Original subtitles

Stalingrad is a really major setback.

Really, I think, it has an effect on him.

It makes him doubt, I think, inwardly,

his ability to...to lead Germany.

The physical and mental stress on Hitler is absolutely immense.

He has insomnia,

he finds it difficult to sleep.

He doesn't quite know what to do.

For once, there is no masterplan.

Hitler leaves it to the men around him

to pull Germany back from the abyss.

This is the story of the Eastern Front of the Second World War,

which many see as its defining conflict.

It was a campaign that saw some of the most brutal and inhumane

warfare in all of history.

Our interest is the psychology of that war.

What is the enemy up to? Can you deceive him?

The minds of dictators and the morality of those around them.

Hitler always needed people around him saying,

"You are a genius. You are our leader. You are the Fuhrer."

To tell this story, we've asked some of the world's

most eminent historians and experts

with different kinds of insight

to each take us inside the mind of one of the key protagonists.

He wanted to be the architect of Germany's reality.

In some ways, the only truth-teller.

Nazi rule relies on quiet complicity.

Ultimately, it's a study of why dictatorships are flawed,

and how those who rule through fear and terror

can never trust even the people closest to them.

He'll then lose everything and bring Germany down with him.

Requiem in D Minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

In 1943, the war has been raging for over three years.

On the surface, Germans remain united behind the Nazi regime,

but war fatigue is setting in.

And the crucial pact between the Nazis and the public

is starting to come under strain.

Their charismatic leader, Adolf Hitler, is nowhere to be seen.

Hitler's absence creates a power vacuum.

Senior Nazis go into competition to prove themselves

as Hitler's most valuable deputy.

Each has a different strategy.

Hitler's principle of rule

was what's been called "managerial Darwinism".

He would appoint different people and different organisations

to do more or less the same thing,

let them fight it out between themselves

and whoever came out on top, in his view, would be the most effective.

Master of Nazi spin,

Joseph Goebbels,

believes he is the man to return Hitler to his former strength.

Joseph Goebbels is the person that has made the lies so palatable.

Goebbels is the author of your reality in 1940s Germany.

He created the hero-worship cult of Hitler,

the idea of the Fuhrer's infallibility.

To Goebbels, Hitler isn't just a hero,

he's the incarnation of National Socialism.

But Stalingrad represents a total disaster for the Nazi regime.

He's getting regular reports from intelligence

about people's feelings.

It was Hitler's reputation,

and especially his infallibility, that took a hit.

Because, you see, the thing about infallibility

means that you never fail.

If you fail once, the whole myth is liable to collapse.

Everything Goebbels had built is at stake.

With Hitler in retreat, Goebbels attempts to do damage control.

He unrolls a barefaced lie...

..spinning the defeat in Stalingrad as a heroic sacrifice

on the part of Paulus and the 6th Army...

..proclaiming generals, officers and troops battled shoulder to shoulder

until the last bullet was fired.

"They died, so that Germany could live."

Within the top echelons of the Nazi Party,

Goebbels is not the most powerful man.

And he's constantly thirsty for more power.

Hitler's withdrawal provides Goebbels with an opportunity

to prove his intellectual superiority,

to inspire confidence.

Confidence that the war can be won.

Goebbels' radio broadcast is heard across the country.

But there are some Germans who see through the smoke and mirrors.

Nazi rule relies on quiet complicity.

It relies on people turning a blind eye.

But Sophie Scholl clearly cares deeply about right and wrong,

and believes that this is an active pursuit.

That there is an obligation to take a stand.

For months, 21-year-old student Sophie Scholl

has been questioning the actions of the Nazi regime.

Her boyfriend, Fritz, has been fighting on the Eastern Front,

and sends her regular updates

on the realities of the war with the Soviets.

"For eight days, we have been in constant retreat.

"The situation here is pretty hopeless.

"It is frightening how heartlessly my commander talks about

"the slaughter of all the Jews in occupied Russia.

"He remains completely convinced

"of the justice of this action."

During the Nazi era, and especially during the war,

it was difficult to get access to information that was credible.

There was no freedom of press.

The country was saturated with Nazi propaganda.

Sophie sees the personal suffering of Germans

through this needless warfare,

and she also gets the sense of

the lies that the Nazi regime is propagating.

