- 3 months ago
The 20th July 1944. Operation Valkyrie is underway. Conspirators race to change the course of history forever. Will the plot succeed or will Adolf Hitler escape unharmed...once again?
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00:00The 20th of July, 1944. The Wolfschancer. Germany's headquarters on the Eastern Front.
00:12Nestled away in the deep forests of Poland, Adolf Hitler is drawing up plans that he believes could secure his victory in Europe.
00:22The Fuhrer's strategies are interrupted by a knock at the door.
00:26Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg, Hitler's trusted chief of staff, walks in, holding a briefcase.
00:34But Stauffenberg is not here to talk battle plans. He's here to kill Hitler.
00:41There were lots of plots to kill Hitler.
01:10And he survived so many that it made Hitler feel that he really did have this kind of divine providence behind him that made him survive.
01:18The most celebrated plot against him was the July-Bond plot of July 1944, in which you've got this kind of coterie of senior officers all over the Third Reich who have been meeting in secret for many years, actually.
01:43On the 20th of July 1944, Count von Stauffenberg made a serious attempt on the Fuhrer's life by bringing a bomb into the briefing room where Hitler was, placing it under his desk and hoping that it would kill Hitler.
02:00Adolf Hitler, the most notorious dictator of the 20th century.
02:21Outraged by the Treaty of Versailles and Germany's humiliation in the First World War, Hitler fiercely campaigned to rescue the fatherland from ruin.
02:39The mood in Germany at the end of World War I was that of a humiliated and defeated people and nation.
02:50This fight had been going on for four years.
02:54Millions of people had died and no one had got anything or no one had got anywhere.
02:59It was a mood of revolution, a mood of deep dissatisfaction, a mood of instability, and it felt like the country was on the brink of collapse.
03:13His mesmerising public speeches called for a new order in Germany, one which would cast off the weak and incompetent structure of the democratic regime and instead install a supreme national leader.
03:29Citizens from all corners of the country fell for the relentless promotion of his ideology and Hitler successfully recast himself as Germany's saviour.
03:41What Hitler is absolutely amazing at is speech making.
03:46And to begin to understand Hitler, you've really got to understand that he was the most amazing demagogue.
03:54Hitler's speeches are really vitriolic, but they're very effective and they attract regular audiences.
04:02And he's really good at using populist themes and he labels scapegoats for losing the war.
04:09You name it, Jews, communists, you know, whoever Hitler hates on that given moment, he'll lay into them.
04:15Listeners are listening and watching this and they're thinking, yes, these are the reasons for our economic hardships.
04:20And Hitler's also got this huge personal magnetism and he's got this instinctive understanding of the psychology of crowds.
04:29And of course, you know, like any really brilliant public speaker, he's going to use that to his advantage.
04:34It's like a conductor with an orchestra.
04:36Like many dictators before him, he became insistent on protecting his godlike image and divine right to power.
04:55The Führer kept himself away from the more violent and brutal aspects of the regime.
04:59He promoted anti-Jewish propaganda, but refused to bloody his own hands, relying instead on his loyal circle to rid Germany of its enemies.
05:09So the issue of how Hitler managed to keep his popular image clean while the final solution was underway is obviously a very interesting and a very difficult question.
05:28But I suppose the essence of it is two things.
05:30First of all, that those mass shootings that were taking place in the USSR were not on German soil.
05:38And of course, the second part, the most important part too, that the death camps, all of those were on Polish soil.
05:45So they were out of the immediate frame of sight or reference of the Germans.
05:49So again, in some way, they were happening elsewhere and not really in their immediate field of vision.
05:55Hitler is always mindful of public opinion.
06:03I think that it's always important to remember that Hitler, you know, does always worry about what the German people think about him.
06:10He doesn't just sort of seize power in 1933 and then not care.
06:14He wants to be liked.
06:16He wants to be popular.
06:17He is a political leader after all.
06:19And all political leaders, democratic or fascist or otherwise, want to be liked.
