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00:02Adolf Hitler's suicide shot reverberates through history.
00:07For 80 years, endless documents have been analyzed, trying to understand this most notorious of tyrants.
00:15Someone who can order the deaths of six million Jews. What kind of person is that?
00:21Now, science is unlocking a new source of information.
00:26Hitler wanted to destroy all traces of himself, but failed.
00:31In the wreckage of his Berlin bunker, an American colonel cut out a swatch of sofa material, stained with Hitler's
00:38blood.
00:39In 1945, it was just a war trophy.
00:42He didn't think 80 years later people were going to try to extract DNA off of it.
00:46But now it's a unique historical document.
00:50Tests have proved it is Hitler's blood.
00:54An exact match.
00:55For the first time, an international team has sequenced his genome.
01:00We've got Adolf Hitler's DNA.
01:02They've already rewritten history.
01:05The rumor that Hitler had Jewish ancestors is not true.
01:08We can actually put that rumor about Jewish ancestry to bed based on the DNA.
01:13A strong association for genes to do with autism could explain his all-or-nothing thinking.
01:20And he actually belongs to the top 1%.
01:23Hitler's genome suggests he may have been genetically predisposed to psychopathic behavior.
01:29When these findings emerged, I was simply flabbergasted.
01:34What other secrets can his DNA unlock about his mental state?
01:40Genetic evidence for Hitler having psychiatric illness is really important.
01:45About his delusions of grandeur.
01:47Hitler felt that he could control the planet.
01:50And about an entirely new insight into his intimate relationships.
01:55He was interested in women, but only at a distance.
01:59He's got a deletion in a gene strongly associated with development of sexual organs.
02:19On the 30th of January 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.
02:27The Nazis called it their seizure of power.
02:31Goebbels straight away organized this huge torchlight parade.
02:36Hitler was basically a nobody from a village in Austria who had nothing to his name.
02:43So how did he get so much influence in power so quickly?
02:46The average person does not do that.
02:51Hitler was far from average.
02:53His passionate oratory commanded huge crowds.
03:02And the talkativeness and the ability to speak so much.
03:06And if you're very charismatic and you have new ideas.
03:10It attracts people to you.
03:17He's accruing more and more power to himself.
03:20And at the same time is the establishment of the first concentration camps.
03:26The intimidation and imprisonment of political opponents.
03:30They were beaten up in the streets by the Nazi stormtroopers.
03:35Hitler's rise to power is characterized by a willingness to use violence.
03:41His greatest hatred was reserved for the Jews.
03:45And Hitler proves to be completely ruthless.
03:49Anti-Semitism becomes German state policy.
03:57And to understand an individual who takes these ideas to an extreme.
04:02To start designing the so-called final solution.
04:07There were 9 million Jews living in Europe.
04:10Of whom 6 million died.
04:13It's a killing machine on a massive scale.
04:21Hitler's obsessive nationalism and use of extreme violence.
04:25Including murder.
04:26Are typical of dictators past and present.
04:34But Hitler was an untypical dictator in one key area.
04:41Mussolini was very well known for his affairs and relationships with women.
04:47And kind of quite proud of showing some of that off.
04:51It was very common among the Nazi leadership.
04:53To have mistresses and many sexual relationships.
04:56Hitler on the other hand was determined to keep his personal and private life absolutely secret.
05:06Why were Hitler's relationships with women so unusual?
05:10For the first time scientists have sequenced his genome.
05:14And discovered something extraordinary.
05:17I have to say there was a bit of a moment.
05:21He's got a deletion in a gene known as PROC2.
05:25So PROC2 is found on chromosome 3.
05:28And we've got two chromosome 3's.
05:31He has a section on one of his.
05:34Where there's a deletion of a crucial letter.
05:36And it's a nonsense deletion.
05:38So if you've not got one working.
05:40It can have a pretty big impact on your health.
05:43And we know that it's strongly associated with something known as Kalman's syndrome.