At this point in her life,

she decides she's going to expose the truth about the Nazi regime.

Sophie has joined an underground resistance movement -

the White Rose.

Based in the Nazi heartlands of Munich,

they have been producing and distributing

anti-Nazi material across the country.

Just walking down a street in Nazi Germany

feels like a precarious thing to do.

There are so many reasons for which you could be questioned,

interrogated, arrested. People were spying,

they were informants everywhere.

So imagine in that context, taking leaflets,

the discovery of which would certainly lead to your death.

Carrying them on trains,

trains that are full of Gestapo, guards.

It would really feel like carrying a bomb.

Sophie realises the defeat in Stalingrad

is the opportunity she has been waiting for.

Many ordinary Germans are starting to question

the regime's lies and propaganda.

People are finally ready to hear the message of the White Rose.

They draft a damning leaflet,

calling on the youth of Germany to rise up

and overthrow Hitler and the Nazi Party.

They decide that to make maximum impact,

hundreds of leaflets will be distributed

at their university campus during school hours.

Goebbels knows he must keep close control of the public mood.

He believes Hitler needs the fervour of the nation to propel him forward.

But Hitler has another deputy who is working on his own strategy

to get the nation, and his Fuhrer, back on track.

In many ways, Heinrich Himmler is the quintessential Nazi.

Coldblooded and extremely brutal.

And everyone in Europe is afraid of this man.

He is the mastermind of genocide,

he's the mastermind of the racial war,

he's the architect of the Holocaust.

Here is someone who wants to be the chief protagonist

of the racial re-engineering,

the racial reordering of Europe.

He knows how powerful he is,

and he knows that he's only becoming more powerful.

At only 42-years-old,

Himmler has risen to become the main architect of terror

in the Third Reich.

He is chief of all German police units, and his vast SS network

penetrates nearly every corner of German society.

Now, Himmler has a plan -

to turn the tide of the war by extending his tentacles

to the one area of German life currently out of his reach -

the military.

To the ire of the Army High Command,

Himmler has been building a special military branch of his prized SS.

The Waffen-SS has become famed for their brutality.

Himmler's main insecurity is

that in 1918, he's too young to fight

on the front line in the First World War.

And he really wants to prove himself as a political soldier.

And he hopes to impress Hitler

with the performance of the Waffen-SS.

Himmler viewed the Wehrmacht with some suspicion.

He thought that their main loyalty was not towards Hitler.

The whole history of Hitler's relationship with the senior

generals and field marshals of the army is a rather fraught one.

Senior generals, with their long tradition

of Prussian military conduct,

were less susceptible to Hitler's charm.

The German Army is in retreat,

facing relentless setbacks in North Africa and the Soviet Union.

But the Waffen-SS are proving their worth on the battlefield.

Himmler's troops score their own independent victory

against Russian forces,

taking back the city of Kharkov from the Soviets.

As the Waffen-SS began to score some victories,

Hitler found this was absolutely the right way to go.

These were noted for their fanaticism,

their total devotion to Hitler.

And the army might be failing him,

but Himmler and the SS were not.

Hitler does not like listening to many other people...

..but Himmler has Hitler's ear.

He knows that if he can produce the desired lethal results...

..he can become the most powerful man in Germany, just after Hitler.

Goebbels is watching Himmler's rise with frustration.

He is still struggling to get Hitler to buy into his efforts

to seize the nation's morale.

He plans a stunt, which he hopes will sway the public mood

and galvanise the Fuhrer.

He gathers thousands of top Nazi officials

at Berlin's Sportpalast Arena.

On the same day, Sophie Scholl is making her way across Munich.

The White Rose have decided that today is the day

to put their plans into action.

They have in their possession a suitcase, no less,

packed with leaflets.

Putting these leaflets in visible places.

In corridors, on notice boards, on doors.

It's incredibly dangerous.

But she knew that what she was doing was going to, in her words,

"make waves",

was going to be remembered as something that stood out

in this sea of oppression and complicity.

As the White Rose spread their message,

Goebbels' speech fills the Sportpalast.

HE RANTS

He hopes to renew a sense of German patriotism

by proclaiming a state of total war.

Total war involves devoting all national resources

to the conflict.

Britain and the Soviet Union were the first to do it.

The entire economy became subservient to the war efforts.

