All language subtitles for BBC The Nazis A Warning from History S01 E03_track3_[und]

In the mountains
of southern Bavaria,

on the slopes of the Obersalzberg,

Adolf Hitler built his retreat -
the Berghof.

Here, he would relax
by watching feature films.

And he liked one film
in particular.

TRANSLATION FROM GERMAN:

These buttons represent troops,
understand? Yes, sir. Good.

The buttons are thickest near the
north-west frontier. Yes. Always.

We have 300 million to protect.

To Hitler,
the British rule of India

was perfect proof of the superiority
of the Aryan race.

HE ISSUES ORDERS

Later, in 1941, he said...
"Let's learn from the English,

"who, with 250,000 men in all,

"including 50,000 soldiers,

"governed 400 million Indians.

"What India is for England,

the territories of Russia
will be for us."

You keep me covered, I can make it.

Yet, in 1939, Hitler ended up

at war with the country
he most admired - Great Britain -

and allied to the country

he most wanted to colonise - Russia.

How did he end up fighting

what was, from his point of view,
the wrong war?

MEN SING IN GERMAN

On 30th January 1933, the same day
Hitler became Chancellor,

the Nazis paraded by torch light
in Berlin.

After the years of unemployment,
inflation and political uncertainty,

Hitler promised Germany would be
reborn and national pride restored.

Germany would be a world power
once again,

her foreign policy
decided in a new way.

By the desires of one man.

And every true German,
especially the Nazi storm troopers,

now had to be obedient
to the will of their Fuhrer.

HITLER ADDRESSES MEN, THEY RESPOND

ROUSING SINGING

Under Hitler, the German armed
forces would have all the guns,

tanks and planes they needed.
And more besides.

These armaments were paid for
by a series of sophisticated loans

which mortgaged Germany's future.

The plan was masterminded

by Reich Minister of Economics,
Hjalmar Schacht.

Hitler wasn't interested in how
Schacht worked the economic miracle.

He simply told Schacht to get on
with the job any way he liked.

He later said... "I have never had
a conference with Schacht

"to find out what means were at our
disposal. I restricted myself to,

'This is what I require.
This is what I must have.' "

Hitler was obsessed with the idea
of the survival of the fittest,

and Goebbels' propaganda films
reflected this obsession.

Hitler believed humans were animals.
The strongest animal would win.

If his subordinates were strong
enough, they'd succeed without him.

Just as it was with animals,

so it was with great men,
and even whole countries.

Hitler believed the entire world
was locked in a permanent struggle

in which the stronger must prevail.

This was the theory he developed in
Mein Kampf, which he wrote in 1924.

He also wrote that the Germans
were a nation who needed to expand.

Like the British,
they needed colonies,

and he was clear
where they should find them.

"We are putting an end

"to the German march towards
the south and west of Europe,

"and turning our eyes towards the
east.

"When we speak of a new land in
Europe,

we must bear in mind Russia
and the border states subject to her.

"Destiny itself seems to wish
to point the way for us here."

In the years immediately
after he became Chancellor,

Hitler repeatedly stated what

he saw as Germany's central problem.

Germany simply wasn't big enough.

ROAR OF APPROVAL

Deutschland, Sieg Heil!

CROWD RESPONDS

Hitler did openly announce
one foreign policy goal.

He wanted, as he saw it,

to right the wrong of the Treaty
of Versailles,

by which Germany had
lost territory at the end of WWI,

and was restricted
to an army of 100,000.

At that time, the young people were
enthusiastic and believed in Hitler

and thought it was a wonderful task
to overcome the consequences of WWI,

especially the Treaty of Versailles.

So we were in a high mood.

To help overcome Versailles,
the Germans looked to the English.

England and Englishmen were admired
by the German ruling classes.

They embraced what they took to be
the ideals of the English gentleman.

Country estates and fox hunting.

I always hoped that England - I'm
talking to you as an Englishman...

England would see what Germany was
planning to do,

was building up too much,
and would agree to share Europe,

or whatever the politics.

Whilst the English

may not have wanted to share Europe
with the Germans,

they and the rest of Britain

felt some form of accommodation
should be reached

with their former enemy.

