Original subtitles

(ominous music)

Germany. September the 12th, 1919.

(dramatic music)

At the Sterneckerbrau restaurant

located in the heart of Munich's Old Town,

history is about to be changed by a single man.

He was basically a loser.

I mean, his chosen profession, to be an artist,

it was a failure.

He barely earned a living.

There was nothing that would mark him out for greatness.

For the past few months,

a new political movement known as the German Workers' Party

has been holding regular meetings

at the Leiberzimmer on the first floor.

He had attended a lecture

in which a professor had advocated

a various splitting off from the rest of Germany.

He got up to rebut this professor

and he launched into a tirade.

And when he stopped speaking, he looked around

and he could see people with their mouths hanging open.

That stranger's rant

would impress Anton Drexler,

the founder of the German workers movement,

who would invite him to join the party.

Drexler would later write to a friend.

An absurd little man

has become number seven in our party.

13 years later on January the 30th, 1933,

and that absurd little man would be saluted

and acclaimed by thousands on the packed streets of Berlin

as the new chancellor of Germany.

We read that a funny little man called Hitler

had come into power in Germany.

(crowd cheering)

The Nazi Party became a huge organization,

and when we see the propaganda tactics that they did,

it becomes obvious how much money was needed.

But how was that even possible

when Germany had been on her knees economically

since the end of World War I?

(uneasy music)

Who paid for the massive propaganda machine

that helped Hitler become a media sensation,

tour the country in a private airplane,

and even build his own private army?

He's backed by these petitions

signed by prominent far-right politicians

and industrialists and bankers.

You've got a lot of powerful people supporting Hitler.

Was Hitler being manipulated

by the shadowy financiers and industrialists

who were funding his irresistible rise to power?

Or was Hitler the one doing the manipulating?

All along when they started to say

that he was a puppet of big business,

Hitler said, "Come and have a look

at the accounts of the Nazi Party,

and you'll see that all of our money

comes from membership fees."

(dramatic music)

(uneasy music)

August, 1936.

The height of the Nazis' glory and power.

Hitler was the supreme fuhrer of a resurgent German Reich.

Its growing economy was admired and envied

by leaders from around the world,

who flocked to the epic opening ceremony

of the Berlin Olympics.

Not even the triumphs of America's new track and field star

could spoil Hitler's opportunity

to show off on the world stage.

(spectators cheering)

(uneasy music)

A few months later, in a note in his diary,

Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels

couldn't help but reflect on the meteoric rise of the Nazis

since their chaotic attempt to stage a coup and seize power

in the aborted Munich Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.

How poor we were then.

The fuhrer tells how he wanted to shoot himself once

because the bill debt grew over his head.

Goebbels was writing about a time

when the very idea of Hitler as fuhrer of Germany

would have been laughable.

When the man who would become Germany's supreme leader

was fresh out of prison

for his failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923,

banned from speaking in public

and struggling to keep his party against internal divisions

and soaring financial debt.

This was the third devastating blow

Hitler had suffered in his life

after losing his beloved mother

to breast cancer when he was just 18.

And then, the humiliation of defeat

at the hands of Britain, France, and America

in the First World War.

(soft dramatic music)

Back then, Hitler was a mere army corporal.

Though Austrian by birth,

he had proved his loyalty to Germany

and her Prussian ideals by his bravery in the trenches.

There was nothing that would mark him out for greatness

except that he had won the Iron Cross.

When he joined the German army in World War I,

they put a rifle in his hand, they gave him self-discipline,

they taught him how to kill,

and he was a completely different character

coming out of that war.

(bomb whistles)

(explosion booms)

After the German capitulation,

Hitler feared for his future in the army,

the only place where he had so far found

the purpose and recognition that he was looking for,

but the impoverished and increasingly desperate

Weimar Republic would be fertile hunting ground

for his extremist ideas.

(uneasy music)

And of course, we have these sort of famous images

of people taking wheelbarrows full of money

to buy one loaf of bread and a bit of ham.

It is absolutely chaotic.

You know, the country is in a mess,

so that creates a lot of resentment,

and what you get emerging in Germany

is increasing political fanaticism.

So what you've got is a country

becoming more and more poor, more and more fanatical.

It's the perfect breeding ground

for a fanatic like Adolf Hitler.

During his military service,

Hitler had shown he had the gift of gab

and a knack with public speaking,

with which he had openly voiced

his strong nationalist beliefs.

