All language subtitles for Rise.of.the.Nazis.S04E02.The.Ratline.1080p.iP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RNG_track3_[eng]

This programme contains some scenes
which some viewers may find upsetting

After the Second World War,

some of the worst war criminals
in history go to ground.

Hoping that, in the near future,

their fortunes will change

and they would be players again.

Many changed their names,

and the most-wanted flee
to South America.

Others claim the Holocaust
never happened,

or had nothing to do with them.

Told by historians and experts,

this is the story of
the little-known people

searching for truth and justice.

Trying to confront this man who is
the murderer of her entire family.

It's a hostile environment.

What kind of men are they?
Are they mad?

They must be mad.

The hunt for Nazi war criminals

is without any parallel,

to my knowledge,
either before or since.

It's a hunt taking place
against the backdrop of a world

that wants to forget and move on.

Justice, for him, was everything.

I'm upset that he died
without being in a cage.

In 1945,
Allied troops swept across Germany,

bringing an end to 12 years
of Nazi rule.

With Hitler dead
and his country in ruins,

the surviving Nazi top brass
were put on trial in Nuremberg,

and there, held to account
for their crimes.

Men, women and children

murdered in cold blood.

What rights has any man to mercy

who has played a part,
however indirectly,

in such a crime?

But many wanted Nazis
are still on the run.

Among them,
39-year-old Adolf Eichmann.

Eichmann led the notorious
Jewish Affairs Department...

..working under SS Commander
Heinrich Himmler,

the architect of the Final Solution.

Eichmann arranged the transportation

of millions of European Jews
to death camps.

His role was so important,

he was repeatedly singled out
at the Nuremberg trials.

Adolf Eichmann is one of
the most terrifying Nazis.

Eichmann encapsulates the essence
of Nazism -

a lethal cocktail between enormous
personal ambition on the one hand,

and a murderous ideology
on the other.

Eichmann organised, with
meticulous bureaucratic coldness,

the murder of millions of Jews
in Europe.

Eichmann may be a wanted man,

but he won't be easy to find.

Over seven million German
prisoners of war have been taken.

This time, the Wehrmacht
are really beaten.

The master race of men are stripped
of their insignias,

de-loused, numbered.

The Allies face a monumental task

in distinguishing common soldiers
from war criminals...

..and Eichmann takes full advantage.

All SS men have a tattoo,

so he burns that off
because he wants to survive.

He is planning a future without
his identity as an SS officer

because he knows that if caught,
if put on trial,

he will almost certainly
be executed.

When Eichmann is arrested
and put in a POW camp,

he manages to hide his true identity.

Then, with the help of
former SS colleagues,

he obtains false papers.

Now known as Otto Henninger,

a forestry worker,

he manages to escape...

..and goes into hiding
in the woods in northern Germany.

Eichmann has a huge ego.

He genuinely believes
that he is beyond reproach.

Eichmann even starts jotting down
notes

about his work for the SS.

He starts collecting
newspaper clippings about himself.

Eichmann is still a free man,
living under the radar.

It's almost absurd.

Like so many
other Nazi perpetrators,

he wants above all to avoid justice.

Eichmann is just one of thousands of
wanted Nazis who remain at large...

..but the hunt is on to find them.

At the end of the war,

the Allied victors
had divided Germany

into four separate
administrative zones.

In the American-occupied zone,

the Counter Intelligence Corp -
the CIC -

are tasked with finding Nazis
on the run.

The primary directive of the CIC

is to root out any vestiges
of the Nazis

and to bring those people
to justice,

holding them accountable

for the crimes and atrocities
they've committed,

making sure the Nazis
don't rise again.

Former US infantryman Robert Taylor

has been transferred into the CIC

to help track down
wanted war criminals.

Robert Taylor really has
no background in intelligence.

He had done
some small-town journalism work.

He's not really prepared
for this pretty significant role.

In my experience,

there's all kinds of
moral ambiguities,

psychologically and emotionally,

that are entailed
in the world of espionage.

But Robert Taylor is kind of
thrust into this situation

with very little training.

It's a lot.

