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 when Hitler made himself increasingly vulnerable

by flying in the relatively dangerous aircraft of the time.

Hitler was fascinated by the possibilities of flight.

In the 1930s,

he could see its potential for dominating future warfare.

Secretly, he rebuilt

his country's air force

and channeled vast amounts of money into the development

of fast, powerful bombers and fighters.

He was also one of the first politicians

to use aircraft for election campaigning.

In 1932, on the verge of becoming Chancellor of Germany,

he hired an aircraft so he could visit five cities in one day.

It was this dynamic, modern approach to campaigning

that made him one of the most popular figures

in Germany at the time.

But he was not a natural flier,

and on one turbulent early trip to Berlin,

he was sick several times.

This anxiety about flying came back to haunt him

10 years later.

Talking over lunch to Sepp Dietrich,

chief of his Leibstandarte bodyguard regiment,

he revealed his feelings.

Man: "I have so many responsibilities now,

"I don't take unnecessary risks flying about by aircraft.

"In my early, heroic days, it was different.

"I only once abandoned a flight,

and that was against my will."

Powell: It was at the end of an election campaign,

and Hitler wanted to get back quickly to Berlin.

[All chanting "Sieg Heil" ]

Captain Hans Baur,

Hitler's chief pilot, finished the story.

Man: "Yes, my Fuhrer, it was I who insisted you give it up.

"It was a night flight,

"and the route was thick with heavy storms.

"I was sure of one thing --

"there were a few people who would have been very happy

to learn we'd broken our necks."

Powell: Hitler used flying

to his considerable advantage,

but it also presented his bodyguards

with a whole new set of problems.

It was in March 1932 that the 35-year-old Hans Baur

first got a telephone call from Adolf Hitler

asking him to be his pilot.

Hitler wanted a steady pair of hands

to help him get over his natural anxiety about flying,

and he found them in Baur.

Baur learned to fly in World War I.

He was a natural

and finished his training ahead of the rest of his class.

He joined a fighter squadron and had shot down

nine Allied aircraft by the end of the war.

Defeat for Germany in World War I

meant that it was banned from having an air force,

and all military aircraft had to be destroyed.

Baur joined a pioneering civilian passenger service.

One of his first V.I.P.s was Cardinal Pacelli,

the papal nuncio

who later became Pope Pius XII.

Germany's national airline, Lufthansa,

was founded in 1926, and Baur became

one of its most reliable pilots.

When Hitler called in 1932,

he was taking a considerable personal risk

deploying aircraft for his election campaign,

but it was a very important year for Hitler.

After languishing in the polls for most of the 1920s,

the Great Depression and widespread unemployment

in Germany had made the Nazi party very popular again.

If Hitler could find a way of visiting

more cities than his opponents,

he stood a better chance of getting into power.

[Speaking German]

Hitler flew with Baur to scores of cities.

His election flights became

a great source of publicity,

as people watched his tireless crisscrossing

of their country with admiration.

These campaign flights were hectic, and, frequently,

Hitler would fly to several meetings in one day.

Baur would check if a town had an airfield nearby.

If it didn't, it was crossed off the campaign list.

Typical of Hitler's packed itinerary

was the first day of his election campaign

on March 3, 1932.

He flew from Munich to Dresden.

[Crowd cheering ]

There he spoke for half an hour

and then flew to Leipzig.

Three quarters of an hour speaking in a hall,

then on to Chemnitz for another rally.

Finally, he flew to Plauen,

arriving in the evening.

At the airport he made a particular point

of thanking Baur sincerely for his excellent flying.

A few days later, Hitler flew

from Berlin to Wurzburg, Furth, and Nuremberg,

giving speeches in each city.

Oh this occasion, a second aircraft flew ahead of him

as an advanced guard with Sepp Dietrich,

main organizer of his bodyguards,

and some journalists.

When Hitler arrived,

Dietrich would brief him on the local security situation

and then fly on to prepare the next location.

Despite a tightly packed schedule,

there were few delays, and Hitler's bodyguards

were able to provide complete security for him.

