Original subtitles

In the valley of the Bavarian Alps, January 1943,

Eva Braun has herself filmed for the pleasure of her secret love, Adolf Hitler.

Is the twilight of the gods by his favorite composer Wagner,

which he often listens to in his mountain home, perhaps an omen?

For her, he is the Fuhrer, the leader who has conquered Europe and part of Russia,

despite setbacks in Moscow and Stalingrad, where the situation is dire.

Will his need to dominate, still as strong as ever, lead to his own downfall?

APOCALYPSE THE FALL OF HITLER

After these first defeats, Hitler prepares for the great shock.

1/2 GREAT SHOCK

January 43, an icy winter.

At the Wolf's Lair, the Fuhrer's headquarters close to the Russian front.

Hitler prepares with Marshal Kettel, head of the army's high command,

and Ribbentrop, minister of foreign affairs, for the arrival of his ally,

Romania's dictator, Marshal Antonescu.

Hitler blames him for the Romanian army's debacle at Stalingrad,

which, according to him, has led to the inevitable fate of Germany's 6th Army.

In Hitler's entourage, one of his liaison officers, Nikolaus von Below,

notes in his memoirs: "The longer the fighting in Russia went on,

the more unrestrained became his hatred of the Jews."

Hitler constantly insists:

"Exterminating the Jews is my mission on Earth."

Behind these doors, one of the secretaries, Christa Schroeder, notes:

"When during conferences, the conversation

turned to rumors about the mass murderers and torture,

in front of witnesses, Hitler would have never admitted

the inhumane harshness of the orders he had given."

But what does his secretary really know about the roundups, ghettos,

deportations, massacres, about all these extermination operations

constantly carried out in Russia and occupied Europe?

And how much does Eva Braun really know?

She says: "I met people who told me stories."

"I couldn't believe my ears."

"But in the end, isn't it better that I don't know what's going on?"

"After all, I can't change anything."

Berlin, March 21st, 1943.

Hitler inaugurates an exhibition of weapons seized from the Soviets

to cover up the fall of Stalingrad.

He is greeted by Marshal Goering, Minister of Aviation,

with whom he seized power exactly 10 years earlier.

The atmosphere has changed. An attack is being prepared against him.

It is unsuccessful, but others will follow. He miraculously escapes them all.

Throughout Hitler-occupied Europe, 1943 marks the true rise

of the resistance to Nazism, even in Germany.

Hans Scholl, a medical student drafted as a nurse on the Eastern Front,

speaks of the horrors committed by the Wehrmacht in Russia.

Together with his sister Sophie Scholl, and another medical student,

Alexander Schmorell, they launch the White Rose Movement.

They denounce what they call "The dictatorship of evil".

And hand out anti-Nazi leaflets.

Here's one. It ends as follows.

"Our people stand against the annihilation of Europe by national socialism

in a renewed affirmation of freedom."

They are turned in, arrested, and sentenced to death.

Sophie Scholl declares: "What we have said and written,

many people feel the same, but they don't dare express it."

She is guillotined at the age of 20.

Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil"

Hitler now faces a wall.

At the Casablanca Conference, the Allies have just confirmed their intention

to continue the fight until Germany surrenders unconditionally.

So Hitler declares: "As I have always said, the situation is clear."

"It will be victory or destruction."

His accomplice, Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, had prepared the field.

Do you want total war?

German people, rise up!

Storm! Unleash yourself!

The apotheosis is April 19th, 1943, the day before the Fuhrer's birthday.

With Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Ode to Joy,

under the direction of a pro-Nazi conductor, Herbert von Karajan.

His secretary, Christa Schroeder writes:

"Hitler appeared less and less in public as his army suffered setbacks."

"Like a reptile that fears the sun, Hitler fled the light."

German losses now exceeded 4 million military

and civilian dead, wounded, or missing.

Christa Schroeder writes about Hitler's diabolical nature:

"The death of a human being left him absolutely indifferent."

"He viewed humanity as a long chain of men, and he himself as the first link."

