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00:00Down this road, on a summer day in 1944, the soldiers came.
00:22Nobody lives here now.
00:30They stayed only a few hours.
00:34When they had gone, the community, which had lived for a thousand years, was dead.
00:42This is Oradour-sur-Glane in France.
00:48The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together.
00:53The men were taken to garages and barns.
00:57The women and children were led down this road, and they were driven into this church.
01:06Here they heard the firing as their men were shot.
01:12Then they were killed too.
01:15A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead in battle.
01:27They never rebuilt Oradour.
01:29Its ruins are a memorial.
01:34Its martyrdom stands for thousand upon thousand of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia,
01:41in Burma, in China, in a world at war.
02:41Germany, 1933.
02:48A huge blind excitement fills the streets.
02:55The National Socialists have come to power in a land tortured by unemployment, embittered
03:00by loss of territory, demoralised by political weakness.
03:05Perhaps this will be the new beginning.
03:13Most people think the Nazis are a little absurd here, too obsessive there, but perhaps
03:18the time for thinking is over.
03:26Adolf Hitler did not seize power.
03:28He was offered it just as his voting strength was declining.
03:32The politicians who made Hitler Chancellor argued, we are hiring him.
03:38Their figurehead was the ancient president von Hindenburg.
03:43The Communists and Socialists tried to take Hitler coolly.
03:48This wouldn't last, they said.
03:50Conservative anti-Nazis took comfort from the fact that their old war leader Hindenburg,
03:55still head of state, was known to despise the vulgar little corporal.
03:59No. 982, Herr Reichspräsident von Hindenburg.
04:05So, fertig?
04:08No.
04:10Danke sehr.
04:12Na, nun wird's fertig sein.
04:26With mock solemnity, Hitler and his lieutenants walked to the ceremonial opening of Parliament.
04:33The party's strength had been built up by revolutionary violence.
04:36They had never imagined that they could take office legally.
04:41When the old Reichstag building was mysteriously gutted by fire, Hitler seized his chance to
04:45suspend all civil liberties.
04:48His followers could hardly believe their luck.
04:57The old Hindenburg, the symbol of apparent continuity, presided as they turned office
05:01into power by acts of sham legality.
05:05In March, when the Reichstag voted to allow Hitler to govern without Parliament, Hindenburg
05:11made no comment.
05:14The legal chancellor marched irresistibly into the role of the legal dictator.
05:37Hitler proclaimed the new Germany, and meant it to last a thousand years.
05:46The new Germany began to round up its enemies, communists, socialists, impertinent journalists,
05:54even Reichstag deputies.
06:00At Oranienburg concentration camp, just north of Berlin, conditions were at first crude
06:04rather than brutal.
06:09At this time, the camps were run by the Sturmabteilungen, the SA.
06:16They bullied more than they murdered.
06:26From the first moment, Hitler unleashed his promised campaign against the Jews.
06:36The SA organised boycotts of Jewish-owned shops.
06:41The real point was to encourage the German people to think and act anti-Semitic as a
06:46matter of course.
06:48The outside world was horrified.
06:51But there were those, including many German Jews, who thought the anti-Jewish campaign,
06:55the work of Nazi extremists, something Herr Hitler would put a stop to when he felt more
07:00secure.
07:04There was to be a cultural revolution too.
07:08German culture would be purged of the Jewish-Bolshevist taint.
07:16The books flew into the fire.
07:26Many of those who flung them were students and teachers.
07:30And as the sparks rose, the intellectuals fled, writers and scientists, to give their
07:36talents to Western Europe and America.
07:41A hundred years before, the German-Jewish poet Heine, whose books now went into the
07:47fire, had warned, where one burns books, there one eventually burns people.
07:59Some of Hitler's most earnest followers found new ways to show loyalty.
08:03They married, or got married all over again, under a Nazi ritual.
08:18The Nazis had mass support among the unemployed, but less among the organised workers.
08:26The left wing of the party wanted to start a workers' movement inside the factories,
08:30but Hitler took a simpler course.
08:32He granted the unions the May Day holiday they had always demanded.
08:37Next day he abolished the unions.
08:41Nazi supporters were basically middle class, shopkeepers ruined by the Depression, clerks
08:46who had lost their savings, craftsmen squeezed out by mass production.
08:58These were Hitler's worshippers.
09:09To this army of those who had come down in the world belonged the small farmers, the
09:14peasants.
09:15Hitler had enlisted them during the Depression.