Hitler's air election campaign

was an unqualified success,

and in the following year, he became Chancellor of Germany.

Hitler never forgot Baur's key role in this victory.

From 1934, he employed him as his full-time

private pilot and would not allow anyone else to fly him.

They developed a strong personal relationship,

and Baur stood alongside

Hitler's longest-serving bodyguards

as one of his chief protectors.

It was a role that would be tested

many times over the next few years.

Hitler reckoned that luck was his best line of defense.

He drove his bodyguards mad

with his unpredictable travel schedules.

He also insisted on total secrecy

as to his route when air traffic controllers

demanded advance notice.

On one occasion, in 1933,

he wanted to visit two destinations --

Karlsruhe, for a speech,

and then Essen for the funeral of a Brownshirt.

The air traffic controller at Tempelhof airport in Berlin

insisted on knowing the route

so as to clear the airspace

and prepare security at the destination.

Baur, Hitler's chief pilot, refused,

saying that only the Fuhrer himself

could release that information.

When Hitler arrived, he laughed at the controller

and again refused to release any information.

Man: "That will remain between Baur and me.

"My pilot is so skilled

"that flight security can be waived

if he assures me that he can make the flight safely."

Powell: As always,

Hitler considered surprise his best security.

But this time, he was let down by his own security forces.

It was the Gestapo that leaked information about his landing.

As a result, the airport near Karlsruhe

was crowded and Hitler was delayed.

He was furious and forced to cancel his visit

to the SA funeral.

During this trip, Hitler confided to Baur

some of his fears about assassination.

Man: "I feel much safer in the air than on the train.

"Security is more difficult to maintain by rail.

"When I travel by train from Berlin to Munich,

"at least 5,000 different people

"have to be notified,

"all the way down to signalmen at crossings.

"It would be easy for assassins to set

pressure-triggered mines to explode on the rail road."

Powell: To fit in with his master's unpredictability,

Baur always turned up at an airport

just half an hour before a flight.

And in an apparent exception to Hitler's rule

of maintaining secrecy, Baur usually used

the same aircraft during the pre-war period

for Hitler's flights

with the registration number and call sign D-2600.

But because he sometimes flew other top Nazis,

his presence or that of D-2600

did not necessarily mean that Hitler would be there, too.

Also, Baur would frequently fly the aircraft as a decoy

to mislead anyone trying to track Hitler's movements.

The secret of Baur's success as a pilot

was a thorough study of that day's weather maps.

The aircraft Hitler hired

for his first campaign flights in 1932

was a Rohrbach Ro VIII Roland.

It was called "Immelmann I"

in honor of the World War I German flying ace.

From late 1932 onwards,

Hitler's moved onto a Junkers Ju 52 called "Immelmann II."

The three-engine Ju 52

was a very robust and reliable aircraft.

A bomber variant would become notorious

for being used at Guernica in Spain,

one of the world's first terror air raids directed at civilians.

And the robust "Aunt Ju," as it became nicknamed,

was the Luftwaffe's standard transport throughout the war.

In 1937, the Ju 52s of the Fuhrer's personal flight

were replaced by the new four-engine

Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor.

His was "Immelmann III".

The Condor was much faster than the Ju 52

with a top speed of just over 224 miles per hour

as opposed to 178 miles per hour and a far longer range,

over 2,000 miles instead of just 680 miles.

It was a much sleeker-looking aircraft

and was originally designed as a transatlantic passenger plane.

Hitler sometimes put aircraft

at the disposal of his immediate entourage.

His girlfriend, Eva Braun, used a Condor

to fly on holiday to Italy.

The long range of the Condor

meant that a military version was developed

as a maritime reconnaissance bomber for use

during the Battle of the Atlantic.

A 1942 version of this with more powerful engines

and armed with four machine guns was adapted for use by Hitler.

The Condors had a greater degree of comfort

than previous aircraft.

Hitler sat in his own cabin with a club chair,

a small sofa, and a table.

He took great interest in the increased speed

of the aircraft and had instruments,

including an air speed indicator and altimeter,

installed on the bulkhead in front of him.

