Rise of the Nazis (2019) s01e03 Episode Script

1
In late 1933,
Chancellor Adolf Hitler is one step
away from total power.
Only Germany's elderly president,
Paul von Hindenburg,
stands in his way -
the one man with the power to sack a
Chancellor -
so it's vital for Hitler to keep
him onside.
Believe it or not,
Hitler can be charming
..and he exercised this charm on
Hindenburg,
I think, to probably quite good
effect.
Von Hindenburg, he, perhaps against
his better judgment,
becomes a little impressed by
Hitler.
This is the story of how Hitler went
from Chancellor
to all-powerful dictator.
To piece together how it happened,
historians and experts have examined
this period - each from a different
individual perspective.
You cajole, you influence,
you manipulate.
They'll take us inside the minds of
those that fought fascism
They 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?
Adolf Hitler will go on to oversee
the murder of millions of people.
But, in 1933,
he is the outwardly respectable
Chancellor of Germany,
the equivalent of Prime Minister.
But, just under a year into the job,
he's finding being in government a
difficult balancing act.
He has two very different audiences
to please
..the aristocratic elite,
the president,
the generals
and his Vice Chancellor.
They're uneasy about the Nazis,
seeing them as thuggish
and worrying they could destabilise
the whole system.
On the other hand,
Hitler has his base,
the Stormtroopers, the paramilitary
wing of the Nazis.
Over two million angry young men.
They're waiting for Hitler
to deliver the Nazi revolution he
promised.
None more so than the leader of the
Stormtroopers.
For Rohm, the aim was a revolution
in Germany
to change the political system.
Ernst Rohm was a trained officer.
He was military and ruthless.
Rohm is an adventurer.
He is not really a politician.
Hitler owes Rohm a lot and he knows
that Rohm is one of his oldest
comrades.
Hitler promised Rohm that they would
get rid of the old elites,
that they would get rid of the rich
and they would change the whole
system.
Hitler couldn't hold his promises.
Unleashing violence against their
left wing enemies,
Rohm's Stormtroopers have been
useful to Hitler -
but now they could become a threat.
Their violent attacks are upsetting
the public.
As Chancellor, Hitler wants things
to appear calm.
Rohm's actions pose a problem for
Hitler because Hitler
needed to persuade the elites.
He needed to persuade the
conservative establishment.
He needed to persuade Hindenburg
that he was to be trusted,
that he was a solid bourgeois
statesman.
Hitler got increasingly concerned
about Rohm's discontent,
as it were, and about his whole kind
of persona as a rough,
soldierly, violent type.
But Hitler needs to placate Rohm
and,
in a move that risks upsetting the
aristocratic elites,
he brings the revolutionary Rohm
into the political fold,
giving him a job in the cabinet.
He's minister without portfolio.
But Rohm isn't satisfied.
He feels he and his millions of
Stormtroopers were promised more.
Rohm doesn't want to command
auxiliaries.
He wanted an army.
He saw himself as a commander,
the commander of the new Nazi army.
These are promises Hitler made
before he became Chancellor.
In his view, Hitler
..betrays his friends.
So, running out of patience,
Rohm makes a wild and bold move.
He goes behind Hitler's back and
tries to take control of the army
from the aristocratic generals,
men who report directly to the army
supreme commander,
President Hindenburg.
I suspect Hindenburg is pretty
horrified at this.
The armed forces are the servants
of that state and of its people
..on a apolitical basis,
and there is no room for political
manoeuvring
by the armed forces of any state.
They were just a load of bully boys
and were, by no means,
an army which could, for example,
attack France and prevail.
I mean, it is unthinkable.
That was the job of the army
proper.
So Hitler can't afford to upset the
generals and the president.
But, with Rohm, it's more than
politics -
it's personal.
Rohm opened gates for Hitler.
Rohm was the one who had influence.
Hitler is a frequent visitor to the
Rohm family,
Rohm's mother and his sister,
Eleonore,
so they became friends.
And therefore Rohm is someone who
supports Hitler
not only politically, but, at the
same time, personally.
And when Hitler's niece and rumoured
lover killed herself,
it was Rohm he wanted with him at
the graveside.