If he can commit every last German to devote all of their beings,

all of their economic lives,

victory is within grasp.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Are you willing to do what it takes to survive?

She's just feeling this rush of adrenaline.

And Sophie acts impulsively.

HE RANTS

He truly believes that if you can push a perception far enough,

it will become reality.

Requiem in D Minor by Mozart

CHEERING

APPLAUSE

At this critical moment,

Sophie's actions are spotted by a caretaker.

He reads the leaflets and informs the dean.

The local Gestapo are alerted

and officers rush to the university.

As Sophie is brought into custody,

Goebbels' Total War speech is being broadcast around the building.

SHOUTS OF AGREEMENT

She's brought into Gestapo HQ,

she's fingerprinted, then she has this mugshot taken.

You really get a glimpse of Sophie.

She looks trepidatious,

but at the same time, she looks quite resilient.

Defiant, even.

Looking straight ahead, giving very little away.

Goebbels' speech has failed to convince the public.

He receives reports from Security Service agents

who listen in on conversations across Germany,

revealing that support for the regime is crumbling.

Goebbels knows that these reports will be deeply damaging

to his standing with Hitler.

There is only one man who can help him.

As always, with leading Nazis,

there is quite a lot of jealousy

about who has more access to Hitler,

who is more important in Hitler's eyes.

Is it Himmler? Is it Goebbels?

But Goebbels does not want Himmler to present

the SD reports on public morale to Hitler

because Goebbels finds them too defeatist.

Himmler firmly believes that Hitler needs to know

about what the German people think.

He offers to his arch-rival, Heinrich Himmler,

to doctor these SD reports together.

This is a fascinating moment where the minister of propaganda

is actually trying to lie to his own superiors.

He's trying to doctor reality

even as seen privately by the regime itself.

How concerning must these reports have been

for Goebbels to need to conceal them

and doctor them for Hitler's benefit?

Himmler does not agree,

and Himmler refuses to doctor the reports

that are going up to the higher-ups, to Hitler,

about dissent in Germany.

Himmler has a close working relationship with Hitler,

so in all likelihood, Himmler still shows

these public-opinion reports to Hitler.

Hitler steps further back into the shadows.

Hitler identifies himself with the German people,

so it obviously becomes more difficult for him

if he has to admit that people are beginning to criticise him.

Mingling with ordinary people, as he'd done so often,

becomes rather less frequent.

And I think he begins to be a little bit afraid

that he won't get rapturous crowds

giving the Nazi salute and cheering their heads off.

Himmler is well aware of the need to reassert authority.

When Sophie Scholl's case reaches his desk,

he decides to make an example of her and the White Rose movement.

Germany's most notorious judge is to oversee a show trial.

The sentence is death by beheading.

She's allowed one last visit with her parents.

For Sophie, at that age,

you still feel like you need and rely on your parents.

And here they are, having to let you go

to a regime that's going to execute you.

But even in those circumstances,

Sophie had a serenity about her.

Her mother brought her sweets and she said,

"Oh, thank goodness, cos I haven't had lunch".

She projected confidence, strength of character, integrity.

But on the inside, she was terrified.

It's important to remember that fear,

because we would all feel it in those circumstances.

And I can only understand her composure

by imagining that she had confidence

that it would mean something long after she was gone.

Himmler may have eradicated the White Rose,

but in the summer of 1943,

a new crisis is brewing.

The allies launch merciless carpet-bombing raids

over major German cities.

Taking out factories, dams,

and the homes of ordinary German people.

One RAF raid sets Hamburg on fire.

In the space of a week,

over 30,000 men, women and children

are killed in the inferno.

If Stalingrad woke Germans to the possibility

that a German army could be defeated,

the bombing of major German cities showed them

that they were not invulnerable. Quite the opposite.

They would be killed, their cities destroyed by the Allies.

It became very obvious that it was going to hurt,

and it was going to hurt at home.

It was going to invade their lives.

And there is nothing that German propaganda could do

to soften the blow of the bombing.

In Hamburg, some survivors are moved to show open dissent

against the Nazi regime.

Swastikas are ripped down

and people dare to refuse the Hitler salute.

Goebbels' Total War propaganda is losing its resonance.

Dissent is now coming out into the open,

and directly linked to the failure of the Nazi regime

to keep these Germans safe.

But the RAF don't just drop bombs,

they also drop leaflets.

