Original subtitles

He said, I have a great task for you.

And he said that it was Berlin.

The biggest, most important thing he called 5 ,000 ways.

He was very pleased with it.

Ah, wonderful.

He was like a child then.

Adolf Hitler is planning a new capital for his new Nazi empire.

Before he is finally stopped, many of his fanatical ideas will become a

Hitler's story shows where the unchecked power of a dictator can lead.

Now, we're looking at him through different eyes.

His friends.

His admirers.

His enablers.

Most are Nazis.

Few can be trusted.

But perhaps if we see him as they did, we can grasp who Adolf Hitler was and

what made him possible.

By summer 1940, Hitler is on the way to realising his dreams of world conquest.

His armies have stormed through Europe, invading one country after another.

Most of his fellow warmongers will later be sentenced to death.

But General Walter Wollimont survives to tell the tale.

He helped Hitler implement the attack on France.

How did Hitler himself react during the French campaign?

He was terribly nervous.

He was frightened by his own success.

And nobody could have foreseen a success of such a

totality in hardly one month.

Arriving in the airspace over Paris, I observed that great columns of German

infantry had already entered the town.

I felt such joy and exultation that I asked the pilot

whether it would be possible to perform a landing on the Place de la Concorde,

which was entirely free of any traffic.

And we landed on the Champs -Élysées.

German might has arrived in Paris.

After the French surrender, the streets were cleared for one man.

I was in the car with him, and we drove immediately to the Opera building,

and he said to us, It was always the ardent wish of my life to see this

once in my lifetime.

And from there, we were close to the Eiffel Tower, and he admired this

work of a genius.

The Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon's tomb, the opera, and of that,

one to me that seemed most important, Napoleon's tomb.

We gave him first the chance to go there alone.

He was absolutely silent.

And then we were slowly getting around.

Did Hitler say, I'm leaving the tomb, that that was the greatest moment of my

life? Do you remember him saying that?

That's, I think, that's the truth. He continues the peak of his life.

Hitler has always craved glory.

Now he's eclipsing even the great conqueror, Napoleon.

Hitler and his propaganda took care.

that the overwhelming success of the campaign was attributed to him as the

greatest strategist of all times.

My feelings towards Hitler were such as if he were some superhuman being between

man and a god.

He told the German people all the time, he was sent by providence.

The whole people believed it, I too.

always bigger for us and always portrayed that this is the man who does

right. And that is really a genius.

What you have found me, one in so many millions, that is the wonder

of what I have found you.

Now Hitler is ready to inform his generals of his next big idea.

General Walter Wollimont is one of the first to hear.

Military staff and our special train not far from Berchtesgaden.

When he arrived, Jodl ordered that the doors of the dining car were

shut up. Sentries had to be posted before these doors.

He started to tell us that Hitler had resolved to go to war with Russia and

Russians can be quickly overcome.

It was a great shock for all of us.

But it was clear that Hitler just had to attack Russia as soon as possible.

Hitler wants to conquer vast areas of the Soviet Union to make way for German

settlers.

He mobilizes the largest invasion force ever assembled.

We had no fear.

Because we thought...

We will win the war against Russia because the war against

Poland and France, we had ended with victories for Germany.

But fatally ill -equipped for the onset of winter, the German advance faltered.

This unique recording made without Hitler's knowledge.

reveals a rare moment of doubt in the normally unshakable leader.

But in the face of the enemy's overwhelming military strength, instead

backing down, Hitler raises the stakes.

Hitler becomes obsessed with the idea of capturing the Russian city named after

the Soviet leader.

Stalingrad.

Johann von Kielmannsegg is in Army HQ.

The decision to attack Stalingrad, that was Hitler's decision against

the will of the German government.

That has to be taken.

And I have to say, that was then to be shaken by no one.

By no intervention, by no argument, by nothing.

Hitler's plan leads to disaster.

His troops are surrounded and starving.

But he demands victory, even when presented with a dire situation on the

für deutsche Truppen, nicht?

Und malte diesen Angriff, diese Angriffsfeile, mindestens doppelt so

der tatsächliche Angriff war.

Frage an Sie, radieren Sie das wieder aus?

Ich meine bloß.

Also, und dann, und sagte, das ist nur mehr ein wörtliches Zitat, auch wenn es

50 Jahre her ist, sowas vergisst du nicht.

But no amount of wishful thinking can change the reality on the ground for

Hitler's forces.