The next day, April 20th, in the Berghof, his residence in the Bavarian Alps,

Hitler celebrates his birthday with a small group. He is 54.

His personal photographer, Hoffman, presents a collection of photos

ordered by the Fuhrer.

Monuments of the great German Reich, which will disappear in the Allied bombings,

so they can be rebuilt identically after the war.

Hoffman has him admire paintings stolen from the Jews for his personal collection.

His close circle poses for the traditional family photo.

In the front row, to the Fuhrer's right, is Eva Braun.

She has gone from secret mistress to official companion.

He receives birthday wishes from the staff and their children.

One of the secretaries, Traudl Junge, writes:

"He only talks about his dog as if it were the dog's birthday."

He says: "She really is the cleverest dog I know, and I often play ball with her."

Hitler talks about his dog to avoid talking about the war.

The war continues, like here in northern Russia,

where the goal is now holding on over advancing and surviving over winning.

The war continues over a 1900-mile front, from Lapland to Crimea.

Kharkiv is taken and retaken four times.

Hitler, filmed by Eva Braun, still seems cheerful and confident.

This is not just the comedy of power.

If he doesn't talk about the war, it's because he now believes

he has the means to win, with what he calls "His secret weapons".

Thanks to this man, Wernher von Braun, a young genius at the service of evil,

who has designed an invincible weapon, the V-2 rocket.

He has it built on an island in northern Germany.

When the V-2 is perfected and produced in large quantities,

it will be able to transport a ton of explosives over London,

and later over New York,

and one day maybe even the atomic bomb.

A small team of nuclear scientists are working on it,

but the best ones were forced to flee Germany because they were Jewish.

The first trials are far from conclusive.

While he waits for his secret weapons, Hitler still has a key advantage.

In the Berghoff's grandiose living room, Hitler welcomes Admiral Karl Dönitz,

the strategist of submarine warfare

whom he has just named commander-in-chief of the German navy.

Since the beginning of the conflict, German submariners, most of them die-hard Nazis,

have sunk by torpedo or cannon 17 million tons of ships, liners, oil tankers,

transports of troops, equipment, food, and wounded soldiers.

An unconscionable war.

After prowling the ocean, Dönitz's gray wolves, the famous U-boats,

hide from Allied aircraft.

They return to their impenetrable shelters on the French coast,

in Lorient, Bordeaux, and Royan.

They are the heroes of the day, dead the next.

27,000 out of 35,000 submariners killed.

70% losses, including Admiral Dönitz's son.

In 1943, Hitler sees his project to conquer Caucasic

and Middle Eastern oil escape him.

But he still occupies part of Russia and what he calls New Europe.

German propaganda continues to celebrate Hitler's idea

of a unified Europe fighting against Bolshevism.

For those living under the Wehrmacht's control,

like the family of photographer Fernand Bignon in Normandy,

life can be peaceful if you are neither a Jew nor an enemy of the Reich,

a communist, or a resistance fighter.

There are many resistance fighters willing to risk being packed into freight cars

that transport refugees, like this one,

which are also used to deport unfortunate Jews to the death camps.

There's a real risk of being turned in by a neighbor while listening to Radio London,

the Free French Forces, or personal messages.

General de Gaulle's voice gives hope.

The country is not dead. Hope is not vanquished. Long live France.

The majority of the French go with the flow.

They live through the German occupation with one main concern,

not starving to death.

The French call the Germans les doryphores, or potato bugs,

harmful insects that devour potato crops.

The French cycle across the country. There's not a drop of gasoline left.

Ration cards provide meager servings.

So people search for a farmer who can sell meat, eggs, and milk.

They pick watercress in the rivers

and rabbit grass for their small family farm.

A spiteful caption, no ration card, and yet, rabbit in mustard sauce.

Mr. Bignon films his daughters, who have become accustomed to wooden shoes

and everything the Germans call ersatz, like fish fat instead of butter.

