All language subtitles for H-B.05of13.Jewish.and.Emigre.Attempts.to.Kill.Hitler.x264.AC3.MVGroup.org_track6_[eng]

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 hand-picked 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.

Within a few months of Hitler
becoming Chancellor of Germany

in January 1933,

the number of his enemies
increased enormously,

and he feared revenge attacks
from all of them.

His bodyguards
scanned the crowds

at every event
he attended,

searching for
a sudden move,

an aggressive gesture --

anything unusual
that might betray

an imminent assault.

Germany's Jews seemed
a particular danger.

They had overwhelming reasons
for loathing Hitler

and wanting him dead.

Anti-Semitism was at
the heart of Nazi ideology

from the beginning.

Brown-shirted SA men

routinely smashed
the windows of Jewish shops

or scrawled anti-Semitic
slogans on walls.

Jews were harassed

and attacked in the street
by Nazi thugs.

Hitler's hatred of the Jews
was profound

and long-lasting.

He didn't care what the rest
of the world thought of him.

The Third Reich remained
hideously anti-Semitic

until it was
blasted to pieces

in the rubble of Berlin.

Those Jews who could afford

to flee Nazi Germany
started a new life abroad

with their families.

But many could not,

and some would not.

They believed they were good
and patriotic Germans

and would not be hounded out of
their country by a madman.

[Crowd cheering]

Once Hitler had become

Chancellor in January 1933,

he wasted little time
in ramping up the pressure

on Germany's
Jewish population.

The burning of the Reichstag --

the German parliament --

in February
gave him the excuse

to crack down on
all opposition.

Prominent Jews were singled out

for their financial
or political power

and their homes raided.

Among these was Albert Einstein,

the winner of the Nobel Prize
for Physics in 1921,

whose theory of relativity
had made him world famous.

But in 1933,
he was just another Jew,

as far as Hitler
was concerned.

He was believed to be

hoarding a huge
arsenal of weapons

in preparation for an assault
on the Nazi regime.

The raid made headlines
around the world.

The New York Times reported
what the Nazis uncovered.

"The nearest thing to arms
they found was a bread knife.

"Professor Einstein's home,
which for the present is empty,

"the professor being on his way

"back to Europe
from the United States,

"was surrounded
on all sides,

"and one of the most
perfect raids

"of recent German history
was carried out.

"The outcome was
a disappointment to those

"who have always regarded
Professor Einstein's

pacifist utterances
as a mere pose."

It was a global embarrassment
for Hitler,

but he shrugged it off.

The raid was for internal
consumption to cow Germany's

Jewish population even more.

Shortly afterwards,
Einstein renounced

his German citizenship
and emigrated

to the United States.

He stayed there for
the rest of his life,

becoming an American
citizen in 1940.

The brain-drain of top German
Jewish scientists abroad

was a major catastrophe
for Hitler.

It meant that when war came,
he had fewer

senior scientists to call on
to develop new weapons.

And in 1939,
it was Einstein

who wrote to U.S. President
Franklin Roosevelt,

urging him to start work
on a nuclear weapon

before Hitler did.

Ultimately, Hitler's expulsion
of Jewish scientists

would be a greater
threat to him

than any assassin.

In 1935, Hitler introduced

the Nuremberg Laws
on citizenship and race.

These withdrew citizenship
from people of non-German blood

and effectively banned Jews
from the professions

and the civil service.

It was the first step
towards their

total elimination
from German society.

One of the results of this ban
was to stop

Jewish students from studying
at German universities.

It created a whole section
of disaffected young men

who now sought ways
to hit back

at the society
that had rejected them.

While some Jews still hoped
the new laws would be temporary,

others decided that
it was time to fight

and joined underground
opposition groups.

One formed around
Otto Strasser.

With his elder brother Gregor,
he had been among

the leaders of the early
National Socialist Party.

But the brothers took
the "Socialist" part

of the Nazis' name too
seriously for Hitler's liking.

In 1926, at a Nazi rally
in Bamberg,

Gregor pushed strongly
for a socialist agenda,

but Hitler rejected
his proposals,

arguing that they
sounded too much like

their Communist rivals.

Tension continued,
and in 1930,

Hitler expelled Otto Strasser
from the party.

Wisely, Strasser fled abroad

to Prague in Czechoslovakia.