Thousands of them.

Leaflets that have been smuggled out by the German Resistance.

Leaflets written by the White Rose

and Sophie Scholl.

OPERATIC RECITAL

Interestingly, the White Rose leaflet mentioned Goebbels by name,

and insulting him, essentially, claiming that he is lying.

It proved that, unlike Goebbels' claim in his many speeches,

Germany was not united behind the Nazis,

and this was not the only necessary future for Germany.

It shows the power of these leaflets.

They had so much resonance, the British saw them as a weapon

against the Nazis in the war.

And to think that a group of students created that,

I think is just really remarkable.

By this circuitous route, despite having executed Sophie,

these leaflets actually came back to haunt the regime

just at the moment it was most damaging.

And I think that also would have given Sophie great satisfaction.

Goebbels repeatedly calls on Hitler to come out

and face down these gestures of resistance.

But he refuses.

Hitler's never comfortable with defeat or with attacks.

For him, war is all about the offensive.

And when Germany is on the defensive,

he gets rather, I think, isolated.

Doesn't know quite what to do

and certainly doesn't want to confront the population.

These expressions of dissent actually scare him quite a lot.

They terrify his sensibilities.

He just keeps refusing to turn up to events,

keeps refusing Goebbels' very numerous requests

for Hitler to do it like Churchill and other leaders,

and visit bombsites, commiserate with Germans

and be there for his people.

This makes the Fuhrer more distant from ordinary Germans.

Recognising his authority now rests with police repression

rather than the adulation of the masses,

Hitler appoints Himmler as Reich Minister of the Interior.

Goebbels was disappointed.

I think he probably coveted that position himself,

and more influence, but crucially, he also thought

that Hitler was missing a political opportunity.

This is a very clear signal

that Hitler believes that this problem will be resolved

not through more propaganda, not through more consent,

but rather, through more repression of dissent.

Himmler's methods.

He knows that he's only becoming more powerful in 1943

with this appointment as Reich Minister of the Interior.

The party and the SS begin to increase in power

and to put the screws on the German people.

Himmler is a very chilling figure.

The cold bureaucrat.

And that does, with the Gestapo,

cast a kind of chill of fear among the German population.

Himmler's new position of power

is a frightening move for almost all of Germany.

But a new threat is brewing in the one place

that still remains out of his reach -

the German Army.

Everyone who was ever in the presence of Stauffenberg

talks about how he's charismatic,

he has a real presence in the room.

He has a way with words.

He makes this impression on everyone around him.

He's a man of action.

Claus von Stauffenberg appears every inch the German war hero,

having been attacked by Allied fighter planes in Tunisia.

He's lost an eye, a hand, and two fingers.

Unable to return to the front on account of his injuries,

he has been appointed Chief of Staff

of the General Army Office in Berlin.

But Stauffenberg is harbouring a dangerous secret.

He wants to kill Hitler.

Stauffenberg has witnessed personally

the vast scale of slaughter that has become central to the war.

The losses on the Eastern Front are massive.

He sees this everywhere he turns,

and he sees German youth just being laid to waste for nothing.

And his whole outlook on the world has changed.

Stauffenberg is part of an assassination plot

that spans the political and military corridors of Germany.

Hitler's always had quite an uncomfortable relationship

with the army.

A lot of them have never really got beyond the idea

that he's this lowly corporal that somehow become Commander-in-chief,

and that he's not really one of them.

So there's this sort of separation between the two.

Stauffenberg knows Hitler is a danger to the nation.

He believes that it is his mission to assassinate him.

Of course, it's a vast undertaking.

He knows that there's a good chance

that he won't survive the attempted coup.

He'll also suffer the risk of being criticised

for the rest of history as being a traitor to his own country.

Despite the risks, despite the scale,

it's something that he feels is his duty.

Stauffenberg is in a valuable position.

His new role puts him within Hitler's orbit.

He could almost get close enough to plant a bomb.

Meanwhile, the plotters will take on strategic roles

within Reserve Army units across Germany.

Once Stauffenberg succeeds in killing Hitler,

he will initiate Operation Valkyrie.

Word will go out for the Reserve Army to start the coup,

arrest all high-ranking Nazis,

and take over the running of Germany.

Stauffenberg seems to be the sort of person

who enjoys pressurised situations.

