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When Adolf Hitler led the German nation into

the most horrific war humanity had ever witnessed,

a conflict that would cause an unimaginable loss

of life spreading far into the East and

penetrating beyond the borders of the West, few

would have imagined such a meteoric rise to

global dominance by any nation was possible.

Allied with fascist Italy and imperial Japan, Nazi

Germany would form an axis of evil to

fight against the Allied forces of Great Britain

and the Commonwealth, France and later Russia, followed by America.

Waging relentlessly for six gruelling years from 1939

to 1945, the Second World War claimed in

excess of 50 million lives and the question

of how Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, once a

destitute artist living on the streets of Vienna,

inspired generals, politicians and the German people themselves

to embark upon a catastrophic journey that would

alter the course of history has never been fully explained.

Not all Germans supported Adolf Hitler and many

risked their lives to shatter his cruel regime,

but equally there were also those who were

as dangerous as the foundation of the Third Reich.

Josef Goebbels, the brilliant propagandist, faithful to Hitler

to the very end, Heinrich Himmler, the leader

of the deadly SS who oversaw the extermination

of millions of Jews, and Hermann Goering, who

was at the Fuhrer's side from the beginning of his rise to power, are just a

few of the protagonists who will be featured

as we consider Adolf Hitler and the Germans at war.

But before we step back in time to

explore the dramatic events of the Second World

War, we should travel even further back to

the 19th century and rural Austria, where Farmer's

daughter Maria Anna Schickelgruber gave birth to an illegitimate son.

Maria was Hitler's grandmother and when she later

married a man called Hiedler, he gave his

name to her son, Adolf's father Alois, which in turn was changed to Hitler.

There's no clear evidence who Hitler's grandfather was

but Maria's relationship with her Jewish employer's son

may well have had a dreadful irony suggesting

that the man who persecuted the Jews so

vehemently may in fact have had Jewish ancestry.

Despite the humiliation of his illegitimacy, Alois Hitler

was determined to make his way in the world and by the time he married his

second wife Clara in 1885, he had a

successful career working as a customs official.

Clara was in fact Alois's niece and papal

dispensation had to be sought to allow their marriage.

Long after they were married, Clara continued to call her husband uncle.

The couple lost their first three children to

diphtheria but in 1889 they were blessed with

a healthy baby boy who they named Adolf,

meaning noble wolf.

Five years later another son, Edmund, was born followed by a daughter, Paula.

As the children grew, a strong bond formed

between Adolf and his mother but his relationship

with his father was far from affectionate and

he received plenty of beatings from the domineering Alois.

Young Adolf was the apple of his mother's

eye, a creative though lazy boy who found

it difficult to socialize with others.

He was determined to become an artist and in 1907 sat the entrance exam for the

academy of fine arts in Austria's capital Vienna but failed to impress.

When he returned home to Braunau am Inn, there was little to console him as the

family doctor had diagnosed Clara with cancer, giving her only months to live.

Adolf was devastated and did everything he could

to care for his mother, tending to her

every need and begging the doctor to relieve her pain.

Just days before Christmas on December 21st 1907,

Clara died and Adolf lost the only person he'd ever loved.

Distraught with grief, Adolf left Braunau am Inn

after Clara's death and returned to Vienna, using

money that had been left to him to

live in relative comfort only streets away from

the Hofburg Palace, where Austrian politicians planned the

future of the empire.

Enjoying life in the glorious city, Hitler was

a regular visitor to the opera house, particularly fond of Wagner.

He continued to study art, determined to fulfill

his dream of becoming a painter.

But such aspirations were beyond his grasp.

When he sat the exams the second time, he fared even worse than he had on

his first attempt.

Hitler fell into a deep depression and haunted

by the memory of his dying mother, the

tortured 18-year-old's life seemed to collapse around him.

The pathetically bedraggled figure that roamed the streets

and alleys of Vienna was almost unrecognizable as

the young man who'd previously dressed so immaculately.

Now penniless, Hitler was utterly alone and as

he sought someone to blame, it was in this dark period that he began to meet

others living in poverty who blamed the Jews for their predicament.