There, he set up
an anti-Hitler organization

called the Black Front.

Although Otto had been a Nazi,
it did not stop him from

recruiting alienated
Jewish students

who wanted to strike back
at Hitler.

After his brother's escape,

Gregor's position became
increasingly precarious.

In 1932, with the Nazis on
the verge of political power,

came the final showdown.

[Crowd cheering ]

Knowing that Strasser and Hitler
had very divergent ideas,

Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher
attempted to split the Nazis

by offering Gregor the position
of vice-chancellor.

Hitler was furious.

He insisted that
the offer was refused

and accused Gregor of
stabbing him in the back.

[Speaking German]

By the end of 1932, Gregor had
resigned from the Nazi party.

But, less wise than his brother,
he chose to remain in Germany.

An early member of
Otto Strasser's Black Front

was Walter Stennes,

the SA leader in Berlin.

Like many brownshirts,
he sympathized with

the anti-capitalist views
of the Strasser brothers.

Following
Otto Strasser's dismissal

from the Nazi party
in 1930,

Stennes led protests against
the luxurious lifestyles

of the top Nazis.

Hitler could see the imminent
danger of a catastrophic mutiny

and rushed to Berlin
to meet Stennes.

They patched up
their differences,

but it was only
a temporary truce.

Fearing that the SA
was becoming uncontrollable,

Hitler now summoned Ernst Röhm,
the brownshirts' former leader,

back from Bolivia.

He hoped his old comrade would
help him reassert order.

In fact, this decision
only made matters worse,

for Röhm also saw
the Nazis and the SA

as a truly revolutionary
organization.

Soon, he would be
an even greater threat

to Hitler's personal security.

The fall-out from this affair
would unite Nazi and Jew

against Hitler.

As he returned from Bolivia

to take day-to-day command
of the SA,

Ernst Röhm was given
a surprising warning.

The brownshirts' leader
in Berlin, Walter Stennes,

told him that the Fuhrer
should not be trusted.

By mixing with big business,
he was intent on betraying

the true socialist principles
of the Nazi Party.

Röhm may have been sympathetic
to Stennes's views,

but he knew
where the power lay,

and soon started to
undermine Stennes's position.

In April 1931, Stennes was
ordered to move from Berlin

to the SA's headquarters
in Munich

to become its
Chief of Organization.

He refused, even when directly
ordered to do so by Hitler.

Once again, the SA seemed
on the verge of a revolt.

And once again,
Hitler acted swiftly,

using the SS to get
the Storm Troops under control.

Stennes fled to Prague

and joined Otto Strasser's
Black Front opposition group.

Before he went,
he gave Röhm a grim prophecy --

Man: But I warn you.

I say, after you have
liquidated me,

you will be
liquidated yourself.

Powell: After Hitler
became Chancellor in 1933,

Stennes made the mistake of
returning to Germany.

He was arrested by the SS
and faced

certain execution.

But Hermann Göring,

who had been his friend
at cadet school

many years before,

arranged for Stennes
to be exiled.

The former Brownshirt commander

sailed to China,
where he became bodyguard

to the Chinese dictator
Chiang Kai-shek.

Stennes's prophecy came true

just three years later

in the Night of the Long Knives.

Hitler liquidated

Ernst Röhm and other
senior leaders of the SA...

[Gunshots]

and took the opportunity

to get rid of other opponents
of the Nazi regime.

[Gunshot]

Otto Strasser was at
the top of the list,

but he was safely out
of the country in Prague.

His older brother
was not so fortunate.

Gregor was arrested
by the Gestapo and shot

at its Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse
headquarters.

For two more years,

Otto welcomed angry young men
into the Black Front.

They came from
the stream of emigres

that escaped
to Czechoslovakia

looking for justice
against Hitler.

Not surprisingly,

the Nazis swiftly expanded
the bodyguard agencies

designed to counter
this threat.

In 1931, Himmler had
been authorized --

ironically, by Röhm,
who was then his nominal boss --

to establish a security
and intelligence service

within the SS to gather
information about

enemies of the Nazi Party
and to keep watch

on Party members.

Known as the Sicherheitsdienst,
or SD,

this new department

was put under the command
of an ice-cold

and ruthless ex-navy officer,
Reinhard Heydrich.

