The Plot to Kill Hitler (2023) Movie Script
1
- [Narrator] The
20th of July, 1944.
The Wolfsschanze,
Germany's headquarters
on the eastern front.
Nestled away in the
deep forests of Poland,
Adolf Hitler is drawing up plans
that he believes could
secure his victory in Europe.
The fhrer strategies
are interrupted by
a knock at the door.
Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg,
Hitler's trusted chief
of staff walks in
holding a briefcase.
But Stauffenberg is not
here to talk battle plans,
he's here to kill Hitler.
(crowd cheering)
(speaking foreign language)
(crowd chanting)
- There were lots of
plots to kill Hitler,
and he survived so many
that it made Hitler feel
that he really did have
this kind of divine
providence behind him
that made him survive.
(speaking foreign language)
(crowd cheering)
The most celebrated
plot against him
was the July bomb
plot of July, 1944,
in which you've got this kind
of cadre of senior officers
all over the Third Reich
who have been meeting in
secret for many years actually.
- On the 20th of July, 1944,
Claus von Stauffenberg
made a serious attempt
on the Fhrer's life
by bringing a bomb into the
briefing room where Hitler was,
placing it under his desk
and hoping that it
would kill Hitler.
(explosion booming)
- [Narrator] Adolf Hitler,
the most notorious dictator
of the 20th century.
Outraged by the
Treaty of Versailles
and Germany's humiliation
in the first World War,
Hitler fiercely campaigned
to rescue the
Fatherland from ruin.
- The mood in Germany at
the end of World War I
was that of a humiliated and
defeated people and nation.
This fight had been
going on for four years.
Millions of people had died
and no one had got anything,
or no one had got anywhere.
It was a mood of revolution,
a mood of deep dissatisfaction,
a mood of instability,
and it felt like the country
was on the brink of collapse.
- [Narrator] His
mesmerizing public speeches
called for a new
order in Germany,
one which would cast off the
weakened incompetent structure
of the Democratic regime,
and instead install a
supreme national leader.
Citizens from all
corners of the country
fell for the relentless
promotion of his ideology,
and Hitler successfully recast
himself as Germany's savior.
- What Hitler is absolutely
amazing at is speechmaking.
And to begin to
understand Hitler,
you've really gotta understand
that he was the most
amazing demagogue.
Hitler's speeches
are really vitriolic,
but they're very effective,
and they attract
regular audiences,
and he's really good at
using populist themes.
And labels scapegoats
for losing the war.
You name it, Jews, communists,
you know, whoever Hitler hates,
that given moment,
he'll lay into them.
Listeners are listening
and watching this,
and they're thinking, yes,
these are the reasons for
our economic hardships.
And Hitler's also got this
huge personal magnetism,
and he's got this
instinctive understanding
of the psychology of crowds.
And of course,
you know, like any really
brilliant public speaker,
he's going to use
that to his advantage.
It's like a conductor
with an orchestra.
(speaking foreign language)
- [Narrator] Like many
dictators before him,
he became insistent on
protecting his godlike image
and divine right to power.
The Fhrer kept himself away
from the more violent and
brutal aspects of the regime.
He promoted
anti-Jewish propaganda,
but refused to
bloody his own hands,
relying instead on
his loyal circle
to rid Germany of
its enemies me.
(crowd chanting)
- So the issue of
how Hitler managed
to keep his popular image clean
while the final
solution was underway
is obviously a very interesting
and a very difficult question.
But I suppose the essence
of it is two things.
First of all, that
those mass shootings
that were taking place in the
USSR were not on German soil.
And of course, the second part,
the most important part too,
that the death camps, all of
those were on Polish soil.
So they were out of the
immediate frame of sight
or reference of the Germans.
So again, in some way, they
were happening elsewhere
and not really in their
immediate field of vision.
- Hitler is always
mindful of public opinion.
I think that it's
always important to
remember that Hitler,
you know, does
always worry about
what the German people
think about him.
He doesn't just sort of seize
power in 33 and then not care.
You know, he wants to be
liked, he wants to be popular.
He's a political
leader after all.
And all political leaders,
democratic, or fascist or
otherwise, want to be liked.
- [Narrator] However,
Hitler and the Nazis
were not entirely immune
to the consequences
of their dark agenda.
Feelings of
disillusionment and disgust
built up amongst
certain individuals.
And by 1944,
Hitler faced the biggest
threat to his life yet.
Out of Hitler's Nazi regime,
spilled not only a
drive to preserve
the country's economy
and global status,
Nazism also meant
the annihilation of
Germany's enemies.
And in 1935, the creation
of the Nuremberg Laws
set its sites firmly on the
most hated group in Germany,
the Jews.
- So we know that
from as early as
Hitler's writings
in "Mein Kampf,"
that he was personally
antisemitic.
So we see his
personal antisemitism
translated into state policy.
There were many different
measures, legal measures
taken against the Jews, and
also illegal measures as well.
So very early on,
there was a boycott of
Jewish shops and businesses.
Very early on too, there
was a civil service law,
which essentially threw
out Jewish civil servants
from their positions.
The Nuremberg Laws
really put into place
some legal parameters
for how the situation would
be with Germany's Jews.
But what they did
really was to turn
Germany's Jews into
second class citizens,
really to take away their
equal citizenship rights.
And also to forbid marriage
or sexual relations
between Jews and Aryans.
- [Narrator] Many citizens
bought into the ideology
that the very presence of Jews
threatened the German people.
Ordinary people everywhere
began practicing
antisemitic views
and encouraging the idea that
Jews were an inferior race,
separate to the
superior Aryan Germans.
(speaking foreign language)
Before long, such
poisonous rhetoric
turned into violent action.
And on the 9th of
November, 1938,
the Nazi regime coordinated
a wave of attacks
across the country.
- You suddenly get this
thing called Kristallnacht,
the Night of Broken
Glass in 1938,
where the Nazis just
literally set fire
to synagogues everywhere.
The world really
noticed Kristallnacht,
you know, this
absolutely horrific
destruction, slaughter, violence
carried out by the state
against its own people.
It showed the world
what Hitler was.
He was effectively a
gangster and a murderer.
- [Narrator] The violence
was supposed to look
like an unplanned outburst of
popular anger against Jews.
But in reality,
Kristallnacht state-sponsored
vandalism and arson.
Nazi leaders actively
coordinated it
with Adolf Hitler's support.
- There's no doubt
about the centrality
of antisemitism to
Hitler's worldview.
There's absolutely
no doubt about that.
But what he seemed
to be trying to do
was sort of stay in the shadow
so that when we get
a pogrom like this,
that the public, the German
public and the population
were quite affronted by it.
Maybe not because they
particularly supported the Jews,
but because it was a kind of
a sort of flagrant violation
of law and order and sort of
a kind of very violent,
violent affair across the land.
So, you know, it wasn't
popular in that respect.
