All language subtitles for 2 - Chaos and Consent.en

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The Nazis were obsessed with images of order.

In their museums,
exhibits like this glass man

showed how the perfect human body
was ordered into one interlocking whole.

Through their parades and pageants,

they sought to show
how one individual human being

was but a part of the ordered national community.

But in Germany, the Nazis
only created an illusion of order.

On January 30th, 1933,

Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

Chief among those who rejoiced at this

were the Nazi Storm Troopers,
the party's paramilitary wing

led by Hitler's old party comrade, Ernst R�hm.

(MILITARY BAND PLAYS)

(SINGING)

In '33, you thought it was the beginning

of a new, German, wonderful period.

It was a true, enthusiastic movement
in the people,

except the people who were,

by their hearts, socialists,

and were, from the beginning,

prosecuted and had to emigrate
or went in concentration camps.

One knew of these concentration camps.

We said, ''So what? The Communists
would have done the same thing.

''This is a revolution.''

First to be imprisoned in this revolution

were the Nazis' political opponents,

Communists and socialists,

who were rounded up and thrown
into hastily-built concentration camps.

Hermann G�ring boasted
that scores were being settled,

all in an atmosphere of chaotic terror,

as one Nazi Storm Trooper admitted.

''Everyone is arresting everyone else,

''avoiding the prescribed official channels.

''Everyone is threatening everyone else
with protective custody.

''Everyone is threatening everyone else
with Dachau.

''Every little street-cleaner today feels

''he is responsible for matters

''which he has never understood. ''

Amongst the first to suffer
was Josef Felder, a Social Democrat MP.

He was sent to the newly-opened
Nazi concentration camp outside Munich,

Dachau.

Josef Felder was released from Dachau

after 18 months.

The majority of those imprisoned here in 1933
were released after less than a year.

The regime here was brutal.

Beatings and psychological torture
were commonplace.

But the Nazi extermination camps
were not yet born.

The camps were a tool of oppression,

not yet of systematic murder.

In 1933, to many Germans,

they were an acceptable part
of the Nazi revolution.

The closest is the French Revolution.

To be a French nobleman in the Bastille
was not so agreeable, either.

So people said, ''This is a revolution.

''It was an astonishing, peaceful revolution,
but partly it is a revolution.''

And that sort of thing.

The concentration camps, everybody said,

''The English have invented them
in South Africa with the Boers.''

You know...

People couldn't look ahead.

It's impossible for somebody in '33

to look ahead to '45.

You can't.

It was only 12 years,

but it seems to be too much
to look ahead for 12 years.

But Germans only had to look fewer
than 12 weeks into Hitler's chancellorship

to see what the status of the Jews
would be in the new Nazi state.

On April 1st, 1933,

the party organised a boycott
of all Jewish shops, which lasted one day.

The Nazis had made the Jews
scapegoats for the loss of World War One,

and much else besides.

In those early months of the Nazi reign,

German Jews also fell victim
to the Storm Troopers' violent attacks.

In 1933,

the Storm Troopers came

and took my father away.

Together with many other Jews in Nuremberg,

they were taken to...

a sports stadium with a lot of grass.

They were made to cut the grass
with their teeth by sort of eating the grass.

But I found that out afterwards.

My father never talked about it.

They used to humiliate them

to show them that they were the lowest of the low.

Simply to make a...a gesture.

Nazi Storm Troopers
made other violent gestures.

In 1933, together with sympathetic students,

they organised burnings of unsuitable books,

particularly those by Jewish authors.

(SINGING)

R�hm wanted his Storm Troopers
integrated into the regular German army.

The army was horrified.

Hitler sympathised with the revolutionary
zeal of R�hm and his Storm Troopers,

but by the summer of 1934 he knew
that their power had to be curbed -

and not just curbed to please the army.

R�hm had made a more dangerous enemy
than the army leadership.

Heinrich Himmler, ambitious for power,

and still technically working to R�hm
in the Nazi hierarchy,

plotted his downfall.

He concocted a story that R�hm was
plotting a coup, and Hitler believed him.

On June 30th, 1934,
when R�hm was on holiday in Bavaria,

he was arrested and taken to a nearby prison.

Two days later he was shot.

The armed forces were grateful,

glad to see the power
of the Storm Troopers moderated.

In gratitude, they volunteered
to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler -

the man who, on Hindenburg's death,
was not just Germany's Chancellor

but also her head of state.

(TROOPS REPEAT)

Somebody was reading,

and we had to lift our arm,

and at the end say, ''That's my oath. ''

(INTERVIEWER)
And how seriously did you take this oath?

Very serious. I mean, a soldier...

This accompanied my life till the very end.

I mean, er...

oath is oath.

