All language subtitles for Hitler.and.the.Nazis.Evil.on.Trial.S01E04.NF.WEBRip

The Jewish watchword

"Proletarians of the world, unite"

will be conquered by our response,

"Working men of all nations,
recognize your common foe!"

Hitler had never made any secret

of his desire
to make Germany free of the Jews.

JEW

By the late 1930s,
we see increased radicalization.

Jews are facing increasing pressure
to give up their property.

Many thousands of Jews
are being imprisoned,

often beaten,
and... and occasionally murdered.

The goal for Hitler and the Nazis

is to put more pressure
on the Jews to leave.

Jews from the Reich
are liquidating their property

accumulated in Germany for generations,

and are drifting to Hamburg,
the harbor city,

where they will set out on German steamers
for a new life across the sea.

The SS St. Louis was a ship,

uh, with hundreds
of German Jewish refugees on it.

They had visas for Cuba.

For us youngsters,
it was really quite an adventure

because this was a luxury liner

where you had a cinema
and a ballroom and a swimming pool,

and all the usual games
you have on a boat.

We really had a very good time.

Until we landed and found
that, um, things began to go wrong.

When they arrived
in Havana Harbor,

they were informed that
the Cuban government had changed its mind,

had canceled their entry visas,

and now they're sort of stuck.

And the Cuban police came on

and the immigration people,

and we were told,
"Well, not today, not today."

"Mañana, tomorrow, tomorrow,"
but tomorrow never came.

The ship hopes that
they will be allowed to disembark

in the United States,

but the American government
denies that request,

and the ship has no choice
but to turn back.

One man committed suicide
with a razor blade.

I saw him rushing out,
the blood dripping down,

and, um... he jumped into the water.

But even when he was in the rescue launch,

he was still trying
to pull his arteries out

and didn't want to be saved.

At the time,
Goebbels published in the newspapers,

"You see, nobody wants them either.
At least we are building camps for them."

Attention! Tribunal.

One of the most
striking and revealing...

of all the captured documents
which have come to hand...

is a document which we have come to know
as the Hossbach Note...

...of a conference in the Reich Chancellery
on 5 November, 1937,

in the course of which,
Hitler outlined to those present

the possibilities and necessities

of expanding their foreign policy

and requested, I quote,

"That his statements be looked upon
in the case of his death

as his last will and testament."

The document destroys any possible doubt

concerning the Nazis' premeditation

of their crimes against peace.

For the prosecution,
this is a smoking gun, right?

You've got Hitler telling
several of the defendants,

"We're gonna annex Austria.
We're gonna annex Czechoslovakia."

That is pretty close to a textbook piece
of evidence for conspiracy.

At this very secret meeting
which took place in the Reich Chancellery,

Hitler called all of his generals together

and explained the sort of grand layout
of what he saw coming ahead,

which was the absolute necessary war
for the survival of the German people.

He says,
"We have to conquer living space,

because if we don't,
we will fail as a people." Right?

"We will die out,
and we will deserve to die out."

He's talking almost
as if this is going to be his legacy.

He's telling his would-be successors

that, "If I'm no longer here,
what I want you to do

is make sure you fulfill
these territorial goals for me."

And the ultimate aim is Lebensraum,

is getting living space for the Germans.

And so there's a sort of mission
that's creeping into his language

which now, overtly and explicitly,
talks about military action.

And at this point,
Hitler has conducted a series of gambles

starting in 1936.

First, as he marches into the Rhineland,

the French do nothing,
the British do nothing.

Next, '38, he marches into Austria.

He's greeted with huge crowds,
sort of victory parade to... to Vienna.

So having gone that far,
then there is a German minority

that lives in the kind of U-shaped ring
of Czechoslovakia on the German border

that's called the Sudetenland.

There are about
three million Germans

living in the mountainous Sudetenland.

Germany wants those Germans
to belong to it.

And there's a fledgling Nazi Party there
that the German regime supports.

And so Hitler's argument is, uh,
"We just want these territories."

"They are full of Germans.
They should belong to Germany."

So Hitler, he makes a case

that it's the Sudeten Germans' right
to be reunited in the German Reich.

He basically threatens
to invade the Sudetenland,

and there are many, many people
all over Europe who realize

that one could go to war over this,
but do you really want to?

One day early in September,

I kissed Tess and Eileen goodbye,

and once more caught a plane to Germany.