06:25However, Hitler and the Nazis were not entirely immune to the consequences of their dark agenda.
06:38Feelings of disillusionment and disgust built up among certain individuals.
06:43And by 1944, Hitler faced the biggest threat to his life yet.
06:47Out of Hitler's Nazi regime spilled not only a drive to preserve the country's economy and global status.
06:58Nazism also meant the annihilation of Germany's enemies.
07:02And in 1935, the creation of the Nuremberg laws set its sights firmly on the most hated group in Germany, the Jews.
07:13So we know that from as early as Hitler's writings in Mein Kampf that he was personally anti-Semitic.
07:21So we see his personal anti-Semitism translated into state policy.
07:25There were many different measures, legal measures taken against the Jews and also illegal measures as well.
07:34So very early on, there was a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.
07:38Very early on, too, there was a civil service law, which essentially threw out Jewish civil servants from their positions.
07:45The Nuremberg laws really put into place some legal parameters for how the situation would be with Germany's Jews.
07:55But what they did really was to turn Germany's Jews into second-class citizens,
08:00really to take away their equal citizenship rights,
08:04and also to forbid marriage or sexual relations between Jews and Aryans.
08:08Many citizens bought into the ideology that the very presence of Jews threatened the German people.
08:18Ordinary people everywhere began practicing anti-Semitic views
08:22and encouraging the idea that Jews were an inferior race, separate to the superior Aryan Germans.
08:29And if the Jewish newspapers today believe about the hidden threats and the national-sozialist movement,
08:36to break down, if they believe today, to our criminal law enforcement,
08:41to be able to deal with them, they should be given themselves.
08:47Once our pride will be at the end, and then the Jews will be stopped by the wrongdoing of the law.
08:55And then the Jews will be stopped by the wrongdoing of the law.
08:59Before long, such poisonous rhetoric turned into violent action.
09:04And on the 9th of November 1938,
09:07the Nazi regime coordinated a wave of attacks across the country.
09:14You suddenly get this thing called Kristallnacht,
09:17the Night of the Broken Glass, in 1938,
09:20where the Nazis just literally set fire to synagogues everywhere.
09:26The world really noticed, you know, in Kristallnacht,
09:29you know, this absolutely horrific destruction, slaughter, violence,
09:34carried out by the state against its own people.
09:38It showed the world what Hitler was.
09:41He was effectively a gangster and a murderer.
09:47The violence was supposed to look like an unplanned outburst
09:50of popular anger against Jews.
09:53But in reality, Kristallnacht was state-sponsored vandalism and arson.
09:59Nazi leaders actively coordinated it with Adolf Hitler's support.
10:04There's no doubt about the centrality of antisemitism to Hitler's worldview.
10:09There's absolutely no doubt about that.
10:11But what he seemed to be trying to do was sort of stay in the shadows
10:14so that when we get a pogrom like this that the public,
10:16the German public and the population were quite affronted by it,
10:19maybe not because they particularly supported the Jews,
10:22but because it was a kind of sort of flagrant violation of law and order
10:27and sort of a kind of very violent, violent affair across the land.
10:31So there wasn't, you know, it wasn't popular in that respect.
10:34So there's the idea then that Hitler was sort of staying in the shadows
10:37and not being associated with that.
10:40I think he managed to maintain his popularity during this time.
10:44First of all, because he was staying in the shadows of more unpopular policies.
10:48And there was certainly that sentiment among the German population
10:52because of this myth that surrounded the Fuhrer that, well,
10:55if there were unpleasant things going on or policies that they didn't like,
10:59then somehow that Hitler couldn't know about it,
11:02that he wasn't associated with it, that it had to be one of the other leaders.
11:05Universal approval of the violent pogroms was not a reality for Hitler.
11:19In fact, opposition lurked in unexpected places and arose from unexpected individuals.
11:25Major General Henning von Treskow absolutely despised the Nuremberg Laws
11:31and the violent Kristallnacht attacks.
