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Documentary, The Living Dead Part 1: by Adam Curtis- On the Desperate Edge of Now
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00:00These are the German forests
00:28in which the last desperate battles of the Second World War were fought.
00:36Here, among the chaos and darkness, the Allies obliterated Nazism.
00:42Out of the senseless fragments of violent human experience,
00:45they forged a coherent memory of the war.
00:48It is the memory of the Good War, which we have lived with for 50 years.
00:58But in the process, the victors buried those fragments that didn't fit.
01:03They were suppressed even in the minds of thousands of men
01:06who fought among these trees.
01:07The dream started with walking down a canal bank
01:23between trees, among trees.
01:27And suddenly I'm lying on my face
01:29and bullets are flying around me and mortar shells are falling.
01:32And someone is dying and shouting on his mother, for his mother.
01:38And I woke up and I wrote it out.
01:41And as I wrote it, the details started coming back to me
01:44and I realised this was no dream.
01:46I was just reconstructing the actual episode
01:49that happened, as it was.
01:52And that was the beginning of memory coming back.
01:55Out of the carnage in Europe 50 years ago,
01:59the Allies selected certain memories.
02:02They used them to build the official version of the Good War.
02:07This film is about how that happened.
02:10It tells why certain memories had to be buried and forgotten
02:13because they contradicted the optimism of the big historical picture.
02:19The fault of the big picture is that it omits evil.
02:22It's all good.
02:24We won the war.
02:25Therefore, we must have deserved to win it.
02:27Therefore, we are wonderful people without fault.
02:30And so on.
02:31Right there, you can read the history of modern Europe
02:33and the Allies' continued relation with it.
02:36A lot of the Cold War is based upon that.
02:38American behaviour in Vietnam,
02:40which assumes that anybody who's opposed to communism
02:43must be wonderful, you see?
02:45And who's astonished when the people opposing communism
02:48prove to be as wicked as the communists.
02:50I'm thinking of Lieutenant Callie and people like that.
02:53Yes, it has a lot to do with post-war assumptions
02:57and post-war national behaviours, I would say,
03:00that great big picture,
03:01which so conveniently omits individual evil.
03:05So schön, schön war die Zeit.
03:23So schön, schön war die Zeit.
03:27The story begins six years before the war,
03:37when the Nazis came to power in Germany.
03:40They promised to end the chaos the country had suffered since 1918.
03:45Hitler's right-hand man was Hermann Göring.
03:47Like many of the Nazis,
03:49Göring was convinced that a new Germany would arise
03:51only if it reawakened the glories of the past.
03:55In the forest north of Berlin,
03:57Göring began building a vast palace.
04:00Today, this is all that is left of Karin Hall.
04:03It was a house of Göring, Karin Hall.
04:08Here stood a large house, a castle.
04:13It's a shame that the table was brought here.
04:16It was not seeable.
04:17And now, it's a ruin.
04:20And there was also a ruin.
04:22Göring designed Karin Hall
04:24to evoke the power and splendour
04:25of Germany's distant past.
04:27The marble halls were lined with tapestries
04:30that displayed the images and symbols
04:32of the Teutonic Knights of old.
04:34And the walls were also teppies.
04:38I always remember
04:40the big Zelda there.
04:44The Zelda there.
04:45In a gallery.
04:47In a gallery.
04:58Nazis like Göring look back to ancient German history,
05:02to a time when knights rode through the forests of northern Europe.
05:06The knights were powerful figures
05:08who had established political and intellectual supremacy.
05:12The Nazi aim was to conjure up this noble past.
05:15To mark the start of a new era.
05:27They tried to give a new memory, a new history, a new past.
05:32There were big parades and big marches and big inscenierungen,
05:36big things they made in the town to bring the history back.
05:42You would have got the belief that you are coming from a very important part,
05:45and going to a very important future.
05:52The whole Third Reich was a theater of memories,
05:55that picked together from the past whatever was good and interesting for them,
05:59forgetting the rest.
06:00And they mixed them in a way never seen before.
06:03And there was a fascinating cocktail of a never happened history.
06:07Their wildboden solle schätze vergangener jahrtausende bergen.
06:11Konti ihrer muttererde eindringlicher zu ihr sprechen.
06:15Ein wunder welche sie und uns stolz macht,
06:19der Rasse anzugehören,
06:21die bereits vor tausenden von Jahren
06:23auf derart hoher kulturstufe stand.
06:25But the Nazis' project was far more than a simple reawakening of history.
06:35Their aim was to use the power of the past to transform those they governed into new and better people.
06:43This is the former congress building, congress hall.
06:46The Nazis planned it for their congresses, for the sub-organizations of the party rallies.
06:54It was planned for 50,000 to 60,000 people here to listen to the speeches of the big Nazi leaders.
07:01It's a mix between Babylonian, Egypt, medieval, Greek, Roman architecture.
07:07The impression they were trying to give was of a very far away history,
07:13very mighty, very important, very big history.
07:16The Nazis were deliberately manufacturing a mythical image of Germany's past
07:21in order to control its people.
07:23They believed that democracy and socialism had failed
07:27because individuals, when left to themselves, became corrupt and barbarous.
07:32Only the nation had the power to control this evil.
07:36It could pull people together and transform their wickedness into a new powerful force.
07:42The giant Nazi rallies were an expression of this ideal.
