All language subtitles for BBC The Nazis A Warning from History S01 E01_track3_[und]

Hidden in a forest, in what is now
the eastern part of Poland,
near the border with Russia,

lie the remains of a concrete town.

For three crucial years during WWII

this was home to one of the most
infamous figures in world history.

A man who said he and the nation
he led would create an empire
which would outlast any other.

RECORDING OF HITLER SPEAKING

Here at the Wolf's Lair,

his headquarters
in the forest of Rastenburg, in
what was then German East Prussia,

Adolf Hitler took decisions
which shaped the course of WWII.

The result was a level

of destruction and suffering

unprecedented in the history of war.

55 million people died in WWII.

The Germans took five million
Russian prisoners of war alone.

Only two million survived.

During the war, Hitler authorised
a policy unique in all history,

the mechanised extermination
of an entire people.

All this was possible
because the Nazis ruled Germany.

How could it be that a cultured
nation at the heart of Europe

ever allowed such a man,
and the Nazi party he led,
to come to power?

Leading Nazis explained
their success easily.

It was inevitable given what they
called the superhuman qualities
of their leader.

But the true reasons for the Nazis'
rise to power are not that simple
and are much more alarming.

Nazism, which was to create
the Second World War,

was born out of the first.

On November 11th 1918,
to the surprise of German troops,
the war stopped.

IN GERMAN:

The myth grew among many of the
surrendered German soldiers that
they had been stabbed in the back,

that the front-line troops
and the two million German war dead

were betrayed by Marxists and Jews
who had fermented dissent at home.

As the surviving troops returned to
the newly democratic Germany, they
took their bitterness with them.

It would grow into Nazism in
the south of Germany, in Bavaria.

Bavaria is a picture-book land,
famous for its lederhosen
and its beer halls,

but at the end of WWI,
conditions existed here
which would create a revolution.

After the war, the Allies
continued to blockade Germany

and the returning troops
were shocked to discover how much
their families were still suffering.

Millions of Germans were hungry

and thousands more were dying
of tuberculosis and influenza.

Politics were polarised.

Conservatives and Socialists became
radical in the face of crisis.

With the whole of Germany
in turmoil in the spring of 1919,

the unrest in Munich resulted in
a left-wing takeover of the city,
the Raterepublik.

This culminated, in April 1919,
in the Munich Soviet Republic,

an attempt to create a soviet-style
government of the city,

only 18 months after the victory of
the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union.

Government troops were sent to
quash the rebellion and there was
fighting on the streets of Munich.

GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

More than 500 people were killed.

The soldiers were supported
by the Freikorps,

right-wing mercenaries
paid for by the government.

In Munich, there were cases where
the Freikorps simply shot members
of the Raterepublik out of hand.

Other Freikorps members heartily
approved of the brutal measures

used to suppress Communist
revolutionaries throughout Germany.

Eugene Levine's father was
the leader of the Raterepublik.

He was executed in June 1919.

I understand, from my mother,

that he had been very brave,
the way he met his death.

And in fact, he called out, er,

"Long live the world revolution."

And I realised that an honourable
person would die sooner or later,

either on the barricades
or put up against a wall and shot.

Eugene Levine's father was Jewish,

and the anti-Semitic prejudice
of those on the right

was further fuelled by the fact
that of the leadership of
the Raterepublik, most were Jewish.

To the Freikorps,

who celebrated in Munich after

the suppression of the Raterepublik,

the Jews were convenient scapegoats,

held to blame
for all the country's ills.

And the Freikorps had the support
of right-wing officers in the army,

like Captain Ernst Rohm,
a man with a simple philosophy.

"Since I am an immature
and wicked man,

"war and unrest appeal to me
more than order."

Rohm was involved in the violent
politics of the extreme right,

and in 1919, he joined
the small German Workers' Party.

Here he met a 30-year-old veteran
of WWI, Corporal Adolf Hitler,

a man who shared with Rohm a deep
hatred of Communists and Jews.

Hitler had also joined
the German Workers' Party in 1919.

