PBS_Project Nazi_6of6_Retreat From Reality
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00:00January, 1945. The Allies are advancing on all fronts. The Nazi regime seems on the brink
00:18of collapse.
00:19On the Western Front, the last major German offensive had just failed. On the Eastern
00:25Front, the Red Army launched a major offensive and is moving towards Berlin. And the air
00:32war is totally lost for the Germans.
00:36Yet one man refuses to accept that the Third Reich is over. Adolf Hitler. He has such faith
00:43in Nazi power that he continues planning to build a brand new capital city for his empire.
00:50Hitler increasingly took refuge in fantasy plans for rebuilding Berlin with vast buildings.
00:58Hitler was a sucker for anything that was big. You know, I'm going to build you the
01:00Volkshalle, which is going to sort of, you know, seat 180,000 people. You know, Hitler
01:04loves all that stuff.
01:06Hitler convinces the German people that victory is still possible with his sinister vengeance
01:12weapons.
01:13One of the ways you've still got solidarity and the fighting spirit is that you promise
01:19the German people that a new generation of miracle weapons would fight the war for them.
01:25Nazi propaganda has such power that Germans fight for Hitler right up to the end.
01:30I mean, these people don't stop fighting, even when the Russians are in the garden of
01:35the Reich Chancellery.
01:37Even children join up to defend Berlin. They are told that German design and engineering
01:42brilliance will defeat the Allies despite their enormous resources. But reality is crushing
01:48this illusion.
01:51Hitler claims Germany leads the world in design and technology. Now, the world is putting
01:57that claim to its ultimate test.
02:1813th of June, 1944, just days after D-Day. British and American forces are spreading
02:32across France, flushed with success. But their advance is about to be stopped by one man
02:38and one tank.
02:42The man is Michael Wittmann, a German panzer ace. He's already credited with destroying
02:49over 100 enemy tanks. His weapon is the much feared Tiger, the most powerful German tank
02:56on the battlefield.
03:00The Tiger tank certainly had two positive attributes. It was heavily armoured and it
03:06had a very powerful gun. And this allowed the Tiger tank to fight against Allied tanks
03:13at a range where the Allies' tanks were not able to knock out the Tiger tank. So they
03:20often could keep the enemy tanks at a distance.
03:24The British 7th Armoured Division advances from the Normandy beaches to the small French
03:29town of Villers-Bocage. They are greeted by cheering French civilians. The British soldiers
03:35are relaxed. In the morning, Michael Wittmann and his men strike.
03:41They realise that there are lots of British troops and tanks in the village, all just
03:46waking up and yawning and stretching and making their cups of tea. And Wittmann, who is the
03:51commander of this company, thinks, ah, here's a golden opportunity here, and splits into
03:56two. And he goes off on his own pretty much, and careers around a road that is parallel
04:01to the main drag in Villers-Bocage, in which all these British tanks and units and carriers
04:07are waiting. And goes down this parallel road, and wherever there's a link, he turns his
04:13barrel to the right and fires and blows them all up, and then actually moves into the main
04:16high street himself and finishes off the job.
04:19In less than 15 minutes, at least 13 tanks, two anti-tank guns, and 13 other vehicles
04:26are destroyed by Wittmann and his men. For many Germans, the Battle of Villers-Bocage
04:31proves that their tanks and soldiers are inherently superior to the Allies. German propaganda
04:37describes Wittmann as a noble hero, for a country which desperately needs one. He's
04:44promoted to captain and awarded one of Germany's highest honours, the Knight's Cross of the
04:49Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, by Hitler himself.
04:55These events were massively played up by German propaganda, and it's very interesting
04:58that the cult of the ace was something that was absolutely integral to the German propaganda
05:03machine. And a lot of these people were kind of put on pedestals, whether they be Yube
05:09aces, whether they be fighter aces, whether they be dive-bombing aces, or whether they
05:14be panzer aces. And it is amazing how often these aces tended to be incredibly good-looking.
05:20They were all absolutely conformed to the ideal of the Aryan kind of superhero in a
05:25way that the Nazi leadership itself didn't. And Wittmann was no different.
05:30But despite Wittmann's success, neither he nor any other Tiger commander prevents the
05:35Allied breakout from Normandy.
05:37Really all we're talking about here is a minor tactical engagement. The British didn't have
05:42much chance of exploiting that gap at the time anyway. Did it have an overall effect
05:48on the campaign? No. How significant were the losses? Well, actually, by the time the
05:54two-day battle was all over and it wasn't just that morning engagement, the Germans
05:58had only marginally fewer casualties than the British did, and six of their precious
06:03Tiger tanks had been knocked out.
