For educational purposes
A look into the private life of the most infamous personality of the 20th Century.
It asks the question of how this man could rise from obscurity and plunge the world into a bloody war.
It delves into his past and reveals a portrait of a troubled soul ; an unpopular, obsessive loner who thought the whole world was against him.
His public persona of a charismatic man was far from the truth, as he hated to be touched and had few friends.
A look into the private life of the most infamous personality of the 20th Century.
It asks the question of how this man could rise from obscurity and plunge the world into a bloody war.
It delves into his past and reveals a portrait of a troubled soul ; an unpopular, obsessive loner who thought the whole world was against him.
His public persona of a charismatic man was far from the truth, as he hated to be touched and had few friends.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:30Do you see this, Bob? This is Salzburg. This is in Austria.
00:50And then I said something like, this is your home, Mr. Hitler.
00:55Yes, I was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria.
01:00And these are also Germans.
01:08And at some point the Austrians will be with us in the Reich.
01:25Stalin is bringing his country back home into the Reich.
01:48He left as a failure and returned as a ruler.
01:52Here he's visiting his primary school at Fischlheim.
01:55A boy from the region of the river Inn, a peasant.
01:59The people here are Austrians, but lean towards Germany.
02:02He does especially.
02:05But his childhood was not unusual.
02:07Three siblings died at an early age.
02:10All the more reason for Clara Hitler to dote on him with disastrous consequences.
02:20When he did something, he admitted that he was a particularly lazy boy.
02:26And he adored Karl May colossally.
02:29And he also liked Winnetou so much that he only spoke very quietly on the Marderpfalz.
02:35And while he was otherwise screaming like crazy when he was beaten up,
02:39when he came with his mother, he said,
02:42he then, like a Winnetou, only counted one, two, three, four, five at each leap.
02:54And then his father got such a fright because he thought,
02:57now the poor boy has gone mad.
03:13Unbending and numb.
03:17Alois Hitler got his way.
03:20On this sofa, taking his early morning drink, he had a stroke.
03:24Nothing shaped Hitler's character so much as being torn between his mother and his father.
03:29Between her indulgence and his hardness.
03:32Between her closeness and his distance.
03:42Hitler didn't finish school.
03:45Once free of his father, he played the dandy.
03:49His stage, the back streets of Linz.
03:54A loafer who drew and raved about Wagner's operas.
04:00He dreamt of fame.
04:02His mother developed cancer.
04:06Hitler, trying to bring order into his life,
04:09went to Vienna to study at the Academy of Art.
04:15He passed the preliminary test,
04:17but in the second round his drawing was rejected as inadequate.
04:22His vanity was deeply wounded.
04:24The dream of fame had been spoiled for the time being.
04:28He drifted, loafed around.
04:31It was 1907 and Hitler was 18.
04:34The capital of the multiracial state was awash with fear of foreigners, including Jews.
04:40Hitler's antisemitism was at this stage vague, not fanatical.
04:44His artistic dreams represented his craving for recognition.
04:48He wouldn't tolerate contradiction, as his friend of the time found out.
05:05I mean, he often said that he gave lectures for hours
05:10and gave political speeches while he was still asleep,
05:14while they were gathering in Vienna.
05:17He simply didn't tolerate any other opinion.
05:26That same year, Hitler was called back to Linz.
05:29His mother was on her deathbed and died of cancer shortly before Christmas.
05:33The Jewish doctor said he had never seen a son so grief-stricken.
05:42Hitler once again applied to the Academy of Art in Vienna.
05:46Once more, he was rejected.
06:09What followed was a plunge into the abyss.
06:13A few years later, he ended up here, in this hostel for the homeless in Vienna.
06:21Hitler's misery was all his own doing.
06:23He stubbornly refused to accept reality.
06:26It was not he who had failed, but the Academy that had failed to recognise his genius.
06:43Later, the adulation of the Viennese was especially sweet.
06:49When he'd left Vienna, he'd been fleeing homelessness,
06:52humiliation, conscription and the hated multiracial state.
07:06In 1910, he escaped to the Reich of his dreams,
07:09In 1910, he escaped to the Reich of his dreams, to Munich.
07:15When he was in Vienna, he had scraped a living by painting copies of postcards.
07:20He tried it here, too.
07:24City views, true to life.
07:28Accurate.
07:30Soulless.
07:33Fossilised, just as he was, a recluse and an eccentric.