Hitler has demanded
that Czechoslovakia agree

to the handing over of Sudetenland.

Mr. Chamberlain has agreed
to convey this demand

to the Czechoslovak government.

William L. Shirer,
like all foreign correspondents,

wants to get a news story out of it,

and he's talking to Czech officials
as part of his reporting duties.

They believed
they were being sold down the river,

and I think Shirer believed that as well.

He wants to report what they're doing
'cause he... he feels...

To him, he thinks it's a mistake.

Just as I was about
to go on the air at 2:00 a.m.

with the day's story
and the official communiqué,

Goebbels and the Nazi boss of German radio

forbade me to say anything over the air,
except to read the official communiqué.

The censorship in Nazi Germany
is very challenging.

"You can't say this. You can't say that."

You know, you can't describe
German moves as "aggression."

You can't do anything critical at all
about Hitler,

and that drove him absolutely crazy.

So he was really in a very tight window
in terms of what he could say and not say.

Now in a minute or two,
we're told Hitler will be coming.

He has left the Chancellery
a few seconds ago,

and he's driving down
the Leipziger Strasse

to the Potsdamer Platz.

I have placed a memorandum

representing Germany's
last and final proposal

with the British government.

That any territory which is German

who wants to come to Germany,
belongs to Germany.

The world prays fervently

that the roar of this plane,
this dramatic meeting, may bring peace.

The conference held
between Germany on the one hand,

the British, the French,
and the Italians on the other hand,

in which those great powers negotiate

that Hitler has the right
to the Sudetenland.

The thinking is,

if we finally let Hitler
have that territory,

there won't be any more reason
for conflict.

All the Germans will be together,

and Hitler will no longer
make any more demands.

The reaction to Munich
on the Allies' side is mixed emotions.

On the one hand,
people are greatly relieved

that war has not broken out.

On the other hand,
there is a sense of shame

that they have sold out the Czechs.

So it was, on Hitler's part,
a brinksmanship gamble

that ultimately the Allies would cave.

It's all over.

At 12:30 this morning,
30 minutes after midnight,

Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain,
and Daladier signed a pact

turning over Sudetenland to Germany.

Czechoslovakia, which is asked
to make all the sacrifices

so that Europe may have peace,

was not consulted here
at any stage of the talks.

Shirer is in Munich,

and he sees Hitler
in the street passing by,

and he sees in his face
this determination,

this satisfaction that he just took
another part of another country.

Hitler brushed past me
like the conqueror he is this morning.

I noticed his swagger.

Shirer reads into his face
and in his eyes this determination

that, "I got away with it again."

"I fooled the British.
I'm gonna keep going."

"They're not gonna stop me.
No one's gonna get in my way."

"They didn't get in the way
in the Rhineland,

they didn't get in my way in Austria,

and they're not getting in my way
in the Sudetenland."

On 3rd October,

our dear Führer
visited his German Sudetenland.

The decision to...
to give up the Sudetenland to Hitler

had many, many implications...

KRUMAU THANKS THEIR LIBERATORS!

...because this was a very important
physical geographical barrier to invasion,

which means the road to Prague is open,

should Hitler decide to go further.

A few months after
the Munich Agreement,

Hitler moves in and takes over
the rest of Czechoslovakia,

which, you know,
contains almost no Germans.

The Czechs
don't really put up a fight. They can't.

Once he has control of the Sudetenland,

they don't have
any natural defensive terrain.

When he occupies Prague
in the spring of '39,

he is occupying for the first time
a country that is non-German.

Hitler looks at the collapse
over the Sudetenland

as just simply more of the weakness
of the Western Allies.

They're not going to fight him.
They're never going to stand up to him.

Now, according to
the Hossbach Memorandum,

it's not about
getting all the Germans together.

It's about having Lebensraum,

living space.

Do you remember Hitler saying

that at six o'clock in the morning,

the German army would invade
Czechoslovakia from all sides?

I do not recall the exact words.

Do you remember Hitler saying

that within two days,
the Czech army would not exist anymore?

I do not remember the details. No.

You think you
could answer one of my questions directly?

I'll ask you it again.

Will you agree with me
that you had threatened

to march in in overwhelming strength,

and to bomb Prague if they didn't agree?

What further pressure
could you put on Czechoslovakia?

War, for instance.

That... What is that but war?