06:05German propaganda exaggerates Wittmann's achievement. The German armed forces magazine, Signal,
06:11shows the aftermath of the battle but uses three different photographs joined together,
06:16creating a false impression of the destruction. And the Tiger tank is not the war-winning
06:21weapon the Nazis claim it is.
06:24First, it was too slow, so that made it very difficult for the Tiger tank to advance quickly
06:30or withdraw quickly. Second, it was too heavy, so this meant certain bridges were not passable.
06:39Third, it was not motorised enough, it was under-motorised, so too slow and too difficult
06:45to manoeuvre. And fourth, as it was too heavy, the fuel consumption was also far too high
06:53and that was something Germany could not afford in 1944 with the scarcity of its resources.
07:01The Tiger is rushed into production. Early Tigers are particularly unreliable. They often
07:07break down during combat and have to be abandoned. In fact, more Tigers are destroyed by their
07:13crews than by the enemy. And it costs far too much money, resources and labour to produce.
07:22Only about 1,350 Tigers are built during the war, compared with 6,300 of the less glamorous
07:30Panther.
07:31Generally, I would say that the Panther tank was superior to the Tiger tank. It had similar
07:37strengths, like strong armour and a powerful gun, but it was much more reliable and it
07:45was also more manoeuvrable. So it would be logical if the Germans had focused solely
07:51on the Panther tank and not on the Tiger tank. However, this would mean not to understand
07:57the nature of the Nazi regime and the Nazi state.
08:01Problem is, Hitler believes only conflict and competition get results.
08:07People misunderstand the nature of the Nazi state. The image we're kind of given is this
08:11ruthlessly efficient state in which people are told exactly what to do. Actually, Hitler
08:17created a chaotic state. He set up agencies against each other. He got them to compete
08:22and look to him for authority.
08:25It's all a by-product of Hitler's method of rule, which was not to centralise and coordinate
08:32everything, but to appoint different people and institutions to do the same thing and
08:36let them fight it out amongst themselves. And whichever was the most ruthless, he thought,
08:40would be the best and come out on top.
08:43In the end, this meant a waste of resources, because every company tried to produce its
08:49own tank, or first to conceive it and later to produce it. And so the Germans were unable
08:56to streamline their resources.
08:59This infighting means Germany cannot produce enough of its best weapons for all its troops.
09:05But as for the quality of the soldiers themselves, Germany leads the world.
09:12The German army has often been portrayed as the most skilful and the most efficient army
09:16of the Second World War. They knew how to deploy their arms in a so-called combined
09:22arms approach, so the cooperation between infantry, artillery, tanks and also the air
09:29force was generally pretty good. Second, the German army was generally well-led, so officers
09:35and NCOs looked generally well after their men, and all this formed a glue for high combat
09:42motivation. And many believed, perhaps not in Nazism as such, but many of them believed
09:49in the Führer and the Reich's Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, as their great leader.
09:55The skill, bravery and loyalty of the German military is constantly shown in German cinemas
10:01as part of the propaganda newsreels known as the Weekly Review, the Wokenschau.
10:12It was a link between the millions of German soldiers who were at the front to their families
10:20back home, and their families then had an idea of what their achievements were. Because
10:26the Wokenschau films were all about achievement, how much ground has been taken, how many enemy
10:31vehicles have been destroyed, and all this was good for the soldiers' morale, because
10:36then their loved ones back home were truly appreciative of what was being achieved for
10:42them at the front.
10:47You do get images of wounded soldiers, rarely many dead soldiers, for obvious reasons, and
10:55that really was the success of the Wokenschau, because there was sufficient truth in there,
11:01grainy realism, to enhance the value of the propaganda.
11:07I think because much of it is actuality footage, it's got that grainy feel that contemporary
11:12newsreels have. They're obviously unrehearsed, not all, but many of them are unrehearsed
11:19and showing combat as it really is, because some of the sound effects are there.
11:37Keeping up civilian morale is vital for the Nazis. They're convinced that, in the First
11:54World War, the German army was not defeated. Instead, they believe it was the home front
11:59that collapsed. They're determined to stop that from happening again.
12:06The conditions faced by German families during the Second World War were not as bad as you
12:11might have expected for the first few years of the war, because Goebbels was immensely
12:15aware of the fact that many people felt that the First World War had been lost by Germans
12:20due to insufficient rations towards the end of the war. So Goebbels was really keen to
12:25make sure that the home front was well-provided for for as long as possible.
12:33In the beginning, stunning military successes convince the people that Hitler is a great
12:39war leader. Poland is captured in five weeks, France in little more than six, but Hitler's
12:45ongoing lust for territory is undermining his popularity.
