitler has said to him that day and was beginning to tire of Hitler’s expansionist plans.

He’s joined by Verer vonfr, also horrified by what he’s heard. But Hitler refuses to listen to them. Hitler was having none of it. There’s no doubt that at that moment he started to doubt their support and to doubt whether he could carry out his plans uh with them still in place. As the two men will soon find out, Hitler has a way of dealing with those who oppose [Music] him.

In the Berlin offices of the Gestapo, an agent combs through the police files. His target is not communists or dissident. It’s von Blumbberg. Very soon, the agent finds what he’s looking for. The file on Verer von Blumbberg shows the general has a dark secret. He’s recently remarried. Hitler had been one of the witnesses.

She was considerably younger than him. And it’s clear that at some stage he was he was smitten. He fell in love and he decided that he wanted to marry her. She was only 25 years old. But Bloomberg’s new wife has a secret and colorful past. She was not only a former prostitute, but had also posed for some pornographic pictures in her past.

The file reveals that she has been a regular fixture at Berlin’s sleazy nightclubs and bars. She’s a totally unsuitable wife for a senior military figure. The file is sent to Hitler. Hitler, a notorious prude, is appalled. There was an anecdote going around Berlin at the time that Hitler was washing almost compulsively because he had shaken this lady’s hands.

But at the same time, it chimed very neatly with Hitler’s desire to get rid of von Bloomberg to do away with some of the opposition to his military plans which he now had in place. Bloomberg is summoned to a meeting and offered a choice. Resign or his wife’s past will be made public. [Music] As Hitler had hoped, he chooses to resign.

Days later, Veron Frri is also summoned to a meeting with the Furer. A file has mysteriously surfaced suggesting Fr has had a homosexual liaison. [Music] Homosexuality to the Nazis was something that was absolutely abhorrent and for Hitler personally who was tremendously homophobic it was it was utterly beyond the pale.

Fridge too is forced to resign. Almost immediately, Hitler abolishes the position of war minister and appoints himself supreme commander of the German army. Hitler actually emerges in much firmer control of the German military than he had been the previous autumn. The army has basically become much more his creature.

It’s much more subordinated to his will. any remaining independence of action that it had has been effectively [Music] removed. Yet Hitler faces an obstacle. The German public has elected him as a man of peace. How can he fulfill his expansionist plans, seize new territory, and still keep his promise to them? In the spring of 1938, Hitler launches phase one of his expansionist plans.

German troops pour across the border into Austria. They’re greeted by cheering crowds. The Austrians welcomed Hitler and the Nazis into Austria. Many millions of them were Germans by birth, German by upbringing, and they were only too happy to return back to the Reich. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Within days, Hitler arrives in Vienna to claim Austria for his new greater Germany.

[Applause] There are wonderful photographs of him addressing a quarter of a million 300,000 people in the Helden Plats, the the square of heroes in the middle of Vienna. Annexing Austria, even peacefully, is a blatant breach of all international agreements. Yet Britain and France do nothing. Hitler has judged the situation very skillfully.

He’s gambled on their reluctance to go to war and [Applause] one in Germany. There’s also jubilation. [Music] Hitler has taken the first step in creating his greater Germany without bloodshed. In doing so, he’s also kept his promise to his people not to take the country to [Applause] war.

The Nazi propaganda machine pumps up the achievement. The crowds were euphoric. They saw this as being a a bloodless invasion that almost without a shot being fired, Hitler had reintroduced Austria back into a greater Germany. He was a hero at the time. Joseph Gerbles, Hitler’s propaganda minister and close confidant, speaks for many when he writes, “The Furer is wonderful, a real genius.

He sits over maps for hours and broods. It’s stirring when he says he wishes to live to see the greater Germanic again. Yet behind the scenes, Hitler and some of his closest collaborators are planning another aggressive expansion of Germany’s borders. [Music] 5 months after the annexation of Austria, Hitler masses troops on the border with Czechoslovakia and threatens an invasion.

The country has a large German minority. Most of them live in a border area known as the Sudatan land. They are the next target on Hitler’s shopping list for incorporation into a new greater Germany. He felt that the German people had the right to live together in one large nation state. Hitler simply believed this was an entirely natural and just cause and he had absolutely no hesitation in making this the centerpiece of his foreign policy.