09:18Now he told them that their blood and their soil were Germany's treasure.
09:22He passed laws to give them safe possession of their fields, and he gave them bread.
09:43The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 had bitten deep into Germany's frontiers.
09:51Alsace-Lorraine and the Saarland had been lost.
09:55East Prussia was cut off by the new Polish state.
09:58Silesia cut in two.
10:01Danzig, a League of Nations city.
10:08To every patriot, Germany could not be free while Versailles stood.
10:13Hitler alone seemed the saviour foretold by the monuments at the border.
10:18Never, German, forget what blind hate stole from thee.
10:25Wait for the hour that avenges the bleeding frontier crime.
10:32Abroad, there were some who admired the way this new Germany stood up for herself.
10:43In America, we've had many reports against your new government, and in most cases this
10:46has caused hasty demonstrations everywhere.
10:50I can now say to you that the American people today realise that these stories are untrue
10:55and without foundation.
10:56I find that there's a new, fresh vitality here in Germany under your great leader and
11:01Chancellor Adolf Hitler, whom I'm a great admirer.
11:05The new Germany will live, for you have the best centralised government in the world today.
11:11In fact, the new Germany was a bundle of different interests and grievances held together by
11:15the strap of the National Socialist Party, and the buckle of the strap was Hitler.
11:45Well, really, it was the only party that promised to get us out of the hole.
12:03And their idea was principally that that would only be possible if we developed as a nation
12:14a team spirit, a solidarity and pulling all on the same rope instead of quarrelling about
12:23petty differences of opinions in foreign politics and social politics and so on and so forth.
12:35What did he promise?
12:37Work and bread for the masses, for the millions of workers who were unemployed and hungry
12:42at that time.
12:44Nowadays, in our prosperous society, work and bread doesn't mean anything anymore.
12:50But then it was an absolutely basic need.
12:54And this promise, which wouldn't make any sense today, then it sounded like a promise
13:00of paradise.
13:07All this seemed ideal ground for a prophet to say, I will lead you to the promised land.
13:13I will deliver you from evil.
13:16Anyone who said that would be greeted with enthusiasm.
13:27Of course, there were people who said this is a false prophet.
13:31But who was to know whether they were right or not?
13:33At that time, no one did.
13:44Christmas 1933, one year of Hitler's Reich.
13:50Peace on earth, goodwill towards men.
13:55The concentration camps were full, parliament a rubber stamp, political parties and trade
14:00unions abolished, the Jews out of the civil service, a free press strangled, personal
14:06liberties destroyed.
14:13Germany lived under a permanent state of emergency.
14:24Self-Hitler's state was all-powerful, even almighty.
14:37But he still felt threatened.
14:40He feared his old conservative rivals.
14:43He feared the army.
14:45And he feared those sections of his own party which were still revolutionary, like the leadership
14:50of the storm troopers.
14:52The army too hated the SR.
14:56Hitler saw how he could conciliate the generals and clear his own path.
15:03The head of the SR was one of his oldest comrades, Ernst Röhm.
15:10On June the 30th, 1934, Röhm was arrested and shot.
15:16His SR commanders and more than a hundred others dragged from their beds were shot too.
15:24Murder exploded across Germany.
15:27The killers were the new force in Germany, the SS, Hitler's bodyguard, which now became
15:34his personal instrument of terror.
15:38Goering gave a press conference at the propaganda ministry.
15:43Goebbels was the minister of propaganda, but Goebbels had wisely stayed with Hitler
15:47at that time, because Goering hated his guts and might have taken the opportunity to bump
15:52him off if he'd been in Berlin.
15:56Goering had that press conference for the foreign press.
15:59Before that, the telephones had been cut off to all foreign countries.
16:04Goering came striding in and said, well, I know you boys always like to have a story.
16:11He used the English word, I've got a story for you all, right, and described how that
16:20previous night and that morning he and Hitler had acted against dissident forces, both of
16:29the right and of the left, that Röhm had been shot, that a second revolution had been
16:37quashed.
16:38And he also made a rather obscure reference to General von Schleicher, who had preceded
16:46Hitler as German Chancellor.
16:49Then he left the room, came back again in a few seconds, and said, it's been suggested
16:55to me that I didn't make myself quite clear about General von Schleicher.
16:58General von Schleicher was shot dead this morning while resisting arrest.
17:02The 30th of June, 1934, was a very, very important day because it became obvious that
17:11this government, as a government, started to become a murderer.