12:51People's views of the Nazis weren't static over time. When Germany was winning lots of
12:56victories early on, that was sort of easy propaganda for Hitler and I guess people were
13:02keen to throw their weight behind the national cause out of patriotism even if they had had
13:06reservations about Hitler. But as the war went on and there were more personal costs
13:12associated with the war, with men away fighting, rationing, biting harder after the defeat
13:18at Stalingrad in 1943, the popularity of the regime began to wane significantly because
13:24the difference between propaganda and reality became ever starker.
13:31What you can't make successful propaganda out of is failure. And this is, I think, the
13:38reason why the propaganda efforts, from particularly 1943 onwards, are less and less successful.
13:48When Hitler decides to invade Russia, he triggers a series of events which will destroy his
13:54military.
13:56The Blitzkrieg really ran out of steam in Russia. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union,
14:04this was his best armed and strongest foe to date. And the major change immediately
14:11was once they crossed the frontier, the tempo of the fighting was immediately very high.
14:19That, in time, led to obviously extremely heavy casualties so that by, let's say, October
14:301941, the army that invaded Russia had had casualties to the equivalent of 30 divisions.
14:40And in terms of leadership, they had lost by that time the equivalent of 37 divisions
14:45worth of junior officers and NCOs.
14:54As the new guys are promoted, they are the people that have been schooled in National
14:59Socialism. So the, if you like, the social fabric and psychology of the army underwent
15:07quite profound changes in 1941 to 1942.
15:13Nazi society in the Nazi state was very much a militarized state. When a young soldier
15:18entered the German army as a young recruit, he had already went through various Nazi party
15:23organizations. And research has also shown that the most Nazified soldiers within the
15:29Wehrmacht were the younger ones. So the younger a German soldier was, the more likely it was
15:36he was Nazified.
15:39Despite their inexperience, Hitler benefits from the loyalty of these young soldiers.
15:44Since he became Fuhrer in 1934, everyone has sworn an oath to serve him personally. In
15:51the past, German soldiers pledged themselves to the state, but Hitler has changed all that.
16:01The oath to Hitler was very crucial for the army's loyalty to Hitler. For instance, for
16:06the officers, and particularly those who were critical towards the Nazis and Hitler.
16:11For them, it always posed a big barrier because breaking the oath was out of question. From
16:17then on, an individual soldier was no longer bound to the state, but to one person, Hitler
16:24himself.
16:25Obedience, accepting orders without question, is central to the Nazi project. But no matter
16:32how loyal they are, the influx of dedicated Nazi soldiers cannot change the fact that
16:38by the summer of 1943, the war is going badly for Germany.
16:44On the Eastern Front, the major offensive at Kursk had failed. The initiative now lay
16:51solely with the Soviets. Over the skies of Germany, the Allied bombing campaign intensified
16:59more and more. In North Africa, Army Group Africa had just surrendered, and the Allies
17:06were preparing to launch their offensive against Fortress Europe. And finally, in the Atlantic,
17:15the U-boats had lost the Battle of the Atlantic. The senior leadership of the German Army and
17:21the German Armed Forces saw that the war was against them, and there was no question
17:27anymore of winning the war. However, they still continued. They still waged the war
17:33as if there was still a chance to win the war.
17:37Despite Nazi propaganda, the severity of the situation can no longer be hidden from civilians.
17:45Women were dealing with bombing, rationing, possibly having their children evacuated
17:50and being worried about their relatives, husbands, fathers, brothers at the front.
17:55As the war began to bite and began to be felt more intrusively in people's lives, their
17:59attitudes towards the regime, to the fact that maybe the Nazi fat cats weren't feeling
18:04the same privations as ordinary people were, that maybe middle and upper class women, for
18:10example, weren't making such a contribution to the war effort in the way that working
18:15class women were, that they were somehow able to shirk their duties and get a cushier job
18:21or role, all of these things didn't go unnoticed and caused a lot of acrimony and it caused
18:26the regime to lose a lot of popularity.
18:30British and American bombers are inflicting terrible damage on German cities.
18:35The lack of availability of food, the long queuing, all of which was made much worse
18:39by bombing and the fact that water pipes were broken so people had to go and get their waters
18:44in buckets from wells, you know, daily life was completely disrupted, particularly in
18:48the major cities, as a result of the bombing and the rationing combined.
18:54Hitler refuses to visit bomb-damaged cities, but he can't avoid seeing the devastation
18:59of Berlin, yet he shows little concern.
19:02The destruction actually makes it easier for him to imagine his grandiose plans to totally
19:08transform the capital.
19:10Well, Hitler increasingly took refuge in fantasy plans for rebuilding Berlin, which he wanted
19:17to rename Germania, because he didn't really like Berlin very much, too many communists
19:21and socialists there, with vast buildings, a huge hall with a dome greater than St Peter's,
19:28triumphal arch bigger than the Arc de Triomphe and so on.
19:33Ever since he took power in 1933, Hitler dreams of totally rebuilding Berlin, no matter
19:39what the cost.