07:46Dwarfed by the symbols of the country's mighty past,
07:49individuals would lose themselves in the vast sea of the nation's soul.
07:54There was an hour on Earth and all the lights was released down the underneath.
07:58And there were about 130
08:03officers that were in army for the flight.
08:04And they all went straight up and went straight down.
08:07And that was so, as if the whole stadium had a light-like wall
08:12that was filled with a circular wall.
08:15That made a fantastic impression of this.
08:18By the end of the 1930s,
08:35Germany had become a coherent, directed society.
08:38It also represented a fundamental challenge to the ideas of democracy.
08:43Individual rights and reason no longer mattered.
08:46Instead, the nation was to be supreme.
08:49And one of the most fervent believers in this new faith was Hermann Göring.
08:54He believed in the necessity to support the lasting life and domination
09:04of the German, as you might call it, nation-state,
09:08the German body national.
09:11Böhring said once, and that was years earlier,
09:17I think when he was prime minister of Prussia,
09:19he made a statement to the effect,
09:21I am the police.
09:24Every bullet that leaves the muzzle of a police weapon is my bullet.
09:29If that be murdered, then I am a murderer.
09:31It's a strange feeling.
09:36I cannot describe it and hardly declare what it is,
09:39but this mix of history gave them a destiny for eternity,
09:43the last step to the promised land.
09:47By early 1945, the war was drawing to an end.
10:10Everything that the Nazis had built in Germany had been destroyed.
10:13The past had been obliterated physically and mentally
10:17by what had become known as total war.
10:19The past had been killed in Germany.
10:27The end of
10:32this scene became a woman who from the aircraft
10:37fell to the lungs and fell, so she was crying to them.
10:41I showed her the list that was published in the newspaper
10:46after the first big attack on 31 May 1942.
10:52I asked her to describe which of the people
10:57who were their neighbors, or who she was.
11:04The Allies now stood on the brink of victory in Europe.
11:07But the experience of total war was also
11:10destroying the confident certainties of their own past.
11:18The Americans had come into the war
11:20determined to put an end to European barbarism.
11:23But they found that the beliefs and assumptions
11:25they had brought with them were fading.
11:29Europe was a much darker and stranger place than America.
11:37My crucial memory, and the memory that really starts
11:40all of my other memories about the war, is waking up in this pine forest.
11:44My first morning in the war was still dark, but just barely getting light.
11:49And as it got light, I was astonished to see within three or four feet of me
11:55several bodies, dead bodies, of German boys who'd been killed, I think, the day before,
12:02by the unit we were relieving.
12:04These boys were just exactly like me.
12:06And they were killed, their eyes were open, and their faces were as white as marble, greenish-white.
12:19And at that moment, when I saw what I was involved in, actually for the first time, my training had never told me this.
12:26Many of my adolescent illusions about reason,
12:30and the governance of the world by reason, and common sense, and the idea of progress fell away
12:36all at once.
12:37And I realized in that one moment that I would never be again in that world of childhood innocence,
12:43where the world is run by reason, and where events contain a certain amount of justice.
12:52I knew that I was now deeply enmeshed in a world of injustice and unreason,
12:58that I would have to figure out how to survive in that world, or how to make sense of it later on.
13:03As the war drew to an end, the challenge for the Allies was to make sense of what it had all been for.
13:10The soldiers who had lived through the battles had no idea what all the terrible experiences meant.
13:15We live, wrote one, on the desperate edge of now.
13:19At the time of battle, combat, it's not coherent.
13:22You're always being surprised by the first shell that comes in, the machine gun,
13:28and its fragments. It's accidental. Everything is accidental.
13:32I suppose that's what's the worst thing about combat, is that it's pure accident.
13:37It's pure accident that that bullet, three inches away, wasn't through your head.
13:41So, if you want to make sense of it later on, you could only do it on some higher level.
13:47You can't do it from the level of the private, the foot soldier, the tank man.
13:52You can't make sense of it.
13:54Since you've gone, there's nothing left but sorrow.
14:11No joys now or pleasures, can I find...
14:14In May 1945, the Germans finally surrendered.
14:17The Americans, along with the Russians, were now the dominant powers.
14:22They were determined to put the surviving Nazi leaders on trial.
14:27They chose the city of Nuremberg, whose ruins their troops now occupied.
14:32The trials were to be more than just a legal process.
14:34They were to be a history lesson, an attempt by the Allies to piece together
14:38and explain what the war had been for.
14:40It will be the greatest history seminar ever in the world, announced one American prosecutor.
14:48But the Americans were to have a determined opponent, Herman Goering.
14:52He had been brought to Nuremberg by his jailer, Colonel Andrus.
14:55When my father first met him, his fingernails were bright red with fingernail polish,
15:04and in his baggage was a tremendous quantity of a drug.
15:10It was diagnosed as pericodeine, which in itself is a fairly mild drug,
15:15but he was taking 20 or more a day.
15:20When he was given his physical examination,
15:22the doctors discovered his toenails were also bright red.
15:29Colonel Andrus put Goering on a strict regime to wean him of his drug addiction.
15:34He quickly recovered and became the dominant figure amongst the 21 defendants.
15:43The trial began on November 20th, 1945.
15:47The prosecution's aim was to show that the Nazis in the dock had conspired to wage war,
15:52and to commit crimes against humanity.
