Original subtitles

Since its existence, the train has been an ideal propaganda tool.

On all continents, presidents, monarchs, and dictators

have wanted their train to crisscross countries,

promote their policies and meet the people.

In the 1930s in Germany,

as Chancellor, Hitler decided

that he needed an exceptional train to match his power.

It would be a titan pulled by two locomotives,

protected by anti-aircraft batteries.

On board, men mobilized for war, private bodyguards, railway police

and officers of the German Army.

Its name: "Amerika",

or "F�hrersonderzug": the F�hrer's special train.

A steel beast of 1,200 tons, 430 meters long,

with state-of-the-art cars equipped with the highest technology.

It was like an "Air Force One", a veritable Nazi fortress on rail.

The 20-mm guns

had an upwards ground range of 4.7 kilometers.

F�hrersonderzug is the best equipped

mobile headquarters in the world at that time. The very best.

For each journey, hundreds of men were called into action,

manning tracks, bridges, tunnels and stations.

Their mission: to protect Amerika from Hitler's enemies.

Hitler's private train was more than a means of transport,

it was a genuine bunker,

a headquarters and a refuge.

Pages of the history of World War II were written on board,

tragic decisions taken, decisive meetings held.

P�tain, Mussolini

and Franco, all climbed aboard to visit the Nazi dictator.

The strategic train was even the target of plots against the F�hrer.

But Amerika was an impregnable beast of steel.

70 years on and little is really known about Hitler's train.

Yet, it shows us another side to the dictator:

that of a paranoid megalomaniac.

We went back in time to learn more.

How was this steel beast designed?

What railway mega structures were built to ensure its security?

These are absolutely enormous: 480-meter-long tunnels,

20 meters high.

How was life organized on board?

Why was nobody able to attack Amerika?

And what does the train teach us about Hitler?

We went to Germany to film what remains of other Nazi special trains,

with their luxury cars.

We found the last surviving archives.

We retraced the routes the F�hrer traveled,

as we tried to uncover the secrets of the steel beast.

Now join us on board Amerika, Hitler's private train.

Synced by chebinhdan.com

Back to the early 1930s. Hitler was head of a political party:

the NSDAP, the Nazi Party, which was on the rise.

On January 30th 1933,

he was elected Chancellor and took the reins of power.

He was a modern politician who won over large crowds.

He knew how to reach out to people:

with his appearance and his speeches belted out with fury,

possessed with his own ideas.

But he also understood

that to reach the people, he had to go out to meet them.

So in the early 1930s,

before any other politicians of the day,

Hitler became aware of the importance of travel.

He crisscrossed all Germany during his political campaigns.

Hitler likes to be seen.

He feels History his behind him,

the German people are largely behind him.

So he's happy to show himself.

As a fan of modernity, technology and power,

Hitler wanted to be able to move fast all the time.

At the time, another European dictator had his own private train:

Mussolini.

In 1937,

Hitler commissioned the Deutsche Reichsbahn

to construct a special train for him.

After two years of design and manufacture,

it left the factory in August 1939.

It was named "Amerika".

To Hitler, America represented the annihilation of the Indians.

He was fascinated by this land of conquest.

Hitler plans to conquer Europe and annihilate those who weren't Aryans.

And his train matched his ambitions: almighty.

It traveled at speeds up to 120 kilometers per hour.

Each car weighed at least 60 tons.

This steel beast was a high-performance tool.

Like in a fixed headquarters, a bunker,

Amerika ensured Hitler's security,

allowed him to be surrounded by his teams on journeys,

to be mobile on all fronts,

and to remain reachable,

something which cars and planes were unable to provide.

It was a kind of Air Force One, crammed with high technology.

A very impressive train to look at.

I wouldn't call it scary,

I would call it impressive with its austerity

and its total lack of fancy trimmings.

Hitler used his train to show he was close to the people.

He was greeted by crowds,

but each outing was strictly organized and highly securitized.

One of the things the bodyguards were concerned about

particularly with the train,

was when the train pulls in a station,

often mobs of people stampeded to the train,

like as a rock star arriving,

trying to touch Hitler, to shake his hand.

Somebody could have thrown a hand grenade into the train

or pulled him out off the window. Everything could have happened.

So it becomes increasingly obvious

that Hitler requires a special train

which would be cut off from the public and indeed from the military as well.

Soon, all Nazi dignitaries were having their own private trains built.

Hitler had launched an out-and-out fashion.

The fact that Hitler had his own train made all the other bigwigs

of the Third Reich,

men like G?ring, the head of the Luftwaffe,

Himmler, the head of the SS,

also want a private train

to take them all over the country.