19:42At its heart would be one of the largest buildings ever built.
19:46Hitler was a sucker for anything that was big, you know, I'm going to build you the
19:49Volkshalle, which is going to sort of, you know, seat 180,000 people, you know, Hitler
19:53loves all that stuff.
19:54This enormous temple, based on a sketch by Hitler himself, would have been nearly 300
19:59metres high.
20:00Here, the German people would gather to worship Hitler and his successors down the centuries.
20:06It would be the heart of the Nazi cult.
20:11Germania actually began in 1934, a new sports stadium for 100,000 spectators was created
20:18for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
20:23Hitler gave the crucial task of creating the vast new Reich Chancellery, which was 400
20:28metres long, to his favourite architect, Albert Speer.
20:33The Chancellery was destroyed in the war, but other elements of Germania still survive
20:38in Berlin.
20:43This was the huge Air Ministry.
20:48With 2,800 rooms and nearly seven kilometres of corridors, it was the largest office building
20:54in the world.
20:56Today, it is the home of the Finance Ministry.
21:01Speer also creates a vast triumphal way leading west from the Brandenburg Gate.
21:07He decorates it with a huge 19th-century war memorial, the Victory Column, by moving it
21:13nearly two kilometres.
21:17The entrances to the pedestrian tunnels are Speer's own design, as are the street lamps
21:24lining the road.
21:29An important part of Hitler's plan are new embassies for his allies, including Spain
21:34and Italy.
21:37They remain in use by their original owners to this day.
21:46But the completion of the Japanese embassy marks the end of Germania.
21:51The military situation in the east is getting worse, forcing Hitler to put his grandiose
21:55building project on hold.
21:59By 1943, Germany is beginning to face a manpower crisis.
22:04The loss of a complete army at Stalingrad meant not just the loss of numbers, but a
22:10wiping out of a huge chunk of experience and professionalism within the German army at
22:17that time.
22:19So really, the Germans are looking for technological solutions to compensate for its reduction
22:26in manpower and, more importantly, experience.
22:31Hitler was always very enthusiastic about technological progress.
22:35And Germany had a tradition of great engineering and of great science.
22:40So in the Second World War, the Germans produced some of the most advanced weapons.
22:45The most advanced weapons of all are created and tested here, a top secret base on Germany's
22:51Baltic coast, Peenemünde.
23:00Whole Peenemünde facilities, which actually were two armament facilities, one of the army
23:07and one of the air force, were of course the biggest armament center in whole Europe during
23:15World War II and was 25 square kilometers wide, up to 12,000 people worked here.
23:24So it was enormous industrial facility, which spent lots of resources, material, financial
23:32and personal resources.
23:34The mission of the scientists who work here is to develop weapons of enormous speed and
23:40power to penetrate the Allies' defenses.
23:47By 1944, conventional German bombers have little chance of attacking London successfully.
23:53An entirely new approach is needed.
24:02So the scientists at Peenemünde create two of the most advanced weapons of the Second
24:07World War.
24:09The first is a cruise missile, the V1.
24:12With a top speed of 630 kilometers per hour, it is faster than almost every Allied fighter.
24:18It carries 850 kilograms of explosive, up to 240 kilometers.
24:25The V2 is an even more extraordinary weapon, the world's first ballistic missile.
24:32It carries 1,000 kilograms of explosive, 320 kilometers.
24:37Traveling at well over 5,000 kilometers per hour, nothing could detect it or stop it.
24:42It arrives at its target without warning.
24:46High-tech guidance systems replace increasingly scarce pilots.
24:50Now the Nazis believe they have a chance to strike back.
24:54Here was the panacea, there would be this magic weapon that would clear the skies and
25:00devastate the landscape to Germany's favor.
25:05On September 29th, 1943, Albert Speer promises revenge against the Allied bombing of German
25:12cities with a secret weapon.
25:14So before they even exist, the V weapons are a vital tool of Nazi propaganda.
25:22The idea was in 1944, one of the ways you still got solidarity and the fighting spirit
25:28is that you promised the German people that a new generation of miracle weapons would
25:33fight the war for them.
25:34Firstly, it was anticipatory propaganda.
25:37They could tell people that we've got these weapons coming.
25:41Then they could actually show them.
25:43They seemed formidable.
25:45Any possibility that they can get out of this fix by some miraculous wonder weapon or some
25:50reinforcement that was going to come, that the Fuhrer was finally going to conjure is
25:55something people would like to believe in.
25:58During the last ten months of the war, about 12,000 V1s and 3,500 V2s are launched against
26:06Britain and Belgium.
26:08Yet the amount of explosives carried by all these expensive weapons is only the same as
26:13that dropped by two or three large Allied bombing raids.
