All language subtitles for Secret.Sex.Lives.of.Tyrants.S01E03.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH

NARRATOR: Evil.

Powerful.

Uncompromising.

Ruthless.

Behind closed doors, a private hell.

- Tyrants often deviate
in their sexual behaviour.

- He fantasised about older women

- He puts make-up on.

- He had thousands of concubines.

They were this glamourous,
gun-toting, sex objects.

- Fire on designated targets.
NARRATOR: The psychological insights

of the degenerate and deviant.
- He was obsessed with aphrodisiacs.

- It is typical of somebody
who is sexually repressed.

- Power can change somebody.

NARRATOR: 30,000 handwritten pages
of bile and self-aggrandisement.

Diaries written by the hand
that helped conduct a genocide.

Joseph Goebbels dreamed
that his words would one day

be quoted by descendants
of the Third Reich.

They mockingly stand today

as testament to the man
dubbed the Poison Dwarf.

Tellingly, they also
secretly document

his own lecherous abuse
of hundreds of German women.

- One of the most
sexually powerful people

amongst the leaders
in the Third Reich.

NARRATOR: As Hitler's all-powerful
Reich Minister of Propaganda,

he was the face and voice
of a regime

that slaughtered six million Jews.

- He fervently believed
that they are right,

that they are the people who will
control the entire world.

NARRATOR: In public,

he was portrayed as the archetypical
wholesome Nazi family man.

But in private,
Goebbels was a sadistic killer

and sexual predator...

- He would even grab
and fondle women in public

In front of his wife.

NARRATOR: ..described as
the most prolific Cassanova

in the Nazi regime.

- He wrote in his journal
about all of his sexual conquests,

30,000 pages.
- Joseph Goebbels

would meet the criteria
of what I think is best termed

a sexual athlete. In other words,
it was a competition.

So you describe what you're doing,
who you're doing it with,

and you tick the box
and then move on to the next one.

GOEBBELS: Heil! Heil!
CROWD: Heil! Heil!

NARRATOR: Paul Joseph Goebbels
was born on 29th October, 1897

in the Rhineland region
of western Germany

bordering France, Belgium
and the Netherlands.

At the turn of the century,

the Rhineland was the heart
of Germany's industrial revolution.

Joseph's father, Fritz Goebbels,
was a factory clerk,

a strict Roman Catholic
and a harsh disciplinarian.

From his earliest years
it was his mother, Katharina,

to whom young Joseph
turned for comfort..

- Growing up, Goebbels really didn't
like his dad much at all.

But he was very close
with his mother.

It's likely that that relationship
influenced his future relationships

with women.

- If you look at
Goebbel's relationship

with his parents, you see
the same thing as with Adolf Hitler.

There's an over-bonded,
probably pathological relationship

with the mother, and a distance,
even a hostility towards a father

who is perceived as absent, cruel,
all those things.

NARRATOR: Joseph,
seen here with his brother,

took communion aged 12.

Without money or social standing,
he even contemplated the priesthood,

an historical sliding door moment

barely comprehendible
with the monster he would become.

But Joseph was not a healthy child.

Smaller than the other kids,
he had a club-foot,

believed to be due to polio,
osteomyelitis

or perhaps a congenital deformity.

- He was a shrimp,
and he was a shrimp with a limp.

- Goebbels suffered from polio,
and this caused him

to have a physical disability,

and that of course impacted
his psyche growing up.

It caused him to feel insecure,
low self-esteem, inferior.

- He had a physical handicap,

and at that time
and in that society,

that wasn't easy to live with.

- But he translated that
into leaning in

on his sharp intellect. It is here
that he garnered the most power.

NARRATOR: Joseph's parents
paid for corrective surgery

to his club foot. It failed.

His physical disability
would curse Goebbels for life.

He later wrote in his diary...

- "From that moment
my youth held little joy for me.

I had to look after myself
and could no longer join in

the other children's games.
I became lonely and solitary.

My former friends
had no affection for me."

- Goebbels' diaries reveal,
by their sheer obsessiveness,

the fact that he was
preoccupied with his own image,

his self-esteem and how
he was perceived by the world.

NARRATOR: But what
Goebbels did possess

was a formidable intellect.

- His brain compensated
for his physical deformities.