The general view in Britain

was that the French had imposed,

and we had obviously been connected
with it,

imposed too harsh
a settlement on Germany in 1918,

and that this should be rectified.

And, to that extent,

there was a slight feeling of
"we ought to have done better".

If you call that a sentiment
of guilt, all right.

I'm not sure that we felt it as
guilt, quite.

The first fruits of Hitler's attempt
to woo the British

came in June 1935,

when Germany and Britain
signed a naval agreement,

allowing Germany to rebuild her
fleet

beyond the level permitted
by the Treaty of Versailles.

Hitler said
the day the agreement was signed

was the happiest of his life.

And Hitler sought to capitalise
on the agreement

by sending the
Nazi who had negotiated the deal,

Joachim von Ribbentrop,
to London as German ambassador

in the summer of 1936.

The task was 100%

to find
a German-British alliance,

because he had arranged before,
quite well, the naval agreement

and that should be crowned by
a German-English entente. Agreement.

And he, at the beginning,
he worked on this.

Ribbentrop was not a success
in Britain.

Not only did the British not want
a wide-ranging treaty of alliance

with Nazi Germany, Ribbentrop
committed a series of faux pas,

like
giving a Nazi salute to King George
VI.

No, Ribbentrop was regarded as
not a gentleman. That kind of thing.

And he wanted to be considered a
gentleman.

He was VON Ribbentrop. He
wasn't just one of the rough Nazis.

I don't think that that went down at
all well,

even in circles which felt
we must get on with the Germans.

I think his mission was disastrous.

GERMAN SPEAKER:

Sometimes he shouted,

sometimes he was furious.

He threw pencils
at the secretaries...

So, privately, he behaved very simply
and stupidly, and very pompous.

And the British don't like this,
pompous people.

And he was
very outspoken and very loud-voiced.

Goebbels said of Ribbentrop...

"He bought his name,
he married his money

"and he swindled his way into
office."

Count Ciano, the Italian foreign
minister,

revealed that Mussolini
had remarked,

"You only have to look at his head
to see that he has a small brain."

Ribbentrop was loathed by
almost all the other leading Nazis.

They thought him a humourless
upstart. Yet Hitler supported him.

Hitler said,
when Ribbentrop wasn't present,

"With Ribbentrop, it is so easy.

"He's always radical.

"Meanwhile, all the other people
I have, they come here,

"they have problems, they are afraid,
they think we should take care,

"and then I have to blow them up
to get strong.

"Ribbentrop was blowing the whole
day, and I had to do nothing.

"I had to break, give breaks there.
Much better."

Ribbentrop had a great insight
into how to deal with Hitler.

He knew Hitler always smiled kindly

on the person who came to him with
a radical solution to any problem.

It didn't matter if Hitler
didn't adopt the suggestion.

This was an insight

another
much more intelligent member
of Hitler's regime didn't have.

Schacht told Hitler
the German economy was overheating,

and armament production should be
scaled down to stop hyperinflation.

Instead, Hitler was furious
with his economics minister.

Schacht was sidelined.

The economy was now put
in the hands of a man who,

though ignorant of economic theory,
was certainly a proven radical.

Herman Goering.

HORNS PLAY

CHEERING

He was a... You would say,
"a jolly good fellow."

Jolly good fellow! Loved to show off.

And loved rings and diamonds
and...had funny hobbies.

Loved paintings and loved to live
in luxury, in Karinhall,

which was near Berlin,
in the Schorfheide,

where he built some
kind of castle for hunting purposes.

That was more than a castle.
Just wonderful!

And upstairs, in the attic,

he had an electric train built.
Various trains running round.

He played there like a child.
Loved to play there.

So therefore,

besides being a true, dependable
vassal to Hitler,

he was a big child.

What did Hitler
want his new army for?

At first, it seemed the answer
might be

just to overturn the
worst consequences of Versailles.

In 1936, Hitler moved his troops

into the demilitarised portion
of Germany - the Rhineland.

There was little
international protest.

Then, at a secret meeting in
November 1937,

he told his generals

Germany must expand to survive,

and announced that
Germany's problem could be solved

only by the use of force.

Austria and Czechoslovakia were
named by Hitler

as the first targets.

