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00:001934. The International Motor Show in Berlin. One of Adolf Hitler's favourite events. Here,
00:19he promotes the Nazis' boldest propaganda project, building the motorways.
00:28Hitler fetishised mobility and loved cars, and you could tell that. Just weeks after
00:36becoming Chancellor, Hitler makes a promise. His plans for motorway building and car manufacturing
00:42will make Germany great again, ending years of hardship and high unemployment. In my opinion,
00:50the most appropriate way to guide the German people back into work is to get the German
00:54economy back into gear through great monumental works. The Reich motorways were promoted and
01:03propagandised as the roads of the Führer. For Hitler, the motorways are a powerful symbol
01:10of Germany's return to power after humiliating defeat in the First World War, and the youth
01:16of Germany will build them. The building of the Autobahn was done deliberately in a way to make
01:23work for as many hands as possible, that it wasn't particularly mechanised. There are just a lot of
01:28guys out there with shovels. Hitler also promises to build millions of cheap people's cars for the
01:34masses, but none of these promises are ever fulfilled. Not one person who subscribed to
01:40the car ever got one because the war came and it was converted to military purposes in the factory.
01:45Instead, millions of forced workers and prisoners struggle and die building roads that can never be
01:53completed, because Hitler only has one real drive, to wage war. His motorways are just another route to Germany's destruction.
02:241924. Landsberg Castle in southern Germany. Adolf Hitler is imprisoned here for staging a coup,
02:34but the authorities are surprisingly tolerant. The conditions in Hitler's fortress prison are
02:41far from harsh. He's many visitors and many books. During his enforced idleness, Hitler
02:49re-reads one of his favourites, the autobiography of Henry Ford.
02:57I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be so low in price that no man making a
03:03good salary will be unable to own one, and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours
03:08of pleasure in God's great open spaces. Hitler is inspired by Ford's vision of mass motorisation,
03:18he also identifies with Ford himself, a brilliant industrialist from humble origins,
03:23who creates the world's most famous car, the Model T. As soon as he's released,
03:30Hitler starts campaigning for the Nazi Party right across Germany.
03:36But now he refuses to take boring trains. Instead, he prefers to travel by car,
03:42to demonstrate his vision of national reconstruction through motorisation.
03:48Hitler enjoyed driving powerful Mercedes cars at high speed, all being chauffeured in them.
03:54Hitler was a real car fan. But Hitler's motorcade is something of a novelty. At the time,
04:02car ownership is still a privilege of the rich. Germany had fewer motor vehicles per capita than
04:11either Britain or France, to say nothing of the United States, during the 1920s and the early
04:171930s. Hitler wants to do for Germany what Ford has done for the United States, so he pushes his
04:24party to promise three things, jobs, cars and roads, for everyone. Very quickly, he asserted
04:36and propagandised that the German economy should be grown or restored to health, mainly through car
04:42manufacturing and road construction. In 1933, Hitler consults an expert on road construction,
04:51who is also a loyal Nazi Party member. His name is Fritz Todt. Todt was a construction engineer,
05:02a road builder. He had a senior position at a very reputable construction company. He joined
05:11the Nazi Party very early on, in 1922 or 1923, I think. In contrast to many other Nazis,
05:17he was very competent in his field, and most people describe him as a level-headed guy.
05:22The most crucial person in the development and realisation of the motorways was definitely Fritz
05:31Todt. Todt presents Hitler with a plan for a national motorway network. He argues it will
05:40create jobs, boost tourism and even have strategic military benefits. However,
05:45Todt's proposal isn't original. He borrows from plans created a decade earlier by the
05:51motorway lobby, Haferba. The Autobahn programme begins in the Weimar Republic. The first Autobahn
06:00is the one between Bonn and Cologne, which was supposed to be the first leg of an Autobahn
06:07going from Hamburg down to Frankfurt, down to Basel, the Haferba. So the idea of the Autobahn
06:13are already there. It is more than just an idea. These are comprehensive blueprints. These plans
06:24were very meticulous and were very advanced by the late 1920s. They had drawings for every 20
06:31kilometre stretch, down to every last detail, which the Nazis were able to base their plans
06:36on with only minor variations. When the Nazis come to power, Hitler appoints Todt General
06:45Inspector of Roads. He gets to work immediately. Naturally, sweeping promises about route
06:54completions were made. By 1937-38, 10,000 kilometres were meant to have been completed.
07:01The overall plan envisaged 22,000 kilometres of motorway.
