Rise of the Nazis (2019) s01e01 Episode Script

1
..with elections, parliament,
and the rule of law.
Just four years later,
freedom of speech is over.
Most of the political opposition
is in jail
and the government
is in the hands of murderers.
This is the story
of how democracy died.
To piece together how it happened,
historians and experts
have examined those four years,
each from a different
individual perspective.
You cajole, you influence,
youmanipulate.
They'll take us inside the minds
of those that fought fascism
They've realised that these people
are after your heads.
They want to annihilate you
from existence altogether.
..and the Nazis themselves.
Himmler genuinely believed that he
would create a racially pure Germany
where the Aryan race
would reign supreme.
The moments when history
hung in the balance
and the world's worst atrocities
could have been prevented.
Mass murder was no problem.
But it was important
to be socially acceptable.
Do people care about the truth?
There's a black hole
in the heart of Europe.
Germany, a once-great nation,
is on its knees.
The people, having endured
years of economic hardship,
are looking for change.
But no-one knows what kind of change
they will choose.
Another milestone
is marked
in Germany's political history.
The 1930 general election
should have brought clarity.
But it didn't.
It's a total mess,
the vote split between
14 different parties.
The Communists.
The Social Democrats.
The Centre Party is just about able
to put together a moderate coalition
government, but it's a weak one.
The only party who are happy,
who make substantial gains,
are the Nazis.
Just a few years ago, the Nazis
were violent revolutionaries.
But their revolution failed
..and Hitler was sent to prison.
But out of that failure,
Hitler devised a new strategy
for the Nazis -
to pretend to be
a legitimate political party
and destroy democracy from within.
For years, though, they were
seen as the lunatic fringe.
Until now.
In 1930,
the Nazis have 18% of the vote
Moonlight Sonata
by Beethoven
..and that captures the interest
of this man.
Germany's ultimate
political operative -
a right-wing aristocratic general,
Kurt von Schleicher.
It has been noted by many people
that "Schleicher"
Schleichen in German
means to sneak, to creep.
So in English he would be
the creeper or the sneaker,
which strangely is a very accurate
denomination for what he did
..and for what he was.
If you see politics as a game,
a schleicher is a master
in the play of power.
Von Schleicher's profession
is to observe
..everybody.
And the Nazis
appear like deus ex machina,
or like a jack in the box.
It's something
which was not foreseen,
it's saying, "We offer you this."
"Here we are,
and we offer you a part
"of the German working class
on a silver plate."
The Nazis have a kind of
street cred.
And Schleicher is cynical enough
and he thinks to be clever enough
to say,
"This is a horse
that we are going to ride."
Schleicher wants to use the Nazis
to solve a big problem -
the threat posed
to the aristocratic elite
from the increasingly powerful
forces of the left.
So Schleicher cooks up a plan.
He wants to replace
the current chancellor,
supported by a moderate coalition,
with his own right-wing choice.
But to do this he needs two things -
the backing of the Nazis
in the Reichstag
..and the support of Germany's
head of state.
The man who has the power
to hire and fire a chancellor.
So Schleicher has to persuade
President Hindenburg,
an 82-year-old war hero,
to work with the Nazis.
Hindenburg was trying to
make sense of this rather chaotic
and complex situation.
You want the book? Yeah.
He's not really a politician at all,
is my reading on his character.
Soldiering, er,
particularly in wartime conditions,
is an exercise -
amongst other things - in command.
Politics are somewhat different,
particularly in a democracy.
And I could see him saying,
"God, I wish for the
simplicities of military command."
Which, of course,
were not open to him.
He had to do the best he could.
Others tried to manipulate him,
of course.
If we look at politics as a game,
as Schleicher does,
Hindenburg simply is
what in chess would be the king.
Everything comes down to
who is close to Hindenburg,
who is close to the king,
is close to power.
So Schleicher was one of
the closest persons,
if not the closest person
to the president,
is trying to influence
and to engineer
meeting with the Nazis.
