Original subtitles

[narrator] In the years leading up to World War II,

Hitler and the Nazi Party had one main objective.

To brainwash the German people into the Nazi way of thinking.

[Lynn Picknett] The Nazi Party was aimed at oppression.

It was aimed at conquering.

No matter what your role in life, you were part of this enormous war machine.

[narrator] This would be achieved

using innovative methods and the latest technology.

They were being fed Nazi propaganda through a fire hose.

[narrator] The Nazis were relentless in promoting their warped worldview.

The rapturous tens of thousands in the crowd hailed Hitler

almost as kind of a religious figure.

[narrator] Even vacations were repurposed

for state-sponsored indoctrination.

This is what the Nazis were creating.

An entire city for Germans workers to go on holiday

under Nazi control.

[narrator] How far did Hitler go to corrupt the German population?

And how successful were his schemes

in transforming a nation into a finely-tuned war machine?

On the peaceful island of Rugen,

is the largest surviving monument to Hitler's brainwashing project.

This island sits 130 miles north of Berlin,

off Germany's Baltic coast.

These sandy beaches have long been a popular vacation spot.

Historian Nick Jackson is an expert on this location

and what Hitler planned to do with it.

[Nick Jackson] It was, and is today,

one of the more expensive domestic holiday resorts.

For the last couple hundred years,

it's been Northern Germany's premier holiday destination.

[narrator] But this idyllic island hides a much darker past.

Years before the outbreak of war and soon after ceasing power,

the Nazis exploited this coast's popularity for their own twisted ends.

Here they built a giant vacation compound

that would come to be known as the Colossus of Prora .

[Jackson] So, Prora is this absolutely enormous complex

that covers almost three miles in length,

which is still, you know, one of the single largest building complexes

of the modern age.

[Dr. Luke Daly-Groves] Hitler himself absolutely loved architecture

and he really liked for things to be built on a gigantic scale

because this suited his aims for global domination.

At Prora, there would have been cafés, a cinema, bowling alleys,

two swimming pools, including a heated one with a wave machine.

There are many things people know about the Nazi Party,

but one thing they don't know is that for a short while before the Second World War,

it was the largest travel and tour operator in the world.

[narrator] This huge building was designed to hold 20,000 people.

But the guests here would not have had much time for relaxation

because when it came to the Nazi Party,

there was always an ulterior motive.

The main crux of the building is we are allowing you to have an enjoyable holiday.

That makes you, um, keen on the regime.

And it also relaxes you because you're gonna be expected to work

on behalf of, uh, of your country

and certainly, um, work on behalf of producing a country

that is capable of fulfilling Hitler's military dreams

of dominating Europe.

You are going to be expected to die for that idea.

[Lynn Picknett] It would have been wall-to-wall Nazi indoctrination,

one way or another.

Whether it was actual speeches given to them, or the songs they sang,

or the music they listened to,

everything was geared to heightening the sense of Nazis.

By controlling their holidays, the Nazi Party was able to keep an eye on

and keep control over ordinary citizens.

There were spies within these camps.

And if they picked up on anyone speaking ill of Hitler

or of the Nazi Party, then they would be turned in and there would be grave,

if not deadly, consequences for those people.

[narrator] Prora was one of five gigantic, coastal, brainwashing complexes

planned by the Nazis.

But indoctrination was not the only purpose this site's designers

had in mind.

Possibly at the, um, insistence of Hitler himself,

nearly all mid-30s Nazi buildings are designed for two purposes.

One is theatrical performances and rewards for the German people.

But on the other hand, given that, um, war is always planned in Hitler's future,

the size of these rooms and the design of the building was also partially conceived

for it to function, as it did, as a military hospital.

[narrator] Prora sits crumbling today,

a decaying testament to the Nazis mass brainwashing program.

In the German capital of Berlin,

evidence of the Nazi's indoctrination program is harder to find.

But in the vibrant suburb of Wedding, one man knows exactly

how serious the Nazis were about training the German population for war

because his family paid the price for dissent firsthand.

