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 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 --

even when Hitler's regime was in its death throes,

and his most fanatical supporters knew the game was up.

January 1945 --

Hitler's last gasp offensive,

the Battle of the Bulge, was over.

As the freezing fog lifted, Allied fighters and bombers

won back their dominance over the skies of Germany.

And US and British ground forces pushed the Germans back.

Hitler left his western headquarters.

He used his armored train for the last time --

he couldn't risk flying to Berlin.

On January 16th,

Hitler arrived back in his bomb-blasted capital.

American and British bombers had been

pounding it relentlessly for more than a year.

Like so many of his subjects,

the Fuhrer had to take cover underground.

The palatial Reich Chancellery in Voss Strasse

was now a shattered ruin -- his last home

and military headquarters

was a bunker in its garden.

For the rest of the war,

Hitler lived a twilight existence,

rarely emerging above ground.

On January 11, 1945,

just as the Western Allies

were counterattacking in the Ardennes,

the Red Army launched a massive winter offensive.

In less than three weeks,

it had smashed through the German defenses,

advanced more than 300 miles,

and reached the river Oder,

less than 50 miles from Berlin.

Hitler's bunker became his final sanctuary --

surrounded by his trusted bodyguards

and those most loyal to him.

But if he thought he was safe from all assassination attempts,

he was wrong.

Even here, buried beneath the ground,

encased in concrete and steel,

he was still a target for those who blamed him

for the destruction of Germany.

Planning Hitler's Fuhrerbunker

began back in 1943,

as Allied air raids started to batter Germany.

At first, attacks on Berlin were sporadic.

But from November 1943 to March 1944,

RAF Bomber Command mounted 16 major night attacks on the city.

And on March 6th, protected by its new long-range fighter,

the P-51 Mustang,

the U.S. Eighth Army Air Force joined in by day.

They took a particular delight in bombing Hitler's capital

on his birthday -- the 20th of April.

The Fuhrer was now in the direct line of Allied fire.

The Reich Chancellery already had an air raid shelter.

In early 1936, a new banqueting hall

had been completed in the garden

of the old Reich Chancellery building.

Beneath this was a reinforced cellar.

The construction manager was Albert Speer,

a young Berlin architect who soon became

one of Hitler's favorites and a close confidante.

By early 1944,

Speer was Reichsminister of Armaments.

He now received instructions

to extend the existing bunker with a new "Fuhrerbunker"

in the garden behind the banqueting hall.

Digging started in April 1944

and a pit 30-feet deep was excavated.

The main entrance to the new bunker

would be through what now became known as the front bunker.

There was an emergency exit into the garden,

and a ventilation tower with a conical roof.

Hitler was very specific about his requirements --

the concrete ceiling of the bunker

was to be 10-foot thick,

and the walls over 12-foot thick.

To stop bombs from penetrating the concrete

and exploding inside the bunker,

Hitler ordered the use of a steel mesh.

This would lie on top of the concrete roof,

with granite slabs and earth above it.

Bombs should be detonated before they got to the bunker.

Because of the high water table in the area,

the bunker had to be built with a concrete drainage pan beneath,

and pumps to extract any water.

Hitler feared that a bomb might crack the concrete walls,

and water would gush into the bunker to drown him.

A staircase linked the front bunker to the new Fuhrerbunker.

The steel doors were sealed against gas attack.

A small room like an airlock

then led into a passage

running through the middle of the bunker,

divided to form two waiting and sitting areas.

On one side of the passage

were the private rooms used by Goebbels --

Hitler's chief of propaganda

and one of his most ardent supporters,

various guard rooms,

the switchboard room,

and the generator room,

with a diesel engine to provide electricity

to power lighting, heating, and water pumps,

and an air-conditioning unit.

On the other side of the central passage were washrooms,

which included a place for Blondi, Hitler's dog.

And then a bedroom and bathroom

for Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun.