So there's that idea then
that Hitler was sort of
staying in the shadows
and not being
associated with that.
I think he managed to
maintain his popularity
during this time,
first of all, because he
was staying in the shadows
of more unpopular policies.
And there was certainly
that sentiment
among the German population
because of this myth that
surrounded the fhrer,
that well, if there were
unpleasant things going on
or policies that
they didn't like,
then somehow that Hitler
couldn't know about it,
that he wasn't
associated with it,
that it had to be one
of the other leaders.
- [Narrator] Universal
approval of the violent pogroms
was not a reality for Hitler.
In fact, opposition lurked
in unexpected places
and arose from
unexpected individuals.
Major general
Henning von Tresckow
absolutely despised
the Nuremberg Laws
and the violent
Kristallnacht attacks.
From as early as the 1930s,
the Nazi officer had been
plotting Hitler's overthrow
and gathering a trusted
circle of people
to assassinate the Fhrer.
Tresckow's disgust towards
extreme antisemitism,
consequently spurred him on
to become a key architect
of Operation Valkyrie.
- Meanwhile, at the graveyard
attached to the institution,
bodies are exhumed for autopsy.
20,000 are buried here,
15,000 who died in
a lethal gas chamber
were cremated and
their ashes in turd.
Death books found hidden
in the wine cellar
of the Hadamar institution
revealed part of the story
of the mass killings.
The bulky volumes contained
thousands of death certificates.
Profession unknown,
nationality unknown
was written after each name.
- [Narrator] Feelings of
disenchantment, however,
did not halt with Hitler's
anti-Jewish policies.
In 1939, one of the darkest
programs of the Nazi regime
came into existence.
Aktion T4.
- Where Hitler's popularity
starts to take a real dent
is his association,
or the Nazi association with
what is called the T4 program.
Now, the T4 program
is named after the address in
which it was headquartered,
Tiergartenstrae 4 in Berlin.
And it really was the
most repellent form
of kind of Nazi quote
unquote "medicine"
that you could imagine.
Because it was this idea
that you have to treat
a people as a body.
But what if you've got part
of your body as a population
that is considered to be weak,
i.e. sort of
cancerous or deformed,
or has hereditary illnesses?
Well, why don't you just
chop them off as well?
Because if you can
get rid of them,
i.e. people with
congenital problems,
you are gonna stop those
bad genes being passed on.
And that's essentially
what the T4 program is.
It is basically chopping
people out of life.
You're killing them.
You're killing
children with epilepsy.
You're killing people who've
got mild spinal deformities.
You're killing people
who've even got stutters
because you are saying
they're genetically weak
and we don't want them,
if we're gonna make this
strong, blonde Aryan race
full of perfect super humans.
It's kind of pseudo
medicine, it's pseudoscience.
- [Narrator] The unlawful
system of mass murder,
outraged many German citizens,
particularly Protestants
and Catholics,
who led protests against
the exterminations.
Relatives of patients
everywhere frantically panicked
with many, withdrawing
their relatives
from asylums to care
for them at home.
In some places, doctors
and psychiatrists
also cooperated with families
to have patients
discharged or transferred
to private clinics
beyond the reach of T4
Fhrer Chancellery
Director Phillip Bouhler
and physician Karl Brandt
led the killing operation.
Under their leadership,
T4 operatives established
six gassing
installations for adults
as part of the
euthanasia action.
For every person killed, a
death certificate was prepared,
giving a false, but
plausible cause of death
to hide the evil reality.
Hitler publicly canceled
the program in 1941
after outcry from
the German people.
However, the killings
in fact, continued
until the end of the war.
By 1945, the Nazis
had callously murdered
as many as 300,000
innocent people.
The T4 euthanasia program
represented in many
ways a rehearsal
for Nazi Germany's subsequent
genocidal policies.
Planners of the final solution
later borrowed the
gas chamber method
to eradicate the Jewish
and Roma populations
on a scale never
before seen in history.
(explosion booming)
(guns firing)
(explosion booming)
Two years into the largest
conflict in history,
Adolf Hitler devised
his riskiest move yet,
Operation Barbarossa
Hitler despised Bolshevism
and Stalin's regime.
Intent on wiping out
the Soviet Union,
he ordered Nazi troops to invade
Russian occupied territory
on the 22nd of June, 1941.
(speaking in foreign language)
(explosion booming)
(speaking in foreign language)
Hitler had assured
the high command
that we have only to
kick in the front door,
and the whole rotten edifice
will come tumbling down.
But Russia was not France.
Despite the serious losses
inflicted on the Red Army
and extensive territorial gains,
the mission to completely
destroy Soviet fighting power
was not achieved.
The Soviets were not
going to go down easily.
- Had Hitler stopped
after he'd successfully
conquered France
and the low countries,
and not decided in June, 1941
that he was going to invade
this really quite big
country called Russia,
he may have stayed in power.
But of course, what Stalin's got
is a lot of room to fight him,
because he can retreat and
retreat and retreat and retreat,
and you've still got thousands
of miles of Russia behind you
that you can fall back on.
But also what Stalin does is
he's very good at regrouping
and getting his
forces back together.
Germans use a lot of
overdesigned tanks,
overdesigned uniforms,
overdesigned weapons.
What the Russians
are good at doing is
just getting things together
in a kind of makeshift way.
But that works.
You know, everything
Russians have,
uniforms, tanks, weaponry,
really simple,
really easy to use,
really easy to mass
produce very, very quickly.
German kit takes
ages to produce.
So this is another real problem
that's faced by the Germans.
- [Narrator] 1942 would
be an even worse year
for Hitler's fight in the East.
The Fhrer hoped to take
the strategic city
of Stalingrad easily,
but the well-armed Red Army
and the fierce Russian winter
made German soldiers'
lives absolute hell.
By mid-November,
the Germans found themselves
outnumbered, outgunned,
extremely low on food
and medical supplies,
and surrounded by Russians.
But Hitler refused
to withdraw troops.
He placed prestige over
lives and commanded
they hold their
positions to the last man
and the last round.
He also promised
additional provisions,
provisions that never arrived.
- So when the tide of
the war turned in 1943
with a battle of Stalingrad
and then the fortunes
went the other way,
then that sort of question
of the infallibility
of the Fhrer came to
be called into question.
So whilst by this
point after Stalingrad,
the cult of the leader
was diminished somewhat,
he'd created this myth
of the Soviet hordes
and this great Soviet
enemy to such an extent
that out of fear and
out of desperation,
both the army and the home front
really worked until the bitter
end before capitulation.
- [Narrator] Left
with little choice,
German general Friedrich Paulus
went against Hitler's orders
and surrendered his
weakened troops to Russia
on February the 2nd 1943,
an act which Hitler
later called "treason."
The heavy defeat, punctured
the Fhrer's power in Europe,
and a lurking feeling
of disenchantment
spread throughout
the German army.
