Original subtitles

It's January 1933

and Germany has a new Chancellor.

He refuses to engage in the boring day-to-day detail

of running a country.

He has no interest in the opinions of experts and refuses

to read briefings.

Instead, he tasks his team with a simple assignment.

Destroy democracy and make him dictator.

Destroying democracy will take just six months.

To piece together how it happened, historians and experts have examined

this period, each from a different individual perspective.

You cajole, you influence, you manipulate.

They'll take us inside the minds of those that fought fascism...

They realised these people are after your head.

They want to annihilate you from existence altogether.

..and the Nazis themselves.

Himmler genuinely believed that he would create a racially pure

Germany, where the Aryan race would reign supreme.

The moments when history hung in the balance and the world's worst

atrocities could have been prevented.

Mass murder was no problem.

But it was important to be socially acceptable.

Do people care about the truth?

At the start of 1933,

Hitler is the Chancellor of Germany,

the equivalent of Prime Minister.

But he still has a Parliament beneath him that could block him...

..a head of state who could fire him...

..and a legal system that could prosecute the Nazis

if they break the law.

So, Hitler now wants those below him to dismantle the German state,

pitting senior Nazis against each other.

Hitler allowed his subordinates to fight it out amongst themselves,

even encouraged it, because he believed in a Darwinian principle,

or what he understood as the Darwinian principle,

of the survival of the fittest.

Hitler's regime was a mass of competing individuals,

and competing centres of power, which Hitler deliberately kept

competing with one another.

He believed that if he appointed three people to do the same job,

the most ruthless, the most Nazi, the most able one

would come to the top.

Hermann Goring has ambitions to be a big wheel,

second, perhaps, to Hitler.

He needs to be noticed.

People often ask me, "You've written a biography

"of Goring, did you ever fall in love with your subject?"

You know, people who write biographies generally do.

And I always say, "No, I never fell in love with my subject."

He's so different from the other leading Nazis.

You know, he is jovial, amusing, flamboyant,

likes the good life.

He'll have a good joke, he has a drink, his picture is often

in popular magazines.

He is the kind of person who nowadays would invite

Hello Magazine in to look at his house.

But, on the other hand,

he is callous, brutal, ambitious.

This is a man, who, at the end,

signs the order in July 1941

for the Final Solution to the Jewish question.

The Nazis' first move appears democratic.

Hitler calls a general election to try to get

more seats in Parliament.

Goring sees an opportunity to impress Hitler

by delivering victory.

But, to do that, he'll need to take on the Social Democrats

and the Communists.

The Communist leader is Ernst Thalmann.

Ernst Thalmann is definitely a charismatic guy and he's a leader

of the German Communist Party,

which was the largest communist party outside of Soviet Russia.

And he is red as hell.

He speaks to a deep sense of resentment and anger

amongst the German working classes.

Goring hates Marxism and everything it represents.

He's a German patriot.

He's very committed to Germany, with a capital G.

He thinks the left will destroy Germany,

it will do to Germany what the Bolsheviks did to Russia.

While the communists are preparing to fight an election,

Goring has other ideas.

He wants to arrest them and lock them up.

But to arrest the democratically elected opposition,

Goring will need a very good reason.

So, he plays on public fears,

casting the communists as enemies of the people.

Then he raids the Communist Party HQ, looking for evidence

of a violent uprising.

Well, of course, they find plenty of Marxist literature

which is about the revolution.

That's what Marxism is, it's about having a revolution.

But there isn't any hard and fast evidence of a Communist coup

or revolutionary plan.

And they don't find the smoking gun.

Even though he'd put in all this work to demonising communists,

presenting them as an existential threat,

he can't say he's found evidence that an armed uprising is imminent.

He's got to say the armed uprising has started,

and that's where the Reichstag Fire comes in.

Goring's working late in his office when, suddenly, people

rush in and tell him, "The Reichstag's on fire."

Goring gets up and rushes to the building.

In fact, he tries to enter the building until he's restrained.

Here's the Reichstag, where he holds office,

if you like, is going up in flames.

A photographer captures Hitler and Goring

after they rush to the scene.

Goring knows this is exactly the opportunity he needs.