Hitler is stuck between the
president and his friend.
When it comes to dealing with Rohm,
Hermann Goring has no such qualms.
For Goring, the problem with Rohm,
I think,
is that Rohm has ambitions to be a
second, perhaps,
to Hitler. You know, that's what
Goring wants to be.
Is it possible, perhaps, that Rohm
is thinking of launching some kind
of revolution, even putting Hitler
to one side?
Now, for Goring, that would be
unthinkable.
He's got to find a way of persuading
Hitler that, you know,
this is a point at which he's got to
break that friendship with Rohm.
He's got to recognise that Rohm is
not just a companion
but he's a threat,
so all that Goring has got to do is
to show Hitler evidence
that Rohm is not loyal.
So Goring orders his secret
surveillance organisation,
the Research Bureau, to go after
Rohm
..building a file of everything Rohm
says or does.
And Hitler publicly forces Rohm to
back down from his demands
for the Stormtroopers to take over
Germany's army.
He summons Rohm and the army leaders
to a meeting,
where he makes it clear that the
army,
and not the Stormtroopers,
are Germany's military force.
It's a devastating blow for Rohm.
He's even forced to shake hands
with the defence minister -
General Blomberg.
Shaking hands with Blomberg meant
nothing to Rohm.
He, er, saw
..the Nazi Party, the Nazi militia,
now in the driver's seat.
Afterwards, Rohm makes a series of
thinly veiled threats.
"Hitler is a ridiculous corporal
"and should go on leave."
Rohm very openly criticised Hitler
for his decision to go with an army,
therefore he was, kind of,
a dangerous person
because Rohm didn't let go.
He doesn't accept it.
And he was a danger to this whole
notion of Hitler as Fuhrer.
Goring now makes a shrewd move in
his plot against Rohm.
He enlists the help of his rival -
Heinrich Himmler.
Over the past year,
Himmler has taken over police forces
across Germany,
but the biggest and most powerful
remains outside his control.
In April, Goring gives Himmler
the thing he wants most -
his Gestapo.
In exchange, Goring plans to harness
Himmler's terror network
to bring down Rohm.
Himmler is pleased.
He's now inspector of the Gestapo,
so he's almost there,
on his way to taking over control of
all German police forces.
One character trait about Himmler
that is the most important one
is his absolute careerism and his
ruthlessness -
his ambition, his drive,
to make it to the top.
Here is someone who prioritises
rational procedures over emotions -
over human feelings.
As head of the Stormtroopers,
Rohm is Himmler's superior,
a man he'd once hero worshipped.
But Himmler now dreams of destroying
the Stormtroopers
and making his own SS Germany's only
paramilitary force.
Himmler, in public, had to display
some loyalty towards Rohm.
Behind the scenes,
Himmler had no qualms about getting
rid of Rohm.
Himmler is collecting evidence
against Rohm,
putting Rohm into a really bad
light,
in terms of Rohm's private life,
in terms of Rohm's political
activities.
Himmler makes sure that it reaches
Hitler's desk.
Himmler hopes very much that Hitler
will finally act
and eliminate Rohm.
Rohm has an Achilles heel
that Goring and Himmler are keen to
exploit.
He is openly gay at a time when it's
illegal.
He frequented Berlin's famous gay
club, The Eldorado,
sipping cocktails with men dressed
in drag.
Rohm lived a different life than all
others.
He was a homosexual
and he lived this kind of life
more and more openly.
He met with male prostitutes.
In the view of his comrades,
he was not normal.
Since the Nazis came to power,
they have strictly enforced the
socially conservative laws -
meaning Rohm could face imprisonment
for his sexuality.
Defying his colleagues,
Rohm has joined an organisation
campaigning for gay rights.
The Nazis wanted to transform
society.
Everything should be clean, Aryan
Er, no prostitutes.
No smoking, women
..and Rohm
..dismissed this.
It shows the stern character of Rohm
that he openly
lived his homosexuality.
In a letter, he said, "I know it's a
criminal act in Germany,
"but, then, I'm a criminal and they
have to take me like this."
Rohm obviously felt very secure
because he was such a close friend
to Hitler.
