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.

The challenge for his bodyguard intensified

when he became Chancellor of Germany

on January 30, 1933.

The Nazis had won over 30% of the vote in the previous year

and were the largest party in the Reichstag.

Ruthless political bargaining behind the scenes

made Hitler the leader of a coalition government.

He had won the battle of the ballot box.

Would he also win

the battle of the streets?

His main rivals in the Reichstag were the Communists,

and Hitler set his thuggish brownshirts on them,

fighting them wherever they found them.

There was a shocking outburst of violence,

but German citizens hoped it would end,

once and for all, the anarchy

that had plagued the Weimar Republic.

Hitler's brutal rise to power had won him many enemies,

some of whom were only too willing to kill him.

Communists, Jews, and Catholics feared even greater persecution

by the Nazis now they were in power.

Previous chancellors had received death threats.

In April 1931, Heinrich Bruning

received a small parcel bomb

made of a cardboard tube containing gunpowder.

When the deeply loathed Nazi head of propaganda,

Joseph Goebbels also received a letter bomb

similar to that sent to Bruning,

he blamed it on the Communists.

Such a heightened sense of fear

played into the hands of the Nazis,

who pledged stricter security against ultra-left forces.

Just two months before Hitler took the job,

his predecessor, von Papen,

was walking through the corridors

of the Berlin Chancellery when he was attacked

by a knife-wielding woman who had slipped past security.

But the new Chancellor, Hitler, received more threats

than all these German leaders put together.

In his first year in power,

the police listed over a dozen serious attempts on his life,

and tip-offs of other plots came in on a weekly basis.

As leader of his country,

Hitler could call upon the full security apparatus

of the state -- police and intelligence agents --

as well as his own dedicated Nazi Party bodyguards,

but that couldn't stop

the attentions of the lone fanatic.

Ludwig Assner, an enraged former Communist and Nazi,

dared to send a letter

threatening to shoot Hitler unless President Hindenburg

dismissed the new Chancellor from office.

He said he knew that Hitler was mad

and that if left in power,

he would bring destruction to his country.

He wasn't far wrong.

[Cheering ]

Very aware of the ever-present threat

to his life from a lone assassin,

Hitler confided in a Nazi police chief.

Man: "One day, an average-looking man

"will establish himself in an attic apartment

"along Wilhelmstrasse.

"Neighbors will think he is a retired schoolmaster,

"a man with horn-rimmed spectacles and a little beard,

"but he will not allow anyone

"into his shabby room.

"He will quietly and patiently equip himself with rifle

"and telescopic sight

"and will aim the gun day after day,

"hour after hour,

"at the balcony of the Reich Chancellery.

"Then, one day,

he will pull the trigger."

[Gunshot]

Powell: Government security staff did their best

to limit the chances of attacks on Hitler,

but sometimes their efforts descended into farce.

On one occasion, Hitler was due

to attend an official ceremony at a church in Potsdam

with President Hindenburg.

A zealous security agent

spotted a tunnel dug beneath the building.

He immediately jumped to the conclusion

that dynamite would be placed there

to blow up the whole government in a new

Guy Fawkes gunpowder plot.

On closer examination, it was revealed

that the tunnel had been dug by the radio company

which would be broadcasting the ceremony.

On another occasion, Hitler was warned by police

that he was to be handed a bouquet of flowers

when he appeared in public.

When the Chancellor took them, the alleged assassin

would squirt poison at him through the perfumed petals.

Faced with such farfetched ideas,

it is not surprising that Hitler quickly became

fatalistic about his own safety.

"What will happen will happen," he frequently said.

Nothing would stop him from appearing

before the vast crowds of voters,

who still, at this stage, adored him.

Although Hitler was now in a position of power,

it did not mean he could exert it easily.

The complex coalition

of politicians and parties that had raised him up

also stood in his way.

His immediate aim

was to call another election

to increase the number of Nazi seats

in the Reichstag and gain an overall majority.

The perfect opportunity came in February 1933.

On the 27th, the Reichstag was set on fire.

It could not have been a more symbolic target.