07:32Germany had 35 or more percent of the workforce unemployed when the Nazis came to power. The
07:39depression in Germany was deeper than anywhere else in Europe, and it's a big reason why the
07:45Nazis managed to come to power, because they promised to try and deal with it. People were
07:51fed the propaganda, this is a means to an end, a great glory will arise from this, and you're a
07:57part of that great glory. In other words, this idea that we live in epic times, you want to be
08:02part of that, then get digging the motorway, because everything will come to you, all the
08:07goodies, because then you'll be able to deliver by lorry, and you'll be delivered fast, and you'll
08:12have a great future awaiting you. Many unemployed people put great effort into applying for jobs on
08:20the motorways. The Federal Archives have records of the unemployed, sending in poems and using
08:26these poems to put themselves forward to finally get a job on the motorways.
08:33Cueing up for the Dole, many years I spent, now finally I hold a shovel in my hand. Doing physical
08:40work in nature out there, worked on me like a miraculous cure. This is why I work with gratitude
08:47for the master builder of all time, to realise the jewel in the crown of his monumental plan,
08:53the Reich Motorway. The building of the Autobahn was done deliberately in such a way as to make
09:00work for as many hands as possible, that it wasn't particularly mechanised. There were just a lot of
09:05guys out there with shovels. The routine was that workers were given work clothes and equipped with
09:11spades and shovels. The authorities would officially release them from the state of unemployment.
09:17Then they marched off, or were transported to the construction sites by lorries,
09:21which were driven by members of the SA in a kind of triumphal march. The population showed
09:27great interest. Sometimes hundreds of thousands of people crowded around these construction sites.
09:35These back-to-work ceremonies take place all around the country.
09:38Tod carefully schedules motorway construction to spread the propaganda message as widely as
09:44possible. All Germans are meant to feel that they are directly benefiting from the motorways.
09:49The commissioning of the construction sites always ran to more or less the same pattern,
09:54which was designed for propaganda purposes in both film and sound. It was very important
10:00that the radio was always there to broadcast, as well as the weekly newsreel.
10:07And when the cameras are rolling, even the Führer gets his hands dirty.
10:11Hitler often tells the workers that he understands their needs, because
10:16he too had suffered during his humble earlier life, before his rise to power.
10:23Back then, they used to say, what does he want? That former builder or painter. But I am happy
10:30and proud that fate forced me down this road. It is, perhaps, why I have a desire to be a
10:36It is, perhaps, why I have a deeper understanding than others,
10:42of the German worker, of his nature, but also of his vital needs.
10:50It's hard to imagine today the extent to which the motorway shaped the perceptions
10:55of the population across all media. Fritz Tod takes charge of motorway-related propaganda
11:03personally. He edits the weekly magazine The Road and commissions films which portray the
11:09Führer's project as a miraculous road to recovery. But this doesn't distract him
11:14from overseeing all the technical details.
11:21So the motorway was intended to meet the following criteria.
11:25To have two lanes in each direction, separated by a central reservation.
11:30It was meant to have no junctions and was reserved for car traffic only.
11:35In the early planning stages, quite a few railway engineers were involved, which means
11:39that their plans followed railway construction conventions.
11:42An elevated track, preferably going in a totally straight line over long distances.
11:51Tod dismisses these coldly efficient straight lines.
11:55He prefers a route design known as the curved path.
12:00In this conception of the curved path, two aspects come together.
12:07First, that landscape should be experienced,
12:09which links to the emphasis on travel and tourism, which was a priority.
12:16So they wanted to open up a panoramic vista for the driver.
12:20To a large extent, this was copied from the USA.
12:24These designs were based on the idea of landscape entertaining the driving audience.
12:30Even though Tod has copied the curved path from America,
12:36he insists that Nazi ideology makes German roads different.
12:42Motorways can, after all, be built by any nation.
12:45But that we should have been the first to span our fatherland with these ribbons of light,
12:50and that they are looked upon and felt by everyone in the nation as being
12:54throughout a work of national socialism, is no mere chance.
12:59These roads bear witness to the unity of the Reich.
13:05So driving on these Roads of the Führer is both a convenient and political experience.
13:11They are the height of modernity, yet also lasting monuments to Germany's power.
13:19The first stretch of motorway completed by the Nazis links Frankfurt with Darmstadt in May 1935.
13:26Thousands line the 22-kilometre route,
13:29but there are still not many drivers, as even now few Germans own a car.
13:35Germany was a very under-motorised country.
13:38If you look at early film, neutral film, there's hardly any cars on them, just one or two.
13:46Hitler hates the fact that cars are simply too expensive for most Germans.
13:51It is bitter to think of the millions of brave, industrious and hard-working fellow men
13:57who were excluded from the start from owning motor vehicles.
14:00This class of people would really benefit from car ownership,
14:04especially on Sundays and on holidays,
14:06when it would be a source of joyous happiness previously unknown to them.
14:13But Hitler is planning a solution.
14:16The German people were meant to be furnished with the German people's car,
14:20similar to the Americans' Ford Model T, and as soon as possible.
14:25The people's car has to be cheap enough for workers.