Tommy Spree has managed the Anti-War Museum for almost 40 years.

This is the, uh, worldwide, first museum that was ever founded

against violence, against war.

Founded by my grandfather Ernst Friedrich.

Ernst Friedrich was a conscientious objector in the First World War,

and after the war, he gets involved in all sorts of political movements,

including, most famously, pacifism.

[Spree] And he wanted to show how disastrous this First World War was.

People in Germany thought a war like that would never happen again.

This world war would be the war to end all wars.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, it took only four weeks

till the private army of Hitler called the Brown Shirts

stormed the museum and they changed this house of peace

into a torturing chamber.

[Daly-Groves] Hitler absolutely hated pacifists.

In 1928, he referred to a nasty pacifist sewage,

which he claims was poisoning the German people.

[Tony McMahon] Hitler's rise to power was essentially violent.

He had no time for pacifism.

And those who resisted the drive to war were more than likely

going to end up in a concentration camp.

[Daly-Groves] People who were political prisoners of the Nazis at this time,

were often subjected to gruesome torture and horrific treatment.

But Friedrich being the remarkable man that he was,

at his release, he actually manages to flee Germany

and he goes on to fight for the French Resistance in the Second World War.

[narrator] The Anti-War Museum founded by Ernst Friedrich

and now operated by his grandson,

is filled with examples of Nazi propaganda.

This is, uh, an original air raid shelter.

Everyone had his or her own kitchen chair.

And you had to sit on that chair, it was controlled.

The Germans have always been very good in controlling.

The Nazi air raid construction program started in the mid 1930's

and easily outstripped similar Allied projects.

You have to remember that this was a totalitarian state.

That the Nazis controlled all the communications at all.

And so they were able to brainwash the German people into believing

that war was not only inevitable,

but the German people were superior and would undoubtedly win.

[Spree] Of course brainwashing took place

because of course they wanted, er, German boys to join the German Army.

And if people in Germany had read Hitler's book Mein Kampf, my battle,

they then would have realized that Hitler meant war and that Hitler wanted

to overrun, well, the whole of Europe.

People like Hitler, people who want wars, they always lie

to their own society.

[narrator] But Hitler's extreme worldview

and the strategies he used to promote it would prove so successful

that even the war-weary people of Germany would willingly join his cause

in the most bloody conflict the world has ever seen.

[narrator] In the lead-up to World War II,

Hitler was doggedly focused on preparing the German people to go to war.

He needed a master manipulator to spread the Nazi message

and oversee the propaganda machine.

And he had just the man for the job.

[Daly-Groves] Power in Nazi Germany to a large extent

depended on closeness to the Fuhrer.

Joseph Goebbels was very close to Hitler,

which meant that his Ministry of Propaganda

was one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany.

Everything that you saw and heard in Germany was filtered through Goebbels.

[narrator] When Hitler seized power in 1933, he installed Goebbels as head

of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

His headquarters were in lavish offices in central Berlin.

So, this was in essence the nerve center of the Nazi regime.

Everything from this building was designed with a purpose to influence and manipulate

the German people into viewing the world through the ideological lens

of the Nazi regime.

Goebbels served essentially as Hitler's chief PR officer

and his job was largely to bring the German people along with the Nazi Party.

And he marshalled all the resources of popular media available to him.

The methods Goebbels used

included both traditional and emerging media.

[Dominic] The Nazis weren't a political party in the traditional sense.

They were a cult, it was a movement.

And in order to garner the levels of support they needed,

they had to engage in mass levels of propaganda effectively.

And they did that by employing technology and constant messaging.

So they used the radio ceaselessly and very, very meticulously.

[Matt] After shortly taking office,

it was important to Goebbels that they create a affordable radio,

uh, for all Germans to have access to.

And this is where we get the concept of the Volksempfanger,

the people's radio.

It was to cost no more than 35 Reichsmarks,

um, and some 70% of German households had access

or had a radio in their homes.

But, of course, this had a very sinister side as well.