In the spring of '39,
the war drums begin to beat,

and the Poles, they begin to realize
that they're next on the menu,

and their answer
is to not do what the Czechs did.

And so the Polish strategy is,
"No, we don't negotiate."

"We don't surrender anything."

Poland's leaders were military men.

They answered force with force.
They enlarged the Polish army.

It's clear by then
to British policymakers

that the next move would be Poland.

So both France and Britain are now warning

that if Germany, uh, attacks Poland,

then they will declare war on it,

but they're still
highly reluctant to do so.

The Soviet Union has also
been watching all of the developments

of the Anschluss
and... and Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia

with great, great interest,

and Stalin has been very nervous

because he's seen Germany
getting stronger and stronger,

and he isn't sure that Poland
is gonna be enough of a buffer zone

if, uh, Germany should attack Poland first
and then head off to the Soviet Union.

After Munich,
Stalin is very upset

that he hadn't been invited to the table,

that he had been excluded
from this conference.

If they had turned their backs
on Czechoslovakia,

then what was the role
that they were imagining

the Soviet Union played
in the future of Europe?

Hitler has some respect for Stalin,

but absolutely despises Bolshevism

and... and what he thinks
the Soviet Union stands for.

And Stalin despises racial ideology
of Nazi Germany.

So... so these are countries and leaders
that are enemies,

but after the Munich conference,

Stalin really redoubles his efforts
to try to reach out to Hitler.

Hitler signals
that he's open to discussions.

Stalin brings in
his Minister of Foreign Affairs,

Vyacheslav Molotov,

then they invite Ribbentrop to... to Moscow.

Joachim von Ribbentrop
is an interesting figure.

He's one of these mediocrities
who manages to reach

very prominent positions
in the Third Reich.

He was a champagne dealer
for most of his adult life,

and then becomes
the Nazi foreign minister.

He's a Nazi who had
almost no experience in diplomacy before,

and Molotov is a long-term Bolshevik.

These two men,

they're acting very much as emissaries
of their respective leaders.

The reception
given to me by Stalin and Molotov

was very friendly.

I told the Russian gentlemen

that Germany would do everything to settle

the situation in Poland

and to settle the difficulties peacefully.

But I left no doubt
that an armed conflict might break out.

That much was obvious.

And that's
the meeting at which they work out

the Soviet-German Nonaggression Pact.

And then in August,
the bombshell.

This time, from Moscow.

Incredibly, Stalin and Hitler join hands.

The archenemies of old
become fellow aggressors,

and von Ribbentrop flies back to Berlin

with the news that the way is now clear.

When he gets news
from Ribbentrop,

Hitler says "Now we have them."

And, of course,
the world is absolutely shocked.

You couldn't find
two more natural enemies.

Even the leadership within the Reich
is stunned by this news

because it's so unlikely.

It just so goes against
what Hitler has been proclaiming

about Jewish Bolsheviks.

But then the thing that killed Germany
in the First World War

was fighting with Russia on one front
and the Western Allies on the other.

And Hitler's found
a way out of that conundrum

by doing this pact.

Throughout centuries,
Germany and Russia

have lived next to each other
in peace and friendship.

Why should it not be possible
in the future once again?

The Poles immediately knew
that this was their doom.

And it was only a few days later,
after the pact was announced,

that Hitler told his generals
to begin mobilization

to almost imminently invade Poland.

In Poland,
there is no official comment

on the latest German moves,

but a dispatch from Warsaw
says the country is standing firm

and ready to fight if necessary.

On the eve of the war itself,

there was a German operation,
Operation Himmler,

and there were a number
of false flag operations

staged along the border

to make it look as if the Poles
had attacked Germany,

and therefore that the Germans
were defending themselves.

Nazi Germany staged a fake attack

and even brought
concentration camp prisoners,

dressed them up in uniform,
and had them drugged, had them killed,

to make it look like
Poland had attacked first.

And Hitler says, "This is an outrage.
Poland has provoked Germany,

and therefore, we have to,
uh, we have to answer back."

Well, of course, Hitler's been
preparing for war for a while.

Here is
a United Press flash from Warsaw

which says officially that German planes
have bombed railway stations

in three Polish towns.

In September 1939,

the Nazis march into Poland,

and my grandfather,
along with other press people,

are invited to follow along behind

so that they can report
their glorious conquering of Europe.

On Tuesday, I found myself
on a hill in the midst of a city

which had been occupied two days before.