In 1947,

the case of Nazi
secret police chief Klaus Barbie

lands on Taylor's desk.

Posted with the Gestapo
to southern France during the war,

Barbie became known as
the Butcher of Lyon.

His job was to track down
suspected communists

and members of the French Resistance.

Not every Nazi perpetrator

was a born sadist and torturer...

..but Klaus Barbie certainly was.

He was master of life and death.

You know, he could wave his hand

and decide if somebody
was to live or was to die.

As head of the Gestapo in Lyon,

Klaus Barbie enjoyed torturing,

mistreating, causing pain.

He had a whole range of techniques -

electroshocks, boiling water,
cutting people.

Even after 1945,

he does not show any remorse,
he doesn't show any regret.

He still admires Hitler,
the Nazi regime.

Despite Hitler's defeat,

Barbie is looking for a way
to keep Nazism alive.

He's being helped by
a group of wanted SS officers.

The CIC become aware,
through their informants,

that Barbie has a network
of former SS personnel,

and it's operating
within the American Zone.

This is precisely what the Americans

and what the CIC
have been afraid of.

Klaus Barbie and his group
are on the run -

stealing, blackmailing,

but also procuring weapons.

They are plotting resistance
against Allied occupation,

hoping that, in the near future,

their fortunes will change

and they would be players again.

Robert Taylor and the CIC
know immediately

that they have to gather
intelligence on this network

and they have to be able to
quash it.

The CIC plan
this highly-coordinated swoop

to flush out all these former Nazis
and capture them.

They're going to unknown houses,

knocking on doors,

and they don't know what awaits them
on the other side.

It's a dangerous situation,

and failure is not an option.

The Americans seize 70 Nazi suspects.

This network is crushed...

..but at the same time,
a key leader escapes...

..and that leader is Klaus Barbie.

Klaus Barbie has just barely
avoided arrest.

He's on his own,
he has no place to go.

His greatest fear

is getting caught
and being executed for his crimes,

and that is a real possibility.

Then, events in the wider world

take an ominous turn.

Since the end of the war,

relations between the Western Allies
and Russia have deteriorated rapidly.

In Washington, President Truman
tells Congress

that the world faces
a new ideological battle.

"Communism", he says,
"is now the greatest threat".

At the present moment,

nearly every nation must choose
between alternative ways of life.

One way of life is based upon
the will of the majority.

The second way of life relies upon
terror and oppression,

and the suppression of
personal freedom.

Joseph Stalin now controls much of
Eastern Europe...

..and the Americans fear
his vast armies

could take over the Western world.

Battle lines are drawn for
what's being called the Cold War.

Now, in the early Cold War years,
things are changing very quickly.

It's not so much arresting Nazis
and bringing them to justice,

but fighting the communists.

By 1947, the geopolitical landscape
has shifted quite a bit,

and so has the mandate
and the mindset of the CIC.

Robert Taylor's thinking, "What is
the threat on the horizon?"

Not, "What is yesterday's threat?

"What is today
and tomorrow's threat?"

Incredibly, the Nazis are not

a top intelligence priority
for the Americans at this time.

As the West's attention
shifts to containing communism,

the CIC take their eye off
wanted Nazis

like Klaus Barbie.

He's lucky.

He runs into a former comrade,
Kurt Merk,

who was stationed with him
in France.

They couldn't believe the
coincidence to run into each other.

And then, of course,
they talk about the good old times.

Merk is clearly doing well
for himself,

he's well-dressed and
looking good and is in good spirits,

and Klaus Barbie is not.

Former German intelligence officer
Kurt Merk

tells Barbie he may be able to
help him.

Merk arranges to meet
an unlikely contact...

..the CIC's Robert Taylor.

Taylor has been paying Merk
to track down suspected communists.

Now, Merk tells Taylor

he's found someone
of even greater value -

an old friend from France,
Klaus Barbie.

When you're an intelligence officer
on the ground,

your mandate is to collect
the best intelligence you can.

So, Robert Taylor's not looking at
Klaus Barbie

as a former Nazi on our wanted list.

He's looking at Klaus Barbie
as a potential asset.

Taylor could have Barbie arrested

and tried for his crimes...