But unlike the Austrians, the checks aren’t willing to give up territory to Germany. Furthermore, Czech sovereignty is guaranteed by France and supported by Britain. Hitler needs to somehow maintain the illusion to the German people that he’s a man of peace. If there is conflict, it shouldn’t be seen to be of his making.

The job falls to Joseph Gerbles, Hitler’s propaganda minister. The Nazi propaganda machine swings into action. News reels show the Sudatan Germans as a people yearning to become a part of greater Germany. There had been a vigorous propaganda campaign beforehand to suggest that these people were persecuted in the Czech state, that they they were not given equal rights and that their legitimate popular wish to become part of Germany was being denied.

Hitler was very clever at telling the world and of course telling his own people in particular how badly oppressed the Germans living within the Sudatan borders were and that this was really a moral crusade for Germany. Hitler’s Nazi sympathizers in the Sudatan land now secretly stir up trouble. There was a very effective grouping of Nazis, pro-Nazis, who were able to magnify any incident of oppression suffered by the Germans.

It’s a classic Nazi trick, secretly provoke unrest, then make sure it gets lots of news coverage. Every news carried an example of the oppression of the German people in the Sudatan land. Our people, our German brothers and sisters are being oppressed in an appalling way in the Sudan land. This can’t be allowed to continue. We must intervene.

And the anger that was built up was very effective propaganda. It’s a clever spin. Hitler can now put the army on a war footing while claiming he’s merely protecting a helpless, undefended German population. But despite his popularity, Hitler still feels insecure. That summer, Hitler takes another step to reinforce his position.

He had this fear that although the army was sworn to him by an oath of loyalty, you could never trust everybody on every occasion. What he needs is an alternative source of military power and he knows just where to find it. The Vafan SS is the armed paramilitary wing of the Nazi party. The men who joined the Vafan SS were fanatical Nazis and they also had to meet the SS criterion.

They were tall and blondhaired and had to show that they’re of pure Nordic blood for at least three generations. They had to uh swear allegiance to to Adolf Hitler. They had to have their blood group tattooed on their arms. They had to have read mine camp. They really had no compunction about what they did and who they killed as long as it was followed the Nazi ideology.

Ordinary Germans and ordinary German soldiers would be scared of these guys. That summer, the ranks of the Vafan SS are rapidly expanded. New recruits pour in. In 1938, the Vafanets set up its own training schools. This gave them access to better equipment and better training. It also welded them together uh as a a unique elite core which were fanatically devoted to Nazism and to the extermination of communists and Jews. They were special.

They were separate and they were answerable only to themselves and to the furer with no reference to any other authority over them. That’s what gives them that fearful image. They are in effect Hitler’s private army. His guarantee that if the army turns against him, he has an alternative source of power.

It will turn out to be a wise precaution. [Music] There’s already a growing revolt inside the [Music] military. Late that summer at a cathedral in the German capital, an extraordinary scene is unfolding. [Music] A group of military officers have come to ask the cathedral’s cannon to release them from their oaths of loyalty to the [Music] furer.

Among them is Hans Auster, a colonel in German military intelligence. He’d been an early supporter of the Nazis, but now, like the rest of the group, he believes Hitler is rushing the country into a suicidal war. The cathedral cannon, also a dissident, is happy to help. He tells them Hitler is a tyrant and that they have no obligation to follow him.

And that was a difficult step for many of those senior military men to make. This was after all their commander-in-chief. So they needed if you like absolution from the church uh to prepare them for what they were planning to do. The conspirators also have the backing of important names in the German military.

They include General Irvin von Vitzelban, commander of the army in Berlin, and Fritz von Schulenberg, vice president of the Berlin police. Both have been deeply disturbed by Hitler’s removal of Bloomberg and Fridge and his willingness to risk war with Britain and France. Many of those who were plotting in the in the summer of 1938 were those that you might normally imagine were were the Nazis natural echelon of supporters.

There were senior military personnel, also senior police personnel. And many of them had initially been supporters of Hitler and the Nazis, but they feel they’re being railroaded into reckless foreign policy adventures. Auster and his colleagues leave the cathedral determined to do all they can to stop Hitler.

Over the next few months, the conspirators lay their plans. The idea is to arrest Hitler and remove him from power. They tour Berlin, studying places where they might seize him. The big outstanding question, when should they act? Meanwhile, on the Czech border, German troops continue to prepare for war. But France and Britain are still guarantors of Czech sovereignty.

