All language subtitles for m.m.n.g.i.w.s01e05.1080p.web.h264-cbfm_track3_[eng]

[THEME MUSIC]

ROD FOUST: Bavarian politics
of the early 1920s were

a particularly violent
subculture of the larger German

political scene and
revolved around meetings

in Munich's famous beer halls.

Fueled by strong beer
and fiery rhetoric,

bloody street fights between
rival groups were common.

The Nazi party was in the
thick of this maelstrom.

To take the fight to his
Communist rivals, in 1921,

Hitler organized a party militia
dubbed the Sturmabteilung,

literally "storm
detachment," or SA.

It was under the command of a
former army captain, Ernst Röhm.

Soon nicknamed the
Brownshirts because

of their distinctive
uniforms, SA stormtroopers

were in the thick of
riots and other trouble.

Hitler also moved to set up a
new ultra-loyal paramilitary

group that would have
the job of protecting him

and other senior Nazi leaders.

Since many SA members
were former freikorps,

he needed men who would give
him unquestioning loyalty.

In March 1923, he
set up the Stabswache

or "headquarters
guard," which initially

consisted of just two men.

Within weeks, this group was
reorganized as the Stosstrupp,

or "shock troop," Adolf Hitler.

The group's distinctive black
uniforms soon became a feature

of Nazi party meetings.

And its members were
always ready to do

their master's bidding.

At this point, Hitler's
bodyguards never numbered

more than a few dozen men.

By early November
1923, Hitler was

convinced that the
Weimar Republic

was on the verge of collapse.

And he declared
that the Nazi party

was to lead a march on Berlin to
overthrow Germany's government

of Jewish Marxist traders.

The first stage of
the Nazi revolution

would take place in Munich,
where Hitler and the SA

planned to depose the
Bavarian state government

and win over local army
units to their cause.

After a rabble-rousing speech in
a beer hall from their leader,

Hitler's supporters spread
out through the city

with the intention of
seizing key buildings.

This resulted in the
coup d'état attempt being

dubbed the Beer Hall Putsch.

The small Stosstrupp
Adolf Hitler

was given the task of
ransacking the offices

of the Social Democratic
Munich Post newspaper.

In the meantime, Hitler and
the main column of Nazis

headed for the Bavarian
War Ministry building.

Unfortunately for Hitler,
he had misjudged the mood

of the country, which was
now starting to recover

from the post-war chaos.

The army soldiers outside the
ministry stood their ground

and opened fire on
the Nazi plotters.

Some 16 Nazis were
killed in the confusion

and Hitler dislocated his
shoulder as he dived for cover.

The putsch ended in fiasco.

Hitler and several other
plotters were arrested.

But during the 13 months he
served of his five-year sentence

in Landsberg Prison for
conspiracy to commit treason,

Hitler's bodyguard
was disbanded.

The period of imprisonment
did nothing to dampen

Hitler's quest for power.

Rather, he emerged from
jail with a long-term plan

to achieve his aims.

Germany was now a more
prosperous and stable place,

so Hitler's apocalyptic
vision of future struggles

had to be tempered.

He now talked about using
legal methods to gain power

and tried to portray
himself as a normal

constitutional politician.

[PATRIOTIC MUSIC]

Hitler was still convinced
that his opponents,

both within and
outside the Nazi party,

would try to kill him if
they had the opportunity.

On his release from
prison, he moved quickly

to re-establish his bodyguard.

[PATRIOTIC MUSIC]

In April 1925, only eight
men were in the group

that was soon renamed
the Schutzstaffel

or "protection squad."

This title was quickly
abbreviated to SS,

creating the infamous name.

Because of their
distinctive black uniforms,

they were soon nicknamed the
Black Guard or Black Order.

Their uniforms were adorned
with the letters SS, stylized

as distinctive Nordic runes.

For the next four
years, the SS was

a small, elite group of
bodyguards that traveled

with Hitler wherever he went.

They were initially volunteers
who did their security work

in the evenings or on weekends.

Only a small number of
the 300 or so SS men

were full time and on
the Nazi party payroll.