26:17By 1944, such raids take place every week.
26:23And many V weapons never reach their target.
26:26The British work out how to shoot V1s down, destroying more than 4,000 in the air.
26:33And even the apparently invincible V2 has serious flaws.
26:38So like one third of the rockets exploded in the air because they had aerodynamic problems
26:47and 3,000 launched rockets, just about 2,000 of them really hit the ground.
26:56And also these 2,000 didn't hit exactly because the control system wasn't very exact.
27:04It has a radius of 15 kilometres.
27:09The inaccuracy of the V2 is its biggest weakness.
27:13They were technologically very advanced weapons, but in reality their effects were rather limited.
27:22So using them against point weapons against specific targets, the V2 was a failure.
27:29For instance, the Germans launched several V2s against the port facilities of Antwerpen
27:33in autumn and winter 1944-45, also tried to destroy the bridge at Remagen in 1945.
27:40In both cases, the V2 could not destroy their target.
27:44So instead, most are aimed at large cities, especially London and Antwerp, targeting their civilian populations.
27:53It was a terror weapon.
27:54It was to terrorise the civilian population in, for example, London,
28:01because they came down at any time of the day, at any moment,
28:07absolutely without any possibility to hide, without seeing, hearing them come.
28:14And this is this terror effect.
28:17More than 12,000 British civilians are killed by Hitler's terror weapons,
28:22and their propaganda effect is even greater.
28:27They could tell the German army that it's causing panic, mass panic on the streets of London.
28:32People are leaving the cities in droves.
28:35I believe that the Germans, particularly at the political top,
28:39were starting to believe their own propaganda,
28:41and feeling that this would be the panacea to their problems.
28:44They're on the defensive, but they could get the Allies probably to bend to their will
28:50by being faced with new and terrible weapon types.
28:54But the reality is rather different.
28:57In Germany, more civilians are killed by Allied bombing every month than by all the V weapons.
29:03And they're expensive.
29:05V2s especially use up a lot of scarce materials and need many skilled workers to assemble.
29:13Most are slave labourers, working in appalling conditions.
29:17The V weapons are a final, desperate attempt to use technology to overcome Germany's economic weakness.
29:24England, United States, Soviet Union, the biggest economies in the world, of course have more.
29:32I mean, so the only chance is that we have better, newer technology,
29:38a kind of progress as a hope of salvation.
29:42But even the Nazi elite are realising that the chances of German salvation are getting slimmer and slimmer.
29:50The V stood for Vergeltung, which means retribution.
29:54And so these weapons were meant to pay back the Brits for what they'd been doing to Germany.
30:00They weren't advertised as being sources of victory.
30:05That was completely pushed to one side. It's just getting their own back.
30:09And so in a way, the promise of a wonder weapon is also a confession of defeat.
30:21Summer 1944 is a time of huge disasters for the Germans.
30:26In Normandy, the Allied landing had succeeded,
30:30and major German forces were encircled and destroyed in the Battle of Falaise.
30:35On the Eastern Front, Army Group Centre had collapsed,
30:38and the Allied air campaign was now beginning to start as a full success.
30:43The Allies had now full air supremacy over the skies in Germany.
30:47These hammer blows completely change Hitler's behaviour.
30:51Hitler can't really deal with defeat. He doesn't even want to know about it.
30:55And so increasingly, he refuses to appear in public.
30:59He's, of course, afraid that he might be shouted at or jeered.
31:03His appearances are less and less frequent.
31:07Towards the very end, he does pretty well vanish.
31:10Indeed, his speeches are delivered over the radio by someone else.
31:15So he does become more and more of a recluse.
31:19For Goebbels, this is a disaster.
31:21Hitler is his greatest propaganda weapon,
31:24but with the Fuhrer now almost invisible,
31:26he must come up with ever more creative alternatives.
31:30During the war itself, they went much more for pure entertainment,
31:34and they still made films which were propaganda,
31:37but they were big-budget epics, costume drama,
31:41where the propaganda message was heavily disguised
31:45beneath an 18th-century uniform or a 19th-century crinoline skirt.
31:51And the biggest of Goebbels' box-office spectaculars
31:55is the feature film Kolberg.
31:57Well, in the later stages of the war,
31:59Goebbels tried to convince people to hold out against the enemy
32:04by spending huge amounts of money and resources
32:07on making a film about Kolberg,
32:09which is a town in the eastern part of Germany
32:12which had been sieged by Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars.
32:17And it's all a story in glorious colour,
32:21enormous resources devoted to it.
32:24Parts of the German army are actually diverted from fighting
32:27to put on Napoleonic-era uniforms and take part in the film.
32:32And the idea is to show how the townspeople rallied round
32:37and defeated the enemy, and that's what the Germans should do.
