Rise of the Nazis (2019) s03e01 Episode Script

1
On 12th December 1944, some
of the Nazis' top generals
are called to a woodland location
in western Germany.
They were taken to an undisclosed,
unknown location.
They were disarmed, forced
to hand over their weapons.
It's all very, very secret.
And they're ushered
into an underground room.
Since the assassination attempt,
no-one has seen or heard
from Hitler in months.
There have even been rumours
that he had died.
Now, he tells them he has a plan.
There's going to be a decisive blow
where the Allies will be completely
defeated and will have to sue
for peace.
It's an extraordinarily bold
counterattack and it's never
going to work.
Hitler always had a capacity
to imagine things, no matter
what the reality was.
He was very capable of
self-delusion.
This is the story of the collapse
of the Third Reich
as the Allied troops close
in on Germany.
Our interest is the psychology
of that collapse
as those at the heart of the regime
cling to power.
It's the worst in human nature,
you see during the collapse
of the Third Reich.
To help us tell the story,
we've asked historians and experts
to take us inside the minds of each
one of the key protagonists
as they are forced
to confront failure.
The cycle of thinking at that time
wouldn't allow anyone to think
that what's happening is wrong.
Being picked up, shot, disappeared.
They are walking into an apocalypse
on purpose.
Ultimately, who will stay
loyal to Hitler?
And who will betray him?
And when?
By autumn 1944, Germany is broken.
Germany's cities and towns
have been destroyed.
The German economy
has been destroyed.
German society has been destroyed.
The Nazis provoked a war
in which millions of Germans died.
They brought nothing
but destruction.
And now the net is tightening
on Germany.
From the west, the Americans,
the British and their allies.
From the east, the Soviets
are coming.
Any other leader would surrender.
His instinct is all or nothing.
Total victory or total defeat.
No compromise, no halfway measures.
He believes that a nation or a race
can only really survive
through perpetual conflict.
This pursuit of total war will play
out as a psychological drama
inside Hitler's inner circle.
For Hermann Goering, his punishment
for the failures in the air war
is to be sidelined.
But for all the others, there's
the dubious honour of promotions.
Albert Speer, Joseph Goebbels,
and Heinrich Himmler are all
elevated
even higher, each with a new set
of responsibilities for driving
the war forward.
Military experience, in a way,
does not matter that much to him.
What counted for him was the men
around him had a will to continue
and a fighting spirit.
In the new hierarchy,
propaganda chief Goebbels lands
the job of Minister for Total War.
He must make sure there are enough
soldiers to fight these battles.
But by now, Germany is running
out of men.
The architect Speer must provide
the weapons for the new offensive,
even though he doesn't have
the workers to keep up production.
So as these men prepare
for an impossible military task,
they must compete with each other
for the few resources
Germany has left.
There is definitely a sense
that Speer and Goebbels
are struggling for Hitler's
attention, for Hitler's favour,
and they're struggling over who is
the strategist of the final victory.
This is how power works
in Nazi Germany.
You struggle against all
of your political opponents
to please Hitler.
Speer has already been lying
to Hitler about the amount
of armaments he's been producing.
Now he must convince him
to back him further.
Speer is one of Hitler's
closest friends.
Hitler trusts him.
Speer is educated, smart
and ambitious, but also
he is as ruthless as the dictator
he serves.
Speer now is the one who comes
up with new production figures,
who tells Hitler that victory
is possible, that he is producing
even more arms, that he is producing
even more tanks and weapons.
But Speer has an obstacle.
Joseph Goebbels.
Goebbels believes that he's a man
of history, that he is one of the
key actors in the great drama
of German history.
Goebbels is suspicious of Speer.
He thinks of Speer
as an opportunist, a personal friend
of Hitler that became a
high-ranking Nazi.
Speer was not there
for what the Nazis called
"the struggle". For Goebbels,
this is not about building
the right tools for war,
for Goebbels, this is about
unleashing the racial
spirit for survival.
