Original subtitles

By this stage, almost every building in Berlin has been flattened,

but there's still a partially intact concert hall.

And in this concert hall, the Nazis organise a final concert

by the Berlin Philharmonic.

APPLAUSE

The concert features Wagner's Gotterdammerung,

in which the gods of Valhalla are consumed in flames.

Gotterdammerung by Richard Wagner

The last scene features a suicide at its centre.

There's a clear implication here that Germany, Hitler,

and as many people as possible...

..are going to end it all.

APPLAUSE

It's an extraordinary event.

And at the end of the concert, as the audience streams out,

there are Hitler Youth handing out cyanide capsules.

It's an invitation to the audience to bring everything to an end,

to kill themselves as well.

This is the story of the collapse of the Third Reich

as the Allied troops close in on Germany.

Our interest is the psychology of that collapse,

as those at the heart of the regime cling to power.

It's the worst in human nature you see during the collapse

of the Third Reich.

To help us tell the story, we've asked historians and experts

to take us inside the minds of each one of the key protagonists

as they are forced to confront failure.

The cycle of thinking at that time wouldn't allow anyone to think

that what's happening is wrong.

Being picked up, shot, disappeared.

They are walking into an apocalypse on purpose.

Ultimately, who will stay loyal to Hitler?

MUSIC CRESCENDOS

And who will betray him...

..and when?

When Adolf Hitler sweeps to power in the 1930s,

he promises the German people a thousand-year Reich,

a thousand years of undisputed glory.

Seduced by this vision of global domination,

Hitler's millions of followers think he's invincible.

Now, at the end of April 1945,

the war Hitler started has come back to haunt him.

Germany is on the brink of total defeat,

and the all-powerful Fuhrer is living in an underground bunker.

Most of Germany is occupied by invading Allied forces,

and a two-million-strong Soviet army

is just a mile from Hitler's hiding place.

With the Red Army now inside Berlin,

even Hitler's most loyal deputies

have started to turn their backs on him.

Albert Speer, once a close personal friend of Hitler's,

believes the Allies will need him to help rebuild Germany after the war.

Speer is looking for his own future,

his way out of the Third Reich.

He's collecting material for the Allied forces,

to show them that he did everything to stop the war,

to save the lives of people.

He twists the truth.

Speer now tries to appear as Hitler's opponent.

Meanwhile, Hermann Goring, Hitler's notional successor,

is convinced he's the one the Allies will choose to collaborate with.

After all these years of waiting, you think the possibility might now

arrive that I will actually become Hitler's successor.

This is a point to which I've been working for many years.

It's arrived at the wrong time, of course,

but nevertheless there's still a possibility

I can play an important role again.

While he waits to stake his claim as leader,

Goring tries to preserve the wealth and status he's enjoyed for so long.

The artworks, the tapestries, the jewellery,

all the things that he's collected as Hitler's deputy

across the years of the war are all being packed up.

He wants to keep around him the apparatus

that made him the great figure he thinks he is.

Hitler believes Heinrich Himmler is still his most loyal follower.

Himmler knows that his idol is going to die soon.

Himmler must shape his own future now.

What is keeping Himmler going at this stage

is his determination to survive...

..his determination to maintain his reputation

as one of the most powerful men in Germany.

And he is really keen on crafting a new role for himself

in a post-Hitler Germany.

Behind the Fuhrer's back,

Himmler is secretly making plans for peace with Germany's enemies.

If Hitler discovers Himmler's plan, it could cost him his life.

Song Of The Plains by Boris Alexandrov

The Soviets are now taking Berlin street by street,

hour by hour.

Brutalising the German people as they go.

Heading to Hitler's bunker from all directions.

DISTANT EXPLOSIONS

On 27th of April, Hitler decides he wants to go upstairs,

into the garden, and inspect the ruins of the Reich Chancellery.

He gets his valet, Anslinger, to lead him up to the door

that opens out onto the garden.

EXPLOSION

But just at that moment, a Russian shell lands in the garden.

It's clearly far too dangerous to go.

The Russians are now surrounding the chancellery area

and bombarding it very heavily, and so they have to go back downstairs.

DISTANT EXPLOSIONS

By this time, he's realised that the end is approaching.

Hitler knows he is now trapped.