Stalingrad soon became
a major catalyst
for conspirators
across the Third Reich
to join the plot to kill Hitler.
Claus von Stauffenberg
was no exception.
He had witnessed firsthand
the absolute catastrophe
on the eastern front
and became convinced that
Hitler had to be removed.
Stauffenberg was born into
an aristocratic family.
Despite joining the Wehrmacht,
he, like many elites,
tended to view the
Nazis with this taste.
However, it would not
just be a class issue
that persuaded Stauffenberg
to turn away from
his divine leader.
His time on the Eastern
front opened his eyes
to the mass murder
of Jews and Slavs.
Outraged, the young
officer openly stated,
"They are shooting
Jews in masses.
These crimes must not
be allowed to continue."
- [Guy] As well as
places like Auschwitz,
which were relatively
easy to keep quite secret,
what people also knew
about from troops
returning from the front,
and especially from
the Eastern front,
was the Einsatzgruppen,
the mobile killing squads
that went behind
the German lines,
killing anybody they regarded as
being an enemy of
the Third Reich,
such as Jews and
communists and so on.
And the Einsatzgruppen
killed millions of people,
and it was impossible
to keep that quiet.
- [Narrator] Stauffenberg became
so vocal in his criticism,
his officers decided that he
should be posted to Tunisia,
a move which would
end with Stauffenberg
losing his left eye, his
right hand, and two fingers
in a surprise attack by
American fighter aircraft.
Stauffenberg's
life-changing injuries
did not hinder his mission
to rid Germany of its
ruthless dictator.
Instead, his fate placed him
in an even better position
to implement the plot,
right at the heart of Berlin.
(dramatic music)
In September, 1943,
Stauffenberg was posted
to the headquarters
of the replacement army
on the Bendlerstrasse.
Here he would be introduced
to two key conspirators,
Major General
Henning von Tresckow,
and General Friedrich Olbricht.
The tide of the war was now
turning against Germany.
The trio had to move first
to implement the plot.
- [Churchill] We shall
defend our island,
whatever the cost may be.
We shall fight on
beaches, landing grounds,
in fields, in streets,
and on the hills.
We shall never surrender.
(explosion booming)
(guns firing)
(explosion booming)
- [Narrator] Olbricht put
forward a new strategy
for staging a coup
against Hitler.
The replacement Army had
an operational plan called
Operation Valkyrie
to be used in the event of a
breakdown of law and order.
Valkyrie was the perfect way
to mobilize the reserve army
during the takeover.
Tresckow and Stauffenberg
worked tirelessly
to modify Valkyrie
and at the same time
remain undiscovered.
The pair drafted plans
to occupy German cities,
take control of Heinrich
Himmler's SS and Gestapo,
and even arrest the
Nazi leadership.
The plotters finalized
every tiny detail,
even devising a whole
new government structure,
following takeover.
General Ludwig Beck would
be placed as head of state,
the long-term resistor Dr.
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
would become Germany's
new chancellor.
Tresckow would take control of
all German security services,
and either Olbricht
or Stauffenberg
would serve as state secretary.
The only question that remained
was how to kill Hitler.
- There were lots of
plots to kill Hitler,
and he survived so many
that it made Hitler feel
that he really did have this
kind of divine
providence behind him
that made him survive.
But actually, the most
kind of celebrated plot
against him was the July
Bomb Plot of July, 1944,
in which you've got
this kind of cadre
of senior officers all
over the Third Reich
who've been meeting in secret
for many years actually,
what they wanna do is
to get rid of Hitler.
And they don't want to get rid
of Hitler because he's evil,
that may be part of it,
they want to get rid of Hitler
because they think he's
fighting the war badly,
and they just are
fed up with him.
And indeed Hitler is
fighting the war badly
'cause he's a terrible,
terrible strategist.
- [Narrator] The conspirators
considered poisoning his food
and even shooting the
Fhrer at a dinner party.
But by late 1943,
Hitler had become increasingly
paranoid and suspicious,
often abruptly changing
plans or tightening access.
In the end, a time bomb
was the only option.
At the time of planning,
none of the conspirators had
direct access to Adolf Hitler.
However, in 1944, everything
changed for Stauffenberg.
General Friedrich Fromm,
the commander of the
replacement Army,
appointed Stauffenberg
as his chief of staff.
Fromm was the only
officer other than Hitler
who could initiate Operation
Valkyrie with his signature.
Aware of his subordinate's plan,
he made a deal to remain quiet
on the condition that
he became a top official
in the new government
after the mutiny.
The plan was coming into place,
and Stauffenberg was
now in a position
where he could see Hitler
on a regular basis.
Of all the conspirators,
he was the best placed
to become the assassin.
(clock ticking)
Time was ticking.
Certain defeat in
the war closed in,
and the coup needed
to take place soon
to save Germany from
total destruction.
The Army had posted Tresckow
to the eastern front
and the original assassin,
General Hellmuth Stieff
had backed down from the plan.
Stauffenberg took total
control of the resistance,
but in doing so,
he placed himself as both the
assassin and the commander
of the Valkyrie
Operation in Berlin.
Hidden away in the dark
shadows of the Masurian woods,
Hitler was gathering
his most trusted offices
for a military conference
at the Wolfsschanze.
It was the 20th of July, 1944,
and Stauffenberg found himself
in the Eastern
front headquarters,
alongside his aide,
Lieutenant Werner von Haeften.
Briefcase in hand,
the Colonel now had the perfect
opportunity to plant a bomb
that could change the
course of history forever.
- So on 20th of July, 1944,
everything's in place.
You've got people in Berlin
ready to take over the SS.
You've got various army units
all over the Third Reich,
ready to go, the drop of
the code word "Valkyrie,"
which is gonna say that
Hitler's being killed.
- [Narrator] However,
the summer sun had
reared its brutal head.
The atmosphere was
intense and uncomfortable.
And irritated by the heat,
Hitler moved the meeting
from the Fhrerbunker
to a wooden hut.
At 12:30pm, Stauffenberg excused
himself to a nearby room,
claiming he needed
to change his shirt.
But in reality, the pair
began fussing the first bomb.
A guard knocked at the door,
urging the colonel to hurry.
Haeften and
Stauffenberg panicked.
The Fhrer was waiting
and no time remained to
fuse the second bomb,
one bomb would have to do.
As the seconds slipped away,
Stauffenberg swiftly
excused himself
under the pretext of
making a phone call.
(bomb ticking)
But unbeknownst to
the would-be assassin,
Colonel Heinz Brandt
positioned next to Hitler,
inadvertently collided
with the briefcase,
deftly nudging it
behind a table leg.
The fate of Europe now
hung in the balance.
At 12:42pm, the bomb detonated.
(explosion booming)
Shock waves reverberated
through the Wolfsschanze.
Stauffenberg and
Haeften quickly escaped
driving to a nearby airfield
to return to Berlin
and finish the job.