Next came a little refreshment room,

and then a conference room,

where Hitler constantly pored over maps

and searched for units he could throw into the front line.

Beyond these were Hitler's study and bedroom.

Over his desk hung a portrait of his hero,

the Prussian King Frederick II.

He hoped that his spirit would imbue him with

the good fortune to turn the war around, even at the last moment.

At the end of the passage was another airlock

with steps up to the emergency exit.

Work was still being carried out on the new bunker

when Hitler moved in, in early 1945.

It was not really intended

as a place to live for any length of time.

Damp was a persistent problem.

Black mold covered the interior walls,

and water leaked into several rooms.

When filled with staff and bodyguards,

the atmosphere inside the bunker was fetid.

The sewers failed

and toilets were often blocked.

It smelled terrible,

and most people took to smoking in the bunker,

despite Hitler's dislike of cigarettes.

This was how Hitler,

the brutal warlord who wielded the power of life and death

in a way not seen since the Roman Emperors,

was now living.

It would please his enemies to know that.

But even though the war was nearly at its end,

there were some who were so furious

at the ruin Hitler had brought to their country

that they could never forgive him.

They wanted to see him punished.

Even in his bunker,

Hitler was to be a target,

and the threat would come from one of his oldest friends.

In 1941, at the height of his power,

Hitler had said, "If one day,

"the German nation is no longer sufficiently strong

"or sufficiently ready for sacrifice

"to stake its blood on its existence,

then let it perish and be annihilated."

By early 1945, as his enemies pressed in from all sides,

Hitler finally recognized that that day had come.

And on March 19th, 1945,

he issued what became known as his "Nero Order" --

nothing of value in Germany

should fall into the hands of the conquering Allies.

It was an order for Scorched Earth,

and it provoked one of his closest colleagues

to act against him.

The 40-year-old Albert Speer had trained as an architect.

He joined the Nazi party in 1931.

He displayed his creativity

by designing dazzling special effects

for Hitler's massive Nuremberg party rallies.

Cathedrals of light were created by hundreds of searchlights.

Hitler was impressed.

He was a frustrated architect

and found in Speer a friend who could share his ambition

for constructing colossal buildings

throughout the Third Reich --

transforming Berlin into a new imperial capital

to surpass ancient Rome.

Speer was one of the few close colleagues

Hitler took with him on his daring early morning tour

around Nazi-occupied Paris in 1940.

In 1942, following the mysterious death

of Armaments Minister Fritz Todt in a mid-air explosion,

Speer took over his job.

He proved an administrative genius,

and played a crucial role

in adapting Germany's weapon production

to the demands of total war.

Despite the rising tide of the British and U.S. bombardment

of German factories,

Speer almost trebled weapon production by 1944.

But despite his skill

in keeping the German war effort going,

by mid-1944 Speer was under no illusions

that the war was lost.

The horrific reality of Hitler's decision

to fight a war on two fronts was coming home to roost.

As they fell back,

the Germans adopted a scorched earth policy --

the industrial and transport infrastructure

of occupied Europe were to be annihilated.

Many leading Nazis supported the idea of

a Wagnerian Crescendo of destruction,

but Speer increasingly argued against it,

and attempted to get round it --

not least because he was looking forward

to the time when Germany must be rebuilt after defeat.

Even before Hitler's Nero order

that Germany too must be devastated,

Speer had profound doubts about the sanity of the Fuhrer.

In February 1945,

while sheltering from an Allied air raid,

he made a startling revelation to one of his subordinates --

Dietrich Stahl, head of the Main Committee

for Munitions.

Stahl recalled the conversation while under Allied interrogation

in Nuremberg before Speer was put on trial.

He reported that Speer said that he could not stand it

any longer.

That he could not go on living with a government of lunatics.

Germany would be totally annihilated

if nothing decisive were done

to stop the insane plans for destruction,

and that he had decided to act, "if necessary, by force."