With the Nazi regime disintegrating,

only his most die-hard loyalists stay by his side.

Propaganda Chief Joseph Goebbels is one of the last true believers.

Goebbels understands that the war is lost.

But he still urges the German people

to fight to their utmost, to fight to the bitter end.

This is not because they expect victory any more,

but rather they are walking into an apocalypse.

They want to make a historical last stand,

they want to go down in flames and take Europe down with them.

Nazi ideology is based on the belief,

in a Darwinian struggle between races,

only the strongest can survive.

Now the Germans are losing the war,

Hitler and Goebbels turn this racist ideology against their own people.

Hitler and Goebbels had come to believe their own propaganda

about racial struggles for survival,

and that if German people did not win,

they did not deserve to survive.

They did not care for the lives of German people

if they were not victorious.

Goebbels is so indoctrinated by Nazism,

he makes a shocking choice.

The Goebbels' decision to take their children with them

in the Hitler bunker seems crazy.

But in their own logic, it made a lot of sense.

Goebbels was not going to leave the side of the Fuhrer.

Magda declared very openly,

"I belong to my husband, and my children belong to me."

Obedient as she is,

there is far more to Magda than a doting wife.

Magda is a very committed Nazi.

All of the Goebbels' children have names beginning with H

in a tribute to Hitler.

Hitler outright believes that she is the model

of the perfect Aryan woman that represents the purity,

the dedication, the devotion and the ideological radicalism of Nazism.

She has been printed in every magazine.

Every German would have known her face

because she is the ideal Nazi matron.

Goebbels hopes his family's show of loyalty

will boost Hitler's morale.

But in reality, Germany's military position is hopeless.

Things are so desperate in April 1945

that Hitler issues a proclamation that everybody should fight.

People shouldn't do deals with the Allies,

they shouldn't raise white flags,

men, women and children should resist until the last.

This is an invitation to die in the interests of a future Germany,

as Hitler saw it.

Hitler believes that the most shameful thing in German history

has been the surrender, the capitulation of 1918,

at the end of World War I.

This time, there will be no surrender.

While Hitler demands self-sacrifice from his bunker in Berlin...

..in southern Germany, American forces are just a few miles

outside the historic town of Ansbach.

19-year-old student Robert Limpert fears many lives

will be needlessly lost by resisting Germany's inevitable defeat.

Robert, this person who wanted to speak out,

he wanted to think freely.

He doesn't want to just follow the orders of the Nazis

without questioning.

The town's commander, Colonel Ernst Meyer,

calls on local people to fight until the last bullet.

Few have the capacity to resist his senseless command.

They either still support the Nazis

or are too exhausted by war to defy him.

It's very strange.

Like, speaking about the Nazis, I feel myself speaking about Isis.

Because it's exactly what they did.

People lose track of what they are.

People forget at one point that they are being oppressed.

While a student at Wurzburg University,

Robert witnessed the devastation of the city by Allied bombers.

Robert saw all that destruction

and thought, "I have a chance to prevent this

"from happening in my town."

He believes in the power of words.

He believes in the power of thoughts.

Now he decides it's time to show the people how ugly this war is.

He began distributing those leaflets.

If caught with his anti-Nazi propaganda,

Robert faces certain death.

But with countless lives at stake, he cannot stand by and do nothing.

Robert has to convince the people of Ansbach not to fight back

when the Americans arrive.

In his last line, he wrote "Death to the Nazi executioners!"

This is the ultimate level of resistance to the Nazis.

His opposition against the system

is putting him at the danger of death,

that he might be killed at any moment.

But he knows deep inside his heart and mind

that this is what should be done.

Hitler is really now cooped up in the bunker.

The situation is getting desperate.

The Red Army is going to be there within hours.

In this atmosphere, discipline begins to fall apart.

People start smoking in Hitler's presence.

They started drinking, which he also didn't like, as a teetotaller.

People started disrespecting him.

They didn't stand up when he entered a room, didn't give Nazi salutes.

It's a situation in which Hitler, in some sense, is already dead.

He's already treated as if he's no longer the great leader.

You can smell the fear, the sweat of people.

The toilets are blocked,

and so the stench is spreading throughout the bunker.

There is a sense of impending doom.