The hopes of resistance crumbled
as the aftermath unfolded.
Stauffenberg, Olbricht,
and Ludwig Beck
rushed to commandeer
various government buildings
and arrested general Fromm
for refusal to cooperate
until Hitler's death
had been confirmed.
But soon came the news
they had been fearing.
Hitler was, in fact,
very much alive.
- As it happened, the furniture
took most of the blast,
and Hitler got away with just
very superficial injuries.
And put into place
straight away,
the capture, the arrest,
and then the execution
of all of those who were
involved in that bomb plot.
- [Narrator] Had the bomb found
its place to Hitler's left,
had the meeting unfolded
in the Fhrerbunker,
and had Stauffenberg
triggered both devices,
the assassination success
would've seemed inevitable.
Yet fate intervened.
Hitler emerged with
only limited injuries,
sheltered by a table leg
that absorbed the
brunt of the blast.
The plan had faltered,
the tables had turned.
The dream of a
world without Hitler
slipped through the grasp
of those who dared to defy.
Furious and humiliated,
Hitler ordered commanding
officer Otto Ernst Remer
to arrest the conspirators
and bring them to him alive.
But a bitter general
Fromm had other ideas.
To hide his involvement
from ordered immediate
court martials,
the conspirators now faced
swift and brutal reprisals
for their bold attempt to
alter the course of history.
Ludwig Beck asked for a
pistol and shot himself,
the first of many suicide
attempts in the coming days.
At 00:10 hours on the
21st of July, 1944,
Colonel von Stauffenberg,
General Friedrich Olbricht,
Lieutenant Werner von Haeften
and another officer,
Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim
were killed by firing squad
in the Bendlerblock courtyard.
On the eastern front, Tresckow
learned of the plotters fate
and committed suicide.
Until the end, he remained
loyal to the cause.
The plot to kill Hitler
was well and truly over.
The 20th of July, plot
serves as a testament
to the bravery of those
who dared to stand
against a ruthless regime.
Even in the face of almost
insurmountable odds.
If the plan had succeeded,
it would've undoubtedly
shortened the war by many months
and saved countless lives.
However, Hitler's days
were still numbered,
and he would face the
looming shadow of death
sooner rather than later.
The Russians move
steadily from the East
whilst the western allies
crossed the Rhineland.
By April, 1945, 3
million Soviet troops
dealt brutal blows
to the last traces
of the German resistance.
With the Russians at
the gates to Berlin,
Adolf Hitler had nowhere to run.
- The first half
of 1945 is probably
the darkest six months
in Germany's history
because it being invaded by
the Russians, the Red
Army from the East,
and you've got the other allies
coming through from the west.
And it's the Russians
who reach Berlin first,
and when they reach Berlin,
it's a city in rubble,
it's a city in flames,
it's a city in chaos.
It's a city in which
squads of marauding loyal Nazis
are going around hanging people
who are not taking part in
the resistance to the city.
It's a city in which
you then got some Nazis
committing suicide.
It is the most benighted,
appalling place you can imagine.
And you've got the Soviet army
literally raping and
pillaging this city.
- [Dr. Lisa] Towards the
end of the war, of course,
Hitler was spending
more and more time
in his mountain
retreat, The Berghof.
And then people were
seeing less of him.
He was making less and
less public appearances.
And then eventually, in
the last months of the war,
into the Fhrerbunker.
And this is when public
opinion of the Fhrer
starts to crumble.
- [Guy] Hitler's last
days in the Fhrerbunker
under the Reich Chancellery
in center of Berlin,
are kind of terrible end
of a Shakespearean tragedy.
As the thunder Russian
artillery all around them
and they're deep,
deep inside this
sort of concrete
underground fortress.
Everybody's sort of kind of
going mad and especially Hitler.
- [Narrator] On April the 30th,
he committed suicide
in his bunker
as the city at the heart of
his thousandth year Reich
burned to the ground and
crumbled in ruins around him.
The war in Europe ended
forever on May the 7th, 1945,
and Hitler's rule
was finally over.
- [Dr. Lisa] The question
of how much the Germans knew
about what had happened
to the Jewish population
is very complex.
So certainly they knew
that their Jewish compatriots
were disappearing,
being taken away.
They were being taken
away they believed
as indeed some of the Jewish
people themselves believed,
they were taken away
to work in the East.
- [Guy] During the
war, word leaked out
from people who had
escaped some camps.
There were aerial pictures
taken of places like Auschwitz.
So, you know, by the
middle of the war,
the world at large
had a very good idea
that this slaughter
was being carried out
on an industrial scale.
- [Dr. Lisa] Yes, some
rumors did circulate back
from soldiers on leave,
and other information did
filter back to the Reich.
But the German population was
busy with facing its own war,
dealing on a day-to-day basis
with the course of the war,
allied bombings,
rationing, food shortages.
There was a deliberate policy
on the part of the Nazis
that this extermination
should take place,
not on German soil so these
death camps were all in Poland,
so they were outta the
direct line of vision
of the German population.
- [Guy] When the Germans
fully appreciated
what had been done in
their name by the Nazis,
it took a very long time
for that to sink in.
If you look at public
opinion polls carried out
in the 40s and the
50s in Germany,
there was still a lot of
residual affection for Nazism.
It was felt that
this was something
that had made
Germany great again.
It was something that had
got things moving and done.
Yes, there had been excesses,
the small matter of
the Holocaust clearly.
But people, some
people in Germany were
willing just to say,
if we can divorce the kind
of genocide bit from Nazism,
you know, is Nazism so bad?
Minority of Germans were still
affectionate towards
Nazism and towards Hitler.
- [Narrator] The tyrannical
force of Nazi Germany
sent the world into chaos.
An empire of hate,
violence, and discrimination
had spread across the
world like a virus.
- The atrocities
of the Nazi regime
came to popular attention.
Both the Western and
the Soviet forces
came to liberate the Nazi camps,
and they were absolutely
shocked and horrified
with what they found.
And once that became known
to the German people as well,
then they were again absolutely
horrified and appalled
about what had been
carried out in their name
by the Hitler dictatorship.
- [Narrator] Hitler's rule
left a mark on history,
a reminder that this behavior
should never be tolerated
and the world should not dismiss
such brutal atrocities again.
- Certainly there
are a lot of reasons
why you might have voted
for Hitler in the 30s,
not all of which
involved you being evil.
But certainly if you
are a fan of Hitler
after the war still,
and after all the revelations
that have come out,
then I would say you
definitely are evil.
(crowd cheering)
- [Narrator] Today the
Valkyrie conspirators
are memorialized as heroes,
even inscribed into the
very geography of Germany
through street names.
A reminder that in
times of darkness,
there will always be those
brave enough to fight evil
even from the inside.
- German guns.
German bombs.
(speaking foreign language)
(dramatic music)
(dramatic music continues)
(dramatic music continues)
(soft music)
(soft music continues)
- [Narrator] The
20th of July, 1944.