This was something the new German army,

the Reichswehr, could make good use of.

At the end of the war, he would be drafted

into the army's new education and propaganda division.

He kept on an army salary and his job

was to talk to the troops before they were demobilized

and keep them loyal to Germany and the army,

keep them from going over to communism.

And his commander was a Captain Mayer

who spotted his talent early.

Captain Karl Mayer

was a young ambitious officer

with a talent for picking the right agents

and choosing the right missions.

These skills earned him the commanding post

of the education and propaganda department in Munich,

and he would be the man who,

with the help of the army's secret slush fund,

would kickstart the Hitler money trail.

(tense music)

In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles

had dictated that the German army

should be limited to only 100,000 men.

To tackle these terms, the commanding officers

created a special money reserve

that would be kept under the noses

of the allied supervising commission

and finance a secret army reserve

named the Black Reichswehr.

This was mostly formed

by nationalist private paramilitary organizations

made up of demobilized soldiers from the Great War

and known as the Freikorps,

who would be used to fight and contain

the growing number of communist uprisings in the streets.

There's no doubt that some of these paramilitary groups

were being financed by the army

because the army had the intention of suppressing socialism.

In a way, the army in Germany

was a kind of state within a state.

It was sort of saying, look, we call the shots here.

We want to have a big say in who rules Germany.

So that's why the army was getting involved.

Black Reichswehr funds would also be used

to infiltrate newly emerging political organizations

and disrupt those who could pose

a potential threat to the army

or support those who were sympathetic to their aims,

such as the German Workers' Party.

They get Hitler to go along to a meeting

of this Deutsche Workers' Party led by Anton Drexler,

and he goes along.

He's supposed to actually be eavesdropping on them

to take information.

And that's how Adolf Hitler would be invited

to join the German Workers' Party, the DAP,

which would eventually become the Nazi Party.

Karl Mayer trusted his agent's capacity

and would give him an extra 20 gold marks a week

on top of his salary for the young corporal to help

in the fledgling party's expansion.

Mayer's investment paid off.

In just a few weeks,

Hitler would organize his first public speech

on October the 16th, 1919,

before an audience of 111 people.

On February the 20th of the following year,

more than 2000 would listen to the presentation

of the 25-point party program at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich.

(dramatic music)

Hitler would soon become the party's star speaker,

mesmerizing audiences hungry for someone

who could show them new direction.

In 1921, Hitler would be elected

the leader of the now-rebranded

National Socialist German Workers' Party,

and his rapid rise to prominence would be noticed

by the party's first serious potential financiers.

(dramatic music continues)

(uneasy music)

Having helped to put the newly-rebranded

National Socialist Workers' Party on the map,

star speaker Corporal Adolf Hitler

was attracting attention from some unexpected circles.

(man speaking in foreign language)

Then there were those who,

besides financing Hitler personally,

would also become fundraisers for the party.

The first would be Dietrich Eckart,

one of the founding members of the party

and a father figure to Hitler,

who would introduce his protege

to the higher echelons of German society.

Then there was Emil Ganser,

the man who would introduce the Nazis

to the Berlin business community, organized lectures,

and organized fundraising trips to Switzerland.

There was also Ernst Hanfstaengl,

who would loan 1000 US dollars

to bail out the party's newspaper from bankruptcy

and would become one of Hitler's close confidants.

Kurt Ludecke, a shady dandy

who made a small fortune gambling and with dodgy businesses

who became the international fundraiser

and the man who would connect the Nazis

with the Italian fascists.

(uneasy music)

And also Max Erwin Scheubner-Richter,

a Baltic German who fought the Bolsheviks

during the Russian Civil War

and who would become a key connection

with exiled white Russian families all over Europe.

But still, all the money raised

was inadequate to cover the party's growing expenses.

When we sort of talk about the influences on Hitler

in terms of money,

we need to be clear about how much money is being given.

And in this sense,

we're talking about minuscule amounts of money.

It helped Hitler to take over.

Hitler didn't have a job

and he wasn't claiming unemployment benefits,

so therefore he needed some money.

Bigger donations would soon start to arrive,

and when they did, they'd come from an improbable source.

If you read "The New York Times"

from the 20th of December 1922,

that early on, that article accuses none other

than the very, very rich and famous

American industrialist Henry Ford

of actually supporting the Nazis.