He was very pushy,
extremely ambitious,

extraordinarily reaching for heights

that were out of the ordinary.

NARRATOR: Together
with this intellectual drive

and physical insecurity
went a hyperactive libido.

In his mid-teens, Goebbels began
to yearn for sexual encounters

with older women.

- So Goebbel's fantasy
about older women

is typical of somebody
who's sexually repressed.

So an older women
would seem knowledgeable,

sexually experienced, one that,
like a sexual mother,

will replace the mother,
but work with him sexually.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR:
Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand

was shot down by a Serbian patriot,

and the greatest war the world
had known exploded in Europe.

NARRATOR: In 1914,
Germany's territorial ambitions

swept across Europe.

But as thousands of young men
marched into the Great War,

Goebbels was rejected by the army
due to his club foot.

- When we read accounts of Goebbels,
it's obvious that he overcompensated

for his physical disability.
He was extremely ambitious.

So he was overcompensating,
I believe,

for his physical deformity
and his problems as a child

in competitive sports.

NARRATOR: Humiliated
at his rejection by the military,

Goebbels instead threw himself
into academia, at Bonn University.

- He studied literature first,
and that was of course

a very good basis for becoming
the world's greatest propagandist.

NARRATOR: Goebbels' appetite
for learning, like his sex drive,

was insatiable. He quickly learned
that having a sharp intellect

would compensate for his feelings
of physical inadequacy

in all sorts of ways.

Then as a student at Freiburg,

Goebbels met pretty,
21-year-old Anka Stalherm.

The attraction was mutual.

But Anka's parents did not approve.

Her well-to-do mother
referred to Goebbels

as "Anka's penniless,
crippled boyfriend."

When Anka broke off their affair
in 1920

and started seeing another man,
it is said that Goebbels threatened

to take his own life.
In his diary, Goebbels wrote

about the eroticism of death,

and it seemed for a moment
as if the world might be spared

the life of this disturbed,
malevolent creature.

Four calamitous years of world war

had left much of Europe in ruins

and Germany a pariah.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: The first
world war of our time was over.

The news of the Armistice
was a bit premature,

but that didn't prevent a full-scale
celebration in Times Square.

NARRATOR: But for the Germans,

the cost of peace
was pain and poverty.

- Germany was a country
that was completely decimated

by the First World War.
The victorious Allies

really wanted Germany
to pay for the war.

These reparations
absolutely bankrupted the country.

NARRATOR: In Germany
in the 1920s

there was massive unemployment,
hunger and skyrocketing inflation:

the perfect breeding ground
for fascism.

- People would go to buy
a loaf of bread with one wheelbarrow

full of money
and by the time they got there

found they needed another.
There was starvation.:

The fledgling Weimar Republic r
really was on its knees.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: The inflation
ruins the middle classes

and the workers. Hitler
holds the Republic responsible

for the distress and misery.
NARRATOR: A new political movement

emerged, National Socialism,

its vigorous leader
promising to sweep away

the old establishment
and to make Germany great

once again.
- Here you have Goebbels,

who's looking for some way
of finding a meaning in life,

and this fits in perfectly.
"We've been betrayed,

I can be one of the people
who make us great again.

But the way I am going to do it
is with the only thing I've got,

which is my intellect."

NARRATOR: After completing
his doctorate,

Goebbels had returned
to his home town, Rheydt,

where he worked on novels
and journalism.

His interest in nationalism grew,
and in 1922

he started a relationship
with a schoolteacher, Else Janke.

JANKE: "How great it was yesterday.
Today I am so happy.

It is so nice that I can respect you
so much, and you should know

that I also want to be good
and noble."

NARRATOR: Their relationship
flourished

during these turbulent times.

In common with an ever-growing
segment in German society,

Goebbels blamed the Jews
for Germany's defeat

in World War One
and subsequent bankruptcy.

Imagine his horror
when he discovered

his new love's mother... was Jewish.

- "She told me her roots.
Since then,

her charms were destroyed for me."

NARRATOR: In 1924, Goebbels
joined the National Socialist

German Workers Party,
Adolf Hitler's Nazis.

Goebbels found a home

when he found Hitler
and the Nazi Party.

This was the ultimate way for him
to exercise his sharp intellect,

and Hitler recognised that
immediately when he met Goebbels.