Hitler was careful to avoid needless luxury.

When the interior of a Ju 52

was upholstered with green Morocco leather,

he said the aircraft looked very beautiful

but was more suited to the tastes of Hermann Göring.

The military Condor also had a personal escape system

with a trapdoor forward of Hitler's seat

and a parachute under the seat

with the harness installed in the back of the seat cushion.

In an emergency,

a bodyguard would strap Hitler into the harness.

The door was then released by a red lever beside the seat.

It was spring-loaded so as to eject downwards,

and the airstream would then carry it clear of the plane

so that Hitler could drop safely through the opening.

In 1944, this escape system was improved

when a new aircraft was adapted for use by Hitler --

the four-engined Junkers Ju 290 A-6.

This had also been designed originally

as a long-range civilian transport

and then adapted as a military transport and maritime bomber.

When Hitler pushed his red lever,

an escape hatch would open hydraulically,

and he would slide out in his seat,

dropping to the ground with a parachute.

To protect Hitler against a midair attack,

his seat was shielded with 12mm-thick armor plate.

Further armor plates and 50mm-thick bulletproof glass

were added to the fuselage and window

near where Hitler sat.

With the constant addition of new airplanes,

Baur ended up running

a personal air fleet for Hitler

that consisted of almost 50 aircraft.

Before every journey that Hitler took,

his chosen aircraft was taken on a short test flight.

This would check the reliability of the aircraft,

as well as detecting any bombs linked to movement or altitude.

And then no one apart from the pilot

was allowed near the aircraft.

SS and RSD troops always guarded the aircraft on the ground.

Hitler repaid Baur's diligence with a close friendship,

allowing access to him anywhere.

He frequently ate lunch or dinner with him.

This close relationship

meant that Baur had to be on call at any time,

but there were compensations.

On Baur's 40th birthday,

Hitler invited him to the Reich Chancellery for lunch.

He even had Baur's favorite meal cooked for him --

roast pork and dumplings.

The Fuhrer had failed to turn his pilot into a vegetarian.

Then he presented him with a luxury model black Mercedes

with grey leather seats.

He gave it to Baur because he couldn't stand him

driving around in an American Ford.

Baur treasured the car and his friendship with Hitler.

This example of his close relationship

with his employer came in 1937,

but by then, Hitler was on the road to war,

and the demands on all his bodyguards,

and in particular his personal pilot,

would soon expand enormously.

World War II started well for Hitler.

Airpower supporting

fast-moving Panzers devastated

the outdated Polish forces.

The Fuhrer was keen to see

the progress of the Blitzkrieg personally.

And within days, his chief pilot, Hans Baur,

was making arrangements.

He selected a Ju 52

for this first visit

to the front in September 1939.

Although slower and less comfortable

than the sleek, modern Condor,

it was sturdy and reliable

and would attract less attention.

Used for all sorts of military transportation,

it was the perfect disguise for Hitler.

But deception wasn't Baur's only weapon.

When Hitler's Ju 52 took to the air, he was accompanied

by an escort of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters.

The tour of the front was not a pleasure trip,

and Baur frequently had to land the aircraft

in unprepared fields.

There Hitler's plane would be met

by the Mercedes 6-wheelers of the "Grey Column,"

with the escort from the army's Fuhrer Begleit Battalion.

The terrible highlight of this aerial tour

was circling at 6,000 feet to watch the flash

of thousands of German guns

pulverizing the historic Polish capital of Warsaw.

For much of the winter of 1939-40,

Hitler remained at Berchtesgaden,

but in April 1940, Nazi forces invaded

and swiftly seized first Denmark and then Norway.

Paratroops played a vital part in this assault,

and Baur anticipated

that Hitler would soon want to visit this new conquest

to congratulate these revolutionary new troops.

But the approaches to Oslo airport

were dangerously close to mountains.

Attacks and crashes were frequent,

and Baur reported back to Hitler

that a landing should not be attempted.

The next important request received by Baur

was in early May 1940, --

to take the Fuhrer's personal aircraft to Hamburg.