"Communists, they've done this, I've told you they were going

"to do it. If you wanted proof of the threat posed by communism,

"here it is, the flames in front of you."

Hitler finally endorses completely what it is that Goring is doing.

We're going to wipe out these vermin.

Communists have had it.

For Goring, it's a moment of real political excitement.

He makes the most of it.

He is the one who is going to act, boldly,

decisively, he's going to be Hitler's fixer.

Goring has the green light to round up the Nazis' political opponents.

To provide the muscle, he teams up with the Nazis'

paramilitary wing, the Storm Troopers.

Commanded by the brawling, brutal adventurer, Ernst Rohm.

Ernst Rohm was a trained officer.

Very stern and very rough.

Rohm was a ruthless fighter against democracy.

We have to get rid of this kind of political system

to fight these, what they called, inner enemies -

communists, social democrats.

It was quick.

Immediate.

The scale of this operation...

..is insane.

4,000 communists arrested in one night.

And it was traumatic.

Suddenly, the communists realised these people are after your heads,

and they don't just want to squeeze you out of the electoral terrain,

they want to annihilate you from existence altogether.

For Goring, the violence he unleashes doesn't seem

to worry him very much.

There's that famous Goring comment,

"You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

You don't have a normal moral compass.

You know, you can't do this to people.

He has an inverted moral compass.

What the communists are doing is wicked,

and what they're doing is restoring order and protecting Germany.

And that's moral.

Social networks, political networks, networks of publishing

were evaporated overnight.

Bear in mind, this is all still happening during

an election campaign.

The next day, the arrests continue.

Hitler moves to make them appear legal.

He goes to the head of state, President Hindenburg,

convincing him to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree.

It gives the Nazis emergency powers...

..to arrest and imprison without charge,

to restrict civil liberties, ban free speech,

and the right to protest.

Within weeks, over 25,000 arrests made.

Many are beaten and tortured.

Ernst Thalmann escapes.

But one of his comrades is captured and is tortured,

and his hiding place is given up.

Your leadership is being arrested.

Your active campaigners, your activists are all being

taken up by the state.

Where do you go?

In a climate of fear,

just under 44% of Germans vote Nazi.

Less than three weeks later,

the Nazis push the Enabling Act through Parliament,

a law that suspends democracy,

allowing Hitler to govern

without needing approval from Parliament.

All this is signed off by President Hindenburg.

I suspect Hindenburg is feeling he's getting backed into a corner.

The Reichstag burns,

Hitler is able to persuade not only Hindenburg,

but a large proportion of the German population

that this is the first sign of communist insurrection.

I mean, it was, if you like,

almost the birth certificate of the Nazi regime,

with all its horrors.

With the Reichstag suspended, the first laws are passed

to restrict the freedoms of Jews.

A Jewish baker is found dead,

a swastika carved into his chest.

Goring gets his reward.

More power and more prestige.

He is Prussia Minister of the Interior,

Germany's most powerful state.

He's given control of the Air Force and becomes master

of the German forests.

He'll get new uniforms,

a country estate and a pet lion.

But, whilst Goring has managed to lock up

the Nazis' political rivals...

..the next step of Germany's moral dissent is taken by someone

further down the pecking order.

In a regional office in Munich

is the relatively unknown Heinrich Himmler.

In early 1933, Himmler wants to cultivate links with Hitler

to get known by Hitler more and more.

Himmler wants power,

but, in early 1933,

it doesn't look likely at all that Himmler will ever rise

to the top of the Nazi party.

Himmler looked completely boring, unmanly.

Uncharismatic, dull, pedantic, bespectacled nerd.

This photograph is really emblematic of Himmler's personality

as a really insecure man who feels that he doesn't have much

of a soldierly, masculine face,

so he needs to cover his chin.

Himmler's view of Goring was initially quite negative,

because he thought that Goring was old guard,

that Goring was baroque,

that Goring was the direct rival.

For Goring, Himmler's not somebody he is yet going to be aware of

as a potential rival or a threat.

He becomes a very big figure, of course,

later on in the dictatorship.

Himmler is head of the SS, a paramilitary group of fanatical

Nazis who see themselves as Hitler's most loyal soldiers.