Because Hitler's Reich is also subject to severe restrictions,

now the German women produce shells heavier than their weight for Goebbels' total war

that's burning through ammunition.

But German rationing seems to spare some, as evidenced by these amateur images

from the spring of 1943, filmed in the touristic town of Dachau, near Munich.

Dachau is also the first Nazi concentration camp,

opened only two months after Hitler rose to power in 1933.

200,000 deportees pass through this gate that reads: "Work sets you free".

Communists, homosexuals, Bavarian Jews, gypsies, Polish priests,

many of whom are slaves of the BMW company.

They will die of hunger, medical experiments,

or under the blows of the SS guards that we see here playing volleyball

next to the camp on Sundays.

Dachau is a medieval city that this club of amateur photographers

and filmmakers has chosen as a subject.

They're welcomed by one of the SS officers, hanged in 1946,

like the entire camp staff.

It's a feast, courtesy of the Dachau guards' canteen.

These people are Nazis, otherwise they would be rationed like everyone else.

For these privileged members of the regime, Adolf, the Fuhrer,

is always right, and he will win the war.

On April 14, 1943, Hitler makes Mussolini come to Germany.

His features are drawn, and his power is wavering.

Hitler wants to inform him he plans to resume the offensive in Russia.

He still needs Mussolini's support and his soldiers.

The Italian dictator is reluctant. He would prefer an effort in the Mediterranean,

where his interests are directly threatened.

But Hitler shows him that his generals prefer to attack in Russia

to stabilize his front and reassure their allies.

This will be Operation Citadel,

an offensive in the center of the front, in the sector of the city of Kursk,

where the Russians had managed to advance.

The Germans will attack from the north and south with their usual pincer maneuver.

Will the world's fate in July 1943 be a battle around the city of Kursk?

Hitler mobilizes the energy of Speer, his architect,

whom he names Minister of Armaments.

Speer gives a new boost to the German war industry.

He has succeeded by working millions of prisoners and deportees to death.

He forces the steel industry of occupied Europe to work at full capacity

to produce weapons in mass quantity.

Hitler and Speer have also found a genius engineer, Ferdinand Porsche.

For Hitler, Porsche had invented the people's car, the Volkswagen.

Hitler and Speer make him design a better tank than the Soviet T-34.

Speer attends the trials of this Tiger tank.

The gamble pays off. It is a 60-ton monster

armed with the famous 88-millimeter cannons,

capable of piercing all types of armor, more precise, more range.

They will spearhead the largest group of tanks ever seen.

Who can possibly defeat Ferdinand Porsche's Tiger?

At the end of June 1943, everything is ready for Operation Citadel.

Hitler has gathered 2,700 tanks, 7,000 guns,

2,600 planes, and 800,000 soldiers.

A massive effort, considering the Wehrmacht's substantial human and material losses.

Hitler says: "The victory at Kursk will be a signal to the entire globe."

"The path to world domination is clear."

But the Germans have once again underestimated their enemy.

The Red Army lines up twice as many tanks, 5,600, along with 30,000 guns,

3,600 aircraft,

and nearly 2 million soldiers.

Stalin rallies them. He has his proclamation read:

"Do not leave a single meter of our land to the enemy."

"Be ready for the decisive fight against the Germano-fascist invaders."

Thanks to its spies, Soviet high command knows precisely

that the enemy will strike in Kursk.

Nikita Khrushchev, who will one day be Russia's leader,

plays a role in this battle.

He is a political commissar, Stalin's eye.

He oversees everything. In his memoir, he recounts

that he interrogated SS prisoners before having them shot

and knows what is being prepared and what is at stake.

He says: "The next two or three days will be terrible."

"Either we hold out or the Germans take Kursk."

"They're staking everything on this one strike. It is a matter of life or death."

"We must see to it that they break their necks."

Khrushchev, in his American coveralls, climbs into his Jeep,

supplied by the Americans, as are two-thirds of the vehicles, planes, weapons,

and all the canned goods that his army eats.