This is the moment when his charisma finally breaks and disappears.

In these darkest hours, Hitler relies evermore

on the unconditional support of his girlfriend, Eva Braun.

Piano Concerto No. 5 by Ludwig van Beethoven

Eva Braun is not a particularly political creature.

She is not following things in great detail.

Eva's fantasy is about her place in Nazi history.

The clock is ticking.

Time is running out.

I now need to make sure that I am at Hitler's side.

Most rational people would be trying to get out of Berlin.

Eva has a different ambition.

Her life doesn't hold value to her

unless she can achieve her greatest ambition,

which is to secure her place in future Nazi history,

being Hitler's loyal support to the end.

Even if it costs her life.

Despite his rapidly waning authority,

Hitler still holds daily military briefings.

He now pins his hopes on the 12th Army,

but they are nowhere near Berlin.

Heather's Situation Conferences came to focus more and more

on enormous maps he'd had made...

..with little flags that he could move around,

each representing a division.

And he became almost obsessed with these maps.

But the problem was each division was severely depleted.

In reality, the little flags, they represented nothing at all.

They were purely imaginary.

One of the generals, Keitel, requests permission

to rejoin the remnants of the 12th Army

to make sure Hitler's demands are carried out.

Keitel is the last of the totally loyal generals around Hitler.

He's there at the centre of things because Hitler trusts him

not to object to anything he orders.

Even Keitel realises that Hitler is indulging in fantasies

so bizarre and so hopeless that it would not make any sense

to carry out these orders.

Keitel simply disappears.

He just fled.

As the situation in Berlin worsens,

Himmler senses an opportunity to improve his own chances of survival.

Himmler feels emboldened to press on with plans for the future.

Himmler thinks that Hitler is incapable at this stage

of acting decisively.

Himmler needs to take charge from now on.

As he contemplates a new Nazi order, Himmler allows himself to imagine

a world in which he is the next Fuhrer.

He even considers a new name for the Nazi Party -

the Party of National Union.

He's a man who boasts about loyalty.

He is a man who boasts about honour.

But what really matters to Himmler in the end is his own prestige,

it is his own position.

Himmler thinks the best way to secure his position

in future Germany is to sound out a peace deal with the Western Allies.

To make this bold move, he travels 175 miles

north of Berlin to the Baltic coast.

Himmler is meeting an intermediary, Count Bernadotte,

who is a senior representative from the neutral Swedish government.

Himmler tells Bernadotte that he has authority from Hitler

to negotiate with the Western Allies.

Himmler boasts that he will force the German troops

fighting on the Western Front to surrender.

This is exactly what Hitler promised would never happen.

Going over the Fuhrer's head

is a very dangerous game to be playing.

Himmler is not really having lots of moral qualms.

He simply talks about business.

Himmler is determined to have a meeting with the Supreme Commander

of the Allied Forces in Europe, General Eisenhower.

And he is wondering whether he should shake hands with Eisenhower

or whether he should bow.

He is acting under delusion if he believes

that the Western Allies will seriously negotiate with him,

the architect of the Holocaust.

In the town of Ansbach,

Robert Limpert continues his one man campaign of resistance.

But he needs more than just leaflets to save lives

and starts taking ever bigger risks.

To disrupt the defence of the town,

Limpert cuts telephone wires leading from the headquarters

of the local Nazi commander, Colonel Meyer.

It's probably his last resort.

It's an act of courage,

but at the same time, he knows...

..the step he is taking has only one end.

Boys from the Hitler Youth saw him...

..and they reported him immediately to the police.

When Robert is arrested, a show trial is quickly held.

And in two minutes, he is sentenced to death.

They don't care about killing him physically.

They are so afraid of what Robert would say

if he was given the right to speak

because they know it is the power of his words that will last.

Even at that moment, Robert was resisting.

He somehow managed to escape.

I believe he died with some sorrow, looking at his people.

But at the same time, satisfied that he had done the right thing.

Meyer said, "Let him stay here until he stinks."

They wanted to leave him hanging.

To that extent, they were trying to dehumanise him.

But they forgot that Robert is no more this body.

Robert is the value of what it means to be a free man.

I believe freedom is what he stood for.

And it's freedom, what he died for.