11:35From as early as the 1930s, the Nazi officer had been plotting Hitler's overthrow
11:40and gathering a trusted circle of people to assassinate the Fuhrer.
11:45Treskow's disgust towards extreme anti-Semitism
11:48consequently spurred him on to become a key architect of Operation Valkyrie.
11:53Meanwhile, at the graveyard attached to the institution, bodies are exhumed for autopsy.
12:0220,000 are buried here.
12:0415,000 who died in a lethal gas chamber were cremated and their ashes interred.
12:09Death books found hidden in the wine cellar of the Hadamar Institution
12:13revealed part of the story of the mass killings.
12:16The bulky volumes contained thousands of death certificates.
12:19Profession unknown, nationality unknown, was written after each name.
12:25Feelings of disenchantment, however, did not halt with Hitler's anti-Jewish policies.
12:31In 1939, one of the darkest programs of the Nazi regime came into existence.
12:36Where Hitler's popularity starts to take a real dent is his association, or the Nazi association,
12:49with what is called the T4 programme.
12:51Now, the T4 programme is named after the address in which it was headquartered,
12:55Tiergartenstrasse IV in Berlin.
12:58And it really was the most repellent form of Nazi quote-unquote medicine that you could imagine.
13:07Because it was this idea that you have to treat a people as a body.
13:11But what if you've got part of your body as a population that is considered to be weak,
13:16i.e. sort of cancerous, or deformed, or has hereditary illnesses.
13:21Well, why don't you just chop them off as well?
13:24Because if you can get rid of them, i.e. people with congenital problems,
13:28you're going to stop those bad genes being passed on.
13:32And that's essentially what the T4 programme is.
13:35It is basically chopping people out of life.
13:40You're killing them.
13:42You're killing children with epilepsy.
13:44You're killing people who've got mild spinal deformities.
13:48You're killing people who've even got stutters.
13:51Because you're saying they're genetically weak,
13:54and we don't want them if we're going to make this strong, blonde Aryan race
13:58full of perfect superhumans.
14:00It's kind of pseudo-medicine. It's pseudo-science.
14:06The unlawful system of mass murder outraged many German citizens,
14:11particularly Protestants and Catholics,
14:13who led protests against the exterminations.
14:17Relatives of patients everywhere frantically panicked,
14:20with many withdrawing their relatives from asylums to care for them at home.
14:25In some places, doctors and psychiatrists also cooperated with families
14:29to have patients discharged or transferred to private clinics beyond the reach of T4.
14:36Führer Chancellery Director Philip Buhler and physician Karl Brandt led the killing operation.
14:47Under their leadership, T4 operatives established six gassing installations for adults
14:53as part of the euthanasia action.
14:55For every person killed, a death certificate was prepared,
15:01giving a false but plausible cause of death to hide the evil reality.
15:05Hitler publicly cancelled the program in 1941 after outcry from the German people.
15:15However, the killings in fact continued until the end of the war.
15:19By 1945, the Nazis had callously murdered as many as 300,000 innocent people.
15:34The T4 euthanasia program represented in many ways a rehearsal for Nazi Germany's subsequent genocidal policies.
15:41Planners of the final solution later borrowed the gas chamber method
15:46to eradicate the Jewish and Roma populations on a scale never before seen in history.
15:52The T4 euthanasia program represented in many ways a result.
16:11The T4 euthanasia program represented in the U.S.
16:16I know it!
16:46Two years into the largest conflict in history, Adolf Hitler devised his riskiest move yet, Operation Barbarossa.
17:01Hitler despised Bolshevism and Stalin's regime.
17:05Intent on wiping out the Soviet Union, he ordered Nazi troops to invade Russian-occupied territory on the 22nd of June, 1941.
17:16Hitler had assured the high command that we have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten edifice will come tumbling down.
17:44But Russia was not France.
17:49Despite the serious losses inflicted on the Red Army and extensive territorial gains, the mission to completely destroy Soviet fighting power was not achieved.