07:41War brought deliverance.
07:44The people of Munich welcomed the prospect of a world war
07:47as an escape from the confines of the age.
07:53Among them was one who finally rediscovered a purpose in life,
07:57Adolf Hitler.
08:03He was so happy that he could join the German military.
08:08My father said, well, that's quite something.
08:13He really wanted to get it, and in Germany.
08:18That was quite special.
08:24Swearing in of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment before King Ludwig.
08:29One of these soldiers is Hitler.
08:33In Austria, he had fled conscription.
08:37But for Germany, he wanted to go to the front.
08:41At last, he belonged.
08:51The war was more murderous than any before it.
08:54His regiment was sent to the Western Front,
08:56where the assault soon petered out into trench warfare.
09:07Hitler was recognised as a brave soldier and received the Iron Cross.
09:18But in four years of war, he never rose above the rank of leader.
09:22His company became a surrogate family.
09:25He was different from his comrades,
09:27a loner who refused alcohol and tobacco and avoided women and brothels.
09:32His only friend?
09:35Vauxhall, a British deserter.
09:40After three years of war, hopelessness set in.
09:43People were exhausted.
09:46All quiet on the Western Front.
09:50All quiet on the Western Front.
09:54But on the Eastern Front, a ceasefire was in the offing.
09:57The German Reich was dictating peace terms to the Russians,
10:01an end to the war on two fronts.
10:04Everything staked on one card again.
10:10An attack in the West, the last great offensive.
10:15Spring, 1918.
10:17Once more assurances of victory, once more an illusion,
10:21even for Lance Corporal Hitler.
10:24But he was caught by an Allied gas attack and blinded for a short time.
10:30In the Pasewalk military hospital, he learned of the German defeat.
10:37A world collapsed, and not only for him.
10:40It was a turning point in his life.
10:48Everything, everything staked,
10:51and everything made,
10:54and everything answered by the men of November 1918.
11:02With the defeat and the proclamation of a republic,
11:05revolution broke out across Germany.
11:08In Bavaria, a revolutionary government was set up.
11:11The socialist president, Kurt Eisner, was shot on the street
11:14in February 1919.
11:19The people turned out to say farewell.
11:231919, Bavaria
11:43Hitler had returned to his Munich regiment,
11:46his only foothold, his only home.
11:49He was threatened with demobilization and a return to the hostel.
11:54A fellow soldier later remembered that Hitler seemed like a stray dog
11:57searching for a new master.
12:02In the funeral procession for the Jewish socialist Eisner
12:05was a detachment from Hitler's regiment,
12:08wearing both red armbands and black mourning bands.
12:14The film clearly shows a Lance Corporal marching with the officers.
12:19Adolf Hitler.
12:28Contrary to his own legend about himself,
12:31he is wearing the red cloth of the Soviets
12:34and sympathizes with the German Socialist Party,
12:37a hangaron with no political home.
12:44After the murder of Eisner, Munich was shaken by a second revolution.
12:48The Bolsheviks forced their way into power
12:51and for the month of April 1919 set up a Soviet Republic.
12:56The Bolshevik leaders demanded loyalty from the soldiers,
12:59including Hitler's regiment.
13:02Spokesmen were being elected. Hitler stood as a candidate.
13:06With 19 votes, he won a seat on the Soldiers' Council, or Soviet,
13:10becoming a servant of the forces,
13:13which shortly afterwards he said he had always hated.
13:16In early May, troops of the Reich Central Government
13:19captured Munich and crushed the Soviet dictatorship.
13:24Among those loyal to the government
13:26was the infamous Werdenfels Volunteer Corps.
13:29For ten days, this private militia of war veterans
13:32conducted a campaign of vengeance in the capital.
13:35Then they returned to rural Garmisch,
13:38greeted with jubilation by the locals.
13:42Lanz Corporal Hitler was willing to serve the new masters
13:46and denounce his former comrades from the Soviet period.
13:51When the Werdenfelsers arrived in Garmisch,
13:54he once more made an appearance,
13:56this time without the Red Army Band
13:58and this time siding with the right.
14:02Now Hitler had a stroke of luck.
14:05A former superior called on him to join the propaganda unit.
14:08The aim?
14:09Agitation among soldiers against the spectre of Bolshevism.
14:14The propagandists received special training
14:16with a nationalistic bias.