So Schleicher persuades
the president
to take a meeting
with Adolf Hitler.
Neither of them have any idea
who they're dealing with.
Hitler is living with his niece,
Geli Raubal,
who it's rumoured
he was having sex with.
Right.
Yep.
Hitler was aa narcissist.
Obsessed with power.
Belief that he was a man of destiny.
And all of these things
grew over time.
He was increasingly ruthless.
He was filled with hate,
particularly against the Jews.
He was, in the end,
a man of violence.
Hitler's niece Geli is found dead.
She's shot herself in the chest
with Hitler's revolver.
There are moments in Hitler's life
when he completely loses control.
You can think, for example,
of towards the end of his life,
in the bunker in 1945,
when he completely goes to pieces.
And this also happens with the death
of his half-niece, Geli Raubal,
his girlfriend of the time.
Not necessarily because he loved her
and he was shocked and so on
but because he thinks his whole
political career is finished.
But just as he thinks
it might all be over,
only three weeks
after her suicide
..Schleicher has organized
an audience for Hitler
with President Hindenburg.
The key question
is to sell the concept
that Hitler could be used
to build a right-wing coalition
which is based on a common hatred
and on common enemies
that they have.
For Hitler,
this is a moment when he realises
that he has arrived.
He's now become part of
the political game.
Hitler no doubt
had his own personal feelings.
But I suspect Hindenburg's
looking down his nose at Hitler.
Now, mind you, being a somewhat
snobbish dimension to this.
Von Hindenburg is an aristocrat,
he is a general,
indeed, he is the president
of his country.
Hitler fought in the first war
as a corporal.
And Hitler's time
in the German army
was not marked by
any particular distinction.
He was rather dismissive
of what he called
"this Austrian corporal".
Hitler thinks it's gone
pretty well, really.
He comes away from it thinking
that Hindenburg now knows
who he is, for one thing,
and that in due course,
Hindenburg would be prepared
under some circumstances
to appoint him as Reich-Chancellor.
Hindenburg concludes
Hitler is best suited
for the office of postmaster, quote,
"so that he can lick me from behind
on my stamps," unquote.
So it wasn'ta very deep
impression that Hitler made.
This is not how things are.
An upstart.
Schleicher at this moment
is annoyed.
"These people are very precious.
We need them."
We would like to do politics
only with, you know,
general staff-trained officers
like in the good old times,
but unfortunately we do live
in a republican democratic reality.
So Schleicher thinks
if plan A goes wrong,
you should have a plan B.
While Hitler is the leader
of the Nazis' political party,
they also have a paramilitary wing
called the Stormtroopers.
These disenfranchised men are used
to dish out violence on the streets
to their enemies.
But in a way that the Nazi Party
can deny involvement in.
All part of Hitler's secret agenda
to wage war
against the Nazis' political rivals.
In this too,
Schleicher sees an opportunity.
Maybe he can persuade Hindenburg
to work with the Nazis
as a way of harnessing
these Stormtroopers.
For Schleicher,
the Stormtroopers
are precious elements,
as he calls the Stormtroopers,
because the left-wing insurgency -
which is communism, socialism,
the unions -
probably has to be broken
with force
and these people represent this
force and they have this power.
The German army
is weak and depleted,
an issue that the old man
cares about.
Maybe they could use the
Stormtroopers to bolster the ranks.
Schleicher definitely knows
which buttons
to press with Hindenburg.
Hindenburg regards it
as his duty as president
to see Germany back
as a great power.
So Schleicher
is saying to Hindenburg,
the Nazis, with the Stormtroopers,
represent a fresh start.
I mean, as a soldier,
that would have resounded with him
without doubt,
in my view.
With the president on board,
he now needs to persuade Hitler
to join his right-wing coalition
government as the junior partner.
Hitler really is not somebody
who's going to enter
any kind of coalition government
unless he's at its head.
That would violate
the leadership principle.