Stahl claimed that Speer was planning to introduce Tabun gas

into a ventilation shaft of the Fuhrerbunker

which came up in the garden at ground level,

and was only covered by a wire grating.

Tabun was a nerve gas

which, as this film of an experiment shows,

swiftly destroys the entire nervous system

when inhaled.

The German Army had put it into mass production in 1942,

and by 1945 had many thousands of shells and bombs

loaded with the gas.

Speer asked Stahl to investigate how Tabun worked,

and how it could best be

introduced into the ventilation system.

A few days later, Stahl reported that

Tabun did not form a vapor naturally,

it only dispersed into fine particles

when it was exploded in a shell or bomb.

He offered to look for another more suitable gas,

but in the meantime Speer ran into another snag --

when he inspected the ventilation shaft

in the Chancellery garden,

he discovered that it had been raised from ground level

to two stories high.

He could no longer deliver the poison gas by hand.

In his memoirs Speer admitted that this flaw to his plan

had got him off the hook

of actually carrying out the assassination.

Man: "That was an end of it. It was a great relief to me.

"It was an impulse of despair,

"but I never really wanted to do it.

I couldn't have."

Powell: If Speer really had planned to kill Hitler,

then once again, it had been chance

which had saved the Führer.

But according to Stahl,

the failure of the poison gas plot

was not the end of Speer's attempts

to attack his former colleagues.

A few weeks later, he came up with a plan

to ambush and shoot SS chief Heinrich Himmler,

propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels,

and Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary --

while they were being driven out of Berlin

to avoid Allied air raids.

Stahl claimed that Speer had recruited

several Luftwaffe officers to help him shoot up

the Nazi convoy using machine guns,

flares, and grenades,

so that it looked as if they had died in an air raid.

It would be a suitably gangster end

to a gangster regime.

But events were now moving too quickly for Speer to put

any such plan into action --

although he did continue to see Hitler

until just a week before the end,

making a special trip to say goodbye.

An interview after his release in 1966

showed that he remained concerned

about his relationship with the man

who had raised him to such power --

Speer: It was more an act of pity than anything else,

I was first going away without saying goodbye to him,

but then I thought that this was not only cowardice but it was,

it was, um...

it was mean.

Powell: This lack of conviction has led many people to doubt

whether either of Speer's plots were genuine.

Speer's plans were revealed during the Nuremberg trials

while he was fighting for his life --

and trying to establish his credentials

as the only top Nazi who showed any sign of remorse.

Stahl was ready to corroborate his boss' claims,

but for many people they seemed just too convenient.

But at least they managed to save from hanging

the man who once said,

"If Hitler had been capable of having a friend,

I would have been that friend."

On March 11, 1945, Hitler made his last visit

to the front -- inspecting troops

on the bank of the river Oder,

who must resist the inevitable Soviet onslaught.

Never again would his Bodyguard be called on

to escort their Fuhrer into a danger zone.

On the other bank, the Red Army,

which now outnumbered the German defenders ten to one,

was moving into position.

And just over a week later, on the 20th,

the tired and ill-looking Fuhrer emerged from his bunker

to view a small delegation

of Hitler Youth soldiers.

Despite the desperate situation,

their confidence was undiminished --

as one of them, Wilhelm Huebner, later explained.

Interpreter: No, not at all,

we boys still fought,

and we'd heard rumors that the Fuhrer

somehow had a secret weapon in reserve.

Powell: This was the last occasion Hitler was ever filmed,

and even as the pathetic little ceremony was taking place,

some of the pick of his Bodyguard,

the six-foot-tall Nordic supermen

of the SS-Leibstandarte,

were fighting and dying for him on another forlorn mission.

Sepp Dietrich and his Sixth SS Panzer Army,

which included the remnants

of the Leibstandarte combat division

which he had founded and led early in the war,

had spearheaded Hitler's desperate final gamble

in the west -- the offensive in the Ardennes.