The mission puzzled Baur

since he had understood that Hitler was at the Felsennest --

the Rocky Nest -- his military headquarters

near the Belgian border.

France and Britain were Germany's two remaining enemies,

and it was likely that the next military action

would be on Germany's Western Front.

Baur couldn't help wondering

why Hitler was apparently wanting to go

to northern Germany.

When he got to Hamburg,

the mystery became clear.

Hitler was at his Felsennest HQ.

He had sent Baur on a wild goose chase

to fool allied intelligence services.

He was convinced their spies knew his itinerary too well

and constantly changed destinations

to throw them off his track.

Just days later on May 10th,

the German armies swept into the Netherlands and Belgium.

And soon the Blitzkrieg

was thrusting across northern France

to reach the English Channel on the 20th.

As the onrush continued,

Baur was constantly in action

ferrying senior officers from forward HQ

to forward HQ

in a Fieseler Storch observation aircraft.

Hitler was also constantly touring the front line,

but mainly by car and under heavy escort

by the Begleitkommando.

At Charleville,

he visited a fighter squadron

headed by Adolf Galland,

the Luftwaffe's leading ace,

and personally awarded Galland the Iron Cross.

Early on the morning of June 28, 1940,

Baur flew Hitler

on his most historic flight of the entire western campaign.

From his Wolfschlucht HQ on the southern Belgian border

to Le Bourget airport in Paris.

There Hitler was met by a convoy of Mercedes

and taken on an unscheduled early morning tour of Paris.

The entire tour went off without mishap,

and Baur thought the atmosphere was surprisingly relaxed,

even at Le Bourget airport.

Man: "Our flight was delayed because of a flat tire,

"but Hitler chatted with a number

"of the French ground crew at the airport.

They laughed a lot."

Powell: Remarkably, the French mechanics

were allowed to repair the aircraft,

although it was just a burst tire.

Normally, they would not have been allowed

anywhere near Hitler's aircraft,

which was constantly guarded by SS troops.

It all seemed to be going too well for Hitler,

but by the autumn of 1940,

his plans to invade Britain had stalled.

British airpower had defeated the Luftwaffe,

and Hitler had to shelve his ideas of invasion.

The British were proving to be a tough enemy

and Baur discovered that they could pose a threat to Hitler

in the most unexpected way.

In Norway, several German aircraft

had mysteriously crashed.

When Nazi air experts investigated,

they found that in most cases,

the tail sections had been blown away.

All aircraft were grounded and searched.

In one, a section of rubber hose

was found containing explosives.

It was linked to a flashlight battery

and a detonator set to trigger the bomb at a specific altitude.

Resistance agents,

supplied with these devices by the British,

were smuggling them into numerous aircraft.

Baur ordered a thorough search of all Hitler's fleet

and security was increased.

But it was not these British bombs

that Hitler would have to fear most when he next flew

into a war zone.

It would be bombs planted by his own generals.

The war was about to enter a new phase

that would make Baur's job even more dangerous

than it already was.

It was "Operation Barbarossa,"

his invasion of the Soviet Union on June 21,1941,

that decisively turned the war

against Hitler.

Despite conquering vast tracts of land

and getting within 19 miles of central Moscow,

the onset of severe winter weather

and stubborn Soviet resistance

prevented the Germans from finishing the job.

Hitler needed to visit his generals

during this fast-moving campaign,

but it involved flying huge distances.

He was now frighteningly vulnerable

to sudden changes of weather

or sabotage directed at his aircraft.

At first, it was problems of

the extreme cold that threatened his flights.

Hans Baur, Hitler's chief pilot,

struggled to get his aircraft into the air.

Inside, passengers found the conditions

equally appalling.

Generals nearly froze as he flew them to meet Hitler.

During the summer of 1942,

the German armies launched

a massive new assault in the southern sector of the front

designed to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus.

The left flank of this was to be secured

by capturing the city of Stalingrad on the Volga.

And by the end of August, the men

of General Friedrich Paulus's Sixth Army

were close to the city.

But ten weeks later,

the Red Army was still resisting heroically

in savage hand-to-hand fighting.