14:28Hitler tells German manufacturers that it must cost no more than two months' average earnings.
14:35It must be possible to give the German people a motor vehicle
14:40that does not cost more than a mid-range motor vehicle.
14:43The price was set at 990 marks by diktat.
14:47The car was not allowed to cost any more,
14:50but economically, this was completely unachievable.
14:56It was a big problem for the motor industry,
15:00because selling it for a thousand marks was not going to bring the men any happiness.
15:06Despite their reservations, the car industry builds a prototype designed by Ferdinand Porsche.
15:12It only just about managed to go without any frills, any luxuries at all.
15:17Very, very uncomfortable.
15:20But the manufacturers calculate that even a basic people's car
15:24will cost far more to make than Hitler has decreed,
15:26when they tell him he is furious.
15:30I was told this is impossible.
15:32My only reply to this is what is possible in other countries is also possible in Germany.
15:38I hate that word impossible,
15:40since it has always been the mark of people not daring enough
15:43to make and to implement great decisions.
15:46The automobile must become the means of transportation for the people.
15:50And what the fuck is that?
15:52It's a car.
15:52It's a car.
15:53It's a car.
15:54It's a car.
15:54It's a car.
15:55It's a car.
15:55It's a car.
15:56It's a car.
15:56It's a car.
15:57It's a car.
15:57It's a car.
15:58It's a car.
15:58And what the Führer wants, the Führer gets.
16:02The way the economy worked in Nazi Germany was it was directed and controlled,
16:06increasingly so, by the Nazi government for political reasons.
16:11And then in the end, I mean, Hitler, of course, could not be resisted,
16:14and he pushed through the idea.
16:16The car firms are desperate not to be stuck with a loss-making model,
16:20so they cast their eyes on another source of funds for the people's car.
16:25All workers are now forced to join the Nazi workers' organisation,
16:29the German Labour Front.
16:31It takes over independent trade unions and confiscates their assets
16:35of nearly 500 million Reichsmarks,
16:37equivalent to more than 8.5 billion US dollars today.
16:42To produce the people's car, Hitler, like his hero Henry Ford,
16:46builds his own factory, and he steals German Labour Front money to fund it.
16:50So he's forcing German workers to take on the risk of this loss-making venture,
16:55now rebranded the Strength Through Joy car.
17:01This means that, from the word go, this was an enterprise dependent on subsidies.
17:06A new factory was built, the Strength Through Joy plant,
17:10which later became the Wolfsburg plant.
17:14The factory is planned to be the largest in the world,
17:17bigger even than Ford's, with enormous output.
17:21Propaganda was spread that, from 1939,
17:251.5 million people's cars would be built each year.
17:31The Nazis come up with an ingenious way of taking yet more money from the workers.
17:37There was a peculiar, I guess, higher purchase system,
17:40where first you had to pay for the car, and then you got it somewhat later.
17:45Sales are limited to German Labour Front members,
17:48who have to buy a Strength Through Joy savings stamp every week,
17:52until they reach the purchase price.
17:54But if they miss a single payment, everything they've spent is forfeit.
17:59So the workers are paying for their cars, even before the factory is built.
18:04This was a new thing, the idea that I, in my roommate village,
18:07might actually be able to have a car.
18:10And the Nazi party were telling all the time you could.
18:12It was only a matter of waiting, be patient and you'll get one.
18:16So a lot of it was aspirational consumption.
18:18You lived in hope, and they played on your hope.
18:22Hitler wants more people to own cars.
18:25But there is one group he does not want to see on Germany's roads, the Jews.
18:30There's a great diary from Nazi Germany by a Jewish professor called Victor Klemperer,
18:37who, with great pride and joy, buys a car,
18:40and then he's banned from driving it.
18:43Jews are banned from driving.
18:45The Jews driving offends the German traffic community,
18:49especially as they have presumptuously made use of the Reich motorways,
18:53which were built by German workers' hands.
18:55This prohibition hits us terribly hard.
18:59Jews are banned from driving and even owning cars.
19:03Victor Klemperer records the growing list of small,
19:06everyday pleasures now denied to Jews like him.
19:09They're wearing us down with ever-new tricks.
19:13Ban on purchasing flowers.
19:15Ban on going to the barber.
19:17Compulsory surrender of bicycles.
19:20It has allowed to cycle to work,
19:22but Sunday outings and visits by bicycle are forbidden.
19:26Gradually you see, you know, these things that he likes doing
19:30are kind of gradually circumscribed and stopped,
19:32and his life kind of closes in because he's able to do less and less.
19:37The Jews are persecuted because the Nazis believe they are an inferior race,
19:41whereas Germans are seen as superior,
19:44partly because of the concept of German work.
