Original subtitles

Powell: Adolf Hitler caused the deaths of 50 million people.

An entire nation followed him to ruin.

He was hated by those he persecuted

and even by some of his own commanders,

yet in 25 years, no one managed to kill him.

Winston Churchill had very few bodyguards,

whilst Hitler had thousands.

He needed them.

During his travels across Europe,

there were over 40 attempts on his life.

Now with access to captured original SS records,

the producers of "Churchill's Bodyguard"

can reveal for the first time in this new series

how fate and a small number of handpicked bodyguards

helped this evil genius to cheat death

on so many occasions.

Why did no one manage to kill Adolf Hitler?

Enough people wanted to, but as this series shows,

it was not as simple as it sounds,

even in Hitler's earliest days

as a minor rabble-rousing street politician.

After Germany's catastrophic defeat in 1918,

soldiers streamed back

from the Western Front full of anger

and frustration.

They believed they had been let down

by their own government, forced into a humiliating peace,

stabbed in the back.

One of these soldiers

was 29-year-old Corporal Adolf Hitler.

He had served

as a front-line messenger in the 16th Bavarian Infantry

and had been lucky to survive the war.

He was wounded twice.

In October 1918, during fighting south of Ypres,

a gas shell exploded near Hitler, blinding him.

He spent three months in hospital

and emerged into a Germany in turmoil.

With no job or profession to go to,

Hitler hung around his old regiment in Munich

and was given the task

of spying on political party meetings.

Germany had a new democratic government,

the Weimar Republic,

but this faced horrendous problems.

With inflation spiraling out of control,

many, like Emil Klein,

doubted whether it could survive.

[Man speaking German]

Powell: Amid the chaos,

Communists clashed with Nationalists and Socialists.

War veterans

formed armed groups that shot at each other on the streets.

It looked as though the country was on the verge of civil war.

Hitler was excited by the anarchy

and formulated his own political beliefs,

mainly based on a growing hatred of Jews and Marxists,

who Nationalists like Fridolin von Spaun

thought wanted to destroy Germany.

[Man speaking German]

Powell: One of the political groups Hitler spied on

was the National Workers' Party.

But rather than inform on it, he joined it,

and within two years, he had taken it over,

giving it a new name --

The National Socialist German Workers' party.

The Nazis had been born.

When he joined this group,

it had only 54 members,

but his fiery talent for public speaking

soon attracted many more,

some, like Emil Klein,

against their better judgment.

[Man speaking German]

Powell: Hitler had finally found a purpose to his life,

but politics in the Weimar Republic

were dangerous.

In the first three years after the war,

there were 380 political assassinations in Germany.

Fights in beer halls and clubs were the norm.

Fists, knuckle-dusters, knives, metal poles

were the preferred weapons,

but guns and grenades were available, too.

If Hitler was going to survive in his new career,

he had to protect himself from rival political gangs.

Like any mobster chief,

he needed hard men to look out for him.

And these were readily available from the ex-soldiers

attracted by Hitler's rabble-rousing speeches.

His first security unit was called the Ordnertruppe --

the Steward's Troop -- made up of tough veterans.

Since the formation of paramilitary groups

had been outlawed, they had to call themselves

the Gymnastics and Sports Division

of the new Nazi Party to avoid being arrested.

The first members of the Ordnertruppe

were key figures in Hitler's personal security.

They would become his most trusted bodyguards

and would follow him throughout his career.

Ulrich Graf was a 42-year-old butcher by trade.

He set up Hitler's first bodyguard,

but taking several bullets in one crucial clash

soon put him out of action.

These were men who knew Hitler's most intimate secrets,

and even when their personal traits let them down,

Hitler would protect them from the fury of his own party

because they had served him well in these early years.

One would even be a rival in love with Hitler

for the affections of a young woman.

Emil Maurice was just 23-years-old

when he joined Hitler's first protection squad.

He went on to become chauffeur to Hitler

and a member of his closest bodyguard.