15:55To prove this, they reconstructed the events of the past 15 years,
15:59using documents, photographs, the emerging evidence from the concentration camps,
16:04and most dramatically, Nazi film.
16:06We will show you their own film.
16:10You will see their own conduct, and hear their own voices,
16:13as these defendants reenact for you some of the events in the course of the conspiracy.
16:25The Nazi Plan was a film shown to the court.
16:28It lasted six hours and had been edited from millions of feet of captured Nazi footage.
16:33In particular, The Triumph of the Will,
16:35Lenny Riefenstahl's record of the Nazi rallies in Nuremberg eight years before.
16:41This was taken by Hollywood editors and recut with other footage to tell a new story.
16:46It showed that hidden behind the pomp and splendour of the 30s,
16:50lay Hitler's conspiracy to wage war.
16:52They took large parts of The Triumph of Will and other surviving Nazi footage,
17:00and put it together.
17:01And the Nazi Plan attempts to be a documentary history of the Third Reich.
17:06And it's a good basis, and we know where the film came from.
17:10But it is, of course, a biased, allied linking of German film.
17:28It shows the last just war, the war that had to be fought,
17:34that we were reluctant to fight, where the villains were clear,
17:37and the heroes were clear.
17:42That's the memory.
17:47What began in the courtroom at Nuremberg was the construction of the grand public memory
17:51of the Second World War.
17:54Out of the chaotic fragments of five years of warfare,
17:57the Allies forged a simple, powerful story.
18:01But the memories and experiences that didn't fit the story
18:04were quietly discarded and forgotten.
18:07This official plot of the war, that it was a good war that proceeded
18:11from bad to good, or from defeat to success and victory, that's true.
18:17That's true.
18:19But it has almost nothing to do with the individual soldier's individual truth.
18:28They know better.
18:29They know sort of how much fun it was to direct artillery fire upon
18:32a hillside full of innocent German boys and blow them all up.
18:36It was fun.
18:38It involved technical expertise as a way of doing it well,
18:41and there's a way of doing it badly, and so on.
18:44And you don't see the lads you're killing, so it's not as bad as it might be.
18:47But still, what you're doing is destroying human beings for the sake of the
18:51the new post-war world.
18:58I think the memory was built basically because the opponents
19:02were so evil that they make us look good.
19:08The trial took place in the midst of a city the Americans had declared 90% dead.
19:13Few Germans ever came to the courtroom, and the Allied staff who worked there
19:18knew nothing of the world outside under the ruins.
19:21In walking, you think you're alone, it's so quiet.
19:24All you've got to look at is rubble.
19:26You went through there and you felt alone, that nothing was there
19:30except stillness, stillness, and it was dead.
19:33And then suddenly you became aware of a head, or saw a movement,
19:37and it was a head coming out from that rubble, just this head.
19:43It was alive and looking at you as you walked.
19:46It gave you kind of a funny feeling that,
19:48oh, there are people there under the rubble.
19:53To those living underneath the rubble, the version of history the Allies
19:57were constructing inside the courtroom was terrifying.
20:01What millions had once believed glorious was now being revealed as murderous.
20:04The Germans called it Zero Hour, the destruction of all belief in the past.
20:12I was in the American sector of the city, and I came home.
20:17My father was dead. He was a Nazi, a convinced Nazi.
20:21A very good creature, I guess. I loved him.
20:25But he was a Nazi, and he killed himself because he couldn't get over this,
20:33what was the past broken down, his hopes.
20:38And I came from school and told to my mother, to my brother,
20:47what I've learned about the concentration camps and
20:52the liquidation of the Jewish people and so on.
20:55And they said, this is a lie, this lie of the Americans, don't believe that.
21:01Because they couldn't take this in their mind that this is part of German history.
21:10The response to this cataclysm was a wholesale wiping of memory by most of the German population.
21:16Millions of men and women who had been part of the Nazi system hid and denied their murderous past.
21:21A feature film made in 1946 tried to expose what was happening.
21:28It tells how a former army officer responsible for mass murder becomes a successful industrialist.
21:34One of his former soldiers returns to confront him.
21:37What do you want from me? Do you want money?
21:43Do you want money?
21:43I want your responsibility, Mr. Hauptmann Brückner.
21:47Rechenschaft? Wofür Rechenschaft?
21:5036 men, 54 women, 31 children.
21:56And two children, 31 children.
21:57Munition, 347 shots.
22:00Yeah, what then?
22:01For God's will, there was war.
22:03There were still very different conditions.
22:05What have I done with it today?
22:06It's all peace.
22:07We have Christmas.
22:09Christmas.
22:10Me, with my wife.
22:14What have I done with my children?
22:20But the film was a lone voice.
22:22Throughout Germany, the past was being buried and forgotten
22:25by millions of men and women.
22:27The Germans emerged from the ruins with their history rewritten.
22:33Meanwhile, in the courtroom,
22:34the Allies, too, carried on reconstructing Germany's past.
22:38They lived in a strange world.
22:40Each day, they listened to the careful cataloguing of Nazi atrocities,
22:44while in the dock, Rudolf Hess read Grimm's fairy tales.
22:48And every night, the Americans held parties
22:50in the ballroom of the Grand Hotel.
22:52Basically, it was a bachelor's dream, you might say.
22:56There were lots of romances.
22:58I got myself into trouble in no time.
23:01We had a lieutenant, a female lieutenant.
23:05Her name was Nancy Robinson.
