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Italy was the birthplace of fascism.
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So an alliance between
the fascist government in Rome
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and the Nazis in Berlin had seemed natural.
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But on 19th July, 1943,
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the unthinkable happened - Rome was bombed.
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By 1943, nearly 200,000 Italian soldiers
were dead or missing.
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The Italian alliance with Nazi Germany
had resulted in nothing but disaster.
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During the four years of war, more or less,
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Italy was practically half-destroyed.
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And everybody understood that the war was lost.
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And, of course, everybody was thinkingthat Italy had to get out
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and not to stay with Mussolini.
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On the night of 24th July, 1943,
the Fascist Grand Council met
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and expressed its lack of confidence in Mussolini.
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They voted for the King
to regain control of the armed forces.
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Benito Mussolini had been
the first fascist dictator,
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his success an inspiration to Hitler,
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but now the Italians had had enough of him.
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The King summoned Mussolini here
to the Villa Savoya on 25th July, 1943.
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Mussolini was told he was dismissed
as Prime Minister of Italy.
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He walked down the hall
out of the King's villa at 5.20 in the afternoon.
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As soon as he set foot outside,
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Mussolini was arrested
by the Italian police and taken to prison.
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The Italians were jubilant.
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Now they were free of Mussolini
and could change to the winning side.
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The new Italian government
first surrendered and then,
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in October, 1943, declared war
on its former ally, Nazi Germany.
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Not very honourable, certainly.
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Whenever you...you...
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betray a friend, an ally, it's not very noble,
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but it happens, it happens.
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We are more realistic sometimes
than the Germans are, no?
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Of course, being more realistic,
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we are not faithful to the present chief, no?
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I don't say it is a noble thing,
but it is...it is our character.
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(NARRATOR) If the Italians were capable
of removing Mussolini in 1943,
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when they saw how the war was going,
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why couldn't the Germans remove Hitler?
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Why were they fighting to the end?
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The first task facing anyone
in removing Hitler was gaining access to him,
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and that was not easy.
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For most of the war,
Hitler hid himself here at the Wolf's Lair
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in what was then German East Prussia,
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protected by minefields,
barbed wire and his loyal SS bodyguard.
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Discussions with his generals dominated his time,
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and deep into the war
the F�hrer had still not lost his ability
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to dominate those around him
by the force of his personality.
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At that time, I...
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..respected him.
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I mean, I...
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He impressed me and made me tense.
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Whenever I was near him,
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I was prepared, in every respect,
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to watch out.
But the flair Hitler had was...
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..unusual. He could, he could...
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Somebody who was almost ready
for suicide, he could revive him
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and make him feel that he should carry the flag
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and die in battle. Very strange.
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But by the end of 1943, it was clear
that Germany was losing the war.
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In November, 1942, the area of territory
controlled by the Nazis and their allies
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had reached its peak.
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Just over a year later, as 1943 ended,
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Soviet forces were making
huge advances in the East.
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The British and Americans
were fighting their way up through Italy,
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and Allied forces were gathering
for D-Day, the invasion of France,
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but it was in the war in the East
that the Germans suffered their greatest losses.
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4 million German troops
and their allies faced a Soviet force
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of more than 6 million.
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Hitler had said this would be
a different war, a war of annihilation,
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and this was a crucial reason
why the Germans fought to the end,
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for in the East the Nazis believed
they were fighting sub-humans.
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Behind German lines,
partisans resisted the Nazi occupation
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and were summarily executed
wherever they were found.
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This partisan war gave the Nazis
an easy excuse to hang and shoot
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anyone they didn't like the look of.
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German forces, unlike their Italian allies,
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committed countless atrocities in the East.
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This massacre of Polish prisoners
in Lublin was carried out by the SS in July 1944.
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But not only the SS and security police
killing squads committed atrocities.
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Many Wehrmacht units, too,
were deeply implicated in the barbarism.
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This war of annihilation made it harder
for some to remove Hitler -
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the man ultimately responsible for this.
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Almost all the Nazi Party hierarchy,
like these Gauleiter,
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knew and approved of the criminal killings.
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And there was another reason
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why the Nazi leadership found it hard
to conspire against their F�hrer.
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From the very beginning,
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Hitler had encouraged personal enmity
among his favourites,
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often by appointing two people
to the same job and then watching them fight.
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It was a leadership where almost everybody
hated and distrusted everybody else.