05:49One of the big things that Kalman's is about is about development of sexual organs.
06:02The DNA diagnosis of Kalman's syndrome reveals an entirely new source of information.
06:09That raises questions about Hitler's sexual development.
06:15At Turku University in Finland, this rare condition is a specialism of Professor Jorma Tapari.
06:22How would this have affected him?
06:26Yeah, the typical symptoms in 10% of the kids with this kind of mutation might have a small penis,
06:34micropenis.
06:35Much more common feature would be that the testes don't descend normally to the scrotum.
06:43The DNA reveals the possible physical impact of Kalman's syndrome.
06:48So it seems a coincidence that during World War II, there was a British propaganda song about his genitals.
07:01In the Second World War, there was a popular song in Britain.
07:06People thought that that was probably not really quite true.
07:14The song was clearly intended to belittle Hitler.
07:18But did it contain a grain of truth?
07:20Pretty much everybody knows there's this song from World War II where it talks about Hitler having only one ball.
07:28What's the historical evidence?
07:30It turns out that this is more or less true.
07:34In 1923, Hitler spent nine months in Landsberg prison.
07:39And in 2010, a medical report was discovered showing that Hitler had right-sided cryptochidism.
07:48In other words, an undescended testicle.
07:50So there's some truth in this rumour that was already being circulated during the war.
07:57Yeah, and now we have genetic evidence which seems to back that up.
08:03Hitler's Proc 2 mutation indicates that as well as an undescended testicle, he may also have had a micropenis.
08:11This diagnosis reflects testimony from a friend of Hitler's during his rise to power in the 1920s.
08:17When he was a young man in the army and would get dressed and undressed in front of his fellow
08:25soldiers,
08:25the other men would make fun and say to him,
08:29your penis is smaller than everybody else's.
08:33And that is potentially more psychologically traumatic for a young boy, a young man, than anything else.
08:43This genetic condition would have shaped Hitler throughout his life.
08:49So as a baby, he could already be starting to show signs of the implications of having this deletion in
08:56that particular gene.
08:58Yes, but that's it in the childhood.
09:02Then the next time one would see something wrong would be in puberty.
09:07So talk me through that. What happens?
09:09Well, most of the ones with Kalman syndrome don't enter puberty because they don't produce testosterone.
09:19Jorma, Hitler is heterozygous, so he's got one copy of the PROC2 gene that's normal, one copy that's not.
09:27But my understanding is that even having just one copy with this mutation, you will have some form of Kalman's.
09:33Is that correct?
09:34That's correct. And the majority of the cases with this mutation are heterozygous.
09:40And it always causes the syndrome, but the severity of the syndrome can be very variable.
09:53So how might fluctuating testosterone levels have affected Hitler?
09:59His iconic moustache shows he managed to enter puberty.
10:03But did his testosterone levels then falter?
10:07A unique historical source might shed light on this question.
10:11Incredibly, despite his many declamatory speeches on film, Hitler's speaking voice was recorded only once.
10:20This is the place where Hitler met Marshal Mannerheim, the chief of Finnish military force during the Second World War.
10:31After recording the official reception and speeches aboard the train,
10:36the Finnish sound engineer kept recording as Hitler chatted casually over lunch.
10:43So this is a picture of that meeting?
10:46Yes.
10:48They have a nice white cloth on the table, though, which we don't have.
10:53Yeah.
10:54But it's the very same table and the microphones were up there.
10:58Wow.
10:59The only time we have recording of Hitler speaking in normal circumstances.
11:06Should we have a listen?
11:18So that sounds like a grown man's voice.
11:21Yeah.
11:26So his voice is quite deep.
11:29It is, yeah.
11:31Yeah.
11:34It shows that he had gone through puberty and he had his voice break.
11:41He might have not had the most severe condition because the mutation was only in one of the genes, not
11:52on both.
11:52He's certainly born with some kind of abnormalities around his sexual organs, so he may have had a micropenis.