Not only was Goebbels in control of the news, papers and the films,

but by having access to people's homes,

ah, he was able to indoctrinate the German people,

really 24 hours a day.

[narrator] The propaganda ministry grew steadily from 350 employees in 1933

to 2,000 employees by 1939.

With a budget of close to $1 billion in today's money.

But Goebbels and his propaganda ministry

was only one pillar of the great Nazi brainwashing machine.

The party sought to control every aspect of people's leisure time

through a program known as Kraft durch Freude or Strength through Joy.

[Dominic] It ran from 1933 to 1939.

It was their leisure wing, if you like, but they used it as a propaganda tool

because whilst entertaining people in the library, in concerts, in theaters,

on holidays, they were dripping Nazi ideology all the time.

The ultimate goal was to try and create a racial people's community,

in which regional and class divisions would be destroyed in pursuit of national aims.

Which for Hitler, included war.

Strength through Joy was a program engineered

to make the average German person love the Nazi Party and feel loved by it.

[Tony] You did not take a holiday without the Nazi state

having its beady eye trained on you.

And to such an extent, everybody had to take their holidays

through this organization.

It became the biggest travel agency in the world.

[narrator] In addition to the vacations people were to enjoy at Prora,

the Strength through Joy organization offered other leisure activities, too.

Strength through Joy wasn't just land based holiday resorts.

Um, it actually began with a concept of giving people cruises.

So, I mean, it still has an idea of glamor about it today.

So running from this quay, it would've been two piers.

One of them was 2,600 feet out into the Baltic Sea, the water's deeper there.

And that would've been used by larger, um, boats bringing passengers

to the Prora holiday resort.

[Dominic] Hitler and his cronies had grown up in the golden age

of streamliners like the Titanic and the Lusitania.

For them, this was the ultimate glamor of travel and transport.

And so, they wanted a Nazi cruise ship.

And, originally, they were gonna call it the Adolf Hitler.

It was vast, it was beautiful, it was modern, it was slick.

In the end, it was named the Wilhelm Gustloff after a dead Swiss KDF leader.

But this was to be the Nazi's flagship of luxury travel.

[crowd cheering]

[narrator] The crown jewel of the Strength through Joy movement,

this ship was 684 feet long and could carry almost 2,000 passengers and crew.

But life on board would've been tightly controlled.

So the day would start around 6:30 in the morning

where they'd be woken up by a trumpet which would signal that it's time

to have exercise on deck.

They'd have breakfast at around 7:30.

Then they would sing Nazi songs.

People would be allowed to choose what sort of daily entertainment

they wanted to do and often this involved day trips to locations

which always suited Nazi foreign policy.

So places like Italy which was allied with Nazi Germany.

And there was always a sort of sinister purpose behind, uh, these trips

because, ultimately, they were designed to make people think

about racial differences and to emphasize racial difference

between Germans and the places that they were visiting.

[Tony] You're stuck in the middle of the sea.

You're bombarded with Hitler-right propaganda.

And if you try to swim to shore, you'd have probably ended up in a Gestapo cell.

[narrator] The Nazi regime used the Strength through Joy organization

to enter every corner of German public and private life.

But as Hitler's desire for war was close to becoming a reality,

Nazi propaganda would extend its reach outside of Germany for the first time.

[crowd chanting]

[narrator] The Nazi Party's quest to fully indoctrinate

the nation of Germany was unceasing,

as they prepared the people to fight and die for Hitler's ideals.

In addition to taking over the airwaves, newspapers and even vacations,

the Nazis also tried to insert their warped world view into high culture.

On the outskirts of Berlin, one structure that was key to this effort still stands.

This huge amphitheater is the largest surviving example

of a Nazi approved meeting place or Thingplatz.

[Nick] By 1936, when this venue opened,

Joseph Goebbels' propaganda ministry controlled everything.

What you hear on the radio, what you see in the cinema,

what you see in, ah, a place like Thingplatz, uh, like this.