At the outbreak of war,

there were 25 special trains.

300 cars for the 25 trains with poignant names inspired by "Amerika":

Asien, Afrika, Atlas, Atlantik, Prussia...

as if the Third Reich had already conquered the entire world.

They were all based on the model,

with cars built by German manufacturers,

and all looked alike, both inside and out.

They were often confused,

especially the trains of Hitler and G?ring.

Amerika would cover thousands of kilometers

during the war years,

a steel beast which shunted everything out of its way,

similar to Hitler's conquests.

Depending on war requirements and the number of people on board,

the make-up of the train varied between 10 to 16 cars,

a length of 300 to 430 meters,

the equivalent of two French high-speed TGV trains.

Amerika was a convoy of 1,200 tons,

a town-on-the-tracks, with sometimes over 200 people on board.

The cars in the middle of the train were always placed in the same way

to keep circulation between the communication cars

and the HQ car consistent.

These were regular steel passenger cars - the height of modernity -

adapted for the F�hrer's needs.

The cars themselves weren't armored.

They were built in the 1930s

in three renowned German factories:

Henschel, Wegmann and Cred�.

The inside was furbished by a well-known

interior design company: "Associated Workshops" based in Munich.

These workshops were well-known because they introduced Art Nouveau

into Germany in the early 20th century.

And here's Hitler's private car,

weighing in at a colossal 63 tons,

something that gave rise to the rumor

that it was heavily armored.

But the truth is even more surprising:

Hitler had a 100% marble bathroom installed,

But in order to do so,

a reinforced concrete sub-floor was necessary to support

the considerable extra weight.

What's more, like in all the cars,

there was a heating and air-conditioning system - very rare for the time -

which allowed the F�hrer to regulate the temperature.

The highest technology even for daily life.

This car was the third from the front, just after the first baggage car.

You entered via an antechamber permanently guarded by two soldiers.

The simple living area,

with its large table and armchairs in the middle,

had veined mahogany walls.

Hitler's apartment consisted of a bedroom with a single bed.

His famous bathroom had a bathtub and gold-plated faucets.

Next came three guest rooms

and a washroom.

Two soldiers also kept permanent guard at the rear end of the car.

Basically, the style we see here in the lounge car

was fairly middle-class,

old-fashioned middle-class.

Most of the features have a relatively functional design.

There's very little decoration or ornamentation.

He believed luxury belonged to the state.

As a man, he liked sobriety,

a degree of austerity, even.

September 3rd 1939.

A big day for Amerika.

The train would make its first military journey,

from Berlin to Bad Polzin,

a small town in north-west Poland.

Hitler had just started World War II by invading Poland.

The world entered into armed conflict,

the biggest mankind had ever known,

one of the darkest pages in our history.

62 million men, women and children would lose their lives.

The fate of Poland and the world would be decided in this train.

Hitler had made it his military headquarters.

Mobile and impressive, it would now escort the F�hrer to all fronts.

As war raged in Poland for several long days,

Amerika, like its owner, gave off an air of invincibility.

From the train, Hitler dictated his military strategy.

Over the coming days, it would become a kind of second home,

shared by high-ranking Nazi dignitaries, his closest associates,

but also by secretaries, cooks, Hitler's private bodyguards,

his doctor, train drivers

and the soldiers who manned the anti-aircraft batteries.

A whole Nazi ant nest came to life.

Hitler has a very large staff of attendants.

He has valets looking after his every need, dressing him,

providing clean clothes,

there are chambermaids on board to make the beds,

very carefully vetted staff

who act as waiters,

ma�tre d', in dining carriages.

So these are some of the best waiters in Germany

to do this.

The train offered unexpected commodities, a touch of luxury at the height of war,

like the car entirely dedicated to bathing with its hairdresser,

a refined area enjoyed by Hitler and his prestigious guests.

It was presented to him by the Reichsbahn

for his 50th birthday on April 20th 1939.

The marble and the 11,200-liter water tank

made the car extremely heavy at 78 tons.

It was the 9th car from the front, just after the guest sleeper car.

The first room, with asbestos insulation,

was fitted with two 2,000-liter water tanks.

Then a small dressing-room,

followed by five bathrooms,

two of which had bathtubs in marble and enameled steel.

Hitler shaved himself,

but his private barber cut his hair every two weeks in the hairdressing suite.

Finally, three shower cabins in marble...

and a washroom.

The bathroom facilities were state-of-the-art,

the very best showers and bathes.

Hitler was somebody who enjoyed

those aspects of his life very much so.

Hitler's days started fairly late, around ten o'clock,

when he would go to the command post

for discussions with the head of strategic operations.

He would be updated on the morning's progress.