..but instead,
using Merk as an intermediary,

he invites the Butcher of Lyon
to join them for lunch.

For Klaus Barbie,
it must be nerve-racking,

very, very stressful.

Ultimately, he's risking a lot.

But a life of this kind,

always on the run,

is not sustainable.

Taylor's there to make an assessment
of Barbie, to figure out,

does this person have what we call
placement and access?

Which is the placement and the
ability to access information

that the US Government might want.

Barbie is a wanted war criminal,

so one would expect that
this meeting

would have the form of
an interrogation,

but it's actually not.

It's more of a conversation.

It always begins with rapport,
and that might surprise people.

They don't just
get down to business.

So some time would've been spent
just making small talk,

maybe about Barbie's family
or his kids,

and Taylor giving
a little information about himself.

And that always happens
before they get down to brass tacks.

Taylor makes the fervent Nazi
an extraordinary offer...

..to work as a US agent,

hunting communists in return
for his freedom.

Taylor writes his thoughts
after the meeting,

and he was impressed by Barbie
as, quote,

"An honest man,
both intellectually and personally.

"Absolutely without nerves or fear.

"He is strongly anti-communist
and a Nazi idealist

"who believes that he and his
beliefs were betrayed by the Nazis
in power."

Hearing that seems quite shocking.

But, in the game of intelligence
and espionage,

it's not unprecedented that the
enemy's enemy becomes my friend.

So the CIC is probably not
doing a lot of soul-searching.

These kind of cases happen
all the time.

Once he gets the offer from the CIC,

it's pretty much a no-brainer
for him.

This gives Barbie the opportunity

to have a normal life
with his family again,

finally, after years of
separation...

..constantly on the run
and in hiding.

The Americans find Barbie a new home

and offer him
a generous monthly salary.

Klaus Barbie's back in the game,
he's fighting communists again.

Within two years of
Barbie's recruitment,

Germany becomes a front line
in the deepening Cold War.

In 1949,

the four Allied occupied zones

are reshaped into two new countries -

a democratic West Germany

and a Soviet-controlled East.

East zone Germans stage a
so-called spontaneous demonstration.

On the Nazis' old stamping ground,
Unter den Linden,

Berliners see a show
that rivals Hitler's best.

In East Berlin,

the Russians mark the birth of
a new nation

with a choreographed parade.

For Klaus Barbie,

the looming communist threat

means more guaranteed work.

But his fellow war criminal,

SS Officer Adolf Eichmann,

has no role to play
in this new world.

His crimes are so well-known by now,

that no side will touch him.

Eichmann remains in hiding,

still living in the
remote West German countryside

as Otto Henninger.

Eichmann experienced
a huge fall from power.

He starts working on a chicken farm.

How pathetic does that sound,

one of the chief architects
of the Holocaust

working on a chicken farm?

Eichmann's situation has become
untenable for him.

So he starts planning a future
outside of Germany.

Eichmann intends to cross the border
into neighbouring Austria,

where he hopes to find help from
Nazi sympathisers.

Before he leaves West Germany,

he burns all his papers and cuttings,

erasing his trail.

He's fed up with the idea
that he has to live under the radar,

he wants to live under
his real identity

and he wants to tell everyone
in the world

what great achievements he has
made during the Second World War.

He still believes that he has done
nothing wrong.

But what Eichmann doesn't know

is there's one man
who refuses to forget his crimes.

Lawyer Fritz Bauer
is a German-born Jew.

He spent time in
a concentration camp in the '30s,

before fleeing to neutral Sweden.

Now, in 1949,

Bauer's returning home
on a very personal mission.

Fritz Bauer wants to confront
German society with its past.

There was a fire burning in him.

The downfall of the Nazis was not
a magic cure to anti-Semitism.

Being Jewish makes him an outsider.

He is likely to ask
some uncomfortable questions...

..which nobody wants to hear.

Fritz Bauer wants former Nazis
like Eichmann

to be held accountable for
their crimes,

but he's going to have to act alone.

When he looks around him,

he sees that more than half of
the judges he works alongside

were themselves
members of the Nazi Party.