Among the Nazi Party's most fervent

and prominent early supporters

in the early 1920s was Winifred Wagner,

the daughter-in-law of famous composer Richard.

(dramatic music)

While touring the US with her husband in the early 1920s,

the Wagners would be invited to the estate

of famous American car manufacturer Henry Ford for dinner.

Later, when interviewed by writer and historian James Pool,

Frau Wagner would confirm the rumors.

When I was doing my interviews with Frau Wagner,

who was the daughter-in-law of the composer Richard Wagner,

I said to her, "Some people think Ford gave Hitler money."

And she said, "Oh, I know he did."

I said, "Well, how do you know?"

She said, "I was the one that arranged it."

The money was transferred by a man

who worked for Ford named Boris Brasol.

So Brasol had been a Russian prosecutor

and after he fled Russia, escaped successfully,

and then went to work for Ford.

So it was Boris Brasol that carried the money

from the US to Germany,

where it was given to Kirill Romanov,

who was the pretender to the throne,

passed it to Ludendorff, and then to Hitler.

There was never any evidence of this.

There were no documents on it.

Fortunately, I was just in my 20s

when I interviewed Frau Wagner

and she was about 80 at the time.

And then in a couple of years, she died.

So she was the last living link that knew this.

One name from this secret transaction,

who would go on to play a crucial role

in Hitler's money trail, was Erich Ludendorff.

(dramatic tense music)

General Ludendorff, a German war hero of great standing,

would become an important conduit

between right-wing militarist organizations like the Nazis

and prominent industrialists

like German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen.

In 1923, he meets Ludendorff,

who at the time is a very pivotal figure

in the Nazi movement.

And Ludendorff says, "Look, come on,

why don't you come along and watch a speech by Hitler?"

And, you know, Thyssen of course is thinking,

"Who is this guy?

You know, "I never heard of him."

(man speaking in foreign language)

I followed his advice.

I attended several public meetings organized by Hitler.

(crowd applauding)

What impressed me most was the order

that reigned in his meetings,

the almost military discipline of his followers.

(tense music)

(lively music) (singing in foreign language)

Military discipline at Hitler's public meetings

was kept by the Nazi Sturmabteilung, the SA,

the paramilitary wing of the party

that not only provided security in the rallies

but were dispatched into German cities to stir up trouble,

which they could then brutally suppress.

(lively music continues)

There's a famous Elton John song

that's called "Saturday Night Is Alright For Fighting,"

but in Weimar Germany,

every night was all right for fighting

because there was fighting all the time,

tremendous violence.

It was German nationalist and Hitler confidant

Kurt Ludecke who would take that bunch of Nazi thugs

to the next level.

He alone would finance the first uniforms, weapons,

and logistics, and appoint as their head

an old comrade of Hitler's and an early party member,

Captain Ernst Rohm.

Ernst Rohm was one of the leading figures

in the Reichswehr, in the army.

He was actually the commander of Hitler.

He was all ready in this German Workers' Party.

We don't know whether he was in the party to infiltrate it,

but there's good evidence that yes, he was.

Rohm had a keen eye for business,

and right after the end of the Great War

he'd made a tidy sum of money

by smuggling weapons to the Freikorps.

All his deals were off the books and highly illegal.

His efficiency in moving weaponry

illegally under the noses of the authorities

earned him the respect of the Black Reichswehr

and which in turn enabled him to recruit

experienced military men to the Nazi cause.

Rohm definitely had access to weapons.

He had access to, for example,

it was very important for Hitler

to be able to mobilize his men

and go from one town to another.

Rohm had access to trucks, to suppliers,

so he was a key figure very early on.

There's no evidence actually linking payments

to Rohm from the army,

and then he gives wages to the storm troopers.

No, the storm troopers paid membership fees

to the Nazi Party, and then the Nazi party

may have helped them out, you know, some beer,

which they would have liked, some food,

but it wasn't very rich enough

at that stage to actually do anything.

The Nazi Party didn't have a lot of funds in the early days.

With Rohm now on board

and the Thyssen-Ludendorff axis now in place,

they had the beginnings of a network

of senior military figures and industrialists

which could bring in a steady flow of money and manpower

to the party's cause.

Fritz Thyssen in particular was now ready

to place a big bet on Hitler and the Nazis.

I gave him about 100,000 Deutsche Marks.