Goebbels pushes ahead with
the Volkssturm, or People's Storm.
A radical plan to boost Germany's
dwindling army by calling
on all men, young and old,
to join the battlefront.
No military experience required.
Goebbels at this point is trying
to persuade himself that raising
the will of the German people
in the form of this rabble,
this human leftover of military
conscription, can still win the war.
The question is - what is more
important, workers or soldiers?
Goebbels and Speer should
convince Hitler
it's time to stop.
We can't do it any more.
We can't produce more weapons.
We can't produce more workers
and soldiers because there's
no cause any more.
We've lost.
They do the opposite.
They prolong the war.
Speer's answer is to support
his factories with more women, men
and children from the concentration
camps.
One of them is Helene Podliasky.
Helene is just one of tens
of thousands of young women who
tried to do something, right?
Anything in order to resist.
24-year-old engineer Helene
has been captured by the Gestapo
while working as an agent
for the French Resistance.
She doesn't know exactly what's
going to happen, but she knows
they are to be taken out of France,
to Germany.
You hold your breath, you close
your eyes, and you try
and imagine yourself elsewhere.
And you try and think - "Me
and my new friends,
"we're going to come out
of this somewhere else."
After several days in a cattle car,
Helene arrives at
Ravensbruck Concentration Camp
in north-eastern Germany.
Germany is the big, bad
black hole of a monster.
It's the place of no return.
At this point,
what Helene knows is that in these
concentration camps, people are shot
if they are not worked to death.
And that in many ways it is
the lucky ones who are shot,
before they are worked to death.
Helene is thinking about the next
thing to do.
The next way to resist,
the next way to be relevant.
Helene is sent to work in an
armaments factory in Leipzig.
In this aim to win the war,
Speer doesn't care about human
beings.
He doesn't care about females,
schoolgirls.
Speer is one of the most powerful
organisers of total war.
By mid-December, Goebbels
has delivered more men to fight
on the battlefront.
The Red Army has paused its advance
in the east, so Hitler decides now
is the time to launch his surprise
attack on the west.
Hitler moves troops from the eastern
front to the Ardennes, to exploit a
weak point in the American lines.
What he's looking for is essentially
a repetition of the stunning success
of the spring of 1940, of the attack
on France.
And he kind of recreates
this in the belief
that this can repeat itself.
In the early morning of the 16th
of December 1944, German divisions
launch an artillery barrage.
Across a 105-mile front.
With Allied aircraft grounded due
to the fog, the Germans
make dramatic gains.
Hitler thought he was back in 1940.
He thought the same thing
was happening.
A bold move driven by passionate
belief in the Nazi world.
Germany was going to win the war.
Hitler was so pleased
that he phoned Goebbels to tell him
"This is the great turning
point in the war."
Goebbels is euphoric.
His faith is proven right,
and so Goebbels takes the
opportunity to persuade Hitler to
speak to the nation,
share the good news,
reaffirm their trust, reaffirm
their belief.
Because this is what Goebbels does,
he turns information into
political power.
Many people haven't heard
Hitler's voice for a long time.
For many Germans, this is
a reaffirmation of the hope
that they had been losing
for two years now.
So the
Ardennes offensive is an expression
of hope, an ideological
obsession over reality.
But by now, Speer
is too close to reality to believe
Goebbels' spin.
He's all too aware of a threat
coming from the eastern front.
Hitler's strategy of moving troops
westward has left it exposed,
and the Red Army will begin
its advance into Germany within
days.
This is weighing on Speer's mind
when he arrives at Hitler's
western headquarters, just after
midnight on the 1st of January 1945.
Speer arrived late
to find Hitler's entourage
all toasting the New Year.
Hitler, was convinced that the New
Year, 1945,
would bring ultimate victory.
Speer was thinking about, "How am
I going to get the grim realities
"of the situation recognised
by Hitler?"