17:17You remember that they shot a great number of people without any bringing them to court.
17:24They just killed them.
17:27And not only direct enemies of Hitler in that moment, not only Röhm, the head of the SR,
17:39but also other people who were, they felt, were unpleasant.
17:43And they just did it at the same time.
17:46That summer, another rival disappeared.
18:00President Hindenburg died in his bed on August the 2nd.
18:07While the old man was still breathing, Hitler had abolished the office of president, proclaiming
18:11himself Führer and Chancellor, head of state and governor.
18:22And before his corpse was laid to rest, Hitler usurped his command over the army.
18:28The armed forces paraded to swear a new oath, where once they had sworn loyalty to the Constitution,
18:35now they pledged themselves to Hitler, personally, by name.
18:39Ich schwöre bei Gott, diesen heiligen Eid, dass ich dem Führer des deutschen Reiches
18:54und Volkes, Adolf Hitler...
19:04For German officers, an oath was almost physically real.
19:11Hitler had trapped them.
19:14Now they could not disobey him without disobeying the fatherland.
19:18Ich schwöre...
19:21Ich schwöre bei Gott...
19:24Ich schwöre bei Gott...
19:27Ich schwöre Adolf Hitler...
19:30Adolf Hitler...
19:34Adolf Hitler...
19:39Hitler kept up the pace.
19:41That same month, the Germans had to go again to the polls to approve his assumption of
19:45state and government powers.
19:48By now, the machinery of ballot management by threat propaganda, forgery and fraud was
19:52functioning excellently.
19:53Ich schwöre...
19:54Ich schwöre bei Gott...
19:55Ich schwöre bei Gott...
19:56Ich schwöre bei Gott...
19:57Ich schwöre bei Gott...
19:58Ich schwöre bei Gott...
19:59Ich schwöre bei Gott...
20:00Ich schwöre bei Gott...
20:01Ich schwöre bei Gott...
20:03Ich schwöre bei Gott...
20:05Ich schwöre bei Gott...
20:06Ich schwöre bei Gott...
20:07Ich schwöre bei Gott...
20:08Ich schwöre bei Gott...
20:09For million still voted 9.
20:10Hitler proclaimed for the next thousand years there will be no other revolution in Germany.
20:20The Nazis preached the doctrine of folk community, of learning to be Germans one of another.
20:27Winter help, the main street collection for charity, was one symbol.
20:32And the leaders of the party, for the benefit of the cameras,
20:35showed themselves as folk comrades too.
20:40Göring displayed himself.
20:42A war hero, a man who laughed and enjoyed life.
20:46A moderating force in the party, it was believed.
20:50Josef Goebbels, the little propaganda minister
20:53whom the back street called Poison Dwarf.
20:56His sharpness was feared, but respected.
21:05The deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess, a puzzling figure to the crowds.
21:11The Nazi way of ruling was to be remote, but to seem not to be.
21:17All classes were encouraged to relish the same meal.
21:20The soldier, the boss, the worker, the banker.
21:24The party believed in community, but the industrialists stayed rich.
21:30They had financed the Nazis when they seemed likely to win,
21:33and now they submitted to Nazi direction without too much distaste.
21:38Business was picking up fast.
21:42The economy was reviving when the Nazis came to power,
21:46but they reaped the credit, speeding recovery
21:49with an enormous public works programme for the unemployed.
21:53Other nations where mass unemployment persisted
21:56watched Germany with envy.
22:23The workless built the autobahns,
22:26the first motorways in the world
22:29binding a still provincial Germany together.
22:32The autobahns were not least for private pleasure
22:36in the fascist notion of strength through joy.
22:39And they were presented less as a transport system
22:42than as a triumph of national will,
22:44linked with other prestige projects,
22:47like the design for the Führer's new Berlin.
22:50Like the design for the Führer's new Berlin.
23:21These were members of Faith and Beauty,
23:24which was elder sister to the League of German Maidens,
23:27which was the girls' equivalent of the Hitler Youth, and so on.
23:31All young people learned party songs,
23:34drilled and danced and belonged.
23:51Each year, the farmers and their wives gathered at the Buchenwald
23:56to meet their Führer at harvest time.
23:59In 1936, those who stood and waited for the leader numbered one million.
24:09The leader was late. He always arrived late.
24:12Built-up tension.
24:20Hurray! Hurray!
24:50Hurray! Hurray!
24:55Then he came, letting the excitement spill over.