For years, Rohm's sexuality has been
an open secret.
Hitler even defended Rohm when the
press tried to expose him.
Hitler wasn't particularly bothered
by Rohm's homosexuality.
He, as it were, forgave him because
of his services
to the movement and his obvious
loyalty to Hitler.
Hitler didn't really want to know
about people's private lives,
I think.
Hitler had a certain kind of loyalty
to old comrades,
which he certainly felt towards
Rohm.
But now Hitler sees that Rohm's
sexuality
could be a way to bring him down.
Meanwhile, Rohm is making his own
moves.
In early 1934,
Rohm stages Stormtrooper manoeuvres
across Germany.
Stormtrooper membership is growing
fast
and Rohm now commands around four
million men.
He publicly calls for revolution.
Unable to bring Rohm to heel,
Hitler's ability to pass himself
off as a respectable statesman
is under threat.
The elites that surround President
Hindenburg are getting nervous.
The aristocratic Vice Chancellor
Franz von Papen
helped Hitler get into power.
Now he's dealing with the
consequences.
Papen has been uneasy
..because of the
..the general lawlessness
is now becoming the talking point of
the civilised world.
These Stormtroopers are intimidating
diplomats,
people who are going to report back
to their own country.
It is a troubling thing for him to
see that this will essentially
end up by damaging Germany's
reputation in the outside world.
Then news comes through that the
president is on his last legs
and won't live much longer.
Hitler wants President Hindenburg to
name him successor before he dies
so he can take complete control of
Germany.
If the ruling class wants to stop
that from happening,
it's now or never.
And the next move comes from an
unlikely player.
Inside the Vice Chancellor's office
is Papen's speech writer,
Edgar Jung,
a right wing intellectual, who is
secretly plotting Hitler's downfall.
Jung belongs to the educated upper
bourgeois
and he grows up steeped in their
values.
He sees himself as belonging to the
class that should be ruling.
He sees himself as a potential
Minister of the Interior,
if not a Chancellor of a future
Germany.
So, when the Nazis first come in,
Jung is absolutely delighted.
He sees them as a very convenient
vehicle for change.
They are very strong leadership.
They are bringing a new
authoritarian sense
of direction to Germany.
1933, '34 is a very bad year for
Germany.
There is still huge amounts of
violence,
with the Stormtroopers on the
streets.
There isn't the immediate economic
miracle they had hoped for.
The honeymoon period for the Nazis
is over.
I think Jung feels a real sense of
responsibility and guilt
for enabling someone like this to
then entrench themselves
at the leadership,
at the very highest levels
of his country's politics.
Deep within Papen's Vice
Chancellery,
Jung and others have formed a
resistance cell.
He's working with people who have
got connections in intelligence.
They are trying to warn people
before they get arrested,
they're trying to get people out of
the country when possible,
they're trying to get people out of
prison when they have been arrested.
Politically, they're manoeuvring
inside the Reichstag,
so they're doing really quite
important
and very dangerous political work.
Jung had even made a plan to
assassinate Hitler
..but abandoned it in case it
damaged his own political ambitions.
Instead, Jung plans to get Hitler
removed from power.
He'll write a high profile speech
for Papen
that will expose the violent truth
about Rohm,
the Stormtroopers and Nazi rule.
The speech should be enough to force
Hindenburg to get rid of Hitler
..but it all hinges on getting Papen
to deliver it.
Jung realises that this is a good
moment,
both because we have public
discontent,
we have the threat of violence
turning into something more,
perhaps a political putsch
..and we have Hindenburg's
deteriorating health.
It's the time to act and,
conveniently, at this moment,
Papen gets an invitation from the
University of Marburg
to give a speech, which is perfect.
Jung is an intellectual and he's a
communicator,
and he puts pen to paper,
and what he drafts is basically
his alternative manifesto,
or at least his alternative path for
Germany.
Jung doesn't trust Papen to deliver
the speech,
but he has some insurance policies.
He distributes advanced copies to
the press
..and gets Goebbels' propaganda
ministry
to agree to a live radio broadcast
so that Hindenburg can listen from
his estate.