19:48The idea was that there was a special element of honour in German work,
19:52that there was an element of sincerity of a work ethos
19:56that was specific to the German people.
19:58That was part of the Nazi ideology,
20:00and also something that Hitler very much stressed in his public speeches.
20:04I am asking you to bear in mind that we live in a time
20:08which sees work as an essential matter,
20:11and that we want to build a state which values work for its own sake
20:15and respects the worker because he is fulfilling a duty to the nation.
20:21The Nazis create a new national organisation to embody this ideal,
20:26the Reich Labour Service.
20:28It takes over existing job-creation schemes around the country,
20:31school leavers, students and long-term unemployed men
20:34are forced to do at least six months' service,
20:37creating an army of cheap labour.
20:40The propaganda message is clear.
20:42Physical labour should be admired and experienced by every German,
20:45regardless of social class.
20:49I ask you to keep in mind that we want to build a state
20:52which uses its labour service to teach everyone,
20:56even the pampered son of Highborne to be a good boy.
20:59I ask you to keep in mind that we want to build a state
21:02which uses its labour service to teach everyone,
21:05even the pampered son of Highborne parents,
21:08to value work and respect physical labour
21:11in the service of the national community.
21:14Whether you were a prince or whether you were a pauper,
21:18you had to build roads.
21:21The Reich Labour Service's propaganda also says
21:24it is unifying the country and overcoming regional differences.
21:29The most important propaganda opportunity
21:33was certainly the annual rally in Nuremberg,
21:36where the Reich Labour Service, since 1933,
21:39was always a central element
21:41of the propaganda marches and demonstrations.
21:44So you would have 100,000 young men marching in front of Hitler,
21:48showing to the Führer that this organisation
21:51was a powerful and important tool for the regime.
21:59MAN SPEAKS GERMAN
22:18This is, of course, one of the great achievements of propaganda,
22:21this elevation of labour,
22:23partly by making everyone for a period a labourer,
22:26but continuously producing posters and films and so forth,
22:30celebrating labour as really the sinews of the culture,
22:35the foundation of the culture.
22:38It was a symbol of the regime
22:40in its attempt to overcome the Great Depression.
22:43It had young men, mostly men, put to work
22:47to show that the regime was trying to help the people,
22:50that it was an active attempt to overcome the crisis,
22:54and that was the most important propaganda element that it actually had.
22:58Young men walking with their space through small villages,
23:01singing their songs, looking happy, and being back to work.
23:11But beneath the happy image lurks the power of the Nazi state.
23:17The Labour Service obviously had an element of coercion in it,
23:22and the Nazi idea of work was one of self-sacrifice for the nation,
23:28whether you volunteered or not.
23:31The service is run in a quasi-military fashion.
23:35The Reich Labour Service had its specific uniform, it was brown.
23:38It didn't look particularly nice.
23:40People in the Third Reich also complained sometimes
23:42about the way the uniforms looked.
23:44It was almost like a military uniform,
23:46and there were also all the badges
23:48and things that normally distinguish people in military organisations.
23:54Each of us had a work shovel and, in addition,
23:57a second spade which we polished to perfection,
23:59which we handled like a gun.
24:02We were drilled in presenting it so that it flashed in the sunlight.
24:08All of this was very powerful propaganda,
24:11and it was very, very persuasive to people looking at Germany from outside.
24:16Sir Neville Henderson, the British ambassador,
24:18he actually was totally taken in.
24:21He said, these are marvellous structures.
24:23You know, not everyone in Nazi Germany is an evil clown.
24:26It has some very great men,
24:28and it creates some fantastic nationalising institution
24:32which destroy all the barriers of social class and create solidarity.
24:37It's a marvellous thing.
24:38In many ways, it is the new dawn they promised.
24:43Relentless propaganda shows the young men of the Reich Labour Service
24:47as heroes, serving the national community by constructing Hitler's roads.
24:52In fact, they're not really up to the job.
24:56The workforce of the Labour Service was unskilled labour.
24:59We have to remember that these are 7-, 18-, 19-year-old young men
25:03from all walks of life who have to do this kind of service,
25:07and therefore it is impossible to think of them as a qualified workforce.
25:11What it mainly did was infrastructure projects
25:14such as cultivating the ground, irrigation work, for instance,
25:18but also some other jobs in that field of building smaller pathways, roads.
25:24So that was the main job in the early years.
25:28For the more complex work of motorway construction,
25:31Fritz Todd hires skilled labour and qualified engineers.
25:35They are vital as he plans to build 20,000 kilometres of road across Germany,
25:41and progress in the first few years of Nazi rule is swift.
25:45Nearly 600 kilometres are completed each year.
25:50The completion of every regional section of motorway is celebrated
25:54and broadcast nationwide, with the Führer present,
25:57painting a picture of future prosperity.
26:12Hitler claims his make-work schemes are curing unemployment.