12:00We know he certainly seems to have had something with one of his testicles.
12:04He might have not had sexual desire because that's the specific symptom of lack of testosterone.
12:12Although women were, of course, so idolizing him, bringing him flowers and screaming and everything like the pop star.
12:24But he doesn't seem to take that as a hint to anything else.
12:32He's not interested in sex.
12:39The Nazi philosophy emphasized the importance of fertility, of large families, of lots of children, creating a racially pure German
12:49nation.
12:51Hitler clearly goes very much against this in not having any kind of family, in not having children, in not
12:57being married.
12:58Hitler quite effectively cultivates the image of a man devoted entirely to the fatherland.
13:06Our discovery strongly suggests that it may have been only a convenient cover for his Kalman syndrome.
13:23Analysis of Hitler's DNA shows he had a rare condition called Kalman syndrome.
13:31Symptoms include low testosterone and abnormal genital development, which may have brought psychological challenges.
13:42Back then, if a boy was thought to be in any way not fully masculine from a psychological point of
13:50view, that could well have had a big impact upon his sense of masculinity, his sense of identity, and make
13:58one feel very, very depressed, very, very ashamed, and also desperate.
14:05How would that have affected him, growing up and into adulthood, and his relationships with women?
14:11He really, really did struggle to feel comfortable with women, and that in itself can be an act of great
14:19shame.
14:21And the earlier that shaming exercise takes place, the more rage, fury, and murderousness will develop within one's psyche.
14:34Hitler's friend, August Kubitschek, wrote in his memoir about the teenage adults' dysfunctional relationships.
14:42Kubitschek said he was with Hitler daily from age 15 to 19.
14:46And he clearly can state that Hitler never had a girlfriend during that time, never had an ongoing sexual relationship.
14:55Kubitschek describes how Hitler had a crush on a girl named Stephanie.
15:00He never actually went out with her, but he did have a couple year long infatuation with her.
15:04Hitler fantasized about kidnapping Stephanie and them dying in a melodramatic death pact.
15:12It's the first and last time I heard him seriously speak of suicide.
15:16He would jump in the Danube River and make an end of it.
15:20But Stephanie would have to die with him. He insisted on that.
15:29Many years later, in 1929, there's a record of an actual relationship.
15:35It was far from a healthy romance.
15:39He was 40, she was just 21, and she was his half-niece.
15:46Geli Raubal.
15:47She was a young and attractive woman.
15:51Kind of liked attention, she was quite flirtatious, she had quite a lot of admirers.
16:01Hitler was clearly infatuated, obsessed with his half-niece, Geli Raubal,
16:06in a way that he wasn't obsessed with any other woman in his life before or after.
16:13She felt trapped by Hitler's attention.
16:17Hitler was controlling, Hitler was jealous.
16:21He was quite manipulative of her, possibly there was violence involved.
16:28Lots of people think that Hitler was having some kind of sexual relationship with this niece of his.
16:35We do not know for certain.
16:38Clearly, she was very unhappy.
16:40Geli, after two years living with her controlling uncle Adolf, made a tragic decision.
16:49In 1931, Geli took her own life.
16:54She used Hitler's pistol and shot herself in his apartment.
17:00The shadow of suicide often fell over Hitler's relationships with women.
17:05One historian has estimated that of the seven women with whom Hitler had some kind of boyfriend-girlfriend encounter,
17:16at least three of these women attempted suicide and another three actually committed suicide.
17:24Including his longest and most famous relationship with Eva Braun.
17:31After she met Hitler, she endeavoured to commit suicide not once, but twice.
17:36So whether he was already attracted to people with a passion for self-harm and death, or whether he actually
17:46was so cruel to them that he really caused the suicide, that we do not know for certain.
17:54Hitler's relationship with Eva Braun was one that lasted 14 years.
18:00He was attracted to her from the very beginning.