It would kind of undermine
his charisma, his image
and his self-image
as the man who is in charge.
So Hitler says no.
What Hitler wants
is another election,
in which he hopes
to do even better.
So Schleicher offers another deal.
He'll bring elections forward
on condition Hitler doesn't vote
down his right-wing coalition.
In this moment he perceives him
as a servant,
someone who was going to play
a supporting role
in the system which would be run
by aristocrats like himself.
He thinks he can somehow
blackmail the Nazis,
he can put pressure on the Nazis,
and that sooner or later,
they are going to eat from his hand.
Whatever he thinks Hitler's
extracted as a condition
of the support of the Nazis,
that elections should be held,
Schleicher imagined he was
manipulating Hitler,
whereas in fact,
it's the other way round.
So while Schleicher
plots his next chancellor,
Hitler sets about winning
the hearts and minds
of the German people.
He portrayed himself
as a man of the people.
He wasn't a toff, he wasn't
a member of the elites.
He was a man who projected himself
as an ordinary bloke,
as it were, and that, I think,
managed to unite
many different kinds of people.
While Hitler's support grows,
some realise that he's not
the respectable politician he seems.
And one man tries to prove it
in court.
Hans Litten is anxious.
He saw the rise of what he believes
is going to be
a very dangerous movement.
Litten is a lawyer who is powered
by the idea that law is important.
He doesn't see law as
just a set of rules.
He sees it as being the thing
that will make the difference
in creating a better society -
a foundation,
a rock on which it can be built.
He is talking about human rights
at a time when very few people did.
And he takes on his cases
as though life depended on it.
Litten sees what the Stormtroopers
are doing on the streets.
When they attack a nightclub
full of communists,
dozens are injured,
and four Stormtroopers are charged.
Litten wants to join the dots
back to the Nazi Party itself.
Hitler is saying
that he believes in law,
he believes in
a rules-based society,
and he would never himself speak
of violence, or using violence.
But Hans Litten, he understood what
fascism was about,
he understood what Nazism
was about.
And so he thinks,
"How do we make this case
"of use in a bigger struggle?"
And he decides that
a summons should be issued
to get Hitler before the court.
When Hitler enters the court,
the Stormtroopers who are on trial
stand up in the dock
and raise their hands
in the Hitler salute.
And they show their dedication
to their leader.
Hitler is absolutely in control.
Hitler went there prepared to say
something very well-rehearsed,
and says that
he had no knowledge at all
of what these Stormtroopers
would do.
This was a rogue group.
How often have we heard
great leaders
saying that somehow
this was an out-of-control group
and that this has nothing
to do with THEM?
And Litten slowly but surely
starts to unpick that.
Hitler is cross-examined
for three hours.
Who are the Stormtroopers?
What is expected of them?
Tell me the truth.
As Hitler continues to deny
Stormtrooper violence
is official Nazi policy,
Litten produces a pamphlet.
It's a quick guide to Nazi ideology
for new Stormtrooper recruits.
In it, there's a line that says
if the Nazis can't come to power
by democratic means
Litten plays his trump card,
and he presents it to Hitler.
"Look at this.
"You're telling us
you are a democrat?
"That you're running
a democratic party?
"Look what your pamphlets say."
It must have been so exhilarating.
You know, there's nothing
more satisfying than
a good cross-examination,
if you're a lawyer.
And then he gets angry.
From this position of
calm leadership,
he becomes the rather frothing man
that we know
he was capable of being.
By keeping at it,
slowly and patiently,
he wore down the veneer.
And although, you know,
this was not about, you know,
a witness saying, "I'm guilty,"
you just know that someone
has been reduced in size.
And I think Hitler was.
A reporter secretly takes
this photograph.
The sense you have
in looking at the photograph
Hitler knows that his performance
was not good.
That Litten had exposed
to the public
what this man was really like.
Hans Litten, he was exactly the sort
of man who Hitler rather despised.