And on November 19th,

the Soviets launched an unexpected counterattack

which swiftly surrounded Paulus's forces.

Attempts to relieve them failed,

and by January 1943,

just over 100,000 German soldiers

were still sheltering in the ruins of the Russian city.

Nearly 200,000 men had already perished in the bitter fighting.

The Red Army offered Paulus the opportunity to surrender,

but he refused.

Paulus had wanted to fight his way out while he still could.

But Hitler told him to stand and fight to the last man.

On January 31, 1943,

Paulus surrendered the broken remnants of his army.

Deeply embittered,

he allowed the Soviets to use him for propaganda purposes.

He broadcast urging his fellow officers

to rebel against Hitler and kill him,

thoughts that had already occurred

to many German officers.

The atmosphere at Hitler's Eastern Front HQ,

the Wolf's Lair at Rastenburg, became even gloomier.

Baur overheard the arguments Hitler had with his generals.

Man: "From this time on,

"Hitler stopped eating with his generals.

"He didn't trust them,

"and he didn't want them turning his conversation against him.

He ate alone in his bunker."

Powell: But still Hitler's personal luck held out.

On February 17, 1943,

he flew for a conference with

Field Marshal Erich von Manstein at Zaporizhzhya,

close to where the Russians were advancing

after their victory at Stalingrad.

The meeting took place a few miles from the airstrip

and while waiting there with the Condor,

Baur received the grim news that Soviet tanks

were approaching rapidly.

Aircraft were scrambled to attack them,

but were unable to do so because of low cloud.

So Baur radioed Hitler

asking permission to move to another field.

Only to be told to stay put

because the Fuhrer's party was already coming back.

It was a desperate race against the Soviet tanks,

but the jeeps reached the aircraft just in time.

With Hitler safely on board,

Baur gunned the engines for takeoff

and the Condor roared into the sky

with the Soviet tank-men still unaware of the prize

which had been within their grasp.

It was Hitler's closest escape from being shot down or captured

during his flights on the Eastern Front,

and extraordinarily,

it later turned out to have been a double escape.

For the conference with Manstein

was originally scheduled to be held

near Poltava

and there a group of generals led by Hubert Lanz

and Hans Speidel were plotting to arrest Hitler

and kill him if he resisted.

Lanz commanded a battle group

which included elements of Hitler's SS bodyguard regiment,

the Leibstandarte.

But he had become convinced that Hitler

was a criminal and did not deserve the protection

of such loyal troops who had bled themselves white

fighting the Russians.

When Hitler suddenly changed his plans

for the conference at the last moment,

the plot was abandoned.

Once again, his unpredictability had saved him,

on this trip, from not one but two

separate and potentially fatal threats to his life.

Shortly after these narrow escapes,

Hitler decided that he must visit

Army Group Centre's headquarters at Smolensk

for a conference.

The news delighted a particular group of officers.

For another group of plotters had been gathering

around Major General Henning von Tresckow,

the senior operations officer at Army Group Center,

and his friend and aide-de-camp, Fabian von Schlabrendorff.

On March 7, 1943,

they met for what was ostensibly an intelligence briefing

with Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr,

the military intelligence department.

In reality, it was to discuss the final details

of how Hitler would be killed.

Canaris was a firm anti-Nazi

who had long been sympathetic to plots against Hitler.

He was accompanied by his deputy, Hans Oster,

who had been directly involved in the Generals' Plot

to remove Hitler from power in 1938

during the Sudetenland Crisis.

The plotters discuss

two different ways of killing Hitler.

One was a direct approach.

A group of officers volunteered

to shoot him while he was at lunch.

But when news of this reached Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge,

the commander of Army Group Center

who was also sympathetic to the plotters,

he refused to support them.

Amazingly,

it wasn't that Kluge objected to the removal of Hitler,

he just didn't think it was right

to shoot a man while he was eating.

The plotters now fell back on their second approach --

smuggling a bomb on board Hitler's aircraft.

Von Tresckow had given

38-year-old Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff,

an army intelligence officer,

the task of obtaining suitable explosives.