18:03He developed quite a fascination with her, but what really went on between the two of them sexually, we do
18:11not know.
18:13Hitler's housekeeper, Herbert Doring, and his wife were close to the couple, and well placed to discover the truth of
18:20their sexual activities.
18:22Also, my wife is very curious, as I am, and my wife has washed me often.
18:28And at the first time, she has looked at me, with a lot of curiosity, whether it was sexual.
18:34But there was never something to show.
18:36And my wife has always looked at me, and there was nothing sexual, nothing, nothing.
18:44Never.
18:44No one has ever really been able to explain why Hitler was so uncomfortable around women throughout his life, or
18:52why he probably never entered into intimate relations with women.
18:55But now we know that he had Kalman syndrome, this could be the answer we've been looking for.
19:01The Kalman diagnosis is a new source of information, filling gaps left by the existing records about Hitler's health.
19:11The medical notes made by the FĂĽhrer's personal physician, Dr Theodor Morel, can now be examined in a fresh light.
19:19Morel was giving Hitler all kinds of pills and injections, around 80 different medications, over the course of the time
19:29that he spent with him.
19:31It's unlikely Dr Morel knew about Kalman syndrome, as it wasn't identified until 1944.
19:39But now Hitler's DNA has revealed the PROC2 gene mutation.
19:44One of Dr Morel's treatments stands out.
19:49Testosterone.
19:50This is an entry here from Morel's diary.
19:54It's the 24th of January, and we can see here 25 milligrams of testosterone injected, so we know that he
20:02was regularly injecting Hitler with testosterone.
20:07It's not that unusual that testosterone was being used at this time, because people understood it could help energy, it
20:13could help fatigue, for example, as well as things like muscle mass and really producing masculine characteristics as it was
20:19branded and sold as.
20:20Also things like erectile dysfunction, loss of libido.
20:23Unfortunately, Morel doesn't explain explicitly in his notes why he's giving Hitler testosterone, but he's certainly receiving it on a
20:31fairly regular basis.
20:33In Kalman's, the treatment is actually sex hormone.
20:35So Morel may have identified some sort of sexual issue, we don't know, but maybe they were onto the right
20:42track.
20:44Dr Morel unwittingly provides more evidence that supports the Kalman diagnosis.
20:51His own body odour.
20:54Kalman syndrome has two principal features.
20:59One is there is no sex hormone production.
21:04And the other one is the lack of sense of smell.
21:09While Hitler trusted him entirely, some of the other leading Nazis took quite a strong dislike to him.
21:18People were complaining to Hitler about him.
21:21They were even complaining also that he was smelly.
21:24To which Hitler responded,
21:26I employed Dr Morel not for his fragrance, but for his skills as a doctor.
21:32The very fact that everyone in Hitler's inner circle seemed to have been irritated by the smell of Dr Morel,
21:41and Hitler did not, would suggest that Hitler might have not been able to smell very well, which now in
21:48the light of the diagnosis of Kalman's is highly significant.
21:55Hitler wanted to be seen as a godlike figure, the heroic leader of a pure Aryan race.
22:04But Kalman syndrome now reveals the truth about his own body.
22:10Hitler knew nothing of the DNA clues that would be left in his blood.
22:15But the Nazis did understand that disease and disability could be passed down the generations.
22:22So we've known about the heredity of characteristics for literally thousands of years.
22:30I mean, we know things like the early farmers used it as a way of kind of selecting for crops
22:35and selecting animals and domesticating animals.
22:40Selective breeding to improve livestock is seen as a good thing.
22:44Selective human breeding, eugenics, is widely condemned and illegal.
22:49A central component of Nazi ideology was eugenics, that the health of the nation could be improved through selective breeding.
23:01In his earliest days as dictator, Hitler authorized forced sterilization of people with mental and physical disabilities to stop them
23:10passing on what he believed were impurities.
23:14Eugenics and a determination to ensure the purity of the Aryan race was an obsession that led to the worst
23:22atrocities of the Nazi regime.