24:58As he marched through to the Rostrum,
25:00the masses were allowed to see him close and even to touch him.
25:04Deliberately, women were placed in the front rows.
25:10When he went up the mountain, I couldn't understand
25:13how it was possible that people could shout so much.
25:18Yet when he came towards our group, I too came under his spell
25:23and shouted Heil just like everyone else.
25:28But then, when he was really close, greeting people to his left and right,
25:33shaking their hand and exchanging a few words,
25:37and he also shook my hand,
25:39I suddenly noticed that everybody in his immediate presence
25:44was completely silent.
25:48For the first ten minutes, he wasn't a good speaker.
25:52He just began warming up and finding the words.
25:58But then he turned out to be a terribly good speaker.
26:03You know, he just...
26:05I don't know the words in English.
26:08Er massiert his public.
26:12And the whole atmosphere grew more and more hysterical.
26:22He was interrupted nearly after every phrase
26:27by big applause and women began screaming.
26:34It was like a mass religious ceremony.
26:43And, well, I listened to his speech
26:47and I feel that more and more excited atmosphere in the hall.
26:54And for some seconds, again and again, I had a feeling,
27:00what a pity that I can't share that belief of all those thousands of people,
27:07that I'm alone, that I'm contrary to all that.
27:11It was very funny.
27:13I thought, well, he's talking all the nonsense I know,
27:17the nonsense he always talked.
27:19But still, I feel it must be wonderful
27:26just to jump into that bubbling pot
27:31and be a member of all those who are believers.
27:50One lady in our village,
27:53she went to Berlin to a birthday reception for Adolf Hitler
27:58and she came back and told us the Fuhrer shook hands with me
28:03and from this time on she was like a saint in our village.
28:24Hitler's home life took place on a ledge in Bavaria at Berchtesgaden.
28:30These pictures are from the home movies of Eva Braun,
28:34the discreet young woman who stayed with him till his death.
28:38To the Berghof for tea and tactics came the elect,
28:42some a little ill at ease, some genuinely intimate.
28:53Adolf Hitler's Lieblingsblume ist das schlichte Edelweiß
29:01Adolf Hitler's Lieblingsblume ist das schlichte Edelweiß
29:24Even in private, Hitler had to correspond to the image sold to the public.
29:31Adolf with children, Adolf with dogs,
29:38Adolf with a magnifying glass,
29:43Adolf with friends,
29:53out for a walk, like a good Bavarian bourgeois on a Sunday.
30:09In this closed circle, Eva Braun posed herself as the girl who was natural,
30:14healthy, joyfully physical.
30:22Adolf Hitler's Lieblingsblume ist das schlichte Edelweiß
30:41Adolf Hitler's Lieblingsblume ist das schlichte Edelweiß
30:53Up at the Berghof, there were jovial, friendly bodyguards and colder ones.
31:01Heinrich Himmler, lord of the SS, came with Heydrich, his terrible, handsome lieutenant.
31:14On formal occasions, the SS guard turned out.
31:19They were the reality of the great tyranny centered in distant Berlin,
31:23their hands soon to be red with the blood of millions.
31:27For that reality, Hitler would leave his chinched chair, his tea parties and his mistress.
31:35The car was waiting at the foot of the steps.
31:48If Germany was to be strong again, Germany must rearm.
31:53The people, frightened by war, had to become once more familiar with arms,
31:59to touch them, to play at soldiers.
32:18Versailles
32:23Germany had to train pilots.
32:26Versailles forbade Germany an air force,
32:29so the League for Air Sports used gliders to train men,
32:32still officially civilians, for the future Luftwaffe.
32:40And the army began to swell beyond the limits set by Versailles
32:43from the moment Hitler became chancellor.
32:46In secret, it trebled its strength in two years.
33:03Any foreign military attaché could see what was happening.
33:07But the world did nothing decisive, and in March 1935,
33:10Germany announced conscription, a peacetime army of half a million men.
33:21The new tanks came out into the open.
33:33The first Luftwaffe squadrons flew past.
33:41The new German navy was underway.
33:52Hitler kept Europe bewildered.
33:54Proclaiming Versailles extinct, he proposed a limit on armaments.
34:00Britain, the first democracy to make a pact with the Nazis,
34:03signed a naval agreement.
34:05Hitler was reassured.
34:07It might be safe to start tampering with the hated frontiers.
34:12One part of Versailles had already been undone.