A watchmaker by training,

Maurice had French family roots and dark good looks,

but his background held a secret

that would later be used against him.

Another early member of this gang of street brawlers

was 26-year-old Rudolf Hess,

who was later rewarded by being appointed

Deputy Führer.

Because many Nazi political combats

took place in beer halls,

the Ordnertruppe became known as the Saalschutz

or Hall Protection.

Then in August 1921,

the Sturmabteilung, or SA, was formed.

Not a bodyguard but a paramilitary force

intended to win the battle of the streets.

The title meant "storm troopers"

and came from the elite trench-storming troops

of World War I.

In time, the SA would be equipped

with its own military-style uniform

and be known as the "brownshirts."

On November 4, 1921,

Hitler was caught up in a typical brawl

that came close to killing him.

Talking to a hostile crowd in a beer hall in Munich,

he had only 50 SA men to protect him

against hundreds of communists.

One heckler started the fighting.

Then Nazis and Marxists went at each other

with knives and clubs.

Shots were fired at Hitler on the rostrum,

and Hitler fired back with his own pistol.

[Gunfire]

Maurice and Hess were at Hitler's side

and were badly injured in the fighting

before the police arrived to restore order.

Amazingly, no one was killed.

Hitler later described the events,

praising his closest comrades.

Man: "The dance had hardly begun when my storm troops,

"as they were named from that day forth, attacked.

"Like Wolves they rushed again and again

"in groups of 8 or 10 on the enemy.

"They gradually swept them out of the hall.

"After five minutes, I could hardly see anyone

"who was not streaming with blood.

"I was beginning to appreciate their quality.

"At their head was my splendid Maurice.

"Hess, my private secretary, and many others,

"though badly hurt, continued to attack

as long as their legs could carry them."

Powell: Not surprisingly,

these pitched battles sometimes led to problems with the police.

In another incident,

at the Lowenbrau Bierkeller in 1922,

which the Nazis later hushed up,

Hitler egged on his thugs

to drag a rival speaker off the stage and beat him up.

Hitler was arrested and given the minimum

three-month sentence by a sympathetic judge,

later reduced to one month with the rest on probation.

It was this bloody experience of political combat

that bound Hitler close to his early bodyguards,

a relationship that would endure

for most of his life.

In these violent and dangerous early days,

a key figure in the protection of Adolf Hitler was Ernst Rohm.

He would eventually rise

to command the SA as his private army.

But that was far in the future.

In 1920, he was 33-years-old.

A squat little man with a scarred face,

he reveled in the chaos of Weimar Germany.

Contrary to his usual brutish image,

he was a classics scholar

who came from a distinguished family of royal officials.

In World War I,

he proved himself a fearless leader of troops

and remained in the small army of the Weimar Republic

after the war.

This gave him access to secret stores of army weapons

which he slipped to the nationalist Freikorps.

In 1920, Röhm joined the Nazi Party

and became one of Hitler's closest friends.

He helped to organize the first units

of the SA, recruiting young, enthusiastic men

who had missed out on the war

in addition to war veterans.

Typical of these was Bruno Gesche,

a natural brawler who was just 17 years old

when he joined the Nazi Party in 1922.

Sacked from a series of jobs

every time his SA membership was discovered,

Gesche remained loyal and eventually became

the head of Hitler's personal bodyguard.

The SA in the early years was run on a purely volunteer basis.

Kurt Ludecke was an early member

and many years later wrote about the difficulties

of organizing and kitting out the first units.

Short of money, it was difficult to find equipment for them.

Man: "Most of our material was stored in my apartment.

"Not much was new, but all was in fine condition.

"Germany was filled with the debris of the war --

"uniforms, implements, even arms,

"which had been sold by soldiers

"or stolen after the armistice

"from immense army depots.

"It was easy to get military goods,

"but not to get them undamaged.

"I solved the problem by keeping two Jewish dealers

constantly on the lookout for what we needed."

Powell: This included searching for weapons.

Arms had been banned

for the civilian population in Weimar Germany,

and their possession could lead to several years in jail.