After that campaign failed,

Dietrich and his Sixth Army were transferred to Hungary.

The Red Army was poised to capture the vital oil fields

south of Lake Balaton,

and Dietrich was told to push it back.

It was an impossible task.

Operation Spring Awakening began

in hideously muddy conditions on March 6th.

Totally outnumbered and short of fuel,

the SS troops ground to a halt,

and the Soviets were soon counterattacking.

By the 22nd, the 6th SS Panzer Army was falling back.

Hitler was furious.

He ordered that all their SS armbands bearing his name

be torn from their sleeves.

The Leibstandarte reacted

by sending their medals back in a chamber pot.

They included a severed arm wearing an SS armband.

Dietrich ordered his men not to remove their armbands.

He wrote an angry letter to Hitler,

and offered to shoot himself.

But no reply came back from Berlin.

Now the blows were coming thick and fast.

The Soviet assault on the Nazi capital began on April 14th,

heralded by a massive barrage

delivered by artillery, rockets, and aircraft.

Ironically, it was only now,

with his mortal enemy's capital within his grasp

that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin

could be absolutely sure where Hitler was.

He had twice considered killing Hitler,

but both times backed off.

The first was in 1938,

when the Nazi annexation of Austria

had shown that the Fuhrer was on the warpath,

and that the Soviet Union must eventually become his target.

Alexander Foote,

a British-born agent of Soviet military intelligence,

the GRU, was instructed to investigate

the possibility of killing Hitler.

He traveled to Munich

and homed in on Hitler's favorite restaurant,

the Osteria Bavaria.

Foote's investigation revealed

startling lapses by Hitler's bodyguard --

The RSD, who were responsible for

screening anyone who had access to it,

did not seem to be doing anything.

When Hitler was actually eating there,

none of the Begleitkommando appeared to be present.

Foote reported back to Moscow

that it would be easy to plant a bomb

and eliminate the German dictator.

But surprisingly he was told to take no further action.

Partly, this was because the Great Purge,

which Stalin had unleashed in 1936

against his political rivals,

was now convulsing his armed forces.

The Soviet Union was in chaos and militarily exposed.

To provoke a war with Germany by killing Hitler

seemed inadvisable.

The following year, Hitler and Stalin made a pact --

the Soviet Union received half of Poland

in return for not intervening

while Hitler's forces occupied much of western Europe.

After Hitler tore up the pact and invaded the Soviet Union,

the Soviet secret services faced the same problem as the British.

If Hitler were to be assassinated,

it was essential to know where he was --

and the erratic movements of the Fuhrer,

and the increasing size of his bodyguard,

made it difficult to plan an attack.

KGB sleepers living in Berlin

did investigate the possibility of infiltrating

an assassin into the Fuhrer's private circle --

but it proved difficult to find a suitable person.

Then, in 1943, after the twin disasters

of Stalingrad and Kursk,

Stalin came to the same conclusion

as the Western Allies --

that Hitler's strategic blundering

made him worth more alive than dead.

The agents in Berlin were told to abandon their project,

and the Fuhrer was safe

from direct attack by his greatest enemy.

Hitler's birthday was on April 20th -- he was 56.

To celebrate,

the top Nazi Chieftains braved the Soviet bombardment

to get to the bunker --

Goebbels, Himmler, Göring and Bormann were there.

So was Speer -- despite his recent plans to kill them.

Several of Hitler's loyal generals were also there --

Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, and Hans Krebs.

They were a dwindling bunch.

Hitler was urged to leave Berlin

and start a fight back elsewhere in Germany.

In the mountains around the Berghof in Bavaria,

a Nazi stronghold could keep the Allies at bay for months

until a peace was negotiated -- on the Fuhrer's terms.

It was a far-fetched idea,

but at least escape would be possible.

Hans Baur, Hitler's pilot, was ready to use

a Fieseler Storch liaison aircraft

to fly out the Fuhrer and his top aides.