The Wolfsschanze,
Germany's headquarters
on the eastern front.
Nestled away in the
deep forests of Poland,
Adolf Hitler is drawing up plans
that he believes could
secure his victory in Europe.
The fhrer strategies
are interrupted by
a knock at the door.
Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg,
Hitler's trusted chief
of staff walks in
holding a briefcase.
But Stauffenberg is not
here to talk battle plans,
he's here to kill Hitler.
(crowd cheering)
(speaking foreign language)
(crowd chanting)
- There were lots of
plots to kill Hitler,
and he survived so many
that it made Hitler feel
that he really did have
this kind of divine
providence behind him
that made him survive.
(speaking foreign language)
(crowd cheering)
The most celebrated
plot against him
was the July bomb
plot of July, 1944,
in which you've got this kind
of cadre of senior officers
all over the Third Reich
who have been meeting in
secret for many years actually.
- On the 20th of July, 1944,
Claus von Stauffenberg
made a serious attempt
on the Fhrer's life
by bringing a bomb into the
briefing room where Hitler was,
placing it under his desk
and hoping that it
would kill Hitler.
(explosion booming)
- [Narrator] Adolf Hitler,
the most notorious dictator
of the 20th century.
Outraged by the
Treaty of Versailles
and Germany's humiliation
in the first World War,
Hitler fiercely campaigned
to rescue the
Fatherland from ruin.
- The mood in Germany at
the end of World War I
was that of a humiliated and
defeated people and nation.
This fight had been
going on for four years.
Millions of people had died
and no one had got anything,
or no one had got anywhere.
It was a mood of revolution,
a mood of deep dissatisfaction,
a mood of instability,
and it felt like the country
was on the brink of collapse.
- [Narrator] His
mesmerizing public speeches
called for a new
order in Germany,
one which would cast off the
weakened incompetent structure
of the Democratic regime,
and instead install a
supreme national leader.
Citizens from all
corners of the country
fell for the relentless
promotion of his ideology,
and Hitler successfully recast
himself as Germany's savior.
- What Hitler is absolutely
amazing at is speechmaking.
And to begin to
understand Hitler,
you've really gotta understand
that he was the most
amazing demagogue.
Hitler's speeches
are really vitriolic,
but they're very effective,
and they attract
regular audiences,
and he's really good at
using populist themes.
And labels scapegoats
for losing the war.
You name it, Jews, communists,
you know, whoever Hitler hates,
that given moment,
he'll lay into them.
Listeners are listening
and watching this,
and they're thinking, yes,
these are the reasons for
our economic hardships.
And Hitler's also got this
huge personal magnetism,
and he's got this
instinctive understanding
of the psychology of crowds.
And of course,
you know, like any really
brilliant public speaker,
he's going to use
that to his advantage.
It's like a conductor
with an orchestra.
(speaking foreign language)
- [Narrator] Like many
dictators before him,
he became insistent on
protecting his godlike image
and divine right to power.
The Fhrer kept himself away
from the more violent and
brutal aspects of the regime.
He promoted
anti-Jewish propaganda,
but refused to
bloody his own hands,
relying instead on
his loyal circle
to rid Germany of
its enemies me.
(crowd chanting)
- So the issue of
how Hitler managed
to keep his popular image clean
while the final
solution was underway
is obviously a very interesting
and a very difficult question.
But I suppose the essence
of it is two things.
First of all, that
those mass shootings
that were taking place in the
USSR were not on German soil.
And of course, the second part,
the most important part too,
that the death camps, all of
those were on Polish soil.
So they were out of the
immediate frame of sight
or reference of the Germans.
So again, in some way, they
were happening elsewhere
and not really in their
immediate field of vision.
- Hitler is always
mindful of public opinion.
I think that it's
always important to
remember that Hitler,
you know, does
always worry about
what the German people
think about him.
He doesn't just sort of seize
power in 33 and then not care.
You know, he wants to be
liked, he wants to be popular.
He's a political
leader after all.
And all political leaders,
democratic, or fascist or
otherwise, want to be liked.
- [Narrator] However,
Hitler and the Nazis
were not entirely immune
to the consequences
of their dark agenda.
Feelings of
disillusionment and disgust
built up amongst
certain individuals.
And by 1944,
Hitler faced the biggest
threat to his life yet.
Out of Hitler's Nazi regime,
spilled not only a
drive to preserve
the country's economy
and global status,
Nazism also meant
the annihilation of
Germany's enemies.
And in 1935, the creation
of the Nuremberg Laws
set its sites firmly on the
most hated group in Germany,
the Jews.
- So we know that
from as early as
Hitler's writings
in "Mein Kampf,"
that he was personally
antisemitic.
So we see his
personal antisemitism
translated into state policy.
There were many different
measures, legal measures
taken against the Jews, and
also illegal measures as well.
So very early on,
there was a boycott of
Jewish shops and businesses.
Very early on too, there
was a civil service law,
which essentially threw
out Jewish civil servants
from their positions.
The Nuremberg Laws
really put into place
some legal parameters
for how the situation would
be with Germany's Jews.
But what they did
really was to turn
Germany's Jews into
second class citizens,
really to take away their
equal citizenship rights.
And also to forbid marriage
or sexual relations
between Jews and Aryans.
- [Narrator] Many citizens
bought into the ideology
that the very presence of Jews
threatened the German people.
Ordinary people everywhere
began practicing
antisemitic views
and encouraging the idea that
Jews were an inferior race,
separate to the
superior Aryan Germans.
(speaking foreign language)
Before long, such
poisonous rhetoric
turned into violent action.
And on the 9th of
November, 1938,
the Nazi regime coordinated
a wave of attacks
across the country.
- You suddenly get this
thing called Kristallnacht,
the Night of Broken
Glass in 1938,
where the Nazis just
literally set fire
to synagogues everywhere.
The world really
noticed Kristallnacht,
you know, this
absolutely horrific
destruction, slaughter, violence
carried out by the state
against its own people.
It showed the world
what Hitler was.
He was effectively a
gangster and a murderer.
- [Narrator] The violence
was supposed to look
like an unplanned outburst of
popular anger against Jews.
But in reality,
Kristallnacht state-sponsored
vandalism and arson.
Nazi leaders actively
coordinated it
with Adolf Hitler's support.
- There's no doubt
about the centrality
of antisemitism to
Hitler's worldview.
There's absolutely
no doubt about that.
But what he seemed
to be trying to do
was sort of stay in the shadow
so that when we get
a pogrom like this,
that the public, the German
public and the population
were quite affronted by it.
Maybe not because they
particularly supported the Jews,
but because it was a kind of
a sort of flagrant violation
of law and order and sort of
a kind of very violent,
violent affair across the land.
So, you know, it wasn't
popular in that respect.
So there's that idea then
that Hitler was sort of
staying in the shadows
and not being
associated with that.