But the political parties on the fringes

needed them to instill fear into their opponents

and to protect themselves.

Man: "it was no easy task

"to obtain weapons and keep them in secret.

"Arms were being bootlegged,

"and it was an exciting business.

"One had to risk danger a hundred times

to find a single weapon that was intact and not rusted."

Powell: By the end of December 1922,

about 100 men had enlisted under Ludecke,

and some 40 regular army soldiers

had pledged themselves to him in secret.

Man: "All possessed complete uniforms,

"with steel helmets and field outfits.

"Outside Munich, I had managed to secure and hide

"15 heavy Maxim guns,

"more than 200 hand grenades,

"175 perfect rifles,

"and thousands of rounds of ammunition --

a real arsenal."

Powell: In late 1922,

another major figure entered the close circle

of Hitler's personal security.

The flamboyant 29-year-old Hermann Göring

was a minor aristocrat.

He started World War I as an infantry officer

but soon transferred to the most exciting unit to serve with,

the pioneering air force.

Starting as an observer,

Göring qualified as a fighter pilot in October 1915.

He was soon an ace,

winning the coveted Pour le Mérite --

the German equivalent of the Victoria Cross --

and commanding the Richthofen Squadron,

the legendary Red Baron's Flying Circus,

by the end of the war.

When Göring joined the Nazi Party,

Hitler was delighted.

Here was a true war hero who could lead his veterans

into political combat.

He put him in charge of the fledgling SA

based in Munich.

A correspondent from the London Times

described the appearance of Hitler's early armed followers.

"Many of these storm troops are lads of from 17 to 20,

"but professionals and businessmen.

"Ex-officers, students, and farmers

"can be seen in the ranks.

"Recently, Hitler's men have been equipped with steel helmets

"of the regulation government pattern,

"presumably surplus war material

that was supposed to have been destroyed long ago."

"These political gangsters

were not allowed to carry weapons in public,

such as knuckle-dusters or knives."

"But in spite of this,

every active member of the Hitler organization

carries a flexible steel truncheon covered with rubber."

In May 1923, shortly after Göring took command of the SA,

the Ordnertruppe was replaced as Hitler's personal bodyguard

by the Stabswache, or Headquarters Guard.

Numbering just 20 men,

it was soon renamed Stosstrupp Hitler --

Hitler's Shock Troop.

These chosen men wore a different uniform

to the rest of the SA -- field-grey jackets and breeches

On their heads, they wore gray ski caps

with a silver death's head button.

This skull would become the sign

of the most notorious of Nazi organizations, the SS,

and many historians

date its beginning from this bodyguard unit.

The chilling death's head insignia

was not invented by the Nazis

but copied from the badges

of long-established cavalry regiments.

It was probably because of its association

with elite Prussian Hussars

that Hitler adopted it, wanting his bodyguards

to be considered the elite of his party.

The first great test for this Nazi bodyguard

came in January 1923, when the Weimar government

postponed the payment of war reparations.

In retaliation, the French occupied the Ruhr,

the country's industrial heartland.

Their heavy-handed tactics

caused a general strike and widespread resentment.

Hitler had recently been emboldened

by the support of the World War I hero

General Erich Ludendorff.

He decided to exploit the chaos by launching a coup d'etat

during a political meeting in a Munich beer hall

being addressed by the Bavarian Prime Minister, Gustav von Kahr.

It would be a tremendous political

and personal gamble.

If Hitler's putsch failed, at best,

his political career would collapse,

at worst, he might be shot

as a traitor.

On November 8, 1923, at 8:00 in the evening,

Adolf Hitler entered the Munich Burgerbraukeller.

He was armed with a pistol

and accompanied by a handful of bodyguards.

The Bavarian prime minister was speaking.

Kurt Ludecke, one of the SA men with Hitler,

described what happened next.

Man: "The door was flung open.

"Steel-helmeted men burst through,

"pushing Maxim guns into the hall.