23:25In 1939, Hitler signed a decree to eliminate people he deemed unworthy of life in a state-organized program of
23:34euthanasia.
23:45This is Hartheim Castle near Hitler's hometown of Linz, which was used as part of the so-called euthanasia program
23:55to murder the mentally and physically disabled.
24:00It's the one killing decree or the one order to murder people actually signed by Adolf Hitler.
24:13The castle was a home for disabled people, beginning in 1898.
24:23The Nazis changed the castle into an annihilation center in March 1940.
24:30And they murdered up to 30,000 people here.
24:38This was the former guest chamber.
24:40It was disguised as a shower room.
24:43About 30 people were brought in at the same time.
24:48And from outside, the doctors, they filled in the carbon monoxide.
24:59It's hard to imagine, you cannot imagine what took place here.
25:06Hartheim formed a prototype for the use of gas chambers for the mass murder of six million European Jews in
25:15the extermination camps set up by the Nazis.
25:20Hitler's policies are completely around eugenics and based on his own DNA, particularly with the Kalman syndrome.
25:29If he had been able to look at his own DNA as if it was somebody that he was making
25:35a decision about whether or not should go to the gas chambers or not, he almost certainly would have sent
25:40himself.
25:43The castle archive reveals that Hitler's policies did send one of his relatives to die at our time, his second
25:50cousin, Aloisa Weit.
25:53She'd been confined for years in a psychiatric facility in Vienna.
25:58Her medical records state she imagined she could see ghosts and evil people.
26:04Her vivid hallucinations and delusional behavior often meant she was restrained on a bed.
26:11The diagnosis doctors gave Hitler's cousin was schizophrenia.
26:18This could have implications for our understanding of Hitler's mental state, because schizophrenia runs in families.
26:34Groundbreaking analysis of Hitler's DNA is unlocking more secrets of the infamous dictator.
26:40You get a little glimpse into his personality by looking at his DNA.
26:47What I'm doing in my research is that I'm trying to identify genetic risk factors for psychiatric conditions.
26:57We know that Hitler's relative was diagnosed with schizophrenia and that it runs in families.
27:03So what does Hitler's polygenic score suggest about his likelihood of developing the condition?
27:11You can see here the distribution of the score for schizophrenia in the population.
27:15And you can see that Hitler is located in the very end of the distribution.
27:21He has a very high polygenic score for schizophrenia.
27:24Actually, he belongs to the top 1%.
27:27Top 1%?
27:29Yeah, it's high.
27:30Wow.
27:31But what does it actually mean when somebody's in that top 1% in terms of how likely they are
27:36to develop the condition?
27:38Yeah.
27:38It's very difficult to say from the score because it's only capturing a small part of the risk.
27:44But he is highly loaded with common variants that increases the risk.
27:50The latest DNA result reveals Hitler had an increased risk of developing schizophrenia.
27:58Schizophrenia is a very challenging mental illness where the person experiences hallucinations and delusions.
28:08It often means that your everyday life falls to pieces.
28:13Hitler would not be diagnosed with schizophrenia today, as he did not show these serious debilitating symptoms.
28:21In acute schizophrenia, there's a total fragmentation of the personality.
28:27And so a person in that state has no ability to lead a country, no ability to wage war.
28:34If he had full-blown schizophrenia, he couldn't have achieved what he achieved.
28:41Hitler may not have had schizophrenia, but his DNA analysis reveals a range of genes associated with it.
28:49When we look at physical health conditions, sometimes we can find a single gene that is the cause.
28:58But when it comes to psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions, it's very rarely the case that there's a single gene.
29:06There are hundreds of genes that are likely to be involved.
29:11Recent international studies show that some of these schizophrenia genes may actually have positive effects.
29:18Research found relatives of people with schizophrenia are often extremely creative.
29:25In families that have schizophrenia, you often find that there's a genius.