Yet, even now, Hitler sticks to his claim that he doesn’t want war. In a speech to the German people that September, he proclaims, “I demand that the oppression of these Germans in Czechoslovakia seizes.” Hippa had a very successful technique where he presented himself as a man of peace.

He always said he was a former frontline soldier. Why would he of all people want a renewal of war? But he presented himself always as a man under great pressure from his own people and from the minorities he was uh seeking to rescue. The clock is ticking. War seems imminent. done. Will the invasion of Czechoslovakia go ahead? Or can the conspirators inside the army stop Hitler before he drags Germany into a reckless [Applause] war? Suddenly, there’s a dramatic new development.

[Music] In Britain, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain has been watching Hitler’s saber rattling with alarm. He now leaves London for a meeting with Hitler. Discussion between him and me may have useful consequences. On the morning that he left for uh for for Germany, he was sent off from the airport by cheering [Applause] crowds.

In Germany, Chamberlain is received by Hitler at the Behoff, his mountain retreat in the German Alps. Chamberlain and Hitler are very different figures. They’re 20 years apart. Chamberlain is 69. Hitler is 49. Chamberlain must have cut a a fairly strange figure amongst all these Germans in their Nazi uniforms with his wing collar, his tie, his rolled up umbrella.

Chamberlain very much looks like a statesman of the old school. And of course, Hitler’s a very different beast indeed. It was the meeting of two cultures. The old Edwardian school of British diplomacy represented by Chamberlain and this new aggressive Nazi German uh movement. As if to symbolize the significance of the meeting, a thunderstorm breaks overhead.

That day there was a storm brewing, appropriately enough. And boy, was there going to be a storm brewing that day. Chamberlain is, as many were when they first met Hitler. He’s impressed by the charisma, the personality, the character of the man. And that, of course, carries Hitler a long way forward to getting what he wants.

Hitler once again presents himself as a man of peace, simply trying to help his fellow Germans. He demands the Sudatan land be given a vote on whether it should secede from Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain appears to accept the argument and agrees to try and sell it to the French and Czech governments, but he leaves a poor impression on his German hosts.

After Chamberlain had left that evening, there was much hilarity amongst the uh the staff and the other people at the Burgoff about Chamberlain. There’s no doubt that the Germans felt having met him once that this was a man who they could uh could get the better [Applause] of in Berlin. Hans Auster and his fellow conspirators are not taken in by Hitler’s presentation of himself as a man of peace. They plan their next moves.

to make sure they weren’t followed. They went to some some quite uh you know extraordinary lengths. They used to go for walks together in the park so they could see that nobody was following them. One group of plotters even used to meet in a Berlin swimming pool so they could make sure that any any potential Gestapo tail was left in the changing room.

One important question remains unresolved. What to do with Hitler? once he’s arrested. Most favor a trial. But not everybody agrees. One of them is Major Friedrich Wilhelm Heights, a former right-wing thug. That is the most Friedrich Vham he had a colorful background. He’d been through First World War and and subsequently fought in every radical right-wing paramilitary organization of the 1920s.

He supports the Nazi cause, but not Hitler’s leadership of it. He tells Auster, by now the leading spirit behind the rebellion, “Hitler alive is stronger than all our divisions. He needs to be killed.” The two men come to a secret understanding. Hitler will be shot in the confusion of the arrest. There is now a very real chance Hitler could be killed.

[Music] 5 days after his first trip to see Hitler, Chamberlain returns to Germany. The second meeting is held in the small spa town of Bad Goddisd on the Rine. Chamberlain’s hotel, the Petersburg, is on one side of the river. Hitler stays in his favorite, the Dreon. On the other, the Dreon is the hotel where Hitler traditionally went to relax, where he used to go to stay when he wanted a holiday.

Her Dreon, the owner of the hotel, was famous as being an arch Nazi. And he had an interesting sideline. Whenever Hitler came to stay, he would then auction off all of the materials that had been in Hitler’s room afterwards to earn a bit of extra money. [Music] As the meeting gets underway, Chamberlain is optimistic.