I think he managed to
maintain his popularity
during this time,
first of all, because he
was staying in the shadows
of more unpopular policies.
And there was certainly
that sentiment
among the German population
because of this myth that
surrounded the fhrer,
that well, if there were
unpleasant things going on
or policies that
they didn't like,
then somehow that Hitler
couldn't know about it,
that he wasn't
associated with it,
that it had to be one
of the other leaders.
- [Narrator] Universal
approval of the violent pogroms
was not a reality for Hitler.
In fact, opposition lurked
in unexpected places
and arose from
unexpected individuals.
Major general
Henning von Tresckow
absolutely despised
the Nuremberg Laws
and the violent
Kristallnacht attacks.
From as early as the 1930s,
the Nazi officer had been
plotting Hitler's overthrow
and gathering a trusted
circle of people
to assassinate the Fhrer.
Tresckow's disgust towards
extreme antisemitism,
consequently spurred him on
to become a key architect
of Operation Valkyrie.
- Meanwhile, at the graveyard
attached to the institution,
bodies are exhumed for autopsy.
20,000 are buried here,
15,000 who died in
a lethal gas chamber
were cremated and
their ashes in turd.
Death books found hidden
in the wine cellar
of the Hadamar institution
revealed part of the story
of the mass killings.
The bulky volumes contained
thousands of death certificates.
Profession unknown,
nationality unknown
was written after each name.
- [Narrator] Feelings of
disenchantment, however,
did not halt with Hitler's
anti-Jewish policies.
In 1939, one of the darkest
programs of the Nazi regime
came into existence.
Aktion T4.
- Where Hitler's popularity
starts to take a real dent
is his association,
or the Nazi association with
what is called the T4 program.
Now, the T4 program
is named after the address in
which it was headquartered,
Tiergartenstrae 4 in Berlin.
And it really was the
most repellent form
of kind of Nazi quote
unquote "medicine"
that you could imagine.
Because it was this idea
that you have to treat
a people as a body.
But what if you've got part
of your body as a population
that is considered to be weak,
i.e. sort of
cancerous or deformed,
or has hereditary illnesses?
Well, why don't you just
chop them off as well?
Because if you can
get rid of them,
i.e. people with
congenital problems,
you are gonna stop those
bad genes being passed on.
And that's essentially
what the T4 program is.
It is basically chopping
people out of life.
You're killing them.
You're killing
children with epilepsy.
You're killing people who've
got mild spinal deformities.
You're killing people
who've even got stutters
because you are saying
they're genetically weak
and we don't want them,
if we're gonna make this
strong, blonde Aryan race
full of perfect super humans.
It's kind of pseudo
medicine, it's pseudoscience.
- [Narrator] The unlawful
system of mass murder,
outraged many German citizens,
particularly Protestants
and Catholics,
who led protests against
the exterminations.
Relatives of patients
everywhere frantically panicked
with many, withdrawing
their relatives
from asylums to care
for them at home.
In some places, doctors
and psychiatrists
also cooperated with families
to have patients
discharged or transferred
to private clinics
beyond the reach of T4
Fhrer Chancellery
Director Phillip Bouhler
and physician Karl Brandt
led the killing operation.
Under their leadership,
T4 operatives established
six gassing
installations for adults
as part of the
euthanasia action.
For every person killed, a
death certificate was prepared,
giving a false, but
plausible cause of death
to hide the evil reality.
Hitler publicly canceled
the program in 1941
after outcry from
the German people.
However, the killings
in fact, continued
until the end of the war.
By 1945, the Nazis
had callously murdered
as many as 300,000
innocent people.
The T4 euthanasia program
represented in many
ways a rehearsal
for Nazi Germany's subsequent
genocidal policies.
Planners of the final solution
later borrowed the
gas chamber method
to eradicate the Jewish
and Roma populations
on a scale never
before seen in history.
(explosion booming)
(guns firing)
(explosion booming)
Two years into the largest
conflict in history,
Adolf Hitler devised
his riskiest move yet,
Operation Barbarossa
Hitler despised Bolshevism
and Stalin's regime.
Intent on wiping out
the Soviet Union,
he ordered Nazi troops to invade
Russian occupied territory
on the 22nd of June, 1941.
(speaking in foreign language)
(explosion booming)
(speaking in foreign language)
Hitler had assured
the high command
that we have only to
kick in the front door,
and the whole rotten edifice
will come tumbling down.
But Russia was not France.
Despite the serious losses
inflicted on the Red Army
and extensive territorial gains,
the mission to completely
destroy Soviet fighting power
was not achieved.
The Soviets were not
going to go down easily.
- Had Hitler stopped
after he'd successfully
conquered France
and the low countries,
and not decided in June, 1941
that he was going to invade
this really quite big
country called Russia,
he may have stayed in power.
But of course, what Stalin's got
is a lot of room to fight him,
because he can retreat and
retreat and retreat and retreat,
and you've still got thousands
of miles of Russia behind you
that you can fall back on.
But also what Stalin does is
he's very good at regrouping
and getting his
forces back together.
Germans use a lot of
overdesigned tanks,
overdesigned uniforms,
overdesigned weapons.
What the Russians
are good at doing is
just getting things together
in a kind of makeshift way.
But that works.
You know, everything
Russians have,
uniforms, tanks, weaponry,
really simple,
really easy to use,
really easy to mass
produce very, very quickly.
German kit takes
ages to produce.
So this is another real problem
that's faced by the Germans.
- [Narrator] 1942 would
be an even worse year
for Hitler's fight in the East.
The Fhrer hoped to take
the strategic city
of Stalingrad easily,
but the well-armed Red Army
and the fierce Russian winter
made German soldiers'
lives absolute hell.
By mid-November,
the Germans found themselves
outnumbered, outgunned,
extremely low on food
and medical supplies,
and surrounded by Russians.
But Hitler refused
to withdraw troops.
He placed prestige over
lives and commanded
they hold their
positions to the last man
and the last round.
He also promised
additional provisions,
provisions that never arrived.
- So when the tide of
the war turned in 1943
with a battle of Stalingrad
and then the fortunes
went the other way,
then that sort of question
of the infallibility
of the Fhrer came to
be called into question.
So whilst by this
point after Stalingrad,
the cult of the leader
was diminished somewhat,
he'd created this myth
of the Soviet hordes
and this great Soviet
enemy to such an extent
that out of fear and
out of desperation,
both the army and the home front
really worked until the bitter
end before capitulation.
- [Narrator] Left
with little choice,
German general Friedrich Paulus
went against Hitler's orders
and surrendered his
weakened troops to Russia
on February the 2nd 1943,
an act which Hitler
later called "treason."
The heavy defeat, punctured
the Fhrer's power in Europe,
and a lurking feeling
of disenchantment
spread throughout
the German army.