29:30These genes may have given him the creative, unconventional thinking that drove his early success.
29:42At the Berghof, his mountain retreat in Bavaria, Hitler conceived his plans for Nazi domination.
29:57It is from the picture-perfect world of the Bavarian Alps that he starts the war, that he conducts the
30:04war, that he brings death and destruction across the world.
30:10Hitler's plans at the start of the war were spectacularly successful.
30:16Poland quickly fell, Denmark and Norway followed.
30:20His armies swept through Belgium, the Netherlands and part of France, then Yugoslavia and Greece.
30:27Some historians have put Hitler's success down to his unconventional thinking.
30:33In May 1940, when most of Hitler's generals wanted to invade France from the north,
30:39Hitler insisted on attacking the further south through the difficult wooded terrain of the Ardennes.
30:45This plan proved to be a brilliant and decisive success.
30:50The French army collapsed. It was all over within six weeks.
30:54Just as Hitler had predicted.
30:59Hitler's DNA is suggesting new explanations for his behaviour.
31:05Schizophrenic traits involve unconventional creativity.
31:09Autistic traits include attention to detail.
31:12ADHD can add hyper-focus.
31:17He also often had a manic energy in pursuit of a goal or idea.
31:23He was a man who became obsessed by the things that interested him.
31:28And he would focus on these things to the exclusion of everything else in his life.
31:35Sleep, hunger, relationships, everything.
31:41Hitler's doctor noted this behaviour.
31:45Theodore Morell diagnosed Hitler in his diaries with manic depressive illness in 1943.
31:51His own physician diagnosed him during his lifetime with this condition.
31:59If the latest DNA analysis detects genes for manic depression, now called bipolar disorder, it could transform our view of
32:09Hitler.
32:09We're also looking at his score for bipolar disorder.
32:13And if you look here again at the distribution, you can see that Hitler is loaded really at the top.
32:20So he has a very high, high score.
32:22Actually, he belongs to the top 1% of individuals with a high score.
32:26Another 1%?
32:27Yeah, really, really striking results.
32:33Bipolar really means that your mood swings from very low when you're depressed through to very high when you are
32:42manic.
32:43So it's sometimes also called manic depression.
32:46Hitler had manic depressive periods throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
32:51Hitler would be highly excitable, highly talkative, very overactive for a few weeks.
32:56And then times when he would be highly underactive, not get out of bed, not say anything, not eat anything
33:01for a few weeks.
33:02And back and forth between these states.
33:04If we look back at Hitler's youth, in the diaries of his teenage friend Kubitschek, before politics, before power, the
33:14signs are already there.
33:16Kubitschek describes him being in a state of ecstasy and talking and talking and talking in a grandiose way.
33:23And the talkativeness and the ability to speak so much is a manic trait.
33:29That doesn't happen in a normal mentally healthy person.
33:37Hitler's manic phases may have aided his rise to power.
33:45And fueled his early success in directing the war.
33:50But then he seemed to lose touch with reality.
33:55Hitler made a very bold and surprising decision.
33:59To invade Russia.
34:01Hitler!
34:03This time, his plans led to disaster.
34:08In this kind of moment of euphoria, Hitler starts to fantasize what the world would look like after the defeat
34:18of the Soviet Union.
34:23Hitler, against the explicit advice of his officers, told that he knew best.
34:33This was a much bigger enemy with much bigger manpower resources.
34:40And it was also a much bigger terrain and territory.
34:45Hitler's attack on Stalingrad leads to over half a million German casualties.
34:51His sixth army, which had played a key role in the devastating assault on France, is destroyed.
35:00After crushing defeats in Russia, Hitler's mood swings grew more severe.
35:09He was no longer the energetic, highly active, excitable, but very functional and often very calm, charismatic, creative leader of
35:19the early 1930s.
35:20He was becoming more and more angry and irritable and rageful.
35:25Hitler increasingly resorts to haranguing those around him, dictating to them, flying off the handle.