His membership card
said he was member 555,

but in reality, he was member 55.

They numbered from 500 to make it
look as if they had more members.

Hitler was like thousands of other
ex-soldiers, drifting without a job.

He discovered a natural talent.

He could channel his anger
at the way the war ended
into powerful speeches.

Hitler spoke about what he called
the iniquity of the Versailles
Treaty, signed at the end of WWI.

Under the treaty, Germany lost
large amounts of her own territory

and was forced to pay reparations
to the victors.

In the early 1920s,
inflation spiralled out of control.

In Bavaria, by 1921,
Hitler had become leader
of the small German Workers' Party,

renamed the National Socialist
German Workers' Party,

or the Nazis for short.

It was still one of many different
right-wing parties in Munich,

and they still all said the same -

Versailles was a crime
and the Jews were behind it.

But Hitler's dynamism, together
with his uncompromising tone,

began to attract other prominent
Bavarians to the Nazi party.

In 1922,
a WWI flying ace joined the Nazis.

Holder of awards for gallantry
and Richthofen squadron commander
during WWI, Hermann Goering.

"I joined the party because it was
revolutionary, not because
of any ideological nonsense."

The Nazi party spread its appeal
into the Bavarian countryside.

One agricultural student,

who was to become a chicken farmer,

found in the Nazis

an expression of his obsession
with the relationship between
German blood and German soil.

"The yeoman of his own acre
is the backbone
of the German people's character.

"Cowards are born in towns,
heroes in the country."

The words of another Bavarian,
Heinrich Himmler,

chicken farmer and, later,
commander of the SS.

In January 1923, the Nazis
exploited the discontent caused by
the French occupation of the Ruhr.

French troops came to enforce
reparation payments.

They succeeded
in alienating the Germans.

In Munich, in 1923,
in the atmosphere of crisis caused
by the occupation of the Ruhr,

Hitler and the Nazis acted.

Hitler stood on the stage of the
Burgerbraukeller on November 8th,
interrupting a right-wing meeting.

He called

for a revolution to overthrow

the left-wing government in Berlin.

The next day, the Nazis and
other right-wing parties marched
through Munich to gain support.

They were stopped by the police
at the war memorial.

The Nazis hoped the army and police,
many of whom were right-wingers,

would join them
in a march on Berlin.

GUNFIRE

The police didn't support them.

Shots were fired and the marchers
were routed. Hitler fled the scene.

Four policemen and 16 Nazis
lost their lives.

Hitler was tried with other leaders
of the putsch in early 1924.

The trial was a media sensation
with entrance by ticket only.

The Nazis hadn't just killed
four policemen,

they had also
organised a bank robbery.

A defiant Hitler told the court,

"You may pronounce us guilty,

"but the goddess who presides over
the eternal court of history

"will, with a smile, tear in pieces
the charge of the public prosecutor

"for she acquits us."

Hitler gained fame
for his apparently brave stand.

But it was a con trick,

for he knew as he spoke
that the judge would be lenient.

Hidden from the public was the
truth about a previous appearance
Hitler had made in a Bavarian court.

More than two years before,

Nazi thugs, egged on by Hitler,
had disrupted a left-wing meeting,

dragged the speaker off the stage
and beaten him up.

Almost all the documents relating
to the trial were seized by
the Nazis when they came to power.

But one or two from this trial
survived, hidden in the archive,

and they tell truths
the Nazis wanted to hide.

Hitler got the minimum sentence
possible - three months in prison.

The sympathy of the judge
didn't stop there.

He wrote to the appeal court and
asked them to reduce his sentence.

As a result, Hitler served
only one month in prison

and a period on probation.

The judge in Hitler's first trial
was called Georg Neithardt,

the same judge whom the authorities
let preside over the putsch trial.

It must have been obvious to Hitler
that the court would be lenient.

Hitler had attempted revolution,
incited murder and his followers
had robbed a bank.

He served nine months
in Landsberg prison.

But even so, by 1924,
it seemed that Hitler and the Nazis
had become an irrelevance.