July 4, 1943.

The Soviet infantrymen in the trenches are Ukrainians.

Like every soldier around the world, they speak of their wives

and girlfriends before battle.

Their general, Konstantin Rokossovsky, had just been warned by Stalin himself

that the German assault will take place at night.

Across the front lines, the Russians wait.

They rode on their tanks. For the fatherland. For Stalin.

In a short trip to the mountains, Hitler is photographed at the Berkhof,

looking very relaxed.

At his side, Goebbels informs him:

"The Russians are running out of human reserves."

Goebbels comes to encourage Nazi General Walter Model,

from whom defeat is not an option.

His soldier's honor is at stake.

Model, under the orders of Field Marshal von Kluge, must attack from the north,

starting from Morel.

And Manstein will attack from the south to encircle the Russians around Kursk.

Marshal von Manstein has his doubts.

He believes Hitler has waited too long to launch his offensives

and has allowed the Russians to reinforce their troops.

Manstein wants more soldiers, younger and younger.

But on this 4th of July, the die is cast.

The greatest tank battle of all time is about to begin.

Hitler proclaims: "Soldiers of the Reich,

today you are taking part in an offensive of the utmost importance."

"The outcome of this offensive may affect the outcome of the war."

"Your victory will show the whole world that to resist us is futile."

The German attack order is confirmed.

In the north and the south, on July 5th at 4 a.m.,

the Wehrmacht will launch its offensives.

But General Rokossovsky's troops make the first move.

At 2 a.m., they unleash their artillery and Katyusha rockets.

And yet the Russian fire is largely ineffective.

And the Germans attack, backed by their tanks, their assault weapons,

with their Tigers leading the way.

The powerful Russian tanks, the T-34s, are quick to retaliate.

The battle is reminiscent of World War I, says Nazi writer Paul Carell.

Despite the tanks, it's a stalemate.

Paul Carell writes: "All the officers are dead or wounded, in vain."

"The men rush to conquer a trench."

"Another trench immediately blocks their way."

"Battalions are melting like wax."

On July 10th, north of Kursk, after five days of progress,

the Germans are stopped by the violence of the Russian defense.

Two days later, General Model orders a retreat to the starting positions.

While retreating, Lieutenant Karl Freigang of the 7th Infantry Division

angrily destroys everything that could be used by the enemy.

He writes: "We must go back."

"All these victims died for nothing. All this commitment was in vain."

"I have wept tears of anger and sadness."

While Model retreats in the north, the SS manages to break

through the second line of Russian defenses in the south, but with heavy losses.

They take many prisoners who were sent behind the lines

to the summer wheat fields.

The Luftwaffe, Germany's air force, attacks the last line of Russian defense.

The famous Stuka dive bombers pound Soviet positions.

The Battle of Kursk is also a great air battle.

The Soviets now have better planes,

but are lacking in good pilots and effective tactics.

They suffer huge losses.

On Yakovlev fighters, the Yak-3s,

the French volunteers of the Normandy squadron join the fight alongside the Russians.

Now called the Normandie-Niemen Regiment, at the end of the war

they will tally 273 victories and 38 dead,

including their commander, Major Jean Tulasne, killed in the sky over Kursk.

On the southern front, the land battle reaches its climax.

But in the violent fighting, neither side gains the upper hand,

and the worst is yet to come.

All German armored forces launch an assault on the Russian T-34s.

On July 12, 1943, eight days after the start of Operation Citadel,

3,000 tanks go head-on in hellacious chaos.

This is Soviet tank commander Yevgeny Shkurdalov's first battle.

"I hit the first German tank at 100 meters."

"This Tiger has already demolished many of our tanks."

"It is firing in our direction. I aim. I shoot."

"The Tiger catches fire. I've never felt such excitement before."

German tank driver Wilhelm Heinz says:

"T-34 straight ahead. The shells are frantically passed to me."

"I load them into the gun, and the captain keeps shouting: "Shoot, shoot!"."