And when the secret
state police,

the Geheime Staatspolizei,
or Gestapo,

also became part of
Heinrich Himmler's police empire

in April 1933, it began
to work alongside the SD,

doing the dirty work
of arresting

and interrogating suspects.

In June 1936,

both organizations
were placed formally

under Heydrich's control.

Together, the Gestapo
and SD hunted down

anyone who might
conspire against Hitler.

Jews, Communists,
and any sort of dissident --

anyone who even told
an anti-Nazi joke --

were arrested and sent
to concentration camps.

Behind the apparent jubilation
of the population,

it was Gestapo

and SD agents who
arrested over 60,000

supposed enemies of
the Nazi state in Vienna

when Austria was absorbed
into the Third Reich

in 1938.

The SD took the lead in
infiltrating opposition groups

outside Germany's borders,

and its tentacles
spread across Europe.

While the intelligence-gathering

and secret-police
functions of the SS

were being expanded,

Hitler's own security
arrangements also saw

a quantum leap
in size and complexity.

Alongside the eight-man
SS-Begleitkommando,

Hitler's close protection squad,

came two new and potentially
competing groups.

On March 17, 1933,

Hitler had ordered
the recruiting

from SS ranks of his
own palace guard

which soon became known as

the Leibstandarte SS
Adolf Hitler.

Initially just 120 men under
the command of a tough

former army sergeant
and police officer,

Sepp Dietrich,
the Leibstandarte's role

was to guard Hitler's
residences and offices,

form a human wall
around the Fuhrer

during public appearances,

and to provide muscle
for special security tasks.

Within a year,

the unit had grown to
almost 1,000 men

and was based at
the Lichterfelde Barracks.

Although nominally under
the control of Himmler,

Dietrich always
took his instructions

directly from Hitler.

To confuse matters,
just two days earlier,

Himmler had authorized
the establishment of

a Fuhrer protection group,

the Fuhrerschutzkommando,

staffed by detectives of
the Bavarian State Police.

Headed by 36-year-old
Inspector Johann Rattenhuber,

the Fuhrerschutzkommando
initially only had

authority within Bavaria.

But the potential
for confusion

between these
new bodyguard units

was shown by an incident
later in 1933.

Driving through Munich
one evening,

Hitler became aware of
a car following his own.

He told his SS driver-bodyguard,
Erich Kempka,

to increase the speed of
his supercharged Mercedes,

and eventually, the pursuing car
was shaken off.

On further investigation,
it turned out that

the strange car was part of
Rattenhuber's protection group,

which had not bothered to tell
the Fuhrer's close bodyguard.

Hitler took a dim view of this,
having a strong aversion

to all police ever since
his days in opposition.

But by 1934,
Himmler had persuaded Hitler

that he needed the 12 officers
of the Fuhrerschutzkommando,

and they were authorized
to operate

throughout the Third Reich.

In 1935,

the Fuhrerschutzkommando
became part of

a separate Reich agency,
the Reichssicherheitsdienst,

or Reich Security Service --

the RSD.

As with the Leibstandarte,

the RSD was nominally part of
Himmler's SS empire,

but, like Sepp Dietrich,

Rattenhuber answered
directly to Hitler.

Responsible for Hitler's
overall security,

the RSD followed up reports
of assassination plots,

sometimes overlapping
with the SD,

kept key places
under surveillance,

secured travel routes,

and checked personnel
and locations

before important
public appearances.

By 1936,
the RSD had 56 officers,

most still recruited
from Bavaria.

They wore black SS uniforms
or plainclothes,

depending on their missions.

If the array of security
agencies now protecting Hitler

sounds complicated,
that is not surprising.

It was meant to be like this.

Hitler encouraged
a certain amount of chaos

in government
since he believed

it kept the various departments
and factions

competing and conspiring
against each other and not him.

Nazi bureaucratic in-fighting

was yet another way of

safeguarding the Führer.

As Hitler tightened his control
over the Third Reich

and the number of agencies
and secret policemen

dedicated to his protection
expanded enormously,

the Jewish opponents
of his regime

were becoming increasingly
desperate to act.

Soon their efforts

would be putting Hitler's
bodyguard to the test.

The increased presence
of Hitler's security forces

on the streets of Germany,

both publicly and secretly,
made operating within it

very difficult and dangerous

for active opponents
of the Third Reich.

It is not surprising,
therefore,

that one of the first major
strikes against a senior Nazi

took place beyond German borders
in Switzerland.