But Hitler said no.

He would stay in Berlin until the bitter end.

As his birthday guests left their Fuhrer behind

in the fetid atmosphere of the bunker,

they began to think of their own survival.

Even Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, was not all he seemed.

On the face of it, he had been fanatically loyal to Hitler

throughout his rise to power.

He had turned the SS into a ruthless machine

dedicated to the Fuhrer's personal protection.

But defeat at Stalingrad had shaken even Himmler's faith.

He could see the war was no longer winnable,

and as the second most brutal man in the Third Reich

he knew his fate would not be good.

He had schemed ruthlessly

against men such as Bruno Gesche,

commander of Hitler's closest bodyguards,

the SS-Begleitkommando, to assert his control.

But now, as Soviet shells pounded Berlin,

Himmler had a secret...

for months, "Loyal Heinrich," as Hitler called him,

had been plotting to betray his Führer.

The Reichsfuhrer SS,

supreme head of Hitler's Bodyguard, was no fool.

He knew that if Germany lost the war,

his key role in the whole dreadful machinery

of the Final Solution,

the extermination of Europe's Jews,

would make him a marked man.

As early as August 1943,

Himmler had started putting out feelers

to the opposition to Hitler.

His contact was Johannes Popitz,

the former Prussian minister of finance,

who suggested that perhaps

Himmler could save Germany from ruin

by taking over the government

and doing a deal with the Allies.

Himmler agreed that an intermediary in Switzerland

should be contacted by radio

to see if discussions could be opened with the Western Allies.

But unfortunately,

Himmler's own Gestapo intercepted these messages,

and Popitz was arrested.

The Reichsfuhrer SS backed off.

In the wake of the July 1944 bomb plot,

Himmler was in the forefront

of eliminating the remnants of the military opposition.

But even while doing this,

Himmler sent a telegram

to British war leader Winston Churchill.

Churchill destroyed the telegram

and never revealed what it said,

but it seems clear that Himmler prized saving himself

above loyalty to Hitler.

But, by the end of 1944,

Soviet forces were overrunning the death camps.

The full horror of the slaughter carried out by the SS

was becoming apparent,

and Himmler knew that he would soon be held responsible.

As the days counted down

towards his judgment for these appalling crimes,

one of his elite servants offered him a way out.

Possibly the head of the SS

could become the man who made peace with the Allies.

During January 1945, Walter Schellenberg,

head of Himmler's counter-intelligence section,

arranged several meetings between Heinrich Himmler

and Jean-Marie Musy, a former President of Switzerland.

A deal was thrashed out that Himmler would stop killing Jews

and allow some to be evacuated to Switzerland.

In return, a propaganda campaign would start

to improve Himmler's image to the rest of the world.

Word of this got to Hitler, and he canceled.

He was furious that the man

tasked with protecting the Third Reich

was now protecting himself.

But Schellenberg kept talking to Musy,

and Himmler ordered an end to the evacuation

of all concentration camps ahead of the Allies.

Schellenberg later claimed that this information

was passed on to the Western Allies' supreme commander,

General Dwight Eisenhower.

In the meantime, in February 1945,

another avenue opened with the arrival of

Count Folke Bernadotte,

the vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross.

Initially, he wanted just the release

of Scandinavian prisoners of war.

But Schellenberg saw him as a perfect mediator

for starting peace negotiations with the Allies.

With the news in March 1945

that Hitler intended to destroy

everything in Germany rather than surrender --

and that that included the annihilation of

any Jews remaining in concentration camps --

negotiations became more urgent.

And on the day of Hitler's birthday, April 20th,

the man whom Himmler had sworn to protect,

and the man for whom he carried out the Final Solution,

"loyal Heinrich" made arrangements

to meet Norbert Masur, head of the Swedish section

of the World Jewish Congress.