32:41Well, Kolberg was an extraordinary phenomenon.
32:44The producer actually claims that he pulled back 100,000 troops
32:50from the front line, about the size, I think, of the current British army,
32:54to act as extras in Kolberg.
32:56Certainly, the scenes are amazing, the cavalry sweeps and so forth.
33:00It's probably more likely to have been about 20,000,
33:03but that's still a huge number of troops to pull back for the front
33:07in the last stages of the Second World War.
33:11Kolberg is the most expensive Nazi movie.
33:15Filming lasted nearly ten months,
33:18both on location and at the Babelsberg film studios.
33:22While based on real events, the film claims that the will of the citizens
33:27to defend their city is strengthened by the imposition of a dynamic new general,
33:32a kind of 19th-century Nazi.
33:35But by the time the fictional version is ready for release in January 1945,
33:40the real city is under threat from the advancing Soviet forces.
33:45Then what happens is that the town of Kolberg
33:48is surrounded by the Russians, parallel to this,
33:53and so what Goebbels did is replace the older general
33:56with a thrusting new general, just like in the film.
34:01But then Kolberg surrenders,
34:02and Goebbels stifles the news of that surrender
34:06so that everything will be consistent with the movie.
34:09So it's an extraordinary example of art and life
34:12not only imitating each other, but being extremely intertwined.
34:19In January 1945, the German Reich was on the brink of collapse.
34:25On the Western Front, the last major German offensive in the Ardennes,
34:28in the Battle of the Bulge, had just failed.
34:32On the Eastern Front, in mid-January 1945,
34:35the Red Army launched a major offensive from the Vistula
34:38and is moving towards Berlin.
34:41And the air war is totally lost for the Germans,
34:46and Allied bombing now heavily impacted on German industrial production.
34:51The wonder weapons are not appearing in nearly enough numbers to turn the tide.
34:55Production of conventional weapons is also falling.
34:59And yet the German army holds together,
35:01fighting to the very last despite enormous casualties.
35:06Half of all of Germany's casualties,
35:10of all of Germany's dead in the Second World War,
35:13occurred in the last ten months of the war.
35:16The Wehrmacht, in January of 1945, lost 450,000 men.
35:23This is three times as many as two years before in January 1943,
35:28that is the month of Stalingrad.
35:30I mean, this is a bloodbath without parallel
35:34in European and perhaps in human history.
35:37With their enemies now threatening Germany itself,
35:40the Nazis might have been expected to withdraw to their country's borders.
35:44But Hitler will not allow any retreat.
35:47Hitler often described himself as an all-or-nothing man.
35:51He said, when I bet, I go for broke.
35:53And he believed very much in the triumph, the power of the will,
35:59as the film says.
36:02Willpower could conquer anything.
36:04So he saw retreat, even tactical withdrawal,
36:08such that the generals had all been trained to do in military schools.
36:13Tactical withdrawal was a sign of cowardice.
36:15To keep the armed forces fighting,
36:17the Nazis resort to their oldest tactic, repression.
36:21It's kept together, they kept fighting,
36:24partly because of increased terror.
36:27So there were increasing numbers of executions
36:30for deserting the colours, for cowardice and similar offences.
36:35Thousands and thousands of German troops were executed
36:38in the last stages of the war for these things.
36:41It's estimated that German courts-martial
36:43try three million cases during the war.
36:46They sentenced 30,000 members of the German armed forces to death.
36:52The Nazi leadership and the senior German generals
36:56shared one big trauma.
36:58The defeat of 1918,
37:00when it was considered that the morale of the German army had collapsed.
37:04So it was considered the German imperial army was too soft.
37:08This should not repeat.
37:10And this is why they imposed harsh, brutal, murderous measures,
37:15very often in order to keep up the discipline in the Second World War.
37:19Up to 15,000 men were executed after having been court-martialed
37:23for various true or alleged crimes like desertion and so forth and so on.
37:29And German soldiers were hence coerced to fight
37:33until the very last days of the war.
37:35But it's not just the military that are terrorised.
37:38Civilians also face extreme punishments.
37:43If one proceeds from the assumption that Germany was not defeated
37:46in the battlefield in the First World War,
37:49but lost because morale cracked,
37:53because the population didn't support the war,
37:56didn't have the backbone to continue the fight to the bitter end,
38:01then the logical policy to follow is to force them to do it this time
38:06and to make sure that there's no backsliding.
38:09And this is the motivation for the application of terror
38:12against one's own population.
38:15They used an awful lot of coercion.
38:17A lot of people were fairly randomly executed by the Gestapo and the SS.
38:22And in the final days, left even hanging from lampposts.
38:26But another part is the power of the propaganda.
38:30Right to the bitter end, a lot you see continues to function.