As Hitler moved to establish the
Nazi party as a national body

outside of his Bavarian power
base, the SS was expanded

and small detachments were set
up in every major German city

to protect local leaders
and party meetings.

The SS was deliberately kept
small so its total loyalty

to Hitler could be assured.

Already, Hitler was growing
suspicious of Röhm and the SA

because their hotheaded
behavior was threatening

his attempts to rebrand
the Nazi party as

a respectable political force.

In January 1929, Hitler
appointed a chicken farmer,

Heinrich Himmler,
as head of the SS

with the blessing to build it
up as a force to rival the SA.

Even though the SS was
nominally part of Röhm's force,

Himmler was totally
loyal to Hitler

and threw himself into
expanding his new fiefdom.

Over the next four years, he
expanded the SS to some 52,000

men, which not only included
bodyguards but also a covert

secret intelligence
organization called

the Sicherheitsdienst,
translated as the "security

service" or SD.

Loyalty to Hitler was at
the core of the SS ethos.

The expanded SS
organization was essentially

a shadow internal
security apparatus,

which would help the Nazis
gain and keep power in Germany.

Events across the
Atlantic soon intervened

to change the fortunes of
Hitler and his Nazi party.

The Wall Street stock market
crash of October and November

1929 rapidly sent ripples
of economic crisis

around the world.

Germany's fragile recovery
was stopped in its tracks.

Millions were soon
unemployed, and the value

of Germany's currency
went through the floor.

There were 1.6 million
unemployed in October 1929.

By February 1932, this figure
had increased to 6.12 million.

The Great Depression gave Hitler
the chance he was looking for.

And again, he portrayed himself
as Germany's new messiah.

From having only 12
seats in the Reichstag--

the German parliament--
in 1928, the Nazis

managed to win 107
seats and 6 million

votes in the 1930 election.

Over the next three years,
as Germany's economic crisis

worsened, the Nazi party's vote
increased, as did the votes

going to the communists.

Squeezed from left and
right, the center parties

found themselves unable
to form governments

without the support of either
of the political extremes.

Governments lasted
only a few months,

preventing the implementation
of the necessary measures

to restore the economy.

Germany's democracy was
locked into a spiral of

economic and political decline.

By the middle of 1932,
the Nazis were the largest

party in the Reichstag.

Even though they did not have
the necessary majority of seats

to allow them to
form a government,

they held the balance of power.

And Hitler was now
a key power broker.

For six months, Germany
was in political turmoil

as the aging president,
Paul Von Hindenburg,

tried to form a government
that excluded Hitler.

The former field marshal
despised Hitler because

of his lowly Austrian birth.

In January 1933,
Hindenburg bowed

to the inevitable and appointed
Hitler as Germany's chancellor.

Hitler was the
leader of a coalition

with other right-wing
parties, which represented

big business interests.

[PATRIOTIC MUSIC]

Over the next year, Hitler moved
systematically to consolidate

his grip on power and
eventually appointed

himself Germany's Führer with
unlimited dictatorial powers.

The SS played a key role in
this move to dictatorship.

Once in control of the
levers of political power,

Hitler moved to put his loyal
lieutenants into key positions

of influence.

Himmler was made
police chief in Munich.

The SS was also
authorized to act

as an official police unit
alongside established state

police forces.

Money from the interior
ministry budget

was diverted to pay
for the SS expansion.

Now, many of the part time
SS men could become full time

employees of the German state.

SS units around the
country were established

on a permanent basis,
with battalions

or political
readiness squads being

set up in every major city for
so-called heavy police tasks.

These were, in effect,
paramilitary squads

which owed their loyalty
directly to Hitler.

The SA organization,
by the end of 1933,

had mushroomed to 3 million men,
and Hitler was looking for ways

to bring it under his control.

A crucial development was
the setting up in Berlin

in March 1933 of a new
elite grouping within the SS

under the command
of one of Hitler's

old henchmen from Munich.

Josef Sepp Dietrich was an
old party crony of Hitler

whom he trusted implicitly.