And Jung doesn't give Papen the
speech
until he is on his way to Marburg.
Papen is travelling towards Marburg
in Hesse, in central Germany,
to give a speech to some 600 people.
Papen, as a leading representative,
the Vice Chancellor,
is a representative of the
government
sent out, essentially, to do
..call it what you will, marketing
or PR for the government.
And he reads the speech,
the words that are being put into
his mouth, and he is alarmed.
He says that this speech could cost
him his head.
But the speech has already been sent
out, and therefore some members
of the press already have the
speech. He can't go back on it,
so he reluctantly agrees to deliver
the speech.
Jung knows that Papen
..maybe he won't have the backbone
to give the talk word-for-word,
as he's written it, but then also
maybe he hasn't got the intellect
or the backbone to replace it with
something else.
It's all very last-minute, so he's
really on tenterhooks
to see what is delivered.
Jung is listening to the radio,
incredibly anxious.
"What's going to happen?"
And Papen begins to deliver the
speech.
And he gives is pretty much as
given.
Because he gets on a roll,
he responds to his audience.
This is revolutionary stuff.
It is a very dramatic speech,
as well.
He uses this incredibly strong
language,
so he talks about it being time to
silence the fanatics
and, er, make room for the work of
serious men to do the serious work.
There's thunderous applause in the
hall and Papen adores being adored,
and so he gets on a real roll
and he delivers the whole thing
word for word.
Jung can hardly believe it.
He's banging his hand repeatedly
on the table,
saying, "He bought it!
He bought it!"
So he's absolutely delighted.
Some of the Stormtroopers quite
pointedly walk out of the room,
but essentially it's a huge success.
Papen seems to be delighted.
There's a wonderful photograph of
him walking down the steps
of the hall afterwards and he really
looks like
the cat that's got the cream.
He was the object of the adulation
of the crowd
and that sort of thing probably goes
to his head a little bit.
The Marburg speech sent shock waves
across Germany
and the public rally in support of
Papen,
who sees an opportunity to become
President himself.
To topple Hitler,
all Papen needs to do now is seize
the momentum and get to Hindenburg.
But when the Nazis order news of the
speech to be banned,
Papen's ego is bruised and he
decides to first visit Hitler.
Papen is furious and goes to
complain to Hitler,
threatening to resign as
Vice Chancellor of the Reich.
That was a big problem for him.
There's a danger that Von Papen
would go to see Hindenburg
and get his blessing to become his
successor.
So this is not the moment Hitler
wants to see a rebellion
within his own cabinet.
Danger was that the army would link
up with Von Papen
and the Conservatives because they
saw very much eye-to-eye.
The senior generals themselves are
political conservatives,
they weren't Nazis at this stage,
and the danger was there'd be some
kind of Conservative coup.
Hitler convinces Papen to delay his
visit to see Hindenburg,
suggesting they make the trip
together instead.
He manages to run rings around Papen
because Papen suddenly loses
that ability to see the urgency of
the situation -
that he needs to get to East Prussia
to talk to Hindenburg.
If he moved at precisely that
moment,
he might be able to do something.
But, as it is, he loses that chance
and fails to seize the moment
which might have been actually
instrumental
in bringing Hitler down.
Hitler has played Papen cleverly.
Going behind his back,
Hitler arranges to meet with the
president at his country estate.
Hitler himself hotfoots it up to
Neudeck, in East Prussia,
to go and see Hindenburg and find
out what sort of state
his health's in and whether he's
likely to fall off the perch
quickly,
or whether they need to do something
about it fast.
Hindenburg and his generals issue
an ultimatum to Hitler to bring
the revolutionary troublemakers
under control or face martial law
and the transfer of power to the
army.
Hindenburg is pointing to the
Stormtroopers and saying,
"Enough is enough."
Hitler, now seeing that he is
slightly pinched on both sides,
both by the rebellious nature of
Papen
..and the fact that the President,
who can dismiss him,
is looking angrily at him about the
Stormtroopers,
Hitler then decides to act.
And now Jung has created the crisis
and the man that capitalises
on the crisis is not Papen,
it's not Jung, it's Hitler.