18:00The Soviets were not going to go down easily.
18:02Had Hitler stopped after he had successfully conquered France and the Low Countries and not decided in June 1941 that he was going to invade this really quite big country called Russia, he may have stayed in power.
18:17But of course, what Stalin's got is a lot of room to fight him because he can retreat and retreat and retreat and retreat and you've still got thousands of miles of Russia behind you that you can fall back on.
18:35But also what Stalin does is he's very good at regrouping and getting his forces back together.
18:42Germans use a lot of over-designed tanks, over-designed uniforms, over-designed weapons.
18:50What the Russians are good at doing is just getting things together in a kind of makeshift way, but that works.
18:56You know, everything the Russians have, uniforms, tanks, weaponry, it's all really simple, really easy to use, really easy to mass produce very, very quickly.
19:04German kit takes ages to produce, so this is another real problem that's faced by the Germans.
19:121942 would be an even worse year for Hitler's fight in the East.
19:19The Führer hoped to take the strategic city of Stalingrad easily, but the well-armed Red Army and the fierce Russian winter made German soldiers' lives absolute hell.
19:34By mid-November, the Germans found themselves outnumbered, outgunned, extremely low on food and medical supplies, and surrounded by Russians.
19:52But Hitler refused to withdraw troops.
19:55He placed prestige over lives and commanded, they hold their positions to the last man and the last round.
20:02He also promised additional provisions, provisions that never arrived.
20:09So when the tide of the war turned in 1943 with the Battle of Stalingrad, and then the fortunes went the other way,
20:16then that sort of question of the infallibility of the Führer came to be called into question.
20:22So whilst by this point, after Stalingrad, the cult of the leader was diminished somewhat,
20:30he'd created this myth of the Soviet hordes and this great Soviet enemy to such an extent that out of fear and out of desperation,
20:41both the army and the home front really worked until the bitter end before capitulation.
20:49Left with little choice, German general Friedrich Paulus went against Hitler's orders and surrendered his weakened troops to Russia on February the 2nd, 1943,
21:02an act which Hitler later called treason.
21:05The heavy defeat punctured the Führer's power in Europe, and a lurking feeling of disenchantment spread throughout the German army.
21:13Stalingrad soon became a major catalyst for conspirators across the Third Reich to join the plot to kill Hitler.
21:30Klaus von Stauffenberg was no exception.
21:32He had witnessed firsthand the absolute catastrophe on the Eastern Front, and became convinced that Hitler had to be removed.
21:49Stauffenberg was born into an aristocratic family.
21:53Despite joining the Wehrmacht, he, like many elites, tended to view the Nazis with distaste.
21:58However, it would not just be a class issue that persuaded Stauffenberg to turn away from his divine leader.
22:11His time on the Eastern Front opened his eyes to the mass murder of Jews and Slavs.
22:18Outraged, the young officer openly stated,
22:20They are shooting Jews in masses.
22:23These crimes must not be allowed to continue.
22:25As well as places like Auschwitz, which were relatively easy to keep quite secret,
22:32what people also knew about from troops returning from the front,
22:36and especially from the Eastern Front,
22:38was the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squads that went behind the German lines,
22:44killing anybody they regarded as being an enemy of the Third Reich,
22:48such as Jews and communists and so on.
22:50And the Einsatzgruppen killed millions of people.
22:54It was impossible to keep that quiet.
22:57Stauffenberg became so vocal in his criticism,
23:00his officers decided that he should be posted to Tunisia,
23:03a move which would end with Stauffenberg losing his left eye,
23:07his right hand and two fingers in a surprise attack by American fighter aircraft.
23:12Stauffenberg's life-changing injuries did not hinder his mission
23:20to rid Germany of its ruthless dictator.
23:24Instead, his fate placed him in an even better position to implement the plot,
23:29right at the heart of Berlin.
23:31In September 1943,
23:56Stauffenberg was posted to the headquarters of the replacement army on the Bändlerstrasse.