The black-shirted, jack-booted SS

is very much a product of Himmler's ideas.

Aryan supremacy, hatred of parliamentary democracy,

the dispensation of violence against anyone standing in the way

of the Nazis.

Extreme anti-Semitism.

He was a micro-manager.

SS members had to seek Himmler's permission if they wanted to marry.

His ambition is to make the SS the central institution

in Nazi Germany in charge of political repression.

More conservative Nazis believed that the best way to control

political opponents was by using the law to lock them up.

Himmler thought that even more radical measures were required.

Himmler now follows Goring's lead,

and he uses new laws to start arresting Nazi opponents.

The instrument Himmler used was called, euphemistically,

protective police custody.

Protective police custody meant that prisoners could be locked up

in the hundreds of thousands over the course of 1933,

without having the chance to speak to a judge,

without having the chance to speak to a lawyer.

Himmler used protective police custody quite indiscriminately

to extend his power, to extend the power of the SS.

Then Himmler needs somewhere to put all these prisoners.

And he's found a solution to that, too.

Himmler gives a press conference.

In his dull voice, the topic of this press conference

is the opening of a camp where political prisoners

can be re-educated.

He says that this camp has a capacity of about 5,000.

He claims that rabble-rousers who are subverting the power

of the state would be housed there.

Especially communists, social democrats, trade unionists.

He says that law and order will reign supreme within this camp.

The camp's in the small town of Dachau.

Himmler and the SS are quickly taking control

of Bavaria's justice system.

But right at the bottom of that system is someone

who is about to fight back.

Josef Hartinger was a 39-year-old deputy prosecutor.

Part of this generation that was going to make

a strong, democratic Germany.

People talk about Oskar Schindler, he saved 1,000 lives.

And if there'd been 1,000 people like Schindler,

there never would have been a Holocaust.

Well, had there been 100 people like Josef Hartinger,

not only would there not have been a Holocaust,

there may not have been a Third Reich.

Hartinger is sitting at his desk, shortly after 9:00 in the morning.

His phone rings.

There's a call from the concentration camp in Dachau,

that four detainees have been shot trying to escape.

Under Germany's criminal code, it is Hartinger's job

as deputy state prosecutor to investigate the deaths.

So, he sets off to Dachau,

with medical examiner, Moritz Flamm.

Hartinger knows there's a detention centre there.

The fact that someone tried to escape is certainly

a possibility.

But he's not going to assume anything, let's see

what it looks like when we get there.

There's a big wall there with an iron gate

in front of it.

He sees several Storm Troopers,

these brown uniforms,

with black SS kepis on.

And firearms.

What he doesn't see is actually more important.

He doesn't see any Bavarian police.

They wear these green uniforms, and the SS had been assigned

as auxiliaries to the Bavarian police.

So, SS men there, but no police.

The camp itself is a former munitions facility,

overgrown, boarded up buildings.

Fairly desolate.

And he sees these prisoners being marched around in groups.

They drive up to the commandant's headquarters,

and the camp commandant is there.

Wackerle, he's a poster boy SS man.

Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, black uniform, shiny boots.

And here you have Josef Hartinger, this slightly paunchy,

middle-aged, balding guy.

The commandant leads Hartinger and Flamm

to where the prisoners died.

He explains that the four men were on a work detail,

but they tried to escape, running for the trees.

They were shot from a distance

after ignoring the guards' commands to stop.

He's taken to a shed, where the bodies have simply

been thrown on the ground like slaughtered animals.

And Hartinger looks at this and just says...

.."This is not the way you treat a human being."

What kind of people are these, that would do this to someone?

Hartinger and Flamm, as they are going back,

are kind of reviewing everything that was there.

The treatment of these three bodies,

of these dead young people,

Wackerle himself.

And, then, as Hartinger said was most troubling of all,

he said, "How is it that all four of these men were Jews?"

And he says, "There is something very wrong here.

"And we are going to fix it.

"We will set this right."

Hartinger vows to bring murder charges against the Dachau SS.

But this means going up against Himmler,

just as his power is growing.

Because, for Himmler, Dachau is only the beginning.