Two miles to the north of us,
the killing was going on.

You could hear the deep roar
of the German artillery,

the Poles had none,

and the rat-tat-tat
of the machine guns on both sides.

The sound
of these shells exploding

or the bombs from the airplanes,
was deafening.

Not the slightest sign
of strain or excitement

among the German officers
at our observation post.

They reminded me of coaches
of a championship football team at home,

who sit calmly on the sidelines and watch
the machine they created do its stuff.

Below us, in the stretch of the town,

women with their youngsters
stood around in little clusters...

...listening to the din of the cannon
and the rattling of machine guns.

The bitterness, the anguish on the faces
of old women was indescribable.

Tragic and grotesque.

Grotesque that we should be standing there

watching the killing
as though it were a football game,

and we, comfortably off in the grandstand.

So the Germans' attack
is very fast, very, very effective.

All of a sudden on the 17th of September,
the Soviet Union invades from their side.

What the world didn't know was
that there were these secret agreements

that were part
of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,

in which Hitler and Stalin had agreed
that they would divide up Poland.

Will you please
explain what took place?

During the negotiations

with Stalin and Molotov,

a line of demarcation was agreed.

So that in the event of war,

there should be a boundary line

to avoid a collision

between Germany and Russian interests.

This was done
by a secret supplementary protocol.

The Soviet prosecution team and judge,

they left for Nuremberg without knowing
the details of the secret protocols.

And Ribbentrop then makes the argument

that if Germany was guilty
of crimes against peace,

then the Soviets, right,
certainly must have been too.

For this to be revealed in court,

for Ribbentrop himself
to be describing it,

this... this was a real moment
in the trial.

Within about a month,
Poland ceased to exist as a country.

It was completely partitioned,

divided up between Germany
and the Soviet Union.

Poland, the state
whose borders England had guaranteed,

was swept from the map within 18 days,
with that guarantee unfulfilled.

With that, the first phase
of this war has come to an end,

and the second begins.

All of the ideas
behind the German racial crusade,

behind Lebensraum,

behind all of these brutal visions
for dominance in Eastern Europe,

can be found in Mein Kampf,
in Hitler's speeches.

But it's truly in Poland in 1939

that the Nazis first had the chance
to carry out these policies.

Germany invades
with its military...

ENTRY PERMIT

...but right behind its military
are Einsatzgruppen,

meaning task forces

which are made up of a mix of Gestapo,
the SS, uh, uniformed police.

Those units are charged

with eliminating Germany's political
and biological enemies,

and that's what they do.

Juden!

Even before the war begins,
lists of about 60,000 people are drawn up

of the Polish intelligentsia
and the elite,

including Jews, but not specifically Jews,

priests, landowners,
university professors, um,

business owners, government officials...

This is not gonna be a war
of the conquest of territory merely.

This is going to be a war of annihilation.

Especially after
the invasion of Poland,

Himmler's power grew significantly.

He and the SS were in charge
of much of the purging of Jews.

And so while they are taking over Poland,

they are also radicalizing policy
against the Jews.

Himmler sees
in the invasion of Poland and in the east,

the chance for him
to grow a vast empire of power.

Empire of power
not only controlling people's lives,

controlling slave labor,
controlling the camps,

but economic power as well,

because, of course,
a lot of things are going to be looted.

A lot of money is going to be made
out of slave labor.

Himmler's got all of that
in his mind as well

as he starts to create this huge empire.

But for the Nazis,
there's a problem

that comes with their success in Poland,

which has the largest
Jewish population in Europe.

According to the Nazis,
Jews were a dangerous racial other.

So the question is,
"What do we do with these Jews?"

So as a kind of an interim measure,

they decide to essentially concentrate
the Jewish population of Poland

in ghettos in major cities,
where Jews are locked in.

They're tremendously overcrowded.
They're not particularly big areas.

They're bringing Jews from all over Poland
and cramming them into these cities.

They forced Jews to wear
a discernible badge on their clothing,

a star that identifies them as Jewish,

so that everyone knows
who is and who is not Jewish.

So it's a strategy
of extreme segregation and isolation.

FOR JEWS - FOR NON JEWS

And at that time,
when we moved to the ghetto,

life started, really,
to be very difficult for us.

We sold whatever we were able to.

My father got sick...

and we were not able
to feed him with the right food.

He died of pneumonia in the ghetto.