"Other steel helmets appeared menacingly at every window.

"Hitler seized his revolver and elbowed his way forward

"through the crowd behind his heavily armed bodyguard.

"Hitler jumped up on a table

"and fired two shots into the ceiling...

[Gunshots]

"demanding quiet.

"In an instant, the stillness was absolute.

"One could even hear Hitler breathing hard.

"He shouted to the audience,

"The National Revolution has begun.

"Six hundred armed men are covering the hall!"

Powell: In truth, there were only 60.

It was a daring bluff.

Meanwhile, Ernst Rohm took several hundred SA troopers

to seize control of the Bavarian military headquarters.

Next morning,

Hitler and his supporters

decided to march to the city center

to rally the citizens to their cause.

It was a dull, cold day,

and two thousand Nazis

formed a column with Hitler and Ludendorff at the head.

Göring walked beside Hitler with Ulrich Graf on the other side.

There was no band,

and the column advanced quietly and somberly.

A police barrier on one of the bridges

across the river Isar was brushed aside.

And when the column reached the Marienplatz,

it was greeted by cheering crowds.

[Cheering]

Hitler and Ludendorff were not sure what to do next,

but when they heard that the army had turned

on Röhm and his brownshirts,

they decided to march to their rescue.

As the Nazis reached the end of the narrow street

leading into the Odeonplatz,

they were blocked by a line of armed state police

near the Feldherrnhalle war memorial.

Ulrich Graf stepped forward.

He shouted that General Ludendorff

was marching with them

and there was no need for any shooting.

But as Emil Klein described, the police ignored him.

[Speaking German]

[Gunfire]

Powell: The reality was less heroic

than this dramatic Nazi painting.

A man beside Hitler fell dead,

dragging him down and dislocating his arm.

Graf threw himself in front of Hitler

and took several bullets intended for his leader.

Göring was hit in the thigh and collapsed.

Only Ludendorff

remained unscathed,

marching on through the police line to be arrested.

When the shooting stopped,

14 Nazis and four policemen lay dead.

Hitler avoided the flying bullets

and was dragged away from the carnage by his bodyguards

but arrested two days later.

Following his narrow escape in the putsch,

the Nazi Party, the SA,

and the Stosstrupp were all banned.

It looked like the end of the line

for Hitler and his followers.

But the attempted coup catapulted Hitler to fame.

He used his trial to project his beliefs

into the national newspapers,

making clear that he was trying to save the nation

from the disasters of the Weimar Republic.

Unlike Ludendorff,

who claimed at the trial that he was an unwitting participant,

Hitler portrayed himself as a man of destiny

who was proud of his actions.

The judges were clearly sympathetic

and gave him a lenient sentence --

five years,

but with the possibility of parole after just six months.

Hitler now had a national stage for his politics

and used his time in jail to set out his beliefs.

In Landsberg Prison, the regime was lax,

and Hitler was free to associate

with Rudolf Hess and Emil Maurice.

They took notes as he composed his Nazi manifesto,

Mein Kampf.

He also pondered two lessons from the failed putsch.

The first was that street fighting was not enough.

He would have to use the democratic system

to achieve power.

Only then could he dismantle it.

The other lesson was more brutal.

The violence and sacrifice of that day in Munich

convinced him more than ever

that he needed a loyal bodyguard,

a group of protectors that would risk their own lives,

as Graf had done, and would, in his words,

"even march against their own brothers."

Hitler served just over a year for high treason.

As he re-entered German politics,

he had to resurrect his party machinery and his bodyguard.

They must be stronger, more efficient,

more vicious than ever before.

Five days before Christmas 1924,

Hitler was met outside Landsberg Prison

by his photographer friend Heinrich Hoffmann.

He was a free man

and posed beside his friend's car.

Hitler should have been happy,

but he knew he had a mountain to climb.

His style of extreme politics suited a time of crisis,

but the Weimar Republic

had managed to stabilize the economy.

The threat of revolution and civil war had passed.

