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 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 master plan.

Hitler leaves it to the men around him to pull Germany back from the abyss.

you 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 people.

historians and experts, with different kinds of insight,

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

He wants to be the architect of Germany's reality,

in some ways the only truth -teller.

The 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.

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 organizations 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 1942.

Germany.

He created the hero worship cult of Hitler,

the idea of the Führer'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.

He unrolls a bare -faced lie,

spinning the defeat in Stalingrad as a heroic sacrifice on the part of Paulus

and the Sixth Army, proclaiming generals,

officers and troops battle shoulder to shoulder until the last bullet was

fired.

They died so that Germany could live.

Headless withdrawal provides scabbles 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.

The 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.

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.

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.

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 fervor 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 Führer back on track.

In many ways, Heinrich Himmler is the quintessential Nazi.

Cold -blooded 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 is 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.

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 galvanize the Führer.

He gathers thousands of top Nazi officials at Berlin's Sportpalasterina.

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 that 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 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.

No time to leave a half -death post at a good end.

Are you willing to do what it takes to survive?

She's just feeling this rush of adrenaline.

And Sophie acts impulsively.

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

it will become reality.

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.

She's brought into Gestapo HQ,

she's fingerprinted and 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 as the reports on public morale

to Hitler, because Goebbels finds them to defeatist.

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 criticize him.

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

becomes rather less frequent.

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 bought her sweets, and she said, oh, thank goodness,

because 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 our lives.

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.

The World's Most Merciful 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.

Source stickers are ripped down, and people dare to refuse the Hitler salute.

Goebbels' total war propaganda is losing its resonance.

The cent 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.

The White Rose leaflet.

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 circuituator's 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.

Recognizing his authority now rests with police repression rather than the

adulation of the masses,

Hitler appoints Himmler as Reich Minister of the Interior.

Himmler is a very chilling figure, the cold bureaucrat, and that does,

with the Gestapo, we 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's 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.

And he's a man of action.

Klaus 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 the 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 this is 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 discuss 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 the 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 that they'll be casted 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 is the war.

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 fight back against the Allies.

The story of Speer is about admiration, belief, love.

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 then 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 on which they are.

willingness to triumph.

Now, in this set piece, speech,

Goebbels and Hitler are trying to set the clock back to believing in the Führer

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.

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

Führer.

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 Führer 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 Führer 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 Führer will

do in the end.

Goebbels the creator of the Führer 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 Pozen 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 journalists, the case of the Final Solution is now in the right place.

Germany heads to almost inevitable defeat.

The Nazi leadership are locked into their pact.

The war will continue until the bitter end.

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As the final chapter of the Holocaust is carried out in his name,

Hitler withdraws to his official The atmosphere generally was very relaxed,

people were laughing and joking, they had conversations,

they looked at the scenery, it was all very normal.

We were not 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 the 6th of 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 the 6th of 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, you know, 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.

as 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 anymore 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 planned for.

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

The people in this environment,

the 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 is 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 Stauff 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,

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,

months of concentrated planning is 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.

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 know because they 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,

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

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.

For more information,

visit himmler .com 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.

Himmler moved 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 German.

turning 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, and death on an almost unimaginable scale.

This is a kind of absolute nightmare which has very few parallels in history.