[narrator] Now known as the Waldbuhne or Forest Stage,

this venue was used in Nazi Germany for plays and operas,

which were performed in front of 20,000 people.

Its design is based on a classical Greek theater.

Because the golden age of ancient Greece and Rome played an important part

in the Third Reich's propaganda.

[Nick] So I think a nice example of this are these two characters here.

These two male figures represent the male power,

so there's a fertility, uh, and hence, sort of racial element to it.

But also, a martial element because one, here on the left is holding a sword,

the other a torch.

And then, you always have the feminine representing

the more emotional and the muse is laying

on the other side of the gateway.

[Janina] Nazi art and sculpture was working in the service of the state.

The German public were being bombarded

with images of Aryan perfection.

So, sculptures that show the perfect physical form,

posters that show idealized visions

of Germany's position as the great nation.

[narrator] The Nazis controlled how these theaters were built,

and also what was performed on stage.

[Tony] The Nazis exercised complete control over the theater,

and this could be quite surreal and unpleasant at times.

So for example, they admired Shakespeare, but not all his plays.

So for example, Othello, because it had a Black protagonist, was banned.

But The Merchant of Venice, where they could take the character of Shylock,

and turn him into this grossly exaggerated

Jewish figure to kind of terrify audiences.

They liked that.

They turned The Merchant of Venice

into an instrument of anti-Semitism.

[narrator] The Waldbuhne opened in 1936

as one of the venues for the Olympic Games, which were held in Berlin.

These games remain in public consciousness,

as the event that saw African American Jesse Owens

triumph in the face of Hitler's overt racism.

What is not remembered is how aggressively the Nazi Party used

the Olympics as a propaganda opportunity.

So the Third Reich could be seen in a good light by the rest of the world.

[Nick] So this is the main public entrance to the 1936 Olympic stadium.

They would be here for that great extravaganza

in those, uh, two weeks in August, 1936 would take place.

[Tony] Hitler, at first, didn't appreciate

the propaganda potential of the Olympics.

And it really took Goebbels to point that out to him.

But it was a way of proving

the muscular superiority of the Aryan race.

It was a way of also putting Germany very much at the center of Europe

with the torch, the Olympic torch,

finding its way through all these countries to Berlin.

Berlin as the new Olympia.

[narrator] Berlin had been awarded the Olympics in 1931.

Two years before Hitler became chancellor.

As the truth about Hitler and his Nazi Party slowly began to surface,

enthusiasm for the Berlin games waned.

There were rumors of a boycott.

Hitler's festival of propaganda nearly blew up in his face.

Hitler would back down, um, as a result of that pressure because Hitler is propaganda.

His entire persona, having staked his own personality and success,

ah, and the regime that followed him on the Olympics,

could not afford to have the Olympics taken away.

[narrator] Hitler was so eager to show off

in front of the international community, that he even allowed the Jewish fencer,

Helene Mayer, to compete.

She won silver for Nazi Germany.

And in another propaganda triumph for Hitler, she performed the Nazi salute.

[Nick] During the 1936 Olympics, Berlin completely changed.

Vicious anti-Semitic slogans that covered not just Berlin,

but other German towns were deliberately removed.

Slogans such as: Jews, the road to Palestine doesn't lead, um, through our town.

International newspapers that had been banned,

now suddenly appeared to be on sale.

Jazz is played again in night clubs.

[Luke] Over a million people came to Berlin

to see or participate in the 1936 Olympics.

And were treated to the most outrageous spectacle of Nazism imaginable.

The Berlin Olympics was a spectacular

international propaganda success for the Nazis.

There was comparisons with imperial Rome

and even some Black Americans commented

on the friendliness of Germans that they encountered.

It was a watershed moment in the normalization of Nazism throughout the world,

and particularly in the United States.

A New York Times reporter who was sent to cover the games,

reported on the rapturous

tens of thousands in the crowd who really hailed Hitler

almost as kind of an religious figure.

[Nick Jackson] Many of those visitors were taken in

by this well-organized, friendly Olympics.

But that is just the propaganda facade.