The leading generals
were not enthusiastic.

They offered sober
objections to Hitler's ideas,

not the applause he wanted.

Within three months, the war
minister and commander of the army

were removed after personal
scandals.

Hitler took the opportunity
to appoint the most radical Nazi

as commander in chief

of the German armed forces. Himself.

It was in the mountains above
Berchtezgaden in southern Bavaria

that Hitler liked to dream
of Germany's forthcoming greatness.

He later said
that his greatest ideas

came to him in these mountains.

In the afternoon,
he would go on walks

between the
great peaks of the Obersalzberg.

In the early evening,
he would return to the Berghof -

a house run for him
by Herbert Dohring -

a member
of Hitler's own personal guard,

the SS Leibstandarte.

IN GERMAN:

At the Berghof, Hitler indulged
himself

by planning great cities
he'd build in his new Germany.

Herbert Dohring constantly folded
and unfolded huge building plans

so his master could dream his
dreams.

Sometimes,
it seemed Hitler did little else.

INTERVIEWER:

When not dreaming of future German
cities or of German expansion,

Hitler would lose himself in
fantasy by watching feature films.

At the Berghof, always two a night.

He preferred escapist entertainment,

and Goebbels always made sure
there was plenty on hand.

DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS

ROMANTIC MUSIC PLAYS

At the Berghof
in the spring of 1938,

Hitler saw an opportunity

to take the first step in achieving
one of his most cherished dreams -

to bring other German-speaking
people under his rule.

He capitalised on political
instability in neighbouring Austria,

a country which had already come
hugely under Nazi influence.

After checking that no foreign
power would interfere,

he ordered
German troops to cross the border.

LOUD CHEERING

The majority of Austrians welcomed
the Germans into their country.

The Austrians, too, had suffered

as their empire was dismantled in
the settlement at the end of WW1.

Now, united with Germany,
they were a power once again.

CRIES OF "SIEG HEIL!"

It had been the nicest days of
my life when we entered in Austria.

I entered with Hitler
in the sixth car.

I had tears in my eyes.

All my dreams of reuniting Austria
with Germany...

Don't forget, Austria
was ruling Germany during 600 years.

And so, for me, after the defeat
of the year '18 and Versailles,

for us it was a dream.

I suppose a lot of people in England
would say,

"They ARE Germans, after
all. That's what they really want."

But it was, after all,
a pretty nasty sort of takeover.

CROWD ROARS

CRIES OF "SIEG HEIL!"

CHILDREN CHANT "SIEG HEIL!"

CROWD ROARS

I think we cried.

Tears were running down our cheeks.
With the neighbours it was the same.

And when Hitler came to me,

I nearly forgot to give him the hand.

I just looked at him
and I saw good eyes.

And in my heart, I promised him,

"I always will be faithful to you."

I kept my promise.

All my free time, besides school,

I gave to the work,
because he had called us.

"You all..." he had said that to us.

"You all shall help me
build up my empire

"to be a good empire,
with happy people

"who are thinking and promising

"to be good people."

But this was not going to be
"a GOOD empire".

Heinrich Himmler, commander
of the SS,

was one of the first
German Nazis into Austria.

Like Hitler, Himmler thought
himself a radical and a visionary.

This former Bavarian chicken farmer

made Wewelsburg Castle
the spiritual home of the SS -

the elite group
which had emerged

from Hitler's own personal
bodyguard.

MEN SING IN GERMAN

Himmler believed
these were the superior beings

who would crush Germany's enemies.

Himmler fantasised that the leaders
of the SS would meet in this room,

like the Knights of the Round Table,

subordinate only to their own
"King Arthur" - Adolf Hitler.

Here, they would plan
how to rule over their own empire.

Himmler said in 1938,

"Germany's future is either a
greater Germanic empire

"or a nothing. I believe if we in
the SS are doing our duty,

"the Fuhrer will create this greater
Germanic empire,

"this greater Germanic Reich.

"The biggest empire ever created by
mankind on the face of theearth."

In Austria, the first territory
of this new, greater Germany,

the SS and the other Nazis revealed
how they intended to rule.