23:08And she was beautiful.
23:09And she used to bring the mail, you know, to our desks and so on.
23:12And I had my eye on Nancy almost from the first day.
23:16And I shared an office for a while
23:19with a gentleman by the name of Robinson
23:21who didn't look anything like her.
23:24And she came in one day.
23:25She pranced in and pranced out.
23:27And I couldn't resist the comment.
23:31And I said what I'd like to do someday, you know, having the chance.
23:36And Mr. Robinson looked up and said,
23:38you know, Nancy's my sister.
23:39So there are things that happen that are not programmed.
23:45I don't think he ever spoke to me again.
23:46We shared the office.
23:47We continued to share it.
23:50And Nancy committed suicide later.
23:51I don't know what happened.
23:53Oh, it was all American jazz.
23:55I mean, it was a German twist, if you want to call it.
23:57I remember the singer.
23:59She used to sing,
24:00please miss that room
24:01and why can't we go home?
24:04We have conquered Berlin
24:05and we have conquered Rome.
24:09We have defeated the master race.
24:13So why can't we get shipping space?
24:16How did you remember that, Nancy?
24:19How did you remember that?
24:20Thank God!
24:37When your eyes are blue, your kisses too,
24:41I never knew what they could do.
24:44I can't believe that you're in love with me.
24:49But there was one German who has determined
24:51the path should not be wiped.
24:53He wanted to defend it publicly.
24:56Hermann Goering was about to be cross-examined
24:58by the chief American prosecutor, Robert Jackson.
25:01The cross-examination of Goering went wrong
25:04because Justice Jackson got a very good start.
25:07He asked Goering whether or not it wasn't true
25:10that in order to rule Germany,
25:12the Nazis had to do this, that, and the other thing.
25:15And Goering said, yes, those things were necessary.
25:17We were conducting revolution.
25:19So then Justice Jackson started to press it
25:22and asking these kinds of questions,
25:25Goering would make very long and circuitous answers.
25:28And Jackson became angry with him.
25:37Well, let's omit that.
25:39I haven't asked for that.
25:40If you'll just answer my questions,
25:41we'll save a great deal of time,
25:43and your counsel will be permitted
25:44to bring out any explanations you want to make.
25:47You did, you did prohibit all court review
25:52and considered it necessary to prohibit court review
25:56of the causes for taking people
25:59into what you call protective country.
26:01That is right, isn't it?
26:02Das habe ich ganz klar beantwortet,
26:04aber ich bitte, dass diese Ausführung,
26:07die von Ihnen gehörten, zu der Beantwortung liegt.
26:10And your counsel will see to that.
26:12Jackson didn't reach Goering.
26:15Nobody could reach Goering.
26:17In other words, Goering, as a condottieri type,
26:20as I've mentioned, did not know
26:22the difference between good and bad
26:25and right and wrong.
26:26That didn't mean anything to him.
26:28So to confront him with crimes
26:31that he had been responsible for,
26:34but that he felt he had to commit these acts
26:38because they were necessary
26:39to safeguard the life and the future
26:42of the body national
26:44was pointless.
26:46Well, if you wanted certain people killed,
26:48you had to have some organisation
26:49that would kill them, didn't you?
26:51Again and again, Jackson accused Goering
26:54of corruptly using his power to commit crimes.
26:57Each time, Goering responded
26:59that such actions might be crimes
27:00in a democratic state,
27:02but that in Germany, democracy had failed.
27:05Eliminating the political opposition
27:06was necessary to fulfil a higher principle,
27:09that of the nation.
27:11And it had worked, Goering insisted.
27:14It had brought order and prosperity to Germany.
27:16In Germany.
27:17Finally, Jackson lost his temper
27:37and appealed to the judges
27:39to control Goering.
27:40The difficulty is
27:41that the tribunal loses control
27:43of these proceedings.
27:44Outside of this courtroom
27:45is a great social question
27:48of the revival of Nazism.
27:50And that one of the purposes here
27:51of the defendant, Goering,
27:53I think he'd be the first to admit,
27:55is to revive and perpetuate.
28:00What frightened Jackson
28:02was the link between the political ideas
28:04that Goering was explaining to the court
28:06and the terrible crimes
28:07the Nazis had committed.
28:12The horrors revealed at the trial
28:14were so overwhelming
28:15that those who had committed them
28:17began to be seen as alien
28:18and utterly other.
28:21And so the trial became a morality play,
28:23a battle against evil,
28:24with Goering's role that of the villain.
28:27The ideas that had led millions
28:29of ordinary human beings
28:31to support and participate
28:32in such barbarism
28:34were too dangerous to discuss.
28:36They had to be locked away and hidden.
28:39What was missing at Nuremberg
28:41was the indictment
28:42of the ideology
28:43of the Thousand-Year Reich.
28:46Everybody nowadays knows
28:48what the war was being fought for,
28:50but nobody really has paid much attention
28:52to what the Germans thought
28:55the war was fought for
28:56in their sometimes,
28:59how shall I call it,
29:00a very twisted mentality
29:03that was spread by Hitler
29:05and his people.
29:08The body national,
29:11a form of nationalism
29:12where the entire nation
29:14was considered one body
29:16that had to be assured
29:19of its security and life.
29:23In the name of this mentality
29:25most of these crimes were committed.
29:30The terrible executions
29:31shown on film at the trial
29:33became a central image
29:34in the public memory
29:35of the Second World War.