In the mid-1920s, the German
economy recovered, as inflation
was reduced to single figures.

The Weimar government had solved
the reparations problem by
borrowing money from the Americans

which it used to pay the French
and British their own reparations.

The good times were financed
by short-term credit.

There were Germans who disapproved
of the "Weimar decadence".

They joined non-political groups
like the Wandervogel,

who called for a return
to an older, simpler way of life.

One small political party sought
to capitalize on this longing
for old-fashioned values.

In the mid-1920s, the Nazi party
was small but radical.

Their party programme promised that
if the Nazi party came into power

German Jews would be stripped
of citizenship and could be
expelled from the country.

INTERVIEWER ASKS IN GERMAN:

The fantasy of a world Jewish
conspiracy was openly preached
by the Nazis...and believed.

Along with their anti-Semitism
went a belief that violence was
a part of the political process.

The party had a paramilitary wing,
the brown-shirted storm troopers,

who protected Nazi meetings,
intimidated the followers of other
parties and drummed up support.

Towering over the small party

was the personality of the man
now called the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.

The way the party was evolving
was essentially the way it would be
structured when they ruled Europe,

and the structure was a strange one.

Though these images of Nazi offices
in the 1920s seem ordered enough,

the administration of the party
was chaotic.

Hitler hated committee meetings and
disliked arbitrating between rivals.

The Fuhrer was often late.

One prominent Nazi, Gottfried Feder,
complained to Hitler,

"I regard your time management
as very damaging
for the entire movement."

Yet the party still functioned.

Hitler was a passionate believer
in the law of natural selection.

"Men dispossess one another

"and one perceives that,
at the end of it all,

"it is always the stronger
who triumphs.

"The stronger asserts his will.

"It's the law of nature."

Hitler's obsession with this idea
of the survival of the fittest

meant that when a party member
wrote to him and asked to be made
leader of his local branch,

he was answered thus by Max Amann,
one of Hitler's confidants -

"Herr Hitler takes the view that
it is not the job of the leadership
to appoint party leaders.

"You state that almost all the local
members have confidence in you,

"so why don't you take over
leadership of the branch?"

But now, seven years after
Hitler had become leader,

the Nazi party was failing dismally
in the great struggle.

Despite the enthusiasm
of the party faithful,

the Nazis could not
get themselves elected to power.

In the 1928 election,
the Nazis got just 2.6% of the vote.

The vast majority
of the German electorate, over 97%,

rejected them and their leader.

This secret government report,
compiled before the 1928 election,

says that the Nazi party has
"no noticeable influence" on
the great masses of the population.

The Nazis were a tiny fringe party,
almost a joke.

Yet, just four years
and eight months later,

Hitler was chancellor of Germany,

for the Nazis were helped
by circumstance.

Germany suffered.

A drop in world agricultural prices
brought poverty to the countryside

and then the Wall Street Crash
heralded a world economic slump.

The Americans called in their loans.

German unemployment rose to
five and a half million in 1931.

Unemployed lived rough
in the cities

as Germany became economically
the worst-hit nation in the world.

Then, just when it seemed things
couldn't get any worse...

Then, just when it seemed things
couldn't get any worse...they did.

The five major banks crashed
in 1931.

More than 20,000 German businesses
folded.

Now the middle class was suffering.

In the economic crisis,
the Nazis' vote increased.

They still said the same -

Versailles was a crime, Jews should
lose citizenship, Marxism must be
destroyed, Germany must be reborn.

The message hadn't changed but
more Germans were ready to hear it,

and in this economic crisis,
people who had never seen
or heard Hitler still voted Nazi.

RECORDING OF HITLER SPEAKING

In a remote town in German
East Prussia, like Neidenburg,

in 1928,
the Nazis got 2.3% of the vote.

In 1930,
their vote leapt up to 25.8%,

yet Hitler didn't visit here and
there was no Nazi party in the town.

But the Communists started
to pick up votes too.

Something sinister was happening
to this new democracy.