Inside the bunker, Himmler shook Hitler's hand

and wished him a happy birthday.

The next day, at the house of his masseur,

Himmler sat down to talk with Masur --

the first Jew he had spoken to on equal terms

since the Nazis came to power.

Schellenberg was there and witnessed their conversation.

Man: "Himmler said he had tried to solve the Jewish problem

"by expelling them from Germany.

"But the rest of the world had refused to accept them.

Then he faced opposition within the Nazi party."

Powell: This was complete nonsense --

coming from the man who had dedicated his life

to tightening his control over the Nazi party.

Man: "Masur listened to Himmler's points,

"but did not discuss them.

"His main purpose was to get the following reassurances --

"that no more Jews would be killed,

that surviving Jews should not be evacuated from the camps."

Powell: Himmler said he had already given such orders.

Himmler next had a meeting at the Swedish consulate

in Lubeck, with Count Bernadotte.

He told the Swede that all the women and children

in Ravensbruck concentration camp

would be released and sent to Sweden.

When Bernadotte left his meeting with Himmler,

Schellenberg traveled with him part of the way.

He said Himmler hoped he could

fix a meeting with Eisenhower to discuss some kind of peace deal.

But Bernadotte told the Nazi it was too late for that.

The head of the SS should look to his own survival.

Himmler became increasingly desperate,

and begged Bernadotte to pass a letter on to

General Eisenhower with an offer to surrender

to the Western Allies.

Bernadotte agreed to forward it to the Allies.

On April 26th, Schellenberg received news

that the Allies would not deal with Himmler.

He delayed telling him.

The next day, Allied newspapers published

accounts of Himmler's failed peace negotiations.

Inside the Fuhrerbunker, on April 28th,

a BBC radio report was picked up.

Man: "It has been reported by Reuters

"that unconditional surrender

"was offered by Himmler

"to Britain and the United States only,

"further that Britain and the United States

"have replied saying that they will not accept

"unconditional surrender, except on behalf of all the Allies,

including Russia."

Powell: Hitler raged at Himmler.

The man he had trusted completely with his life,

the man who headed all his SS bodyguard organizations,

had stabbed him in the back.

It was unforgivable.

Hitler ordered him to be stripped of his power

and office.

He was to be arrested immediately.

But in his bunker,

Hitler was virtually cut off from the outside world,

and Himmler did not get news of this order.

But one man who did pay the ultimate price

for the SS chiefs treachery

was Hitler's SS adjutant,

Hermann Fegelein,

the husband of Eva Braun's sister Gretl.

It was discovered that Fegelein had slipped out of the bunker.

But he was soon tracked down,

hiding in a nearby apartment and dressed civilian clothes.

When Hitler heard of Himmler's treachery,

Fegelein was presumed to be part of the plot,

and stripped of his rank and honors.

He was then interrogated by

the fearsome commander of the Gestapo, Heinrich Muller --

one of the few henchmen left in the bunker

that Hitler could rely on.

After questioning by Muller,

Fegelein admitted to knowing about

Himmler's secret negotiations with Bernadotte.

He was given a summary court-martial,

and then executed by an SS firing squad

in the Reich Chancellery garden.

His boss had joined the ranks

of the Nazi damned.

Just like Hermann Göring -- once head of Hitler's Bodyguard

back in the early days of the party.

The Luftwaffe chief was now accused of

betraying Hitler by suggesting he take over control

of the Third Reich.

All the big beasts in the Nazi party

had now let their Fuhrer down.

As Soviet soldiers ran through the streets of Berlin,

only the most die-hard of Hitler's Bodyguard

stayed with him in the bunker.

On April 25, 1945,

the Red Army completed

the encirclement of central Berlin.

Over two million civilians were now trapped.

Much of the defense of Hitler's capital

was now in the hands of hastily-trained old men,

young boys, and even housewives.

But immediately around the Reich Chancellery,

the remnants of the Bodyguard

were still defending their Führer.