He gave few orders, and let the teams get on with their work.

The only demand he made was no smoking.

You have to imagine life on board as something like the train's master:

extremely austere and essentially dedicated to work.

He was always in his dynamic of power.

Amerika was a genuine haven of peace

as it weaved its way across northern Poland in September 1939,

taking Hitler to support his army

as it advanced in the noise and fury of the Blitzkrieg.

Poland was attacked

from every possible side

and it shared many of its borders with Germany.

The Army managed to cross all of these borders.

Hitler would immediately organize the occupation of Poland

in an extremely cruel way for the Polish people.

He wanted to show them

that their homeland would be germanized

and become part of the Reich.

The Soviet Union, with which the Germans had signed

a non-aggression pact in August 1939,

invaded the western part of Poland on September 17th.

The country was on its knees

and surrendered 5 weeks after the outbreak of war.

Hitler's dream was coming true:

the creation of a great German Empire.

With the conquest of Poland achieved,

Hitler returned to the Chancellery,

while Amerika was parked up in a highly guarded zone

at Tempelhof Airport, just outside the capital.

The Nazis were obsessive about security.

To ensure it, a meticulous system of logistics was put in place.

The entire regiment of SS and Wehrmacht Troops

whose only job is to protect Hitler, to protect the train,

to protect his cars, his planes, and the transport routes

to and from his military HQ.

The train itself has to undergo a very thorough security check

including with sniffer dogs for explosives.

Everything has to be very carefully checked:

food brought on board, everything prepared,

the staff gathered, et cetera.

Every person employed on the train underwent very strict controls.

Aryans only,

very much like the SS trace your lineage back to 1750:

no Jews in the blood, anything like this.

Perhaps reliable Party people

vetting, very careful vetting.

Then, there was Hitler's bodyguard: a special unit dedicated entirely to him.

On board Amerika, they had a car just for them.

This would be the RSD, the Reichssicherheitsdienst.

They are the closest bodyguards and Hitler would carry anywhere

from about 22 to 26 SS bodyguards on the train.

They are the only men allowed anywhere near Hitler, who are armed.

Everybody else is unarmed, for obvious reasons.

During his journeys, there was always the same obsession with security,

with an absolute control of everywhere the train would pass.

Along the tracks, one soldier was posted every on 100 m

at vulnerable points, such as stations, bridges and tunnels.

The train itself was protected by heavy weaponry

contained in the highly effective anti-aircraft cars, or Flakwagens.

At the front and back of the train, and totally autonomous,

they provided protection from attacks by both air and land.

Four anti-aircraft guns on a turret at the front of the car.

In the middle, the soldiers' living space, with beds, a kitchen,

a washroom, and a magazine for arms and munitions.

At the rear, four more guns identical to the first set.

The 20-mm guns were very effective

because they could be used as anti-aircraft,

being able to fire upwards

to an altitude of about 2,500 meters.

But they could also fire

to the side at objects on the ground.

At enemy troops or light vehicles that got too close to the train.

Here, their range was much greater, because they could fire up to

about 4.7 km at ground targets.

And they're thought to have had a rate of fire of about 800 rounds a minute.

The full crew of the Flakwagen was between 25 and 30 men.

The special train gave Hitler the possibility

of taking his entire war staff with him.

Hitler also needed to be able to travel anywhere and quickly if need be.

For this, his armored Mercedes followed the train and an airplane

was permanently available along the route.

He also had his Focke-Wulf 200 Condor,

his private four-engine airliner.

So as the train went from one stop to another, the plane preceded it

and waited at an airfield chosen in advance, ready to take

Hitler and his staff wherever they needed to go

depending on the situation and the urgency.

In early 1940, with Austria,

Czechoslovakia and Poland now part of the new German Empire,

the F�hrer began preparing his next offensives.

Hitler worked very hard on

well-designed attack against France. Well-designed because it was

- what they didn't say back then - "surgical".

It was to nullify the French Army

and its weapons,

then offer generous peace terms

which France would not be able to refuse because it had been disarmed

in the early encounters, which had been well-calculated by Hitler.

When France was attacked in the middle of May 1940,

it didn't resist the speed and power of the German Army.

It laid down its arms four weeks later.

All of western Europe was now under the yoke of Nazism and Fascism.

Only Britain stood firm.

On June 22nd 1940,

in a train, Hitler accepted the surrender of France.

In a spirit of pure vengeance,

the F�hrer demanded it be signed in the Rethondes clearing in Compi�gne,

in the same car the Armistice of 1918 had been signed.

Hitler's choice of place

was far from neutral or innocent.