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G�ring disliked Speer, Ribbentrop,
Goebbels and Bormann.
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Goebbels had little time for either
G�ring, Ribbentrop or Bormann.
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Ribbentrop couldn't stand any of them
and none of them could stand him.
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The entire Nazi leadership
was riven by dislike and suspicion
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as they fought each other
for Hitler's praise and favour.
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That left the military leadership,
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but they too had agreed to the killing
of Communist commissars in the East
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and felt bound by their oath of loyalty,
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so any strike against Hitler
was certain to alienate some of them.
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A conspiracy was only possible
under conditions of great secrecy.
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Finally, a year after Mussolini's overthrow,
one senior officer did come forward.
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On 20th July, 1944, in the most famous
attempt on the F�hrer's life,
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Klaus von Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler.
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Stauffenberg was the only one
who said, ''I am prepared to do it.''
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But my opinion was always
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that it could only succeed
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if the man who tried to kill him
killed himself at the same moment.
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The way the Palestinians do it now
in Israel, do you see?
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Self-sacrifice, or kamikaze.
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Stauffenberg left a bomb in his briefcase
in the conference room
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on this spot at the Wolf's Lair,
then hurried to Berlin.
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At 12.42 p.m. on 20th July, 1944,
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the bomb exploded as Hitler was being
briefed by his military commanders.
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Karl Boehm-Tettelbach
was in his own office nearby.
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When I stepped into the office, my colleague said,
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''Did you hear that?''
Suddenly, there was a big boom.
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''Did you hear that?''
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Four or five minutes later on,
we saw out of the window
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the SS in battle uniform surrounding
our barracks. I said, ''Isn't that funny?''
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The bomb destroyed the conference room,
but the blast was dispersed
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by the wooden walls
and Hitler escaped with only minor injuries.
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Now the search was on for all those
who had conspired in this attempt.
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But by no means every German officer
had supported the plot.
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Nobody approached me because they knew
that I wouldn't break my oath.
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They knew from the very beginning
that I would stick.
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Luckily, nobody would approach me
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because I was Air Force
and the Air Force was not involved.
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If you had been approached,what would you have said to Stauffenberg?
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To Stauffenberg? I would have said,
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''I'm going to report to Hitler
that you want to kill him.''
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Ja.
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I had no other choice.
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If I would have stayed...stayed quiet,
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they would put me down
in a little notebook and I would be shot.
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All my comrades who were all shot,
they didn't speak.
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Stauffenberg couldn't speak,
Mertz, and Haeften, the ADC,
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they were shot immediately.
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The other ones whom I worked with,
they were later on condemned to death,
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but they didn't give away my name.
I owe my life to them.
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Even under torture,
they didn't give away the names.
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In the early hours of 21st July,
Hitler spoke on radio to the German people.
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Hitler visited the officers
who had been injured in the blast.
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The propaganda newsreel expressed
official joy at the F�hrer's survival
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and hatred for those who had tried
to kill him - feelings shared by many.
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The roots of Hitler's popularity,
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carefully nurtured by Goebbels
over the previous 11 years, went deep.
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These letters home from the front line
reveal what many soldiers felt.
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Though letters like this were censored,
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there was no need for them
to refer to Stauffenberg and the plot
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unless they wanted to.
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''There's a deep disgust about this crime... ''
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''The honour of the Officer Corps isunder attack through Stauffenberg... ''
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''The attempt on the FUhrer's lifemarks a sad chapter in German history. ''
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Hitler ordered that the armed forces
be drawn deeper into the Nazi fold.
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Propaganda images of this perfect Nazi world,
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showing the young members
of the Master Race, hid another truth.
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Unlike Italy,
Germany had become a racist state.
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Almost all Germans profited
from racism for, as the war progressed,
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the German economy relied not so much
on the work of the Hitler Youth
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as on the sweat and toil of forced labour
from the so-called inferior races
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of the conquered territories.
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It was horrible to take a young boy,a child, from the family,
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escort himand put into forced labours and being...
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..beaten.
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He awoke me at 5 o'clock.
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I had to go to the work in a barn,
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in a stable,
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polish the horses. They had two horses
and, I believe, six cows, pigs...
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And then, after I had done all this,
to go to the fields,
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to work in the fields -
it was spring - to prepare everything.
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Well, I never cried as much as at that time.
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The last... I would say the last months
of my childhood passed this way.