So in this phase,
it's still very unclear,

both to the Jewish victims
and to the Germans,

how ultimately
this is going to settle out.

Though for the Nazis, the vision
is ultimately the Jews have to go.

It's a question of when and how,

and that will be answered
depending upon the outcome of the war.

The responsibility lies
on the shoulders of one man.

By his latest act of naked aggression,

Hitler has committed a crime
not only against Poland,

but against the whole human race.

Shortly after
Germany attacks Poland,

Britain and France declare war.

In 1939,

the Western Powers dropped their masks.

They sent Germany
their declaration of war.

And I can only say to France and England,

"You too shall have your war!"

War, for Hitler,
was a fundamental human activity,

the motor of history.

Hitler felt that war would determine
the rise and fall of a nation,

that only by conquering other nations
would one race rise up.

It was not a sort of lament
that war would be necessary,

but it was... it was something he desired.

Our enemies,
they already cry out today,

"Germany shall fall!"

Yet Germany can give but one answer:

Germany will live,

and hence Germany will win!

France and Britain
declare war on Germany,

and then they do nothing,

and they wait,

and they settle into
what the Germans called the sitzkrieg,

uh, "sitting war."

There's a few skirmishes here and there,

but basically,
the British Expeditionary Force

and the bulk of the French army

are sitting and waiting
for something to happen.

They have no plans to attack Germany.

The French have built a protective line,

the Maginot Line,

and very little happens
until May 10th, 1940,

Germany attacks
the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.

One of the key lessons
Hitler takes from World War I is that,

really, if you're going
to defeat Eastern Europe,

you have to take care
of Western Europe first.

So you have to defeat France.
You have to defeat the Low Countries.

You do not want a war on two fronts.

Hitler is determined
to control the coastline,

from northern Spain all the way up
to basically the Arctic Circle.

It's a way to neutralize Britain

so that there's no opportunity
for the blockade of Germany

or to launch an attack against Germany.

So after the German armor
breaks through

and races to the Channel coast,

they've managed to split
the British forces in Europe

from the bulk of the French army.

And the British are trapped
in northern France and southern Belgium.

And so they retreat to the coast.

There's one open port, Dunkirk,
in northern France.

DUNKIRK

Dunkirk.

Here the French navy lost
in quick succession the SS Niger,

SS L'Adroit, SS La Bourrasque,
the SS Foudroyant, SS Cyclone,

and SS Siroco.

Despite the heroic defenders,

the soldiers at Dunkirk
reach their limits.

Only the sailors fight on.

The British forces
and some French troops gather there

and begin to evacuate to England.

The British famously call
for any private boats

that are capable of crossing the Channel
to come and help with the evacuation.

The German tank forces,
in particular, are exhausted.

They have been fighting nonstop
for quite some time at this point.

They're running low on ammunition,
they're running low on fuel,

and so the British are able to evacuate

the overwhelming majority
of their forces in continental Europe

and a fair number
of French troops as well.

They do have to abandon
most of their heavy equipment, however.

So it's not a victory
for the British by any means,

even if the British media
makes it into a moral victory.

Alarms sound over Paris.

Nazi bombers attack in earnest.

After the British withdrawal
at Dunkirk,

the French are in disarray,

and their politics
are even more fragmented.

And so, a decision is made
to sign an armistice with the Germans.

William L. Shirer
is with the German army in Paris.

He sees the swastika on the Eiffel Tower.

And he gets a tip from a source,
an officer in the German High Command,

who tells him
there's gonna be an armistice.

The French are gonna surrender,

and Hitler wants it to be carried out
in the same railroad car

that the French
made the Germans surrender in 1918.

That railroad car was in a museum

in the little village
of Compiègne, France, north of Paris.

Shirer gets in a car and drives there.

And he sees the train
is pulled out of the museum.

Everything's being set up for this event.

There's only two
foreign correspondents there,

a freelance correspondent for NBC

and Shirer.

My grandfather realizes
the Nazis miked everything,

and he goes around
and searches in the woods

for the sound engineers

and listens outside.

He got the whole story.

He was allowed to broadcast

with the condition
that it would be held in Berlin

and not broadcast
until after Hitler himself

had announced the signing of the treaty.

Someone in Berlin
flipped the wrong switch.

It went through a shortwave system
on to New York.

My grandfather got
the biggest scoop of his life.