"The Russians keep getting closer. After the fourth shot, the T-34 stops."

"It has five centimeter holes in its flank."

Russian commander Pavel Rotmistrov recalls a hellish vision:

"The battlefield is overrun by swirls of smoke and dust."

"The earth is shaken with explosions."

"Tanks collide with each other and get stuck."

"They can't back up."

"They fight to the death, shooting until they're blown to bits

and in flames."

Tanks fire at each other at close range.

Some of them end up colliding or rolling on top of one another.

2,100 Russian tanks are destroyed compared to 360 German ones.

A clear-cut victory.

A sea of wreckage, scrap metal, and human debris.

1.2 million Soviets and 200,000 Germans have been killed or wounded.

The famous SS General Sepp Dietrich, so close to Hitler, tells his officers:

"Tonight we shall dine in Kursk."

And yet, to everyone's surprise, Hitler, smiling, summons his generals.

He orders them to stop fighting and return to their starting positions,

not to take Kursk.

So close to the goal, General Sepp Dietrich does not understand.

Stalin takes the opportunity to show the world the Kursk victory,

which isn't one to recover lost ground and retake the city of Orjol.

Stalin institutes the salvo of cannons to celebrate each victory.

He will fire 355 of them by the end of the war.

Hitler wavers.

He is facing another Russian offensive in Ukraine, near Donetsk,

as well as the Allied invasion of Sicily,

which threatens Italy and southern Germany.

For Hitler, the danger is so serious

that he takes the risk of flying to northern Italy to meet his longtime ally, Mussolini.

A unique photo shows Il Duce looking anxious,

begging the Fuhrer to find a way out of the war.

Hitler tries to reassure him with an insane monologue about his secret weapons

and new submarines.

Roughly 100 large, ocean-ready submarines are under construction.

Much more powerful, they will be able to stay underwater much longer.

They will be armed with acoustic torpedoes.

English Admiral Cunningham warns:

"With these, they will shoot at our freighters like ducks on a pond."

Churchill writes in his memoirs:

"This whole war depends on the battle of the Atlantic."

And he adds: "The only thing that really frightens me are the German submarines."

Most submarines are built in the port of Hamburg, Germany's second largest city.

This is where Churchill and the Allied Air Force commanders want to strike,

at the very heart of Nazi submarine production.

For months, the British and the Americans develop

what will become the first major city bombing campaign in history.

Each plane will carry a carefully measured mixture of explosive and incendiary bombs.

The logic of war leads to this terrible undertaking, patiently calculated

and perfected to produce maximum devastation.

The shipyards aren't the only targets.

Everything must be destroyed, the port with its installations and factories,

and the city around it with its workers and inhabitants,

anything that could serve Hitler's Reich.

On July 25th, 1943, the British and the Americans

launch 1,000 four-engine bombers over Germany.

Their target is Hamburg.

This armada spreads across six miles of sky.

The bombers take turns for eight days.

These young crews sacrifice themselves to accomplish

this deadly mission against the German population.

A hurricane of fire instantly kills 40,000 people and renders 600,000 homeless.

The man who organized this terrifying raid is General Arthur Harris.

He writes: "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion

that they were going to bomb everyone else and nobody was going to bomb them."

"In Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places,

they sowed the wind and now they're going to reap the whirlwind."

Seven more air raids follow on Hamburg, dumping 8,000 tons of bombs

without destroying the shipyards.

The German people have now been plunged into the misery of war.

But Goebbels' first objective is to show that Hitler is firmly in control.

He has Hitler filmed in his headquarters at the Wolf's Lair.

The Führer seems serene, but the military situation in Russia

is deteriorating a bit more each day.

Hitler must go to Russia to meet with Marshal von Manstein,

who commands the Southern Front in Ukraine.

The meeting is heated. Manstein says:

"I want to emphasize the gravity of our situation."

"Whether we like it or not, we should be compelled to retreat behind the Dnieper."

"The Big Dnieper River is the objective of the Russian offensive

from Kursk towards Smolensk and Kiev."