Speer is too smart not to know
the war can't be won any more.
Everyone knew, by this stage,
that Hitler did not like bad news.
This is not the moment to confront
Hitler with the really desperate
situation.
Speer has not the courage
to say, "Stop the war.
"It can't go on any more."
Why?
He fears disloyalty.
He's not sure what will happen
then, if he tells Hitler the truth.
For him, like all other
high-ranking Nazis,
there is no way out.
Leaving Hitler in '44 or '45
means death.
Germany's initial success
in the Ardennes is short-lived.
The weather clears and the Allies
are able to exploit
their air superiority.
Pounding German positions
and pushing them back.
The Luftwaffe suffers crippling
losses when a quarter of their 800
planes are destroyed.
Hitler's hopes of a comeback
are shattered.
Goebbels, as the liar in chief,
is now in the most difficult
of all situations.
He's struggling because of his love
and admiration for Hitler
and he's struggling because
he's afraid of this defeat.
Goebbels focuses on deflecting
the failure from himself.
He takes advantage of a crisis
meeting at Hitler's
western headquarters, knowing
Speer will be present.
Goebbels begins to make a shock
announcement about another
mass recruitment drive
for the battlefront.
Goebbels is looking to implement
what he thinks, and his ideology
suggests, is the last chance
for Germany.
Sensing that Goebbels is trying
to steal the limelight by promising
an impossible rescue plan,
Speer snaps.
Speer says that the war
can't be won.
They are still fighting,
fighting, recruiting,
and it's totally senseless.
Goebbels jumped on him and
essentially accused him of losing
the war for Germany.
Goebbels humiliated him in front
of Hitler, to prove Speer wrong
and to put his strategy ahead.
And then Hitler has his say.
Hitler starts to ignore
Speer and address himself
to his subordinate, Saur.
"Saur will do the job," he says.
"Saur's really committed.
He will sort it all out."
And between the two of them,
Hitler and Goebbels,
they really humiliate Speer.
First of all, attacking him,
and then ignoring him. And Speer
must have felt about that small
when they did this.
Goebbels enjoyed the event, as he
seems to have told Speer afterwards,
"Why do you let an underling
speak to the Fuhrer
"like this, over your head?"
I wonder if Goebbels is twisting
the knife, enjoying his little
victory over the opportunist
Albert Speer.
The future is insecure and Speer
feels anxiety and horror.
The economy is scrambling.
The Allied Forces are closing in.
They are on the German borders.
So actually there is nothing
to quarrel about.
Speer and Goebbels
quarrel on the sinking ship.
24 hours after being snubbed,
Speer is feeling dejected.
It's only at this point
that his mind-set begins to change.
Speer is not Goebbels.
Speer doesn't want to die in final
victory,
and he thinks that for him
there might be a way to come
out of this mess.
He's thinking of what may happen
after the end of the Third Reich.
What will he do?
What can he do?
How can he save himself?
His family?
He looks for an exit strategy.
One week later, Speer's concern
about a Russian invasion
from the east becomes a reality.
A two-million-strong Red Army
crosses over the River Vistula.
This is absolutely terrifying
to the German population.
They already know what's in store
for them from media reports
orchestrated by Goebbels,
with photographs and lurid
descriptions of Red Army atrocities.
There'd been massacres.
There'd been hundreds
of thousands of rapes
of German women.
Hitler's insistence on carrying
on to the end meant death
for millions of Germans,
which could have been saved
had a compromise
peace been struck.
Desperate to show he's in control.
Hitler moves himself back
to the capital, Berlin.
In a way that's typical
of his refusal to accept reality
at this late stage of the war
he has the blinds turned
down on the train windows.
So he can't see the terrible scenes
of rubble, ruined buildings
through which the train is passing.
As they come into Berlin.
It's a scene of absolute
devastation.
From now on, Hitler will direct
the war from the Reich Chancellery.