A Jewish lawyer, a clever man,
an intellectual.
They were traitors. They were tools
of a world Jewish conspiracy.
Vermin, they were less than nothing.
And so it was a great victory
for Litten,
but by God had he made an enemy
in the Fuhrer.
Back in the halls of power,
Schleicher goes to work
to bring down the chancellor.
Schleicher's political game operates
on different levels at once.
He conspires with
the military elite.
He uses his influence with media
and big business.
He spreads gossip to weaken
the chancellor's standing
in political circles
..telling everyone the Chancellor
has failed to get Germany
out of its political
and economic mess.
And all the while, he continues
to work on Hindenburg
..the only man
who can fire a chancellor
..convincing him that to keep
the current chancellor in power
is bad for his reputation.
Schleicher knows about how much
Hindenburg likes his own reputation.
This is another button
that he can push.
The chancellor is a failure,
too much under the spell
of the socialists.
He should go.
Well, I think the evidence is clear,
the chancellor cannot go on.
It could be very important
for the future stability of Germany.
This is Schleicher at his best.
These are ways to rule a country
which are based on conspiracy,
intrigue.
This is not what a republic
is meant to be.
And so within weeks of
his deal with Hitler,
Schleicher has persuaded
the President
to fire the Chancellor
and accept Schleicher's choice
for a new chancellor.
What sort of person
is Franz von Papen?
Well, he claims
he's completely surprised
that anyone should imagine him
becoming Chancellor of the Reich.
But on the other hand,
I find that quite hard to believe,
that he hasn't imagined himself
in that position.
You get the impression of
a little bit of a popinjay.
He's always terribly well-dressed.
He always has a flower
in his buttonhole.
He's always immaculately turned out.
And outwardly very charming.
You know, he knew how to play
in a very Germanic way,
he knew how to play the gentleman,
although he has the reputation
of someone
with a degree of incompetence.
Schleicher, at this point,
is looking for a man
who would basically
do what he tells him to do,
someone that he could manipulate.
Well, if we try to think
with Schleicher's mind
in this moment, this is a very,
very understandable choice.
I would even say
it was a very good choice.
The idea that Papen
is sort of useful idiot
for other people around him
is clearly nonsense.
It's Schleicher's men,
it's Schleicher's cabinet.
It's going to be
Schleicher's politics.
Kurt von Schleicher
thought he could exploit him.
Of course,
the reality is that he is
..for want of a better word,
prone to subterfuge.
He is cunning.
And because they need
the Nazis' support,
they turn a blind eye to
the Stormtroopers' violence.
I certainly don't get the impression
that Papen is particularly moved
by what's happening on the streets.
You know, he is a man who
..does not see
the morality of his position.
And as far as he's concerned,
if there's a brawl between the
Nazis and the communists,
the people he wants to lose
in that brawl
will be the communists
and not the Nazis.
For Papen, the Nazis
are the ticket to power.
So Schleicher finally has
what he wants -
a right-wing government,
a malleable chancellor,
and his political opponents
on the run.
The destiny of Germany
is in his hands.
I do think that in this moment
he is
..full of himself,
and he likes what he does.
And I think he's quite proud
and he feels this is going well.
I think he feels
this is successful.
And where he goes wrong, Schleicher,
is to not see that the Nazis,
and particularly Hitler,
were playing their own game,
and were not going to accept
the rules set out
by General Schleicher.
- Sieg!
- Heil!
On Election Day, 1932,
all the key players cast their vote.
Hitler, von Papen,
and President Hindenburg.
Hitler realises that
if he tells a very simple message,
it doesn't matter
if they're true or not.
The point is that you have to keep
repeating them,
keep hammering them in.
Make Germany great again.
Restore the economy.
They are empty slogans,
but they're carrying a message that,
although vague,
is very powerful.
Heil!
Heil! Heil!
The results send shock waves
through Germany.
The Nazis' vote
has gone from 18 to 37%.