It was a way of telling France that the chapter

in which the Second Reich had capitulated

lamentably in 1918 was now closed

and that the Third Reich

had now made up for this insult.

Hitler returned victoriously to Berlin on July 6th 1940

on board Amerika, the symbol of his might.

A gigantic crowd gave him a hero's welcome.

It would be the last time he mingled with the public.

He had enormous fears about his own security.

And he may have had fears...

that public fervor was waning.

And he needed this public fervor.

It had given him a backbone of steel and immense confidence in the 1930s.

So he decided not to take any risks

with crowds that might not be as accommodating to him.

The general public slowly are pushed further and further away

from the physical being of Hitler.

Of course, this is good in many ways,

because it channels into the whole idea

of Hitler being this kind of godlike figure,

that he is not down among his people.

His cult of personality figure

removed from the ordinary German citizens.

Amerika, like the other special trains,

was pulled by two locomotives.

It wasn't because of the weight of the train.

It was to ensure that if one of the locomotives broke down,

the other one could continue.

But a steam locomotive needed about eight hours of preparation

before it was ready to roll.

Coal had to be fed into the hearth and fired, to heat

the 27,000 liters of water in the boiler and bring it up to pressure.

The autonomy of a steam locomotive was 250, 300 km at the most.

You couldn't get from Paris to Marseille with just one locomotive.

After 150 km,

you had to start planning to change. The tender was empty.

The locomotive would have consumed its 7 tons of coal

and 30 tons of water in the first 150 km.

You had to stop. They could hook up a new locomotive in about 2 minutes.

The new one was ready.

They simply unhooked the empty one and gave you a full one.

So for Paris to Marseille, you needed 10 to 15 locomotives.

When the Orient Express went from Paris to Istanbul,

it needed 30 or so locomotives.

So the steam locomotive was a kind of traction relay,

a bit like the old-fashioned postal service

where you changed your horses every 30 km of so.

Amerika was no exception to this rule.

On a 1,000-km journey, like Berlin to Paris for example,

the two locomotives had to be changed four times.

In France, they were supplied by the French national railway.

All through the existence of Hitler's train,

all types of electric and steam locomotives were used.

The most notable was the famous BR52, the war locomotive,

which appeared in 1942.

The BR52, nicknamed the "Kriegslok"

reinvented manufacturing methods

because it was simple. It was soldered together,

there was no riveting, which is expensive.

There were no rivets studding the boiler, it was a smooth cylinder.

It was much lighter

as everything not considered totally useful was stripped away.

So it was very light, but very muscular.

The BR52 was the perfect wartime locomotive.

It was assembled quickly,

required few expensive raw materials and little manual labor.

In all, it made savings of 26 tons of materials

and 6,000 man hours of work.

It wasn't only built in Germany but in all occupied countries.

There are models made at Cockerill in Belgium,

at Batignolles-Ch�tillon in Nantes

and at Schneider in Le Creusot and Paris.

For example, Skoda in Czechoslovakia...

and companies in Alsace

also built these war locomotives.

They were built in 17 countries,

in occupied countries or in those which used them after the war.

In the end, 6,285 war locomotives were built, which is a huge number.

It was most probably

the largest series of steam locomotives ever built.

Hitler began planning a journey which would take him across France

to a meeting with the Spanish dictator Franco,

- Spain wasn't at war -

and Marshal P�tain, the leader of Vichy France.

He was hoping to unite their forces against Great Britain,

the only country as yet unconquered in Western Europe.

It was a dangerous, top secret route.

Meticulous preparation was launched.

Hitler left his residence The Berghof on October 20th

to begin a three-leg voyage across France.

As Amerika gobbled up the kilometers,

the Nazi security services traveled ahead of the train

throughout the entire journey.

Stations were informed at the last minute,

and the heads of the rail network a few hours beforehand.

Traffic was totally disrupted.

When Hitler's train was rolling on the network,

all other trains ahead were parked on side tracks.

No other trains were allowed to run.

French railroad workers were even consigned to their work buildings

so they wouldn't be on the platform when the train passed.

And of course,

all the tracks and bridges were checked

to make sure there weren't any explosive devices

that could derail the train.

In the stations, all documentation produced and used during the journey,

even the most banal service notes, were destroyed at the end of each day.

Nobody was allowed to know where Amerika had been or where it was going.

Plus the security services had also put in place

an extremely effective idea.

What they would do...

Some officials would run a train

that looks quite similar to Hitler's train:

large, Express train, with Pullman carriages.

This would be run ahead of Hitler's train

along the route that Hitler's train was going to take.

It ran about 20 or 30 minutes ahead.

The idea was to thwart a potential attack,

so that the people would attack the first train rather than Hitler's.