Stalingrad soon became
a major catalyst
for conspirators
across the Third Reich
to join the plot to kill Hitler.
Claus von Stauffenberg
was no exception.
He had witnessed firsthand
the absolute catastrophe
on the eastern front
and became convinced that
Hitler had to be removed.
Stauffenberg was born into
an aristocratic family.
Despite joining the Wehrmacht,
he, like many elites,
tended to view the
Nazis with this taste.
However, it would not
just be a class issue
that persuaded Stauffenberg
to turn away from
his divine leader.
His time on the Eastern
front opened his eyes
to the mass murder
of Jews and Slavs.
Outraged, the young
officer openly stated,
"They are shooting
Jews in masses.
These crimes must not
be allowed to continue."
- [Guy] As well as
places like Auschwitz,
which were relatively
easy to keep quite secret,
what people also knew
about from troops
returning from the front,
and especially from
the Eastern front,
was the Einsatzgruppen,
the mobile killing squads
that went behind
the German lines,
killing anybody they regarded as
being an enemy of
the Third Reich,
such as Jews and
communists and so on.
And the Einsatzgruppen
killed millions of people,
and it was impossible
to keep that quiet.
- [Narrator] Stauffenberg became
so vocal in his criticism,
his officers decided that he
should be posted to Tunisia,
a move which would
end with Stauffenberg
losing his left eye, his
right hand, and two fingers
in a surprise attack by
American fighter aircraft.
Stauffenberg's
life-changing injuries
did not hinder his mission
to rid Germany of its
ruthless dictator.
Instead, his fate placed him
in an even better position
to implement the plot,
right at the heart of Berlin.
(dramatic music)
In September, 1943,
Stauffenberg was posted
to the headquarters
of the replacement army
on the Bendlerstrasse.
Here he would be introduced
to two key conspirators,
Major General
Henning von Tresckow,
and General Friedrich Olbricht.
The tide of the war was now
turning against Germany.
The trio had to move first
to implement the plot.
- [Churchill] We shall
defend our island,
whatever the cost may be.
We shall fight on
beaches, landing grounds,
in fields, in streets,
and on the hills.
We shall never surrender.
(explosion booming)
(guns firing)
(explosion booming)
- [Narrator] Olbricht put
forward a new strategy
for staging a coup
against Hitler.
The replacement Army had
an operational plan called
Operation Valkyrie
to be used in the event of a
breakdown of law and order.
Valkyrie was the perfect way
to mobilize the reserve army
during the takeover.
Tresckow and Stauffenberg
worked tirelessly
to modify Valkyrie
and at the same time
remain undiscovered.
The pair drafted plans
to occupy German cities,
take control of Heinrich
Himmler's SS and Gestapo,
and even arrest the
Nazi leadership.
The plotters finalized
every tiny detail,
even devising a whole
new government structure,
following takeover.
General Ludwig Beck would
be placed as head of state,
the long-term resistor Dr.
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler
would become Germany's
new chancellor.
Tresckow would take control of
all German security services,
and either Olbricht
or Stauffenberg
would serve as state secretary.
The only question that remained
was how to kill Hitler.
- There were lots of
plots to kill Hitler,
and he survived so many
that it made Hitler feel
that he really did have this
kind of divine
providence behind him
that made him survive.
But actually, the most
kind of celebrated plot
against him was the July
Bomb Plot of July, 1944,
in which you've got
this kind of cadre
of senior officers all
over the Third Reich
who've been meeting in secret
for many years actually,
what they wanna do is
to get rid of Hitler.
And they don't want to get rid
of Hitler because he's evil,
that may be part of it,
they want to get rid of Hitler
because they think he's
fighting the war badly,
and they just are
fed up with him.
And indeed Hitler is
fighting the war badly
'cause he's a terrible,
terrible strategist.
- [Narrator] The conspirators
considered poisoning his food
and even shooting the
Fhrer at a dinner party.
But by late 1943,
Hitler had become increasingly
paranoid and suspicious,
often abruptly changing
plans or tightening access.
In the end, a time bomb
was the only option.
At the time of planning,
none of the conspirators had
direct access to Adolf Hitler.
However, in 1944, everything
changed for Stauffenberg.
General Friedrich Fromm,
the commander of the
replacement Army,
appointed Stauffenberg
as his chief of staff.
Fromm was the only
officer other than Hitler
who could initiate Operation
Valkyrie with his signature.
Aware of his subordinate's plan,
he made a deal to remain quiet
on the condition that
he became a top official
in the new government
after the mutiny.
The plan was coming into place,
and Stauffenberg was
now in a position
where he could see Hitler
on a regular basis.
Of all the conspirators,
he was the best placed
to become the assassin.
(clock ticking)
Time was ticking.
Certain defeat in
the war closed in,
and the coup needed
to take place soon
to save Germany from
total destruction.
The Army had posted Tresckow
to the eastern front
and the original assassin,
General Hellmuth Stieff
had backed down from the plan.
Stauffenberg took total
control of the resistance,
but in doing so,
he placed himself as both the
assassin and the commander
of the Valkyrie
Operation in Berlin.
Hidden away in the dark
shadows of the Masurian woods,
Hitler was gathering
his most trusted offices
for a military conference
at the Wolfsschanze.
It was the 20th of July, 1944,
and Stauffenberg found himself
in the Eastern
front headquarters,
alongside his aide,
Lieutenant Werner von Haeften.
Briefcase in hand,
the Colonel now had the perfect
opportunity to plant a bomb
that could change the
course of history forever.
- So on 20th of July, 1944,
everything's in place.
You've got people in Berlin
ready to take over the SS.
You've got various army units
all over the Third Reich,
ready to go, the drop of
the code word "Valkyrie,"
which is gonna say that
Hitler's being killed.
- [Narrator] However,
the summer sun had
reared its brutal head.
The atmosphere was
intense and uncomfortable.
And irritated by the heat,
Hitler moved the meeting
from the Fhrerbunker
to a wooden hut.
At 12:30pm, Stauffenberg excused
himself to a nearby room,
claiming he needed
to change his shirt.
But in reality, the pair
began fussing the first bomb.
A guard knocked at the door,
urging the colonel to hurry.
Haeften and
Stauffenberg panicked.
The Fhrer was waiting
and no time remained to
fuse the second bomb,
one bomb would have to do.
As the seconds slipped away,
Stauffenberg swiftly
excused himself
under the pretext of
making a phone call.
(bomb ticking)
But unbeknownst to
the would-be assassin,
Colonel Heinz Brandt
positioned next to Hitler,
inadvertently collided
with the briefcase,
deftly nudging it
behind a table leg.
The fate of Europe now
hung in the balance.
At 12:42pm, the bomb detonated.
(explosion booming)
Shock waves reverberated
through the Wolfsschanze.
Stauffenberg and
Haeften quickly escaped
driving to a nearby airfield
to return to Berlin
and finish the job.