And suddenly he realises that there
is more to this man,
that there is a real potential
problem here.
Papen has missed a historic
opportunity to stop Hitler.
Realising his life may now be in
danger, Jung starts planning
to flee the country.
Jung should have realised
immediately
that his plan is unravelling
and that potentially he himself
is personally in danger.
British intelligence has uncovered
that he is likely to be arrested
and he is warned by a British
journalist and a member
of the Reichstag that his arrest is
likely to be imminent.
Eventually, he concedes that perhaps
it is safer for him probably to get
to Switzerland at this point.
Hitler needs to now decide how to
deal with the two impending
threats to his power,
Rohm and the Stormtroopers, and the
aristocratic right
that could still yet persuade
Hindenburg to get rid of him.
Ready for this moment,
Himmler and the SS have been busy
inventing evidence
..planting the seed of an idea that
Rohm and the elites have in fact
joined forces to launch a coup
against Hitler.
Himmler is working tirelessly in
June 1934
..cos Himmler knows that this is a
now or never moment for himself,
for the SS, to win the upper hand
against the Stormtroopers
and to retaliate against members of
the conservative elite
who have expressed criticism of the
Nazis -
people like Jung, people like Papen.
Himmler created this dossier about
Rohm's alleged putsch plans
against Hitler. Rohm is planning a
putsch aided by the former
German Chancellor, Von Schleicher,
one of the archenemies of Hitler.
Himmler really manages to construct
this image of a conspiracy,
of a coalition between the
conservative right
and the Stormtroopers.
There was no such coalition.
All of these charges were completely
trumped up.
All of these charges are completely
trumped up.
Meanwhile, Himmler's Gestapo agents
burst into Jung's apartment
just as his bags are packed for
Switzerland.
When they arrest him, they do a
thorough search of his apartment
and they discover papers negotiating
the fee
he would get for writing that speech
from Papen,
so that is their evidence.
It's now clear that he is
the author of the Marburg speech.
He goes to the bathroom and he
actually scribbles "Gestapo"
on the bathroom cabinet - to warn
his friends what has happened.
With Jung in custody, Papen finally
understands what's at stake
and just who he's dealing with.
Papen hears that Edgar Jung has been
arrested and flies to Berlin
and demands an audience with Hitler.
Hitler refuses to see him.
At this point,
Papen sees the urgency
of visiting Hindenburg and arranges
to meet him
in Neudeck, in East Prussia.
This is a critical moment.
Hindenburg's health has taken a turn
for the worse.
If Papen is to stop Hitler, he must
get to Hindenburg immediately.
But news of Papen's meeting reaches
Himmler, who is readying the SS
to strike against the aristocracy
and the Stormtroopers.
Himmler summons SS leaders and he
tells them that the Stormtroopers
are planning a putsch. Robust action
must be taken swiftly, ruthlessly
and decisively, so Himmler and the
SS are beginning to prepare lists
of Stormtroopers who are to be
arrested, who are to be executed.
But even as the time to act draws
near,
Hitler seems to remain loyal to
Rohm.
And Rohm promises to lie low.
He takes leave at the Bavarian
lakeside resort of Tegernsee.
Rohm leaves Berlin for Bavaria,
Tegernsee,
where he stays in a nice hotel,
and Rohm feels
..not very well.
He had has problems with his health
and he is
..very thoughtful during this time.
He is very, kind of, remote and this
is definitely not a time for him
to party or to celebrate.
He seems to think about his future.
Opposition inside and outside
the Nazi Party
must now be annihilated
..but Goring and Himmler still need
word from Hitler
before they can move against their
enemies.
On the 28th of June,
Hitler and Goring go to the wedding
of a local Gauleiter.
It's a normal ceremony for Hitler to
attend.
The conspirators have devised a plan
to psychologically prepare Hitler
to take action.
In the middle of the wedding,
there's a moment of drama.
Himmler arrives and this is the
point at which
they're going to tell Hitler about
the dangers that he's facing.
Himmler comes in with the news
that Papen
..is about to see
President von Hindenburg
on his estate in East Prussia.
This raises the alarm for Hitler.