35:32It became virtually impossible for these military advisors to tell him the truth, to disagree with him, if they didn't
35:39want to incur his wrath.
35:44As Hitler's mood swings and rages grew worse, his personal physician, Dr. Theodor Morel, tried to treat him.
35:54What he tried to do was to treat the lows with the amphetamines, and the highs with barbiturates, and of
36:00course there's only so far you can get with that.
36:02So Hitler generally got worse.
36:05Morel gave Hitler Vita-Multin tablets, a mixture he made up himself, that dramatically altered the Fuhrer's moods.
36:13Morel gave Hitler gold foil tablets.
36:15And that tablet was once analyzed by another German physician in the Nazi hierarchy, and it turned out to be
36:23methamphetamine.
36:24The worst possibility you could give to a person with bipolar would be amphetamines.
36:31So Dr. Morel was treating Hitler's depression with the amphetamines, but what he didn't appreciate is that they were also
36:38causing the manic states to be worse,
36:40and then he would cycle back into his depressions again.
36:43So then he would just get more and more amphetamine, and it became a vicious circle.
36:47But he certainly was not in touch with reality yet.
37:01On the 6th of June 1944, Hitler was at his mountain hideaway, the Berghof.
37:09After talking into the early hours, he finally went to bed at 3am.
37:17One hour later, news came in of a vast Allied invasion on the beaches of northern France.
37:27It was D-Day.
37:36The generals were in a quandary.
37:39They just didn't know what to do.
37:41They couldn't actually give out any orders without Hitler's say-so on the one hand.
37:46And yet, on the other hand, they were fearful of a terrible fit of rage if they woke Hitler up.
37:52The landing of Allied troops in Normandy began the recapture of Europe from the Nazis.
38:02As Germany's enemies invaded, vital hours were wasted.
38:13When Hitler woke at 10am, he was unconcerned, even optimistic.
38:20He kind of delusionally seemed to think that Germany would prevail.
38:24When D-Day started, there was this moment of elation, of almost euphoria in the German population because of successful
38:32propaganda.
38:34Germans thought, finally, we can still win this war.
38:38But this is, of course, all based on Hitler's delusions, on Hitler's self-belief and grandeur.
38:46In reality, it was the beginning of the end.
38:50In January 1945, France was being liberated and the Soviets were sweeping through Eastern Europe.
38:57As Germany's fortunes declined, Hitler's mental and physical state deteriorated rapidly.
39:05Hitler fled to Berlin into an underground bunker to avoid the Russian bombardment.
39:19The FĂĽhrer was chauffeured through the bombed-out ruins of his capital in an armoured limousine.
39:29And now we're getting ever closer to the bunker and to the heart of what was then Hitler's Berlin.
39:39What's it like at that point?
39:41Hitler would have been driving through a devastated Berlin.
39:46Wow.
39:46And he's travelling from the, more or less, the western outskirts into the centre.
39:51Can't really fail to notice how devastated Berlin was.
39:56A Berlin which is large chunks of Israel at this point?
39:59Yes.
40:01Well, given that Germany is being destroyed, he knows it's over.
40:06The sun is setting on the third ray.
40:12The devastation of Berlin matched Hitler's own mental and physical decline.
40:19This was clear to staff in the bunker, including his secretary, Traudel Junge.
40:25He looked like a shadow.
40:28He looked emotionless and very grey and pale and like a broken old man.
40:38His leg was lame and his movements were very slow.
40:44He was not, not anymore the dictator and impressive, fascinating man who was earlier.
40:55Hitler was only 56 years old.
40:57But staff also noticed further evidence of his deterioration.
41:02A trembling left hand.
41:04Possibly a sign of Parkinson's disease.
41:09For the majority of cases, DNA analysis can't help doctors diagnose Parkinson's.
41:16Can we find clear evidence of the condition from another source?
41:21This last piece of footage of Hitler, it's from the final days of the war, the final days of his
41:27life.