This was the Roaring Twenties

and Germans enjoyed a new prosperity.

They had no time for political fanatics,

and although Hitler tried to behave

like a legitimate politician, his party lost votes

whenever there was an election.

In Munich, the city the Nazis had nearly taken in 1923,

the party had fewer than 700 members.

Hitler now lived the life of a bohemian,

living off the royalties from Mein Kampf

and using them to buy a villa

near Berchtesgaden on a slope of the Obersalzberg.

This would eventually become the Berghof,

the most heavily defended private residence in Germany.

But for the moment, there were few threats

against a man who was thought to be yesterdays hero.

The re-formed Nazi Party was small but radical,

and this soon led

to a substantial problem for Hitler.

For, as he reconstructed the SA,

Hitler's political views

diverged steadily from those of Ernst Röhm,

the hard man who had led the brownshirts

against the army in Munich.

Röhm had always loathed

the German political and military establishment

and wanted the SA to become a mass revolutionary movement

which could overthrow it by force.

Hitler was no longer interested

in such ideas and ordered him

to either submit or resign.

Röhm chose to resign as head of the SA

and ended up sailing to Bolivia to become a military adviser.

The SA was now put under the command

of a retired army captain, Franz Pfeffer von Salomon.

By 1927, its membership had risen to 10,000.

At the same time, Hitler's bodyguard, the Stabswache,

was recreated.

Numbering just eight men, including Emil Maurice,

it was led by Julius Schreck,

who also served as Hitler's chauffeur.

The Stabswache was soon renamed the Schutzstaffel,

the SS, Hitler's Protection Squad.

Its members now wore black caps

with the death's head insignia.

The SS was subordinate to the much more numerous SA,

but its members acted like an elite.

There were stricter entrance requirements

than the general SA

and it maintained tighter discipline.

These special demands attracted ambitious brownshirts

like Bruno Gesche.

After a Nazi Party rally in 1927,

he was so impressed by the appearance of the early SS

that he left the SA to join it.

By 1929, it numbered 280 men.

That year, Heinrich Himmler was made Reichsfuhrer-SS.

It proved Hitler's most important appointment

among the many people that devoted their lives

to protecting him,

and one which would cost the lives of millions.

Himmler would soon become

one of the most feared men in Nazi Germany

and turn the SS

into a massive and sinister organization

that included most of Hitler's security units.

He also set a pattern of Nazi infighting

that seriously compromised

the efficiency of Hitler's overall bodyguard.

Himmler was 23 years old when he joined the Nazi Party

and served as flag carrier for Röhm

during the Beer Hall Putsch.

Following Hitler's release from prison,

Himmler became a Nazi regional leader,

but lack of funds forced him to drift through several jobs,

eventually becoming a chicken farmer.

Given the chance to head the SS,

Himmler ruthlessly turned it

into a major force within the Nazi Party.

By the end of 1929,

he had expanded its membership to a thousand.

It was also in 1929

that the prosperity of the Jazz Age

was shattered by the Wall Street Crash.

Weimar Germany

was plunged into another economic depression.

Mass unemployment

once again sowed the seeds of discontent.

What was bad for Germany

was excellent for Hitler and the Nazis.

The SA immediately began

a massive recruitment drive

to take advantage of the mass of unemployed men,

and many new recruits like Wolfgang Teubert

were ready to flock to them.

[Speaking German]

Powell: In elections held in 1928,

the Nazi Party had barely managed

to win 12 seats in the Reichstag.

With Germany teetering on the edge

of a new economic disaster,

voters swung away from center politics

to the extremes.

The Nazis' election machine was now in full swing,

presenting Hitler as the strong man

that Germany desperately needed.

The Nazis had few detailed policies.

The focus was on Hitler, the leader.

In 1930, the revived Nazis won six million votes,

giving them 107 seats in the Reichstag

and making them the second biggest party in Germany.

It was a dramatic turnaround for Hitler,

and as a result, money flowed into Nazi campaign coffers

from supportive businessmen.