And also, sometimes, there was another ghost train

following behind Hitler's train, so you could be pretty confused.

Which one to attack?

Hitler, en route for Hendaye on the border with Spain,

made a first stop to meet with Pierre Laval,

the then Vice-President of the Vichy Council,

to prepare for the future meeting with P�tain.

The meeting had to remain top secret and highly securitized.

The ideal place had to be found between Paris and Hendaye,

a place where nobody was expecting Hitler to turn up.

It was to be Montoire-sur-le-Loir,

where Hitler would arrive on October 22nd on board Amerika.

He was preceded by the special train of Von Ribbentrop,

the German Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The town of 4,000 inhabitants had been carefully chosen by the F�hrer's staff.

The station was some way off the main Paris - Hendaye line,

and it was close to a tunnel.

The train would only have 3 km to go to reach the safety of the tunnel.

When you were on a passenger train during the war, even Hitler,

it was like being on the open road and exposed to all kinds of danger.

The locomotives were kept at pressure

so that the train could immediately depart for the tunnel,

which shows how distrustful Hitler was

and how concerned he was about his own security.

He was convinced that the British,

and later the Americans and Soviets,

only dreamed of one thing: to kill him in order to end the war.

Since the beginning of the month, the town had been under pressure.

There were rumors, then more rumors,

as 500 German soldiers began arriving in town.

And silence gradually fell on that October 22nd of 1940.

The town was under very high security,

with lines of sentries posted all around the station,

and German planes standing by for air surveillance.

There were also soldiers placed at regular intervals

between the station and the tunnel.

One soldier every 20 meters,

for a 3-kilometer section of track

equals 150 men,

which is a huge number.

All the access roads in and out of the town were blocked off.

And there was a team monitoring

the post office's lines of communication,

ready to cut them off if need be.

The town was literally under siege.

People living close to the station were consigned to their homes,

with shutters closed and the electricity cut off.

Nobody could witness or know about Hitler's imminent arrival on Amerika,

which would stop at platform 3 at 6:34 p.m.

Pierre Laval arrived around 7 p.m.

Hitler received him, accompanied by Von Ribbentrop

and the interpreter Paul Schmidt.

The discussion was brief, about 45 minutes,

just a few diplomatic preparations

to ensure that P�tain agreed to meet with the F�hrer in two days' time.

Hitler's special train, preceded by Von Ribbentrop's,

left Montoire during the night

and reached Hendaye early in the afternoon of October 23rd,

for the meeting with the Spanish Dictator.

The secret service were experts at creating red herrings.

They'd report a train arriving one day. "Oh no, it's two trains!"

They dissimulated as much as possible

so that people knew as little as possible.

There were also guards in all the stations,

and possibly all along the forests of Les Landes.

And then there was the problem of the track gauge.

The Spanish gauge was 1.76 m,

as opposed to the French 1.44 m,

and so the two trains were blocked in Hendaye Station.

Franco arrived slightly late.

He headed straight to Hitler's living-room car

for a meeting that would last 9 hours.

But the meeting came to nothing.

Franco had no intention of lining up Spain alongside Germany's forces.

And Hitler did not insist, either clearly or firmly.

The train set off for Montoire during the night of October 24th

for the long-awaited meeting with Marshal P�tain.

While the town center had regained a semblance of calm,

the Germans made themselves busy. The station,

a little away from the town center, was once again sealed off.

The soldiers were on-alert, air defenses at the ready.

Once again, the world seemed to stop in this heavy atmosphere.

Nothing filtered out about what was about to happen.

Montoire had no idea that its future would be forever marked

by the next few hours.

Hitler's train arrived at 3:29 p.m. and stopped at platform 3.

Fog came in, and at 6 p.m.,

the French Head of State Marshal P�tain arrived in his car with Pierre Laval.

Hitler waited patiently at the foot of his train,

under the shelter between platforms 2 and 3.

The meeting between Hitler and P�tain

was sealed with the famous - all too famous! - handshake.

Accompanied by Von Ribbentrop, Paul Schmidt and Pierre Laval,

the F�hrer and P�tain settled down in the saloon car.

A two-hour meeting laid the foundations for a French-German collaboration

validated a few days later by P�tain

during his fateful speech of October 30th 1940.

"It is for honor and to maintain French unity,

a unity of some ten centuries,

within the framework of the constructive establishing of a new European order,

that today, I enter into collaboration."

Amerika left Montoire that same evening heading back to Munich.

Hitler learned that Mussolini was planning to invade Greece.

He hurried to Florence to dissuade him but arrived too late:

since 8 a.m.,

Italian troops had landed on the Greek peninsula.

Six months later, April 12th 1941.