David Frankfurter was
a 27-year-old Croatian Jew,

the son of a rabbi.

He had gone to Germany
to study medicine but had been

forced to abandon
his course by Hitler's

anti-Semitic
Nuremberg Race Laws.

He hoped to find freedom
from persecution in Switzerland,

but the Nazis were
active there as well.

The head of the Nazi Party
in the country

was the virulently anti-Semitic
Wilhelm Gustloff,

a Swiss civil servant.

Frankfurter selected him
as his target.

On February 4, 1936,

he went to Gustloff's
home in Davos

and was welcomed in
by his wife.

He calmly waited
for his target

in his study
while sitting opposite

a portrait of Hitler.

When Gustloff entered,

Frankfurter shot him five times
in the head, neck, and chest.

He then gave himself up
to the Swiss police.

The Swiss authorities
resisted all pressure

to send Frankfurter
back to Nazi Germany

and prosecuted the case
themselves.

He was sentenced
to 18 years in prison.

Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy
were shocked

by the brazen shooting
of Gustloff.

He was one of their
keenest representatives abroad,

and they gave him
an elaborate state funeral.

The killing was particularly

embarrassing and awkward
for the Nazi regime

since it came just as Germany
prepared to welcome

thousands of visitors to Berlin

for the summer Olympics.

[Crowd cheering ]

Thousands of SS agents were
deployed to protect Hitler

and his Nazi henchmen
as they paraded daily

before the world
in their spectacular stadium.

His bodyguard's blanket coverage
of the Berlin Olympics

ensured that they passed
without incident.

Hitler suffered nothing worse
than the embarrassment

of seeing his
racist views undermined

when American black athlete
Jesse Owens

won four gold medals.

David Frankfurter had almost
certainly been a loner,

inspired to kill Gustloff by his
personal hatred of the Nazis.

But the next serious attempts
on Hitler's life

came from Otto Strasser's
Black Front.

And they came in Nuremberg,

the symbolic heart
of Hitler's regime.

It was in this medieval city
in Bavaria

that the Fuhrer
held his greatest rallies,

attracting hundreds of thousands
of supporters.

[Crowd cheering ]

It was also the city
that gave its name

to the hideously anti-Jewish
Nuremberg Laws

that banned them
from public life.

Strasser and his Jewish
conspirators intended to explode

two bombs concealed
in suitcases --

one at the Nazi headquarters

and one at the offices of
the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.

Julius Streicher,
the publisher of Der Stürmer,

was a key target for the Jews
in the Black Front.

This bald-headed brute of a man
was a former school teacher

who became notorious
for his obscene verbal

and literary attacks
on Germany's Jews.

Streicher used Der Stürmer
to denounce the Jews

as degenerate sub-humans,

the source of all the ills
afflicting Germany.

A 20-year-old Jewish student
called Helmut Hirsch

was chosen to plant the bombs.

Like Frankfurter, Hirsch had
been excluded from university

by the Nuremberg Laws,
and moved to Prague.

On December 20, 1936,

Hirsch entered Nazi Germany,

telling the border guards
he was visiting his sick mother.

Unfortunately, they knew his
parents were living in Prague,

and began tailing him.

Hirsch had been instructed to
pick up the suitcase bombs

in Nuremberg from a contact,

but he lost his nerve
at the last moment

and went on
to Stuttgart instead.

There the Gestapo were waiting,
and arrested him.

Hirsch was taken to Gestapo
headquarters in Berlin

and brutally interrogated.

During a secret trial,

it emerged that he
had been betrayed

by a Nazi double agent
working in Prague

within the Black Front.

In March 1937,

Hirsch was condemned to death
and guillotined.

Further agents
were sent to Prague

to eradicate the Black Front,

but it was the dramatic events
of the following year

which effectively
did the job.

Hitler's occupation
of the Sudetenland

in western Czechoslovakia
in October 1938

brought Nazi power
too close for comfort.

Strasser left Prague for Canada,
and the Black Front

soon lost its power base
as Hitler completed

the takeover of Czechoslovakia
in March 1939.

The Black Front was gone,

but its threat
still haunted Hitler.

Strasser's thirst for revenge
seemed to remain

a clear
and ever-present danger,

even though he was far away
across the Atlantic.