But just as the Nazi vote had gone up,

so had that of their most deadly rivals -- the Communists.

They were only 30 seats behind.

Powell: They were not afraid to fight fire with fire, and were happy

to take the battle back onto the streets.

[Man speaking German]

Powell: Hitler needed his SA more than ever,

but at this critical moment

came a challenge from within its ranks.

Angered by the apparently lavish lifestyles

of the party leadership,

including the purchase of an extravagant new headquarters

in Munich, the Brown House, SA men in Berlin,

led by their deputy leader, Walter Stennes,

occupied the party's headquarters.

Hitler was forced to accept many of their demands

for better pay and conditions, but now declared himself

Supreme Leader of the SA, as well the Nazi Party.

Having put down the challenge,

Hitler turned to Ernst Röhm for help.

Recalled from Bolivia,

Röhm became chief of staff and effective leader of the SA

on January 14, 1931, and oversaw

its rapid growth to a paramilitary army

of 170,000.

Unemployment helped fill its ranks with aggressive young men.

They beat the Communists

on the streets,

and capitalist backers were happy to see them doing it.

The Nazis were not exactly lovers of capitalism.

They were, after all, a socialist party.

But Hitler knew he had to keep on friendly terms

with big business to get into power.

But Röhm was still an extreme revolutionary.

He fought the Communists

because they were rivals not because

he liked capitalism.

Although Röhm

delivered Hitler a victory on the streets,

his revolutionary beliefs soon reignited serious tensions

between the two men.

There was also a rising tension between Rohm

and his nominal subordinate, Himmler.

Both of them craved to become

the exclusive protector of the Führer.

In late 1930, after the Stennes revolt,

the ever-devious Himmler had persuaded Hitler

to make the SS independent of the SA.

SA officers could no longer give orders to anyone in the SS.

But when Röhm took up command of the SA,

Himmler suffered a blow and was declared to be his subordinate.

Despite this, barely a month later,

Röhm issued orders putting Himmler

in charge of the Sicherheitsdienst,

the SD, or security service which would be responsible

for protecting Hitler and other leading members of the party.

The SS now wore a completely different uniform

to the brownshirts --

all black with the SS lightning strike insignia

and the death's head.

Himmler wanted to poach men from the SA,

but Hitler forbade him.

SA men had to volunteer for the SS,

and strict entrance requirements were imposed.

Hitler wanted the SS to be an ultra-loyal, ultra-fit unit

separate from the SA.

He saw them as his own police force within the Nazi Party.

Whereas the SA struck down opposition from outside,

the SS could be used to neutralize

any opposition within the party,

and that included the SA.

That the potential threat posed by the SA had not gone away

was emphasized by a second incident

involving Walter Stennes.

Ordered by Hitler to leave Berlin

and take up a desk job at the Brown House in Munich,

Stennes refused point-blank.

With his SA supporters, he brushed aside the SS guards

and again took over the Berlin HQ.

Hitler was furious.

Humiliatingly, he was obliged to get

the Berlin police to throw them out.

In retaliation, Stennes was expelled from the party,

but for Hitler, it was a clear warning.

Hitler now turned to his loyal SS

and instructed Himmler to take charge of security

in and around the Brown House.

All guards were uniformed

but not allowed to carry conventional weapons.

However, they were armed with gas pistols

to stun anyone assaulting the building.

Despite these divisions within his own party,

Hitler was confident

that he was on the verge of winning power in Germany.

He just had to keep his guard up

and his own people under control.

That this could be all thrown into jeopardy

by a sexual scandal

was the last thing he anticipated.

But in late 1931,

this is exactly what threatened Hitler's grab for power,

and the scandal would involve one of his closest

and most trusted bodyguards

Munich -- September 20, 1931.

A 23-year-old music student

was found dead in a second-floor apartment

at 16 Prinzregentenplatz.

In her hand was a gun.

She had been shot in the heart.

The dead woman's nose was broken,

and there were other serious injuries to her body.

Her name was Angela Raubal, known as Geli.