14:19Here, Hitler's vague ideas were formed into a political programme.
14:24Three months later,
14:25his first political pamphlet against the Jews appeared.
14:39The Red Army Band
14:45During this time, he was sent to spy on political meetings.
14:48Here, at a Social Democrats meeting in Munich.
14:53On September the 12th,
14:55he was sent to a meeting of the radical right-wing DAP,
14:57the German Workers' Party.
14:59He asked to speak and was discovered.
15:01He's got the gift of the gab, we could use him.
15:04This marks the birth of Hitler, the politician.
15:08A people is in a state of upheaval.
15:12And we, we are blessed by fate.
15:22We were about 15 years old.
15:2515, 16.
15:28We were interested in hearing this man
15:31because back then, in the huge Circus Conus,
15:34there were about 3,000 people.
15:36There were always so many people there.
15:38It's doubtful.
15:40It wasn't a circus show.
15:42But inside, he spoke for about 45 minutes or an hour.
15:48And the main topic was the Versailles Peace Treaty.
15:52And that was a topic
15:54that was of great interest to all young people at the time.
15:59The metamorphosis was complete in less than six months.
16:03Hitler called himself the drummer
16:05and was obsessed with his new task.
16:08He formed the NSDAP,
16:10the National Socialist German Workers' Party,
16:12and attracted more and more followers
16:14with his radical rhetoric.
16:16The king of the local beer hall
16:18rapidly became the standard bearer
16:20for the reactionary forces of the right.
16:23The eccentric from the trenches wanted power at any price.
16:27For him, politics was only a means to an end.
16:30In 1923, Hitler attempted a coup,
16:34the Munich Beer Hall Putsch,
16:36a quixotic attempt to kidnap the leaders
16:38of the Bavarian government.
16:46His dream of a political career
16:48was shattered by gunfire.
16:50His dream of a political career
16:52was shattered by gunfire on the streets of Munich,
16:54with 19 killed and Hitler wounded.
16:57Ruin stared him in the face again.
17:00Hitler first wanted to shoot himself,
17:02then starve to death in prison.
17:04It looked like the end.
17:07But quite unexpectedly, defeat turned to triumph.
17:10Hitler used the courtroom as a platform
17:13and became notorious across the whole Reich.
17:16His sentence was a lenient five years.
17:18Hans figured he confidently presented himself
17:20as the hero of the hour.
17:22He was no longer drumming for someone else.
17:25Now he felt he himself was the chosen one.
17:30The former Landskorporal was treated
17:32like a VIP in Landsberg prison.
17:34His cell door was left unlocked,
17:36visitors came and went.
17:38He made endless speeches
17:40working out his political programme.
17:45Fellow prisoners soon complained
17:47that their card games were being disturbed.
17:49To keep him quiet,
17:51someone suggested he write his memoirs.
17:56Day and night he worked on Mein Kampf,
17:59using this typewriter.
18:01The legend of the chosen Fuhrer was born.
18:10Hitler was released after just nine months in prison.
18:13He was not short of money.
18:15He went to election rallies
18:17in a red supercharged Mercedes
18:19like a small-time celebrity,
18:21made a pilgrimage to Bayreuth
18:23and acted like a man of the world.
18:27But in fact he had no friends,
18:29only followers.
18:31If anyone at all was allowed to get close to him,
18:33it was only the children of his comrades.
18:45I crawled under him.
18:49He was an actor,
18:51very talented.
18:55He made the most incredible sound effects,
18:58a constant narrative
19:00and background,
19:02a sound background,
19:06starting with something
19:08he had not invented,
19:10which was generally known,
19:12the start of a steam locomotive.
19:15Help me! Help me!
19:17Help me! Help me!
19:19Help me! Help me!
19:21Get you better! Get you better!
19:23Get you better! Get you better!
19:30As Hitler put it,
19:32he felt like a lone wolf in this period.
19:35Time after time he returned to Berchtesgaden,
19:38drawn to the rural idyll.
19:41In 1925,
19:43while taking his Alsatian for a walk,
19:45Hitler met Maria Reiter.
19:47The 16-year-old was fascinated
19:49by the politician 20 years her elder.
19:52This is the first recorded romance
19:54in the life of Adolf Hitler.
19:56You know, Mitzel,
19:58wrote Hitler tenderly,
20:00if I'm angry or troubled,
20:02I just want to be with you and forget everything else.