Pretending to be researching anti-partisan weapons,

he experimented with

a British-made plastic explosive.

Just a pound of it

blew the turret off a Russian tank.

To detonate the explosive,

Gersdorff then selected an acid-activated spring fuse,

also British made.

He then made two bombs,

which he disguised as bottles of cognac.

Now everything was ready,

and the officers waited for their quarry to arrive.

They were on tenterhooks

that Hitler might foil them

with one of his sudden changes of plan.

But he did not,

and a signal confirmed his visit to Smolensk.

At last, it seemed as if the long nightmare

on the Eastern Front

might soon be ended.

All that was necessary was to find a way

of getting the bomb onto Hitler's aircraft.

On March 13, 1943,

as German troops fought desperately

to halt the Soviet advance after the debacle at Stalingrad,

Hitler's Focke-Wulf Condor piloted by Hans Baur

landed at Army Group Centre's headquarters at Smolensk.

Waiting for their Fuhrer was the chief of operations,

Major General Henning von Tresckow

and a group of officers.

They were men on a mission.

They were going to kill their Führer.

Von Tresckow's aide-de-camp, Fabian von Schlabrendorff,

was carrying a parcel containing two bombs

disguised as bottles of cognac.

After the meeting, he asked Colonel Heinz Brandt,

one of Hitler's staff,

to take this back to Rastenburg as a gift for a friend there.

Brandt was happy to do so.

Unwittingly, he was enabling von Schlabrendorff

to avoid both any searches of the plane

and the preliminary test flight

which Baur always made.

When Hitler climbed on board,

accompanied by Brandt and the brandy bottle bomb,

the fuse had just 30 minutes to go.

The aircraft disappeared into the clouds.

Tresckow and Schlabrendorff could do nothing but wait.

To their horror, they heard nothing.

And then after two hours came the news

that the aircraft had landed safely at Rastenburg.

The plotters were devastated.

Von Tresckow quickly phoned Brandt

to tell him to hold on to the brandy bottles,

explaining that he had been given the wrong package.

The next day, Schlabrendorff flew to Rastenburg

to retrieve the failed bomb.

Many years later,

Baur learned about the plot.

Man: "An investigation later revealed

"that the acid had eaten at the fuse

"but the detonator bolt had failed to ignite a spark

"and set off the explosive.

What incredible luck."

Powell: What saved Hitler was that the intense cold

in the unheated luggage compartment

had prevented the plastic explosive from working.

The conspirators did not abandon

their plan to assassinate Hitler.

They still had the two bombs and wanted to use them.

Colonel von Gersdorff volunteered for the mission.

Having lost his wife a year earlier,

he would, if necessary,

act as a suicide bomber to kill Hitler.

Just two weeks later, von Gersdorff joined Hitler

at a display of military equipment.

In the pockets of his greatcoat he had the two bombs,

and as Hitler arrived, he started the fuse,

ready to blow himself up alongside the Führer.

But Hitler suddenly decided

to cut short his visit and left the display

before von Gersdorff could catch up with him.

Von Gersdorff ran to the nearest lavatory

and removed the fuse just in time.

Once again,

Hitler's instinct to be unpredictable

had saved him.

Von Tresckow and his colleagues had failed to kill Hitler.

It would be another year

before another attempt was made to do so,

and this time it would come very close to succeeding.

Hitler now withdrew to spend much of his time

at Rastenburg, while the situation

on the Eastern Front grew ever more disastrous.

In July and August 1943,

a massive German counteroffensive at Kursk

was bloodily repulsed.

Following its victory

in the greatest tank battle the world has ever seen,

the Red Army began the first

of a series of massive offensives.

By December 1944, Soviet forces

had advanced so far westwards

that they threatened Hitler in his HQ.

Hans Baur had to fly him out of Rastenburg to Berlin.

Unlike Hitler's generals,

Baur remained faithful to his Führer.

He stayed on with him in his bunker

deep beneath the Reich Chancellery

even as the Red Army was fighting its way into the city

and many others were fleeing.

Baur was at Hitler's final birthday party

on April 20, 1945.