29:37But they were seen
29:38and understood
29:39as the acts of monsters,
29:41not of human beings.
29:43What was buried at Nuremberg
29:45was any idea of examining
29:46why Nazism had happened
29:48in the first place,
29:49what the social
29:50and political forces were
29:51that had led ordinary people
29:53to such savagery.
29:56That's when I thought
29:57they deserved whatever punishment
29:58they got.
29:59They had to be cold
30:00and cruel and unfeeling.
30:03What kind of people are these?
30:05They're not like the human beings
30:07I've known all my life.
30:10After Goering's cross-examination,
30:12the judges ruled
30:13that no defendant
30:14would be allowed
30:14to go over ground
30:15already covered by Goering.
30:17There must be no further
30:18explanation of Nazi policies.
30:20The day of the sentencing,
30:30I was in the courthouse
30:32and the defendants
30:34assembled outside
30:36of the courtroom
30:36and the roll was called
30:39and I was asked
30:40to call the roll
30:41so I called the roll.
30:43It was a strange feeling,
30:44you know,
30:45and I said,
30:45Goering,
30:46you know,
30:46and they stepped to attention.
30:48Keitel,
30:49your goal here
30:49was a field marshal
30:50and so on
30:51and that was it.
30:52That was my entire part
30:53in the thing.
30:56Defendant Hermann Wilhelm Goering,
30:59the international military tribunal
31:00sentences you to death
31:02by hanging.
31:05Defendant Rudolf Hess,
31:07on the counts
31:07of the indictment
31:08on which you have been convicted,
31:11the tribunal sentences you
31:12to imprisonment for life.
31:18Goering had prepared
31:20for his suicide
31:22more than a year in advance
31:24before he was captured.
31:27He had taken three
31:28of these suicide capsule containers.
31:32I have the one he finally,
31:33Goering finally killed himself with.
31:36They were one cc eye pill
31:38of cyanide
31:39kept in this cutoff
31:40rifle cartridge case
31:41for protection.
31:43These were mass produced
31:44at one of the concentration camps
31:45and he was lying on his bunk
31:48and just decided
31:49the time had come
31:50so he moved the ampoule
31:51out between his teeth
31:52and bit it
31:53and everybody converged on him
31:55and he was dead.
31:56Oh!
31:57They were cremated
32:11in the ovens
32:12of Tachau
32:13which was something
32:15that he planned
32:16very carefully
32:17because they are the ones
32:19that ordered other people
32:20to be cremated
32:21in those
32:21and then the ashes
32:23were deployed
32:23into an unidentified river.
32:27My father wanted
32:32the good
32:33to be glorified
32:34and honored
32:35but not the evil
32:36and so he made
32:37great efforts
32:38to prevent
32:39any item
32:40that these criminals
32:42particularly the ones
32:42that were condemned
32:43anything that
32:44would remind anybody
32:46of them
32:46to be removed
32:47and destroyed forever
32:48and wiped
32:49from the memory
32:50of the world
32:50hopefully
32:51what the evil
32:52that they had been a part of.
32:54Well here is a pair
32:55of Herman Goering's underwear
32:57left behind
32:59in the laundry
32:59when his body
33:01was taken away
33:02to be burned.
33:04Beautifully made
33:05monogrammed
33:05finest materials
33:06and his socks
33:08again
33:08handsomely made
33:10wonderful material
33:11and here was
33:12this little pile
33:13of laundry
33:13that was the only
33:15remaining souvenir.
33:16when the trial
33:19was over
33:19and
33:21the defendants
33:23that were sentenced
33:23to death
33:24were executed
33:24and Goering
33:26had committed suicide
33:27he beat them
33:28to it in a way
33:28the show
33:30was over.
33:32With them
33:33went the idea
33:34of the body
33:35national
33:36which is now
33:37looked at
33:38as a phantom.