20:04Yes, child, you really don't know
20:06what you mean to me.
20:08Thank you very much. I love you.
20:10Your Wolf.
20:14In 1928,
20:16Hitler rented the Wachenfeldhaus
20:18on the Obersalzberg.
20:20After this time,
20:22he kept Mitzi Reiter at a distance.
20:30Deeply hurt,
20:32she tried to commit suicide,
20:34but was saved at the last moment.
20:36Mitzi Reiter took over the running
20:38of the Wachenfeldhaus.
20:40With her came her 19-year-old daughter,
20:42Gehle,
20:44the next passion in Hitler's life.
20:50The uncle looked after
20:52his young niece devotedly
20:54in his new flat on Prinzregentenplatz,
20:56besotted as a schoolboy.
20:58Gehle was fascinated by his success,
21:00but she suffered from his jealousy.
21:02Her famous uncle dominated her life.
21:04Hitler's unstoppable rise
21:06began with the world economic crisis.
21:08In a different place every day,
21:10he hammered home his message
21:12to the Germans.
21:30A break between meetings,
21:32Hitler arrived at Chiemsee,
21:34with him as usual his niece, Gehle.
21:50While Hitler continued
21:52his political manoeuvres,
21:54especially building on his success
21:56with female voters,
21:58Gehle waited in Munich,
22:00waiting to be fulfilled.
22:12Hitler's affections blew hot and cold.
22:14It destroyed the young woman,
22:16now 23 years old.
22:26In September 1931,
22:28Gehle Raubaule took her life
22:30in Hitler's flat at Prinzregentenplatz.
22:32Hitler took it hard.
22:34He interrupted his election campaign
22:36and returned to Munich.
22:42After Gehle's death,
22:44he created a cult around his niece.
22:46He left the room where she died
22:48untouched, locked.
22:50Only he was allowed in for his devotions.
22:54He now idealised the dead woman
22:56as his life.
23:00He gave her in death the attention
23:02he had denied her when she was alive.
23:06But soon there was another passion,
23:08also 19 years old,
23:10blonde and buxom,
23:12Eva Braun.
23:26No one had any notion of the character
23:28of the man appointed Reich Chancellor
23:30on January the 30th, 1933,
23:32whose love of very young women
23:34was almost pathological,
23:36who was incapable of close relationships,
23:38utterly ruthless,
23:40and would stop at nothing.
23:46His charisma as champion of the people
23:48was completely lacking
23:50in his private life.
23:52But I found him unusual,
23:54because I was first of all of the opinion
23:56that I was meeting a statesman,
23:58and it was as if I was meeting
24:00everyone else in the hall.
24:02So not having any special reverence
24:04stirred in me.
24:06It was just quite normal.
24:12The new Chancellor struck out boldly
24:14from the very first day.
24:18The first few days
24:20from the very first day.
24:26He ordered life according to an abstract conception
24:29of a national community.
24:31The individual meant nothing to him,
24:33a loner with no friends.
24:35Terror became the foundation of his policy,
24:38and violence, not open, but secret.
24:41The pall of greyness behind this barbed wire
24:44was enough to bring even the last remaining sceptics into line.
24:50Hitler's Reaction
25:17Just like Ernst Röhm,
25:19who had even been on first-name terms with Hitler,
25:22his old comrade was crossed out in 1934.
25:49Hitler, master of life and death,
25:52presented as a god at the party conference at Nuremberg.
26:01In rigid blocks, the masses cheered their Führer.
26:19The monumental, the geometric, the uniform spectacle
26:34all robbed people of intrinsic worth.
26:37It ensured distance for the man who could not bear closeness.
26:50It was well known that every doctor had difficulties with him
26:55because he did not like to be touched.
26:59I think he put his hand on the arm of his neighbour.
27:07He never wanted to be massaged.
27:11He was very reserved.
27:20The reclusive Hitler revealed very little about his private life.
27:24In 1935, his holiday house in Berchtesgaden
27:27was extended into a monstrosity on the mountainside, the Berghof.
27:32The newsreel shows devout crowds of pilgrims, young girls,
27:37a glimpse of Hitler's ideal world,
27:39seemingly far removed from mundane reality.
27:42From this world, he drew strength for new deeds.
27:50A glimpse into the holiest of holies,
27:53but the thoughts of the master of the house remain hidden.
28:19We have to go and eat now.