NARRATOR: Hitler was
so impressed by Goebbels' loyalty,

skill and rabid antisemitism
that in 1926 he appointed him

the Nazi Party Chief for Berlin.

Goebbels established himself
as an impressive speaker,

agitator and master propagandist.

To his delight, he discovered
his new-found prominence

also won him new female fans.

- The entire coming of Nazi Germany
was because of Goebbels' ability

to draw attention to the agenda
of the Third Reich.

- Everybody remembers his comment

that if you repeat a lie
often enough,

people will believe it.

NARRATOR: Goebbels preyed upon
the hardship of the German people

and tapped into their resentment

to stir up
the most ancient of human hatreds.

-They needed a scapegoat.
Antisemitism was rife

throughout Europe in the 1930s
anyway. So they were just

grabbing onto something
that was already in its beginnings,

the seeds of hatred
were already there,

and Hitler and Goebbels
said that the Jewish people

were responsible for the fact
that Germany lost World War I.

NARRATOR: Goebbels
weaponised antisemitic tropes

to elevate his own standing
and that of the Nazi Party.

- Goebbels did an amazing job
of promoting not just Hitler

but the Nazi party and its imagery.

NARRATOR: And it wasn't just
the German people in his thrall:

Goebbels soon had the attention
of the world's media.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: They said
that persons of 'German blood'

were a master race
entitled to subjugate

or even exterminate other races.
:

- Goebbels had the unique ability
to understand

that if you keep telling a lie
over and over again,

people will believe it, and because
he was already in this position

as the Minister of Propaganda,

those lies
were gobbled up by the masses.

ARCHIVE: Scarcely
out of kindergarten,

the child must take the place
allotted to him

in the great Nazi scheme,
and from then on

think and act as he is told.

- So not just targeting unemployment
or the financial crisis,

but the racial targets, the slurs
on the Jews, for example,

all started to work their way
into these speeches,

and soon became the only subject
of those speeches,

and people believed them
because of how they were delivered.

NARRATOR: But even as Goebbels

skilfully controlled
the Nazi message to the masses,

he couldn't control
what his own peers were saying

about him behind his back ,
or indeed

certain sections
of the world's media

about the irony
of the alleged master race

being led by such
un-prepossessing physical specimens.

ARCHIVE: And limping
Joseph Goebbels,

plenipotentiary
for total war effort,

whipping German morale
to further frenzies of resistance,

the man whose mouth
utters all of Hitler's lies.

- And the contrast is astonishing,
because you can look at Hitler,

this marginal Austrian
of no achievement whatsoever

in the past, you look at Goebbels
himself, this, uh,

miserable, stunted guy
with that limp,

where is the Aryan image there?

But they managed
to ride over that.

NARRATOR: The Nazi Party
gave Goebbels a voice, a platform,

and power, and he soon realised
he could use it

to pursue women for sex.

- So when he starts
getting on what we today call

the dating scene, it's not good.

His first relationship reminds him
the fact that he's not going to be,

you know, a great lover
in women's eyes the way he looks,

and the next few don't get very far.
But once he starts

getting into power,
he starts learning

not only how to sell propaganda,
but how to sell himself,

and that works very nicely for him.

NARRATOR: The lonely
and solitary teenage Goebbels,

whose self-pity had been
so extensively diarised,

had become an arrogant fanatic
who could deliver

a tub-thumbing speech
to an enrapt audience.

His distorted message
of antisemitic rants cut through.

Hitler loved it,
and Goebbels revelled in it.

- So Goebbels found himself
moving from a childhood

where he was frail, unathletic,
not handsome,

not attractive, to an adulthood

where he was the central cog

in the major political movement
in Germany and then the world.

NARRATOR: One of the women
who'd been impressed

by those rallies, 29-year-old
divorcee Magda Quandt,

went on to work for Goebbels
and then fell for him.

- She was desirable
to both Goebbels and Hitler,

because she was upper-class,
very much upper-class,

wealthy, educated,
all the things they weren't.

NARRATOR: Even as they married
in 1931,

there were rumours that Magda
was more interested in Hitler

than in her new husband.

- Magda was fascinated with Hitler

or maybe even infatuated with him,

and as far as I can tell,
didn't really care much at all

about Goebbels,
but she wanted to be near Hitler,

and Goebbels knew
that she wanted to be near Hitler,

and so he married her,

and this contributed
to his open philandering.