It was a gloomy affair held in the stale atmosphere

of the bunker while fighting raged overhead.

Three days later,

Baur drove out to inspect the airport

at Gatow, where Hitler's last Condor aircraft was based.

One had been destroyed by Soviet artillery,

and the airfield was about to be overrun by the Red Army.

This was the time to fly out of Berlin,

but Baur declined,

even when Hitler told him to go.

That same day, Hitler received a telegram

from one of his oldest comrades,

Hermann Göring, the commander of the Luftwaffe.

In it, Göring suggested

that since Hitler was cut off in Berlin,

he should take over command of the Third Reich.

Furiously,

Hitler ordered Göring to be stripped of his rank and shot.

He appointed

General Ritter von Greim to be the new chief of the Luftwaffe.

Faced with such betrayal

by his closest friend,

Baur insisted it was not too late for Hitler

to fly out of Berlin.

He was overseeing the construction

of a temporary airstrip

on the section of the main east-west axis

leading west from the Brandenburg Gate.

It was a wide section of the road that formerly was used

for military parades.

It could just about take

a Fieseler Storch light aircraft,

the last plane available to Hitler in Berlin.

Holed up beneath the ruined Reich Chancellery,

Hitler refused to leave Berlin.

But the practicality of a last minute escape

was proved by a dramatic landing

by another of Hitler's favorite pilots.

As new head of the Luftwaffe,

von Greim was keen to see Hitler in his bunker

and receive his final instructions.

He was flown in by Hanna Reitsch,

one of the most remarkable pilots of the Third Reich.

The 33-year-old Reitsch

was the leading female pilot of her time in Germany.

The only woman to win

the Iron Cross during World War II,

she test-flew many of Hitler's more extraordinary aircraft,

including one of the world's first helicopters in 1938.

From Rechlin on April 26th,

Reitsch and von Greim had planned to fly

a more advanced helicopter

to the garden of the Reich Chancellery.

But their helicopter was damaged,

so they requisitioned a two-seat training version

of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190.

Accompanied by fighters,

they flew through Russian flak to Gatow airfield near Berlin.

There they swapped to a Fieseler Storch...

and then headed over the Soviet lines

at treetop level towards the Reich Chancellery.

Greim was injured

as an anti-aircraft shell smashed through the fuselage,

but amazingly, Reitsch managed to land the tiny aircraft

just in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

They were Hitler's last visitors.

Two days later,

Reitsch flew Greim out of Berlin in the Storch,

taking off along the same strip of shell-cratered road.

It was a daring piece of flying.

Baur was impressed, but neither he nor Hitler followed them.

Baur was with Hitler until the very end.

At one point, the Fuhrer ordered his pilot

to take care of cremating his body.

Man: "On his way out of the room,

"Hitler grabbed me with both hands.

"He said 'Baur, my gravestone must read

'He was the victim of his generals!"

Powell: ironically, he was unaware of just how often

his generals really had tried to kill him

and how lucky he'd been to survive their plots

and assassination attempts.

On April 30th, Hitler shot himself.

The body of the man who Baur had devoted

most of his career to protecting in the air

was burned in the courtyard of his ruined Reich Chancellery.

With Hitler gone,

Baur looked to his own survival.

That night, he set off to escape with Martin Bormann,

Hitler's private secretary.

Amid the shelling they managed to get through

the Russian lines, but then Baur lost Bormann.

His complete body would never be found.

Baur carried on until he was caught in enemy fire.

Badly wounded, he was captured

and admitted his close relationship to Hitler.

It was the beginning of 10 years

as a prisoner of the Soviet Union.

Baur served Hitler

for 13 years as his chief pilot.

He had acted as his principal aerial bodyguard,

protecting him from injury

through his sheer skill in the air.

But flying was not the only way

that Hitler covered the vast distances

of his conquests.

He also entrusted his life to a special train

known as the Fuhrersonderzug.

Armored and heavily armed,

the Hitler Special was packed with his bodyguards.

It was one of the most powerful vehicles in the Third Reich

and would take Hitler on some of his most dangerous journeys

deep into the war zone.

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