The hopes of resistance crumbled
as the aftermath unfolded.
Stauffenberg, Olbricht,
and Ludwig Beck
rushed to commandeer
various government buildings
and arrested general Fromm
for refusal to cooperate
until Hitler's death
had been confirmed.
But soon came the news
they had been fearing.
Hitler was, in fact,
very much alive.
- As it happened, the furniture
took most of the blast,
and Hitler got away with just
very superficial injuries.
And put into place
straight away,
the capture, the arrest,
and then the execution
of all of those who were
involved in that bomb plot.
- [Narrator] Had the bomb found
its place to Hitler's left,
had the meeting unfolded
in the Fhrerbunker,
and had Stauffenberg
triggered both devices,
the assassination success
would've seemed inevitable.
Yet fate intervened.
Hitler emerged with
only limited injuries,
sheltered by a table leg
that absorbed the
brunt of the blast.
The plan had faltered,
the tables had turned.
The dream of a
world without Hitler
slipped through the grasp
of those who dared to defy.
Furious and humiliated,
Hitler ordered commanding
officer Otto Ernst Remer
to arrest the conspirators
and bring them to him alive.
But a bitter general
Fromm had other ideas.
To hide his involvement
from ordered immediate
court martials,
the conspirators now faced
swift and brutal reprisals
for their bold attempt to
alter the course of history.
Ludwig Beck asked for a
pistol and shot himself,
the first of many suicide
attempts in the coming days.
At 00:10 hours on the
21st of July, 1944,
Colonel von Stauffenberg,
General Friedrich Olbricht,
Lieutenant Werner von Haeften
and another officer,
Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim
were killed by firing squad
in the Bendlerblock courtyard.
On the eastern front, Tresckow
learned of the plotters fate
and committed suicide.
Until the end, he remained
loyal to the cause.
The plot to kill Hitler
was well and truly over.
The 20th of July, plot
serves as a testament
to the bravery of those
who dared to stand
against a ruthless regime.
Even in the face of almost
insurmountable odds.
If the plan had succeeded,
it would've undoubtedly
shortened the war by many months
and saved countless lives.
However, Hitler's days
were still numbered,
and he would face the
looming shadow of death
sooner rather than later.
The Russians move
steadily from the East
whilst the western allies
crossed the Rhineland.
By April, 1945, 3
million Soviet troops
dealt brutal blows
to the last traces
of the German resistance.
With the Russians at
the gates to Berlin,
Adolf Hitler had nowhere to run.
- The first half
of 1945 is probably
the darkest six months
in Germany's history
because it being invaded by
the Russians, the Red
Army from the East,
and you've got the other allies
coming through from the west.
And it's the Russians
who reach Berlin first,
and when they reach Berlin,
it's a city in rubble,
it's a city in flames,
it's a city in chaos.
It's a city in which
squads of marauding loyal Nazis
are going around hanging people
who are not taking part in
the resistance to the city.
It's a city in which
you then got some Nazis
committing suicide.
It is the most benighted,
appalling place you can imagine.
And you've got the Soviet army
literally raping and
pillaging this city.
- [Dr. Lisa] Towards the
end of the war, of course,
Hitler was spending
more and more time
in his mountain
retreat, The Berghof.
And then people were
seeing less of him.
He was making less and
less public appearances.
And then eventually, in
the last months of the war,
into the Fhrerbunker.
And this is when public
opinion of the Fhrer
starts to crumble.
- [Guy] Hitler's last
days in the Fhrerbunker
under the Reich Chancellery
in center of Berlin,
are kind of terrible end
of a Shakespearean tragedy.
As the thunder Russian
artillery all around them
and they're deep,
deep inside this
sort of concrete
underground fortress.
Everybody's sort of kind of
going mad and especially Hitler.
- [Narrator] On April the 30th,
he committed suicide
in his bunker
as the city at the heart of
his thousandth year Reich
burned to the ground and
crumbled in ruins around him.
The war in Europe ended
forever on May the 7th, 1945,
and Hitler's rule
was finally over.
- [Dr. Lisa] The question
of how much the Germans knew
about what had happened
to the Jewish population
is very complex.
So certainly they knew
that their Jewish compatriots
were disappearing,
being taken away.
They were being taken
away they believed
as indeed some of the Jewish
people themselves believed,
they were taken away
to work in the East.
- [Guy] During the
war, word leaked out
from people who had
escaped some camps.
There were aerial pictures
taken of places like Auschwitz.
So, you know, by the
middle of the war,
the world at large
had a very good idea
that this slaughter
was being carried out
on an industrial scale.
- [Dr. Lisa] Yes, some
rumors did circulate back
from soldiers on leave,
and other information did
filter back to the Reich.
But the German population was
busy with facing its own war,
dealing on a day-to-day basis
with the course of the war,
allied bombings,
rationing, food shortages.
There was a deliberate policy
on the part of the Nazis
that this extermination
should take place,
not on German soil so these
death camps were all in Poland,
so they were outta the
direct line of vision
of the German population.
- [Guy] When the Germans
fully appreciated
what had been done in
their name by the Nazis,
it took a very long time
for that to sink in.
If you look at public
opinion polls carried out
in the 40s and the
50s in Germany,
there was still a lot of
residual affection for Nazism.
It was felt that
this was something
that had made
Germany great again.
It was something that had
got things moving and done.
Yes, there had been excesses,
the small matter of
the Holocaust clearly.
But people, some
people in Germany were
willing just to say,
if we can divorce the kind
of genocide bit from Nazism,
you know, is Nazism so bad?
Minority of Germans were still
affectionate towards
Nazism and towards Hitler.
- [Narrator] The tyrannical
force of Nazi Germany
sent the world into chaos.
An empire of hate,
violence, and discrimination
had spread across the
world like a virus.
- The atrocities
of the Nazi regime
came to popular attention.
Both the Western and
the Soviet forces
came to liberate the Nazi camps,
and they were absolutely
shocked and horrified
with what they found.
And once that became known
to the German people as well,
then they were again absolutely
horrified and appalled
about what had been
carried out in their name
by the Hitler dictatorship.
- [Narrator] Hitler's rule
left a mark on history,
a reminder that this behavior
should never be tolerated
and the world should not dismiss
such brutal atrocities again.
- Certainly there
are a lot of reasons
why you might have voted
for Hitler in the 30s,
not all of which
involved you being evil.
But certainly if you
are a fan of Hitler
after the war still,
and after all the revelations
that have come out,
then I would say you
definitely are evil.
(crowd cheering)
- [Narrator] Today the
Valkyrie conspirators
are memorialized as heroes,
even inscribed into the
very geography of Germany
through street names.
A reminder that in
times of darkness,
there will always be those
brave enough to fight evil
even from the inside.
- German guns.
German bombs.
(speaking foreign language)
(dramatic music)
(dramatic music continues)
(dramatic music continues)
(soft music)
(soft music continues)