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By August, 1944, there were
more than 7,500,000 forced labourers
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working in the new Germany.
1,700,000 of them were Poles.
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The half million slave workers from
the concentration camps, mostly Jews,
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suffered even more than the Poles.
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At least 35,000 of them worked
at the chemical plant of IG Farben in Silesia.
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The name of the camp these workers
lived in has become infamous -
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Auschwitz.
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But there were two types of camp here:
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concentration camps for slave workers
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and the extermination camp
with its gas chambers.
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All new arrivals were selected
to go to one or the other.
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Arriving at Auschwitz, we were separated.
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I remember the selection.
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I came. ''What are you?
What's your profession?''
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''I am a mechanic.'' ''To the right.''
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00:21:42,476 --> 00:21:44,774
''What are you?''
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''I am a doctor.''
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''You must learn to work!''
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He hit him.
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And so on.
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Women with children
and men with children to the left
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and the others to the right.
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And I was thinking, the fool that I was,
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they were going into a family camp.
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In the gas chambers.
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And...we were taken by a truck,
it was 2 o'clock in the morning,
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and...
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we came into the...camp.
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This is... This was the camp of the IG Farben.
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And the people there said,
''You are now in a concentration camp.
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''To go out from here...
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''..through the chimney.''
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(NARRATOR) Selection for the work camp
meant only a temporary postponement of death.
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One Nazi doctor later estimated
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that life expectancy for slave labourers
of Auschwitz was three months.
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we went to work
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in lines of five men and groups.
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I always tried to be in the middle,
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not to be hit from the SS, and that helped.
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I am not a man who says,
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''I must do some things,
some sabotage, or something.'' No.
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I wanted to stay alive.
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I wanted to live
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and to see Germany destroyed,
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the Nazism destroyed.
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The majority of Germans may not have known
of the true realities of Auschwitz,
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00:24:04,384 --> 00:24:07,979
but all knew
their country had become a racist state.
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The Nazis consistently said
that every true German was a superior being,
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something this propaganda film,
made in 1944, was designed to illustrate.
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But this belief that they were superior
made it harder to accept losing the war.
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Perhaps, the Nazis thought,
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they simply didn't have
enough superior beings in their army.
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So they tried to recruit racially acceptable
foreigners into the Waffen SS.
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400,000 foreigners joined the Waffen SS
and fought alongside the Germans.
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Many were motivated by one reason.
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Jacques Leroy was badly injured in battle
and lost an eye and an arm.
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A few weeks later, he begged
to be allowed to rejoin his regiment.
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The SS agreed. He carried on fighting.
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It wasn't just on the front line
that the Germans were losing the war.
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As the war entered its last phase,
Allied bombing of Germany intensified.
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00:27:52,913 --> 00:27:57,373
In the last 15 months of the war,
350,000 Germans died
235
00:27:57,551 --> 00:28:00,019
as a result of the bombing raids -
236
00:28:00,187 --> 00:28:05,147
three times more than in the previous
three years of the war put together.
237
00:28:06,193 --> 00:28:11,221
The British bombers were calledby the Germans at that time,
238
00:28:11,431 --> 00:28:14,059
under the influence of Goebbels...
239
00:28:17,571 --> 00:28:20,199
And they hated them
240
00:28:20,374 --> 00:28:22,171
and...
241
00:28:22,342 --> 00:28:24,810
it was no fun to become...
242
00:28:24,978 --> 00:28:29,608
If you bailed out of the bomber
and came down on the ground,
243
00:28:30,984 --> 00:28:33,953
never you know what will happen.
244
00:28:37,057 --> 00:28:39,617
Germans may have hated the bombing,
245
00:28:39,993 --> 00:28:42,621
but it did not break their will to fight on.
246
00:28:42,963 --> 00:28:48,060
Men like Wolf Falck believed
the Allies would not stop the bombing
247
00:28:48,235 --> 00:28:51,500
until Germany was destroyed
as an industrial power.
248
00:28:53,140 --> 00:28:57,941
It was decided to destroy Germany,so we have nothing to lose.
249
00:28:58,111 --> 00:29:00,409
we have nothing to lose.
250
00:29:00,580 --> 00:29:05,517
And so we fought for our people,for our country, to protect them.
251
00:29:08,388 --> 00:29:12,984
There was an even more powerful
reason to keep fighting -
252
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:15,628
a dread of the advancing Soviet forces.