It was not for several years

that Hitler would have
an opportunity to eliminate

what he regarded as one of his
most implacable opponents.

But when rumors
finally reached him

that Strasser had
returned to Europe,

Hitler was determined
to make no mistake,

and put one of his most lethal
SS hit men on his trail.

[ Knocking ]

The man selected to track down
and terminate Otto Strasser

was a senior SS
counter-intelligence officer,

Walter Schellenberg.

He had joined the SS
from university

in 1933 and quickly impressed

Himmler and Heydrich.

By 1939, he had
become deputy head

of the Sicherheitsdienst,
or SD, the security

and counterintelligence arm
of the SS.

In addition to investigating
plots against Hitler,

the SD sometimes undertook
preemptive strikes to kidnap

or assassinate
potential enemies.

Early in 1941,
the SS began receiving rumors

that Otto Strasser
had returned to Europe.

He was working with
British and American agents

in neutral Portugal on plans
to assassinate Hitler.

This was enough for Hitler.

He had killed Strasser's
brother, Gregor,

and he wanted Otto
tracked down and eliminated.

Early in April, Schellenberg
was called to a meeting

with Himmler, Heydrich,
and Hitler

at the Reich Chancellery
and given his instructions.

The method to be used
was a bacterial poison

developed by
a Nazi scientist.

One drop of it would be
sufficient to kill Strasser.

With his deadly cargo,

the SS hit man set off by air
across wartime Europe.

Flying to Lyon,
Barcelona, and Madrid,

he finally reached Lisbon.

The mission turned out to be
a wild goose chase.

Schellenberg spent 16 days
in the Portuguese capital

searching for him,
but Strasser could not be found.

In fact,
he was still in Canada.

Hitler would never
get Strasser

and would have to live with
the constant threat he posed.

Despite the impression
of power and control

that the great
Nuremberg Rally of 1936

was designed to reinforce,
the assassination

of Wilhelm Gustloff
and the attempt by Helmut Hirsch

to plant bombs
during that year

convinced Hitler's security
services that the Jews

would be a constant threat.

But it is a curious fact
that throughout this period

of growing racial persecution,

Nazi intelligence agencies
were in

constant contact with
Jewish organizations abroad,

and not just in order
to infiltrate them.

Hitler's attempt to rid Europe

completely of all Jews by
exterminating them did not begin

until World War II
was well underway.

Before the war,
forced emigration

was the preferred tool
for driving Jews

out of Germany and Austria.

And Palestine, the historic
"lost homeland of the Jews,"

came to be seen
as a good place to go.

At the time,
it was under British rule

and contained a substantial
Arab population.

Nevertheless,

tens of thousands of Jews

forced out of Germany
settled there.

Local Arab opposition
to this massive influx

was fierce and violent.

To protect themselves,

Palestinian Jews set up
a paramilitary organization --

the Haganah.

And it made contact
with Himmler's SS

to facilitate further emigration
to Palestine.

A meeting was arranged between
SS agent Adolf Eichmann

and a Haganah representative
in Haifa

in Palestine
on October 2, 1937.

Arab anti-Jewish riots

prevented that meeting,

but they eventually met
in Cairo, Egypt,

on November 10, 1937.

There, the Haganah agent
attempted to

enlist Eichmann's help
by hinting at

at least one other
Jewish conspiracy,

based in Paris,
to kill Hitler.

He promised to look further
into this plot

and amazingly even
offered to spy

for the Nazis
in return for help

in getting Jews
out of Germany.

These inducements had
considerable success,

as Yitshaq Ben-Ami,

a former member of Haganah,
reported after the war.

He helped us.

He gave us foreign exchange.

He gave us permits
to take people

out of Bohemia and Moravia,

out of Slovakia,
out of Vienna.

As long as we could
move people out,

we had his support.

Haganah's twisted view
was that Zionists

should collaborate
with Nazi policies

because they built up the number
of Jews in Palestine.

But what Haganah was probably
unaware of was that Eichmann

was also meeting
the Grand Mufti,

Amin al-Husayni,

who was organizing bloody
uprisings against the Jews.

He would eventually become

Hitler’s main Arab ally
in the war against Britain.

By 1939, the level of violence
between the Arabs and the Jews

had forced the British
to ban any further Jewish

emigration to Palestine.

Despite all the layers of police
surveillance in Nazi Germany,

there was still room for
a determined enemy agent

to penetrate
the rings of security.