26:16The reality is different.
26:18While it is true that unemployment levels are coming down...
26:22But it would be wrong to say that the Labour Service
26:24played an important role in reducing them.
26:26Other factors, really, were more important to explain the economic upswing.
26:31It had started already in 1932, prior to the rise of power,
26:35and a good part of it also owed to the rearmament of the military.
26:40So, in that sense, it was also an artificial and aggressive form
26:44of overcoming the economic crisis.
26:47And the Nazi state is tightening its grip on the working class.
26:53There was the idea and the rhetoric of supporting workers
26:56and celebrating also the hard physical work of labourers,
27:00but in practice, the regime did little to really support them.
27:04If you look at the development of wages, for instance,
27:06you see a downward trend in the number of workers.
27:09And then you see a downward trend in the second half of the 1930s.
27:14Workers had formed trade unions to protect their interests.
27:18But the German Labour Front, which replaces them,
27:21exists to control the workers, not represent them.
27:25The Labour Front doesn't care about the conditions of those toiling on the motorways.
27:29So, obviously, in the moving workplace of building a motorway,
27:33they'd be living in very rough temporary accommodation.
27:37Basic food, wages weren't great.
27:40And if you objected, you got into trouble.
27:45The day would have started with flag raising
27:47and then very much a routine day of work and of labour.
27:56They had to do heavy physical work, eight hours a day, sometimes 10 hours a day.
28:02And this led to severe health problems.
28:04There was a new phrase which nearly gained the status
28:08of a new medical condition, shoveler's sickness.
28:14This was caused by the uneven strain when shifting soil.
28:18And it presented itself through symptoms such as torn ligaments,
28:22joint strain, back pain and such like.
28:28They were not to be envied.
28:34Even after work time was regimented too,
28:37so that the German Labour Front was responsible for after work hours as well.
28:43So the regime was making sure that people's leisure time also was quite heavily regimented.
28:49The Nazis start banning strikes as early as 1933.
28:54Yet conditions are so bad on the motorway construction sites
28:57that sometimes workers feel they have to lay down their shovels.
29:04In 1934-35, there were some reports of strikes.
29:09Now, this is always difficult because officially there were no such things.
29:13But we know that there were some minor uprisings.
29:17Strikes in the 1920s caused political unrest.
29:21The Nazis will not tolerate such dissent.
29:24Workers who had written stirring poems about their new jobs are now chanting different rhymes.
29:30The motorway is knocking us dead.
29:32Tomorrow, we'll go back to voting red.
29:37But in those cases, the authorities took drastic measures.
29:41They threw these people in prison or sent them to re-education camps.
29:47This is the site of one of these camps.
29:49A former labour service barracks.
29:52After the barracks burned down,
29:53the Nazis turned this exposed site into a prison camp for workers.
30:00And now, it's a memorial to all who suffered here.
30:05The SS special camp Hinset was used for the retraining of
30:09German workers that were accused of anti-social behaviour.
30:12For instance, they came to work too late,
30:15they start drinking alcohol or complained about the bad working conditions.
30:20And the conditions must have been, of course, inhumane.
30:24The prisoners had no proper uniforms or proper shoes.
30:27Climate is very rough, wet and cold.
30:31Screams and beatings and barking dogs welcomed the arriving prisoners.
30:37They had to work 13 hours a day.
30:40The head was shaved.
30:42And they had a special haircut, which means in the middle, it was very, very small.
30:48And the prisoners called it Hinseter Autobahn.
30:51And it was actually used just in case a prisoner escaped.
30:55Everyone saw from his haircut, you must be a prisoner.
30:58This was the intention.
31:00The idea was to retrain them.
31:02And they had to do hard physical labour, military drill.
31:06And in the evenings, they were indoctrinated by Nazi ideology.
31:11The Nazis believe that the need to the national community outweigh individual needs.
31:18As far as the Nazis were concerned, human beings were only acceptable if they were
31:23able to contribute to society in a positive way.
31:26So they needed to be healthy.
31:27They needed to be productive to society.
31:30So working and playing their part in society, whether they were women or men, boys or girls,
31:36everyone had a role.
31:39The ideal Nazi family would have the father going out to work as a breadwinner in the public sphere,
31:45the woman at home as a wife and mother, keeping home, doing the cooking,
31:50nurturing her children, nurturing the future of Germany, as it were.
31:55Hitler needs workers and soldiers to turn his vision of empire into reality.
32:00So what he wants from German women are German babies.
32:05But not enough of them are doing their duty.
32:08There had been a declining birth rate from the late 19th century across Europe,
32:15but most pronouncedly in Germany.
32:17And Hitler, especially with his territorial ambitions, was keen
32:21to reverse this with pronatal policies.