33:43Hitler
33:43out
33:44swastikas
33:48gone
33:49Nazi propaganda
33:52off the air
33:54concentration camps
33:56empty
33:57you'll see ruins
34:00you'll see flowers
34:03you'll see some
34:04mighty pretty scenery
34:05don't let it fool you
34:08you are in enemy country
34:10you are up against
34:12something more
34:12than tourist scenery
34:14you are up against
34:15German history
34:16it isn't good
34:18following the trial
34:20the Allies embarked
34:21on a gigantic act
34:22of exorcism
34:23they destroyed all trace
34:25not just of the Nazi
34:26past
34:27but of Germany's
34:27military history
34:28the giant statues
34:31that lined the
34:31Tiergarten in Berlin
34:32were removed
34:33to a compound
34:34to be dynamited
34:34but the Germans
34:36organized a secret
34:37operation to rescue them
34:38they remained hidden
34:40until two years ago
34:43they were buried
34:44at the Schloss Bellevue
34:45in the garden
34:46in the garden
34:47a night and rain
34:48as you say
34:49I wasn't there
34:50but it had to be a secret
34:52action
34:53so secret
34:54that you didn't know
34:56where these sculptures
34:58are at the end
34:58for the Americans
35:01these sculptures
35:02symbolized the old
35:03barbarism
35:04that had plagued
35:04Europe for centuries
35:05that was now
35:11gone forever
35:12the Good War
35:13had ushered in
35:14a new age
35:15in which such
35:15terrible things
35:16would never happen again
35:17because evil
35:18had been banished
35:19from the world
35:20large parts
35:22of the European past
35:23had to be wiped
35:24and forgotten
35:25a new world
35:26would be constructed
35:27free from the
35:28bitter historical memories
35:29that had driven
35:30nations to war
35:31again and again
35:32in the American project
35:34the individual
35:35and democracy
35:36were more important
35:37than the nation
35:38underlying this
35:40was an optimistic
35:40belief that human
35:41beings were good
35:43we all had a hope
35:45that the world
35:47would have learned
35:48something from the
35:49horror of World War II
35:50that people had learned
35:53perhaps to be more
35:54civilized
35:55in relations
35:57between one nation
35:59and another
35:59that there wouldn't
36:00be a repeat
36:01of the invasions
36:03the killings
36:05where disputes
36:07could be
36:07settled without war
36:09here is one of the
36:10many buildings
36:11in which tomorrow
36:12the General Assembly
36:13of the United Nations
36:14will be waging
36:15not war
36:16but peace
36:17entering will be
36:18representatives
36:19of all the nations
36:20dedicated to peace
36:21large and small
36:22meeting together
36:23in sovereign equality
36:25these men and women
36:26we visualized
36:27a world
36:27which would be
36:29more rational
36:30and civilized
36:31where nations
36:32would get along
36:32with one another
36:33where people
36:35could live
36:36with each other
36:36in peace
36:37this is not
36:39the capital
36:39of some superstate
36:41trying to rule
36:42the earth
36:42it represents
36:43the mind
36:44and conscience
36:45of the world
36:46it is the watchtower
36:48over tomorrow
36:49if individuals
36:55really could be
36:56freed from the
36:56threatening ghosts
36:57of their past
36:58then a new
36:59more civilized
37:00kind of human
37:00being would
37:01emerge
37:01citizens of a
37:03new age
37:04free for the
37:05first time
37:05from the power
37:06of history
37:07the alliierten
37:09wollten
37:10dieses
37:10stück
37:11geschichte
37:11verdrängen
37:12zerstören
37:13annullieren
37:14und darin
37:15liegt ja
37:15ein gewisser
37:16magischer
37:16akt
37:17i see a new
37:28sun
37:29up in a new
37:30sky
37:31and my
37:32whole horizon
37:33has reached
37:35a new
37:35high
37:36yesterday
37:37my heart
37:38sang a
37:39blue song
37:41but today
37:42hear it
37:43hum a
37:44cheery
37:45new song
37:46the heroes
37:48of this
37:48new age
37:49were the
37:49veterans
37:50who had
37:50fought
37:50and won
37:51the war
37:51but many
37:53of them
37:54had secret
37:54memories
37:55that conflicted
37:56with the
37:56official version
37:57of the
37:57good war
37:58memories
37:59that gave
37:59a much
38:00more complex
38:00and frightening
38:01picture
38:01of what
38:02they had
38:02done
38:03those
38:05memories
38:05after a while
38:06they control
38:07you you know
38:08they come to you
38:10so what happened
38:11you think about
38:12what happened
38:12you think about
38:14the bad things
38:15that happen
38:15over there
38:16because some
38:17of them
38:17is very bad
38:19and then
38:20you got dreams
38:23nightmares
38:24you know
38:25you hate people
38:29you fly into a rage
38:31at the little
38:32little sting
38:33you know
38:34the little
38:34smallest thing
38:35bang
38:36you know
38:37you lose your temper
38:38you hate the world
38:39you stay by yourself
38:41hey turn that off
38:43will you turn that thing off
38:44what's eating you now
38:45yeah what's eating you
38:46that music it stinks
38:47oh you don't like it
38:47huh
38:47no turn it off
38:48now wait a minute pal
38:49there's clearly a conflict
38:51between individual memory
38:52and the big story
38:54as you might put it
38:55which was constructed
38:55out of a number of
38:57actual and very useful
38:58events
38:59one was the trials
39:00at Nuremberg
39:00which established
39:01the version of the good war
39:03which is certainly true
39:04on the other hand
39:05chipping away at that
39:06constantly
39:07is the secret version
39:08of the war
39:09which is possessed
39:10by the actual combat
39:12veterans
39:13did you ever want
39:17to forget anything
39:17did you ever want
39:19to cut away a piece
39:19of your memory
39:20or blot it out
39:21you can't you know
39:22no matter how hard
39:24you try
39:24you can change the scenery
39:26but sooner or later
39:28you'll get a whip
39:28of perfume
39:29where somebody will say
39:29a certain phrase
39:30or maybe hum something
39:31then you're licked again
39:33the problem is
39:35that the experience
39:35of the veterans
39:36is very largely depressing
39:38pessimistic
39:39about human nature
39:40it shows how awful
39:42human beings can be
39:44and how indeed
39:45how they can be brought
39:46to enjoy murder
39:48and enjoy depriving
39:50other people
39:50of their limbs
39:51and their lives
39:52now that's very bad news
39:54for human nature
39:54and it conflicts
39:55with the optimistic news
39:57which is conveyed