Now, with the largest party
in the Reichstag,
suddenly Hitler is too big
for even Schleicher to control.
So Hitler thinks
now's the time to strike.
Now Hitler makes his big move
and demands to be Chancellor.
Schleicher is worried Hitler
is simply not
playing by the rules
that Schleicher has foreseen.
Hitler was a gambler.
As he said, "I always go for broke."
And the more he believed in himself,
the more he was encouraged
by his media followers
to believe in himself,
the more he was disinclined
to compromise.
Talking to Hitler,
which at the beginning
was like talking to a servant,
now becomes talking to someone
who comes with his own claims.
So Schleicher's position
starts to weaken
and things start to become
shaky and slippery.
So Schleicher responds with
an even bigger move.
He knows that
in the German constitution
there is a clause that says
the President can suspend parliament
and rule by presidential decree.
Schleicher and Papen
now persuade Hindenburg
to pull that lever
and exercise his emergency powers.
Hindenburg is rather horrified
by the idea
of Hitler as Chancellor.
The jumped-up little corporal
from somewhere in Austria.
So Chancellor Papen
heads to the Reichstag
with the authority of the president
to suspend Parliament.
He just has to get
the Speaker's attention
and then dissolve the Reichstag.
That is all he needs to do,
in theory.
But there's a new Speaker
who has just been appointed.
Goering is very keen to be
Hitler's fixer
..because it makes him
an important political figure.
But to be Hitler's fixer
you've got, in the end,
to deliver what Hitler wants.
And in a moment
captured in this photograph
..when Papen tries to get
the Speaker's attention
to dissolve the Reichstag,
Goering looks the other way,
and instead calls a vote of
no confidence in Papen's government.
Goering looks at them, reads them,
laughs, and says,
"Sorry, your government's finished."
But Papen has no intention
of leaving,
and decides to try
to cling to power.
Papen can rely on certain people.
After all, it is Schleicher
who makes Papen Chancellor.
Papen thought very highly
of Schleicher.
Schleicher is ruthless when
it comes topolitical loyalties.
And he has the capacity
to change coalitions,
to change people as other people
would change shoes or socks,
when the situation forces it,
needs it.
He persuades the President
they need a new chancellor.
It is a disaster for us.
Papen is a very stupid man.
And that he simply should go.
Somarching orders.
Which Hindenburg, I suspect,
would have found quite difficult.
But there's one thing Schleicher
hasn't quite factored
into his calculations
that will come back to bite him.
When Hindenburg as President
sacks von Papen as Chancellor,
Hindenburg gives him a photograph.
And the superscription
to the photograph, in German,
"Ich hatt' einen Kameraden."
"I had a comrade."
And I find the use of the past tense
rather poignant there.
It meant an awful lot to Papen,
because it was a gauge
of the sympathy of the President.
That Hindenburg was not entirely
in his heart,
he was not happy
at what had happened.
Of course, everybody could see that
Hindenburg developed an almost
..romantic feeling of love
for him, for Papen.
I think that's going a little far.
Hindenburg is not that demonstrative
a man in my view.
But certainly a degree of
comradeship.
So despite the fact that
he was sent packing by Hindenburg,
Papen believes that
this is a monstrous betrayal.
And from that moment onwards,
Papen will do anything
in order to bring down Schleicher
and bring himself back to power.
For lawyer Hans Litten, the fight
against the Nazis goes on.
After the case
where he cross-examined Hitler,
he became, you know,
public enemy number one.
It's the classic thing that happens
to somebody who stands up
to be counted.
People distanced themselves
from him,
death threats,
he's viciously assaulted.
Litten is feeling, I think,
what all lawyers feel
when they suddenly find themselves
at the hard end of
society's criticisms.
And yet at the same time, he knows
that this is something that matters.
Despite the harassment,
Litten is winning.
He gets Stormtroopers convicted
for the killing
of a communist activist.
He successfully defends
anti-fascists
against charges of murder.