M?nichkirchen, a small town in the Austrian Alps near Vienna,

welcomed for two weeks Amerika and its Nazi ant nest.

The train parked up at the entrance to a long tunnel of 2,700 m,

in a valley just outside town, next to a small hotel.

The locomotives were kept under pressure, ready to get Amerika to shelter

in case of an attack.

Hitler directed the attack against Yugoslavia

which would give him access to Greece to help Mussolini

who had been unable to quash Greek resistance.

Hitler spent the majority of his time shut away in his HQ on rails

directing operations.

His link with the outside world was his communications car,

with its state-of-the-art equipment which enabled him

to stay in contact in real-time with his forces.

This car was the 13th from the front,

just after the one which housed Hitler's private bodyguards.

You entered via the war room,

the strategic car with maps which could be put up on the wall

or consulted around a table.

Next, the communications rooms with all the hi-tech of the 1940s:

the first equipped with teleprinters and coding machines

to cipher and decipher teletexts.

Then the switchboards for calls coming in or going out, and internal calls.

And finally, the radio compartment with its Enigma Machines,

which code and decipher messages.

Different parts of the armed forces

use different Enigma and ciphering machines.

To use these machines,

they have to plug the F�hrer's personal carriage

and the two or three communication carriages and the bodyguard's carriages

into the postal telephone exchange.

Every station has all these plugs ready.

They just take the leads and plug it all in.

Within 20 or 30 minutes, everything is up and running.

So you can start using telephones and talking to Russia or wherever.

When he's on the move, he can't use the telephone, the machines,

they have to use instead a great big 700 watt shortwave radio.

This is also state-of-the-art stuff.

And this stuff is being beamed out all over the place.

Hitler broke with the monotony of the campaign on April 20th 1941,

by celebrating his 52nd birthday in this bucolic countryside.

During the two weeks spent at M?nichkirchen,

he held numerous conferences and diplomatic meetings:

with the King of Bulgaria, the Regent of Hungary,

the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the German Ambassador to Hungary,

some of whom also arrived by train.

While Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were already subjugated,

the Third Reich put a stranglehold on Yugoslavia

as it was the gateway to Greece.

On April 26th 1941, Amerika left M?nichkirchen,

and Hitler reached the Chancellery in Berlin

the following day, the day Athens capitulated.

From May 9th 1941, Hitler relaxed in the fresh air

at The Berghof, his residence in Bavaria...

before sending his country into a battle

which would ultimately lead to its defeat: the invasion of Russia.

He's very proud of this house,

which he paid for. The Royalties of Mein Kampf, his book.

And that is where he spent his time with Eva Braun

playing happy families, playing husband and wife.

Lots of children around, not his own.

The children of the leaders and other people.

On June 22nd 1941,

Operation Barbarossa was launched

and Germany invaded Russia.

The Eastern Front became the place of the German Army's operations.

From that moment on, change would set in:

Hitler became more and more paranoid.

He cut himself off from the world

as his hopes for a conquest of all Russia were thwarted.

He only felt safe in bunkers.

Amerika became a train to get him from A to B,

but never again a mobile HQ,

considered too risky, despite its protection.

Two days after the invasion,

Amerika arrived in Rastenburg, in Poland.

Hitler ordered the construction of a 6-square-kilometer HQ,

surrounded by mined land.

A collection of blockhouses, camouflaged bunkers

protected by reinforced concrete walls, barracks for his soldiers

and log cabins dissimulated under moss.

2,000 people lived in the so-called "Wolfsschanze":

the Wolf's Lair.

He spent over two years in this dark forest,

infested with mosquitoes,

enduring heat and humidity in summer,

and deep snow and freezing temperatures in winter.

He names it the Wolf's Lair "Wolfsschanze"

using a name he's used many times.

He was known as "Mr. Wolf" earlier on in his life.

Of course, the wolf is a symbol of strength and cunning.

And of course, "Adolf", his own name,

is an old German name for wolf.

So it's a kind of germanic myth and everything else.

The Wolf's Lair is so important.

It becomes his kind of sealed home.

Away from the reality of Berlin.

Away from the reality

of what is happening in Europe.

He only leaves

when the Russians are almost at the gates.

Only then it is evacuated and destroyed.

Throughout the war and his advances on various fronts,

he would have constructed 20 different HQs

with high-security bunkers.

Excess and gigantism were also present 600 km south

of the Wolf's Lair, at "Anlage S�d".

Two monumental bunkers, some 30 kilometers away,

for special trains, became operational in the summer of 1941.

They were massive tunnels, built in 10 months

by hundreds of prisoners from concentration camps in Poland.