24:00Here, he would be introduced to two key conspirators,
24:06Major General Henning von Treskow and General Friedrich Albrecht.
24:12The tide of the war was now turning against Germany.
24:16The trio had to move fast to implement the plot.
24:19We shall defend our island,
24:26whatever the cost may be.
24:29We shall fight on beaches,
24:32landing grounds,
24:34in fields, in streets,
24:37and on the hills.
24:38We shall never surrender.
24:40Albrecht put forward a new strategy for staging a coup against Hitler.
25:10The replacement army had an operational plan called Operation Valkyrie
25:14to be used in the event of a breakdown of law and order.
25:18Valkyrie was the perfect way to mobilize the reserve army during the takeover.
25:22Treskow and Stauffenberg worked tirelessly to modify Valkyrie and at the same time remain undiscovered.
25:33The pair drafted plans to occupy German cities,
25:38take control of Heinrich Himmler's SS and Gestapo,
25:41and even arrest the Nazi leadership.
25:45The plotters finalized every tiny detail,
25:49even devising a whole new government structure following takeover.
25:53General Ludwig Beck would be placed as head of state.
25:58The long-term resistor, Dr. Karl Friedrich Gödler,
26:01would become Germany's new chancellor.
26:04Treskow would take control of all German security services.
26:08And either Albrecht or Stauffenberg would serve as state secretary.
26:12The only question that remained was how to kill Hitler.
26:21There were lots of plots to kill Hitler.
26:25And he survived so many that it made Hitler feel that he really did have this kind of
26:30divine providence behind him that made him survive.
26:33But actually the most kind of celebrated plot against him was the July bomb plot of July 1944,
26:41in which you've got this kind of coterie of senior officers all over the Third Reich
26:47who have been meeting in secret for many years, actually.
26:51What they want to do is to get rid of Hitler.
26:53They don't want to get rid of Hitler because he's evil.
26:56That may be part of it.
26:58They want to get rid of Hitler because they think he's fighting the war badly.
27:01And they just are fed up with him.
27:04And indeed Hitler is fighting the war badly because he's a terrible, terrible strategist.
27:09The conspirators considered poisoning his food and even shooting the Fuhrer at a dinner party.
27:15But by late 1943, Hitler had become increasingly paranoid and suspicious,
27:21often abruptly changing plans or tightening access.
27:26In the end, a time bomb was the only option.
27:31At the time of planning, none of the conspirators had direct access to Adolf Hitler.
27:41However, in 1944, everything changed for Stauffenberg.
27:47General Friedrich Fromm, the commander of the Replacement Army,
27:51appointed Stauffenberg as his chief of staff.
27:54Fromm was the only officer, other than Hitler,
27:57who could initiate Operation Valkyrie with his signature.
28:02Aware of his subordinate's plan, he made a deal to remain quiet,
28:06on the condition that he became a top official in the new government after the mutiny.
28:11The plan was coming into place,
28:14and Stauffenberg was now in a position where he could see Hitler on a regular basis.
28:18Of all the conspirators, he was the best placed to become the assassin.
28:24Time was ticking.
28:41Certain defeat in the war closed in,
28:44and the coup needed to take place soon to save Germany from total destruction.
28:48The army had posted Treskov to the eastern front,
28:53and the original assassin, General Helmut Stief, had backed down from the plan.
29:00Stauffenberg took total control of the resistance,
29:03but in doing so, he placed himself as both the assassin
29:06and the commander of the Valkyrie operation in Berlin.
29:09Hidden away, in the dark shadows of the Massourian woods,
29:20Hitler was gathering his most trusted officers for a military conference at the Wolfsschanzer.
29:26It was the 20th of July, 1944,
29:30and Stauffenberg found himself in the eastern front headquarters,
29:33alongside his aide, Lieutenant Werner von Heiften.
29:37Briefcase in hand,
29:38the colonel now had the perfect opportunity to plant a bomb
29:42that could change the course of history forever.