That was my first contribution

to the National Socialist Party.

These funds, however, I delivered neither to Hitler,

neither to Scheubner-Richter, but to Ludendorff,

who I desire to use it as best as he could.

I did not examine the details of the plans

evolved by him and Hitler.

I have already said that I did not wish to mix in politics.

And Hitler and Ludendorff had an audacious plan

to put Thyssen's money to work straight away.

He hears about Mussolini's March on Rome,

so he knows that the fascism is on the rise,

and he has this idea that, you know,

they wanna take over the local Bavarian government,

then they're gonna march on Berlin.

Emboldened by Mussolini's dramatic move,

Hitler took to the streets of Munich on November 9th, 1923

with 3000 of his stormtroopers,

supported by Ludendorff and other prominent nationalists,

demanding the Nazi Party be installed

as the new government of Bavaria.

Unlike Mussolini's PNF, however,

there was no public acclaim for the Nazis

and no popular uprising in their support.

Instead, armed police were sent in

to break up the insurrection.

The resulting violence left 14 Nazis dead

and Hitler and his leadership colleagues on the run.

They would all be rounded up and tried as conspirators

for plotting to overthrow the government.

(people clamoring)

With Hitler in prison and the Nazis in disgrace,

he and Thyssen would have to go their separate ways.

(gun firing)

But not for long.

(dramatic wistful music)

(tense music)

Emerging from his nine-month incarceration

in Landsberg Prison,

Hitler knew exactly what he needed to do

to revive his and the Nazis fortunes.

Hitler decides that he's gonna stop

trying to overthrow the government,

'cause he realizes that's gonna be impossible

if the army don't support him.

He can't try and do it by a civil insurrection.

He changes tack.

He decides he's gonna take the legal route to power.

He's gonna create now a proper political party

with membership fees, organization.

It's gonna fight elections, it's gonna need money,

and he's gonna try and win in the ballot box

and come to power legally.

Now, that's important because he's given up

being the street fighter and the revolutionary

for being the manipulator.

His single focus was to grow the Nazi Party

and he was clever at selecting

good businessmen as his allies.

For example, key man was a man named Max Amann.

Max Amann had been a bank manager,

had been Hitler's sergeant major during the war.

Hitler picked people that he knew he could absolutely trust.

(tense music)

Indeed, Max Amann

couldn't be a better party business manager

since he was pretty much the opposite of Hitler.

He was highly organized, hardworking,

and his banking experience allowed him

to obtain credit on good terms.

He would also be trusted with the running

of the Nazi propaganda press.

Where Hitler would think about content,

Amann would think about sales and distribution,

and that's how he would come up with a new idea.

Though the Beer Hall Putsch

may have been in reality a bloody farce,

in Amann's hands it would be mythologized

as an act of supreme self-sacrifice by Hitler and the Nazis.

And this is what makes them such amazing politicians,

is that they later will turn that disaster

into a kind of moment of significance, of trial,

a key moment in the establishment

of this new political religion.

And so when Hitler ends up in prison,

it looks as if he's become even more

of a kind of Christ-like figure.

He's suffering for his politics.

He alone is the man who's sacrificing himself.

For the Nazis,

there was no such thing as bad publicity,

and Amann was confident

that they could capitalize on this momentum,

so he encouraged Hitler to work

on his autobiography while in prison.

The book would be published

in the summer after Hitler's release

with the title "Mein Kampf," or "My Struggle."

Hitler was betting on it as the political manifesto

for the party's new direction.

Amann was thinking about the profits.

Although its initial impact was disappointing,

in time it would make Hitler millions.

In actual fact, "Mein Kampf" doesn't sell

very well, originally.

I think it sells about 10,000 copies between '25 and '27.

It's not a best seller, let's put it that way.

(tense music)

The lukewarm reaction to "Mein Kampf"

put Hitler in a bind.

With a ban on the Nazi Party still in place,

how could he hope to get this message

out to the German people?

In February, 1925, the Bavarian government

agreed to lift the ban on the Nazi Party

on certain conditions.

Conditions which Hitler, in his excitement,

broke within 24 hours

at his first public speaking engagement.

The ban was immediately reinstated for a further two years.

It was a very difficult period for him.

He gets out of prison after the German recovery has begun.

The currency was stabilized and the economy was pretty good.