Fritz Bauer once said,

"As soon as I'm out of my office,
I'm in enemy territory,"

and that literally referred to
the building he was in.

The spirit of the Nazis
was still very present.

Nobody cares to talk about
the things they did,

and he's angry,
he's angry that many people

don't seem to want to learn
any lessons from the past.

What message are you sending
to the survivors,

the few survivors that
are coming back to Germany,

like Fritz Bauer?

The message to them is,
"You still don't count,

"we still don't care for you."

Fritz Bauer's crusade to hunt Nazis

earns him few friends.

He receives a huge amount of mail,

full of hate, full of outrage.

People saying,
"Go back to where you belong."

To some degree, it emboldens him,

it shows him he's going
in the right direction

and he is hitting
on the right notes.

And on the other hand,
it means he has to be very careful.

While Fritz Bauer
begins his campaign for justice,

US agent Klaus Barbie
is feeling untouchable.

The Cold War is heating up,

and so, in a very short
period of time,

he had a large number of sources

informing Americans
about communist activities.

He gives them names and addresses
and contact information,

so his American handlers
are happy with him.

But then, Barbie's reputation
as the Butcher of Lyon

catches up with him.

The French want to question him
about the torture and murder in 1943

of their wartime Resistance hero,
Jean Moulin.

Everybody talks about Jean Moulin

as a national hero in France,
as an icon.

Every child knows about him,

and Klaus Barbie is one of
the people

who murdered their national hero.

When the French authorities
demand to interrogate Barbie,

the Americans have no choice but to
give him up for questioning.

But the CIC do so on their own terms.

Barbie sees that the American
officer clearly has his back

and is shielding him.

He was kind of looking down
on the French

and belittling them almost, like,
"What do you want?

"I work for the Americans, right,
you cannot touch me."

With the CIC's help,

Barbie is off the hook - again.

One of the reasons I got out of
intelligence is because

I think it's very easy

to lose sight of
your own moral parameters

and for your moral compass
to go quite askew,

without you even realising it,
before it's too late.

And I think in this case,

what is appalling is that the CIC
is putting the interests

and safety of Klaus Barbie

above any kind of measure of
retribution or justice

for Barbie's victims.

The list of crimes of Klaus Barbie
is very long.

He's probably most notorious for the
deportation of 44 Jewish children

from an orphanage near Lyon.

The youngest child was
four years old and the oldest 17.

Those children were arrested
on his order

and then murdered in Auschwitz.

When a French newspaper
breaks a story

about Barbie's criminal past...

..the Americans are forced to act.

This puts the CIC in
an extremely uncomfortable position,

because all of a sudden,
they're realising

that their star source
is in fact a monster.

It's at this point where I think
we can safely say

that the CIC is operating
way outside of its moral parameters.

They decide that

the best thing to do
is to make Barbie disappear.

In March 1951,

CIC agents accompany Barbie
and his young family

onto a train heading to Italy.

It's not an option
just to kill him off,

and if we go killing
our foreign agents

or turning them over
to the authorities,

nobody's ever going to come
work for us in the future.

Armed with false papers,

Klaus Barbie and his family

travel along a secret escape route -
the Ratline -

used to smuggle wanted Nazis
out of danger.

Using the Ratline,

they travel out of Germany,

through the Austrian Alps

to the Mediterranean port of Genoa.

In Genoa, the CIC put Barbie in touch

with a Vatican priest
called Father Draganovic.

They pay him to secure
a safe passage for Barbie

out of Europe altogether.

Draganovic is a hard-core fascist
and anti-communist.

In his headquarters, he has war
criminals who are hiding as priests.

They're using code names,

they're using secret hideouts.

It all sounds very much like
a James Bond movie,

but it was real.

Draganovic tells Barbie he's already
helped many wanted war criminals

flee to South America...

..in the hope that the Nazis
may one day return and rise again.

Draganovic is not an exception.

There are many Catholic priests like
him helping a whole wave of Nazis

to leave the continent
and start a new life overseas.

Three weeks later,

Barbie and his family arrive safely
at the end of the Ratline,

7,000 miles away

in the Argentinian capital,
Buenos Aires.