28:21I thought, this can't be possible.
28:23Who would call Führer Adolf? What is this?
28:28And he said, yes, yes, my child, we are coming.
28:33And after about a quarter of an hour, she came back and said,
28:36Adolf, you must come now, the soup is getting cold.
28:40Eva Braun had moved into Hitler's mansion.
28:46The transition from silly teenager to the woman at Hitler's side
28:49had been a stormy one for her.
28:53Hitler kept her at arm's length,
28:55like Mitzi Reiter and Geli Raubal before her.
28:58Lightning visits, then months of silence,
29:01an on-and-off relationship that made Eva Braun miserable.
29:06Desperate, she wrote in her diary in 1935,
29:10why does he torment me like this? Why doesn't he just finish it?
29:14And a little later, I've decided to take 35.
29:17This time it's going to work.
29:21It was her second suicide attempt.
29:24By some miracle, she survived.
29:26Only then did Hitler relent and stop his games of torment.
29:32So he called her to the Berghof at the cost of total self-abnegation.
29:37In his shadow, she remained Fräulein Braun,
29:40the secret lover who had to call her beloved by his surname in front of guests.
30:06It was not the official guests,
30:08the powerful and the great of the Reich,
30:10who made up the everyday life at Hitler's house in the mountains.
30:13The tone was set by his surrogate family,
30:16just a little group, secretaries, adjutants, personal physicians.
30:21Sometimes the architect Albert Speer dropped in.
30:29Set apart from it all, the boss, as they called him.
30:32He didn't like new faces around him,
30:35so it was always the same old gang with the same shallow jokes.
30:43There wasn't a single one of them who would dare to contradict Hitler.
30:48It was not dialogue that Hitler was after.
30:51They were his audience.
31:05We wanted to eat this and that,
31:09and in all these years he always had the same breakfast.
31:35He was very polite,
31:37very kind,
31:39and he was a very good man.
31:41He was a very good man.
31:43He was a very good man.
31:45He was a very good man.
31:47He was a very good man.
31:49He was a very good man.
31:51He was a very good man.
31:53He was a very good man.
31:55He was a very good man.
31:57He was a very good man.
31:59He was a very good man.
32:01He was very polite,
32:03and also very charming.
32:05For example, for Christian he could say,
32:08what kind of piercing ears do you have?
32:11He had a new hairstyle,
32:13and he combed it up.
32:15And he noticed that.
32:17While Eva Braun always said,
32:19the Führer would like me to always wear the same dress,
32:22and always have the same hairstyle.
32:24If he likes something,
32:26if he likes my dress,
32:28he would like me to have thousands of dresses like that,
32:31and always wear the same one.
32:33And I was never allowed to change my hairstyle,
32:35or even my hair color.
32:59Once they arrived,
33:01there were tea and cakes in the pavilion
33:03that had been specially carved out of the rock.
33:05Day in, day out,
33:07always the same.
33:28I always believed in the resurrection of the German Reich.
33:31They always said, you are a fool.
33:33I always believed in the re-establishment of German power.
33:36They always said, I am insane.
33:38I believed in the elimination of our economic crisis.
33:42They said, that's a utopia.
33:44Who was right about that, you or me?
33:46I was right, and I will be right for the future.
33:49After five years of dictatorship,
33:51Hitler was more popular than ever.
33:53Terror was the foundation,
33:56but his successes were overwhelming.
33:58The people kept in step with a Führer
34:00who remained always the same.
34:02Gentlemen, I will tell you something.
34:04If you think I only have a few shabby boots,
34:06I will have them copied without interruption.
34:09And I have ten pairs of them.
34:11As the head of state,
34:13as the Führer of the German nation,
34:16I must always look the same.
34:18And I must stay the way I am.
34:21Even the pharaohs
34:23always appeared with a gold mask,
34:25so that they looked the same.
34:27And that is absolutely necessary.
34:29I can't change that.
34:37Even his taste in art
34:39became the common standard.
34:48He had the final say in the choice of pictures
34:51for the German art exhibition.
34:53Everything was the same all over the country.
34:56The pictures, even if sometimes painted by experts,
34:59were soulless.
35:01The people all looked alike and were alike.
35:04The country was full of celebration,
35:06and yet still a mirror of his monotonous soul.
35:09He promoted the art he liked
35:11and persecuted what he didn't understand.