32:24So when the Nazis came to power, they shut down birth control centers,
32:27which had been some of the most advanced in Europe at the time and made abortion illegal.
32:34German women, be true to your task.
32:37See to it that Germany shall not be a people without youth, that is, without a future.
32:43When you have blessed as many children as possible with life,
32:46only then will you have your greatest purpose in life.
32:50Propaganda posters at the time would depict women with babes in arms,
32:55surrounded by children with a strong father figure.
32:59In contrast to films where women were wearing lots of makeup and might have been sort of lithe,
33:05Nazi propaganda portrayed women in much more sort of strong farmhand breeding light.
33:11The regime also introduces a range of incentives to boost fertility.
33:17Very soon after the Nazis seized power in June 1933, they brought in a marriage loan,
33:23which offered couples a monetary loan that was reduced by a quarter
33:28every time the couple produced a child.
33:30Contingent on being able to get this loan was being politically reliable,
33:34so you couldn't be an opponent to the regime, a communist or a social democrat.
33:38The Nazis attached a hierarchy to different levels of motherhood.
33:43So one of the symbolic ways in which they did this was to
33:47distribute crosses of honour of the German mother.
33:50And these were given out in bronze, silver and gold
33:54for mothers who had four, six and eight children respectively.
33:59And members of the Hitler Youth were required to salute wearers of these medals in the street
34:07if they saw them.
34:09When a mother gave birth, members of the Hitler Youth and the Deutsch-Modern-Bund
34:13would come round and garland the house.
34:16It was made into an epic.
34:19You were made to feel terrifically important.
34:23So the regime strongly favours childbirth and motherhood,
34:27but there is another sinister side to the Nazis' growing control over reproduction.
34:32They wanted to prevent births of what they considered to be the unfit.
34:36So those could be the racially inferior,
34:38which were considered to be the Jews and the gypsies,
34:41and then the hereditarily inferior,
34:44or the people who were regarded to be unhealthy, unfit.
34:50The Jews were seen as particularly culpable for polluting the Aryan German race,
34:58in spite of the fact that they were only a few.
35:00In spite of the fact that they were only, I think, 1% of the population of Germany.
35:06The Nazis turned their ideological policies into laws
35:10which progressively strip Jews of their rights.
35:13The Nuremberg Laws were introduced in 1935.
35:17These were racial laws designed to take away the German citizenship of Germany's Jews,
35:23so effectively turning them into subjects instead of citizens.
35:26Racial discrimination is now enshrined in law.
35:30The Nazi state intrudes into the most intimate areas of the people's lives.
35:35Germans and Jews were, from this point onwards, forbidden to marry or even have sex.
35:41Jewish men were forbidden from employing Aryan German women as housemates.
35:47This was playing on a stereotype of a Jewish man as a sexual predator
35:52intent on defiling Aryan women.
35:55This was an example of the regime infringing and penetrating very strongly into family life,
36:02permeating family life in quite an unprecedented way.
36:07But all these Nazi laws, awards, propaganda and subsidies
36:12do not achieve their critical objective,
36:14boosting the birth rate of pure Aryan Germans.
36:19There was a slight increase in the birth rate during the Nazi era,
36:22but arguably this was as a result of the recovery from the Great Depression
36:26and had little to do with all the efforts that were put into propaganda.
36:31Ultimately, the members of the party could not stand over couples and force them to breed.
36:38Whether women have babies or not is affected at least as much by economics
36:43as Nazi policies or propaganda.
36:46Two million men died in the First World War,
36:49so many women have to work to survive.
36:51They are too busy being breadwinners to breed.
36:56The reality was for working-class women,
36:58they weren't working out of a sense of emancipation or personal fulfilment.
37:02They were working because their husband's wage was insufficient,
37:05so they worked out of financial necessity.
37:09German women actually participate more in the workforce
37:13than in Britain or the United States.
37:15But the Nazis prefer them to stay in acceptably female roles,
37:18such as agriculture.
37:21Women worked most frequently on farms,
37:25but there were also women doing factory work
37:27and increasingly doing secretarial work, too.
37:30The Nazis were keen, if women were going to work,
37:32they wanted them to work in what they considered their natural spheres.
37:38But Hitler is turning the country towards a new era.
37:42But Hitler is turning the country towards war.
37:46Having militarised the economy,
37:48the regime is now forced to soften its line on women's roles
37:51because military conscription is taking many men out of the workforce.
37:57From the spring of 1935 onwards, all young men had to join the armed forces
38:01and that immediately snapped up a couple of million.
38:04As they came into the labour market, they went into the army.
38:07The massive arms build-up began in a small way already in 1933,
38:12but by 1936 or 1937, the arms industry was sucking in labour
38:17and resources from all over the economy.
38:21A new source of labour is needed to replace the male factory workers.