Antisemitism was not a new ideology for the

Austrians and Hitler hungrily consumed political articles and

speeches that gave him a reason to hate.

Spurred on by anger and a little financial

help from his half-sister, Hitler began to

recover himself and even earned a little money from his painting.

But without warning, his entire world and that

of millions of Europeans suddenly changed.

On June 28th, 1914, the heir to the

Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated

by a Bosnian Serb, a member of the Black Hand gang.

The retaliation of the empire against the tiny

Serbian kingdom triggered a series of alliances which

propelled the world into war.

Britain, France, Russia and later America amongst others

would form the Entente powers which now confronted

the central powers of Austro-Hungary, Germany and the Ottoman Empire in Turkey.

The all too familiar images of vast tracts

of muddy trenches that characterize World War I,

where so many soldiers struggled and died, make

it all the more extraordinary today that when

war was first declared, it was celebrated with great exuberance.

Soldiers readily enlisted on all sides to fight

for king and country, convinced that they'd be home within months.

Hitler was among those joyfully celebrating and later wrote,

“to me, those hours seemed like a release from the painful feelings of my youth.

I fell down on my knees and thanked heaven from an overflowing heart.

Our fight for freedom had begun.”

But although Hitler was quick to enlist, it was not in the Austrian army.

He'd left Austria for Munich in 1913 and

asked permission to join the Bavarian army to fight for Germany.

It seems the Hitler's life in Austria and

the prospect of fighting alongside Czechs and Jews

had driven him from the nation of his birth.

When he was called upon for conscription into

the Austro-Hungarian army, he was safely on German soil.

Now aged 25, Hitler traveled to the front on October 21st, 1914.

However, Kaiser Wilhelm's promises that the soldiers would

be home before the autumn leaves had fallen

from the trees proved to be wildly inaccurate.

It was soon obvious that this terrible conflict was nothing to celebrate.

In a letter, Hitler described lying huddled together

with his fellow soldiers as a terrible shindig

that began in the distance as the shell

bursts came so thick and fast they merged into one continuous roll.

Despite the shocking conditions, Hitler would prove his

worth as a soldier, even being awarded the iron cross for his efforts.

But after four years of fighting for his

country, he was only promoted to the rank

of lance corporal because his superiors, ironically, were

convinced that he lacked the ability to lead others.

During those dreadful war years, Hitler miraculously escaped

death many times and one day, as he

limped within the range of a British soldier,

the fate of millions may have taken a very different turn.

But Private Henry Tandy, pitying the thin injured

soldier, didn't pull the trigger.

Two decades later, the British Prime Minister, Neville

Chamberlain, on a mission to forge peace with

Germany, would be astounded to find a photograph

of Tandy at Hitler's Berghof Villa.

Chamberlain was quick to inform the soldier, by

then the most decorated private in the British

army, who he'd saved with his merciful act.

As Tandy took shelter, while Coventry was decimated

by a Nazi bombing raid in 1940, he

no doubt deeply regretted his compassionate act.

This was just one of Hitler's many extraordinary

escapes, but just months before the war ended,

he became a victim of a gas attack in August 1918.

He stumbled off the battlefield, seized with pain,

and later recalled how a few hours later,

his eyes had turned into glowing coals and everything had grown dark.

Hitler had been blinded.

It was only a matter of months, as

Hitler still lay recovering in a military hospital,

that Germany surrendered as the Entente powers were victorious.

On November 11th, 1918, the armistice was signed

in a railway carriage in the Compiègne forest

in France, and the outcome of the First

World War couldn't have been more disastrous for the proud German nation.

There had been six million German casualties, and

a year later, at the Palace of Versailles,

the leaders of the Entente powers stripped Germany

of valuable industrial land, all of its overseas

colonies, and perhaps worst of all, its pride.

Hitler's adopted homeland had to take full responsibility

for the war, pay huge reparations to the

victors, and while the Kaiser abdicated as the

country became a republic, Hitler later expressed the

horror he'd felt on receiving the news that he'd fought in vain.

There followed terrible days and even worse nights,

he wrote.