And what made the story sensational

was that the apartment belonged to Adolf Hitler

and so did the gun.

Geli Raubal was his niece,

and he had been having a clandestine affair with her.

Rumors soon spread around Munich that the death wasn't suicide

but murder, and that she'd been

involved in a love triangle

with her uncle and his bodyguard, Emil Maurice,

one of his oldest and closest companions.

Scandal was the last thing Hitler needed

at this crucial moment in his career.

If the story broke into the national press,

it could be the end of his plans to bring the Nazis to power.

Geli had come to live in Hitler's flat

in August 1928, when her mother, his half-sister,

became his housekeeper.

The 40-year-old Hitler soon became infatuated

with his young niece.

He was extremely possessive,

and when she showed interest in Emil Maurice,

his bodyguard and one of his closest companions,

the tension grew.

On December 24, 1928, Geli wrote to Maurice.

Powell: Not surprisingly,

Maurice had soon been sacked.

Hitler admitted to his friend, Heinrich Hoffmann,

who later became his official court photographer,

that he loved Geli and thought of marrying her.

But he felt he must remain single

for the sake of his political career.

He was also attracted to a teenage girl

working in Hoffmann's photographic studio --

Eva Braun.

If Hitler was jealous of Geli's male friends,

then she may have been jealous of Braun.

On September 18, 1931,

Geli told Hitler that she wanted to leave and go to Vienna.

They had a row,

and Hitler stormed out of the apartment.

Geli, left alone,

shot herself through the heart with his revolver.

When he heard the news, Hitler was distraught.

But Geli's body was reported to be badly battered.

Hitler was known for his outbursts of angry violence.

And at this stage in his career,

he frequently carried, and on occasions used,

a formidable rhino-hide whip.

Hitler responded to these rumors with a published denial.

Powell: This was enough

to get Hitler off the hook of public scandal,

but the death of Geli Raubal

marked a turning point in his romantic life.

The affair had made him vulnerable both emotionally

and politically.

His long relationship with Eva Braun

never captured the passion he enjoyed with Geli,

but it was safe and secure,

and that was what Hitler wanted from now on.

For during 1932,

he faced his sternest political test --

an election campaign to become leader of Germany.

But as he crisscrossed Germany,

drumming up support for himself and his party,

he was exposed to numerous assassination attempts.

Standing on podiums and ranting at his audience,

he made the perfect target for a lone gunman

or ring of plotters with a bomb.

He was standing as a candidate

for President of the Weimar Republic,

but he was up against Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg.

A hero of World War I,

Hindenburg represented the old

conservative strain of German politics

and would not be easily moved.

On March 13th,

Hitler won more than 30% of the popular vote

from a disgruntled and fearful population.

It was a startling result

and meant that Hindenburg did not win an absolute majority.

They would have to fight another election,

and as Egon Hanfstaengl later described,

once again it was Hitler's oratory

which was the decisive factor.

Hanfstaengl: He had that ability

which is needed to make people stop thinking critically

and just emote,

the ability derived from his readiness

to throw himself totally open,

to appear as it were bare and naked before his audience,

to tear open his heart and display it.

Powell: Just two days after this success,

Hitler was traveling by train from Munich to Weimar

with his head of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

As they discussed campaign tactics,

gunshots struck the side of their carriage.

[Gunshots glass shatters ]

The bullets missed, but it was a clear sign

that Hitler's dramatic rise in popularity

now made him a prime target.

On another dangerous occasion,

as he was traveling by car near Freiburg,

demonstrators hurled missiles at it.

[Tires squeal]

Taking his life in his hands, Hitler jumped out

and confronted them, swinging his rhino-hide whip.

But such action was reckless,

and as Hitler ruthlessly pursued his dream

of becoming dictator of Germany,

he and his old bodyguard comrades

needed to take a more professional approach

to his protection.

It would lead to the creation of one of the most fearsome

and evil bodyguard organizations the world has ever seen.

Subtitling made possible by Acorn Media