Consequently, a party like Hitler's

doesn't attract many people.

(uneasy music)

Since Hitler was banned from speaking in public,

he would resort to small secretive meetings

held in tiny secluded rooms

with select businessmen and industrialists.

But this tactic failed initially to get results.

Big companies, they don't want to be attached

with something that's gonna bring them bad publicity.

So what we know is that the major industrialists

in the Weimar period, they support the traditional parties,

not the socialist parties, but the liberal parties,

the conservative parties that are around.

Why would they want to get involved with the Nazi Party?

It's going nowhere.

It's just a group of fringe people out on the streets.

A respectable company would not want to get involved in it.

But on a spring evening in 1927,

while giving a secret speech in Essen,

there would be one man who would listen to Hitler

and decide to take him seriously.

80-year-old Emil Kirdorf.

(man speaking in foreign language)

Kirdorf and Hitler would first meet

on July the 4th, 1927

at the Bruckmann's villa in Munich.

The Chimney Baron, as Kirdorf was known,

was very favorably impressed by Hitler's views

and was curious about what else he would hear in person.

The inexorable logic

and clear conciseness of his train of thought

filled me with such enthusiasm with what he said.

I asked him to write a pamphlet

on the topics he had discussed with me.

Hitler did as Kirdorf asked

and wrote a brochure titled "Der Weg zum Wiederaufstieg,"

or "The Road to Resurgence."

Since some of the content was not deemed appropriate

for the more working-class members of the party,

it was kept as a secret publication

for distribution to a privileged few.

Kirdorf, who became a member of the party

in August of that year,

would personally hand the brochure

to his closest associates and clients.

The Chimney Baron would also introduce Hitler

to his better-acquainted business colleagues

in formal meetings held at his home.

In this setting, Hitler had the chance

to use his persuasive charm

to explain his plans for the future of Germany.

(man speaking in foreign language)

Although Hitler made a good impression,

there were no financial results from this meeting

besides Kirdorf's regular contributions.

And Kirdorf wasn't just contributing

out of the goodness of his heart.

He had a very specific agenda and plan for the party.

He would start to infiltrate his own people into the party

and try to push the Nazis into a more pro-capitalist,

pro-business direction.

This was something that the party's working class faction,

led by Gregor Strasser, resented and resisted.

Used to getting things done his way,

on August the 12th, 1928, Emil Kirdorf

would write his letter of resignation from the NSDAP.

The Nazis had lost their main benefactor.

Nevertheless, things were about to get better for them.

In 1928, the Nazi Party polls about 2.8% of voters.

So the strategy of come into power peacefully

isn't working that well.

In 1930, though, the vote goes up to round about 12%

and about 6 million people vote Nazi.

So something happened between 1928 and 1930.

(people chattering)

What happens is a global economic collapse.

On October the 29th, 1929,

the American stock markets crashed

and the Great Depression began.

Germany was back in a deep economic crisis,

just like in the good old days before the Beer Hall Putsch,

when the Nazis had first started to become popular.

(man speaking in foreign language)

Fear and growing unrest

at the economic downturn was catnip to the Nazi Party cause.

When the opportunity came

to buy the recently vacated Palais Barlow in Munich,

named after its English owner,

Hitler saw it as the ideal place for the new party seat.

But once again, money was a problem.

Hitler approach Kirdorf again for money,

and Kirdorf was having business problems.

And so then Kirdorf passed him on to Thyssen.

Kirdorf would arrange a meeting

between Fritz Thyssen and Rudolf Hess in late 1928,

but Thyssen wasn't so keen on just giving away his money,

so he opted to facilitate a generous bank loan

through a Dutch bank.

Thyssen was back on the Hitler money trail.

And then he then becomes, very, very quickly,

a huge financier of the Nazi Party

and even admits as such in his biography.

And he, you know, he calls it "I Paid Hitler,"

and, you know, he claims he's donated

more than a million marks to the Nazi movement.

So Thyssen money is really important.

In 1929, when Germany wasn't

repaying their loans,

the Allies reorganized the payment system

into what would become known as the Young Plan.

Although it reduced the debt,

it would have a heavier burden

for the country in the longer term.

And many Germans, especially in the business world,

would be against it.

Thyssen would be one of them,

and that's when he decided to join the Nazis

with an old political ally of his,

German Nationalist People's Party leader Alfred Hugenberg.