39:57by the official picture
40:00yes go on
40:02you remember it now
40:03many thousands of veterans
40:04had wiped their memories
40:06the US army
40:07made a film record
40:08of the attempts
40:09to help them
40:09it was kept hidden
40:11for over 40 years
40:12because it was considered
40:13bad for civilian morale
40:15all right go on
40:15you don't want anymore
40:18you want to forget it
40:20but you're going to remember
40:22it because it's gone now
40:23it's gone
40:25you're back here now
40:27you're away from Okinawa
40:28you've forgotten it
40:29but you remember
40:31who you are now
40:32who are you
40:33men who cannot remember
40:37paralyzed men
40:39whose paralysis
40:40is dictated
40:40by the mind
40:41however different
40:43the symptoms
40:44these things
40:45they have in common
40:46unceasing fear
40:48and apprehension
40:48a sense of impending
40:50disaster
40:51a feeling of hopelessness
40:53and utter isolation
40:55the night is dressed up
41:07for dreaming
41:09and on the meadows below
41:14the middle class world
41:16the middle class world
41:16that's sort of the American dream
41:17as they say
41:18was not for you
41:19you were an outsider
41:21I couldn't have stood
41:22I couldn't have stood the idea
41:23of settling down
41:24in a nice family world
41:26and I did try
41:27and it didn't work
41:28then I had dreams
41:30and those lasted for 40 years
41:32scenes of violence
41:36death
41:36disfigurement
41:39horror
41:40which I have always carried inside of me
41:42and I feel that's the real possible world
41:46that's the world
41:47to which things can be reduced very easily
41:50and this has made it hard for me
41:53to function easily in society at times
41:57because I always felt that I might be thrown back into that world
42:00that's the real world
42:01what the hell is this person talking to me like that
42:04I'm going to take a rifle butt and smash his head in
42:06I was always afraid of being reduced back to that
42:09it was a world in which ideas don't count for anything
42:15sentiment doesn't count for anything
42:16it's just dust back down to the brutality of conflict
42:21and that big secret world
42:23which you have to sort of bury
42:25I suppose I buried that
42:27and buried a lot of memories with it
42:28I wanted to get that down and out of it
42:31it came back in dreams
42:32it came back in dreams
43:02by the late 50s
43:16Germany had become one of the most prosperous countries in Europe
43:19she was also now America's ally in the Cold War
43:23American attempts to denazify those who had run the country
43:27had been quietly dropped
43:28good bureaucrats and businessmen were needed
43:31to build a strong state against the Soviet threat
43:33it was in everyone's interest to forget the past
43:37now it goes back to us
43:39and you saw it step to step
43:41and we had a win
43:43and you rejected a house
43:45and you could have to eat
43:46and you could have to pay
43:46and you could have eaten
43:47and you could have given
43:47and you could have done
43:47you could have been
43:48so many years ago
43:51That was a certain euphorie, and in this euphorie, they didn't remember anything more, they didn't remember everything.
44:01They didn't want it anymore, they didn't want it before.
44:04This, what remained in the background, that is of course remained in the background.
44:09That doesn't interest me anymore.
44:11That's over.
44:13The appearance you might get was that there had never been any Nazis.
44:35Nobody had known anything, nobody had done anything wrong,
44:41and they were all sort of innocently baffled by the whole thing.
44:47But when you started certain discussions in narrower circles,
44:54where there was less fear of being pilloried for an utterance,
44:59there was a great deal of resentment of the injustice of the war.
45:05And to them, this is a tremendous block of history,
45:09where Germany was exploding like a nova, radiating across the globe.
45:17And that fascinates them.
45:19Germany, above all, above all in the world.
45:25And then came soon the nationalsozialistism hymn ad.
45:31Die Pfanne hoch, die Reihen dicht geschlossen, SA marschiert mit ruhig festem Schritt.
45:40Kameraden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen, Maschinengeist sind uns an Reihen mit.
45:46Das mussten wir dann singen.
45:50Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles.
45:53Jetzt auf einmal ging es so zur Hymne.
45:57Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles.
46:01Und bis alles gesungen war, musste man da stehen, ob Frau, ob Mann, ob Kreis oder Kind.
46:07Und wenn das Lied fertig war, dann hat man es so gemacht.
46:11Blüht euch.
46:20For the younger generation, those who had grown up in Germany in the years after the war,
46:25the past was completely mysterious.
46:27By the mid-60s, a growing number of them began to ask questions about this strange time.
46:33A period of history that neither their teachers nor their parents would discuss.
46:37Then, in 1968, came the student revolution, and an attempt began to uncover the truth about Germany's hidden past.
46:47I think that in 1968, the student revolution, there was the memory knocking at the door.
46:56We were thinking at the generation, which was not guilty in a very direct sense of this word.
47:02And we asked our parents and our grandfathers,
47:06what did you do in all this time?
47:09Did you resist or had you been a little Nazi or had you been an opportunist?
47:16And this discussion was blocked by the elder generation, and so it became hostile.
47:26And so we were hunted and pushed through the streets by the police and by the people in this town.
47:36Germany's past became a central issue for the student movement.
47:41Many began to delve into recent history, and what they discovered astounded them.
47:48Not only had their teachers and their parents been involved with the Nazi party,
47:52but many appeared to have taken part in crimes.
47:56There were terrible confrontations within families.
48:00And the young people, who then came, always saw that, that was begun and was not included.
48:07But your grandfathers can't do anything for them.
48:11And the young people ask me, my Neve with 22 and 26 years,
48:15if they were with our grandfathers of our grandfathers not finished.
48:21The elderly generation had to fear that now would be taken care of.