This was Germany's seat of government, its parliament,

the heart of German democracy.

Both the aged president, von Hindenburg,

and the new chancellor came to visit the burned-out remains.

Hitler's message was clear --

such an assault on German values would never have happened

if he had been given total power

to defeat the enemies of the state.

A feebleminded young Dutchman named Marinus van der Lubbe,

was found inside the building and arrested.

Other suspects were also pulled in.

They all had connections to the Communist Party.

It was a political gift for Hitler.

All the leading newspapers

were with him as he declared a state of siege.

And the message was reinforced on March 3rd,

when a ship's carpenter, Karl Lutter, was arrested

with other Communists as they planned to kill Hitler

with a bomb during an election rally in Königsberg.

Hermann Göring,

who now controlled the Prussian police force,

ordered an immediate crackdown on the left wing in Berlin.

It was the perfect opportunity to silence political enemies,

and all the Communist members of the Reichstag were arrested.

It was all for the good of Germany, Hitler declared,

but it certainly did the Nazis a lot of favors, too.

Within a week, in another election,

the Nazis won 44% of the total vote

and increased their seats in the Reichstag to 288.

With the support of some Nationalists,

they now had an overall majority.

Hitler could do whatever he wanted.

And he moved swiftly to protect himself and his party.

By the end of March, an Enabling Act had been passed.

This was a charter for dictatorship.

It took power away from the Reichstag

and gave it to Hitler and his Nazi cabinet.

All political crimes,

including attempted assassinations,

were to be punished by death.

[Hitler speaking German]

By the summer of 1933,

all other political parties had been banned,

their leaders arrested, beaten up by Hitler's brownshirts,

or in exile.

A dictatorship had been born.

But even as the Nazis celebrated --

appropriately, with a torchlight parade --

rumors were spreading that it was actually

the brownshirts who had crept into the parliament

and filled it with inflammable material.

They then forced the simpleminded Lubbe to light it.

To quash such cynical talk,

the Nazis put the Communists accused of burning the Reichstag

on trial in September.

Hermann Göring even took the stand

to rail against the accused.

Although the evidence against them was slight,

it was assumed that they would be found guilty.

But in an amazing but doomed act of courage,

the court acquitted

all the accused except van der Lubbe,

who made no attempt to deny that he had started the fire.

He was quickly guillotined.

The truth of what really happened on that night

died with him.

Hitler was so infuriated by the independence of the court

that he decreed that, henceforth,

all treason cases would be tried by special Nazi courts.

All: Sieg Heil!

The last flickers of independence

were now extinguished.

With Hitler's assumption of total power,

the Weimar Republic was finished.

The Third Reich had begun.

If anyone wanted to get rid of Hitler,

they could no longer vote him out.

They would have to kill him.

At the heart of Hitler's personal security

during the dangerous period of transition

from political activist to Nazi head of government

was the SS-Begleitkommando --

Hitler's SS escort.

This was the latest incarnation of his close bodyguard unit,

formerly known as the Stabswache and then the Stosstrupp.

As Chancellor of Germany,

Hitler had access to regular police bodyguards,

but he preferred to trust the elite personnel

drawn from the SS.

Hitler's SS escort was officially established

on February 29, 1932.

12 young SS men were interviewed by Hitler

and Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS,

at Berlin's Kaiserhof hotel.

A palatial building situated on the Wilhelmsplatz,

the hotel was directly opposite the old Reich Chancellery,

Hitler's future home.

In 1932,

he had rented the entire second floor of the hotel

for himself and his entourage.

Hitler and Himmler picked the final eight.

These men would be the elite of the SS, an elite itself.

The heart of the Fuhrer's security day and night.

They included Bruno Gesche,

a 27-year-old former clerk

who had lost his job at a bank

because he preferred to be fighting for the Nazis.

Erich Kempka.

At 22, one of Hitler's youngest bodyguards,

who would become his most trusted chauffeur,

driving the Fuhrer throughout the life of the Third Reich.

Kurt Gildisch, a 28-year-old trained teacher

who failed to find a classroom job

and ended up in the Prussian police force.