With intolerance and cruelty.
Just as in Germany,

the Nazis made the Jews
their scapegoats.

There was no protection
from anywhere.

Anybody could come up to you
and do what they want.

Austrian Jews were made to perform
a variety of humiliating tasks,

like scrubbing the streets clean.

I once had to scrub the streets
as well.

Can't remember anything,

except that I saw in the crowd
a well-dressed young woman,

and she was holding up a little girl,
a blonde, lovely girl,

you know, with these curls,
and she was smiling.

So that the girl could see better,

a...maybe 22-year-old kicked
an old Jew who fell down.

They all laughed,
and she laughed as well.

Sort of, how happy. That was
a wonderful...entertainment.

The Austrian Jews were so
persecuted that many simply fled,

AFTER, of course, the SS had robbed
them of most of their money.

17-year-old Walter Kammerling

was seen off at Vienna station
by his parents.

It's a nightmare situation.

I remember leaving Austria.
It was like in a haze.

And it was only days after that it
struck me,

when I wanted to talk to
my parents and, of course, couldn't.

After the Nazi takeover of Austria,

Adolf Hitler returned to Berlin
to a tumultuous welcome.

WILD CHEERING

He was more popular now
than he had ever been before.

His new Reich
contained over 80 million Germans.

The humiliations of Versailles
were almost forgotten.

But not quite.

In euphoric mood, Hitler turned
his eyes towards Czechoslovakia.

He focused his demands

on the Sudeten Germans
who lived in the border areas,

proclaiming that they too, as
Germans, should be under his rule.

Not all German generals went along
with Hitler's plans for expansion.

Some, like General Beck,

feared he was leading Germany
into another world war.

They secretly communicated
their concerns to the British.

From then on, of course,

that group of generals, for they
didn't represent ALL the generals,

kept in touch with us,
by underground means,

and they used to come through me.

It was a sort of thing of, "If you
and the French stand up to Hitler,

"we'll do something about him",

and we saying, "Hadn't you better
start doing something about him,

"and then perhaps we can help you?"

As Hitler had success after success,

the possibility of the group getting
rid of him became less and less.

With Germany threatening
Czechoslovakia,

the British Prime Minister, Neville
Chamberlain, tried to prevent war.

The crisis grew,
as twice Chamberlain met Hitler,

and, on each occasion,
Hitler increased his demands.

Finally, Chamberlain left
for one last meeting,

on 29th September 1938.

When I was a little boy,

I used to repeat,

"If at first you don't succeed,

"try, try, try again."

That's what I'm doing.

When I come back,
I hope I may be able to say,

as Hotspur says in Henry IV,

"Out of this nettle, danger,

"we pluck this flower, safety."

CROWD CHEERS

Chamberlain sat alongside
Ribbentrop,

now promoted
to German Foreign Minister,

as the motorcade made its way
to the conference hall in Munich.

Finally, an agreement was reached,

brokered by Mussolini and Goering.

Hitler could have the Sudetenland,

as long as he promised this was
his final territorial demand.

Chamberlain, naturally,
knew public opinion in Britain.

That's not the Foreign Office's job.

He knew public opinion
in the Dominions,

which mattered a good deal,

and felt, and I think quite rightly,

really, that public opinion
would not understand

getting involved
as an ally of France, so to speak,

in a war with Germany, in Europe,

to prevent Germans
being attached to other Germans.

But Hitler was still disgruntled.

Shortly after the agreement was
signed, he said he'd been tricked.

I heard that, say,
the day after the Munich conference

by some people who had been
in the same hotel with Hitler

or with his surrounding people...
and Ribbentrop, and so on,

and they said that Hitler had the
idea

that he had failed to get his
war.

That he had taken...

One German soldier
took a home movie camera with him

as he entered the Sudetenland,
and filmed scenes

reminiscent of the victorious German
entry into Austria

just six months
previously.

The German army officers were
ecstatic too,

as they controlled
the Czech border defences -

the barbed wire,
pillboxes and minefields

with which the Czechs
had sought to defend their country.

The rest of Czechoslovakia now lay
naked in front of the German army...

and their commander in chief,
Adolf Hitler.