Litten did enjoy successes.
There is no doubt that Litten
is a thorn in the side of the Nazis.
It's his persistence,
it's his determination,
his sense that he is not
going to give up on this.
He keeps trying to call Nazism
to book through the courts,
because he feels that to succumb
and to quietly skulk off
would be to allow, somehow,
Nazism to win.
And so he keeps going.
Now, Litten's investigations
begin to reveal a conspiracy
between the Nazis and the police.
In one incident, Stormtroopers
clash with anti-fascists
in a neighbourhood called Felseneck.
When a communist called
Fritz Klemke is shot dead,
the Stormtroopers responsible
are brought to trial,
claiming self-defence.
What Litten uncovers is explosive.
A policeman went into a tavern
and deliberately left his gun
on the bar.
A Stormtrooper picked it up,
carried out the murder,
and then slipped it back
to the policeman.
When you have the collusion
of police providing weaponry
and in fact being involved
themselves
in the commission of crime,
bringing that to light
was very important.
Having plotted the removal of
two chancellors in less than a year,
Kurt von Schleicher
feels back in control.
Now, in his boldest move yet,
Schleicher persuades Hindenburg
that the next chancellor
should be himself.
His first objective -
end Hitler's political ambitions.
At this moment, Schleicher starts to
consider different options.
Even plans, it seems, to arrest Nazi
leaders, to strike against them.
So he is considering options.
He's always considering options.
His career, at this point,
requires it.
The fall of Chancellor Papen
coincides with yet another
general election.
And with the German economy picking
up, the Nazi vote falls back.
It looks like Hitler
got close to being Chancellor,
but not close enough.
And years of constant campaigning
has left the Nazi Party
close to bankruptcy.
By late 1932, Goering clearly
feels the Nazi Party
is facing something of a crisis.
He knows that this is a leader
who's stubbornly committed
to becoming Chancellor or nothing.
And for Goering, I think that's,
you know, it's a difficult circle
to square.
And I think there are moments
when Goering is really thinking,
"How the hell
am I going to do this?"
Is Hitler's stubbornness
going to make the party fall apart?
Hitler has always refused
to join any coalition
unless HE is Chancellor.
But many in the Nazi Party
are getting impatient
and want a slice of power.
Schleicher sees this
and offers rebel Nazis
a part in his government,
weakening Hitler further.
So at this moment,
it seems that this is successful.
He feels that he starts
having all the tools in his hand
to open the doors
to the Nazi castle.
And to get into it, or to get
Actually, he tries to steal
from Hitler.
He tries to get a part
of the support
that Hitler has
from the German people.
By the end of 1932
..Hitler was at his wits' end
as to what to do.
He didn't seem to be able
to get any more votes.
The Nazis began to run out of money.
People began to desert them.
The Nazi Party is weak,
it's declining,
so there's general feeling
of crisis.
It should have been the beginning
of the end for the Nazi Party.
With his chances of power
slipping away,
Hitler makes
a clandestine journey
..in a desperate
last throw of the dice.
He definitely looks down on Hitler.
Hitler is another sort of animal,
as far as he's concerned.
Papen is looking at Hitler
to see if this man can be useful
in getting his revenge
against Schleicher.
Papen offers Hitler a deal
to join forces,
using Hitler's
parliamentary strength
and Papen's friendship
with President Hindenburg
to find a way to power.
He sees Hitler as his means
of getting back into power.
Hitler does not represent to him
the ideal form of government.
Franz von Papen finds the ideal
form of government Franz von Papen.
For the first time in his political
career, Hitler makes a compromise.
An agreement is made
that the Nazis and Papen
will form a coalition government.
Compromise wasn't really
in his repertory.
It was either total victory
or total defeat.
But I think he was convinced
that the von Papen deal
would bring the legitimacy with
which he could then take over power.
Between Papen and Hitler,
at least one thing is agreed -
Schleicher must go.