There's no doubt that I can't break it.

Otherwise I'm meant to commit suicide

if I planned something else.

But this...this...this is...

very serious, the oath, for a soldier.

With R�hm dead,
Hitler appeared to have restored order.

Revolution on the streets had subsided.

With his hold on power secure,
Hitler would come here to relax

in the mountains above Berchtesgaden
in southern Bavaria.

In 1938, a tea house was built
on top of the high Obersalzberg

so that Hitler and his guests could enjoy the view.

Hitler's house was lower down the mountain.

A complex of buildings grew up around it.

This was the official guest house.

But all that remains of Hitler's own house,
the Berghof, is rubble.

The building was demolished
to prevent it becoming a memorial,

and quick-growing trees planted
to obscure the famous view.

When Hitler stayed here,
as well as when he was in Berlin,

the Nazi regime revolved around him.

His personality determined
the way in which Germany was governed.

His was not the regime of a workaholic.

Hitler was indolent, as those
who worked closely for him discovered.

Hitler appeared shortly before lunch,

read through the newspaper cuttings
of Reich Press Chief Dietrich,

and then went in to lunch.

When Hitler stayed at the Obersalzberg,
it was even worse.

There he never left his room before two
in the afternoon, then he went in to lunch.

He spent most afternoons taking a walk.

In the evenings, straight after dinner,
there were films.

In the 12 years of his rule in Germany,

Hitler produced the biggest
confusion in government

that has ever existed in a civilised state.

I've sometimes secured decisions from him -

even ones about important matters -

without his ever asking to see the relevant files.

He took the view that many things
sorted themselves out on their own

if one did not interfere.

A different picture of Hitler was projected here

at the vast complex of stadiums
built in Nuremberg for the party's annual rally.

(ECHO OF MASSED VOICES)

What the public saw of Hitler
in Nuremberg in the 1930s

was a confident and strong leader

whose oratory promised a new,
dynamic and powerful Germany.

Heil, mein Jugend!

Heil, mein F�hrer!

(CHEERING)

He was meant to be seen
as the all-powerful, all-knowing leader

who prevailed over a system

of total order, but the contrast
between image and reality was a stark one.

Far from it being
a very orderly structure of command,

in fact it was very disorganised

and rather chaotic.

It is really quite a remarkable system,
if you can call it a system at all,

where there is no collective government,

but yet where the head of state actually
doesn't spend all his time dictating.

# Wochenend und Sonnenschein

# Und dann mit dir im Wald allein

# Weiter brauch' ich nichts
zum Gl�cklichsein

# Wochenend und Sonnenschein! #

Hitler and the Nazis created a unique
and peculiar form of government.

Hitler was surrounded by acolytes

who knew that their future
depended on pleasing their F�hrer.

They strove always to be near him,

accompanying him
on whatever trips took his fancy.

# Tief im Wald nur ich und du

# Der Herrgott dr�ckt ein Auge zu

# Denn er schenkt uns ja
zum Gl�cklichsein... #

Though Hitler had little interest in regular
hours of work or the detail of policies,

he had visions
of what he wanted for Germany.

As Hitler talked in an endless monologue,

ambitious Nazis listened to him closely.

# Wochenend und Sonnenschein
Und dann mit dir im Wald allein... #

Then, on their own initiative,

they tried to think of ways in which
his vision could become a reality.

They made up the policy and said they
were acting on the will of the F�hrer.

From the first, Hitler openly said
he didn't have detailed policies.

(CHEERING)

But Hitler was open in saying what
he wanted from the German economy -

weapons to build a new German army.

Rearmament became his economic priority.

The Nazis increased the army's budget
so much in their first year of power

that the army
wasn't even able to spend all of it.

The Nazis also promised to rid Germany
of unemployment, and they did -

mainly through work creation schemes
like the autobahn building programme.

But building armaments and autobahns

could only be a short-term solution

to Germany's economic problems.

It would take time for these
inflationary pressures to be felt.

And so, for the moment,
everything looked rosy,

especially when Hitler ordered troops
into the demilitarised portion of Germany,

the Rhineland.

There was little international protest.

Germans saw all this as one more sign

that they were regaining self-respect.

Nazis organised pageants to entertain,

like the Nacht der Amazonen,
the Night of the Amazons,

held in Munich in the 1930s,

celebrations in which only those
the Nazis considered racially pure

could participate.

But if you didn't fit the Nazi image
of the perfect German, life was very different.

Here in Munich, the same city
where the Night of the Amazons was held,

the Nazis demolished
one of the biggest synagogues in Germany.

They said they wanted the space for a car park.

The Jews were excluded from German life.

The 1935 Nuremberg Laws

outlawed marriage between
Jews and other Germans

and declared that Jews were not German citizens.