38:34In Berlin, the newspapers continue to be printed
38:37when the Russians are in the suburbs.
38:39There is even a story told about how one Russian commander
38:43picked up a telephone in Berlin and rang Goebbels
38:46and told him, blasted him with exactly what he thought of him.
38:50The point being that the telephone system was still functioning.
38:53So it was still a functioning system,
38:55including still a functioning propaganda system.
39:00Particularly on the Eastern Front,
39:02they felt that they needed to protect Germany
39:05against the Bolshevik hordes as they saw them.
39:08And, of course, there's a lot of fear of the Red Army
39:12and what they would do to civilians, probably mostly justified fear.
39:17Certainly, the notion of fighting to the death was linked to the fact
39:22that the German soldiers had wreaked havoc on Soviet soil
39:27and they had raped and plundered as they went about their warring.
39:31And German soldiers knew that that was going to happen
39:35to their wives and children if the Russians got to German soil.
39:41And what's the alternative?
39:44To give up? To sue for armistice?
39:48After what they'd done? That simply isn't going to be possible.
39:51So they, because of the position in which they put themselves,
39:55have no choice but to fight on.
39:57And also, because of the Allied policy of unconditional surrender,
40:03this also gives the Germans a strong motivation to keep fighting
40:08and finally to keep fighting to the very bitter end.
40:13When the Nazis, in their desperation,
40:15call up the very last remaining German men as a militia
40:19to defend the homeland,
40:20about all they can give them is a fancy name,
40:23the People's Storm.
40:29It was this idea of popular vengeance.
40:32Actually, it was Dad's army.
40:34And, unfortunately, try as you might with the propaganda,
40:38you couldn't disguise how young or how old these men were
40:41or the flash of vacancy or all weariness.
40:45But it was this idea that the army has failed us,
40:48the general has failed us, but the people won't.
40:51You can call the people to arms
40:53and they will fight like demons to defend the Reich.
40:57So you have that great rally of the Volkssturm,
41:00which Goebbels creates in Berlin, the Greater Berlin Volkssturm,
41:05which Goebbels turns into one of the final
41:08and greatest propaganda events of the Third Reich.
41:13If one takes a look at what these young people,
41:16who then get forced into SS units, teenagers,
41:21or if one takes a look at the contribution of older men
41:27who get drafted into the Volkssturm, this people's militia,
41:31what they actually do in terms of military action
41:38is at best useless.
41:41And yet the people's faith in Hitler himself does not collapse.
41:46Even though the Nazi regime was often heavily criticised,
41:50often Germans would express that if Hitler only knew about it,
41:55he would do something about it.
41:56So the figure of Hitler as the...
41:59..as kind of different and distinct and the saviour of Germany
42:03sort of lasted quite a long time, even despite the circumstances.
42:07As the end comes ever closer,
42:10Hitler veers between fantasy and fatalism.
42:14In the later stages of the war, it becomes a fantasy world for Hitler.
42:18He is having military consultations,
42:22moving around on a map armies that really no longer exist.
42:26By now, he distrusts almost all his generals.
42:30In 1945, it was obvious that Germany had totally lost the war.
42:35However, there were still some generals
42:38which often sent out more optimistic messages.
42:42Chief example for that is Field Marshal Schörner,
42:45or General Schörner, a convinced Nazi who quickly rose
42:49from a lieutenant colonel at the start of the war
42:51to a field marshal by the end of the war.
42:54So Schörner was someone Himmler or also Goebbels always listened to.
42:59Himmler and Goebbels were often demoralised by the situation
43:03and then they saw Schörner and Schörner was saying,
43:06everything, it's not too bad here, there's still a chance,
43:09I've just warded off the Soviets and I'm very positive
43:12that in the next couple of days I can launch another offensive,
43:16a local offensive, if it's only a local offensive.
43:20This was something that Himmler and Goebbels and Hitler
43:25wanted to hear in this situation, but it didn't reflect reality.
43:30Schörner's absurd optimism receives its final hollow reward.
43:35On 4th April 1945, Hitler promotes him to field marshal.
43:41He is the last Nazi military leader of Germany's armed forces.
43:47Deep within his bunker, Hitler still finds some time to dream.
43:53So he spends a lot of time thinking about,
43:56looking at his great architectural plans,
44:01projects that he wanted to do after the war.
44:04He spends time with his friend and architect, Albert Speer,
44:08playing around with ideas of what Germania would be like
44:12and he also liked to play around with ideas
44:15of recreating Linz in Austria, which is his hometown,
44:20as a kind of German Florence.
44:25Hitler idealises Linz.
44:27For him, it is the perfect small German town.
44:31This is where he lived as a boy with his mother.
44:37He was going to have an art museum there and, in fact,
44:41while Hermann Goering looted art for his own private house,
44:44Hitler collected art and stole art
44:47to put up in this new museum of German art.