253
00:29:16,396 --> 00:29:20,958
Both sides had committed atrocities
against each other.
254
00:29:21,168 --> 00:29:27,368
But now the supposed sub-humans
were forcing the German Army to retreat.
255
00:30:22,062 --> 00:30:26,158
Not only propaganda newsreels
tried to put the retreat in the best light.
256
00:30:26,366 --> 00:30:30,234
So did Nazi guidance officers
attached to each unit -
257
00:30:30,437 --> 00:30:32,997
men like Walter Fernau.
258
00:33:01,254 --> 00:33:05,714
As Walter Fernau was exhorting
fellow Germans to continue fighting,
259
00:33:05,892 --> 00:33:10,659
so was the Nazi Propaganda Minister
and Berlin Gauleiter, Joseph Goebbels.
260
00:33:13,533 --> 00:33:19,165
In November, 1944, he addressed
the Volkssturm, the German Home Guard.
261
00:34:16,029 --> 00:34:18,759
Six million men were in the Volkssturm,
262
00:34:18,965 --> 00:34:23,925
mostly those who were thought
too old or too young for military service.
263
00:34:25,338 --> 00:34:31,504
All were told that they were
the last bastion against the Bolshevik horde.
264
00:34:31,778 --> 00:34:36,738
The majority of the Italians had only
fought the British and the Americans.
265
00:34:36,916 --> 00:34:42,183
Nazi propaganda said the Russians
were an entirely different sort of enemy,
266
00:34:42,555 --> 00:34:47,515
sentiments echoed by Hitler the last time
he ever broadcast to the German people,
267
00:34:47,694 --> 00:34:50,162
on 30th January, 1945.
268
00:35:25,832 --> 00:35:31,168
But it wasn't just fear of the Russians
that kept the Germans fighting -
269
00:35:31,371 --> 00:35:34,169
it was fear of other Germans.
270
00:35:34,340 --> 00:35:38,834
In the last months of the war,
Nazi terror against German civilians
271
00:35:39,045 --> 00:35:41,377
increased dramatically.
272
00:35:43,783 --> 00:35:48,015
In the town of Zellingen,
alongside the River Main,
273
00:35:48,221 --> 00:35:53,022
a local farmer discovered what happened
if you criticised the local Nazis.
274
00:35:53,193 --> 00:35:58,654
On March 25th, 1945, the Volkssturm
paraded in front of the parish church.
275
00:35:58,832 --> 00:36:04,327
They were exalted to continue
the struggle, to fight on to the end.
276
00:36:42,842 --> 00:36:46,334
One man who sniggered
lived on the edge of the parade ground.
277
00:36:46,713 --> 00:36:48,943
His name was Karl Weiglein,
278
00:36:49,115 --> 00:36:53,347
a local farmer with a reputation
as something of a hothead.
279
00:36:54,153 --> 00:36:58,180
Zellingen was separated from its sister town
of Retzbach by the River Main,
280
00:36:58,358 --> 00:37:01,384
so Weiglein was less than pleased
when, two days later,
281
00:37:01,728 --> 00:37:04,959
local Nazis blew up the connecting bridge
282
00:37:05,131 --> 00:37:07,964
to prevent its use by the approaching Allies.
283
00:37:08,868 --> 00:37:12,964
Weiglein said they ought to be hanged.
284
00:37:13,172 --> 00:37:18,132
Unfortunately, one of them overheard
the remark and Weiglein was arrested.
285
00:37:18,311 --> 00:37:23,442
A court-martial was called and Walter Fernau
was told to act as prosecutor.
286
00:37:37,030 --> 00:37:41,990
The court-martial was held in a house
around the corner from the parade ground.
287
00:37:42,168 --> 00:37:46,969
A trumped-up charge of sabotage
was quickly added against Weiglein,
288
00:37:47,140 --> 00:37:52,100
and after a brief hearing, while they
prepared the hangman's noose outside,
289
00:37:52,278 --> 00:37:56,180
Walter Fernau made
a final submission to the court.
290
00:38:51,004 --> 00:38:55,566
Karl Weiglein was taken
round the corner to a nearby tree.
291
00:38:55,908 --> 00:38:58,206
There his head was put into a noose
292
00:38:58,378 --> 00:39:02,940
as his wife watched
from their house a few feet away.
293
00:39:03,116 --> 00:39:05,812
A neighbour heard what happened next.