And he's slowly bringing every state in Germany under SS control.

Himmler takes up a considerable amount of his time to travel,

to schmooze.

He knew how to flatter them.

He would talk in a soft voice, he would appear polite.

He offers them an honorary rank in the SS, which gave them the right

to wear a smart SS uniform.

Many Nazi and state leaders at that time are extremely vain,

so, they are more than pleased when someone like Himmler makes them

an honorary member of what is turning out to be the elite corps

of the National Socialist state.

He would place people into his debt by giving them expensive gifts.

To win people over for his cause, he believed that he had to be

a decent human being.

Being decent meant, for example, to kiss the hand of a woman.

But being decent could also mean the mass murder of millions of Jews.

Himmler is extremely methodical...

..calculating...

..and patient.

Himmler is amassing a police empire controlled by the SS...

..turning the SS into one of the most powerful institutions

in the Nazi state.

At Dachau, Hartinger is doing some detective work.

Examining the bodies, he discovers the prisoners were shot

in the back of the head.

It's clear the men have been systematically murdered

because they are Jews.

Dr Flamm looks at Wackerle and he says,

"Your guards are very good shots with their pistols."

And Hartinger expands his inquiries,

investigating reported suicides,

and other failed escape attempts at Dachau.

Hartinger and Flamm keep driving back out to Dachau,

collecting evidence...

..taking depositions in a very careful, methodical way.

Forensic details, name, age,

profession, the SS men responsible.

Hartinger said, "I could see the hatred

"in the SS officers' eyes."

One of the detainees allegedly had committed suicide

by hanging himself.

But when Flamm does the autopsy,

it turns out that the man in fact had been beaten to death

and then his corpse was hanged.

Another one, the SS guard had shot allegedly from eight to ten metres.

But, when Flamm conducts the autopsy,

it turns out he had been shot point-blank.

This is late May.

He finally has two cases

that can demonstrate

that these people were murdered.

Hartinger has the evidence to implicate

the Commandant of Dachau in the murders.

Charges that could ruin Himmler's plans.

But it's more than trying to bring a single SS man to justice.

He knows Wackerle is ordering these killings,

but Wackerle is ultimately a deputy of Heinrich Himmler.

And I think Hartinger is out to indict the entire system.

Himmler's fear is that investigations by the legal system,

by state prosecutors, will reveal the horrific truth about Dachau.

That Dachau is not a camp where political prisoners

are being detained, are being re-educated,

that Dachau is a place of murder, that Dachau is a place of savage

brutality and murderous violence.

This is Himmler's fear.

Now Hartinger takes the file to his boss.

"I finally have everything we need, the indictments are ready to sign."

And his boss looks at him and says...

.."I'm not signing.

"I'm not signing anything."

And Hartinger's just stunned.

Hartinger's boss, the senior prosecutor...

..is under Himmler's spell.

Hartinger, at that moment, is left with a choice.

He has a wife and a five-year-old daughter, he has his whole career

ahead of him by simply doing what his boss says.

This is over.

Step back from it.

He knows what's right, and he knows what's wrong.

And that's what actually matters to him.

And he goes back to his office...

..and he starts writing.

It's an astonishing act.

And, at that moment, Hartinger is truly alone in the world.

Hartinger's file is taken to the investigating judge.

And it goes up the chain to the Governor of Bavaria.

But, at the same time, Hartinger's boss tips off Himmler

about what's going on.

Himmler is presented with evidence that Josef Hartinger has filed

investigations against Dachau SS guards.

If news of the murders at Dachau break,

Himmler is facing a huge problem.

The SS does not have the right, under German law,

to kill political opponents.

So, Himmler needs to find a strategy to ensure that these legal

investigations do not go anywhere.

The investigations started by Hartinger seem like a threat

to the SS, as its power base is rapidly increasing,

not only in Bavaria, but also across Germany.

Himmler has to react rather swiftly.

He must try even harder to give the concentration camps

under SS control an even stronger legal veneer.

As Hartinger's file heads up the chain of command,

Himmler tries to fix the problem.

Films like this one make people believe

that concentration camps are humanely run.

Whilst, in secret, the SS finds more elaborate ways

to cover up new murders.