The new group was initially
only 120 men strong

and was dubbed the
SS-Stabswache Berlin.

Its job was to guard Hitler
and his official residence

in the Reich chancellery.

In September 1933,
it became the SS

Leibstandarte Adolf
Hitler or "SS Bodyguard

Regiment Adolf Hitler."

And in November that year,
members of this new life guard

swore an oath of loyalty unto
death to their new Führer.

Under the leadership
of Dietrich,

the Leibstandarte would
later rise to be Germany's

Premier Armored Division.

However, in its
early days, the unit

would gain infamy for its
role in one of Hitler's

first extralegal
acts as he moved

to establish his dictatorship.

[TENSE MUSIC]

By June 1934, Hitler had
outwitted most political

opponents, banned all
parties except for the Nazis,

and placed his supporters
in key positions

in the German government.

The SA remained the last
bastion of potential opposition

to Hitler, and he was soon
to neutralize this threat.

He had decided to remove
the socialist elements

from the party.

Hitler carefully concocted
a bogus coup plot involving

Röhm and other SA leaders.

Orders were issued for the
plotters to be arrested.

The Leibstandarte
and SS units provided

the force for the operation.

Hitler himself led
the raid in Munich

that caught Röhm and several
of his key lieutenants.

Sepp Dietrich then oversaw their
execution in Stadelheim Prison

by a Leibstandarte firing squad.

A rising SS star,
Theodore Eicke,

the inspector of
concentration camps,

shot Röhm after he
refused to commit suicide.

In Berlin, other SS units
arrested some 150 SA leaders.

They were then shot,
four at a time,

by a Leibstandarte
firing squad in Berlin's

Lichterfelde Barracks.

The total number of people
killed in the so-called "blood

purge" or "Night of the Long
Knives" is still unclear,

but it was probably nearly 200.

Most were SA cronies of
Röhm, but some were leading

political opponents of
Hitler such as General

Kurt Von Schleicher,
the last chancellor

of the Weimar Republic.

The audacious nature
of the killings

and the lack of
response from Hindenburg

confirmed Hitler's place as
the supreme political power

in Germany.

Within weeks, the
president was dead

and Hitler assumed the
powers of his office.

He declared himself to
be the German Führer.

He then forced army officers
to take an oath of loyalty

to him rather than to
the German constitution.

Hitler removed the SS
from control of the SA

as a reward for their loyalty
during the blood purge.

Himmler's SS became an
independent organization.

During the next
two years, Himmler

proved himself an
archetypal Nazi baron,

expanding his organization
and personal power.

Hitler made great efforts to
keep his subordinates squabbling

among themselves by
setting up rival power

structures that ensured
they had to come

to him to broker disputes.

So even though Himmler was
nominally boss of the SS,

it was, in turn, broken up
into competing fiefdoms.

The first major reorganization
of the SS occurred in March 1935

when Hitler formally
announced the establishment

of the first armed SS units.

The term Waffen-SS--

Waffen is translated
as "armed"--

would not come into widespread
usage until early 1940.

The description of these units
had to be carefully packaged.

This was done not to
upset the army generals.

They had been promised a year
earlier that the Wehrmacht would

be Germany's sole arms bearer.

This was in return
for their support

during the blood
purge against the SA.

The armed SS units were used
for special internal tasks

allotted by the Führer.

The SS was described
as a militarized force

ready for police action
within the Reich boundaries

when dissident forces are too
strong for the normal security

services.

The armed SS was initially
termed the SS-Verfügungstruppe

or SS-VT.

These so-called
special disposal troops

included all the
old heavy police

units that were grouped into
three regiments or standarten.

Himmler was keen to provide the
new SS-VT with the best training

and weapons, so he persuaded
a number of ambitious army

officers to transfer
to the new force

to provide a corps of
professional officers.

The most famous of these was
Paul Hausser, who was appointed

the commander of the SS-VT.

In 1936, he was
given a headquarters

staff, dubbed the
SS-VT Inspectorate,

to coordinate the growth of
the military arm of the SS.