He scooped Hitler and the whole world.

Negotiations began at 3:30 p.m.
German summer time this afternoon.

A warm June sun beat down
on the great elm and pine trees

and cast pleasant shadows
on the wooded avenue

as Herr Hitler,

with the German plenipotentiaries
at his side, appeared.

His face was grave,
but there is a certain spring in his step

as he walks for the first time
towards the spot

where Germany's fate was sealed
on that November day of 1918.

In the center is a great granite block

which stands some three feet
above the ground.

Hitler, followed by the others,
walks slowly over to it,

steps up, and reads the inscription
engraved in great high letters,

"Here on the 11th of November, 1918,

succumbed the criminal pride
of the German Empire,

vanquished by the free peoples
which it tried to enslave."

We looked for an expression
on Hitler's face,

but it does not change.

And in this quaint, old,
wartime Wagons-Lits car,

another armistice is being drawn up
as I speak to you now.

We peered through the windows of the car

and saw Adolf Hitler
laying down the terms.

The German leader told the French

that he had not chosen
this spot out of revenge,

but merely to right an old wrong.

What a turning back of the clock,

what a reversing of history
we've been watching here

in this beautiful Compiègne forest
this afternoon.

After the signing
of the armistice,

Hitler goes
on a very early morning tour of Paris.

And Paris is still asleep.
It's very early in the morning.

He goes to see the... the Eiffel Tower.

He goes to the Panthéon.

He visits Napoleon's monument

and seems to imagine himself
as the victor over Napoleon as well.

It's as if he still needs
to persuade himself

that he has won that war,

and then vanishes into the mist
and goes back to Germany.

All Germans thank the Führer

for the greatest victory in history.

The drive from the front
back to the capital

became a triumphant parade.

When Hitler returns
from his victory in France,

when he returns to Berlin,

the celebrations are rapturous.

They won.

The German Volk
has proved, above all, its inner attitude

through its sons
who are fighting on the battlefield.

Within weeks, they have beaten
Germany's strongest military adversary

and have destroyed him.

Their spirit was and remains
the spirit of the German Homeland!

Hitler has delivered
everything he promised,

and I suspect that
if he had allowed elections at that point,

it would have been a sweeping victory.

Security teams can hardly resist

the onslaught of the masses.

The initial successes

really gave Hitler
a public relations boost,

and so Germans felt that maybe
this is going to be a quick war.

♪ You're the dream who makes me happy ♪

♪ Who makes me happy tonight ♪

♪ You are the rush
That warmly embraces me ♪

♪ And enriches me greatly tonight ♪

♪ Don't you feel
That you are the only one ♪

♪ For whom I would have to die tonight? ♪

The future belongs
to the young nations

who will solve these questions.

We have undertaken these solutions,
and we shall see to them.

At that point,
Hitler's seriously considering,

uh, invading Britain.

There is an operation being planned,

which is supposed to be
an amphibious invasion of Britain.

Hermann Goering,
who is, among other things,

the commander of the Luftwaffe

and who was an ace pilot in World War I,

promises that they can
have aerial superiority over Britain.

British fighters
speed to engage the foe.

In hundreds of desperate dogfights,
the invaders are held at bay.

And they fail.

The Royal Air Force,

especially with its
newly-produced Spitfire,

which are, uh, very good planes
for that period,

manages not only to hold off
the Luftwaffe, the German air force,

uh, but also to cause
a great deal of damage to it.

And so with the Blitz,

that is the bombing
of London and other cities,

the evacuation of children
from London to the countryside...

...both stiffens the back
of the British population

against the Germans...

Never in history
has an entire people

borne so frightful an ordeal so bravely.

Yes, England can take it!

...and,
from the German perspective,

makes an invasion of Britain
clearly impossible.

And now the question is,
where do we go next?

When Hitler took power,
he went about transforming the economy.

Hitler started the ball rolling,
in a sense, by a sleight-of-hand,

creating a kind of economy

that made it look
as if Germany was tremendously prosperous,

but a lot of it was done
on borrowed money and printing money.

Even before the war starts,

Hitler decides that, in a way,
in order to pay a lot of this back,

he's going to have to plunder,
he's going to have to steal.

And one of the things he does is,
of course, plan to plunder the resources

of the countries he's conquering.

And one of the other things
he plans to steal is labor,

the labor of human beings,

which, if you put people to work for free,

then you don't have to pay
your own workers.