29:45So, on 20th of July, 1944, everything's in place.
29:49You've got people in Berlin ready to take over the SS.
29:53You've got various army units all over the Third Reich
29:59ready to go at the drop of the code word Valkyrie,
30:02which is going to say that Hitler's been killed.
30:05However, the summer sun had reared its brutal head.
30:09The atmosphere was intense and uncomfortable,
30:12and, irritated by the heat,
30:14Hitler moved the meeting from the Führerbunker to a wooden hut.
30:17At 12.30 p.m., Stauffenberg excused himself to a nearby room,
30:27claiming he needed to change his shirt.
30:29But in reality, the pair began fusing the first bomb.
30:32A guard knocked at the door, urging the colonel to hurry up.
30:37Heiften and Stauffenberg panicked.
30:40The Führer was waiting, and no time remained to fuse the second bomb.
30:45One bomb would have to do.
30:47As the seconds slipped away,
30:51Stauffenberg swiftly excused himself under the pretext of making a phone call.
30:55But unbeknownst to the would-be assassin,
31:02Colonel Heinz Brandt, positioned next to Hitler,
31:05inadvertently collided with the briefcase,
31:08deftly nudging it behind a table leg.
31:10The fate of Europe now hung in the balance.
31:16At 12.42 p.m., the bomb detonated.
31:23Shock waves reverberated through the Wolfschancer.
31:27Stauffenberg and Heiften quickly escaped,
31:29driving to a nearby airfield to return to Berlin and finish the job.
31:34The hopes of resistance crumbled as the aftermath unfolded.
31:47Stauffenberg, Olbricht and Ludwig Weck rushed to commandeer various government buildings
31:53and arrested General Fromm for refusal to cooperate until Hitler's death had been confirmed.
31:59But soon came the news they had been fearing.
32:04Hitler was, in fact, very much alive.
32:08As it happened, the furniture took most of the blast
32:12and Hitler got away with just very superficial injuries
32:16and put into place straight away the capture, the arrest,
32:23and then the execution of all of those who were involved in that bomb plot.
32:27Had the bomb found its place to Hitler's left?
32:31Had the meeting unfolded in the Führerbunker?
32:33And had Stauffenberg triggered both devices,
32:37the assassination's success would have seemed inevitable.
32:41Yet fate intervened.
32:44Hitler emerged with only limited injuries,
32:47sheltered by a table leg that absorbed the brunt of the blast.
32:51The plan had faltered.
32:54The tables had turned.
32:55The dream of a world without Hitler slipped through the grasp of those who dared to defy.
33:07Furious and humiliated,
33:09Hitler ordered commanding officer Otto Ernst Rehmer to arrest the conspirators
33:13and bring them to him alive.
33:15But a bitter General Fromm had other ideas.
33:19To hide his involvement,
33:21Fromm ordered immediate court-martials.
33:24The conspirators now faced swift and brutal reprisals
33:28for their bold attempt to alter the course of history.
33:30Ludwig Beck asked for a pistol and shot himself,
33:36the first of many suicide attempts in the coming days.
33:42At 0010 hours on the 21st of July 1944,
33:46Colonel von Stauffenberg,
33:48General Friedrich Albrecht,
33:50Lieutenant Werner von Haiften,
33:51and another officer, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnhem,
33:55were killed by firing squad in the Blenderblock courtyard.
33:58On the Eastern Front,
34:03Treskov learned of the plotter's fate
34:05and committed suicide.
34:07Until the end,
34:08he remained loyal to the cause.
34:12The plot to kill Hitler
34:13was well and truly over.
34:19The 20th of July plot
34:21serves as a testament
34:23to the bravery of those
34:24who dared to stand against a ruthless regime.
34:27even in the face
34:28of almost insurmountable odds.
34:33If the plan had succeeded,
34:35it would have undoubtedly
34:36shortened the war by many months
34:38and saved countless lives.