38:28So Nazi ideological principles are abandoned.
38:32Even mothers leave the marital home to take up jobs.
38:38Women were a fantastically cheap labour source in comparison to men.
38:41Their wages remained persistently lower than men.
38:45They were a resource that the regime couldn't afford to ignore
38:48when they were in the business of rearming.
38:51Yet before Hitler can start his war in the east,
38:54he first wants to fortify his border in the west.
38:58He orders Fritz Tod to build an enormous defensive structure, the West Wall.
39:03But his workforce is busy building the motorways,
39:05so Tod turns to the unskilled workers of the Reich Labour Service.
39:11He was part of building these fortifications in the west of the country,
39:15the so-called West Wall, which was an important new dimension
39:19that absorbed many of its units in 1938 and 1939.
39:24So the whole idea of education, of indoctrination, was less important
39:29and work hours, work days, become much longer.
39:32600,000 men build the West Wall, working seven days a week.
39:37Tod's work is so crucial to Hitler's war plans,
39:40he grants him authority over the nation's entire construction programme
39:44with his own task force, Organisation Tod.
39:48Now Tod is able to complete the West Wall in just over a year.
39:54With its 630 kilometres of bunkers and fortifications,
39:58this is a real line of defence, as well as a show of strength.
40:02And it bears a striking resemblance to Tod's other propaganda project.
40:12When you saw the West Wall embedded in the landscape,
40:15it looked a bit like a prickly motorway, crossing hills and valleys,
40:20just like the curved path of the motorways.
40:22And the idea was that these massive concrete dragon's teeth
40:26and fortifications would stop tanks from penetrating, which is what happened.
40:32But perhaps even more powerful was its psychological and visual effect.
40:40Tod completes the West Wall in summer 1939.
40:44His career is made.
40:52September 1939. Germany is now at war.
40:57At first, Hitler is victorious.
41:00As the Reich's borders expand both east and west,
41:03Fritz Tod extends his plan for the motorway network.
41:08But the new roads are no longer intended for enjoyable drives with scenic views.
41:14These roads have an aggressive political purpose,
41:17supply lines for the army and routes for future German settlers.
41:23They were already making plans for huge thoroughfares
41:30that would have connected the empire with the territories
41:32they planned to enslave in the event of victory,
41:35which they were convinced would come.
41:39These plans would have extended the motorway network
41:42from Holland, France and Italy,
41:44that is, from the west and the south, all the way to Moscow.
41:53These are big plans, but even at home,
41:56there's not enough labour to build the motorways.
41:59Workers have been lured away by the high wages offered creating the West Wall,
42:04so to keep expanding his motorway network, Tod has to find another solution.
42:11It was one that had previously been rejected, mechanisation turning to technology.
42:16Remember that in the early years, work was done almost exclusively by hand
42:22and now road construction machines were deployed to replace labour.
42:27On the motorways, mechanisation helps,
42:30but machines cannot replace men entirely,
42:33so Tod is forced to abandon another key Nazi principle.
42:42There had previously been plans to deploy Jews from concentration camps.
42:46Tod had rejected this, arguing that the honourable German motorway
42:50should not be sullied by Jewish hands.
42:59Tod reluctantly uses Jewish concentration camp prisoners on the Führer's roads,
43:05but the decision does not harm his career.
43:07In fact, he gains power when Hitler gives him an even more important job.
43:16During the war, he was made Reich Minister for armaments and munitions.
43:20He successfully demonstrated his competence and was considered an authority.
43:25The organisation Tod went east too, of course, to Poland, to Russia, to Ukraine,
43:31to build roads, accommodation and so on.
43:34Everything that falls under military engineering, especially bridge construction.
43:41The organisation Tod was also really involved in highly destructive tasks
43:45during World War II.
43:47The most important example is probably building the Durchgangsstraßen,
43:51highways basically, to the eastern occupied parts of Europe,
43:55where forced labour and many Jewish forced labourers were employed,
43:59and there was this idea of exterminating them through work.
44:04From 1941, the organisation Tod uses forced labour and prisoners of war
44:10to construct these Durchgangsstraßen, or thoroughfares.
44:15These men are literally worked to death.
44:22You could argue that the further away you got from the centre of the empire
44:26and the further you left behind the area where the population could monitor you,
44:31and the further the war progressed and became more problematic,
44:36the lower the reluctance to use forced labour,
44:40until you didn't even try to hide the fact that people were being worked to death.
44:50The Nazis had this very important idea that people who were not deemed
44:54to be part of the national community, of the Volksgemeinschaft,
44:58should be excluded and also be exterminated by work.
45:02At first, this extermination through labour
45:06only takes place openly on the edges of the Reich.
45:09But even within Germany, the regime and private companies
45:13have no qualms about using forced labour in every part of the economy.