And Dachau's commandant, Wackerle, is fired.

Hartinger's file goes all the way to Berlin.

Those at the top of the justice system can see that what's happening

at Dachau is illegal.

The astonishing thing is Hartinger expects that he could be killed.

And he isn't.

More astonishing is that the killings stop in Dachau

for the entire month of June,

for the entire month of July.

So, Hartinger, at that point,

assumes that he actually has scored a victory.

He's won this.

It was this fight between him and the Commandant,

between the power of the Nazis

and the power of the law,

and, ultimately, Hartinger won that battle.

Thanks to Hartinger, German law has a chance

to shut down Dachau.

But Himmler has one more lever to pull.

Hitler is not someone who is accustomed

to regular habits at work.

He doesn't have a systematic manner of governing.

Lunch was often served with a delay of two hours because the Nazi leader

had got out of bed so late.

It would have been, I think, pretty boring to be in his company.

Because he just went on, and on, and on, in endless monologues.

Hitler didn't like bureaucratic detail, to read too many files.

Hitler thought he was above the law.

The law was a series of artificial restrictions on his freedom

of action, on behalf of Germany.

He was expressing the soul and the inner wishes

of the German people.

Of course, as defined by himself.

Himmler found out very quickly how to read Hitler's personality,

how to please Hitler, how to work with Hitler.

Himmler would have very rarely dared to interrupt Hitler.

And, then, towards the end of their conversations,

which weren't really conversations but monologues by Hitler talking

at Himmler, Himmler would have made a proposal.

Himmler knows exactly which button to push with Hitler.

Himmler, cleverly, exploits Hitler's dislike

for the judiciary, disregard for legal norms

and values, legal constraints on Nazi power.

Himmler also knows that Hitler lives in fear of assassination,

even convinced his kitchen staff is trying to poison him.

Sensing an opportunity to impress Hitler,

Himmler provides him with hand-picked SS men to act

as a personal bodyguard,

showing Hitler there is now one man and one organisation

above all others that he can trust without question.

Himmler's main characteristic was his unconditional

loyalty to Hitler.

Remember, he's a very young man.

He's only in his early 30s when the Nazis come to power.

And Hitler used to refer to Heinrich Himmler

as "the loyal Heinrich," "der treue Heinrich."

He ran the SS as an organisation that was well structured

and well set up.

And this got the approval of Hitler.

He was very much inclined to give Himmler what he wanted.

Himmler managed to persuade Hitler to make sure that no SS member

would end up behind prison bars for torturing and killing

prisoners at Dachau.

And to block the legal investigations.

Hartinger, his plan has been compromised.

All the evidence that he has collected,

the forensic reports, eyewitness testimony,

the deposition.

All of this evidence is in the hands of the Nazis.

And Hartinger's lost all of it.

It ends up in Munich, they don't know what to do with it,

so, the head Nazi there literally just opens his desk drawer,

puts the files in there, closes it and locks it.

And that was that.

At Dachau, the killing of Jewish prisoners starts up again.

Except, now, no-one complains.

German law is becoming meaningless.

By managing the crisis created by the Dachau murders,

Himmler proves himself to be an extremely skilful operator.

He proves himself to be a brilliant Nazi, as perverse as this may sound,

and Hitler is almost certainly impressed by this.

Now Himmler and the SS feel emboldened to use utmost violence

to kill concentration camp prisoners.

Himmler and the SS know that what they are doing is not legal

under the prevailing German criminal code.

But the ultimate source of the law for Himmler and the SS,

what is right, what is wrong, is Hitler.

The Nazis are transforming German life.

Women are encouraged to abandon their careers

and become mothers and housewives.

Newspapers can no longer criticise the government.

A new ministry for propaganda sells Hitler's vision to the public.

Meanwhile, Himmler is now at top table.

And not everyone appreciates his rise.

For Goring, Himmler suddenly becomes a figure

that has to be taken seriously.

And, so, he's got to be pretty wary of Himmler.

Goring's grip may well be under threat.

But Goring is making some moves of his own,

designed to ensure that no-one can move against him

without him knowing.