Hitler has left his troops to their fate

Half a million of his soldiers are

wiped out

And did Hitler, with his restraints, as well as in Stalingrad, ultimately, also

in view of the fact that many people were raped senselessly?

First of all, I would say not senseless, but from a certain moment on, yes.

I mean, what was his mistake or what was wrong,

was once, as I still believe from his...

After disaster at Stalingrad, Hitler withdraws to his mountain retreat, the

Berghof.

One of the few people he sees is his new secretary, Traudl Junger.

She was at his side when he heard the news of defeat at Stalingrad.

It was such an unpleasant mood everywhere, and Hitler himself

stared on his soup without saying any word, and he was very

depressed.

But on Berghof, it was necessary for us to take the meals of his Hitler and to

entertain him.

Because he said, I cannot make real holidays, but every day a little hour to

relax.

He liked only a very light, very easy conversation and he began to speak about

his dog.

which he liked very, very much. Or he began to talk about his former successes

in the beginning of the Nazi Party.

While Hitler hides away, Allied bombing raids are flattening German cities.

We heard reports about destroyed town.

It was really alarming.

especially after my own house has been destroyed.

I reported and I told him how awful it is.

Then Hitler became very earnest and his eyes were very fanatical and he

swore revenge.

It will not last long. I soon will change this situation and I will stop.

this cruelty.

In his rage, Hitler turns on his usual scapegoats.

he would punish the Jews.

All these things were actually pretty clear.

They were not only said in private, but Herr Zacke also said this in a camp

meeting with the officers.

It actually shows pretty clearly what Hitler wanted.

Es ist die Hauptmacht, der wir all dieses Unglück verdanken, das

Judendom.

Sie werden sich nur erinnern an die Reichstagssitzung, in der ich erklärte,

das Judendom sich etwa einbildet, einen internationalen Weltkrieg zur Ausrottung

der europäischen Rassen herbeiführen zu können, dann wird das Ergebnis nicht die

Ausrottung der europäischen Rassen, sondern die Ausrottung des Judendoms in

Europa sein.

They always laughed at me as a prophet.

Those who laughed back then no longer laugh today.

Those who still laugh now may no longer laugh in some time.

International Judaism will be recognized in its entire demonic danger.

We National Socialists will take care of it.

Hitler's program of genocide has begun.

He sends millions to die in secret killing centers and expects his orders

unquestioned.

Henny von Schirach has known Hitler since childhood.

After seeing Jews being transported to their death, she confronts him.

Henny suddenly began to talk about her experience on the station when she

saw a train full of Jews and this parted people.

So I told him what I'd seen.

His reply was, you're sentimental.

Then there was a terrible row.

He stood up.

I stood up. I said, Herr Hitler, you ought not to be doing that.

I thought I can allow myself to say such a thing because I've known him so long.

Then Hitler said, Every day, 10 ,000 of my best soldiers die on the battlefield,

while the others carry on living in the camps.

That means the biological balance in Europe is not right anymore.

Mark fell down, and the friendly smile vanished off his face, and he stood up

and went to bed. And Henny Schirach was never again invited.

Henny's husband, Baldur von Schirach, is also a close friend of Hitler's and the

Nazi party's most senior official in wartime Vienna.

Under his watch, 65 ,000 Austrian Jews were deported to concentration camps.

Did Hitler often use the phrase, the final solution, the great phrase that we

hear now? Did he use it a lot? No, never.

I've never heard it from him.

But we've seen how...

Close you were to Hitler, too. I mean, it must have been very difficult not to

notice from his own attitudes, wasn't it?

He hated the Jews.

That was a thing that you heard almost every time you were there.

But he would never tell you directly what...

he considered the final solution that is now quoted so often.

I mean, I suppose that when Hitler kept inquiring again about the number of Jews

in Austria, I mean, that was another time, really, when, you know, one had to

just not... somehow not question the reason why he was asking, as it were.

that so?

What could I do?

I...

When I came to Vienna, where are these people

going to?

They are going to special camps with other Jews?

Yes, I mean, what about food and so on? Yes, they get food for their transport

and everything. That's all settled and so on, you know. The SS could be so very

sweet about...