44:50And he also wanted it to be a centre for German music.
44:53But as well as these fantastical dreams,
44:56Hitler is also planning a final and very real nightmare
45:00for the German people.
45:02Hitler began to feel that the German people were not worthy of him.
45:05They had let him down.
45:07Or they had shown in the Darwinian struggle
45:09for the survival of the fittest against other races,
45:12they'd shown that they were the weakest race.
45:15And so he issued this infamous Nero Order after the Roman Emperor,
45:20who said, let Rome burn,
45:22that everything should be destroyed
45:24in the path of the oncoming armies.
45:27All the facilities should be destroyed,
45:30the public utilities, factories, the basic necessities of life.
45:36It is a mistake to believe that undestroyed
45:39and only temporarily paralysed industrial and supply installations
45:43will be useful to us again after the recapture of lost territories.
45:49I therefore command all military traffic,
45:52communications, industrial and supply installations,
45:55as well as objects within Reich territory
45:58that might be used by the enemy in the continuation of his fight,
46:02either now or later, are to be destroyed.
46:06It would be a final historic example of national self-sacrifice.
46:11This time we're going to go down with honour.
46:13This time we're going to go down in flames.
46:15This time we're going to fight to the end.
46:17We're going to fight to the end
46:19to make a shining example for future generations
46:23who will then want to pick up the torch and start again.
46:27Albert Speer is horrified by the Nero Decree.
46:30He claims he does everything he can to frustrate it,
46:33despite fanatical Nazis enthusiastically putting the plan into action.
46:38But in the end, it is the Allied advance
46:41that frustrates Hitler's apocalyptic vision.
46:4720th April 1945, Hitler's 56th birthday.
46:51Since he seized power in 1933,
46:54this day has been a major national holiday in Nazi Germany.
47:00In the past, the streets would be decorated.
47:03There would be celebrations, speeches, songs and poems.
47:07The military would parade and oaths of loyalty sworn.
47:12This year is very different.
47:15Soviet forces are closing on Berlin.
47:18Hitler last appeared in public a few weeks earlier,
47:22congratulating a small group of Hitler youth on their brave defence of the city.
47:29This is his final weapon.
47:32Boys as young as 12.
47:37Now back in his bunker,
47:39the Allies have arranged a final birthday present for him.
47:43A massive artillery bombardment and a bombing raid.
47:51The final Soviet assault on Berlin has begun.
47:56And yet the Nazi system continues to function.
48:00I spoke to a German panzer commander
48:04who was awarded the Knight's Cross in the final months of the war,
48:09and he received his Knight's Cross on the last day of the war.
48:14A German dispatch rider had driven through the rubble of the town
48:18that he was defending and got off his motorbike
48:21and handed him the certificates and his medal, the Knight's Cross.
48:25So right up until the end, the system is still working.
48:30It's blatantly, patently obvious that Germany is going to lose the war.
48:35Hitler is completely aware of this.
48:38Then what is the point of continuing?
48:40And they do continue.
48:42And this is a truly remarkable chapter in German-European human history.
48:47These people don't stop fighting
48:49even when the Russians are in the garden of the Reich Chancellery.
48:53On April 29th, Soviet troops cross here at the Moltke Bridge.
48:58Their target is the Reichstag, the symbol of German power.
49:03The next day, finally succumbing to reality, Hitler commits suicide.
49:08He is not the last Nazi to do so.
49:11At the end of the war, there's an enormous wave of suicides.
49:15Generals, ministers, regional leaders, high Nazi officials.
49:20Quite an extraordinary wave of suicides.
49:23Himmler, Bormann and Field Marshal Model
49:26are just a few of the senior Nazis and generals who kill themselves.
49:31Goebbels, the man more responsible than anyone for creating the Hitler myth,
49:36is appointed Chancellor of Germany.
49:39His only act is to ask the Soviet forces for a ceasefire.
49:43They refuse.
49:45Goebbels then carries out his final appalling act.
49:49His wife and he then murdered their children by poison
49:53because, as his wife said to her son by an earlier marriage, adult son,
49:58in a letter, she could not think that life would be worth living
50:03after the fall of the Third Reich.
50:05It was an absolutely terrible act of ideological vindictiveness, really.
50:11And Goebbels and his wife then killed themselves.
50:16From their foundation, the Nazis always said
50:19they will lead Germany to world domination.
50:26But it was always a fundamentally flawed plan.
50:32All it has led to is destruction.
50:36Germany is now in ruins.
50:45Project Nazi is over.
50:57PBS America looks back at a monumental decision
51:00that saw the greatest loss of warships in history,
51:03the sinking at Scapa Flow of the German High Fleets
51:07in dreadnought destruction.
51:09Next.