41:30And this is the official version of the footage that was shown in the German newsreel at the time.
41:37I think what strikes me about this footage is not what we see, but what we don't see.
41:42What's really hidden in this footage is his left hand.
41:46It's only when we see the uncensored version that we know what's really happening.
41:51And we do have the full footage, which was not released to the German public at the time.
41:57So now we see this left hand behind his back and there is this rest tremor.
42:01It's a very coarse tremor.
42:03The regime did not want the German public to see this footage.
42:05Because it shows us for sure that this is a neurodegenerative condition.
42:09This is Parkinson's.
42:10And there is no doubt about the diagnosis here.
42:19Hitler, an unknown provincial loner, tried to realize his dream of a thousand year German Reich.
42:27That fantasy was shattered.
42:31By April 1945, Soviet guns were trained on his bunker and shells were pounding above.
42:42Terrified of being captured by the Soviets, Hitler planned his and Eva Braun's suicide.
42:48At the end, even most of Hitler's inner circle had abandoned him.
42:55Hitler was losing any sense of reality.
42:59He continued directing the war, holding meetings with his generals, moving armies around the map.
43:07In reality, those armies had collapsed.
43:13By this very late stage, Hitler seemed to be losing grip on reality.
43:18He was determined to keep fighting to the bitter end.
43:21And it was very, very late in the day, maybe just like one week before the very end, that he
43:27finally acknowledged that he was beaten.
43:32Hitler's mindset, Hitler's personality was such that there could only be death by that point.
43:42It is just unimaginable that Hitler would have wanted to sit things out.
43:48It is absolutely clear that Hitler would rather die than live beyond the moment where he could still control things.
43:59Hitler maintained absolute control over his suicide and left detailed instructions with his valet, Heinz Linger.
44:07He gave me the order five days before to get gasoline to burn the body.
44:16He actually marries the previous day. He marries his longtime companion, Afer Braun.
44:22In the early hours of the morning, there's a little wedding celebration.
44:26There are guests, there are drinks.
44:29The following day, around 3.30 in the afternoon, Afer Braun takes cyanide and Hitler shoots himself with his pistol.
44:43Hitler tried to destroy every trace of himself to preserve his godlike image, but failed.
44:51Something crucial survived to reveal his secrets.
44:56His DNA.
44:58DNA.
44:59There had been attempts for a long time to obtain DNA, to analyze it.
45:04It is remarkable that finally it has been achieved.
45:08The DNA analysis is a new source of evidence, revealing conditions likely to have shaped Hitler's thinking and changed history.
45:16The genetic findings from the blood are absolutely extraordinary.
45:21I just cannot believe how well they fit with everything that I know about psychiatry.
45:30Some historians are very motivated to believe that if Hitler has a psychiatric illness, that in some way he can't
45:37be blamed for the evil things that happened when he was the leader.
45:41You are responsible for it, whether you have a mental illness or not.
45:45We may never fully understand Adolf Hitler, but analyzing his DNA has brought us closer than ever before.
45:52There's no doubt in my mind that these findings will change the way we think about Hitler in many ways,
45:58and also add a new layer of understanding of him.
46:02I mean, people are fascinated by Hitler and by his mind, maybe just to try and make sense of the
46:10incomprehensible, because someone who can order the deaths of six million Jews.
46:16You know, what kind of person is that?
46:19Our behavior is a complex mix of genes and environment, and looking at anything that could give us answers becomes
46:29part of the picture.
46:31We had these kind of tantalizing clues about Hitler, but now we've got some genetic information that backs that up.
46:40DNA can be likened to another text, helping to solve historical mysteries.
46:50The untold story of a legendary queen, power struggles and battles since before she took the throne, becoming Elizabeth streaming
46:58now.
46:59Luscious, subtle and ice cold next tonight, Samantha Morton is a one-woman trail of chaos, the devastating Serpent Queen.
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