When he's in the military, he enjoys being on the front.

He enjoys the sort of thrill of having his life on the line.

This is something, again, where he finds himself in a situation

where there are dangers and there are risks,

but this is not a situation in which he's uncomfortable.

This is the sort of place he likes to be.

They discussed their plans, as far as possible,

away from prying eyes and prying ears.

He's really clear about the fact that any documentation

should be destroyed.

He tells his secretary to write in gloves

so there's no fingerprints on it.

He knows the Gestapo have got their eyes open.

If anyone gets the merest idea that they're doing what they're doing,

then the likelihood is they'd be carted off to a concentration camp

and probably executed.

Stauffenberg and his conspirators

must outwardly support the war effort,

without letting the Nazi leadership know

that their biggest threat comes from within.

Meanwhile, the news on the battlefield

is going from bad to worse.

Sicily is lost,

mainland Italy has been invaded,

and the Allies now have a foothold in Europe.

At this critical moment in the war,

Hitler refuses to return to public life.

But Minister for Armaments, Albert Speer,

has a plan to give Hitler the psychological boost he needs

to stage a fightback against the Allies.

The story of Speer

is about admiration...

..belief...

..love.

He owes everything he has to Hitler.

But the weaker Hitler gets,

the stronger is Speer.

Now, more and more, he relies on this inner circle.

He relies on these trustworthy companions.

Speer understands that Hitler is a fantasist,

so he unveils a set of superweapons

that he claims will miraculously defeat the Allies

and win Germany the war.

Hitler's always looking for a way out,

and this is what seems to offer him

the way of reversing the debacle of Stalingrad

and the disasters of 1943.

With the weapons, it's the same as with Speer's plaster models

of the Reich capital, Berlin.

It's a vision.

The idea of the Wunderwaffe

was, of course, very attractive to propagandists,

and it's a kind of a slogan.

Hitler believes in Providence.

He believes that Providence and fate are steering him towards victory

all the time. And when things are going badly,

Providence will surely come to the rescue.

So the wonder weapons, the miracle weapons, for him,

are another intervention of Providence.

Speer fuels Hitler's dreams

of a bright and victorious future.

Convinced by Speer's promise of war-winning armaments,

Hitler finally agrees to do what Goebbels has been asking for months.

He comes out of the shadows

and addresses the nation.

Goebbels is terrified that most Germans are losing confidence

in the regime's capacity and willingness to triumph.

Now, in this set-piece speech,

Goebbels and Hitler are trying to set the clock back

to believing in the Fuhrer and having faith in his plan.

He's back to something like his form.

He gives all kinds of reassurances to the German people

that it's worth carrying on with the struggle.

Their sufferings in the bombing of the cities will be avenged

by the wonder weapons,

and that victory is still there

if only they hold fast to their beliefs

and their loyalty to Germany and to him.

Now Speer has sold Hitler and Germany his vision,

he needs help to make it a reality.

Himmler has a workforce in his concentration camps.

Speer desperately needs Himmler's workforce.

For Speer, it's very important to collaborate with Himmler.

Himmler likes the idea of producing these weapons

that will finally deliver the final victory over the Allies.

The SS will make itself indispensable

in ensuring that the miracle weapons will actually be built

and that they will deliver the desired results.

Himmler and the SS have been using concentration camp inmates

to build an economic empire.

Now Himmler sees an opportunity

to exploit this resource on a vast scale.

He persuades Hitler that rocket productions

should come under his control.

The SS built an underground factory complex

near the Harz Mountains

and put 60,000 prisoners to work.

The conditions were...

..indescribable.

It is hard to imagine how ghastly and appalling

working conditions were.

It is unspeakable.

Speer works very closely with Himmler.

For him, it's no problem at all

to work with concentration camp prisoners.

He knows the conditions.

Himmler is not interested in collaboration.

This has become another opportunity to impress Hitler

and extend the reach of the SS.

Remember, without Himmler,

without the repressive apparatus of the SS and the police,

without the essential contributions of the SS

to the genocidal war in the east,

Hitler's rule wouldn't be as robust.

But Himmler without Hitler is almost unimaginable.

Himmler is so powerful because he enjoys Hitler's backing.

Especially at a time

when the fortunes of war

have turned against Nazi Germany.

The Allied bombing raids increase,

in volume and destruction.