I knew that all was lost.

In these nights, hatred grew in me.

Hatred for those responsible for this deed.

Many speculate about what exactly happened to Hitler

during his time in hospital, but it seems

that when he eventually regained his sight, he'd

become convinced that he'd been shown the way to restore German pride.

He believed it was now his duty, and his alone, to save the nation from Marxism

and capitalism.

His passionate, anti-semitic feeling and oratory skills

impressed the army, and when he finally left

hospital, he was made an educational officer to

lecture new recruits before becoming an undercover agent

in 1919 to inform on Marxist uprisings in

the increasingly unstable German cities.

In September 1919, he was sent to investigate

a small group in Munich known as the

German Workers' Party, but rather than find fault

with the organization, their anti-semitic ideology gripped

Hitler, and he quickly joined them.

Among the men within the party, Hitler found

many companions who would accompany him on his journey to ultimate power.

One of them was Hermann Göring, who was

as furious as Hitler about the defeat of

Germany, feeling that the nation's politicians had stabbed

their glorious army in the back by accepting the Treaty of Versailles.

He also met Rudolf Hess, a young political

student who became devoted to Hitler after hearing him speak.

It didn't take long for the man the

army officers had dismissed as incapable of leading

to work his way up to become the Führer of the party, and by the time

it had been renamed the Nazi party, with

the swastika established as the party symbol, the

number of members had grown by thousands.

Hitler now had his own private army of

stormtroopers, commonly known as the Brown Shirts or

the SA, whose aggressive violence would form a

vital part of the Nazi party's character.

In 1923, along with his troops and accompanied

by Göring and Hess, Hitler seized his chance

to take on the German government in the famous Munich Beer Hall Putsch.

At this early stage, they were unsuccessful, however,

and Hitler fled as national troops arrived on the scene.

Both he and Hess were given jail sentences,

while Göring recovered from the wounds he'd received,

which would trouble him for the rest of his life.

Once behind bars in Munich's Landsberg prison, Hitler

didn't stop his quest for power, as the

stream of feelings and anger he felt were

written down by Hess to create Mein Kampf,

or My Struggle.

The ideas in this book would form the blueprint for Nazi ideology.

He discussed the Jewish conspiracies and hailed the

Aryans as the supreme race over the inferior Jews, Czechs, Poles and Russians.

The Aryans were entitled to more living space,

or Lebensraum, and this land would be acquired

by force, beginning with France in the West,

to avenge Germany's defeat in World War I.

Little attention was paid to the work at

the time, but as life became harsher in

the country within a few years, people began

to take Hitler's radical ideas more seriously.

On 29th of October, 1929, the Wall Street

crash in America threw Europe into an economic

depression that had devastating consequences for Germany.

Inflation rocketed, and as the economy froze, millions were made bankrupt.

Verging on starvation, the desperate nation now soaked

up the passionate speeches of Adolf Hitler as

he offered them salvation and hope.

Hitler had also added other important members to

the party, who now stood by his side.

Heinrich Himmler was a fanatical nationalist with a

deep-seated hatred of the Jews who was

appointed leader of Hitler's bodyguard, the SS, and

later became commander of the Gestapo.

This terror-fuelled organisation was responsible for the

administration of the dreaded concentration camps and the

coordinated killing of millions of Jews, Poles and

Communists, along with other ethnic groups, as well

as imprisoning and torturing countless numbers of Germans.

Another member of Hitler's Nazi party was Josef

Goebbels, a talented propagandist who became crucial in

gathering support for Hitler.

Although Goebbels was rejected from the army because

of his physical limitations due to a club

foot, he was intellectually brilliant and prepared to

do anything for his Führer, even when Hitler's

policies went against his socialist principles.

To him, Hitler was both great and simple at the same time, what one calls a

genius.

Goebbels waged a furious poster campaign in preparation

for the election of 1932 as Hitler aimed

to become leader of the country legally, and

thousands of Nazi rallies were held all over Germany.

He even made use of the latest technology,

producing films that could be distributed to the public.