Other discrimination followed.

(INTERVIEWER)
Wasn't it a problem for you

that you were working in a system

that allowed Jews

to be pushed out of this...?

Out of their position.
To lose their wealth, their property.

Surely this was a great injustice.

How did you feel about that?

Anti-Semitic propaganda exaggerated
the number of Jews in professions

like the law or the theatre.

Nazis never gave the reason why Jews
were concentrated in some walks of life -

that the Jews had been banned
from other careers for hundreds of years.

Thousands of Jews emigrated
from Germany during the 1930s,

realising that there could never be
a safe place for them in German society

for as long as the Nazis ruled.

Those who remained always risked
the attentions of the secret state police,

the infamous Gestapo.

Here in the town of W�rzburg lies a clue

to how the Gestapo operated under the Nazis.

Almost all Gestapo files were burnt
by the Nazis as the Allies entered Germany,

but in W�rzburg, American soldiers
prevented their destruction.

Only recently have the files been studied,

and a surprising picture emerges
of how the Gestapo functioned.

To start with, far from there being
a Gestapo officer on every street corner,

there were only 28 secret police officials

for W�rzburg's nearly one million people.

I think the Gestapo could not have operated

without the cooperation

of the citizens of Germany.

By that, I mean it would really have been...

structurally impossible for them to do so.

There were simply not enough
Gestapo officials to go around.

Somewhere between 80 and 90%
of the crimes that were reported to the Gestapo

came from ordinary citizens.

The main job for the Gestapo

was...sorting out...

the denunciations.

This seems to have been their preoccupation.

(NARRATOR) The citizens of W�rzburg
didn't so much have to fear the Gestapo

as what their neighbours might tell the Gestapo.

Every German was at risk from denunciation.

A woman who lived in this house
on the outskirts of W�rzburg in 1938

first came to the attention of the Gestapo
when she was denounced by a relative.

She was called Ilse Sonja Totzke,

and her Gestapo file lies in the W�rtzburg archive.

After years of denunciations
and Gestapo harassment,

she was sent to Ravensbr�ck
concentration camp, where she died.

Her crime was simple.

She didn't fit in. She avoided
her neighbours and had Jewish friends.

She is put under

very general surveillance,

not by the Gestapo

but by the Gestapo asking
her neighbours to keep an eye on her.

What happens is that
one neighbour after another,

for one reason or another,
come forward with information.

But all of it adds up to really one thing.

She may be just too unconventional
for her own good.

Of course, what this does

is that small-town mentality people keep after her.

They keep noticing her.

And it's fuelled again and again

by yet another denunciation.

(NARRATOR) The denunciations in her file
contain mostly gossip about her -

that she is acting suspiciously
and has shady friends -

but her file contains little that amounts
to firm evidence against her.

One denunciation
hints that she may be a lesbian.

It says, ''Miss Totzke does not seem
to have normal predispositions,'' in red.

It is signed only ''Heil Hitler.''

One denunciation bears the signature
of a 20-year-old neighbour, Resi Kraus.

''Since March, 1938,

''Ilse Sonja Totzke is a resident
next door to us in a garden cottage.

''She rarely has visitors.

''Now and then, a woman
of about 36 years old comes,

''and she is of Jewish appearance.

''She has always been sympathetic...

''Miss Totzke never responds
to the German greeting 'Heil Hitler'.

''To my mind,
Miss Totzke is behaving suspiciously. ''

We used to think

that the population was manipulated
and brainwashed from above.

Now what we're beginning to see

by looking at the social history
of the kind one sees in these Gestapo dossiers

is that the system
is actually manipulated from below

by lots of people for all kinds of reasons,

some of them selfish;
some of them - fewer - idealistic.

But what we get now
is a dramatically different picture

of what the system was like.

Ordinary Germans could influence
the Gestapo through denunciations,

but no major policy could be successfully
instituted unless Hitler blessed it.

So for members of the Nazi �lite,

the search was always on
for a new way of pleasing their F�hrer.

One way to his heart
was to feed his anti-Semitism.

Josef Goebbels, propaganda minister
and hater of Jews, sought to do just that.

Goebbels boasted
that the Nazis had excluded Jews

from German cultural life.

In the autumn of 1938, Goebbels
saw a chance to please Hitler more

when he heard the news that
Ernst von Rath, a German diplomat,

had been assassinated in Paris
by a Jewish man, Herschel Grynszpan,

angry at how his family
had been treated by the Nazis.

The Nazi �lite were in Munich for
the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.

Goebbels asked for Hitler's permission
to let loose the Storm Troopers

in an act of vengeance against innocent Jews.

Hitler agreed, and so began Kristallnacht,

the Night of Broken Glass.