34:15In January 1935, the territory of the Saar,
34:18the little coal-mining region which had been German before 1918,
34:22voted overwhelmingly and under international supervision
34:26to return to Germany.
34:38Next door, the Rhineland remained a demilitarised zone.
34:42Beyond dispute, this was part of Germany,
34:45but to recover it would directly challenge the Allies,
34:48and above all, France.
34:51The troops rode over the Rhine bridges at dawn on March 7th, 1936.
34:56Secretly, the commanders were ready to bolt back across the river
35:00if France showed any sign of fight.
35:02But there was none.
35:05The Rhineland city of Cologne and all Germany went wild with relief and delight.
35:11A part of German honour had been recovered.
35:14Hitler had taken a chance and won.
35:18Two years later, Austria, Hitler's birthplace, lay ripe for the taking.
35:24Austrian Nazis were rioting for Anschluss, union with Germany.
35:29To prevent a plebiscite on independence, Hitler marched in.
35:35Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!
35:41The German troops were greeted by hysterical crowds.
35:44Vienna suffered a Jew-baiting terror which even Germany had not yet seen.
35:49Austria became a province.
35:51Germany's neighbours, appalled, uncertain, unprepared, once again did nothing.
36:04Czechoslovakia was no lost German province but an independent nation,
36:09allied to Britain, France and the Soviet Union.
36:13Within its northern border lived the Sudeten Germans.
36:17Hitler incited this minority, which had never been part of Germany,
36:21to demand union with the Reich.
36:23Europe prepared for war.
36:27But though Czechoslovakia was ready to fight, Britain and France gave way.
36:32At Munich in September 1938, Chamberlain for Britain,
36:37Italis Mussolini, Deladier for France,
36:42signed with Hitler the treaty which stripped Czechoslovakia of the Sudeten land
36:47and left her broken and abandoned.
37:03The Germans crossed the border, welcomed as liberators by the Sudeten population.
37:11At home, the German generals who opposed Hitler,
37:15hoping that a rebuff over Czechoslovakia would fatally injure his prestige,
37:19gave up their plots in despair.
37:33Hitler sat with his troops in the field and planned ahead.
37:40The Sudeten land was easily digested.
37:43The next course could be taken fast.
37:49The shrunken Czech lands and Slovakia lay helpless before him.
37:53He struck on March 15th, 1939,
37:57The German troops reached Prague the same day.
38:00There was no resistance.
38:04The last democracy in Central Europe was wiped out.
38:11The Czechs would never trust the West again.
38:14The West trusted Hitler no more,
38:17and realised that it was time for a change.
38:20The Czechs would never trust the West again.
38:23The West trusted Hitler no more,
38:26and realised at last that only force would stop him.
38:40Berlin, more cheers, more worship.
38:44Yet what was in the minds of those who cheered?
38:48Very few wanted wars of conquest or hoped, like Hitler,
38:52for a German empire from the Urals to the Atlantic.
38:56Most thought they were taking back what had been robbed from them
39:00and restoring, not destroying, the order and unity of Europe.
39:17For these crowds, it seemed that Hitler's statesmanship could never fail.
39:23Others who stayed at home that night feared a war was coming
39:26which might destroy Germany itself.
39:29But now they saw no hope for a rising against Hitler.
39:32They were left with the moral question,
39:35should one resist a tyranny without hope of success?
39:40Well, I think it's difficult, first of all,
39:44to make up your mind that you should do something against a government.
39:51This is very rare, first of all.
39:55Secondly, if it is extremely dangerous,
39:59as it is in a dictatorship,
40:02it's even more complicated,
40:05because everybody likes his own life.
40:09I think everything that came to us when we were living in Germany
40:13came very gradually.
40:16That was part, perhaps, of the way Hitler managed these things.
40:23It came on us rather drip by drip,
40:27rather like an anaesthetic, one could almost say.
40:30And it was only when a specific thing that he did
40:35hit you personally
40:38that you actually realized what was going on.
40:45In my particular case,
40:47I think I could say that it hit me personally
40:51when the Jewish doctor of my children,
40:56whom I'd always had, came.
40:59He was a very busy man,
41:01but he seemed to be having always more time to spare.
41:04And I remember one night
41:06he came and spent the night looking after my very sick child.
41:11And in the morning, the child was better,
41:14and when he left, he asked me,
41:18did I still want him to look after my children?
41:21And I was tired, and I said, well, for goodness sakes, why not?