And the German people continue to question Hitler's leadership.

Hitler's inner circle can see the writing on the wall.

But deep rifts emerge over how to protect the nation

and the spirit of the Fuhrer.

By late 1943, Goebbels no longer believes

that Germany can win this war on two fronts.

Goebbels has an existential nightmare in his hands

because his beloved, worshipped Fuhrer

refuses to see the limitations

of the reality of the war they're fighting.

At this point, Hitler is ever-less amenable to having a conversation.

Hitler wasn't a good listener, that's for sure.

And you took your life in your hands if you started arguing against him

or opposing him, or suggesting to him things he didn't want to do.

It speaks to Goebbels' closeness and confidence with the Fuhrer

that he's able to tell him something that he does not want to hear.

And that is, we must make peace with one of the two sides.

Either the Soviets or the Anglo-American Allies.

This is yet another suggestion of retreat,

abandoning half the war.

Hitler is certainly not prepared to countenance this at all.

In his diary, Goebbels writes that several times,

he has lectured Hitler on the need to make peace with one side.

A war with the Soviet Union was fundamental

to Hitler's belief system.

But in any case, again, Hitler thought he could win.

Something was going to happen

that would enable him to defeat both sides.

Goebbels, here, is trying to face

the very real problem of the war is being lost.

And he concludes this diary entry by saying,

"I don't know what the Fuhrer will do in the end".

Goebbels, the creator of the Fuhrer myth

of the infallible leader of Germany,

does not know if Hitler has a solution at all.

Hitler isn't the only one who wants the war to continue.

Himmler acts quickly to ensure that senior party members

cannot abandon the regime.

In October 1943,

Himmler gathers high-ranking Nazis at Posen

for a series of speeches.

They are recorded,

and any absentees are noted.

On this rare occasion,

Himmler talks openly about the Final Solution.

He coldly describes the mass murder of Jewish men, women and children.

Himmler assures his audience

that these killings are morally justified.

But there is another motive behind these words.

By admitting this giant crime,

Himmler has turned all those present

into accomplices.

As Germany heads to almost-inevitable defeat,

the Nazi leadership are locked into their pact.

The war will continue until the bitter end.

CLICK AND WHIRRING

There's a very eerie movie that Eva Braun took

where Hitler starts to flirt with her in front of the camera

and pay her compliments.

And it gives one a very unsettling feeling that he's flirting with you,

you know, when you look at it from her eyes and her point of view.

As the final chapter of the Holocaust is carried out

in his name...

..Hitler withdraws to his official mountain retreat, the Berghof.

The atmosphere generally was very relaxed.

People were laughing and joking.

They had conversations, they looked at the scenery.

It was all very normal.

You weren't allowed to discuss the extermination of the Jews,

anti-Semitism, the policies towards the Jews or anything like that.

Particularly over dinner, and then afterwards,

when they were watching old movies,

he's in his own private world.

He won't have discussions of the military situation.

That's been dealt with earlier in the day.

He just holds these monologues

about the old days and tells stories.

Hitler is here on 6th June, 1944,

when the dramatic news comes in.

A giant armada of warships has arrived at the Normandy coast,

carrying over 150,000 troops.

D-Day has begun.

It was very difficult to dent Hitler's self-belief.

He slept late on 6th June as the Allies were landing.

When he was told after he'd awoken,

his reaction was rather strange, in a way,

but predictable in another way.

He took it very lightly.

He thought, "This is great. They're going to be defeated

"and we can make political capital out of this.

"The German people will be very angry about this."

But D-Day tips the balance of the war

irreversibly in favour of the Allies.

Stauffenberg sees this.

He knows now that Germany is starting to enter the endgame.

And he also knows that it creates a time pressure.

If he's going to make this attempt on Hitler's life,

he needs to do it now.

After months of meticulous planning, Stauffenberg's chance arrives.

He's promoted into the Reserve Army

and called to the Wolf's Lair,

where he will be face-to-face with Hitler in a reinforced bunker.

It's the perfect opportunity to plant a bomb.

So this isn't a practical act any more, as such,

this is a moral act. It's an act of conscience.

It's a statement to say, within this age of terror

and oppression and violence,

there were people who were prepared to do something about it and to act.

Stauffenberg's briefcase contains two bombs.