Hitler's personal adjutant, Otto Gunsche,

a former member of the SS-Leibstandarte,

had command of the ceremonial and training battalions

of his former regiment,

and a few members of the army's Fuhrer-Begleit-Regiment

who had been on leave in the city.

Inside the Fuhrerbunker,

only the most dedicated of Hitler's followers remained.

But even amongst them, the atmosphere was fatalistic.

Suicide was openly discussed

as Army major Freytag von Loringhoven

later confirmed.

Von Loringhoven: The atmosphere was very gloomy in the bunker,

and the other people,

they talked about

how to commit suicide,

that was the main topic about their talks --

and whether they should take poison,

poison themselves,

or whether they should shoot with a pistol.

Powell: Only one remained

of the original eight men

of the SS-Begleitkommando

who had been personally selected by Hitler

in 1931 as his close escort --

Erich Kempka, who had served for more than ten years

as his chauffeur.

With him were another veteran member of the Begleitkommando,

Heinz Linge, Hitler's chief personal valet,

Hans Rattenhuber,

head of the Reich Security Service, the RSD,

and Hans Baur, the Fuhrer's chief pilot.

But some of Hitler's oldest comrades were gone --

Emil Maurice,

who had fought alongside Hitler

in the earliest street-fighting days

and had been rash enough to fancy Geli Raubal,

the niece with whom Hitler was infatuated,

had been eased out of the Bodyguard

in the mid-1930s.

He served as a Luftwaffe officer and survived the savage air war.

Arrested by the Allies at the end of the war,

he was sentenced to four years hard labor.

Also missing was Bruno Gesche,

the former head of the Begleitkommando

and one of its first members.

His 12-year feud

with his nominal boss Heinrich Himmler

had finally caught up with him.

In December 1944, Gesche drank too much again,

took out his pistol,

and fired several shots at a colleague.

This time Himmler personally wrote

the letter of condemnation.

Man: "You are known to me as a notorious drunk

"from the year 1938,

"as well as from reports in recent years and months.

"Since I cannot tolerate drunks in the Fuhrerkorps,

"I demote you.

"Only based on your long association

"will I allow you to remain in the SS.

"I will give you the opportunity

"to serve in the Dirlewanger brigade --

"and by proving yourself before the enemy,

"it might be possible that you will be able to wipe out

"the shame you have brought onto yourself and the entire SS.

"I expect you to abstain from alcohol

"for the rest of your life, without any exceptions.

"Should your willpower be already damaged by alcohol

"to the extent that you cannot keep this pledge,

then I expect you to hand in your resignation."

Powell: It was a cruel punishment.

The Dirlewanger brigade was a penal unit

expected to die fighting in the front line.

It was Himmler's final blow against the bodyguard

who had most defied him.

With just weeks left of his power,

this may have given him some grim satisfaction.

Gesche didn't receive the letter until January 1945,

and by then the Third Reich was approaching its death throes.

He probably toasted its arrival with a stiff drink.

He could not be sent to the Dirlewanger brigade

because it was fighting on the Eastern Front.

The risk that he might fall into Soviet hands

and betray vital details of Hitler's

personal security arrangements was too great.

Instead, Gesche fought in the 16th SS Division

in its long and bitter retreat through Italy, Slovenia,

and Hungary.

When the SS formations withdrew into Austria,

Gesche is believed to have surrendered to the Americans

and not the Soviets.

If he had been taken by the Red Army,

his SS insignia would have ensured

instant execution.

It was an irony for Gesche

that his drinking had probably saved his life.

If he had abstained from alcohol as Himmler had instructed him,

he would have ended up in the bunker beside the Führer.

As it was, Hitler's closest bodyguard

now disappears from history --

as did many others with the guilt of

long association with one of the most hated men in history.

After three days of savage fighting in central Berlin,

German resistance was collapsing.

On April 29th, Hitler married

his long-time mistress Eva Braun.