This famous meeting, which is
supposed to be a secret meeting,
but it's not that secret,
because it leaks out immediately
and Schleicher has knowledge of it.
And strangely,
he reacts in a manner
where he does not really
feel threatened by it
and it seems that he even thinks,
"This is little Franz
doing something for me,
"trying to negotiate with the Nazis
"to bring Nazi support
to my government."
He does not yet understand
to what extent Papen
has turned against him.
Now, Franz von Papen
shows his true colours
as a cunning political player
in his own right
..using his position
as Hindenburg's new favourite
to present a radical idea.
He should be Vice Chancellor.
And the Chancellor
should be Adolf Hitler.
It's an idea he has
that the only way to destroy
the National Socialists
is to give them a bit of power.
"Let's give them a chance
in government
"to show how dreadful they are,
"and then the people
will lose their interest in them."
These are desperate times,
and desperate schemes
are dreamed up.
The decision rests with Hindenburg.
How is it that Hindenburg,
from his initial, rather lofty
position regarding Hitler -
the upstart, the Austrian corporal -
to contemplating Hitler
as a potential chancellor?
How do you explain the volte face?
It's quite a journey, that one.
Schleicher and von Papen
and "my reputation".
The rise of the Communists.
Eventually, Hindenburg comes to the
conclusion that von Papen is right.
There was no other answer.
He'd run out of options
at this point.
Schleicher is out.
He has no remaining cards to play.
Hindenburg dismisses Schleicher
at the end of January, 1933.
What he says to him
as a last sentence is,
"General, and now let's see
how the hare is going to run
"with God's help."
The hare is Hitler.
The Nazis are close to power.
Hans Litten is starting to realise
that Germany's legal system
is riddled with Nazi sympathisers.
As his case against the police and
the Stormtroopers comes together,
the system begins to shut him down.
Crucial evidence
mysteriously disappears.
The Nazi conspiracy
is wider than Litten realised.
Here we have state collusion
in murder.
He presents it to the judge,
and the judge accuses Litten
of lying.
Hans Litten is seeing how
the rule of law is now a pretence.
It becomes the ultimate evidence
to him
that the whole system
is becoming Nazified.
Berlin's chief prosecutor
informs him that
the case against the Stormtroopers
is being dropped
for lack of evidence.
For Litten, watching this is hell.
He sees that the destruction
of democracy
is taking place before his eyes,
and no-one is stopping it.
An excited crowd gathers
outside the presidential palace on
learning that Hindenburg has sent
for Hitler to form a government.
And so Hitler has,
for the first time,
power.
On that evening, Hitler has
this unshakeable self-belief.
One way or another, he is going to
become Germany's dictator.
People like Schleicher, Papen
and Hindenburg
thought that they could use him,
that he'd be easily manipulated.
They were, of course, wrong.
We go back to this time
over and over and again,
because it informs
our current world.
It informs our current world
on a number of planes,
but particularly
it is a warning to us
to prevent things like this
from happening again.
And we ask, why was it
that there were no people around
who could actually prevent
this terrible descent?
Here we are in the '30s.
Violence is taking place
and society becoming divided.
Do people see
what's really happening?
The story of German politics
between 1930 and 1933
is the story of the decline and fall
of a democracy.
And that's why we're so fascinated,
because we know
what happened afterwards.
Germans at the time didn't know
what was going to happen.
But we know now, looking back,
what a terrible turning point
it was.
And of course, democracy
is under challenge and under threat
in many countries at the moment.
We're looking for parallels.
That period does have lessons for us
if we want to preserve and defend
democracy in our own day.
The moment when his murderer
points the gun on him
and asks him,
"Are you General Schleicher?",
he might have realised
that he created a monster.
And whatever was going to come,
it would finish everything
which was there before.
Hitler still doesn't have
supreme power.
4,000 communists arrested
in one night.
Himmler gives a press conference
announcing the opening
of this concentration camp.
What kind of people ARE these?
The camp's in the small town
of Dachau.