Tragically, the Americans arrive in Ansbach

just a few hours after Robert's execution.

His town surrenders without a fight.

Robert is one of 10,000 German citizens executed by the Nazis

in a final wave of terror.

EXPLOSIONS

In Berlin, Russian shells pound the streets surrounding the bunker.

EXPLOSION

Underground, life is becoming increasingly squalid.

Fans supplying fresh air are turned off

after they start sucking in smoke and fumes

from the heavy shelling above.

The war is so close,

an emergency field hospital is set up inside the bunker itself.

Surrounded by the dead and dying,

ever more dreadful news reaches those trapped inside.

An Allied radio broadcast has been intercepted.

Hitler and Goebbels are together when Hitler's press secretary

comes in and lets them know that the Allied press has published

attempts by Himmler to make peace with England and the United States.

Himmler had been the truest of the true.

Hitler used to call him "Treu Himmler" -

"Faithful Himmler".

Now, Goebbels and Hitler are outraged.

They see any attempt at peace whatsoever as a betrayal.

Hitler goes incandescent in another outburst of rage.

This is a cause of absolute despair for Hitler.

Hitler finds this the last, final, worst betrayal of all.

Faithful Heinrich has become Faithless Heinrich.

"It is the greatest betrayal in history," he says.

Stunned, Hitler takes out his fury on one of Himmler's subordinates,

Hermann Fegelein, who he suspects to be part of Himmler's plot.

Fegelein was close to Hitler

because he was married to Eva Braun's sister, Gretl.

But Fegelein was also, of course, close to Himmler.

Astonishingly, he ordered Fegelein to be shot.

GUN COCKS

GUNSHOT

Not content with Fegelein's death and fuelled by paranoia,

Hitler orders the unthinkable -

the execution of Himmler himself.

But Himmler is more than 100 miles away from the Fuhrer bunker,

near Germany's Baltic coast.

Himmler is completely shocked that Hitler, his erstwhile patron,

staunchest supporter, is now ordering the execution of Himmler.

This is something which comes as totally unexpected news.

He has lost almost everything.

He is absolutely shattered.

Hitler and Himmler have stood side by side in the Nazi Party

for over 20 years.

With the news that the Allies will not even consider negotiating

with Himmler, he realises he's betrayed his Fuhrer for nothing.

The ties between Himmler and Hitler are now cut for good.

With his inner circle in disarray,

Hitler makes time for one last grand gesture.

After keeping her in the shadows for 15 years,

Hitler is finally ready to acknowledge his girlfriend,

Eva Braun.

When Eva Braun went to stay with him in Berlin in the last days,

resisting all attempts to persuade her to leave and go into hiding...

..he was, I think, grateful, perhaps rather touched.

He decided now was the time to give her a public thanks

for her loyalty and devotion by marrying her.

It's hard to accept, but Hitler did have ordinary human emotions.

He was capable of love.

He does seem to have loved Eva Braun.

Oboe Concerto No 2 in D minor by Albinoni

When Eve signs her name, she begins writing "Braun",

before correcting it to "Eva Hitler, nee Braun".

This is all Eva's ever wanted.

And she's really pleased to become Frau Hitler.

She's got her eye on the history books.

Finally, she'll be recognised as belonging to the heart

of the Third Reich.

Eva Braun had imagined a wedding on a grand scale -

a royal wedding...

..a celebration, a couple of days of partying...

..cameras filming everything, flowers and meadows.

What she gets is a plate of cold sandwiches

in a hole 25 foot beneath the ground.

This is a grim event, but she's facing a grim reality.

The nuptials are short-lived.

Hitler leaves the celebrations to dictate to one of his secretaries

his last public statement as Fuhrer.

Hitler's testimony's a very depressing document.

It's full of the settling of old scores, of revenge, hatred,

as well as expressions of loyalty to the people who've

unquestionably followed him.

He also has diatribes full of hatred for people who have betrayed him.

And then at the end, he has another anti-Semitic rant against the Jews.

He accuses them of having plotted the destruction of Germany.

Complete paranoid fantasy.

And then he says,

"And the Jewish people have had to suffer the same fate."

And that is a confession that he has ordered

and had carried out the Holocaust,

the mass murder of nearly six million Jews.

Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Gorecki

ARTILLERY FIRE

With the Russians almost at Hitler's door...

..staff in the bunker receive dramatic news from Italy.

Hitler's ally, dictator Benito Mussolini,

and his mistress have been killed by communist partisans...

..their mutilated bodies publicly strung up

outside a petrol station...

..near Milan.

Hitler's not a man who fears death.

What he did fear was to be captured, taken prisoner, humiliated,

put on trial, subjected to the mockery and contempt of the world.

Hitler gets the news of Mussolini's death.

This is the last straw.

He says he's not going to suffer the same fate.

He is going to die, as far as he can, a dignified death.

And he wants his body and that of Eva Hitler - as she now is -

to be burned until they are unrecognisable,

so there's nothing left of them to mock or defile.

Hitler assembles his staff in the bunker on the 30th of April

and says formally goodbye to them,

shaking their hands and thanking them for their service.

Finally, he has reached a point where he knows it's total defeat.

In a sense, that makes him rather calm.

The decision has been made.

There's no more hope of turning the tide,

there's no more hope of a victory,

and so he knows he's going to shoot himself.

And so he's reconciled himself to his fate.

GUNSHOT

The proclamation that Hitler had died a hero's death,

fighting at the head of his troops, was, of course, a complete lie.

He died a squalid death in the bunker by shooting himself

and poisoning his partner.

When Hitler dies,

for many Germans, the world is over.

It too dies.

He had loomed so enormously large in the consciousness of the Germans

under the Third Reich that there was an enormous wave of suicides

in Nazi Germany, one of the largest mass deaths in history.

GUNSHOT

The defeat was total.

Germany was occupied.

There was no obvious reason to carry on fighting.

GUNFIRE

The Fuhrer may be dead,

but he's left a crucial set of orders to be carried out.

Hitler's private secretary sends a message

disclosing news of his successor.

In his final testament, Hitler has made a surprise appointment.

Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz will be Reich president.

Doenitz may be an outside choice for Supreme Commander,

but he is a committed Nazi.

The Navy, in complete contrast to the Army,

had been faithful to Hitler all the way through.

And Hitler, I think, felt that Doenitz, as the head of the Navy,

represented the one institution in Germany that he had trusted,

that remained loyal to him all the way through.

Doenitz summons the disgraced Himmler

to his temporary headquarters in northern Germany.

Himmler sees this invitation as a chance to salvage his reputation

among the Nazi elite.

Himmler now feels completely liberated of any loyalties,

of any ties, of any obligations to Hitler,

so Himmler can now do whatever he likes.

Himmler still commands the SS and the police.

Himmler still has a considerable amount of power.

He is so deluded that he thinks he will play a major role

in a post-Hitler government.

Himmler appears with armed guards in Doenitz's office

because he wants to remind Doenitz

that the SS and Himmler are still extremely powerful,

that they are still forces to be reckoned with.

Fearing a violent confrontation,

Doenitz has concealed a gun with the safety catch removed

under papers on his desk.

Doenitz knows that Himmler has been expelled from the Nazi Party

and that Himmler is a traitor in Hitler's eyes.

The atmosphere is extremely tense.

Himmler still thinks that he is far more powerful than Doenitz,

who is, after all, only a Grand Admiral,

the leader of the German Navy.

Doenitz hands Himmler a copy of Hitler's final order,

identifying the Admiral, not Himmler, as his successor.

After 22 years a member,

Himmler is unceremoniously dismissed from the Nazi Party.

Himmler has always suppressed his own feelings.

He's never shown any emotion in public.

But now, after his fall from power, he must be feeling a total failure.

Himmler offers his services as a second-in-command,

but Doenitz refuses.

Himmler has always been very sure of himself.

He's always known his identity.

He's always known the purpose of his life.

But now he doesn't.

What is his plan B?

What is he going to do next?

One thing he knows is that he wants to save his own neck.

Speer, keen to keep himself at the heart of power,

also meets with Doenitz.

He, too, is shunned and gets no official position.

For a once close friend of Hitler...

..it's a personal humiliation.

But Speer soon senses an opportunity in this rejection...

..a chance to distance himself from the excesses of the Nazi regime.

It's, for him, part of his exit strategy.