Hitler and Mussolini met there for talks lasting several hours

on the way to conduct war against the Soviet Union.

Hitler's train was parked in the Strzyzow tunnel,

and Mussolini's in the Stepina tunnel.

They were 480 meters long by 8 meters wide and 12 meters high.

The walls, over 2 meters thick of solid concrete,

were designed to do one thing:

to shunt Hitler's train into a very secure location.

If any attack was made on the train,

they could seal both ends of the tunnels

and fight it out

until other German forces could arrive and rescue them.

The crazy thing is all this time, effort and money

for two meetings only.

These tunnels are only used twice in World War II,

for meetings with Mussolini.

It is an absolute joke. But it shows

the level of paranoia surrounding Hitler.

Back at the Wolf's Lair, Hitler directed operations on the Eastern front,

where blood was spilled battle after battle.

This time, blitzkrieg tactics didn't work:

the 4-month planned invasion

turned into all out war until defeat in May 1945.

The Red Army began to advance.

The German Army had reached its limits

in terms of men and material.

It was finding it harder and harder to reinforce its troops.

That's why they brought in

laborers from France and other occupied countries,

to replace as many German factory workers as possible

and to replenish the ranks of the Wehrmacht in Russia,

which had suffered terrible losses at the hands of the Soviets.

As defeat followed defeat,

Hitler became more authoritarian and shell-shocked.

He was wracked with doubts.

From the summer of 1941 on,

80% of lives lost by the German Army were in the Soviet Union.

As the military situation starts to turn against Germany,

particularly by early 1942, the failure to take Moscow

and then of course, the great disaster later of Stalingrad,

Hitler becomes more isolated.

He makes less public appearances and less speeches.

On December 7th 1941,

the American naval base in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, was hit

by a surprise attack launched by the Japanese Imperial Fleet.

The next day, America declared war on Japan.

German and Italy, which formed the Axis with Japan,

riposted with the signing of the Tripartite Pact

and declared war on the United States

on December 12th.

The conflict had become truly global.

Hitler declaring war on the United States,

after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,

comes as a great surprise to many Germans.

Voluntarily declaring war on America,

in the midst of all of this trouble with the Soviet Union

seems to me...

The megalomania is out of control by this stage.

Insanity.

There was no way the special train could keep the name Amerika.

So it was renamed "Brandenburg", in a return to German roots.

"Brandenburg": like the heart of Prussia,

like the region around Berlin.

There had also been an SS DIVISION "Brandenburg",

which was renowned for being particularly loyal to the F�hrer.

I think that's probably where the name came from,

because "Brandenburg" expressed a particular relationship to Hitler.

But as history is filled with twists and turns,

it's the generic name "F�hrersonderzug"

- F�hrer's special train -

which has become used and fixed in the collective memory.

Across the Channel, Britain was desperate to find a way

to halt the Nazi machine.

Hitler was the man to kill.

In all, there were 30 or 40 failed assassination attempts

against the F�hrer since he had been in power.

He said he was protected by something

that was beyond human control.

He said the same thing after the failed attempt of July 20th 1944.

"Once again, I have been protected by Providence."

So he could never imagine his orders not being followed.

He always believed there was something somewhere which would obey him.

In June 1944,

the British Special Operations Executive, SOE,

launched Operation Foxley: a top secret plan

which wasn't made public until 1998.

The outline was simple:

find a way to kill Hitler.

Two main ideas were retained by the British agents:

the first to kill Hitler at The Berghof

by parachuting in two elite snipers.

The second:

to blow up his train.

But how to get round the surveillance of this impregnable fortress?

Several options were studied.

Firstly, to derail the train.

But this would require precise information

regarding where the train was and when.

Information seemingly impossible to obtain.

Systematic searches and the high-level security

gave no chance of planting a bomb on the train.

So another possibility was looked into...

They studied very closely

the train's water supply.

And they realized that while food

and bottled drinks

were treated with maximum security.

On-board drinking water was a weak link.

One German prisoner, a former steward on the train,

revealed to SOE that the tank with Hitler's water

was in his private dining car, just above the kitchen.

They studied

ways of infiltrating an agent

who would poison the water tank.

With the movement of the train, poison would mix with the water.

They knew that Hitler drank lots of tea

and he took it with a drop of milk.

So they were hoping that the milk would be poured first

and no one would notice that the color was a bit odd.

Hitler had a food taster.

Anything that was given to him to drink or eat

was tested first by somebody else.

That person would have dropped dead

and it would be obvious that there was something wrong with the water.

The poison was codenamed "I".

It was a slow-working poison.

Slow-working indeed!

Because the famous "I" poison would kill six or seven days after ingestion.