But he's rapidly running
out of options.
When he finally realised
that his gamble has not paid off,
the Battle of the Bulge
is definitively lost,
Hitler has something of a breakdown.
And he confesses that it's all lost.
"We'll go down", he said,
"But we'll take a world with us."
So Hitler orders the destruction of
anything that might help the Allies.
All the facilities necessary
for the continuation of normal,
everyday life, and then crucially,
for the reconstruction of Germany
after the war, which, of course,
Hitler didn't want to think about.
Meanwhile, Speer, who's holed
up in a Hamburg hotel, is thinking
about life after the war,
more than ever, he wants to survive
and secure a future for himself.
When he gets the news about Hitler's
scorched earth policy,
it gives him an idea.
Speer knows very well that he is
responsible for millions of deaths.
And therefore, to survive the end
of the war, it is necessary
to deny it.
He needs another image, not
the image of Hitler's close friend,
but the image of an opponent
of Hitler.
To tell the Allied Forces,
or to tell before a court that he is
innocent.
Speer EMBARKS on a secret
campaign
deliberately blocking Hitler's
scorched earth orders.
He gives guns to miners
to fend off demolition squads.
This is his story, his exonerating
story to save his life.
Persuades officials not
to blow up factories.
The notion of a good Nazi
is a powerful notion.
At least someone around Hitler
tried to save lives.
This is one of Speer's
biggest lies.
He puts a stop to the detonation
of critical infrastructure.
Speer is rebranding himself.
Speer is THE spin
doctor of the Third Reich.
Such a direct betrayal of Hitler
is a dangerous strategy,
so for now, Speer must play
a double game.
Speer in public, he presents
himself as the one who is able
to continue fighting, who pushes
others to continue the war.
He says, "Don't give up."
By the end of January, the Russians
are advancing through Germany
and are almost within striking
distance of Berlin.
In response, Speer is asked
to produce more
Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons.
But they prove hopelessly
unreliable.
Reports begin to circulate
that these Panzerfaust are blowing
up in soldiers' faces and not
hitting their targets.
And officials are sent
round to investigate. As part
of their investigations,
they not only speak to the guards,
but they ask,
"Who is managing the ovens?"
And someone points them to Helene.
So she's actually interrogated
about her work.
"What is it that you do here?"
"Well, I don't really know.
"You know, there's a pointy
thing and I just make sure
"that it stays right there."
She gives him exactly the answer
that he's expecting.
And so he goes, "Good girl", pat,
pat,
and moves on to the next person.
But Helene knows exactly
what she's doing.
Using her engineering skills,
she's come up with a way
of sabotaging the Panzerfaust,
and she's recruited an underground
network of fellow prisoners
to put her plan into action.
Parts of it is about an idea
that she has of the effect
that this might have on the actual
progression of the war.
Helene figures out that she could
turn the heat all the way
down about halfway through
the process and then turn it back
up again, so that when these shells
came out red hot, they looked
and felt like they should have.
But actually, the tempering
and forging process
had been sabotaged.
And her calculation is even if only
one in ten of these missiles do not
go off, then that is slowing
down that particular regiment
by at least 10%.
And her thinking is, this is my
moment, this is my purpose.
This is the one thing that I can
finally do.
As the Allies wreak untold
destruction on Germany, Goebbels
decides it's time for the next stunt
in his campaign to please Hitler.
He releases a movie.
Having pulled 187,000 soldiers
from the front to act as extras,
this is his most ambitious
propaganda project yet.
The movie Kolberg depicts
the heroic struggle
of this small German town
against the French army
in the Napoleonic Wars.
It is meant to persuade German
people that their blood contains
everything necessary for struggle,
resistance and victory.
Goebbels and Hitler watch
it together.
It becomes a moment of ideological,
emotional, psychological communion
over the fate of the German race,
over the historical place
of struggle and resistance
and heroism.