In the early hours of the morning,

they broke the front door down
and started to smash the place up.

Hordes of Storm Troopers.

And we had two lots.

One lot just concentrated
on smashing things up, and left.

And then the second lot arrived.

Three elderly ladies
were living on the first floor with us.

One was dragged out and beaten

for no reason except she probably
got in the way of something.

I was sort of knocked about,

and finally ended up in the...

in the cellar, where the kitchens were.

In a back room, I was being knocked about.

When I came back, I went upstairs

and found my father dying.

Dead.

I tried, erm...

as far as I could to, erm...

artificial respiration,

but I don't think I was very good at it.

In any case, I don't think... It was too late for that.

I was absolutely in shock.
It was beyond my comprehension.

I didn't know the people. They didn't know me.

They had no grudge against me.

They were just people who'd come to do
whatever they thought they should do.

(NARRATOR) More than 800 Jews
lost their lives as a result of Kristallnacht,

and as many as a thousand synagogues
were destroyed.

What was the reaction of the non-Jews you knew

when they heard of your circumstances?

You'd been badly beaten up.
Your father had been killed.

Did anyone say what they felt about it?

No. In fact, erm...

Er... The people passing the next morning,

ordinary Germans, threw stones at the windows.

Nobody expressed any sympathy?

No.

In the aftermath of Kristallnacht,

Hitler's popularity did not seem to suffer.

As Hitler never spoke in public about it,

it was possible to believe, for those
who wanted to, that the responsibility lay

with the hot-headed Storm Troopers.

The love affair between Hitler
and his followers continued.

(MALE SINGER)

In 1938, a new Chancellery was built,

symbolising the power and order of Nazi rule.

But inside, Hitler was pursuing methods

which resulted in administrative chaos.

The Grand Reich Chancellery was a hive
of political infighting and backbiting,

as rivals with ill-defined jobs
fought against each other for Hitler's favour.

Hitler's working life was organised
not by one private office, but by five:

the office of the Reich Chancellery,
under Hans Heinrich Lammers;

the office of Hitler's personal adjutant,
under Wilhelm Bruckner;

the office of the Presidential Chancellery,
under Otto Meissner;

on the second floor, the office
of the Chancellery of the F�hrer,

under Philipp Bouhler;

and finally, the office representing
the F�hrer's deputy, under Martin Bormann.

Although based in another building,

Bormann was most often at Hitler's side.

All of these different offices
claimed to represent Hitler.

A large portion of their time
was spent fighting each other.

One of the more vicious power battles
was over access to the mail,

to the thousands of letters that arrived
each week addressed to ''Mein F�hrer'',

and which begged favours
or blessings from Hitler.

There were trivial letters asking
if church bells could be named after Hitler,

and serious ones from individual Jews

pleading that they should be exempt
from the Nazis' discriminatory laws.

Access to this mail meant access to Hitler

and a chance to form Nazi policy.

Philipp Bouhler, an ambitious Nazi,

managed to gain control over the mail

and exploit it to his benefit.

In late 1938 or early 1939,

one letter which Bouhler's office showed
to Hitler had a devastating effect.

It was from the father
of a mentally-disabled child.

He asked the F�hrer's permission
to have the child killed. Hitler agreed.

He had already ordered
the sterilisation of the disabled.

Now this one letter was to be
the catalyst to their murder.

Bouhler was authorised to devise a policy

for the selection and killing of disabled
children within days of their birth.

This form had to be filled in

every time a disabled baby was born.

Three doctors read the form.

If they thought the baby should be killed,
they each marked it with a cross.

Within months, it was no longer
just babies who could be killed,

but disabled children as well.

Gerda Bernhardt's brother Manfred

was one of more than 5,000 children
who suffered as a result of this policy.

Manfred was mentally disabled.

But Aplerbeck was one of the Nazis'
special children's units.

By now, two years after the policy had begun,

doctors in homes like this
had stopped filling in Bouhler's form.

In a typical example
of how policies could spiral away,

staff here, on their own,
selected the children they wanted to kill.

The official record of deaths at Aplerbeck

lists Manfred Bernhardt
as dying of measles on June 3rd.

That same week, 11 other children died.

Manfred Bernhardt was murdered

because he was not wanted
in the Nazi's perfect state.

The catalyst that caused his death

was a chance letter to Hitler
on a subject close to his heart,

brought to his attention by an ambitious Nazi.

Any idea in this system could,

with the combination of a leader
who spoke in visions

and enthusiastic supporters anxious to please,

grow radically to an extreme almost in an instant.

This was the way Germany was ruled
in the 1930s.

Now the world was about to suffer
the consequences

of the radical way decisions were taken
in this Hitler state.

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