In the spring of 1932, with six million

unemployed, starvation rife and Berlin in chaos, people

now turned to Hitler in their millions, and

Goebbels' posters and lavish events attracted more and

more people to the Nazi ideology.

However, as the election campaign gained momentum, another

family tragedy hit the Führer hard.

In 1929, his half-sister had moved to

his Bechtesgaden villa to work as a housekeeper,

bringing her daughter, Julie, with her.

Hitler adored the young woman and would do

anything for her, but was also insanely jealous,

despite the fact that he was already embroiled

in an affair with the 19-year-old Eva Braun.

The pressure must have been immense on the

21-year-old Julie, who found herself a prisoner in her own home.

On 18th September 1931, she shot herself in the heart.

Hitler was devastated, and official Nazi photographer Heinrich

Hoffmann said that after her death, the seeds

of inhumanity began to grow inside him.

What's more, Gailey wasn't the only woman Hitler

was involved with, who attempted to take her own life.

Just a year later, Eva Braun, who was

always kept from public view, tried to shoot herself in the neck.

Unlike Julie, Eva survived, and her secret relationship

with Hitler would continue right through until their deaths in 1945.

By 1932, the presence of the SA, the

Nazi stormtroopers now led by Ernst Röhm, began

to strike terror into the heart of the

democratic government, and many believed that the brown

shirts, now reaching 400,000 in number, would take over Germany by force.

Heinrich Brüning, the Chancellor of the German Republic,

attempted to stand up to Hitler and the Nazis by banning the SA and the SS,

but the Führer was one step ahead and,

using contacts in the Reichstag, ensured the swift

removal of the dissenting politician.

When Chancellor Brüning handed in his resignation to

the ailing President Hindenburg, chaos ensued.

On 15th June, the ban on the Nazi

brown shirts was lifted, and violence erupted on

the streets on a scale that Germany had never seen before.

This was only the beginning, because by January

1933, when Hitler was finally made Chancellor of

Germany, millions rejoiced, although there were those who

were less than enthusiastic.

General Erich Ludendorff, one of the great German

commanders of the First World War, who'd fought

alongside Hitler at the Beer Hall Putsch, sent

a telegram to President Hindenburg, voicing his concerns.

“You have just handed over our sacred German Fatherland

to one of the greatest demagogues of all time, I prophesy to you, this evil man

will plunge our Reich into the abyss and

will inflict immeasurable woe on our nation.

Future generations will curse you in your grave for this action.”

As the Reichstag was burnt to the ground

and bonfires of books blazed on Goebbels's orders,

it seemed Ludendorff was not mistaken.

A hundred years before Hitler rose to power,

a German-Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, had said,

wherever books are burnt, human beings are destined to burn too.

As the profound writings of Proust, Freud and

Hemingway turned to ashes, many feared the worst.

Within months of Hitler's rise to power, individual freedom no longer existed.

With his regime of terror led by the

dreaded Gestapo, thousands began to flee the fatherland in fear.

Even members of Hitler's own party, the brown

shirts led by Ernst Röhm, were murdered for becoming too independent.

When President Hindenburg died on the 2nd of

August 1934, Hitler added the presidential powers to

those he already held as Chancellor, and effectively,

Germany became a dictatorship totally under Hitler's control.

A nation that had once boasted fine universities

among the world's greatest centres of learning and

scientific innovation, sacked its professors and exchanged rational

thinking for Nazi propaganda.

Believe, obey, fight, was now taught in schools

as Hitler demanded a brutal, domineering, fearless, cruel youth.

The free splendid beast of prey must once again flash from its eyes.

This is how I will eradicate thousands of years of human domestication.

That is how I will create the new order.

Anyone refusing to conform was sent to concentration

camps, but those who remained to do Hitler's bidding were rewarded.

Among the gifted Germans who didn't flee Hitler's

regime were Albert Speer, who became the first

architect of the Reich, and Leni Riefenstahl, a

beautiful actress turned director who recorded the extraordinary

Nazi rallies that elevated Hitler to an almost

godlike status, an effort crucial to Nazi propaganda.

Now Hitler had reached an unassailable position in

Germany, he could concentrate on his two greatest

goals, Lebensraum, finding living space for the German

people and the destruction of the Jews.