It seemed to be splitting apart
as voters rushed to the extremes.

Alois Pfaller had joined the
Communist party in the late 1920s

and now took on the Nazis
in the streets.

SONG TRANSLATED FROM GERMAN:

NEW SONG:

FIRST SONG AGAIN:

Hitler said that he was the man
who could solve the economic crisis,

at the head of a dynamic party
that promised to destroy
Germany's internal enemies.

And Hitler campaigned
in a fresh and original way.

In his 1932 election campaign,

he travelled by aeroplane
to 20 cities in seven days.

Though he was to lose the election
to President Hindenburg,

Hitler had established himself
as a credible alternative leader.

The Nazi party proposed little
in the way of detailed policies,

but it offered order, discipline
and the personality of Adolf Hitler.

Fridolin von Spaun met him
in the early 1930s.

By 1932, the majority of Germans,
in voting for Communists and Nazis,

were voting for parties openly
committed to overthrowing democracy.

Democracy had arrived in Germany
at the end of WWI.

Now the majority of Germans
wanted rid of it.

Hitler made it quite clear
that a vote for the Nazis
was a vote for dictatorship.

As a result of the elections
of July 1932,

the Nazis became the biggest party
in Germany, with 37% of the vote.

One man stood between Hitler
and the chancellorship,

the man Hitler had challenged
for the presidency.

Hindenburg met Hitler
on August 13th 1932.

Hitler demanded to be chancellor.

Hindenburg refused, and his state
secretary recorded the reasons why.

"He could not bring himself to give
government power to a single party

"which did not represent
the majority of the electorate

"and which was intolerant,
lacking in discipline
and frequently appeared violent."

But then, different pressure groups
began to lobby President Hindenburg.

A group of businessmen,
including the former president
of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht,

wrote to Hindenburg, arguing that
Hitler must get the chancellorship
for the good of Germany.

New pressures came as the results
of an army war game arrived.

It said that in the event of civil
unrest, the army couldn't control
both the Nazis and the Communists.

"It's been shown that the forces
of law and order of the Reich
and of the German states

"could not protect the country
against National Socialists and
Communists and protect the borders."

But if there were pressures on
Hindenburg as 1932 came to a close,

there were also pressures
on the Nazis.

The crowds outside
Nazi headquarters in Munich

weren't aware of the nature
of the problem.

They were going bankrupt due to the
cost of fighting so many elections.

A key figure in the party,
Gregor Strasser, had just resigned

and the Nazi vote had dropped to
33% in the November 1932 election.

It looked like their support
had peaked.

But the traditional right felt
they had to negotiate with Hitler.

They too wanted
to eliminate democracy

and without the Nazis
they had no access to mass support.

A former chancellor,
the aristocratic von Papen,
came up with a deal.

Hitler could be chancellor
if von Papen was vice chancellor

and there were only two other Nazis
in the cabinet.

The theory was
Hitler would be tamed.

As a result, Hindenburg offered
Adolf Hitler the chancellorship
on January 30th 1933.

Von Papen crowed,
"We've hired him,"

and the new cabinet posed
for the cameras.

The Nazis would later try
and rewrite history

to say that he became chancellor
simply because it was his destiny,

but, in reality, he had been helped
into power by economic circumstance

and the support and miscalculation
of others.

It all happened so fast
in those days,

after one had seen it come
gradually.

The Communist party line,
to which I still belonged,

was that it doesn't matter
if Hitler gets to power.

He'll soon prove himself incompetent
and then it's our turn.

For some extraordinary reason,

they didn't realise
that he was going to change the law
once he came to power,

which he did very smartly.

On January 30th 1933, the same day
Hitler was appointed chancellor,

the Nazis held a torchlight
celebration parade in Berlin.

The revolution had begun.

There were a few storm troopers
who had Jewish girlfriends

and therefore, a lot
of German Jews thought, "Oh, well,
it's not going to be so bad.

"They have Jewish girlfriends,
they can't hate us all."

Oh, it's heartbreaking.