Hugenberg was a wealthy man.

Not an industrialist, but he was a media tycoon.

He owned cinemas and newspapers all over Germany

and he was really the leader of the nationalist right.

Thyssen and Hugenberg already had

the largest paramilitary right-wing organization

in the country, called the Stahlhelm,

and the Pan-German League

in the coalition against the Young Plan.

But they were missing the support from the working class

that Hitler and the Nazis could lend to their cause.

While an alliance with the Nazis

helped create a much broader coalition

against the Young Plan,

the alliance gave Hitler what he craved,

financial stability.

(dramatic music)

We shall carry on our propaganda

at the expense of the others.

At least we are gaining access to the funds

which until now were reserved for German nationalists.

On July 9th, 1929,

Hitler and the Nazis joined the committee

to support a new law,

the law against the enslavement of the German people.

Designed to undermine and ultimately destroy the Young Plan,

the Liberty Law, as it became known,

not only called for the rejection of the Young Plan

but the immediate cancellation to all war reparations.

The law would be submitted to the popular vote

in a nationwide referendum

to be held on December 22nd that year.

And then Hitler's on the newsreels

and all of Hugenberg's cinemas.

And this is a big break.

Though the Liberty Law

would ultimately not be passed,

the Nazis had many reasons to celebrate.

Their fame, membership, and money had grown as never before.

The worse things became with the Great Depression,

the better it would become for the Nazis.

When, in September 1930, the government collapsed

due to the economic crisis

and new elections were called,

the Nazis would become the second largest party

in parliament with 107 seats.

And in that period,

Hitler's message starts to get through.

I am the savior.

And it gets through, first of all,

not in the cities, but in the rural areas,

'cause the rural areas suffer even more

in this depression.

(dramatic music)

The Nazi success in the elections

would attract the curiosity of a prominent figure

who would change the Nazis' economic policies,

president of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht.

Like Thyssen and the nationalists,

Schacht himself was a critic of the Young Plan

and would resign as president of the Reichsbank in late 1930

and started to tour the world campaigning against it.

During a trip to the United States,

Schacht would read "Mein Kampf"

and started to look at Hitler and the situation in Germany

from a different perspective.

(dramatic music)

(man speaking in foreign language)

Sometime after his return to Germany,

Schacht would attend a dinner at the house of his friend,

bank manager Emil Georg von Stauss.

Among the guests, he would meet someone

who was already a prominent figure on Hitler's money trail,

World War I fighter-ace-turned-socialite

and nationalist politician Hermann Goring.

(man speaking in foreign language)

Goring, the great World War I flying ace,

was a famous figure,

and his aristocratic wife Carin were energetic socialites

who could move in circles still closed to Hitler.

He would prove an important player in Hitler's plan

to woo big business.

On January the 5th, 1931,

the Gorings would hold a New Year's dinner

at their lavishly refurbished house.

Among the guests were Thyssen, Adolf Hitler,

and Hjalmar Schacht.

This was the ideal opportunity

for Hitler to impress, and he did not disappoint.

Everything he said

he stated as incontrovertible truth.

Nevertheless, his ideas were not unreasonable.

With the former head of the Reichsbank

now in his camp,

together with one of the country's

leading industrialists and a war hero,

Hitler was finally going places.

(tense music)

(soft music)

1931 was the year when Hitler intensified

his approach to big business.

Crisscrossing the country,

he would stop off wherever he could

to give public lectures, receptions, and dinners,

trying to forge new alliances

and lobby for donations to the party.

Really significant break that Hitler had

was when Fritz Towson

gets a speaking engagement for him

at the Industry Club in Dusseldorf.

That was where all the big industrialists.

So here Hitler has a chance

to talk to the wealthiest man in Germany and he needs money.

(elegant music)

On January 27th, 1932,

Thyssen would introduce Adolf Hitler

to some of the wealthiest men in Germany.

Sure, many of the guests would give some generous donations,

but there would be a few who joined the party

in the following days

and whose support would grow over time.

By 1932, the Nazi Party is in much better financial shape.

It's expanded, it's consolidated,

and its financial problems are well on their way

to being solved.

You know, it's got a lot of responsibility.

It employs thousands of people.

You know, each district, known as a Gaul,

had at least a thousand people working for the Nazi Party.

That's a lot of people to look after.

But of course the party needs to keep growing.