BAND PLAYS

Hitler asked the ageing

President Hacha of Czechoslovakia

to Berlin in March 1939 for talks.

Hitler humiliated Hacha
by keeping him waiting.

He was busy that evening,

watching
one of Goebbels' latest romantic
comedies,

called A Hopeless Case.

Papa!

Hitler eventually saw Hacha
at 1.15 in the morning.

He announced
that in a few hours' time,

German troops would invade his
country.

At 4am, the distraught Hacha

signed over the Czech people
into Hitler's "care".

As dawn broke, Hitler
held a celebration in his office.

There was a sort of private party,

a sort of victory party, with
champagne. Hitler had mineral water.

It was amazing to see how he behaved
when he was among his friends,

and hadn't to behave
like the statesman for the public.

So he was sitting...first of all,
like this, everything here open.

Hair's like this.
Drinking his mineral water.

And then the interesting thing...
talking like this, the whole time...

In the meantime, he dictated to two
secretaries

one proclamation to the
German people, one to the Czechs,

and a letter to Benito Mussolini

to be transmitted by
the Prince of Hesse the next morning.

So he did all that at the same time,
and I was a youngster of 24,

so that's how a genius looks at home.

German troops assembling to cross
into the Czech Republic that day

were about to take a momentous step.

This boundary post
marks the old border

between the Sudetenland
and the rest of Czechoslovakia.

Crossing this, Hitler showed

that his claim that he wanted only
to unite German-speaking people

was a sham.

The country these German troops
now entered had never been German,

and had no German-speaking majority
within it. This was an invasion.

BAND PLAYS SLOW MARCH

Gone were the cheering faces
of Austria and the Sudetenland.

This time,
the German military parade

was watched by a silent crowd.

Hitler visited Prague
and its castle -

the old residence
of the Czech kings -

less than 24 hours

after he had first made his demands
to President Hacha.

Looking over Prague,
Hitler was full of joy.

But not all Nazi supporters
were as pleased as their Fuhrer.

That changed the whole history,
because from that moment on,

it was clear that Hitler was
an imperialist

and wanted to conquer
whatever he wanted to conquer

and it had nothing more
to do

with the self-determination
of the German people in Sudeten.

That, one could accept, but now
that was over.

This was really terrible,
what he did then.

SIR FRANK ROBERTS:

And, of course,

this came
as a great shock to Chamberlain.

He thought at least Hitler would
consult him before doing anything.

It opened Chamberlain's eyes.

It was rather like Saul on the road
to Damascus, in some ways.

The British knew Hitler's next
demand

would be for the return of
former German territory in Poland.

This time,
Chamberlain pledged to resist.

If an attempt were made

to change the situation by force...

..in such a way as to threaten
Polish independence...

..why, then, that would inevitably
start a general conflagration,

in which this country
would be involved.

Hitler demanded
the return of Danzig to Germany -

a city in the so-called Polish
corridor of land

between East
Prussia and the rest of Germany.

As the crisis intensified,

Hitler retreated to the Berghof.

Hitler's dream of a grand alliance
with Britain lay in ruins.

In its place, he faced war
with Britain and France

if he did
what he wanted and invaded Poland.

He needed a radical solution
to his problems.

'Von Ribbentrop, leaving for Moscow,

'ushers in a new, incomprehensible
chapter in German diplomacy.

'What has happened to the principles
of Mein Kampf?

'What can Russia have in common
with Germany

'to throw over the peace front?'

Since spring 1939,

on the back of trade negotiations
with the Soviet Union,

the Nazis had been making
tentative moves

towards an alliance
between the two countries.

On 23rd August 1939,

Ribbentrop
signed a non-aggression pact
with the Soviet Union,

which protected Hitler from having
to fight a war on two fronts.

A secret part of the pact guaranteed
Stalin a share in the spoils,

once Hitler invaded Poland.

Hitler was now allied
to his ideological enemy.

As this was being signed in Moscow,

Hitler stood with his guests on the
terrace of the Berghof

and stared at the sky.

A Hungarian woman in Hitler's
entourage looked at the sky,

and then turned to speak to her
Fuhrer.

On the 1st of September 1939,

Germany invaded Poland.

On the 3rd of September,
Britain and France declared war.