Like Gesche, he was sacked

because of his Nazi affiliations and joined the SA in 1931.

Later that year, he was transferred to the SS.

While traveling with Hitler's bodyguards by air from Berlin

to Pomerania,

British journalist Sefton Delmer

gave an intimate portrait of them.

"Some of them looked strangely delicate for bodyguards,

"almost effeminate.

"When they took photographs out of their wallets

"and started showing them round with remarks like,

"Isn't he sweet" I began to wonder whether

"the Stabschef Röhm had had a hand in their selection.

"But delicate though they looked,

"they were tough all right,

as they showed us a few hours later that evening."

SA leader Ernst Röhm was famously homosexual,

but Delmer soon witnessed how brutal

Hitler's security could be

when his car was stopped by protestors at Elbing.

Hitler's bodyguard leapt out of the car

and ferociously battered the protestors

with their rubber truncheons and whips until they ran away.

The SS-Begleitkommando

served Hitler well during the elections of 1932.

Their zealous devotion to his protection

sometimes brought its members into conflict

with Heinrich Himmler and the rest of the SS.

On October 14th at Selb, a town in southern Germany,

Hitler was due to give a rabble-rousing speech.

SS escort bodyguard Bruno Gesche

inspected the security arrangements

made by another SS unit and was unimpressed.

He told the SS and SA troopers present

that their organization was a failure

and that the protection of the rally itself was a shambles.

His remarks ended up in the press.

[Hitler speaking German]

Himmler was furious.

He got one of his minions

to write a letter condemning Gesche's comments,

saying they brought the entire SS into disrepute.

Its reputation had been undermined,

and he wanted Gesche instantly demoted.

But Gesche was close to Hitler,

and the Fuhrer did not want Himmler and the rest of the SS

meddling with his chosen men.

He liked the fact that Gesche had the courage

to speak out against the SS in order to protect him.

Hitler refused to endorse Himmler's punishment

and Gesche was given a mere reprimand

in front of the SS escort.

Himmler was not happy with the outcome,

and it was the beginning

of his vendetta against the Begleitkommando.

Gesche in particular would discover

that he was not a good man to have as an enemy.

Hitler's triumph as Chancellor of Germany

in January 1933 changed forever

the arrangements made for his safety.

As party leader as well as head of government,

he needed more than the eight men of the SS Begleitkommando

for his close protection.

So he turned to a close comrade from his early days of struggle

to organize a much larger private army.

Sepp Dietrich was 41 years old, a rugged aggressive man

with a coarse manner who took no nonsense from anyone.

A veteran of the World War I trenches,

he was in the Munich police

when he first heard Hitler speaking.

Inspired, he took part

in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923

and was sacked when it collapsed.

After drifting through a series of jobs,

Dietrich finally joined the Nazis in 1928.

His fearless leadership qualities

ensured he was quickly promoted within the SS.

Dietrich organized Hitler's security

during the 1932 election campaign,

preceding him to public meetings

and supervising local SS detachments.

He was nicknamed "Chauffeureska"

because he rode so frequently with Hitler in his car.

Hitler took a particular liking to Dietrich

and praised him to his friends.

Man: "The role of Sepp Dietrich is unique.

"I've always seen him as a troubleshooter.

"He's a man who is cunning, energetic, and brutal.

"But under his swashbuckling appearance,

"Dietrich is a serious, conscientious,

"and honest character.

"For me, personally,

"there's also the fact that he was a companion

in my early struggle."

Powell: In March 1933,

the new chancellor entrusted Dietrich

with the task of raising a force from the ranks of the SS

to protect the Reich Chancellery.

It was to be the Fuhrer's palace guard,

and by the end of the year, it was given the name

Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler.

On the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich,

in November 1933, the whole Leibstandarte,

numbering 1,000 officers and men,

assembled to make a solemn oath of personal loyalty.

[Men speaking German]

Man: "We swear to you, Adolf Hitler,

"loyalty and bravery.

"We pledge to you,

"and to the superiors appointed by you,

"obedience unto death.

So help us God."