35:21The Last Objective of Hitler's Policy
35:26The last objective of Hitler's policy
35:28was now within reach.
35:30In his Alpine home, he was planning war.
35:33There was no outward sign
35:35to indicate what schemes Hitler now had in mind.
35:43It was the calm before the storm.
35:46The Last Objective of Hitler's Policy
35:49A year before, I had already experienced
35:52that he read in the German news
35:55with his large magnifying glass,
35:58and he also had golden glasses.
36:01Hitler was not allowed to be seen with them
36:04or photographed.
36:06And he was reading in there
36:09and suddenly said to Ribbentrop,
36:11My Führer,
36:13we will soon have to draw the sword.
36:16And now I thought,
36:18now Hitler will eat him up.
36:20Hitler said, No, Ribbentrop, not now.
36:23Not yet.
36:26April 20th, 1939.
36:29The Führer's birthday.
36:35Time was running out for the 50-year-old.
36:38It was becoming urgent.
36:40I'd rather go to war at 50 than at 55 or 60.
36:44His inner clock was dictating the timetable
36:47that would lead the Germans to their downfall.
36:57The biggest military parade Germany had ever seen.
37:02Four hours long, a spectacle bristling with weapons.
37:06Five months later, he attacked.
37:10For the first time on our own territory,
37:13also with regular soldiers.
37:17Since 5.45 a.m. he is being shot back.
37:23He was sitting by the window
37:25and could see the Wilhelmstraße.
37:27That was a passage.
37:29And I was standing a meter from behind.
37:32And he was watching.
37:34The Regiment Grossdeutschland marched
37:37through the Wilhelmstraße.
37:39We wanted to show it to him.
37:43And when the last man was through,
37:46he stood up and said,
37:48Now it's rolling.
37:50Now I can't stop it either.
37:53The campaign lasted two weeks.
37:55Then Hitler returned to Obersalzburg,
37:58the time of rapid victories.
38:00Poland, Denmark, Norway,
38:04Belgium, Luxembourg,
38:08the Netherlands, and finally France.
38:12In the only recording of a private conversation with Hitler,
38:16secretly made by the Finnish secret service,
38:18he speaks about France.
38:20If I had done it in 1939,
38:24then world history would have gone differently.
38:27We had to wait until 1941.
38:29Unfortunately, that didn't happen until May.
38:32The 10th of May was the first beautiful day.
38:36I started fighting in May.
38:47During the battle of Dünkirchen,
38:49the Fuehrer went to his soldiers.
38:52He visited the battlefields
38:54where he himself fought in the world war as a soldier.
39:01Revenge for a defeat from which he had never recovered.
39:05The delusion of being able to start again
39:07where they left off in 1918.
39:13The forest of Compiègne,
39:15where in a railway carriage the 1918 armistice had been signed.
39:19In Hitler's mind, an act of sheer malice.
39:34The festival in wartime.
39:36The approach to Bayreuth.
39:46Hitler at the zenith of his power.
40:05His public, loyal to the death in the tradition of the Nibelungen.
40:19He believed he had found his identity in Wagner's heroes,
40:23in Rienzi, the people's champion,
40:25and in Siegfried, the fighter against the powers of darkness.
40:30He had one piece of unfinished business
40:32which had been driving him for the past 20 years.
40:35And that was the war he had always wanted.
40:38A war of destruction to create Lebensraum in the East.
40:47Against Russia, he is a man of great ambition.
40:50He is a man of great ambition.
40:52He is a man of great ambition.
40:54He is a man of great ambition.
40:57Against Russia, he went to sleep quite peacefully,
41:01as if he had reached his goal.
41:03In the past, he had waited until the German people
41:08had been informed about his plans.
41:16But in this case, he went straight to sleep.
41:20We had to leave our suitcases in the night,
41:23and I was still on duty in his wagon.
41:29I fell asleep completely exhausted.
41:32In the morning, the Führer stood in front of me,
41:35woke me up, smiling.
41:38He said, Schneider, look where we are now.
41:42And I went out and looked.
41:44My Führer, we are in Posen.
41:46Meanwhile, the brother of Bormann, Albert Bormann,
41:49joined us.
41:51And the Führer said,
41:54now we are going to crack the whole nut.
41:59In the Führer's headquarters.
42:01The Führer on a morning walk.
42:21Hitler had settled down in Linz
42:22in order to recover from his struggle for Lebensraum.