In South America,

even the most notorious Nazis
can find refuge,

as sympathetic right-wing dictators
turn a blind eye to their crimes.

Klaus Barbie is not the only one.

Thousands of Nazi perpetrators were
able to escape through the Ratline.

There is something really wrong
here,

that justice was denied,

and the victims deserve justice.

As Barbie makes his escape,

in the German town of Landsberg,

thousands of protesters
demand clemency

for Nazi war criminals
held in the local prison.

21 death sentences are overturned

and many other Nazi prisoners
are released early,

including members of
an SS extermination squad.

Convicted at Nuremberg,
they now walk out free men,

granted a reprieve.

They are greeted like heroes.

The war has only been over
for six years,

but already, attitudes to
Nazi crimes are relaxing.

In the 1950s,

Germany is a country
that is starting to prosper.

People are very happy to look to
the future,

and they don't really
feel a need to look in the past.

People are willing to forget
and to forgive themselves.

Lawyer Fritz Bauer pushes back
against this collective amnesia.

He's still determined to bring
Nazi Adolf Eichmann to justice.

In 1957,

he receives a letter from
the Nazi safe haven of Argentina.

But this letter isn't full of
the usual violent threats.

Fritz Bauer had,
for a number of years,

been trying to find out where
Adolf Eichmann had escaped to

and where he was living.

But when he opens the letter,

he's surprised to find a message

from a German Jew
living in Argentina,

called Lothar Hermann,

who tells him that Adolf Eichmann

is living under a false name
in Argentina

with his wife and his children.

To Fritz Bauer,

this was
incredibly valuable information.

And it's served to him on a platter.

Bauer is reluctant to share
his tip-off with his colleagues.

He still can't trust anyone
working around him.

Fritz Bauer realises

there are too many people
in the police, in the prosecution,

who would want to tip off Eichmann
and to allow him to escape.

Who could he turn to?

So, it's only Fritz Bauer

who is interested in catching
Adolf Eichmann

and putting him on trial.

In this situation, he takes matters
into his own hands

to seek contact with the Israelis.

Zo Ahava
by A Uzan & Philippe Guez

In 1959,

Bauer travels to
the newly created state of Israel.

There, he makes contact
with Isser Harel,

the chief of Mossad,

the Israeli intelligence agency.

Catching a Nazi,
it's not a priority in the Mossad.

The priority for the Mossad

is to find information

about the Arab states
that surround Israel

and that want to destroy
the young country.

Fritz Bauer's very disappointed
with Mossad.

It turns out they're very hesitant
and very careful.

It's kind of reverse of
what one would expect -

this elderly German man
with a tie and suit

and these
young Israeli secret agents,

and he's the one who's telling them
to be more aggressive.

To persuade Mossad
to take on the case,

Bauer gives Harel an ultimatum -

if Mossad doesn't act,

he'll go to the press,

and then their chance to catch
Eichmann by surprise will be lost.

His gamble is successful.

The head of Mossad promises to
give it a shot,

and to see whether they
can catch Eichmann.

With his government's backing,

Harel agrees to bring Eichmann
back to Israel to stand trial.

But he knows the scale of
the challenge.

There is no extradition treaty
between Israel and Argentina,

so Eichmann must be kidnapped
and secretly smuggled back alive,

without the Argentinian authorities
finding out.

This is a very rare
and very important operation.

To smuggle him alive to Israel
is very, very complicated.

Isser Harel needs to think about
all the small details.

There is plan A, there is plan B,
there is plan C.

There is no place for failure here.

24/7, he's dreaming about it.

But the big failure can be that
this is the wrong guy.

Isser Harel sends Mossad agents
to Buenos Aires.

They confirm Eichmann
is living there,

under the pseudonym Riccardo Klement,

and he's working
in a Mercedes car factory.

The Mossad agents
start observing Eichmann,

they start following him
to and from work,

and his family home.

Eichmann is living with impunity.

He is not afraid of anything.

He even allows people to take
his photograph.

He really feels safe
from Allied prosecution.

Wednesday evening, 7:30.

Adolf Eichmann is on his way home
by bus.