And behind that, grow the shadows of reality.

In the forest north of Berlin, at the same time this Olympics was taking place,

concentration camp Sachsenhausen was being built.

Tens of thousands of people in Nazi Germany have been arrested.

Thousands had already been murdered in cold blood.

[narrator] Galvanized by the international propaganda success of the Olympics,

in the next three years, Hitler would take the German people

closer and closer to the war he always craved.

[narrator] The Nazi Strength Through Joy organization

sought to control every aspect of the German people's leisure time.

But it also used new technology

to give the population skills which could be crucial in the war to come.

[Dominic Selwood] One sphere in which the Nazis were genuine pioneers

was in realizing that technology was there to be used

and could be used to keep them in power

and to enhance their war effort.

And they deployed technology very successfully

in both civilian and military contexts.

[narrator] In Prague, capital of Czech Republic,

Ondrej Brom and his friend, Andre Massoud, have restored an antique German car.

Bizarrely, it's one of the oldest existing remnants

of the Strength Through Joy organization.

[in local dialect]

The owner of the car was Paul Lincke, a German composer from Berlin.

And it was given to him by the Nazi regime.

[operatic music playing]

[narrator] Paul Lincke was considered the father of the Berlin opera

and was widely admired in 1930s Germany.

His music was held in such high regard by the Nazi Party,

that he was deemed to be worthy of the gift of a Strength Through Joy car,

or KdF-Wagen.

[in local dialect]

[Dr. Karen Bellinger] The KdF-Wagen was part of this whole effort

of the Nazi party to ingratiate themselves

with the people, to win them over,

by providing leisure opportunities they had never had before.

And... And this was just one more way

in which they promised to make life better.

The KdF-Wagen, known as the Strength Through Joy Car,

was a program introduced by the Nazis

to allow the German people access to mobility.

The Nazis looked onto the Americans

and the Model T Ford with great envy.

And Hitler wanted to produce a car which was affordable for your average German.

[narrator] In the early 1930s, only 1 in 50 Germans owned a car.

Hitler sought to change this

and enlisted the Czech-born engineer, Ferdinand Porsche,

to design a car to rival Ford's Model T

and mobilize the German people.

Hitler came with the idea that a car should be created

to be affordable for the masses.

Hitler came with the idea. Porsche created it.

It was designed actually to carry a family of five.

Two adults in the front and two or three kids in the back.

[narrator] The KdF-Wagen would cost 990 Reichsmarks,

equivalent to 31 weeks pay for the average German worker in 1936.

To buy one, workers had to join

a special Strength Through Joy savings program.

However, the concept of a car for everyone was not unique to the Nazis.

Before Hitler was in power, and the early years of Nazi rule,

there were all sorts of different people

and companies and designs working on a variation

of what was called "a people's car."

[Tony McMahon] What was then Czechoslovakia

launched a car called the Tatra 97 in 1934.

And if you look at the designs and the actual car itself,

it looks very suspiciously like the KdF-Wagen.

And I think it's... It's almost certain

that the Germans basically stole the idea from the Czechs.

[Selwood] What the KdF-Wagen had done in terms of people's concept and understanding

was to really get the idea going that people should be in machines.

And this actually translated well into a war context

because people were thinking of transport as a mechanized, modern thing,

which of course was absolutely integral to the idea of blitzkrieg.

[narrator] Blitzkrieg, translated as "lightning war,"

would become the German military doctrine

of using fast mechanized force to punch through enemy lines.

But to be successful on land, blitzkrieg also needed support from the skies.

This led to the creation of a project which would be ambitious even today,

let alone by 1930s standards.

The Nazis loved this idea of branding everything "The People's..."

So you had "The People's Cars," "People's Radios,"

"People's Fridges," even "People's Gasmasks."

Uh, incredibly, they even tried to develop a "People's Airplane,"

a kind of light-aircraft that people could aspire to own.

[narrator] This program was known as the Volksflugzeug.

Again, Hitler took his inspiration for this scheme from Henry Ford.