34:44However,
34:45Hitler's days were still numbered
34:47and he would face
34:48the looming shadow of death sooner
34:50rather than later.
34:51The Russians
34:56moved steadily from the east
34:57whilst the Western Allies
34:59crossed the Rhineland.
35:01By April 1945,
35:04three million Soviet troops
35:06dealt brutal blows
35:07to the last traces
35:08of the German resistance.
35:09With the Russians
35:14at the gates to Berlin,
35:16Adolf Hitler had nowhere to run.
35:19The first half of 1945
35:20is probably the darkest
35:22six months in Germany's history
35:24because it's being invaded
35:26by the Russians,
35:27the Red Army,
35:29from the east
35:29and you've got the other allies
35:31coming through from the west.
35:32And it's the Russians
35:34who reach Berlin first.
35:36And when they reach Berlin,
35:37it's a city in rubble,
35:39it's a city in flames,
35:41it's a city in chaos,
35:42it's a city in which
35:43squads of marauding
35:45loyal Nazis
35:46are going around
35:47hanging people
35:47who are not taking part
35:49in the resistance
35:49of the city.
35:50It's a city in which
35:51you've then got some Nazis
35:52committing suicide.
35:54It is the most benighted,
35:57appalling place
35:57you can imagine.
35:58And you've got
35:59the Soviet army
36:00literally raping
36:02and pillaging
36:03this city.
36:07Towards the end
36:09of the war,
36:09of course,
36:10Hitler was spending
36:11more and more time
36:12in his mountain retreat,
36:13the Berghof,
36:15and then people
36:16were seeing less of him.
36:18He was making
36:19less and less
36:19public appearances
36:20and then eventually
36:23in the last months
36:24of the war
36:24into the Fuhrer bunker.
36:26And this is when
36:27public opinion
36:28of the Fuhrer
36:30starts to crumble.
36:32Hitler's last days
36:33in the Fuhrer bunker
36:34under the Reich
36:36Chancellery
36:36in the centre
36:37of Berlin
36:37are a kind of
36:40terrible end
36:41of a Shakespearean
36:43tragedy
36:43as the thunder
36:46Russian artillery
36:47all around them.
36:48And they're deep,
36:49deep inside
36:49this sort of
36:50concrete underground
36:51fortress.
36:53Everybody's sort of
36:53kind of going mad
36:55and especially Hitler.
36:56on April the 30th
36:58he committed
36:59suicide
37:00in his bunker
37:01as the city
37:04at the heart
37:05of his
37:05thousand-year Reich
37:06burned to the ground
37:08and crumbled
37:09in ruins
37:09around him.
37:13The war in Europe
37:14ended forever
37:15on May the 7th,
37:171945
37:18and Hitler's rule
37:20was finally over.
37:25The question
37:26of how much
37:26the Germans knew
37:27about what had
37:29happened to the
37:29Jewish population
37:30is very complex.
37:32So certainly
37:32they knew
37:33that their
37:35Jewish compatriots
37:36were disappearing,
37:37being taken away.
37:38They were being
37:39taken away,
37:39they believed,
37:40as indeed
37:41some of the
37:41Jewish people
37:42themselves believed,
37:43they were taken away
37:44to work
37:45in the east.
37:47During the war
37:48word leaked out
37:49from people
37:50who had escaped
37:51some camps,
37:52there were aerial
37:52pictures taken
37:54of places like
37:55Auschwitz.
37:56So, you know,
37:56by the middle
37:57of the war
37:58the world at large
37:59had a very good
38:00idea that this
38:02slaughter was being
38:03carried out
38:03on an industrial
38:04scale.
38:06Yes, some rumours
38:06did circulate back
38:08from soldiers
38:09on leave
38:10and other
38:11information did
38:12filter back
38:13to the Reich
38:14but the German
38:16population was
38:17busy with
38:17facing its own
38:19war, dealing
38:19on a day-to-day
38:20basis with the
38:21course of the
38:21war, allied
38:23bombings,
38:23rationing,
38:24food shortages.