Answering such questions, you always thought they were so nice and

kindly.

And, Mr. Frost, something else.

Now, I do not want to excuse myself. I just want to... An

old man has no other interest but the truth, the historical truth.

I was there.

I had a job.

Mr. Frost, I didn't have the damn time to think about anything else.

From day to night, I was working.

We felt that people should know what was going on.

And maybe typical is this little experience which I had one day, standing

line for vegetables or something like that.

I told my neighbors standing around me that now they start to kill the Jews in

the concentration camps, that it is not true that they only are brought there

and can live there as they live here, as it was told them.

And they said, Frau Bonhoeffer, if you don't stop telling such horror stories,

you will end in a concentration camp too, and nobody else can help you. It's

true what you're telling. You shouldn't believe these things. You have them from

the foreign broadcast or so, and they tell these things to make enemies

Germany. I say, no, that's not from broadcast or that. I know that directly

firsthand. You can be sure. It is that way.

And coming home, I told that my husband in the evening, and he was not at all

applauding to me. In the very contrary, he said, my dear, sorry to say,

but you are absolutely idiotic what you are doing.

Please understand, a dictatorship is like a snake.

If you put your foot on its tail as you do it, it will just bite you.

And nobody will be helped.

You have to strike the head.

Emmy Bonhoeffer and her family belong to a growing group of anti -Hitler

resistors.

Appalled by Nazi crimes, they believe Hitler is leading them to disaster.

As Allied forces advance towards Germany, high -ranking officers in the

feel compelled to act.

Still posted at Hitler's HQ is General Walter Wollimont.

It was a normal day, but in very depressing circumstances on account of

disaster on the Eastern Front.

We went in and we were standing around and Hitler came in and then the

conference began.

And suddenly the door opened again.

Of course, Stauffenberg came in, and he stood there quite erect, and I

remembered that Stauffenberg had a big black briefcase that he put under the

table, and I haven't seen that. He left the room shortly afterwards.

It was as if a lightning had come down. Everything was on fire. I went down

for a fraction of a second.

And shortly afterwards, Hitler was let out of the room.

It was a chaotic scene.

The room looked terrible.

Tables destroyed, chairs split up, the windows blown out of the

frames. Picture of destruction.

Four die in the explosion, but Hitler escapes with only minor injuries.

Hours later, nursing a sprained right arm, he greets former Italian dictator

Benito Mussolini.

Hitler said to Mussolini, people in the room were killed, burned to death, blown

out of the window, and nothing happened to me.

And when I look at it now, I must say...

that I'm protected by something, I'm supposed not to perish that way.

And after this narrow escape of today, I think we'll have the same kind of

escape in our big common enterprise, and we'll win through.

At first, that was an immediate thankful, grateful feeling that he was

he was still alive. But then he became angry.

to the criminals who had done this plot.

He accused all the generals and he started to claim that they were not

and so on.

Consumed with rage, Hitler sets out to exact his revenge.

Stauffenberg and the ringleaders are shot.

Hundreds of other suspects are rounded up.

tortured and put on trial.

On Hitler's orders, the court proceedings are filmed.

Knowing he'll be watching, the Nazi judge puts on a performance.

While Hitler consoles victims of the plot, He thinks up ways to inflict

suffering on the plotters.

The conspirators are strung up from meat hooks and hanged by piano wire.

Their deaths are specially filmed and photographed for Hitler.

I saw how Hitler grabbed at his photographs and how he looked

at it with cruelty and gleefully.

And I saw the face of one of my friends, of Peter Graf York, who

was executed among these people. And I was so terribly shocked

about it.

how Hitler acted in this moment, that I had to leave the room.

To most Germans, resistance to Hitler's regime now seems futile.

Of course, even to the very end, after the 20th of July, it was only the

question, either you wanted to bear martyr or look away.

What could you do?

You couldn't emigrate anymore.

You couldn't refuse to be a soldier.

You couldn't do anything.

You could just shut your eyes and say, let's go through. That's the way it

happened.

As the Allied armies advanced towards Germany, Bombing raids are destroying

Hitler's war machine.

Head of armaments and Hitler's friend Albert Speer realizes that defeat is now

matter of time.

It was my duty to tell Hitler that these are the last weapons you are getting.

And I told him, which nobody dared to tell, that the war was lost.

We can't do anymore.