294
00:39:22,368 --> 00:39:27,328
Karl Weiglein was just one of thousands
of victims of these flying court-martials.
295
00:39:28,374 --> 00:39:33,334
For his part in Weiglein's death,
Walter Fernau later served six years in prison.
296
00:40:02,208 --> 00:40:06,508
The ruins of Berlin
now became Hitler's final bolt hole
297
00:40:06,679 --> 00:40:09,842
as the Soviet Army advanced further west.
298
00:40:18,624 --> 00:40:24,085
Even Goebbels' propaganda
could not now conceal the reality -
299
00:40:24,297 --> 00:40:26,527
the F�hrer was a physical wreck.
300
00:41:43,409 --> 00:41:48,711
Yet even in these last desperate months,
Hitler remained the undisputed leader.
301
00:41:49,081 --> 00:41:54,041
The Italians had turned to their king
when they had grown sick of Mussolini,
302
00:41:54,220 --> 00:41:58,520
but in Germany
Hitler held all the levers of power.
303
00:41:58,691 --> 00:42:02,422
He was Germany's head of state
as well as her chancellor.
304
00:42:07,500 --> 00:42:12,301
The price the Germans paid
because Hitler remained their leader
305
00:42:12,471 --> 00:42:16,498
became heavier each day the war continued.
306
00:42:20,112 --> 00:42:24,708
Hitler had told his generals to close
their hearts to pity and act brutally.
307
00:42:25,084 --> 00:42:30,454
The advancing Soviet troops showed
they too had learned this Nazi lesson.
308
00:42:32,358 --> 00:42:36,988
On the very last day
of Hitler's life, April 30th, 1945,
309
00:42:37,163 --> 00:42:41,623
Soviet troops moved
into the East German town of Demmin
310
00:42:41,801 --> 00:42:44,269
and destroyed it.
311
00:42:44,704 --> 00:42:47,172
The Germans were reaping the consequences
312
00:42:47,340 --> 00:42:51,436
of the suffering their army had sown in the East.
313
00:42:51,777 --> 00:42:56,237
Waltraud Reski was 11
when the Soviet soldiers came.
314
00:42:56,415 --> 00:43:00,374
She saw what the Russians did to the women,
315
00:43:00,553 --> 00:43:02,680
including her own mother.
316
00:43:43,596 --> 00:43:47,555
Sooner than endure the Soviet occupation,
317
00:43:47,733 --> 00:43:51,692
more than 900 people in Demmin
committed suicide.
318
00:43:51,871 --> 00:43:56,831
Hundreds drowned themselves
here in the rivers which surround the town.
319
00:45:10,683 --> 00:45:15,643
It was Hitler and the Nazis
who had brought this suffering on Germany.
320
00:45:17,690 --> 00:45:21,649
Now the F�hrer, too, was to take his own life,
321
00:45:22,561 --> 00:45:27,362
but only when Soviet troops
were yards away from him.
322
00:45:39,879 --> 00:45:45,340
He shot himself shortly before 3.30
on the afternoon of 30th April, 1945.
323
00:45:57,229 --> 00:46:01,859
Nazism had been destroyed, but at a terrible cost.
324
00:46:04,737 --> 00:46:10,266
There were many reasons the Germans,
unlike the Italians, fought to the end -
325
00:46:10,476 --> 00:46:15,504
an inability to rid themselves of Hitler
and a fear of the approaching Soviet forces,
326
00:46:15,714 --> 00:46:19,946
people they had been taught to believe
were scarcely human.
327
00:46:24,423 --> 00:46:26,891
Hitler had said that when he died
328
00:46:27,059 --> 00:46:31,519
he would leave a great
and strong Germany behind him.
329
00:46:31,697 --> 00:46:34,598
Instead, he left a very different legacy -
330
00:46:34,800 --> 00:46:39,430
new knowledge
of what human beings are capable of.
331
00:46:54,453 --> 00:46:58,412
The German-born philosopher Karl Jaspers,
332
00:46:58,591 --> 00:47:02,891
himself persecuted by the Nazis,
wrote after the war,
333
00:47:03,062 --> 00:47:05,690
''That which has happened is a warning.
334
00:47:05,865 --> 00:47:08,333
''To forget it is guilt.
335
00:47:08,501 --> 00:47:11,299
''It was possible for this to happen
336
00:47:12,305 --> 00:47:18,822
30799
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