- Goebbels was using his wife
to get closer to Hitler,

but at the same time
he didn't quite know himself

how far that had gone.
He didn't know, for example,

how much
his wife was attracted to Hitler,

and vice-versa.

NARRATOR: Even though
he admired Frau Goebbels,

Hitler would never have countenanced
intimacy with her,

and rather than confront his wife,

Goebbels used her infatuation
with the Fuhrer

to his political advantage.
and to justify

his aggressive pursuit of women.

- : Goebbels' marriage to Magda
was ultimately a sham.

This was really to appease Hitler
and Magda's bizarre relationship.

We don't see any evidence
that Hitler and Magda

actually consummated
their relationship in any way,

but they were certainly
very friendly,

and this contributed
to this bizarre triangle

between Goebbels, Magda, and Hitler

in which everyone
was serving a purpose.

There was a need for everyone
to fit into that triangle.

NARRATOR: A sham
it may have been,

but Magda bore Goebbels
six children,

and her popularity with Hitler
ensured Goebbels' ascent.

to the pinnacle of Nazi leadership.

Whilst the bizarre love triangle
fuelled gossip in Germany,

Hitler's rise to Chancellor in 1933

ignited fear around the globe.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR:
January 30th, 1933,

Hitler's popularity was increasing
by leaps and bounds.

The people greeted the announcement
of him becoming Chancellor

with wild enthusiasm.
NARRATOR: For his help

in Hitler's ascent to power,

the mastermind of the Nazi
propaganda machine,

who was now widely referred to
as the Poison Dwarf

by the Fuhrer's entourage,
was handsomely rewarded.

- Hitler saw something in Goebbels

and he gave him something
that nobody else could: status.

And from that status
his power-hungry nature grew

and it was voracious.

NARRATOR: At just 35 years old,

Joseph Goebbels
became the youngest minister

in Hitler's cabinet.
He wasted no time

using his new-found power
to take away liberties, rights

and freedom from those
he and his beloved Fuhrer

deemed Untermensch, or sub-human.

ARCHIVE: Fanned by the oratory
of Hitler's Minister for Propaganda,

Goebbels, antisemitism
has swept Germany like a fire.

NARRATOR: On the 1st of April,
1933,

Goebbels launched the Nazis'
official antisemitic campaign

with a boycott
of all Jewish businesses.

The following month,
he initiated the public burning

of what he termed 'un-German' books.

- So the dichotomy
of the 1933 book burnings,

headed up by 'Doctor' Goebbels,
is a very interesting one.

And I say 'doctor' in that way

because he was
a doctor of literature.

This man was a man of words.
He was learned, he was well-read.

Right the way through his education
he would have been reading

great works of literature,
some of which would be by Jews,

and having a well-rounded education.
So the works of Freud

and of Einstein
would have been part of his being.

- And this shows you

the intellectually
anarchistic nature of Nazism:

it's to destroy the establishment
and recreate it on our own terms.

NARRATOR: Goebbels' education
was fuelled by Jewish scholars

Friedrich Gundolf
and Max Freiherr von Walkberg,

and yet here he was
calling on students

to destroy
all Jewish literary works.

- Why did he do it?
Was he doing it for show,

to tow the party line,
to show people

how they should be reacting
to the Nazi regime?

Or did he truly believe
in what he was doing?

- What made him
particularly hideous, I think,

is that he could see the effect
of his propaganda,

he could see what it was doing,
but he continued.

NARRATOR: Later that same year,

Goebbels became president
of the newly formed

Chamber of Nazi Culture.
He now had control of the press,

literature, radio, fine arts,
theatre and films,

and the biggest casting couch
in Germany.

- So he suddenly found himself
at the centre of everything,

particularly because his work
involved filming,

which involved glamorous women,

and these glamorous women
were finding that Goebbels

was at the centre of all the power,
and any work was through him.

- You can take
the worst Hollywood director

and producers you've ever seen,
roll them all into one

and you've got him. He interfered,
he poured money in,

but he manipulated,
and really saw it

as a celluloid couch on which
he could bed anybody and everybody.