He tells Hitler he’s got the deal he wants. Britain has persuaded the French and Czech governments to accept the German demand that the Sudatan land be given a vote on whether to become part of Germany. War can be avoided. And then having done so, he sort of lent back in his chair as if to say, “Haven’t I done well?” And to his horror and to the horror of the other people in the room, uh Hitler thumped the table and he said, “No, I’m afraid the rules have changed.

I’m afraid that is no longer enough.” He would sort of display these incredible histrionics and theatrics and his mouth would foam with rage. Hitler tells an astonished Chamberlain he’s no longer interested in a vote. And it’s at this point where he’s famously called a carpet biter because he’s like a sort of a rabid dog. Hitler now tells Chamberlain the situation in the Sudatan land has deteriorated.

Hundreds of fellow Germans are being killed almost daily. Forget the vote. He will invade unless the checks hand over the Sudatan land to Germany immediately. At that point, Chamberlain literally his mouth just drops open and he sits up and he’s absolutely shocked by what Hitler said because it means that they’ve haven’t just gone back to square one, they’ve gone back to the square before [Music] that.

At that stage, things look very bad indeed. Hitler now ramps up the pressure on Chamberlain. A carefully orchestrated stream of messengers come and go. A courier comes in and presents in with a great flourish a piece of paper to Hitler. It tells Hitler and Chamberlain that 300 Germans have been massacred in a battle in the German Sudatan land.

In fact, of course, it hadn’t happened at all. It was a complete myth. But it was Hitler’s way of really turning the screw onto Chamberlain. And he bang the table in front of Chamberlain say the urgency is evident, Mr. Prime Minister. And Chamberlain really didn’t know how to respond. I mean, he had to believe the stories.

He couldn’t say, “Well, I think it’s propaganda.” He was duped, if you wish, by a much smarter operator. The meeting finishes late. Chamberlain returns home deeply disturbed. He’s facing a monumental choice. He has to persuade the world that Hitler has a legitimate right to walk into the Sudatan land or take Britain to [Music] war. He soon makes his opinions clear.

He tells the House of Commons in a now infamous phrase, “Hitler’s threatened invasion of the Sudatan land is merely a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing. [Music] In Berlin, the conspirators in the army are certain Hitler is still leading the country to war.

They can’t believe the British will give in to Hitler’s latest demand. Desperate to stop him, they finalize their plans. The invasion may be only days away. At an army garrison in Berlin, Friedrich Wilhelm Heins assembles a small team. The plan is to arrest Hitler as soon as he’s ordered the invasion of the Sudatan land.

Arms, ammunition, and hand grenades are handed out. The conspirators check their weapons, but then something happens they hadn’t anticipated. Europe’s great powers, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, gather in Munich for a final attempt to thrash out a solution to the Sudatan crisis. The meeting is held at the Furbad, the enormous Nazi headquarters in Munich.

The atmosphere at Munich was was tense throughout. Everybody present is convinced time is running out to prevent the second catastrophic war in Europe in 20 years. But Hitler stands firm. Even now he maintains his public image that he doesn’t want war, but that he’s being pushed into it by the checks. Across Germany, there’s a mood of alarm that despite their faith in him, Hitler is going to break his promise.

The reality was, and we know this from diary entries, that there were serious doubts, not simply among the military, but also among ordinary Germans. It wasn’t openly expressed because really there wasn’t an open area for that. But the anxieties are there. There’s a lot of trepidation now amongst the people. They’re quite frightened of coming out and saying, you know, these aims are wrong.

But there is a kind of fear about a world war and what it will do for Germany. Peace in Europe hangs by a thread. Then Chamberlain offers a new extraordinary compromise. Hitler can have the Sudatan land provided he promises this will be the last of his territorial ambitions. Hitler immediately replies, “Yes, yes, it’s the last territorial demand I shall make in [Music] Europe.

” Within hours, the Munich agreement is signed. It’s an extraordinary coup. Chamberlain is convinced war has been avoided. For Hitler, it’s a double triumph. Germany’s borders have again been [Applause] expanded, and he can continue his lie that he’s a man of peace. Once again, he’s a national [Applause] [Music] hero.

In Berlin, the secret conspiracy against Hitler collapses. Hans Auster and his colleagues burn all the evidence. With Chamberlain’s climb down, they’ve lost heart. The leadership melts back into the army command [Music] structure. Hans Auster, the leader of the conspiracy, hides his opposition and remains a colonel in the German military intelligence.