Speer claims that he is just a civilian,

he is a bystander,

he has nothing to do with all these atrocities, with crimes.

This is important for Speer to create a new image

as the innocent man.

With their hero dead at his own hand,

Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda now face an appalling choice.

They are locked into a terrible struggle.

They have decided to stay there until the end

and share Hitler's fate,

and so they discuss what to do with their children.

The Goebbels are so fervently Nazi, so ideologically committed,

there is nothing for them to live for.

A world without Nazism was not a world for their own children.

Goebbels, the mastermind of Nazi indoctrination,

is the one member of Hitler's inner circle

who most fervently swallows his own propaganda.

Magda writes, "The world which will succeed the Fuhrer

"and National Socialism is not worth living in.

"And for this reason, I have brought the children here too.

"They are too good for the life that will come after us,

"and a gracious God will understand

"if I myself give them release from it."

The Goebbels' children are sedated,

before cyanide capsules are crushed into their mouths.

Their parents then shoot themselves.

Magda didn't kill her children because she was a monster.

Magda was a person that had been radicalised by these ideas,

radicalised to such an extent that she did the most unnatural thing

a mother could do and killed her own children.

On the 7th of May 1945, a representative of the German Army

signs Germany's unconditional surrender.

After six years of conflict, the war in Europe is over,

Nazism defeated.

HITLER SHOUTS IN GERMAN

When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Germany was a liberal democracy.

Then he and his fanatical deputies stripped the German people

of their basic freedoms to establish a ruthless dictatorship.

Fuelled by hatred and a flawed belief in racial superiority,

Hitler instigated a global war that cost 60 million lives.

But as his dream of an Aryan empire collapsed,

he turned his anger on his own people...

..and finally himself.

The Third Reich shows us how dangerous ideas are.

Where Hitler and the Nazis are different

is that they wanted to ultimately conquer the whole world.

Their ambitions were without limit.

Nazis, like all nationalists,

do not believe that there's such a thing as humanity.

For them, we're different species locked in a struggle for survival.

Underlying that is a total contempt for human life.

Even though Europe is now at peace,

for some Nazis, the story is far from over.

Goering makes no effort to run away at the end of the war -

in fact, the opposite, really.

Goering gives himself up to the American Army.

And I think he does so because he still has this idea

that he'll be treated as a senior figure now,

perhaps the most important senior figure, after Hitler's death.

And so Goering hopes he'll be taken to Eisenhower

and be able to talk to him as one senior officer

to another senior officer.

Goering has no idea that, instead,

he faces trial for crimes against humanity.

What Goering doesn't really expect is that he will end up

in a prison cell along with other major war criminals.

It's so bizarre.

I think he has no sense that he is one of them.

While Goering is behind bars...

..Himmler is on the run.

Himmler's main priority now is to get as far away

from the advancing Soviet troops as quickly as he can.

He has really fallen from power.

But there is no evidence whatsoever that Himmler is feeling any remorse.

He is completely unrepentant.

Himmler is carrying a fake ID,

pretending to be just an ordinary soldier.

But his forgery is quickly discovered.

Himmler is acutely aware of the fact

that he's one of Europe's most wanted men.

He knows that he will be put on trial and that

he will be, in all likelihood, sentenced to death.

As Himmler is searched,

he bites down on a cyanide capsule he's concealed in his mouth.

The architect of the Holocaust

and the man responsible for the deaths of millions of people

is dead.

His death by suicide is a rather pathetic, cowardly act.

At the same time, Allied forces arrive

at Admiral Doenitz's headquarters in northern Germany.

Any hopes the remaining Nazis have of playing a role

in Germany's post-war government are dispelled when they're arrested.

Speer is very clever.

He knows that pictures are very powerful.

On the day of the arrest, he shows up in civilian clothes,

in a trench coat.

All others wear uniforms.

He shows with this,

"I'm a civilian and I don't belong to this group.

"I'm different."

He lies. He has to lie.

Even other members of Hitler's inner circle don't lie like Speer lies.

Now, the world must seek retribution and Germany must deal with its role

in one of the deadliest episodes in human history.

As dozens of Nazis are rounded up and put on trial...

..tens of thousands more are on the run or hiding in plain sight...

..as they begin to process what they've done....

..in the name of the Fuhrer.