Following
the decree of the Führer and Chancellor

on the administration
of the occupied Polish territories

of October 12th, 1939,

Jewish residents of the German Government

will be forced to work
with immediate effect.

Poland was occupied
as a colony,

not directly incorporated into the Reich,

and was turned into something
called the General Government.

And it was overseen
by, um, a civilian Nazi Party leader,

Hans Frank.

Hans Frank's job was to, uh,
submit the Poles in this territory,

make sure that they did not, uh, rise up,

make sure that
they did not form their own government.

They imagined the Poles
as truly second-class inhabitants

who would be forced
into a kind of slave subservience.

Will you give your full name?

Hans Frank.

Witness,
did Hitler give you any instructions

as to how you should carry out
your administration as Governor General?

Adolf Hitler instructed me
to see to it

that this territory,
which had been utterly devastated,

was somehow put into order again.

Did you yourself introduce
forced labor in the General Government?

Forced labor
and compulsory labor service

were introduced by me
in one of the first decrees,

but clearly, I had in mind
only a labor service within the country

for repairing the damage
caused by the war,

and for carrying out work
necessary for the country itself.

Witness, you have told us
what you did for the welfare

of the population
of the General Government.

The Prosecution, however, has charged you

with making a series of statements

which they found in your own diary,

which seem to contradict that.

How can you explain that contradiction?

The documents, uh, are all,

or nearly all, I imagine, in German...

and can be put to the defendant
in the course of his examination.

In the turmoil
of a country in flames,

in the midst of a life-and-death struggle,

such words may easily be used.

Some of the words are terrible.

I admit that I was shocked
at many of the words which I used.

At Nuremberg,
Hans Frank disavowed responsibility.

He claimed that as he was
just a civilian governor of one territory,

that is of occupied Poland,

that he had played really
no fundamental role.

That's utterly belied

by the fact that he was, uh, instrumental
in setting up the ghettos,

in creating starvation,
uh, conditions in the ghettos

and forced labor conditions
in the ghettos,

and the very act of ghettoization
was understood from the start

to be a form of murder.

The idea was that they would die,

and the idea was
they would die in very short order.

By the winter of 1940-41,

Hitler is in a situation

where he has, um,
you know, won the war in the west,

except that he can't conquer Britain.

France has fallen.

The Soviets have invaded
and annexed the Baltic states

of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

At this point, Hitler or Ribbentrop,
they reach out to Stalin

and let him know that Molotov
should come to... to Germany,

and, "We should have
some more discussions."

And so, Molotov goes to Berlin
in November 1940.

A dark, drizzling day,
and Molotov arrived.

His reception extremely stiff and formal.

For more than a year,

ever since Ribbentrop signed the pact

which brought the two archenemies
of this Earth together,

we've had rumors
that the number two Bolshevik

would repay the visit.

And at stake was the division
of Eastern Europe once again

between the Soviets and the Germans.

Issues were becoming tense

about the fate of the Baltics,
about the fate of the Balkans.

Molotov goes with a whole number
of questions from Stalin

about what is it exactly
that Hitler intends

for the shape of Europe?

Why is it that Germany
has troops in Finland, right?

Why are they there?
What are the intentions?

And really pushes, presses Ribbentrop
and Hitler on these questions.

Whereas the first round of talks
in 1939 had gone very well,

in this second round of talks,

the real conflicts between the two powers
started to surface.

And one of the things
that Hitler is trying to convince Molotov

is that the war against Britain
will soon be won.

And on the second day of the negotiations...

...things are cut short

because there are British bombers
over Berlin.

The British came over
early that evening.

Shortly after nine o'clock,
the air-raid sirens began to whine,

and soon, you could hear
the thunder of the flak guns,

and in between them,
the hum of the bombers overhead.

Hitler's meeting with Molotov
is a little bit of an embarrassment

because Hermann Goering has promised

that no Western planes
would ever hit Berlin.

And Ribbentrop,
he's trying to continue to make the point

that the war against Britain
will soon be won.

At which point,
Molotov apparently makes a quip about,

"Then why are we sitting here
in this bunker?"

So Molotov leaves,

and it's really shortly after that

that Hitler begins to initiate war plans
against the Soviet Union.

Hitler was dedicated to creating
German living space in the east.

For Hitler, it was impossible
not to attack the Soviet Union.

Again, the question was when.