He rapidly began building the German army and

increasing the naval fleet, flagrantly breaking the limitations

set after World War I.

In a secret conference on 5 November 1937,

he disclosed to his generals plans to invade

Poland and go to war with France and Britain.

Two senior generals, Werner von Blomberg and Werner

von Fritsch, were horrified and spoke out against

Hitler, but when the Führer ordered their humiliating

removal, he alienated traditionalists in the Wehrmacht.

By the beginning of 1938, the old generals

feared their country would once more be plunged

into war, but it was impossible to sway

Hitler from the decisions he'd already made.

When faced with opposition, he would remove it.

On the 4th of February 1938, Hitler abolished

the entire war ministry, sacking 16 senior generals

and announced, from now on I take over

personally the command of the whole armed forces.

44 generals resigned.

So, with the German nation and the armed

forces under his total control, Hitler prepared for

his first move, greedily eyeing the land of his birth, Austria.

Yet he was unaware that there were those

who stood in the shadows, ready to thwart his plans.

Wilhelm Canaris, a decorated officer fluent in many

languages, had been made head of the German

high command's counterintelligence service in 1935.

Canaris had been a major influence on Hitler's

decision to side with General Franco during the

Spanish Civil War in 1936, which led to

the terrible Nazi destruction of the village of

Chwernica, famously recorded in Picasso's painting of the same name.

Wever Canaris did not remain under Hitler's spell

for long, and after witnessing the terrible treatment

of Jews and the destruction being wrought by

the Third Reich, began his careful opposition to the aggressive new order.

As Hitler finalised his plans to occupy Austria,

fearing a war with Britain, Canaris sent a

secret emissary to communicate with MI6 in London,

presenting his ideas to overthrow the Nazis.

Keen to promote peace however, the Prime Minister

Neville Chamberlain showed no sign of preparing to

take action as the Nazis marched into Austria,

and while Hitler's troops began to edge towards

Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain met the Nazi leader to ratify

a peace treaty accepting Germany's occupation of a

part of Czechoslovakia, on condition that Hitler agreed

to halt any further invasions.

The German generals who'd plotted against Hitler could

do no more than watch in dismay as

Britain stood back and appeased the Nazi regime.

Chamberlain's error of judgement soon became apparent when

Hitler revealed his horrifying plans for his next

invasion as Poland was targeted.

As Göring drove his army across the Polish

border, obliterating all that stood in his way,

reports of mass murder throughout the country filtered back to Canaris.

The nobility and clergy were targeted for extermination,

entire villages were wiped out and Jews burnt to death.

Efforts by regular soldiers to prevent brutalities were

swept aside by Himmler's Gestapo, and there followed

a rapid deterioration in army discipline.

Canaris warned General Wilhelm Keitel, the High Commander

of the Armed Forces, that the military would

be held responsible for the atrocities being committed,

but the General responded that he was simply following Hitler's orders.

Even so, some years later, just as Canaris

had predicted, Keitel was held accountable and executed by the Allies.

The situation in Poland forced Neville Chamberlain and

the British to go to war with Germany,

which was officially declared on September the 3rd, 1939.

An eyewitness account noted that there was no

joyous celebration in the German capital on the

eve of this conflict, unlike the excitement surrounding

the First World War, but rather shock and

the silent dread hung over the nation.

Nevertheless, the revolutionary tactics of the German army

would prove astoundingly successful, and despite the entry

of Britain into the conflict, quickly followed by

France, there was no halting the Nazi advance

and Poland quickly fell to be carved up

between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia before the Allies could act.

Denmark and Norway followed, being swiftly occupied by

the Nazis, and the Russian leader, Joseph Stalin,

ordered his troops into Finland, and while Hitler

made plans to invade Holland and France, the

German old guard, again, trying to warm the Allies.

Hans Oster, deputy to Canaris, trying to inform

the Netherlands military attaché in Berlin more than

20 times of the exact date of the

constantly delayed invasion of Holland, but the Dutch

government refused to believe him until the paratroopers

descended from the skies, by which time it was too late.