Parked near his usual stop

are four Mossad agents,

pretending their car has broken down.

Their chief, Isser Harel,

waits in a nearby cafe.

He don't have
any connection with them -

no telephone, nothing.

He just need to wait and pray.

Even if you are not religious,
you need to pray sometimes.

One of the agents approaches him
and say, "Momentito, senor."

It means, "Excuse me."

This is a very dangerous moment
in the operation

because his wife and kids at home,

and it was isolated area,
very quiet,

so if you scream, they can hear you.

Surprisingly, Eichmann doesn't try
to fight back.

He is resigned to his fate.

He is now a prisoner
of the Israeli Government.

Eichmann knows that his options
have run out.

Isser Harel was shocked
when he saw Adolf Eichmann.

He ask himself,
"This is Adolf Eichmann,

"the Nazi,
the head of the Jewish Department,

"the one that was the architect of
the killing machine?"

This short guy,

this grey man,

this miserable runt.

As Mossad secretly fly Eichmann
back to Israel to stand trial,

lawyer Fritz Bauer meets
an Israeli diplomat in Frankfurt.

The first thing that the contact
says is, "We've got him."

Fritz Bauer finds out
before the world finds out.

He has this sweet moment of triumph.

But Bauer's part in the operation
can never be known.

By aiding and abetting the Israelis
to kidnap a German national...

..Bauer's broken the law.

Fritz Bauer had the courage to
put his career at risk,

maybe even his personal freedom.

He had the courage to say no,

courage not to go along
with everybody else,

not to choose the comfortable road.

But he has to take this secret
into his grave.

He will never be able to
receive applause openly,

and others will take the credit.

Here in Israel,
Adolf Eichmann faces

probably the most appalling
list of charges

ever to be levelled against
a single human being.

The Israelis are trying to place
before the conscience of the world

the full facts of how the Nazis
tried literally to exterminate

millions of the Jewish people
in Europe.

The Eichmann trial is televised
across the globe.

This is the first time
a major Nazi war criminal

is put on trial
by the state of Israel.

That is a huge moment.

Eichmann knows he will face justice.

The accused,
together with others,

during the period 1939 to 1945,

caused the killing
of millions of Jews

in his capacity
as the person responsible

for the execution of the Nazi plan

for the physical extermination
of the Jews,

known as the Final Solution
of the Jewish problem.

The list of charges against Eichmann
is so long,

it takes the judges over an hour
to read them out.

Eichmann claims that
he is innocent.

He presents himself as a bureaucrat

who simply followed orders.

But over and over again,

he cannot hide his real identity.

Israel, at the time,

is suffering from an inability

to speak about
the unspeakable crimes.

And when finally Eichmann
is put on trial in Jerusalem,

the victims have their voices heard,

people see that they're not alone,

see that they can get respect
and understanding and empathy

for what they went through.

There's a great value in having
a trial as a therapeutic moment,

as a cathartic moment.

Two months into the trial,

the court is shown footage of
the Holocaust...

..including the silent images
shot by the Nazis themselves

in the Netherlands in 1944,

of trains taking men, women
and children

to Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

A system of genocide

overseen by Eichmann himself.

This is Patrick Smith

calling Radio Newsreel
from Jerusalem.

Eight months after
he first entered the court,

Eichmann prepares for judgment.

Eichmann heard his verdict,
standing stiffly to attention.

"The court convicts you of
crimes against the Jewish people,

"crimes against humanity
and of war crimes."

Eichmann is found guilty
on all counts.

He's sentenced to death.

Before his execution,

the Israeli authorities
give Eichmann

the chance to meet a priest.

The priest asks Eichmann
whether he repents.

Eichmann says, "No."

And then he is led to the gallows.

Eichmann was brought to
justice and sentenced and executed

by survivors of the very people
he sought to exterminate.

"He saw the backs of our dead,"
writes one paper.

"He met us face-to-face."

His father isn't dead.

He was accused of
these terrible crimes.

This destroys her world, the way she
has seen it until that moment.

For Klaus Barbie,

one of his worst fears
is now coming true.

Speer wants to dominate the
interpretation of the Third Reich.