Goring has created the Research Bureau,

a top-secret surveillance organisation that uses

new phone-tapping technology.

It starts with only a few men,

but it will go on to employ thousands.

Goring signs off on every wiretap, and reads the transcripts.

He gets a kind of pleasure from it.

He's amused by it, amused by what people say about him,

of course, and quite entertained.

But, at the same time, of course,

he's a reasonably vengeful politician,

he doesn't forget the kind of things people say about him.

There is one famous occasion where he calls in

a number of heads of big business and says,

"You know, I want you to do this."

And they say, "No, no, we don't want to do this."

And he says, "Well, you've got to do this,

"because I've got tape recordings here of your meetings,

"and these tape recordings are very incriminating.

"So, you either do what I tell you, or you're in trouble."

One politician who bad-mouths the Nazis is found dead.

To act on the information gathered by the Research Bureau,

a new branch of the secret police is created -

the Gestapo.

The Gestapo use a new measure -

preventative arrest -

to disappear Jewish people,

gay people, intellectuals,

and anyone suspected of anti-Nazi feeling.

Himmler feels that the Gestapo should be brought under his control.

Part of his plan to take over all German police.

But getting his hands on Goring's secret police won't be easy.

Himmler sees Goring as a rival to Himmler's master plan

to put all German police forces across all states under his control.

Himmler very much thinks that Goring is stepping onto SS territory,

onto Himmler's own territory, by setting up the Gestapo.

It is very difficult for Himmler to simply say to Goring,

"I want to take over the Gestapo" because Goring is not known

as someone who gives up power easily.

Imagine a scene where Himmler, trying to schmooze Goring

into giving him control over the Gestapo.

For Goring, control of the police force in Prussia and the Gestapo

is very important.

Goring doesn't really have any other roles

that are particularly significant, and so he's very keen

that he be able to retain this position.

Goring clearly communicates to Himmler

that Himmler should mind his own business.

Goring doesn't compromise.

So Himmler starts developing some personal animosity against Goring.

They do not agree at all.

Goring is going to be a very difficult person to dislodge.

And, so, Hitler's inner circle are at each other's throats,

whilst also trying to impress him.

This internal conflict within the Nazi party will soon

reach a bloody conclusion.

But, for Hitler, whilst his aims are being achieved,

this rivalry will seem insignificant.

And, with his team dismantling the system for him,

he can just sit back and watch.

Hitler spends increasing amounts of time in his summer retreat

in the Alps, in Berchtesgaden.

He retreats there sometimes for weeks or even months on end.

He spends a lot of time, far into the night,

watching old movies, does not get up particularly early

in the morning.

And, of course, he has a relationship with Eva Braun,

whom he keeps absolutely secret from the rest of the world.

In just six months from becoming Chancellor...

..Hitler has destroyed the political opposition...

..opened Dachau...

..subverted the legal system...

..created the Gestapo...

..and begun to pollute the minds of the German people

with the Nazis' racist doctrine of anti-Semitism.

And there are lessons for us to learn from that crisis.

How easily you can move to a stage of totalitarian dictatorship.

Democracy is fragile, because in order for it to be truly

democratic, in the purest sense, it leaves itself open to being

taken over by fundamentally anti-democratic forces.

Democracies require, first of all, popular support and popular belief

in institutions, such as a free press, an independent judiciary,

and democratic elections.

The echoes that we find in our own time of the Nazis'

seizure of power are in a number of different areas.

Emergency powers, for example, emergency decrees,

state of emergency, that allowed them to put their own

plans into action without any serious opposition.

The rise of the Nazis was not inevitable.

There were many warning signs.

Democracy was a relatively new form of political rule

in the 1920s and 1930s.

People simply didn't know that the institutions of democracy,

that democracy, as such, was extremely frail,

that democracy constantly needed defending.

And this is a story that is still worth retelling,

a story that institutions, the institutions of democracy,

should not be taken for granted.

That democracy needs vigorous defence against forces

of the populist far right.

Hitler can't actually call himself the leader until Hindenburg,

the President, is dead.

Rohm was too powerful.

Hitler feared this kind of power.

Himmler hopes very much that Hitler will finally act and eliminate Rohm.