45:18Prisoners of war, along with people from occupied territories,
45:21are shipped into Germany to work,
45:24and again, the ideological objection to using Jews is abandoned.
45:31After 1939-40, even Jewish forced labour was used,
45:35and forced labourers were treated decidedly worse than German workers.
45:40They lived in terrible conditions.
45:44Forced labour becomes increasingly necessary for a regime
45:48which is sending literally millions of men into their deaths on the Eastern Front.
45:54At Hitler's car factory, two-thirds of the workforce are forced labourers,
45:59but they are not building the promised people's car.
46:02Not one person who subscribed to the car ever got one,
46:05because the war came and it was converted to military purposes in the factory.
46:12In reality, only 600 cars were built,
46:15most of them for display or similar purposes,
46:18whereas they built about 50,000 Kübelwagen
46:21and about 15,000 amphibious Schwimmwagen, which are military vehicles.
46:26The people's car itself only existed in propaganda films
46:30or occasional propaganda rides.
46:35More than 300,000 German workers paid their weekly contributions
46:40in the hope of owning a people's car.
46:43They had hoped in vain.
46:45In January 1942, Hitler himself issues a decree banning all private car journeys.
46:52No one is now allowed to drive on the Führer's roads
46:55unless it directly supports the war effort.
46:58And finally, all motorway construction in Germany comes to a complete stop.
47:04But Fritz Todt does not live to see all this.
47:11In February 1942, Todt was killed in a plane crash
47:15when he was visiting Hitler's headquarters, the Wolf's Lair.
47:20His death comes as a huge shock to Hitler.
47:23Todt's importance to the Nazi project is shown
47:25by the grandiose state funeral he's awarded with military honours.
47:33Fritz Todt had used the enticing argument
47:36that the motorways would play a valuable military role.
47:40He had the idea that 60,000 men could be moved
47:43from one border to the other within two days.
47:46But this was delusional.
47:49Even if they had completed the motorway network,
47:51this would have been impossible.
47:53Firstly, because they lacked trucks.
47:55Secondly, rail transport was much more efficient.
48:00So the military was in fact quite sceptical about the motorways.
48:04And they were concerned that they might be used by enemy aircraft as guidelines.
48:11Well, the motorways turned out to be incredibly useful for bombers
48:14because they were very white and bright
48:16and they went from one city to another.
48:19And so you could use them as navigational aids.
48:21So they, in the end, were painted over with camouflage.
48:24The army's fears about the Führer's roads
48:27are realised during the 1943 Allied bombing campaign.
48:32Germany's decisive defeat at Stalingrad
48:34is a sign of even greater reverses to come.
48:37But Hitler is in denial and carries on regardless.
48:42His propaganda machine starts using a new slogan.
48:45Total war.
48:46Total war meant lots of mobilisation on the home front
48:51as well as on the fighting front.
48:53And eventually, in January 1943, the call-up for work began.
48:59Total war had a specific economic purpose
49:02and that is to fully militarise its economy.
49:07The Nazis issue decrees that minimum working hours for all workers must go up.
49:12And Hitler is finally forced to accept
49:14that women must work in the munitions industry.
49:20Women were working in evacuation procedures, air raid protection.
49:27They were working in distribution of goods.
49:30So the real mobilisation.
49:33Although it went against earlier Nazi propaganda
49:36and earlier Nazi propaganda,
49:38it went against earlier Nazi propaganda and earlier Nazi motives,
49:43was a pragmatic attempt to get the whole nation
49:46working together for this total war effort.
49:50The very survival of Germany is in doubt.
49:53So now, almost every Nazi principle is sacrificed.
49:58Even children are drafted into military service.
50:02Hitler's top propaganda project, the Motorway Network,
50:05lies unfinished under camouflage.
50:08Tod's workers had only managed to build 4,000 kilometres,
50:12less than 20% of the promised network.
50:16Despite its scale, the West Wall only holds back Allied forces for a few months.
50:22Nazi Germany is now suffering defeat after defeat.
50:27The Allies are advancing on all fronts.
50:30The Allies, of course, did not show a great deal of respect for the motorways,
50:34but drove right over them with their tanks.
50:40The motorways were littered with destroyed, burned-out cars,
50:44which had been abandoned as people fled.
50:47And finally, the motorways were used to move German prisoners of war
50:51because there were no trucks or trains to transport them.
50:54As was common with prisoners of war,
50:56they were marched along the roads partly to humiliate them.
51:00So, once again, the motorways became the roads of the Führer.
51:08Hitler promised a network of superhighways to link up his European empire,
51:13but he failed to deliver.
51:17The German war was not over.
51:18The Germans were still on the move.
51:21But he failed to deliver.
51:24In the end, the limited scale of the motorway network reveals
51:28the huge difference between the Nazi propaganda and the grim reality.