- The studios there
actually gave him the nickname

the Randy Goat of Babelsburg,

which was the location
where the movie studios were.

NARRATOR: Germany's most famous
film director was Leni Riefenstahl.

It is said that she only escaped
Goebbels' clutches

due to her sway
with her number one fan,

Adolf Hitler.
Others were not so lucky.

- If the actress wouldn't do
what he want,

in other words go to bed with him,
he would just get rid of them

and do what could
to block their career.

- He created a fabricated world

in which he,

a person with physical disabilities,

a person who was not attractive,

became the centre of attention
of beautiful women.

He became the hero.
In that fictional world,

he had the ideal family.

NARRATOR: In public,
Goebbels presented the image

of the devoted husband
and family man.

With Hitler
maintaining his singular aloofness,

the Goebbels became the unofficial
first family of the Third Reich.

But Goebbels had an affair
that not even Hitler knew about.

At least initially.
He had become totally besotted

with the young Czech actress
Lida Baarova.

- The other issue was with
a Czechoslovakian actress

who had some Jewish roots,
and this was definitely forbidden.

In fact, she might have been
one of the few women

that slipped behind his guard,

because he was very reluctant
to give her up.

NARRATOR: When Goebbels
first met Baarova,

she was already in a relationship
with this leading man,

Gustav Frohlich.
But that did not stop Goebbels.

The affair ignited by his power
over her career.

- These women stood no chance,
that Goebbels was going to take

whomever he wanted, and he did.

NARRATOR: As the young actress
became more famous,

so did her fear
of their affair being uncovered.

But Baarova
was merely another conquest

for the Nazi Minister.
His lecherous behaviour

was becoming more brazen.

- He would fondle a woman's breast

or grab a woman's buttocks
in public,

and people knew that he was
this kind of public creepster.

But because he was so powerful,
people had to bow to his needs.

He would even grab and fondle women
in public

in front of his wife.
He had no qualms

about talking about
his sexual conquests.

He wrote in his journal
about all of his sexual conquests,

30,000 pages.

- Goebbels' diaries reveal,
by their sheer obsessiveness,

the fact that he was preoccupied
with his own image, his self-esteem,

and how he was perceived
by the world.

NARRATOR: By this time,

Magda Goebbels was openly
having an affair

with Goebbels' right-hand man
Karl Hanke.

An increasingly concerned Fuhrer
felt obliged to step in.

- The relationship
between Goebbels, Magda and Hitler

became more complicated
as Goebbels became

more and more infatuated

with sleeping with other women

outside his marriage,
and eventually

he wanted to leave his wife.

But Hitler intervened
and prevented Goebbels

from leaving his wife.

NARRATOR: Goebbels' marriage
and his public persona

as the poster boy
for Nazi family planning

were simply too important
to be sacrificed

for the sake
of his prodigious sexual appetite.

- Hitler imply would not tolerate
them separating,

because it was bad
for the whole Nazi family men,

family image.

NARRATOR: Despite his peccadillos,
Goebbels' star continued to rise.

He took control of all newspapers

and handed out millions
of cheap radio sets

so the German people could listen
to the Nazi message.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: Only those
who get behind the scenes know

that this outward cheerfulness
is the creation of the fanatic

little Propaganda Minister
Paul Joseph Goebbels

in the most concentrated propaganda
campaign the world has ever known.

NARRATOR: By 1938,
Germany was on the march.

Hitler's nationalist movement
was escalating

with terrifying speed and violence,.

and as
the tentacles of his tyranny spread,

the need for Goebbels'
stage management

became ever greater.
- Hitler needed Goebbels

because he needed propaganda

to fabricate this image of himself

and the Nazi movement.

NARRATOR: On the evening
of November 9th, 1938,

rioters destroyed synagogues
and Jewish shops throughout Germany

and Austria in what became known
as the Kristallnacht',

or Night of the Broken Glass.
The Master of Propaganda

had manipulated the emotions
of everyday German citizens,

driving them into horrific acts,

and set the stage
for the onset of World War Two.

Goebbels had helped craft
a new world order

so twisted and perverse
that it would soon claim

the lives of millions,
even those closest to him.

NARRATOR: In March 1939,

German troops
invaded Czechoslovakia.

Six months later,
on the 1st of September, 1939,

Germany launched a surprise attack
on Poland,

triggering the start
of the Second World War.