38:28There was a
38:29deliberate policy
38:29on the part
38:30of the Nazis
38:30that this
38:31extermination
38:32should take
38:33place not
38:34on German
38:35soil.
38:36So these
38:36death camps
38:37were all in
38:38Poland, so they
38:38were out of the
38:39direct line of
38:40vision of the
38:41German population.
38:44when the Germans
38:46fully appreciated
38:48what had been
38:49done in their
38:50name by the
38:50Nazis, it took
38:52a very long time
38:53for that to sink
38:53in.
38:54If you look at
38:54public opinion
38:55polls carried out
38:55in the 40s and
38:56the 50s in Germany,
38:57there was still a
38:58lot of residual
38:59affection for
39:00Nazism.
39:01It was felt that
39:02this was something
39:02that had made
39:03Germany great
39:04again, it was
39:05something that
39:05had got things
39:06moving and done.
39:08Yes, there had
39:09been excesses,
39:10the small matter
39:11of the Holocaust
39:11clearly, but
39:13people, some
39:15people in
39:15Germany were
39:16willing to say
39:16if we can
39:17divorce the
39:18kind of genocide
39:19bit from
39:20Nazism, you
39:21know, is
39:21Nazism so
39:22bad?
39:23The minority
39:23of Germans
39:24were still
39:24affectionate
39:26towards Nazism
39:27and towards
39:28Hitler.
39:28the tyrannical
39:38force of
39:39Nazi Germany
39:39sent the
39:40world into
39:41chaos.
39:43An empire
39:45of hate,
39:46violence and
39:46discrimination
39:47had spread
39:48across the
39:48world like
39:49a virus.
39:50The
39:51atrocities of
39:52the Nazi
39:53regime came
39:54to popular
39:54attention.
39:56Both the
39:56Western and
39:57the Soviet
39:57forces came
39:58to liberate
39:59the Nazi
40:00camps and
40:01they were
40:02absolutely
40:02shocked and
40:03horrified with
40:04what they
40:04found.
40:06And once
40:07that became
40:07known to
40:08the German
40:08people as
40:09well, then
40:10they were
40:10again,
40:11absolutely
40:12horrified and
40:13appalled about
40:13what had been
40:14carried out in
40:14their name by
40:15the Hitler
40:15dictatorship.
40:18Hitler's rule
40:19left a mark
40:20on history, a
40:21reminder that
40:22this behavior
40:23should never be
40:24tolerated and
40:25the world should
40:25not dismiss such
40:26brutal atrocities
40:27again.
40:30Certainly, there
40:31are a lot of
40:31reasons why you
40:32might have
40:32voted for Hitler
40:33in the 30s, not
40:34all of which
40:34involved you
40:35being evil.
40:37But certainly, if
40:38you were a fan of
40:39Hitler after the
40:40war still and
40:41after all the
40:41revelations that
40:42had come out,
40:43then I would say
40:43you definitely
40:44are evil.
40:45today, the
40:51Valkyrie
40:52conspirators are
40:53memorialized as
40:54heroes, even
40:55inscribed into the
40:56very geography of
40:57Germany through
40:58street names.
40:59A reminder that
41:00in times of
41:01darkness, there
41:02will always be
41:03those brave enough
41:04to fight evil,
41:05even from the
41:06inside.
41:06German guns, German
41:13bombs.
41:14In these 13
41:15years, they
41:16have tried the
41:18scammers full
41:19of
41:20Star Wars, the
41:24devil's
41:25war, who
41:25will
41:26help.
41:27In any
41:27time, the
41:28war
41:30was
41:31worth
41:31a
41:32game.
41:34This
41:34war
41:36was
41:36a
41:37war
41:38of
41:38the
41:38war
41:39and
41:41were
41:43a
41:43war
41:44was
41:46a
41:47war
41:48is
41:49a
41:49war
41:49in
41:50war and
41:50Transcription by CastingWords
42:20CastingWords
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