There was a 30-minute window from priming to detonation,

but no-one knows how accurate they are.

He will have to be fast and precise.

If anything happens that reveals his true purpose at this stage,

he risks calamitous harm to everybody around him.

He knows that he has the eyes of history on him.

He knows that the events of this day

could become fundamental to the rest of German history,

to the rest of European history.

When Stauffenberg arrives at the Wolf's Lair,

he's told the plans have changed.

The briefing has been brought forward,

giving him less time to prepare.

And the meeting has been moved to a wooden conference hut.

This is not what they'd planned for.

When he enters the Wolf's Lair, he's very much entering Hitler's space.

The people in this environment are people who are passionately

determined to serve Hitler with everything they have to give.

And so, whether or not it's real or imagined,

von Stauffenberg feels these eyes on him.

And so, the risks and the danger to him and to the plan

just grow and grow the further into this space that he moves.

As he's led to the briefing,

Stauffenberg asks for a private room

to change his shirt before the meeting begins.

This is his window to prime the bombs.

A staff aide knocks on the door to hurry him to the briefing.

This rattles him.

And in his haste,

he only primes one explosive.

For Hitler, Stauffenberg was a real war hero.

The kind of soldier he always wanted.

Someone prepared to make any sacrifice for him and for Germany.

And losing an eye and losing a hand

were obvious examples of his extraordinary bravery.

So Hitler greeted him very warmly.

He has a briefcase with him.

Nobody thinks there's anything unusual in this.

In this moment, Stauffenberg's mind must have been racing.

He must have been charged with a version of excitement.

After years of talking about it and months of concentrated planning,

it's finally happening.

Next to Hitler is a bomb

with a fuse ticking that's about to explode.

With limited time to leave the room before the explosion,

Stauffenberg has a pre-planned phone call,

ready to make an exit.

He makes his pardons and leaves.

This is the last time he will ever see Hitler.

EXPLOSION

Von Stauffenberg knows that the bomb's gone off.

The plot has happened, it's been successful.

He's killed Hitler.

Stauffenberg hurries to his waiting plane,

ready to carry out the next phase of Operation Valkyrie.

But when he lands in Berlin...

..he learns the dreadful truth.

Hitler has survived the bomb.

At the Wolf's Lair, Hitler is covered in cuts and bruises.

And his eardrums have burst.

Furious at the attempt on his life,

he looks for someone to blame,

and summons Heinrich Himmler.

Certainly, Himmler and the Gestapo did not look very good

because they'd failed to intercept Stauffenberg,

or to detect his involvement in the plot.

Himmler gets his act together very quickly,

and he talked to Hitler and says,

"We must crush this coup harshly and swiftly".

This is really the final blow

to Hitler's relationship with the army officers.

He thought they were incompetent, cowardly.

Here, now, he discovers they're trying to kill him.

And so, he gets much more suspicious, much more paranoid.

From now on, Himmler and the SS

have his trust to an even greater extent.

Rather than blaming him, Hitler is persuaded to entrust Himmler

with even more power.

To eliminate further opposition within the army

as ruthlessly as possible,

he appoints Himmler as head of the Reserve Army.

Himmler heads straight to Berlin,

sending SS units ahead

to round up conspirators in the army headquarters.

The SS and Himmler work in a concerted manner

to crush the resistance attempt.

Extremely speedily and extremely efficiently,

the suppressions and vengeance meted out by the SS,

the police and the German judiciary is brutal.

HE RANTS

Himmler moves to destroy the Resistance network.

Close to 5,000 people are rounded up

and are swiftly put on trial.

The loyal Heinrich has proved himself to be the man

who Hitler can count on to deliver no matter what.

Himmler is now at the peak of his power.

Second only to Hitler.

And the coup marks a moment of resurrection for Hitler.

He is now more convinced than ever

of his own invincibility.

Providence has preserved him yet again.

So his future is still to guide Germany to victory.

He sees this as confirmation

of everything that he's done up to that point.

Hitler will now never concede.

Rallied by the defiance and denial of his closest aides...

..he pushes Germany on towards untold destruction.

Hitler now had no boundaries.

Ultimately, Hitler's mission really becomes

one, literally, of annihilation or victory.

The result was total destruction.

Death on an almost unimaginable scale.

This is a kind of absolute nightmare

which has very few parallels in history.