Powell: Hitler's elite palace guard,

the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler,

was based at a barracks of the former imperial army

in Lichterfelde, south of Berlin.

Its tasks swiftly grew from guard duty

at the Reich Chancellery

to maintaining detachments at Hitler's mountain retreat

at the Berghof in Bavaria, his apartment in Munich,

and any other place where the Fuhrer might be staying

during his travels.

Of all the new units in Hitler's rapidly expanding bodyguard,

the Leibstandarte saw the swiftest

and most extraordinary growth.

In late 1934, following its key role

in curbing the SA during the Night of the Long Knives,

the guard battalion's loyalty was rewarded,

and it was expanded to become a motorized regiment,

equipped with armored cars, motorcycles, and trucks.

Hitler increasingly saw it as his own private army

and further regiments were raised.

These became the foundation of the Waffen-SS,

the armed fist of the Nazi party.

Some 39 divisions would eventually be recruited

from nationalities throughout the Nazi empire,

always selected for their fanatical support of Hitler

and their physical prowess.

From the outset in 1933,

Sepp Dietrich concentrated on setting

a supremely high entry level for his troops.

All of them were between 17 and 22 years old

and had to have a minimum height of 5'11".

This was later raised

to just over six feet.

In addition to this,

they had to be perfectly proportioned and, it was said,

if they had one tooth filling, they would be out.

Himmler, as head of the SS, insisted on a racial dimension

in the recruitment of the Leibstandarte.

Applicants had to be

authentically Nordic in appearance

and demonstrate pure Aryan ancestry

going back over 100 years to 1800.

The officers had to be even purer,

having Aryan roots going back to 1750.

Himmler's racial demand greatly irritated Dietrich,

who claimed he was denied at least 40 good recruits a year

because of doubtful ancestry.

It would not be the first point of conflict

between the two commanders.

Although the Leibstandarte was part of the SS

and officially came under the control of Himmler,

the reality was that Sepp Dietrich took his orders

directly from Hitler.

Distrustful of everyone,

Hitler would never allow his black guards

to be controlled by anyone but himself.

Even Himmler had to defer to Dietrich

when dealing with the Fuhrer's palace guard.

When Himmler tried to impose his will

on Hitler’s SS escort by withholding its wages,

chief bodyguard Bruno Gesche went to Sepp Dietrich.

It was Dietrich who outmaneuvered Himmler

by going direct to Hitler

and got the money flowing again.

Later, Dietrich went on the attack,

accusing Himmler of financial corruption.

Man: "His appetite for power just could not be satisfied.

"On top of this,

"he was a great hand at hoarding and scrounging

"He received money from everywhere and everybody.

"Every SS leader, starting from the rank of corporal,

"was made to pay monthly dues to the Lebensborn organization.

"This took care of the pregnant wives and girlfriends of SS men.

"These dues were withheld from all salaries.

"For this swindle, they deducted

"120 Reichsmarks out of my monthly salary of 1,500 marks.

I had quite a number of rows with Himmler."

Powell: Dietrich believed that the climate of fear

created by Himmler's SS also helped to obscure the truth

of what was going on in the Third Reich.

Man: "The Fuhrer was kept misinformed all the time.

"Of course,

"you couldn't say anything, you had to be careful.

"The Gestapo were everywhere.

"If you only dared open your mouth,

"you risked your head.

"It was maddening.

"There was only one way in which to get away from these people --

you had to play the role of a madman."

Powell: Sometimes Himmler's Nazi demands

for racial purity impacted on Hitler’s personal bodyguards.

Emil Maurice, one of his oldest and closest protectors,

fell foul of these rules when he wanted to get married.

He had to submit details of his own racial background to the SS.

Despite being SS member number two --

Hitler was SS member number one --

it turned out that Maurice had Jewish ancestry.

It was a devastating family secret

for a man so close to the Führer.

The devious Himmler was delighted by this news,

always keen to split away bodyguards

he deemed too close to the Führer.

He recommended that Maurice be expelled from the SS.

But to Himmler's annoyance,

the virulently anti-Semitic Hitler

stood by his close comrade.