ARCHIVE NARRATOR: Warsaw is bombed,
blasted, shelled. Poland in ruins.

NARRATOR: Even as
the Nazi war machine

plunged Europe into chaos

and Goebbels
appropriated the airwaves

of yet more conquered nations,
in secret

he continued to leverage his power
and influence for sex.

- Joseph Goebbels
would meet the criteria

of what I think
is best termed a sexual athlete.

In other words,
it was a competition.

. So you describe what you're doing,
who you're doing it with,

and you tick the box
and then move on to the next one.

And for somebody
with very ambivalent feelings

about himself physically,
after all he was disabled,

he was deformed,
this is his compensation.

It doesn't matter what you do,
it's the fact that you've done it

and you're moving on to more.

NARRATOR: And his reaction
to rejection was telling.

When young German actress
Anneliese Uhlig

rejected his sexual advances,
Goebbels cancelled her film.

- Really every day
he was gaining more power.

As the Nazi Party was, so was he.

And that allowed him
to indulge his sexual interest.

- Grabbing on women in public,
having sex with whomever he wished,

that was built into the structure
of his status in power

as a result of the Nazi Party.

NARRATOR: The same ruthlessness

was later inflicted
on Charlotte Thiele,

even though she had become
well-known

for her starring role
in the 1943 film 'Titanic.'

Fame was no protection
from Goebbels' predation

- He was extremely
emotionally manipulative,

maybe one of the most infamous
and successful manipulators ever.

NARRATOR: And Goebbels'
relentless pursuit of sex

was not limited to actresses.
One of his secretaries reported

that Goebbels would proposition
the girls in the office,

no matter how young they were.

- Tyrants often deviate
in their sexual behaviour

because they can.
Because they deviate

in all their other behaviours.

They deviate in the use of power.

They deviate
in the use of relationships

generally. Their relationships
with their families are deviant.

So the deviation of tyrants
in the sexual arena

is just a reflection
of their general deviation,

and it is because they can,
they have the power to do it.

ARCHIVE: In regimenting
German thought,

all radio programmes emanate
from the Department For Propaganda.

Every newspaper prints only
what the state wants to be read.

NARRATOR: From the safety
of his Berlin ministry,

well behind the frontline,

Goebbels became
the public cheerleader

for the most horrific genocide
the world has ever seen.

- There are some
deeply chilling speeches by Goebbels

about the way that the Jews
must pay, about their downfall,

what effectively
becomes the Holocaust.

And Goebbels is the mouthpiece
for this.

- We don't want to forget
the fact that Goebbels

is probably
the most notorious propagandist

of all of the 20th century,
but as a result of his lies,

the lies that he told
over and over again

to make sure people
would believe them,

that millions of people
died at his hand.

NARRATOR: And as the war
turned against the Nazis,

Goebbels demanded 'total war,'

a fight to the death
by the German people

for the sake of
the craven Nazi creed

for which Goebbels and so many
had sold their souls.

As the combined might
of the Allied forces

started to reclaim Europe,
Hitler's dream was fast evaporating

in a cloud of misery
and self-destruction.

- (CHEERING)

NARRATOR: His Propaganda Minister's
calls to action

were now falling on deaf ears.

- He fervently believed
in this thousand-year Reich,

that they are right,
that they are the people

who will control the entire world
and oversee the downfall

of the people that they want
to subjugate or murder.

NARRATOR: Hitler
rewarded Goebbels' fanaticism

by giving him even greater powers
in running the war effort.

By 1945 he essentially became
the second most powerful person

in Germany.
- He was extraordinarily good

at being the person who organised
all their communications,

who organised
their propaganda schemes,

and of course for Hitler's movement,
propaganda was central.

- (ARCHIVE NARRATOR
SPEAKS IN GERMAN)

- But these words
soon turned to poison,

and these words became responsible
for the death of millions of people

across the whole world.

NARRATOR: It's a crushing irony
that Goebbels' rise to power

was hastened
by the Nazis' flailing war effort.

The decimation of the Wehrmacht
on the Eastern Front

and then the successful landing
of Allied troops at D-Day

meant that Goebbels' incessant lies
were more important than ever

to try and prop up the Nazi myth.

ARCHIVE: Nazis in full retreat.