Goebbels and Bormann acted as witnesses.

When Eva came to sign the register,

she began to sign Braun,

then crossed out the "B" to sign as Hitler.

Her new husband was now determined to kill himself

to avoid capture by the Soviets.

That same day, his German shepherd dog Blondi

was used to test the poison

which the Fuhrer and his new wife would take.

Rochus Misch,

one of the bunker's radio operators,

witnessed it.

Interpreter: The dog handler Herr Tornow

brought Blondi to the toilet opposite my room,

and Dr. Stumpfegger came to put her down.

I went over and watched out of morbid curiosity.

Dr. Stumpfegger opened the dog's mouth,

put something inside,

and then pressed the jaws closed --

and then Blondi keeled over.

Powell: The following morning,

Hitler received the news that his fellow dictator

Mussolini had been shot and strung up publicly

in a Milan square alongside

his mistress Clara Petacci.

This humiliation only strengthened

Hitler's determination,

as his secretary Traudl Junge witnessed.

Junge: I asked Hitler

why he didn't fight in the battle

as a commander should in the war,

and he said, "No, it's impossible,

"I'm much too weak to fight,

and I would never risk to get captured alive."

Because he knew what happened to Mussolini,

he saw the pictures,

and he was very, very frightened

to have the same fate if he would be captured.

Powell: At 3:30 p.m., Hitler and Eva Braun

entered his study in the bunker.

Inside the room, Eva Braun took poison.

Hitler pulled out his Walther 7.65mm pistol

and shot himself in the head.

Hitler had finally achieved

what no assassin had been able to do over the past two decades.

Heinz Linge witnessed the final moments.

Linge: I was the last

who said goodbye to him,

and the first to see the bodies.

He and Eva Braun died alone.

Powell: Gunsche and Hitler's doctor,

Ludwig Stumpfegger, then wrapped Hitler's body in a blanket

and carried it up to the Reich Chancellery garden.

Martin Bormann carried Braun.

Hitler's body was tipped into a shallow grave

with Braun's next to him.

Gunsche and Kempka then poured petrol over them.

A lighted rag was then thrown in,

and as the bodies burned,

the last remaining bodyguards

raised their arms in a final Nazi salute.

After attempting last-minute negotiations with the Soviets,

Goebbels gave up and shot himself.

His wife poisoned their six children

and then killed herself.

"Gestapo" Muller had already disappeared

before Hitler's death.

His fate is unknown.

Bormann took his chances in an escape bid with Hans Baur.

He disappeared -- his body was never found.

Baur was wounded and captured by the Russians.

As the Soviet tanks rolled in,

Gunsche, Kempka and Linge also attempted to get away.

Kempka managed to get through enemy lines

and made his way to Berchtesgaden

before giving himself up to the Americans.

Gunsche and Linge were captured by the Russians,

but all survived to live into old age.

Hermann Göring, full of bluster,

strode into American captivity

expecting to be treated with all the respect

due to a senior leader of his country.

He was put on trial

and condemned to death.

He poisoned himself

to avoid the hangman's noose.

Heinrich Himmler fled for his life.

He shaved off his moustache, wore an eye patch,

and tried to pretend he was just an ordinary soldier.

He was arrested by the British at Bremervorde,

just north of Bremen.

While being examined by a doctor at Luneburg,

he bit on a capsule of cyanide hidden inside his mouth.

Thus ended the life of the second most evil man

in the Third Reich -- chief of the SS --

the machine that had contrived

to keep Hitler alive for so long.

Ironically, Hitler's Bodyguard and the organizations

it spawned had succeeded in their duty to keep him alive.

At the end, their master was left to make the choice --

should he kill himself,

since no one else had succeeded in doing it,

or should he face the wrath of the world he had devastated.

Hitler chose suicide.

Cyanide and a bullet succeeded

where more than forty attempts on his life had failed.

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