Finally, there was a glimmer of hope for

the conspirators when Winston Churchill, a man who'd

famously spoken out against Hitler since the early

1930s, took over from Neville Chamberlain as Prime

Minister of Great Britain on May the 10th, 1940.

Even so, Churchill had a tough task right

from day one because, while he was settling

into Downing Street, Hitler's panzer tanks stormed through

France using a sickle-cut manoeuvre to separate

Allied troops, trapping thousands of British and French

soldiers on the beaches of Dunkirk to face

almost certain death in Hitler's well-sprung trap.

However, Churchill put in place a daring plan

to rescue the stranded Allies, just as Hitler

made one of the most extraordinary decisions of

the war, calling on his panzer divisions to

halt within a matter of kilometres of Dunkirk.

Some have suggested the Führer was teaching his

generals that he was in charge and not

to be questioned whatever he did, while others

believe that Hitler intended a gesture of goodwill

as he still hoped to negotiate a peace treaty with the British.

Conversely, it may simply have been arrogance on

Hitler's part believing he had all the time

in the world, but Churchill, right from the

moment of his arrival at Number 10, gave

notice that he was not to be underestimated.

In just the few days of respite given

by Hitler's delay in finishing the task at

hand, Churchill's Operation Dynamo, complete with a fleet

of civilian craft, rescued more than 300,000

Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk.

Despite the fact that so many Allied soldiers

had escaped to fight another day, Hitler was

undeterred and quickly advanced to take Paris celebrating

his victory over the French.

Revenge being sweet, Hitler ordered that the very

carriage where France and Germany had signed the

armistice in 1918 be removed from its museum

and placed in the exact same spot in the forest of Campania where it had stood

on that fateful day.

Hitler wanted to sit triumphantly in the seat

that the French general, Foch, had 20 years

earlier, accepting the German surrender.

This time however, it would be the French

generals who would bow to Hitler and to Nazi Germany.

France was now under Nazi control and as

Hitler turned his gaze to Britain, a nation

standing alone against Germany across the English Channel,

he decided it was time to invade the United Kingdom.

Hitler quickly presented plans to destroy the British

Royal Air Force before attempting a landing as

part of Operation Sea Lion and in the

summer of 1940, Göring led the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain.

But again, Hitler underestimated his enemy, not only

the brave pilots prepared to give their lives

in the fight for freedom, but also the

nations, people who were determined that Hitler and

his cruel regime would never set foot on British soil.

What's more, Hitler got something of a shock

when on August the 25th, 1940, the RAF bombed Berlin.

Göring had assured the German people this could

never happen and although causing little damage, it

shook the confidence of the Berliners.

Hitler was furious and let his anger colour

his judgment when he sought revenge by bombing

London and other major cities day and night

rather than continuing to target the airfields of southeast England.

The RAF were totally exhausted and on their knees by the end of August 1940 and

had the Germans continue to targeting the RAF.

Victory was within their grasp.

Because of the bombing of Britain's cities, the

Air Force had time to recover and the

Nazis lost their advantage before even realizing they'd had it.

The British morale held strong and people continued

to doggedly brew their pots of tea spurred

on by the stirring words of Winston Churchill,

unwavering in their determination to defend their island.

As Erwin Rommel, Hitler's favourite general, was sent

to defeat the British in North Africa, he

boasted many victories much to Hitler's delight.

But Britain's spirit remained unbreakable and by spring

1941 the threat of a full-scale invasion was less and less likely.

Especially as by now Hitler had a more

pressing engagement, opening up an eastern front to

attack the Russians, something he'd always intended to

do disregarding the non-aggression pact with Stalin.

This was perhaps the most important invasion of

Hitler's military career and one he had waited for impatiently.

Along with the Jews, Hitler detested the Soviets

and had told Goebbels his main aim was

to finally eliminate the Bolshevik poison from Europe.

On June the 22nd, 1941, Hitler's troops marched

into the Soviet Union along a 1,800

mile front.

Only three days before Operation Barbarossa was set

in motion, the Führer had given specific orders

of a campaign should be waged with extreme brutality.