William L. Shirer has kind of
reached the end of the line for him.

He can't deal with the censorship.

Mind you,
the British are now bombing Berlin.

They're now bombing other German cities.

There are nights of bombing

where shrapnel's falling
all over the place,

and him running across parking lots.

It becomes intolerable.

At some point that fall,

he begins to fear he's gonna get arrested.

The thing that he really wants
to get out are his diaries.

If he's smart
and he wants to play it safe,

he should destroy them.

But he doesn't want to do that.

It's valuable information
that he wants to get out.

Things he wasn't able to say
on the air, things he observed...

For weeks,

I had mulled over how to get
my diaries safely out of Berlin.

At some moments, I had thought
I ought to destroy them before leaving.

There was enough in them to get me hanged
if the Gestapo ever discovered them,

but I wanted very much
to preserve them if I could.

Suddenly, the solution became clear.

It was risky, but it was worth a try.

I laid out the diaries
in two big suitcases I had bought.

Over them, I placed a number
of my broadcast scripts,

each page of which had been stamped
by the military and civilian censors

as "passed for broadcast."

On top, I put a few maps I had picked up
from friends on the general staff.

His plan is to put
layers of old broadcast notes,

which were all approved by the censors,

so they wouldn't particularly care
about that.

On top of that goes some military maps,

and he thought that maybe they would
take those and not dig any deeper.

So he actually goes
to Gestapo headquarters.

And they open it up,
and they see the maps.

They take the maps.

He's scared.

"What else you got there?"
one of the men said,

putting his paw on the pile of papers.

"The texts of my broadcasts," I said.

"Every page, as you can see,

stamped for approval by the High Command
and the two ministries."

Both men studied the censors' stamps.
I could see they were impressed.

They poked a little deeper,
each man now working a suitcase.

Soon, they would reach the diaries.

I now wished... I now wished I had not come.

I felt myself beginning to perspire.

I had deliberately
got myself into this jam.

What a fool.

"You reported on the German army?"
one of the agents looked up to ask.

"All the way to Paris
and the Armistice at Compiègne," I said.

"It will go down in history."

That apparently clinched it.

"Okay," one of them said,

obviously proud
of his one word of English...

and without a word, sealed the two bags.

I was free at last.

And here is William L. Shirer,

CBS correspondent
recently returned from Berlin.

Mr. Shirer.

Nazi Germany
and Soviet Russia tonight

are fighting it out on a 2,000-mile front,

stretching from the Arctic Sea
to the Black Sea.

Germany struck today
against her late friend and helpmate

with the same kind of lightning force

which she unleashed
on the Western Front a year ago.

When the Germans
invade the Soviet Union

on the 22nd of June, 1941,

the German army
numbers over three million soldiers.

They have about 3,000 tanks,

about 600,000 horses,
close to 3,000 aircraft,

and they invade along a vast front,

from the Baltic
all the way to the Black Sea.

Barbarossa is chosen as the name

because this was
a medieval German emperor,

and he's a kind of mythical figure
for the Nazis.

The Red Army has two,
two and a half million troops,

has a lot of artillery.

And so what you have here

is the largest military confrontation
in military history.

With the launching
of Operation Barbarossa,

Hitler moved his, uh,
military headquarters

to the swampy marshes
of southern East Prussia

in this region called Masuria.

The Wolf's Lair was this
elaborate set of underground bunkers

and conference rooms and dining halls.

This was a very isolated,
very desolate,

uh, very unpleasant place
with a terrible climate.

Full of mosquitoes and bugs in the summer,

deathly cold and damp in the winter.

And Hitler was going to carry out

what he thought was going to be
a few weeks campaign in this Wolf's Lair.

Hitler was wildly confident

that the Soviet Union would collapse
in a matter of weeks.

Hitler gives a speech
to his generals

that this war
will not be a conventional war.

This war will not be fought
like the war we fought in Western Europe.

This will be a culmination
of his race war for Lebensraum.

Barbarossa was designed
to be brutal from the start.

It was designed to show no mercy.

It's a war against
Germany's military and racial enemies.

It's a genocidal war.

Hitler the conqueror,
deliberately, out of his own madness,

decided to turn
on his friend and ally, the Soviet Union.

It led to his doom.

From then on, the road for Adolf Hitler
stretched down to utter disaster.

The ensuing bloody nightmare
has no parallel in history.