Less than three weeks after D-Day,
crushing defeat for the master race.

Our infantry smashes forward.

NARRATOR: By April 1945, however,

no amount of propaganda could save
the dying German war machine.

ARCHIVE: On both sides
of the River Spree,

the charred and twisted graveyard
of 300,000 Nazis.

In four and a half years,
Allied bombs hit Berlin

day and night. Many buildings
still standing are mere shells.

NARRATOR: As the Soviet Red Army
moved into eastern Germany

and the Allies surged from the west,

the last vestige
of the hateful Nazi regime

was caught in a deadly vice.

- So now you have the man
who believed in the Nazi ideal

until the very last days.

The Russians
are surrounding the bunker.

They can hear the cannon.

They know Hitler's
going to kill himself,

and it's impossible
to ignore reality any longer.

- They decide that if things
aren't going to go their way,

if Germany is going to lose,
then Hitler and his partner,

who became his wife, Ava Braun,
will commit suicide.

And Goebbels will do the same.
He will follow Hitler to the grave.

NARRATOR: On April 30th, 1945.
a besieged Hitler,

determined to avoid
the very public humiliation

of his longtime ally Mussolini,
shot himself,

before his bodyguards
carried out his instructions

by burning his
and Eva Braun's bodies.

ARCHIVE: Bulletin.
Adolf Hitler is dead. He is dead,

and how he died the world
little cares.

For Hitler's death millions prayed.
Millions are thankful for justice.

NARRATOR: As per the instructions
in Hitler's will,

Goebbels became
Chancellor of the Reich.

But his time
as the supreme leader of Germany

would not only be short-lived,
it would also reveal him

as one of history's
greatest cowards.

(BOMBS WHISTLING)

Days before Hitler's death
on April 30th,

Goebbels, his wife Magda
and their six children

had moved into the bunker
beneath the Reich Chancellery.

- "I will always be proud
of having belonged to a family

that, even in adversity
and up to the last moment,

has been faithful to the Fuhrer
and his pure and holy cause."

NARRATOR: Having served
only a day as Chancellor,

Goebbels prepared to follow
his beloved Fuhrer to his death.

But he wouldn't go alone.

- What Hitler had done
in committing suicide,

they now needed to do as well.

That was their final act of loyalty
to him.

NARRATOR: Magda Goebbels
tied white ribbons

in her daughters' hair
before sedating all six children.

She and Joseph then forced them
to drink a lethal dose of cyanide.

- What sort of man decides
that because he's done,

because his power is taken away,
that also means

that the six children
that he has brought into the world

also deserve to die,
and so does his wife?

NARRATOR: Having murdered
their children,

Magda and Joseph Goebbels
then went upstairs

and, with the help of the SS,
they committed suicide,

before their bodies were burned.

Only this time
there wasn't enough petrol

to do the job properly,
so Goebbel's ghastly remains

were visible for all to see.

- Everything was falling apart.
It was more painful for him

to face reality
than to kill himself

and have all of his family
killed with him.

- So he accompanies Hitler
even into death.

NARRATOR: Soon after,
their remains were found

by Soviet troops.
ARCHIVE: Hitler's Chancellery

was captured.
Hitler committed suicide here

at the last minute, like a scorpion
surrounded by a ring of fire.

These are the ruins
of Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda.

He himself
will no longer poison the world

with his man-hating invections.

- Goebbels came from nothing.

He achieved power through his gifts
as an excellent propagandist,

an orator. But once power
was taken away, he didn't believe

there was any point in existing.

- All it would take would be
a charismatic leader

saying the same words or lies
often enough

that people start to believe them

and preaching
to a disillusioned public.

They're really the only ingredients
one would need

for this to happen all over again.
- Joseph Goebbels left the world

a terrible legacy. and it's summed
up by his statement

that if you keep repeating a lie,
people will believe it.

And this has been something
that's been repeated

time and time again
in tyrannical, oppressive regimes,

and we live in a world
where the lie

is now almost
overriding reality and truth.

That's a pretty awful legacy.

NARRATOR: A legacy
cemented by the horrific brutality

his hate-filled invective inspired,

as well as by the hundreds of women
he preyed upon and defiled.

(SOMBRE MUSIC)

Subtitles by Sky Access Services