Himmler had instructed the security forces to act

against all populations who were potentially anti-German

or racially inferior by shooting indiscriminately at men,

burning villages to the ground and deporting women

and children to the concentration camps.

But despite the Russian people being abused so

viciously by October, when torrents of rain fell,

turning the roads and the battlefields into mud

swamps, before the onset of a bitter winter,

the Russian weather was able to dash Hitler's hopes of a swift occupation.

Hitler had promised that when he came to

Russia, the Nazis would have only to kick

in the door and the whole Russian structure

will come crashing down, but he was mistaken.

He had guaranteed Germany a victory within six

months, but as more of his troops were

killed or wounded, even Goebbels' propaganda machine could

do little to hide the fact that all was not going to plan.

Many began to despair and even Germany's greatest heroes lost hope.

Germany's first airman, Ernst Udet, frustrated by Göring's

lies about the lack of raw material to

build more planes, was plunged into a deep

depression over the war with Russia and committed

suicide, and it wasn't long before Hitler had

a great deal more to worry about than losing ground to Stalin's Red Army.

On December the 7th, 1941, the Japanese bombed

Pearl Harbour, an act that would at long

last bring America into the conflict, and just

four days later, Hitler declared war on America.

The Axis powers now faced a coalition that

included the world's largest empire, the world's greatest

industrial and financial power, and the world's largest

army, namely Great Britain, the United States of America, and Russia.

Those who had for so long supported Hitler

were now beginning to fear the worst, and

along with field marshals, generals, diplomats, and senior

officials, the German resistance gathered momentum.

Among them was Colonel Henning von Tresckow, who'd

been working on a plot to assassinate Hitler

after hearing the furious speech on the war

of annihilation against the Soviet Union.

So, on March the 13th, 1943, von Tresckow

gave a case containing two bottles of cognac

to a member of Hitler's staff, which had

a bomb concealed within it as Hitler flew to the Eastern Front.

Frustratingly, the bomb failed to detonate, and a

week later another attempt was made when a

close friend of von Tresckow went to meet

Hitler on Unter den Linden in Berlin, with his pockets filled with explosives.

He came close to being history's first suicide

bomber, but Hitler left before the bomb went

off, and the explosives had to be diffused as quickly as possible.

While von Tresckow waited for another opportunity, it

was obvious that not only military personnel were trying to resist the Nazis.

A group of working-class teenagers calling themselves

the Edelweiss Pirates pitted their wits against Hitler's

Nazi youth, regularly stuffing Allied leaflets into letterboxes

and using slogans and songs which were more

poignant than they could ever have known.

Hitler's power may lay us low and keep us locked in chains, but we will smash

the chains one day, we'll be free again.

But such was the sense of paranoia amongst

Hitler's henchmen that even gangs of 16-year

-olds were considered a threat by the Gestapo,

and many of the Edelweiss Pirates were brutally executed.

Worse was to come for the German people

when in November 1943 the Allies increased their

attacks, targeting the capital Berlin with a fierce

bombardment on the scale faced by London during the Blitz.

Many national monuments were obliterated and it was

clear that Hitler's war started with such a

flourish was now turning in favour of the Allies.

Goebbels did what he could through propaganda, conjuring

up images of a nation under siege as

he spoke to the public rallying the Germans

to defend the fatherland, but as Berlin was

laid to waste it became ever clearer to the rebels that the only way to end

the war was to kill Hitler.

As Mussolini was arrested in Italy and the

Italians turned against Germany, the members of the

resistance hoped they too might remove their leader

with a new and very valuable addition to

their ranks by the name of Klaus Schenk

von Stauffenberg, who'd returned wounded from the fighting in North Africa.

The plans to assassinate Hitler received a huge boost.

As a military man, von Stauffenberg had admired

Hitler's strong leadership when he came to power.

However soon the model soldier was disgusted by

the atrocities being committed and when approached by

General Friedrich Ulbricht, a central figure in the

resistance against Nazism, he immediately agreed to take

part in a coup against the Führer.

In June 1944 the Allies were closing in.