In that year, Adolf Hitler decided to make

his most ambitious move so far,

to run in the German presidential elections.

And when he learned that he could only campaign

for seven days for the runoff,

he thought about a bold way to reach the most people

in that short period of time, to fly.

Through Goring's connections in the aviation industry,

the company Lufthansa provided an aircraft

for Hitler's exclusive use

to enable him to crisscross the country

in double-quick time.

(man speaking in foreign language)

Despite the immense success

and popularity of Hitler's campaign,

he would lose narrowly

to incumbent president Paul von Hindenburg.

Yet this massive investment would pay off

at the following federal elections three months later.

He gets 37% of the votes.

Over 12 million people are voting Nazi

of their own free will.

Now, in that election,

he starts to attract white collar workers in big cities,

upper class civil servants.

He attracts people from the higher echelons of society,

not because they're losing their jobs

but they fear they're gonna lose their jobs.

(tense music)

But despite his apparent success,

this election would have a sting in the tail for Hitler,

when President Hindenburg refused

to nominate him as chancellor,

preferring instead conservative party leader

Franz von Papen.

The cost of both electoral campaigns

had left the Nazi Party in desperate need of further funds,

and to make matters worse,

their main benefactor, Fritz Thyssen,

had money worries of his own

and was having to nationalize part of his empire

to avoid bankruptcy.

Still, the Nazis were now the strongest party in parliament

and they wouldn't hesitate to use their influence

to leverage political and economic advantage.

But what Hitler was good at doing

was getting money out of people.

So in many ways, it's kind of like a mafia operation.

You know, give us the money,

and if you don't, maybe bad things are gonna happen to you.

And this is when one of Germany's

largest industrial conglomerates

would join Hitler's money trail,

the massive chemical cartel IG Farben.

Founded in 1925 as the conglomeration

of six leading chemical companies,

IG Farben would become one of

the largest industrial corporations in Europe.

But they had a problem.

They make a food dye called butter yellow

that was put into the butter in most of Europe.

And they discovered that their workers

that handled this food dye were getting cancer

at a much higher rate than the general public.

It was about to break as a scandal in the Reichstag,

so they went to the Nazis and said,

"If you can suppress this, our money will flow to you."

And this was the beginning

of perhaps the most infamous partnership

with big business during the Third Reich

and the Second World War.

(soft dramatic music)

This is a company that really gets involved

with Hitler's regime.

It actually helps to finance the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

it's a kind of, if you like,

private enterprise state activity

where the SS and the IG Farben join together

but it is what you call a partner in crime.

With IG Farben's backing,

the Nazis would use their strength in the Reichstag

to overthrow von Papen's government

in a vote of no confidence.

New elections were called

and Hitler and the Nazis would once again

be the outright winners,

although with a marginally reduced majority.

This is when Fritz Thyssen and Hjalmar Schacht

would make their crucial move

to put pressure on President Paul Hindenburg

to nominate Hitler as chancellor.

They drafted a petition called Industrielleneingabe.

(man speaking in foreign language)

The old president would once again

stubbornly refuse to nominate Hitler as chancellor.

Even though he had won the latest election,

Hitler was worse off than he had ever been before.

To regain the political initiative, he needed a miracle.

And the saint who would perform this miracle

would be none other than former chancellor von Papen,

whom the Nazis had helped overthrow the previous summer.

Von Papen was desperate to find a path back to power

and thought he might succeed in convincing Hitler

to accept the vice-chancellorship of the state

with him as chancellor,

but Hitler was ready for this offer

and told von Papen that he would only agree to such a deal

if he, Hitler, were nominated chancellor

with von Papen as vice chancellor.

Von Papen, naively thinking that with Hindenburg's help

he could control Hitler and the Nazis, stupidly agreed.

(crowd chattering)

(man speaking in foreign language)

(bright music)

After 13 years of struggling

for every penny to keep his party's head above water,

Hitler's rise to power was achieved

with something that no money in the world could buy,

von Papen's naivete.

A few days later, von Papen would meet

with President Hindenburg to make his case.

He says to Hindenburg, you know,

in six months we'll have them squeaking in the corner

like a mouse.

And so Hindenburg says,

"Okay, I'll go along with (indistinct)

but God help me if I'm wrong here."

God help him, indeed.

The only consolation would be that he would not live

to see the catastrophe he had unleashed.

(tense dramatic music)