Hitler is extremely concerned that,
if he doesn't act swiftly
against the Stormtroopers, now that
he knows that Papen
will be seen by Hindenburg,
then Hindenburg might stop
supporting the Nazi regime, that
Hitler might lose some of his power,
that the army might be given some
more power.
To give him a final push, Hitler is
shown documents that allege Rohm
and the Stormtroopers are plotting
against him.
I think, for Hitler, it's a
difficult moment, psychologically,
to confront the fact that Rohm could
be
..guilty of plotting against Hitler,
plotting against the regime.
Having two people there prodding
him, providing him with
what was in fact rather spurious
evidence
about the possibility of a coup,
is, for Hitler, really necessary,
you know?
He needs to have his indecision
ended.
He needs somebody to prod him
..but then it needs to be his
decision.
So, he's prodded and prodded and
prodded
and suddenly says, "Yes, that's it."
You know, "I've had enough."
And what follows is, you know,
can be described only,
really, as mafia politics.
Hitler travels through the night to
personally arrest Rohm at his hotel.
Rohm doesn't expect Hitler coming,
practically with all members of the
inner circle,
to arrest him.
As far as we know,
Rohm was really stunned.
He was very quiet during this time
of arrest.
Rohm just sat there and it seems
as if Rohm still feels very
confident
..that there is no danger for him,
personally.
Meanwhile, Goring and Himmler are
poised for action in Berlin.
Goring and Himmler have returned to
Berlin from Essen, from the wedding.
They lock themselves away in the
Leipzig Palace,
they surround it with armed guards,
just in case there really is
an attack from the Stormtroopers.
Himmler, in this situation,
is very cool.
He's very calculated.
He is patient.
He knows that he needs to wait for
the order
of the Fuhrer to come through.
At 10.00am, Goring and Himmler
receive the code word.
Then, throughout Germany,
sealed orders are opened by SS men -
revealing lists of their victims.
Goring is the kind of impresario of
the drama and Himmler, once again,
is the obedient secretary,
carrying everything out that needs
to be carried out.
Himmler is coordinating the arrests
and executions in Berlin
together with Goring. They go
through lists, they go through lists
of who's to be arrested,
of who is to be shot.
The killing begins.
Former Chancellor Kurt von
Schleicher is murdered at home,
alongside his wife.
Rebel Nazis, who once threatened to
split the party,
are also taken care of.
The men in Papen's office are also
on the list.
Papen is arrested and placed under
house arrest.
He can't do anything to act,
to save the members
of his own department, and various
people in his entourage
are, essentially, murdered.
He is lucky, in many respects,
to survive with his life.
All we know with Jung is that he is
executed.
The place of death is left
unrecorded,
which is a mark of disrespect,
as well,
and sometime later his family
receive his ashes
and his empty wallet.
That is the end of Jung.
It sounds very bizarre to us,
but Himmler is guided
by a different moral compass.
Himmler believes that it is
necessary for the survival
of the Nazi regime to act so
ruthlessly against the people
on the list of those to be arrested,
of those to be executed.
For Himmler, it is an office job
routine.
For at least 100 people
who were murdered
in the aftermath of the Night of the
Long Knives
..this was the end of their lives.
By the evening of June the 30th,
dozens have been executed.
Any possible conservative or
Stormtrooper rebellion
has been crushed.
Still alive, though, is Hitler's
friend -
Ernst Rohm.
almost as if nothing had happened.
It curiously resembled, I think,
the way that some murderers,
when they've murdered somebody,
they wash their hands,
they change their clothes, they want
to put all that behind them
and then they can walk out into the
streets -
as if nothing had happened.
This is a really incongruous scene.
Imagine that some of the bloodiest
murders in the history
of the Third Reich have taken place
on the previous day.
Now, Hitler has invited members of
the Reich cabinet
and their wives to a party.
Himmler and Goring learned that Rohm
has not been executed.
He's an old companion, old fighter,
and he just can't bring himself to
order Rohm to be murdered.
So it's one of those occasions where
Hitler hesitates and he needs
other people to prod him again into
making that decision.
And for Goring and Himmler,
it's really important.