The Ford Flivver had set the standard

for mass-produced, affordable, personal aircraft.

It's hard to see how this could have worked.

I mean, it sounds like a recipe for disaster

having millions of people owning light aircraft.

But, possibly, what the Nazis were trying to do

was to train the future fighter pilots

that they were going to need in a wartime scenario.

[narrator] Even though the Volksflugzeug was popular,

they were too expensive to be within the reach of the average German citizen.

So the Nazi top brass prioritized military designs instead,

abandoning "The People's Plane."

With Europe on the verge of war,

the German population would be forced

to come to terms with the difference between the Nazi Party's promises,

and what it actually delivered.

[narrator] Hitler and the Nazi Party sought to control the German People

in a variety of underhanded ways

from the first moment they seized power in 1933.

But when the war was officially declared in 1939,

the German people began to realize that

many of the Strength Through Joy projects

were little more than propaganda in disguise.

[Dr. Luke Daly-Groves] The Nazis made all sorts of promises

about how things would be better once the war was won,

and the KdF-Wagen was one of these promises.

[narrator] The KdF-Wagen would never reach

the millions of families it had been designed to benefit.

The KdF-Wagen was a bit of a disaster for the Nazis

because you have 300,000 German workers

set up savings plans to try and pay for their car,

only to find that none of them were rolling off of the production line.

There were about 200 that were made before the Second World War started,

and then production was basically switched to wartime mode.

[narrator] Factories set up to build the KdF-Wagen

were immediately repurposed to produce the German Army's Jeep equivalent,

the Kübelwagen.

Like the KdF-Wagen project,

the partially completed Colossus of Prora was abandoned.

By the end of 1940, '41, it was clear

that this building would never be finished.

And it was used, as was originally conceived, as a military hospital.

But the original purpose of the building,

3 miles of happy, holiday home

for the Strength Through Joy movement,

that dream just evaporated,

um, as the building just lay unfinished.

[narrator] Parts of the Colossus of Prora still lie abandoned,

exposed to the elements,

a testament to the hubris of the Nazi brainwashing operation.

[narrator] By 1944, as the tide of the war

started to turn against Germany,

the true face of the Nazi regime was exposed.

The forest next to the purported bastion of culture,

the Waldbuhne in Berlin, became a place of barbarity.

[Nick Jackson] So just outside the Waldbuhne itself, this is the perimeter.

During the Nazi period, military courts would condemn

in total over the 12 years, some 30,000 to be executed.

Though most vividly and most tragically is that at the end of the war,

hundreds were brought here and shot in this valley as deserters.

"I am too cowardly," say the signs around these dead people's necks.

"I'm too cowardly to defend the fatherland and its women and children."

[Dr. Luke Daly Groves] The Nazis built the Waldbuhne to be a place of culture,

and it's actually quite fitting

because that ultimately is what Nazi culture was all about:

violence and human suffering.

[narrator] In the bitter January of 1945,

as Russian troops entered German territory,

one of the greatest disasters of modern times was to take place.

It would occur on the flagship of the Strength Through Joy program,

the Wilhelm Gustloff.

[Tony McMahon] East Prussia was the first part of Germany

to fall under the Soviet invasion.

And the population there was in a state of panic. They were dying to get out

because they knew that a very angry Soviet army

was coming with vengeance on its mind.

[narrator] The Wilhelm Gustloff, whose glamor was used

to brainwash citizens prior to the war,

was now drafted into service as an emergency transport ship.

We fast-forward to 1945, not far from here to the east

in the town today of Gdansk or then Danzig,

the Wilhelm Gustloff was evacuating troops.

It was evacuating members of building operations.

It was evacuating thousands of civilians

away from the ever-encroaching Red Army as they were heading towards Berlin.

[Groves] It's difficult to say just how many people

were on board the Wilhelm Gustloff,

but one estimate puts it at about ten and a half thousand people.

And of these people, around 9,000 were civilians.

But there were also military personnel on board and Nazi party officials,

which made the ship a military target.