42:31But this time, Hitler had miscalculated.
42:34The advance sank into the Russian mud.
42:40The winter finally destroyed the illusion of a rapid victory.
42:47For nine years, Hitler had gambled everything
42:49in the turn of one card,
42:51and lost it all.
42:56He locked himself away, as he used to at home.
42:59He stubbornly refused to accept reality.
43:02It was not he who had failed, but the people.
43:08Now his annihilating rage was boundless.
43:13As long as, literally,
43:15as long as tens of thousands of German men
43:19shed their blood every day,
43:21and give their lives,
43:23so that this Bolshevist plague
43:26does not fall over our European culture,
43:30our beautiful Europe,
43:32as long as we, this Jewish thing,
43:35he also used an expression,
43:37which I do not want to mention,
43:39do not have the most beautiful life.
43:42The consequence was systematic mass murder,
43:45which one of Hitler's followers unashamedly called by its right name.
43:50So it is with us.
43:53You are now in our hands.
43:56We have practically solved the Jewish question.
43:59The Jew is the great danger to humanity.
44:03And if we do not manage to eradicate him,
44:09then we have lost the war.
44:13You have to destroy them.
44:15You have to eradicate them.
44:17They have taken away humanity.
44:23The factories of death were in Poland,
44:25well out of harm's way.
44:27Hitler had never seen them.
44:29The armchair hero never went to the scene of the crime himself.
44:38The private man never wanted to be spoken to about what he had done,
44:43especially not at home.
44:59We have turned friendly Dutch people into enemies.
45:02We lead ourselves here, we lock up the people.
45:05I was so horrified, I really did not know that.
45:08I have only experienced that we do such terrible things,
45:12and the soldiers are ashamed.
45:16And then there was a terrible fight.
45:22The Führer got up and said something like,
45:26Don't get involved in things you don't understand.
45:31And then he withdrew.
45:33He left in the evening.
45:35And since then Mrs. von Schirach has never been invited to the Berghof.
45:52The Führer's birthday, April 1942.
45:55Outwardly he showed his followers he was confident of victory.
45:58Fatherly gestures from a friend of children.
46:01A world of illusion and reality.
46:05Hitler anesthetized himself with endless monologues.
46:08His audience at the Wolf's Lair or the Berghof
46:11already knew what he was going to say.
46:14He would tell his surrogate family of secretaries
46:17and adjutant generals,
46:19that he was going to die.
46:21He would tell them he was going to die.
46:24He would tell them he was going to die.
46:27He would tell them he was going to die.
46:30He would tell them he was going to die.
46:33To his surrogate family of secretaries and adjutants,
46:36a nation does not become extinct from the loss of its men,
46:39but from the loss of its women.
47:04He returned to the Obersalzberg more and more frequently.
47:08The world around him was falling apart,
47:11but the ritual at the Berghof remained the same.
47:14A walk to the Moselaner Kopf, then the platitudes.
47:19What was happening in Berlin was regrettable, he would say,
47:23but that will save us the work of demolishing thousands of houses
47:26to build Germania, the capital of the world.
47:34Hitler was failing.
47:36Suddenly old, ill,
47:38he avoided any contact with the outside world.
47:41Not at any price would he look at what he had done.
47:49He still dreamt of gigantic building projects.
47:53With his own hand, the architect Manquet
47:56had designed the very first building
47:59With his own hand, the architect Manquet
48:02had designed the victory gates, the halls of fame
48:05and the temples of death of his new world.
48:08Castles in the air for a capital city in ruins.
48:15At the end, Berlin was in the sights of the Soviet tanks.
48:18Hitler had dug himself into his bunker.
48:21He hardly ever dared come out into the daylight.
48:26The last footage.
48:28His tremor fell victim to the censor's scissors.
48:33The newsreel began with the next shot.
48:55A living corpse, a dead soul.
48:58A completely lost, destroyed man.
49:05That was the end. He was practically dead.
49:12The evening before his death, he made Eva Braun,
49:15his secret lover, Frau Hitler.
49:21The married couple committed suicide together
49:24in their catacombs under the ruined chancellery of the German Reich
49:27on the afternoon of April the 30th.
49:32Never has a person been so loved and so cursed in just one decade.
49:42Never has anyone failed so absolutely.
49:54The whole nightmare collapsed with his death.
49:57In the end, contempt was the victor.