Increasingly,
this threat came from abroad.

Hitler was now
an international statesman,

and his aggressive views

on foreign policy alarmed
many of his neighbors.

Some of them began to explore

the possibility
of killing him.

Hitler both admired
and hated the Soviet Union.

He remained anti-capitalist
throughout his career

and ran Germany
on semi-socialist lines,

copying Soviet
five-year plans

for his big economic
leaps forward.

He also admired the ruthlessness
of Joseph Stalin,

leader of the Soviet Union.

But what Hitler hated
was the way in which

German communists
were ready to submit to

the aims of their masters
in the Soviet Union.

The German nation
was sacred to Hitler,

and he would never allow it

to be undermined
by foreign influences.

Hitler had fought communism

on the streets of Germany
to win power.

Now he was Chancellor,

he was determined to
oppose it internationally.

His first major opportunity
to do this came in 1936

with the outbreak of
civil war in Spain.

Stalin backed the left-wing
Republican government

with weapons
and military advisers

in an attempt to add Spain

to the international
communist movement.

So Hitler backed
the Nationalists

and sent them
military assistance,

including his Condor Legion

of advanced bombers
and fighter aircraft.

The Spanish Civil War

became a dress rehearsal
for World War ll.

It attracted
thousands of volunteers

from outside Spain --

many of them left-wingers
who served in

an international brigade
supporting the Republican cause.

Among these was a 21-year-old
Briton, Alexander Foote.

While serving in Spain,

he was recruited by Soviet
military intelligence.

And in 1937,
he was sent to Switzerland

to work as radio operator
for a Soviet spy ring.

A year later, Foote was
instructed to investigate

the feasibility
of killing Hitler.

He traveled to Munich
and homed in

on Hitler's favorite restaurant,
the Osteria Bavaria.

His investigation revealed
startling gaps

in Hitler's security.

The RSD did not seem to check

who had access to it,

and Foote decided that it
would be easy to plant a bomb.

So he reported to Moscow
that the German dictator

would be an easy target
to eliminate.

But then he was told to take
no further action.

A possible reason for this
abrupt change of mind

is that the Great Purge,

which Stalin had
unleashed in 1936

against his
political rivals,

was now devouring
his armed forces.

The Soviet Union was in chaos
and militarily exposed.

To provoke a war with Germany
by killing Hitler

seemed inadvisable

The disaster which was now
convulsing the Red Army

may well have been begun,
or at least stoked up,

by the Germans themselves.

For in early 1937,

Heydrich received a report
from Nikolai Skoblin,

a White Russian emigre
based in Paris,

which stated that
the Soviet Marshal,

Mikhail Tukhachevsky,

was plotting to
overthrow Stalin.

Tukhachevsky was one of Stalin's
most talented generals.

At just 31 years old,

he became chief of staff
of the Soviet Army

and was a key figure
in its modernization.

To keep up with
military developments,

Tukhachevsky made several trips
to Germany to watch maneuvers

and had close links
with its generals.

But this made him suspect
in the eyes of the NKVD --

the People's Commissariat
of Internal Affairs,

forerunner of the dreaded KGB.

Heydrich saw
a golden opportunity

to heighten Soviet paranoia...

and arranged a break-in
at the Bendlerstrasse offices

of the German military
intelligence, the Abwehr,

to search for
hard evidence.

Not surprisingly,
documents were found,

quite possibly
planted by SD agents,

suggesting that
Tukhachevsky was indeed

plotting with
the German general staff.

These were then passed
via Czech intelligence

to President Edvard Beneš,
an ally of Stalin.

By May 1937,
the information was in

the Soviet dictator's hands.

On June 4th,
Tukhachevsky was arrested.

He was violently tortured.

His written confession
was stained with his blood.

A week later, he was put on
trial along with seven other

senior members
of the general staff,

all accused of plotting
to kill Stalin.

Despite being tortured,

none of the eight suspects
pleaded guilty.

But in the typed
trial report,

all their "nos"
were changed to "yeses"

They were condemned to death.

Shortly afterwards,
all eight generals were shot

and their bodies buried
in anonymous graves.

Over the next ten days,

hundreds more high-ranking
officers were arrested.

From May 1937

to September 1938,
over 35,000 officers

were arrested or expelled
from the Red Army.