Hausser was also in charge
of the first SS officer cadet

or "junker" school
at Bad Tölz, which

was set up in 1935 to train
a new type of SS officer.

Bad Tölz and a second
Junkerschule at Braunschweig

turned out a generation
of aggressive officers

that would rise to command
the SS armored divisions

during World War II.

At the same time as
the SS-VT was set up,

Himmler also established
a rival branch,

eventually dubbed the
SS-Totenkopfverbande,

SS-TV, or "death's head unit."

This branch was
the responsibility

of the head of the concentration
camp guard force, Eicke,

who set up the first
of these infamous camps

at Dachau outside
Munich in 1933.

By early 1938, in addition to
guarding a string of prison

camps around Germany which
held thousands of inmates

in poor conditions,
the SS-TV mustered

three regiments of
fully motorized troops

equipped with light weapons.

The Oberbayern regiment was
based at Dachau in Bavaria.

The Brandenburg
regiment operated

from Oranienburg concentration
camp outside Berlin.

And the Thüringen regiment ran
the Buchenwald camp near Weimar.

It was intended that they would
reinforce the SS-VT troops

in times of crisis.

But this arrangement
also allowed

Himmler and Hitler to pit rival
SS officers against each other.

Eicke was a brutal
thug who showed

no pity toward the
inmates of his camps.

He indoctrinated
his men to believe

they were responsible
for imprisoning

Germany's most dangerous
enemies and instructed

them to show no mercy.

The most minor infringements
of his camp rules

were to be dealt with
by severe beatings

and other forms of torture.

This period also
saw Himmler move

to spread the
tentacles of the SS

into every sphere
of German life.

In June 1936, Hitler
designated Himmler

as head of the unified
German police system

as well as head or
reichsführer of the SS

and chief of the secret
police, the infamous Geheime

Staatspolizei or Gestapo.

[TENSE MUSIC]

In this capacity, the
SS became responsible

for all the apparatus of
the Nazi police state.

Its members were now the masters
of terror in Hitler's Germany.

By 1939, all the security police
organizations of Hitler's Third

Reich were brought
under the control

of Himmler's loyal
henchman, Reinhard Heydrich,

via the Reich central
security office.

This included the
SD, the Gestapo,

the ordinary criminal
police, and security police.

Heydrich epitomized
the Nazi police state.

He was ambitious, ruthless,
and totally loyal to Hitler.

As well as its armed
and security branches,

the SS also eventually
boasted unusual organizations

such as the SS Marriage Bureau.

This was known as the
Central Office for Race

and Resettlement, which
had the responsibility

of confirming the racial
purity of the brides of SS men.

There was also the German
Racial Assistance Office,

which was charged
with protecting

the well-being of ethnic Germans
living outside the borders

of the Reich.

These groups then helped in
the establishment of the Reich

Office for the Consolidation
of the German Nationhood, which

was nominally responsible for
the movement of ethnic Germans

back into Reich territory.

But it was really a cover for
the deportation and eventual

extermination of
Jews, Slavs, and other

groups considered untermenschen
or "subhumans" by Hitler.

It finally spawned the SS
Economic and Administrative

Central Office,
which was in charge

of the concentration camp
system and the "Final Solution"

of the Jewish problem.

The leaders of
these organizations

developed bland euphemisms
for the mass murder

of most of Europe's Jews.

By the end of the 1930s, the
SS organization had ballooned

to some 200,000 men, of whom
the vast majorities were in its

police, security, and
concentration camp guard

units rather than in the SS-VT.

During this period, the SS
became central to Hitler's folk

myth, with senior figures
in the organization

being portrayed as Nordic
gods in Nazi propaganda.

The racial purity of SS recruits
was given great prominence,

and Hitler tried to
build on this as a way

to indoctrinate the German
people with his theories

of racial superiority.

[TENSE MUSIC]

The SS also had its own rank
system that gave members

prestige and power
over ordinary mortals

in the army, the Nazi party,
and in civilian branches

of government.

The growth of the
armed SS during

the later years of the 1930s
was one of slow evolution.