So even if Doctor Morell,

who often tasted Hitler's food,

were to taste his cup of tea,

he wouldn't die immediately, neither would Hitler,

and nobody would go running around madly

looking for an antidote.

So there was a good chance it just might work.

But in 1944, with Nazi Germany on the back foot,

there was a fierce debate within SOE ranks:

should we kill Hitler?

While everyone wanted him dead,

many feared that his death

by the enemy would turn him into an idolized martyr.

The decision was taken not to kill him

because Hitler, by late 1944,

had become our greatest asset in the West.

He was mismanaging the war to such a degree,

making so many stupid decisions,

he was shortening the war effectively.

So keeping Hitler alive was actually the best thing to do.

Shockingly.

From December 11th

until January 15th 1945,

Hitler directed the Battle of the Ardennes

from his headquarters at Adlerhorst, north of Frankfurt.

His objectives were grandiose,

but as if to give reason to the British SOE,

he confirmed his strategic weaknesses,

seemed to cut himself off from the world

and lacked the means to see his ambitions through.

The defeat of Germany would be all the more a bitter failure.

News arrives

midway through the Battle of the Bulge.

Soviets have launched this enormous offensive,

this gigantic offensive,

which has destroyed the German Army

largely in the East.

They are pouring through Poland

into East Prussia.

Hitler was forced to withdraw to Berlin.

He didn't know it yet,

but it was his last journey on the F�hrersonderzug,

his train which had never been attacked,

his train which had taken him rapidly towards a new European order

in the early days of war.

From the window of his train car,

Hitler became aware of the extent of the devastation.

Berlin had been bombed to smithereens.

He realized the great new German Empire would never be,

that the war was over, that he had lost.

It was January 16th 1945.

Despite his capital lying in ruins,

he still had a small belief that he should set out to attack.

He left the F�hrersonderzug at the small station of Grunewald,

to the west of Berlin, which had already seen

the special train several times.

But other "special" trains too:

those taking millions,

most of them Jews, to the hell of the concentration and extermination camps.

He set up office in the Chancellery,

not right away in his bunker.

But the Chancellery in Berlin had been bombed

so much it was pretty much unusable.

All the windows had been blown out, and this was in winter.

Mid-April 1945.

Hitler locked himself away in his bunker beneath the Chancellery.

He watched on, powerless, as the Soviet Army took Berlin.

On April 20th, he celebrated his last birthday.

On the 29th, he married his companion Eva Braun.

During the night, he dictated

his political testament.

And the next day, at 3:15 p.m.,

they committed suicide in their bedroom.

Their bodies were doused with gasoline and burned.

The following week, on the edge of a ravine in Mallnitz,

the fate of the F�hrer's private saloon car

lay in the hands of the SS.

It was May 7th 1945. The time: 3 p.m.

The SS decided to blow up Hitler's private car.

So they filled the inside with gasoline, planted dynamite

and grenades,

set it alight and the whole thing blew up.

The Nazis didn't want this highly symbolic car

to fall into the hands of the Allies

to be displayed as a trophy of war in Paris, London or New York.

Not a single piece of Hitler's private should survive,

it all had to burn into thin air.

World War II ended on September 2nd 1945.

In defeat, Germany was divided amongst the Allies.

But it still wasn't the end for the F�hrersonderzug.

The Americans get wind of it, they take over.

"Thank you very much. That's now US Army property."

Hitler's train.

And the British say: "We quite fancy some of that as well."

So it's divided up.

Some carriages go to the British, some go to the Americans.

Various generals who were in charge

in the Allied occupation zones

use it as their private train.

Spoils of war, of course.

In the early 1950s, the cars from Nazi special trains were returned

to the West German state.

Chancellor Konrad Adenauer composed his official train

with some of the remaining F�hrersonderzug cars.

It was in this train that he made his official trip to Moscow in 1955,

a kind of thumbing his nose at history,

ten years after the fall of Berlin.

Then the special train cars were updated,

refurbished, modernized and dispersed.

In the 1960s, Queen Elizabeth the Second and the Beatles couldn't have imagined

that when traveling in Germany, they were in the private car

of Hitler's Minister of Transport, who had organized

all special train journeys during the war years.

In the 1970s, it was Chancellor Willy Brandt who made use

of the remaining cars from Hitler's train.

After 1980, none of the special train cars were ever used again.

The steel beast was made in the image of its master.

It personified one of the worst murderers in modern history,

accompanied him on all fronts, in all his crazy decisions,

and was a haven for him when the world was slipping out of his grasp.

Of the F�hrersonderzug, despite the weight of its history,

barely anything remains, just few rail cars

sitting at the back of a museum.

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