In a secret letter written on August 31, 1935,

Himmler was compelled to make an exception of Maurice.

Man: "Emil Maurice is without doubt,

"as shown in his family tree, not of Aryan descent.

"The Fuhrer has decided that in this one exceptional case,

"Maurice, along with his brothers,

"can stay in the SS.

"This is because Maurice has been his very first companion,

"and because his brothers and the entire Maurice family

"have served the movement with remarkable bravery and loyalty

in the earliest and most difficult months and years."

Powell: Despite his Jewish blood,

and despite his affair with Hitler's young niece,

Geli Raubal, the object of Hitler's early desire,

Maurice was first and foremost a loyal companion to the Fuhrer,

and the Fuhrer would not forget that.

Other members of Hitler's personal bodyguard

also had, in Himmler's eyes, personal traits

that made them not wholly suitable for their task.

Kurt Gildisch became commander of Hitler's SS escort

in April 1933, but he had a drink problem,

and within months, it had got the better of him.

In June 1934, Himmler had him removed from his post.

On this occasion,

Hitler did nothing to stop him.

For Gildisch, the warning was not sufficient,

and he continued to drink heavily while on duty.

In 1936, this led to his expulsion

from both the SS and the Nazi Party.

Bruno Gesche succeeded Gildisch

as commander of Hitler's SS escort,

but he too was a heavy drinker.

He had already clashed with Himmler over his criticism

of SS security arrangements for the Führer.

And now the Reichsfuhrer-SS

was able to use Gesche's drink problem

as a means to harass him,

but unlike Gildisch, he could not get rid of Gesche so easily.

For even though Hitler was at the height of his popularity,

there were storm clouds gathering within his own party,

and he needed as many loyal followers around him

as possible.

In the gold rush for political power

in Nazi Germany in 1933,

Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS,

was in danger of losing out.

As police chief of Bavaria,

Himmler was based in Munich.

This did not suit his ambitions

since all the grabbing of departments and positions

by other Nazis was happening in Berlin.

Hermann Göring,

Hitler's obese, ruthless, and egotistical right-hand man,

now held several important posts,

including Minister of the Interior for Prussia,

by far the largest of the German provinces.

This put him charge

of the formidable Prussian police force.

In April 1933, the popular former-air-ace-turned-thug

expanded the political surveillance department

of the Prussian force into the Geheime Staatspolizei,

the Gestapo or Secret State Police.

He seemed to be in direct competition with Himmler.

To make matters worse, it was an SS officer,

theoretically one of Himmler's men,

who had been plucked from obscurity by Göring

to become chief of the Prussian police.

Basking in Göring's patronage,

the 36-year-old Kurt Daluege

had no need to take orders from Himmler

and severed any connection with him.

This was the final straw for Himmler,

and he sent his deputy, Reinhard Heydrich,

an ice-cold sadist, to Berlin to sort out Daluege.

The 29-year-old Heydrich

was later dubbed the perfect Nazi

for his athletic blond good looks.

He personified the Teutonic hero,

the ideal of Aryan purity.

A keen fencer and musician,

he had been an officer in the German navy

until he was dismissed, officially for failing to marry

the daughter of a senior officer who he had got pregnant,

but in reality because of

his arrogant attitude towards his superiors.

Heydrich joined the SS in 1932, having impressed Himmler

with his proposal for building up a security

and intelligence department within the SS.

He was rapidly promoted by Himmler,

who recognized his steely attention to detail

and ruthless efficiency.

Heydrich arrived in Berlin in March 1933,

but Police Chief Daluege refused even to see

the lowly SS-Standartenfuhrer, saying he was far too busy.

When Heydrich protested at this behavior,

Göring sent his Gestapo agents

to threaten him with arrest

if he persisted in harassing Daluege.

It was a naked display of the loathing felt

by top Nazis towards each other.

Göring knew he had the upper hand

when it came to contact with Hitler

and he possessed the police apparatus

to enforce his rule within the Nazi Party.

It was a humiliating lesson for Heydrich and Himmler.

Heydrich was forced to flee Berlin to avoid arrest.