And he told me very bluntly, that's not up to you to tell me if the war is lost

or not lost. That's my decision. I won't accept it.

Herr Speer, did Hitler change through the years you knew him? Could you see

change? He changed to a man who started to hate even his own people.

In the end of the war, he made a statement to me that if this war should

be lost, the whole people should be lost too.

Slowly, but steadily, he became weak, and the doctors

went in and out, and one day he didn't get up. It was a very critical situation

on the West Front and on the East Front, too. And the only man who

could give order and could have changed things...

lay in bed and was not interested at all.

And some days it was like Hitler didn't exist.

As German defences collapse, Hitler and his inner circle take refuge 50

feet below ground in the Führerbunker.

How did he behave? People say that he was mad, that he seemed to be mad.

He could be very, very angry and he could explode.

He wanted to hear only flattering things, so he lost the sense of reality.

was about March when the situation in Berlin was rather hopeless.

He was all of a sudden interested to see the model of Linz, the most beautiful

town of Austria.

But I think it was only an escape for him in his daydream of architecture.

I had always imagined that Hitler was a vital man, full of momentum and also

full of physical strength.

And what I got to see for the first time there really impressed me deeply.

That was a wreck already there.

But he gave me, excitedly, the left hand, but very sleepy.

On the 22nd of March 1945 Hitler makes a

rare public appearance to decorate members of the Hitler Youth.

Even now, the bond between the Fuhrer and the devoted followers is unbroken.

I told Hitler that I was a messenger boy for the army, and perhaps that struck a

chord with him, because he'd been a regimental messenger during the First

War.

Anyway, he then patted my cheek and said, well done, my boy.

Didn't you realize at the time that the war was lost?

No, not at all.

We boy, still thought, and we'd heard rumors, that the Fuhrer somehow had a

secret weapon in reserve.

With the Soviet Red Army in the heart of Berlin, Hitler finally gives up.

Yes, Lorenz, I would like to have you tell me... The moment is recalled in

rehearsed testimony by his press secretary.

The armies were defeated on all fronts, and Berlin was threatened.

He ordered his troops forward to stop the advance, but the troops failed to

attack. The shock of realization that he, Adolf Hitler, had been disobeyed and

that complete disaster was inevitable.

was too much for him he collapsed and he said it's all over and i'll shoot

myself i expected that hitler would regret

what happened what had happened to the german people and i thought he must be

very conscious that he had brought misery and hunger and death to the

people he only repeated all the reproachful phrases against

the Jews, and he even found the German people was not worth his mission.

Suddenly, we heard the pistol shot.

Douglas and I ran back to Hitler's room and entered it.

Hitler's lower jaw was slightly distorted.

It was obvious he had shot himself in the mouth.

The sofa was stained with blood and his pistol lay at his feet.

Every step until now was ordered by Hitler.

And suddenly we're given our own lives back.

And I felt I must go out of this bunker and go out on the fresh air.

Suddenly I saw the war in all its appearance.

There lay dead.

and there were Russians and refugees and horses and

burning houses. It was such a concentrated picture of war

and defeat that I see it today

like it was sometimes.

I think that what I am telling you is the story of another girl.

This is where following the Fuhrer has led.

Germans are forced to confront the atrocities committed in their name.

While further revelations about the death camps finally break the hold

had over his supporters.

His closest collaborators are executed or jailed,

while the remnants of his regime are destroyed.

Today, Hitler's life demonstrates the dangers of absolute power and what

can do when they are in its grip.

What about Hitler's and the Nazi racial attitudes?

How did you personally feel in the late 1930s? I didn't pay too much attention.

I said, well, it's not my thing. I didn't...

I was really neglecting my duty as a human being when I did that.

There

are

so many things going on, aren't they?

Reading about it. In foreign publications about extermination, which

dismissed as propaganda, there was the Jews leaving Vienna and everything

like that. It must have been very difficult for two and two not to add up

four, surely.

Mr. Frost, we are human beings, and human beings are not

always very brave.

Also in these times, we close our eyes to many things

that are happening.

We do not accept them as facts because these facts

are disagreeable.

Irgendwo hat jedes Ding seinen Grund und seinen Sinn.

Schau nicht hin, schau nicht her, schau nur dran aus.

Und was da noch kommt, macht dir nichts heraus.