You know, the whole thing was to
get rid of Rohm!
So they've got to get Hitler to make
the decision
that Rohm must be executed, too.
As with other major decisions,
Hitler has waited for the crucial
moment to play his hand.
Hitler was always prepared to use
violent action in the end.
He didn't have any hesitation about
having people shot, killed,
murdered, robbed, beaten up or
tortured -
it didn't really matter to him.
In that sense, the so-called Rohm
putsch,
the murder of scores of people
he regarded as traitors to the
cause,
that wasn't particularly something
that he felt was bad.
He felt, by this stage, he was above
the law.
In a sense, he'd always felt he was
above the law.
Hitler's decision is to offer Rohm
the honourable way out.
At Stadelheim Prison,
Rohm is forced to make a terrible
choice.
For Rohm, it must have been
astonishing, then,
to see Theodor Eicke, who is the
commander of the
Dachau concentration camp.
A pistol is put into Rohm's cell,
together with a copy of the
Volkischer Beobachter Nazi
newspaper,
with stories about the Rohm purge,
about Rohm's alleged conspiracy.
I wouldn't see Rohm as a victim.
He himself, and he says this very
openly,
he himself would kill people,
would kill his enemies.
Killing was no problem for Rohm.
Rohm does not want to shoot himself.
So, after ten minutes,
the commander of the Dachau camp,
Theodor Eicke,
storms into Rohm's cell and shoots
him at close range.
This is the end of the Night of the
Long Knives.
This is the end of Rohm.
This is the end of the leader of the
Stormtroopers,
who was, until then, Hitler's
closest ally,
Hitler's closest supporter.
Hitler was always relieved after
he'd made up his mind
on a difficult issue and taken
action -
that gave him a sense of relief and
fulfilment.
He knew, he felt in his bones,
that he had solved
a really difficult problem.
This is it.
This is the end of this period of
seizing power
and establishing power.
Now we can move forward as one
united government, state,
people under my command.
Goring finally achieves his
ambition.
As a reward for his brutality,
Hitler promotes him and names him as
his successor.
He will go on to oversee many of the
Nazis' worst atrocities.
Later on, at Nuremberg, when Goring
is on trial for war crimes,
he's asked about Rohm, "What did you
think? Why did you do it?"
He said, "Well, he was in my way."
For Goring, you know,
it wasn't a question
I think he would have understood.
You know, "Did you have a guilty
conscience afterwards?"
"No, of course not."
After the Night of the Long Knives,
Hitler makes the SS a
fully autonomous organisation.
Under Himmler's watch,
it becomes one of the most feared
institutions in Germany,
presiding over the systematic murder
of minorities,
homosexuals and Jews.
One of the keys to understanding
Himmler's personality
and Himmler's career is by
reflecting about the word "decency".
Himmler thought that he had always
been acting decently,
that, in organising the Night of
Long Knives
had been decent, that killing Jews
during the Second World War
had been decent. This is abhorrent.
Himmler thought that he had done the
right thing
for the survival of the Germanic
race.
By crushing the Stormtroopers,
Hitler wins the support of most of
the German public,
the army, the elites,
and President Hindenburg.
Hindenburg was always frightened of
instability.
So, when action is taken in this
way, erm
..I suppose, I don't know,
a fit of relief or something
and pens a letter to Hitler, saying,
basically, "Well done."
Having won Hindenburg's approval,
Hitler presents a new piece of
legislation
combining the offices of President
and Chancellor
to take effect on Hindenburg's
death.
A day later, Hindenburg is on his
deathbed.
When Hitler goes to pay his
respects,
he finds Hindenburg drifting in and
out of consciousness,
addressing him as "Your Majesty".
I'm dubious about his ability to
make rational judgment
as he approached his death.
Might explain some of the very
difficult questions
regarding his shift
vis-a-vis Hitler and the Nazi Party.
In his last rational moments,
what did he think of when he thought
about Germany's future?
Difficult to answer that one.
He would want to vindicate his own
decisions,
but he may be disturbed by
..what has happened since Hitler
took office.
So he might have died a
..rather troubled man.
And so Hitler now had nothing left
to restrain him.