The cold-blooded Himmler knew that he would have to work fast

to justify his own position as Hitler's protector before --

in a classic display of Nazi survival of the fittest --

he was elbowed out.

He chose to do this

by inventing threats to Hitler's life.

Shortly after his rebuff by Göring,

Himmler arrested Count Arco-Valley.

An extreme nationalist,

the count had fought alongside Himmler in the Freikorps

during the chaos in Bavaria after World War I.

But now Himmler turned on the count and told Hitler

that he was planning a coup d'état against him.

Two weeks later, Himmler uncovered another supposed plot

against Hitler.

This time it was three Soviet agents

who were planning to hurl hand grenades at the Fuhrer

as his car drove past

the Richard Wagner memorial in Berlin.

After this, Himmler revealed that his SS agents

were collecting information from Switzerland

about further attacks on the new chancellor

that the Communists were plotting.

All this fed into Hitler's growing sense of paranoia.

Coming soon after the burning of the Reichstag,

Hitler believed in any and every

assassination attempt against him, real or not.

It was one of the main reasons for the establishment

of the Leibstandarte palace guard.

Hitler rewarded Himmler for his apparent diligence

in safeguarding him by allowing him to start taking control

of other regional police forces.

The callous Himmler

swiftly applied his new powers to a new end.

In the Munich suburb of Dachau,

he established a prison camp to hold Communists

and other Nazi rivals.

It was the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany

and soon became a terrifying weapon in the SS armory.

Propaganda films at the time portrayed Dachau

as a place where prisoners were reformed

through healthy living and exercise.

Inside the camp,

however, the reality was horrendously different.

Thousands of prisoners were beaten, tortured,

and worked to death.

Josef Felder, a Social Democrat member of the Reichstag

later described the horrors of the regime.

[Speaking German]

Powell: As Himmler stretched his SS empire

across southern Germany,

he still faced the problem of his old rival Göring in Prussia,

with his complete control

of the country's largest police force.

When Göring heard that Himmler

had opened another concentration camp near Osnabruck,

he sent Diels and the Gestapo to investigate.

Such was the mutual hostility

between the Nazi security agencies

that SS guards actually shot at the Gestapo agents

when they arrived to inspect the camp.

Göring informed Hitler,

who ordered Himmler to shut the camp down immediately.

So bad were the rumors of ill treatment in Dachau

that Hitler had to authorize an amnesty

at Christmas 1933.

Diels himself announced this

before releasing 27,000 prisoners from the camp.

However, Hitler was impressed

by Himmler's extreme punishment of party enemies,

and Göring was forced to follow suit.

Soon, more concentration camps

opened across Germany.

The rules for incarceration became more draconian.

Man: "The following offenders, considered as agitators,

"will be hanged.

"Anyone who makes provocative speeches and holds meetings,

"forms groups,

or loiters around with others."

Powell: The message was clear.

Anyone who even dared speak out against Hitler and his regime

could be thrown into a concentration camp

and executed.

Real fear now dominated the Third Reich,

and Himmler was proving himself an even more

ruthless and evil monster than Göring.

Hitler's first year in power as Chancellor of Germany

was highly successful.

Against the backdrop of the Great Depression

and mass unemployment, he had promised

to get Germany back to work again.

On May 1, 1933, at the National Labor Day rally

at the Tempelhof Field in Berlin,

hundreds of thousands of Germans gathered to hear

a major announcement by the chancellor.

The slogan for the day was,

"Honor Work and respect the Worker."

To get people off the streets, Hitler told the crowd

he was going to introduce

a program of compulsory labor service.

The first great task

would be to construct a massive new network

of high-speed roads across Germany -- the Reich Autobahns.

It was to be a seven-year project

that would completely modernize

Germany's transport network,

creating over 6,000 miles of new roads.

It was a sensational pledge

and ensured a giant flow of public money

into creating work for Germans,

but it came at a price.

The very next day after the labor rally,

all trade unions were closed down,

their funds seized and their leaders imprisoned.

Loudspeakers and radios were installed in every factory.

When the sirens sounded, every worker had to listen

attentively to the Fuhrer’s latest announcements

under the cold gaze of Gestapo informers.