Much of the groundwork for the
development of the armed SS

was undertaken in
great secrecy to allow

the opposition of
the army high command

to be bypassed or ignored.

Hitler was still unwilling to
stage an open confrontation

with the army's generals
and preferred to dispose

of problematic commanders
in a series of dirty tricks

operations to discredit
individuals who opposed him.

The early development
of the armed SS

was characterized
by a series of deals

with the army high command.

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

In May 1935,
joining the armed SS

was classified as
military service

and it exempted the
SS recruit from being

conscripted into the army.

At the same time,
however, the army

retained control of the flow
of new manpower into the SS-VT.

And during most
of the 1930s, that

effectively limited it to a
total of fewer than 10,000 men.

The army also retained
control of military aspects

of SS training and had the
right to inspect SS-VT units.

To get around
these restrictions,

Himmler allowed the
Totenkopfverbande

to mushroom into a force
of some 25,000 men by 1939.

He groomed the concentration
camp guard to become almost

a ghost reserve for the SS-VT.

He stretched its role as a force
for special tasks of a police

nature to the limit.

Because it had no
formal military role,

the army could not
claim any right

to interfere in its affairs.

Totenkopfverbande
units were fully

motorized, had heavy machine
guns, and other light weapons.

Plans were drawn up so SS
police reservists aged over 45

could be quickly mobilized to
guard the concentration camps.

This released the
Totenkopfverbande motorized

regiments for combat duties.

While on paper,
Eicke's private army

seemed a powerful and
heavily-armed force, in reality,

it did not undertake
intense combat training.

It was nowhere near the
quality of the mainstream

armed units of the SS-VT.

During the invasion
of Poland and France,

for example, its lack
of military skills

would become very apparent.

Over the next three
years, a tug of war

took place as the army tried
to strangle the SS-VT at birth.

The effort was to little avail
as the growth of the elite force

had the personal
backing of Hitler.

In 1938, he issued instructions
codifying the role of the SS-VT.

It was to be a permanent
armed force at his disposal

and a formation
of the Nazi party

recruited and trained in
ideological and political

matters by the reichsführer
SS in accordance

with directives given by Hitler.

In case of an
emergency, it was to be

used by the
commander-in-chief of the army

within the framework
of the army,

subject to military
law and instruction.

Politically,
though, the armed SS

was to remain part
of the Nazi party

even if army commanders
had operational control

in the field.

Ultimately, Hitler
envisioned the armed SS

as being an armed
state police that

was to enforce the
authority of the Reich

in the interior of the country.

He declared that this duty can
only be carried out by a state

police containing,
within its ranks,

men of the best German blood
and identified unquestionably

with the ideology upon which the
greater German Reich is founded.

Only a formation
constituted upon these lines

will be able to resist
subversive influences

in times of crisis.

After the setting up
of the SS-VT unit,

a frantic effort began to
train the new formations

in military skills.

While they were already drilled
in the use of small arms,

they were lacking in expertise
in military tactics. .

Hitler insisted that the new
force be fully motorized,

in line with his view that
his elite troops had to have

the best equipment available.

To speed up the
process of training,

each armed SS unit was
twinned with a local army unit

to allow it to share experience
and conduct joint training.

Relations between
the two organizations

were frosty at first, but
improved as armed SS and army

units participated
in joint operations

during the reoccupation
of the Rhineland in 1936

and the union with
Austria in 1938.

The armed SS, however, retained
control over the selection

of its recruits, their
ideological training,

and their transformation
into true Aryan warriors,

soldiers who would be the
vanguard of national socialism.

Hitler saw his SS
troops as Aryan supermen

who would lead the racial
struggle with the untermenschen.

"To judge morality properly, it
must be replaced by two concepts

borrowed from zoology--

the taming of a beast and
the breeding of a species,"

wrote Hitler.

"The SS man must be hard,
unemotional, fiercely loyal.

The SS man's basic
attitude must be that

of a fighter for fighting sake.

He must be
unquestionably obedient

and become emotionally hard.

He must have contempt
for all racial inferiors

and for those who do
not belong to the order.