It also gives Hitler and Goebbels
themselves hope that the final
victory can still be achieved
and that there must be a trust
in the racial will of the German
people to win.
And the message really is never
surrender, never give in.
If the authorities want you to give
in, just push them to one side.
I think Hitler felt yet again,
Goebbels had delivered the goods
in terms of propaganda.
He felt it could not fail
to inspire the German people,
just as it inspired him.
In search of salvation, Hitler's
attention turns to another
favourite.
Himmler, the diabolical architect
of the Holocaust, is promoted
to a major military role.
Himmler is Hitler's hard man.
Himmler is Hitler's man for carrying
out the most brutal assignments.
Hitler knows that he can trust
Himmler.
Hitler knows that Himmler
will not disappoint him.
As Commander in Chief of
Army Group Vistula,
Himmler is now in charge
of the eastern front.
This is a really big moment
for Himmler, who has never seen
active combat duty.
So Himmler feels elated.
He feels extremely happy.
He feels proud.
Himmler feels that the fate
of Germany is now in his hands.
Hitler thought that Himmler could do
this simply by, as it were,
cracking the whip.
Himmler sets about reinventing
himself as a military man.
His special train becomes
his new army headquarters.
He comes across as a well-groomed
man in a neat uniform,
with his shiny spectacles.
He continues to appear as someone
who is extremely self-confident,
as someone who really knows
how to lead.
But Himmler doesn't have any
military experience to speak of.
Himmler says to military commanders
that they should strike
at the flank.
He constantly talks about attack,
attack, attack.
They know that the orders given
by Himmler to attack the Soviets
are completely unrealistic.
So Himmler failed to impose
his authority as a
Commander in Chief on the commanding
officers.
Himmler, as a military amateur,
does not understand the complexity
of military combat.
In an effort to prove to Hitler
he's having some success,
Himmler resorts to what he does
know how to do - terror.
To avoid concentration camp
prisoners falling into enemy hands,
he orders they be marched away
from the oncoming armies.
Among these prisoners is
Helene Podliasky.
Helene and her comrades are feeling
all sorts of things.
Hope, for one, because clearly
the Allies are advancing.
Fear - that the Nazis may no longer
have any use for them.
Uncertainty about where
it was they were being taken.
You couldn't stop.
If you couldn't keep up the pace,
you died.
If you were starving, you died.
There was no provision of water
or food or rest
on any of these marches.
Helene saw one of her comrades,
further down the line,
picking up a rotten apple.
It becomes clear that if they stay
on this march, the likelihood
that they're going to survive
is close to nil.
And for Helene, that's it.
It's now or never.
"We need to escape."
Helene and her group know the Allied
soldiers are now within reach.
They can hear the front line.
They just need to work out
which direction to take.
By now, Allied air raids
have intensified.
This time, Hitler is directly
in the line of fire.
His private quarters at the Reich
Chancellery, a symbol of Nazi power,
are under attack.
There was nowhere else for Hitler
to go now, but underground.
Hitler descends 15 metres
under the Chancellery gardens
to his heavily fortified hideaway.
The Fuhrerbunker.
Bombardment continues to rain
down on the area.
For Hitler,
this is a terrible blow.
As Berlin burns, the Allied leaders,
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin meet
in the Black Sea resort of Yalta.
Confident victory
is just around the corner,
they are making plans for what to do
with Germany after the war.
Unconditional surrender was the top
priority, the main ultimate aim
of allies east and west.
Victory would be accompanied
by dividing Germany into different
zones of occupation.
Hitler hardly reacts at all
to the news of this meeting.
He's determined never to surrender.
It would be like a repetition
of the surrender of 1918.
And for Hitler, it's all or nothing,
it's victory or death.
With the Allies now so close, Speer
spends the next few weeks collecting
official evidence
for his exoneration story,
For his way out to save his life,
Speer really needs not only
a story, but he needs paper.