As the Nazis took over, the economy,

wages were fixed.

But massive job-creation programs meant

that most Germans enjoyed

a boost to their living standards.

It may have seemed that everyone in Germany now basked

in the sun of Hitler's economic miracle,

but beneath the surface, the country

had rapidly been turned into a brutal dictatorship.

Many thousands of political prisoners

were suffering torture and execution.

By the summer of 1933, Göring was tiring

of his battle with Himmler

to control Hitler's security forces.

He was, by nature, a bon viveur

and was enjoying the other government jobs Hitler gave him.

In contrast,

Himmler had nothing else to divert him but his obsession

with grabbing control of the national police force.

Step by methodical step,

he added regional police forces to his SS empire.

But when he asked Hitler if he could transfer SS headquarters

from Munich to Berlin, he was turned down flat.

As far as Göring was concerned,

Himmler and Heydrich would enter the German capital

only over his dead body.

But it was significant that by the summer of 1933,

Daluege, Göring's chief of police

and the man who had recently snubbed Heydrich in Berlin,

started to make contact with the SS in Munich,

perhaps sensing a shift in power.

Göring had his own problems in Berlin,

and these mostly involved not the SS but the SA,

Ernst Röhm's brownshirts.

Ever since Hitler had become Chancellor,

the SA had seen it

as a green light to act openly and brutally

against any opposition.

Mobile squads of SA thugs swept through the capital,

picking up any one suspected

of being anti-Nazi

and dragging them off to improvised torture chambers.

It was a criminal reign of terror

and undermined the rule of the police.

Rudolf Diels, Göring's chief of the Gestapo,

was ordered stamp this out.

But as Diels moved against the SA,

Himmler and Heydrich began gathering material

which suggested that he had been an anti-Nazi

before his appointment by Göring.

Having forced Göring on the defensive,

Himmler played his master card.

Just as he had invented a plot against Hitler,

he now invented one against Göring.

Heydrich claimed to have uncovered

Communist plans to kill him.

He arrested suspects, beat confessions out of them,

and presented the evidence to Hitler and Göring.

Himmler argued that such major threats to the Nazi Party

could only be defeated through the greater efficiency

of merging all local police forces together

under the umbrella of the SS.

With this personal threat on his life, real or otherwise,

Göring had had enough.

If he made peace with the SS,

then they could work together against the SA.

So now he encouraged Hitler to accept Himmler's advice.

In April 1934, the Prussian police

were absorbed into the Nazi Ministry of the Interior

and placed completely under the control of Heinrich Himmler.

This included the Gestapo.

Himmler finally had what he wanted.

He was chief of all Hitler's security machinery

with Heydrich as his deputy.

To achieve this,

he had outmaneuvered Göring,

the most senior Nazi leader after Hitler.

The titanic power struggle had not gone unnoticed,

and a chill went through

the Nazi hierarchy.

They would all now have to be wary of the SS.

Daluege was forgiven

for his arrogant behavior towards Heydrich

and put in charge of all uniformed police

in the Third Reich.

But Diels was the big loser.

The fearless crime buster, who had saved many innocents

from the torture cells of the SA,

was dismissed from the Gestapo.

He was given a provincial post in Cologne,

never again to be in a position

to challenge Himmler or Heydrich.

Himmler should have been delighted,

but this malignantly obsessive man had one more battle to win.

Ernst Röhm's SA was running riot throughout the Third Reich,

and Himmler knew that it posed

the greatest threat to the survival both of Hitler

and his regime.

Röhm's brownshirts were revolutionary gangsters

and were growing tired of Hitler's attempts

to cozy up to the conservative establishment.

The momentum was with them,

and they wanted to create a completely socialist paradise

in Nazi Germany.

If Hitler was with them, fine, but if not,

then by fair means or foul, he would have to go.

It was up to Himmler and the SS to stop them.

The stakes could not have been higher,

but so too was the prize.

Two of the most evil organizations in the world

were about to go head to head for the glory and prestige

of protecting the Führer.

Subtitling made possible by Acorn Media