[narrator] The ship's peace time capacity was limited to 2,000 crew and passengers.

This dangerously overloaded ship departed amid freezing conditions.

[Groves] The Wilhelm Gustloff had to set sail with an inadequate escort

due to shortages during the war.

And this got even worse during the journey because of the freezing cold weather.

Equipment was malfunctioning

and some of the boats which were supposed to be escorting it had to turn back.

[narrator] Unescorted, overcrowded and unintended for combat use,

the Wilhelm Gustloff was a prime target

as it sailed across the freezing sea.

It was a disaster waiting to happen.

[explosion]

[narrator] When World War II came to German soil,

it brought chaos to the local people.

It was during this period that one of the greatest losses of life in history occurred.

In 1945, the Wilhelm Gustloff was fleeing the Red Army,

overloaded with over 10,000 passengers.

Among the fleeing civilians, troops and navy personnel,

there were four ship's captains onboard.

[Groves] The Wilhelm Gustloff received a message which said that

it was on a collision course with a minesweeper.

And the captains had a disagreement about

whether they should switch the lights on to try and avoid collision.

In the end, they did switch the lights on,

and this got them spotted by a Soviet submarine

and ultimately, sealed the fate of the ship.

[narrator] The Soviet submarine S-13 stalked the ship for two hours.

In the dead of night, the submarine fired all of its torpedoes.

[Groves] The Wilhelm Gustloff was struck by three torpedoes fired from a Soviet submarine.

Um, the first two killed many people instantly,

but the third torpedo knocked out the engine room

which basically knocked the lights out on the ship, plunging it into darkness.

It would have been absolutely horrific.

There was screams. Uh, there was people panicking.

People were even trampled to death.

[explosion]

[narrator] The Gustloff sank in under an hour,

in temperatures well below freezing.

It's estimated that about 9,600 people died in... In that incident.

Easily the worst maritime disaster in history.

And when you consider the cruel irony

that this was intended to be a pleasure cruiser.

This was intended to be somewhere where German workers

could come to relax under the Third Reich,

and it ended up being a vessel of death.

[Lynn Picknett] It's extraordinary that this story is so little known.

Because so many people died.

It was the great maritime disaster in history.

But nobody really wanted to know.

Nobody wanted to think of the Nazis as human or as suffering.

Nobody cared about Nazi suffering.

[narrator] The sinking of this floating palace of propaganda,

overloaded with terrified civilians is a sad testament

to the madness of the Nazi regime.

But fortunately, this was a regime that was soundly defeated.

Both on the battlefield and in the consciousness of the German people.

[all shouting] Sieg heil! Sieg heil!

One thing the world has to be grateful for

is the fact that although it seemed

as if an entire population had been brainwashed,

de-Nazification happened rather quickly.

[Dominic Selwood] The Nazis relied on an unprecedented level of propaganda.

And they developed a very sophisticated way for rolling it out.

But the problem with propaganda is that it's not true,

and eventually people see through it.

[Dr. Karen Bellinger] I personally see what the Nazi party accomplished

in those six years leading up to the outbreak of war,

as an absolutely chilling cautionary tale

for all of us faced with populous messaging

and government in the modern world.

Be careful what you wish for and think about what underlies

promises that a government makes in an effort to win over support for its policies.

It's terrifyingly easy for an evil, maniacal leader

to exert mass manipulation over an entire population.

And I think we've seen it elsewhere throughout history

and unfortunately, probably will continue to.

[narrator] Germany has had over 70 years to come to terms

with these dark and painful times.

But what is to become of the largest relic of the Nazi regime?

There has been support for demolishing it,

but instead, the colossus of Prora is being renovated into modern housing units.

[Jackson] A reuse of the building

looking forward to the future is an interesting expression

of how Germany deals with

the darkest part of its history.

The building is now being repurposed,

perhaps even fulfilling its function as a holiday venue.

And um, it's now turned round, if you like.

And these new apartments look not just onto the Baltic Sea,

but into the 21st century.