The Soviets had cleared the Nazis from Russia

and were heading towards Germany and the D

-Day landings along the beaches of Normandy were

well underway, so the resistance knew they had to act quickly.

On July the 1st 1944 von Stauffenberg was

appointed chief of staff to the army reserve

in Berlin, putting him in regular contact with Hitler.

It was the perfect opportunity.

Twice he arrived at conferences carrying briefcases containing

explosives, but twice he had to abort his mission as Himmler wasn't present.

Finally on the 20th of July 1944 von

Stauffenberg carried out Operation Valkyrie and took a

briefcase containing a bomb to a meeting at

Hitler's war headquarters in East Russia.

After half an hour he made his excuses

and departed, leaving the briefcase beneath the table.

Hearing the bomb explode from outside the building

he was convinced Hitler would be dead and

flew immediately back to Berlin to organise the coup.

However when von Stauffenberg had left the room

an officer sitting near the briefcase had moved

it further beneath the table and the blast,

although killing some, was minimised by the solid oak table.

As realisation dawned that Hitler had only been

slightly injured the resistance were horrified and knew their fate was sealed.

When von Stauffenberg returned to the army headquarters

where his compatriots stood poised to take on

the Nazis he was captured and executed along with Ulbricht and many others.

Thousands more were arrested in connection with the

assassination attempt and today a memorial now stands

where Stauffenberg bravely uttered his last words,

“Long live holy Germany.”

With the failure of the assassination attempt the

Second World War would continue for another year

claiming many more lives but the Third Reich's days were numbered.

Berlin was left virtually unprotected as the Red

Army speedily advanced towards Hitler's headquarters from the

east and the Americans marched in from the west.

On the 20th of April 1945, Hitler's birthday,

the Soviet artillery began to shell the centre of Berlin.

The Nazis had forbidden civilians to leave the

city in a bid to boost military morale.

Some were even shocked by their own countrymen

for putting white flags outside their houses.

Goebbels propaganda slogans had been scrawled on any buildings left standing.

Every German will defend his capital.

We shall stop the red hordes at the walls of our Berlin.

Now terrified by the approaching Red Army, already

renowned for its own atrocities in Poland, many Berliners began to flee.

In the rubble that had once been the

proud beautiful German capital Hitler's dream of a

thousand-year Reich had crumbled into oblivion.

As elderly men and youths were employed to

defend the city, fighting a hopeless battle, Hitler

and Goebbels hid beneath the city in a

bunker under the Reich Chancellery along with Eva

Braun, Goebbels' wife and children and other Nazi officials.

On April the 28th 1945, Hitler heard the

news that Himmler, his most loyal commander, had

contacted the Allies to negotiate a surrender.

Hitler exploded in a rage and even that

to this late hour sought someone to blame

executing one of the commanders in the bunker.

Later that night Hitler married Eva Braun before

dictating his last political testament which claimed the

war would one day go down in history

as the most glorious and heroic manifestation of a people's will to live.

But Hitler's ultimate demise was far from glorious

and on April the 30th 1945, having heard

that Berlin was on the verge of collapse,

he and his new bride bit into vials

of cyanide and perhaps fearing that even this

would not kill him, Hitler shot himself in the head.

Only two days later the Red Army found

their charred remains in the Reich's Chancellery along

with the bodies of Goebbels and his family who had also taken poison.

Goring and Himmler were captured but they committed

suicide before the sentence could be carried out.

And while the men who had led them

into the abyss were now free from retribution

the people of Germany were left to face the consequences.

Control of Germany was split between the Western

Allies and the Soviet Union and as the

prisoners were freed from the concentration camps the

task of rebuilding what had once been such a proud nation began.

During the years of the Nazi regime there

were no less than 44 attempts on Adolf

Hitler's life but as he cheated death again

and again millions of innocent souls would perish.

Today Berlin has been rebuilt and a spirit

of hope and reconciliation has replaced the Nazi

ideology but if you look carefully the scars

still remain to remind those who come here of the reign of one of the world's

most terrible dictators warning mankind for all eternity

that absolute power corrupts absolutely.