He starts by writing a memo
to Hitler calling for Germany
to be saved from the
scorched earth policy.
Speer does not write these memos
for Hitler.
He writes them for the advancing
Allied Forces,
to show them
that he did everything to stop
it, that he did everything
to save the German people.
Speer must now get his memo in front
of Hitler,
to make it official.
But he knows better than anyone
that Hitler
doesn't like to be challenged.
So he carefully choreographs
his visit to the bunker.
Speer seeks to avoid the full force
of the wrath that he knows.
Hitler will vent upon him
when he reads the memo.
Speer hands the memo over to one
of his assistants.
Speer tries to sugar the pill
by professing his undying loyalty
to Hitler, and asking for a signed
photograph as the mark
of his esteem.
But just as Speer thinks he's
safe
There's a tap on his shoulder.
He's summoned back to see the
Fuhrer.
Hitler's seen the memo,
which is a direct challenge
to his mantra of victory or death.
Hitler was appalled by the memo.
Hitler realises that Speer is no
longer on the same wavelength.
He doesn't have the spirit
of self-sacrifice
that true Nazis have.
As far as Hitler was concerned,
this is a terrible betrayal.
This is a sin that Hitler
cannot forgive.
It was the end for him.
After seven days on the run,
Helene and her group make
it to the Mulde river.
They are now just a few miles
from the American front line,
but in the other direction
are the Germans.
So it's life or death, depending
on who they run into first.
They're exhausted.
They're hallucinating.
Every few hours, at least one
of them completely loses
the will to keep going.
But all they have to do
is to keep pushing.
They can make it to the frontier.
When the car first approaches
them, they're not sure
whether it's German soldiers.
But then, very quickly, she realises
that it's the Allies.
Helene probably thinks that this is
about liberating France
and the continent.
Helene feels that this is the point
at which Europe is going to be free.
And that if she has made it,
then many more are going to make
it and that her being alive is part
and parcel of that liberation,
of that freedom.
In the first week of March,
the Soviets are now advancing
towards the city of Kolberg.
The scene of Goebbels movie
masterpiece.
Hitler orders this symbolic
stronghold to be held at all costs.
But this time, there is to be no
heroic defence.
On the 7th of March, the town
of Kolberg fell to the Red Army.
The symbolic town which Goebbels
had devoted so many resources
to presenting us the place that held
out against the Napoleonic
invasions in 1813.
Hitler needs a scapegoat
for this humiliating defeat.
He turns on one of his most
loyal disciples.
Hitler felt that Himmler had let him
down.
He'd failed altogether to stem
the Soviet advance.
Hitler told him to his face
that he was incompetent
as a military commander.
Didn't have any experience.
Wasn't doing the job.
For Himmler,
the dressing down he receives
from Hitler is one of the low
points,
not only of his career,
but also of his life.
His world is coming to an end,
almost.
Who is Himmler without Hitler's
support?
Himmler knows that he is a nobody.
Himmler is ordered by Hitler
to strip the armbands from the
SS soldiers who have been stationed
in the east.
And five days later, Himmler
is dismissed
from his military responsibilities.
Himmler really needs to think
very carefully about where he stands
in the Nazi hierarchy, where
he will stand in future.
For over a decade, Hitler has
encouraged his circle of deputies
to compete for his favour.
But this management strategy only
works when you're winning.
With defeat now looming, Speer
has betrayed Nazi ideals
and Himmler has failed.
Hitler feels increasingly isolated,
increasingly alone.
The circle of people who Hitler
feels he can unconditionally
rely on is getting smaller and
smaller all the time.
This is no day for a birthday party.
It is deeply inappropriate
and deeply weird.
They know they're going
to be defeated.
They haven't got hope.
What they have got is champagne.
Himmler realises that Hitler
is losing the plot.
Hitler says he doesn't want
to be congratulated.
What is there to congratulate
when everything is falling apart?