It is unknown how many of these
were executed

or died in the gulags.

Such a savage assault
on the Red Army

inevitably had repercussions.

In 1939,
when Stalin turned to it

to invade Finland,
it lacked

the experienced officers needed.

The resulting chaos meant that

68,000 Soviet troops died

in what should have been
an easy victory.

The lamentable performance of
the Red Army in Finland

encouraged Hitler to press ahead

with his plans to attack
the Soviet Union.

By drastically reducing
the strength of Germany's

major adversary,
Heydrich and his SD agents

had arguably done more
to protect their Fuhrer

than anyone else.

By the end of 1937,
Hitler was confident

that his regime was
securely established in Germany,

but the threat of
assassination still lurked.

[Crowd chanting]

The oppression of
Germany's Jews continued.

17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan
wanted to leave Germany

for Palestine but was
too young to go.

Instead, he moved to Paris
to live with his uncle.

In the autumn of 1938,

he received disturbing news
from his sister.

His family was part of
a large group of Jews

which had been forcibly
deported to Poland.

Grynszpan was enraged
and decided to take revenge.

On the November 7, 1938,
he shot Ernst vom Rath,

the Third Secretary
at the German Embassy,

who later died
of his injuries.

Hitler went mad when he heard
news of the assassination

and unleashed a pogrom

against all Jews
who remained in Germany.

[Speaking German]

This erupted on the night
of November 9th.

Synagogues were destroyed.

Jewish shops and houses

were burned and looted.

Thousands of Jews
were arrested.

The horror became known as
"Kristallnacht",

the Night of the Broken Glass.

Gunther Triedwindt,
then a schoolboy,

watched the Storm Troops

trashing the neighbors' flat.

Man: I didn't understand

the world any more.

I asked my mother, "Why are
these men doing such things?"

And she told me, "Don't worry,
they are Jews anyway."

And I said, "What, are there
other kind of people?"

And she said, "Yes, they are
like vermin in the larder."

Like many in Germany,

his mother had been brainwashed
by an unrelenting diet

of Nazi propaganda
portraying Jews as responsible

for all Germany's problems.

A few weeks after Kristallnacht,

Hitler made a speech
to the Reichstag

in which he stated,
for the first time,

the appalling logic
of his hatred of the Jews.

[Hitler speaking German]

[Crowd cheering ]

Hitler's hatred of Jews
could not be more

clearly displayed to the world.

It sent a chill
through those living abroad.

One of them decided
enough was enough.

A. E. Clouston,

a New Zealand test pilot
living in Britain,

was approached by an anonymous
Jewish businessman

with an extraordinary
proposition --

a million pounds
if he would kill Hitler.

The plan was that

Clouston would fly to Berlin
and bomb Hitler

as he reviewed a parade.

He would use
the de Havilland DH.88 Comet,

an innovative
long-range aircraft

that Clouston
had just flown on

a record-breaking journey
around the world.

The aircraft would set off
from a secret airstrip

in northeast England, heavily
disguised to hide its origin.

It would then
cross the North Sea

and turn in towards the Baltic,

flying low over the sea
to avoid detection.

The round trip to Berlin
was 1,600 miles,

but the Comet would still have
two hours left.

On arrival,

the aircraft would fly down
the Charlottenburger Chaussee

and drop two bombs
on Hitler's reviewing stand.

The Jewish businessman
had his plan

all worked out
and the money to back it.

Clouston was astonished.

The money was a huge amount
at the time,

and, for a moment,
he was tempted.

But he concluded that
the Gestapo would never give up

on the man who murdered
the Fuhrer,

and he would be hunted down
wherever he tried to hide.

Also, he was not Jewish, and had
no personal quarrel with Hitler.

But soon,

even a New Zealander
like Clouston

would be thrust into
a world war by the madman --

unless he could be stopped.

As the march to war began,
the next most

deadly threat
to Hitler would come

from an unexpected direction.

Many of his army generals began
to dread the outbreak

of another European war.

They believed that Hitler
had to be stopped

before the Allies
ganged up on them.

Secretly, they devised a plan
to arrest the dictator,

and, if he resisted, shoot him.

Having survived all the attempts
by his enemies

to assassinate him,
it looked as though Hitler

might now become
a victim of his own

military protectors.

The men who had sworn to
safeguard him with their lives

were plotting to kill him.

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