Friedrich Wilhelm Heints, who had wanted to shoot Hitler, joins a special forces group and will fight on the Eastern Front. General Vin von Vitzelban is promoted to commanderin-chief of an army group. Fritz von Schulenberg also throws in his lot with the military establishment and is later promoted. Their loss of courage means Hitler is now free to move on to the next phase of his expansionist plans.

[Applause] 6 months after signing the Munich agreement, he tears it up. In March 1939, German troops roar straight through the Sudatan land and occupy the whole of [Music] Czechoslovakia. This is no longer merely uniting Germanspeaking people. This is territorial expansion. Yet even so, Britain and France are still unwilling to go to [Music] [Applause] war.

For the German people, it looks like another amazing [Music] [Applause] triumph. Across Germany, there’s renewed euphoria. [Applause] Germany has acquired not just the Sudatan land, but the whole of Czechoslovakia without firing a [Applause] shot. It’s Hitler’s first step in his acquisition of Laben’s realm, the extra living space he’s promised the German people.

There’s a longstanding notion going back to the 19th century which was that Germany didn’t have enough space for its people. Hitler’s popularity soarses to new heights. He had proved yet again that he could take risks. They were calculated risks but been so cleverly well calculated they actually worked.

To many people he’s the country’s greatest diplomat ever. There’s an outpouring of adgulatory letters and poems. A 17-year-old girl writes, “Hitler is a great man, a genius, a person sent to us from heaven.” One Western newspaper reports, “The great majority of Germans could now find some point of identification with Hitler and his achievements.

[Applause] What the German people don’t know is that this will be Hitler’s last major bloodless [Applause] victory. The international community uh was outraged by it. Stalin denounced him, Chamberlain denounced him, and the French denounced him. Hitler is hellbent on war. The only way to stop him is through a powerful military alliance.

But even now, the German people have faith he won’t take them to [Music] war. They’re wrong. At the beginning of September, a German warship in the free port of Danzig opens fire on the Polish garrison. Meanwhile, German troops pour across the border into Poland. This time, Britain and France react. Both countries are signitaries of a treaty guaranteeing Polish independence.

They now have no choice but to come to Poland’s [Music] assistance. On September the 3rd, 1939, 2 days after the German invasion, Britain and France declare war on Germany. This country is at war with Germany. What Hitler has promised will not happen has happened. World War II has begun. In Germany, there’s a mood of fear and doom.

There was no appetite amongst the German people for what could be seen as a resumption of the First World War, which had been utterly catastrophic for Germany. From contemporary reports, we know that the mood in Berlin was somber and uh depressed. The war they’d hoped to avoid has finally [Music] arrived. But then, very rapidly, the mood changes as German forces crush all opposition. Poland is overrun in weeks.

The German army then turns west. War spreads across Europe. It’s accompanied by more easy [Music] victories. Germany occupies Denmark and Norway. I mean, this is joined up warfare. This this is tanks, artillery, all working in unison. Soon afterwards, German forces storm into Belgium and [Music] Holland.

This is a war that no one has ever seen before, and it’s absolutely devastating. This is war at its most brutal. [Music] By midsummer 1940, Hitler is in Paris at the head of a victorious [Music] army. He has defeated the combined forces of both Britain and France. In front of the Eiffel Tower, he proclaims, “I’m the greatest strategic genius of all time.

” Many Germans who had begun to doubt him start to trust Hitler again. In a matter of months, and with minimal losses, Germany has overrun Europe. Hitler may not have kept his promise to avoid war, but at least it’s been a brief [Music] one. He’s grabbed more territory than the Germans had won in the entire course of World War I, a war that lasted four years and cost millions of German lives.

He tells his senior military commanders, “No one has achieved what I have achieved. I’ve led the German people to a great height.” The idea of Hitler’s military brilliance spreads across the [Music] world. National leaders in Europe and Asia rally to his support. [Music] That summer, Italy enters the war on the German [Music] side.

Hitler and the Italian fascist leader Bonito Mussolini have much in common. Hitler from the beginning admired what he called the great man across the Alps. And it’s reciprocated. Mussolini admires Hitler for what he’s achieved. In the autumn, Germany’s old ally Japan also joins Hitler. The Axis powers are born. Hitler strides the world.

Yet, what the Germans don’t realize is that the war is far from over.  The devastation is only just beginning.