He must feel the strongest
bonds of comradeship

with those who do
belong, particularly

his fellow soldiers.

And he must think
nothing impossible."

Loyalty to Hitler was at
the heart of the SS code,

with the force having the
motto, "Loyalty is my honor."

Leibstandarte chief Dietrich
told new SS recruits, "We

ask for and give complete
loyalty to the Führer and those

he has set above us.

To you recruits, I say even the
smallest wish expressed by one

of your non-commissioned
officers must be interpreted

as an order from the Führer."

To mold these supermen, the
armed SS training regime

emphasized physical
toughness and moral supremacy

over all enemies.

Even before recruits were
allowed to begin training,

they had to pass rigorous
racial and physical selection.

Himmler insisted that
potential SS soldiers

had to be aged
between 17 and 22,

be at least 5 feet
9 inches tall,

and be of the highest
physical fitness.

Every SS man had to be
of a well-proportioned

build, with no disproportion
between the lower leg and thigh

or between the legs and body,
to allow an exceptional load

to be carried on long marches.

The Aryan recruit also had
to show no traces of Jewish

or other untermenschen
blood in his ancestry--

in the case of
ordinary soldiers,

back to 1800, and to
1750 for officers.

Those with undesirable
blood were refused entry.

And if racial impurities came
to light during his service,

an SS man could be
summarily dismissed.

The future brides of SS
men were also subjected

to the same level
of racial profiling

to ensure any offspring
were pure Aryans.

With the strength of the armed
SS also limited by the army,

these restrictions
meant that it was

very hard to join the armed
force of the Nazi party.

However, such was the mystique
built up around the armed SS

that every place
was oversubscribed,

which helped to build its
image as an elite force.

Unlike army conscripts,
ordinary enlisted SS men

had to serve a
minimum of four years,

non-commissioned officers 12
years, and officers 25 years.

Senior armed SS Commanders
wanted their men

to be supple, adaptable
soldiers, athletic of bearing,

capable of more than average
endurance on the march

and in combat, and to be as much
at home on the battlefield as

on the athletic field.

Recruits were roused from their
beds at 0600 hours each morning.

They were subjected to
extensive physical training

to toughen them up so
that, eventually, they

could run almost two miles in 20
minutes wearing full combat kit.

Extra physical training
was put on the schedule

during bad weather to
harden up the recruits.

Later in the morning, recruits
underwent training with

their weapons on firing ranges.

Afternoons were spent
on sports and athletics

to help build up recruits'
stamina and team spirit.

Military skills had a high
priority, so drill and parades

were heavily emphasized during
the training of SS recruits,

especially for potential
Leibstandarte men who had

to parade in public in Berlin.

The final ingredient
of SS training

was ideological indoctrination.

This was to ensure that
recruits were fully prepared

to be foot soldiers in the
coming war for racial supremacy

against the untermenschen.

As training progressed,
recruits underwent increasingly

sophisticated training,
including fire and maneuver

training with live ammunition.

This taught them how to assault
enemy strongpoints using

the aggressive stormtrooper
tactics perfected in

the later years of World War I.

The SS put great
emphasis on the selection

and training of its officers.

Although the first
generation of senior SS men,

such as Dietrich and Eicke, were
old hands from the Nazi party's

street fighting days,
it was recognized

that a more professional
officer corps

was needed to turn the armed SS
into an elite fighting force.

The recruitment of professional
staff officers, such as Hausser,

to set up the SS-VT
inspectorate helped

improve the quality of the
armed SS's higher echelons.

There was still, however, a
big skills gap at the junior

and middle ranking level.

Only SS men who had served
two years in the ranks

were accepted for
officer training.

This meant they were already
highly trained before they

attended either of
the Junkerschules

at Bad Tölz or Braunschweig.

Potential SS officers were put
through an incredibly rigorous

training regime, which
included far more extensive

use of live
ammunition in training

than for ordinary SS recruits.

The results were impressive.

The training turned out highly
aggressive and self-confident

young officers who
soon proved themselves

in the early blitzkrieg
campaigns of the war.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]