Hitler authorizes the retreat and like Napoleon and Stalin,

gives a scorched earth order.

The great Russian writer Vasily Grossman testifies to the Nazis' savagery:

"I visited the beautiful fertile Dnieper Valley,

transformed by the fascists into a hell of suffering and torture."

"Fascism shoots and kills people, not individually,

but by entire villages and cities."

"Flamethrowers and machine guns with incendiary bullets

burn dozens of flourishing villages, demolish streets, neighborhoods, whole towns."

This is what the soldiers of the Red Army discover in their reconquest.

Revenge is immediate.

The Stalinists also want to regain control of the people

after two years of German occupation.

They organize large demonstrations and try those who have sympathized with the enemy.

All the trials end in execution or deportation to the GULAGs.

On the German side, Marshal von Manstein returns to the Wolf's Lair

to ask the Fuhrer to stop handling military affairs.

Hitler is furious, but he agrees to step down from military command.

He continues to chair meetings, but his mood is progressively dark.

His favorite secretary, Christa Schroeder, says:

"He played with his dog, a gift from Bormann."

"He ate his meals alone, and he verbatis to talk about the war."

Yet Hitler bounces back. He gives SS officer Otto Skorzeny a mission.

He must save Mussolini, arrested by the new Italian authorities

who have asked the Anglo-American allies for an armistice.

Mussolini is imprisoned, but where? Skorzeny must find him.

Meanwhile, German paratroopers invade Rome.

The Italian army is disarmed and deported.

Skorzeny ultimately finds Mussolini locked up north of Rome

in this mountain hotel that looks like a fortress.

On September 12th, 1943, the German paratroopers

and the SS land on the mountain in a glider.

There is no reaction from the Italians. They free Mussolini,

who says to Skorzeny: "It was time, I was going to commit suicide."

In the various planes taking him to Germany, Mussolini explains

that the Italian armistice included him being turned over to the allies.

But when he is brought to Hitler, he understands that his fate will be no better.

Hitler wants this exhausted, defeated man to still be of use to him.

He pushes him to create a counter-government in northern Italy,

now occupied by the Germans.

Hitler and the Nazis, smiling for the camera,

send Mussolini back to Italy to an uncertain fate.

Hitler's is hardly more reassuring.

His worst enemies are gathered for the first time in front of the world's press.

All eyes are on them. First, Russia's leader,

Stalin, Marshal of the Red Army.

In pride of place, the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And Churchill, in his distinguished Royal Air Force uniform,

who embodies the resistance to Nazism.

The day's agenda is devoted to the date of the Allied landing in France.

It will take place in the spring of 1944.

The second front, long awaited by the Russians, can finally open.

Stalin has no doubt about the outcome of the war.

He declares: "After the victory

we will have to shoot all German officers 50,000."

Churchill, horrified, replies: "I prefer to be shot than to sully my country's honour."

Roosevelt to lighten the mood, jokes:

"Maybe we could stop at 49,000?"

For the first time since the beginning of the war,

Hitler spends Christmas alone in his bunker on his cot.

He wants to show his solidarity with his soldiers on the front.

And what of Eva Braun?

One of the bodyguards, Rochus Misch, recalls:

"As soon as Hitler left, Eva Braun threw a party in no time at all."

"Her expression had changed. She had become funny and playful."

"She seemed to open up to say that we should take advantage of this departure,

of this moment of freedom, that we should all get to it."

The Germans begin the New Year by digging shelters.

Their spirits are high because they still believe in victory.

Hitler says: "Germany will rise from its ashes more beautyful then ever."

In February 1944, American psychoanalyst Walter Langer studies the case of the Fuhrer.

He writes: "Hitler will avoid public appearances."

"There will be a plot against him."

"He will not accept peace negotiations and he will refuse to surrender."

"He will take revenge on the world for hating him

and he will ultimately commit suicide."

Transcription: danel32 Offer me a job: eng.to.est@gmail.com