48:26That also, when you start to start at one's time,
48:31when you start to say, who was in the SS, who was in the SS,
48:36that the young people who were sitting next to him,
48:40and where they were, and they were.
48:44And this fear, to get into your own Sog,
48:48that of course has made a solidarity with the older generation,
48:51that of course had not spoken to this time.
48:53The students were convinced that what they had uncovered was a hidden continuity with
49:23the Third Reich.
49:25Beneath the facade of a liberal democratic country, the fascist state had continued, run
49:30by the very same men and women who had administered Hitler's regime.
49:34A group emerged determined to expose this.
49:37They were led by Andreas Bader and Gudrun Enslin.
49:41Their aim was to resist fascism where their parents had failed.
49:45They were known as the Red Army Faction.
49:46The Red Army Faction embarked on a series of bombings and shootouts with the police.
50:15Their strategy was to use violence to provoke the state into exposing its true identity.
50:22But as the violence escalated, some of the terrorist leaders began to have doubts.
50:31In trying to expose Germany's hidden past, they had unearthed something far more complex and
50:36far more sinister than they had bargained for.
50:39I had begun to realize that fighting against the state by armed groups with this revolutionary
50:50strategy in mind was bringing up fascistic tendencies in the reaction not only of the political class,
51:01but in the people too.
51:03We ourselves became in the same way fascistic as the fascists were.
51:09We didn't realize that our enemies, our opponents, are human beings.
51:14This is what is in the heart fascism.
51:18The oppression of other meanings of the political opposition.
51:23And oppression means elimination by killing.
51:32Was it frightening when you realized that that was happening?
51:34Yeah.
51:35Yeah, of course.
51:36Awfully frightening.
51:37This is one of the main points in the development.
51:43The awareness that we are from the same stuff as the fascists were.
51:59We understood something.
52:00We understood that fascism is a component in all of us.
52:09Do you think that's what we hid from ourselves at the end of the war?
52:17Yeah.
52:18Yeah.
52:19Yeah.
52:20Exactly.
52:21Exactly.
52:22We have a picture of ourselves.
52:23We want to be good.
52:24We want to be human creatures with positive thinking and so on.
52:30But we are a contradiction in ourselves because we don't know to handle this contradiction.
52:37We don't have any meaning to live with this evil part in ourselves.
52:42In the autumn of 1977, the leaders of the Bader-Meinhof group committed suicide in jail.
53:03The attempt to change Germany by opening up its past was over.
53:12The threatening memories were re-buried.
53:15The memory is a swamp like this building is built in a swampy area.
53:22So, in a swamp, something comes up, makes a sound, a noise, boop.
53:29You smell something.
53:31And then, once again, the surface is clean and clear.
53:36And so this memory comes up sometimes, gives a noise, gives a bad smell, and then the surface
53:41is clean again.
53:43But then, ten years later, the course of European history suddenly changed.
53:55The communist domination of Eastern Europe collapsed.
54:00In the summer of 1990, Berlin celebrated the dismantling of the war with a concert given
54:05by Pink Floyd.
54:07During the preparations, hidden fragments of the past came to the surface.
54:12In the no-man's land between the two Berlins, a forgotten Nazi bunker was unearthed.
54:18It was fined by chance when here Pink Floyd has the great spectacle of the war in the summer of 1990.
54:26And they telephoned me because I told them before one could find something.
54:31And that was the beginning of the battle for safeguarding this bunker.
54:36And what did you find down there? Can you show us some of the things?
54:39Yes, we...
54:41There are some small objects, of course.
54:44So, here's a bayonet.
54:46We only took some samples here.
54:49A silver spoon, it was from the official silver.
54:52These fragments, it was like a frozen moment of history 50 years ago.
54:57This frozen moment of apocalypse, the end of history, of a certain part of history.
55:04It wasn't just fragments of the Nazi past that re-emerged.
55:25As the Cold War came to an end, a hidden history of Europe was awakened.
55:30Old rivalries and tensions, suppressed for 50 years, were rekindled.
55:35With them came the barbarism and the evil that the Good War was supposed to have banished forever.
55:41The infantry then went on a foot patrol to look for more casualties or evidence of atrocities.
55:47They didn't have far to search.
55:49They came upon a house in the centre of the village where a family of seven had died.
55:54Two in the stairway, another five in the cellar.
55:57It's hard to look at some of these pictures.
56:00Harder to tell the story of Ahanichi without them.
56:03What happened here can frankly not be shown in any detail.
56:07But the room is full of the charred remains of bodies and they died in the greatest agony.
56:12It's hard to imagine, in our continent and in our time, what kind of people could do this.
56:18I just kept thinking that, you know, there were people once.
56:25You know, I mean, this is, you know, this is Europe 1993, not 1943.
56:31MUSIC PLAYS
56:48The fragments of the past that have re-emerged in Europe are frightening,
56:51because they are linked to a time many thought had long been buried and forgotten.
56:56But history will not repeat itself.
56:59These forgotten pieces will be reassembled to tell a new story.
57:04They will be used to justify the new political ideas of the future.
57:09We are at zero hour once again.
57:12knew, where are the men, where are they stayed?
57:21Tell me, where are the men, what is going to happen?
57:27Tell me, where are the men, who were coming before the war begins.
57:35When she ever felt easier to meet, when will you ever understand it?
57:40What the hell is that?
57:49Maybe something trying to force its way into our world.
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