41:25And he told me that his clinic, his children's clinic,
41:28which he had started in Hamburg,
41:31he was going to be dismissed,
41:33and that he'd had threatening letters
41:35that if he laid his hands on Aryan children,
41:38he was in for trouble.
41:42In November 1938,
41:44a Jew shot a German diplomat in Paris.
41:48The Nazi leaders organized a reprisal.
41:51Synagogues were burned,
41:53and Jewish shops looted all over Germany.
41:57On that crystal night,
41:59named for the smashed glass sparkling in the gutters,
42:03thousands of Jews were thrown into concentration camp.
42:15Do you want to know how the night was?
42:18If you want to know, I will tell you.
42:21We were all shoved together,
42:23beaten and punched and made to stand in ranks
42:27and be counted and so on.
42:30Because I'd been a soldier,
42:32I didn't find that so very difficult.
42:35But the others who didn't fall in properly,
42:38they were beaten right away.
42:42And the most terrible thing was
42:44when somebody grabbed hold of a big strong man,
42:47he said, don't grab me.
42:50What? I shouldn't grab you?
42:52And he hit him.
42:55And this man was immediately overpowered by three people,
42:59SS people.
43:02A block was blown.
43:04He was tied down to it,
43:06and the camp commander said,
43:08the Jew Israel, or the Jew Idzik,
43:11I can't remember exactly now,
43:13is sentenced to 25 lashes.
43:19Then a huge man came,
43:21an SS man with a huge horse whip
43:24and started to beat him.
43:27The man just groaned a bit at first,
43:30but then he shouted, stop, stop.
43:33The commander said, what do you mean, stop?
43:36We'll start all over again, from the beginning.
43:39But after three more lashes,
43:41the blood was spurting.
43:43Then he stopped and salt was rubbed into the wounds,
43:46or pepper, I can't remember.
43:48The man was dragged away.
43:50We never saw him again.
43:54Of course, in the 38,
43:57when the synagogues were burning,
44:00everybody knew what was going on.
44:03I remember that my brother-in-law,
44:05the husband of my sister, Lena,
44:07when he went in the morning after the day
44:10of the Kristallnacht, Reichskristallnacht,
44:14Kristallnacht, Kristallnacht, or how you say.
44:18He went by train to his office downtown,
44:21and between the stations of Savignyplatz
44:23and Zoological Garden, there is the Jewish synagogue.
44:26And he saw that it was burning,
44:29and he murmured, Kulturschande.
44:32That is an insult for culture,
44:35shame to our culture.
44:37Well, right away, a gentleman in front of him
44:41turned his revere and showed his
44:44Parteiabzeichen, party badge,
44:47and took out his papers,
44:49that he was a man of the Gestapo.
44:52And he had to show his papers
44:55to give his address,
44:57and was ordered to come to the party office
45:00next morning, 9 o'clock.
45:12April 1939.
45:14The Wehrmacht prepares to celebrate
45:16Hitler's 50th birthday.
45:19They hope for the usual Führer weather,
45:21a fine day.
45:35The Führer drives through Berlin,
45:37under the Brandenburg Gate and down
45:39the Siegersallee, the Avenue of Victories.
45:59The army lining his route has increased
46:02sevenfold in just four years.
46:10Among the Wehrmacht's 51 divisions,
46:13the new Panzer units,
46:15the instrument of Blitzkrieg.
46:32In spite of appearances,
46:34the High Command is busy
46:36In spite of appearances,
46:38the High Command is by no means sure
46:40that this army is fit for war, yet.
46:44Hitler is ready to overrule them.
47:06The word in every diplomatic conversation
47:08that summer was Danzig.
47:10The free city, with its mixed German-Polish population,
47:13had been separated from Germany
47:15and made the responsibility
47:17of a League of Nations commissioner.
47:21Danzig and East Prussia
47:23were now sundered from the Reich
47:25by a strip of Polish territory,
47:27the Corridor.
47:29Hitler was demanding the return of Danzig
47:32and free access to East Prussia
47:34across the Corridor.
47:36Poland refused.
47:38In March 1939,
47:40Britain and France guaranteed her frontiers.
47:43In August, Britain promised to fight
47:46if Poland was attacked.
47:49Once again, myths about the persecution
47:52of a German minority were used
47:54to build up a case for armed intervention.
47:57German refugees told piteous tales
47:59of Polish brutality.
48:05Nazi propaganda filmed them greedily
48:08for the cinema newsreels
48:10throughout July and August.
48:14Hitler's plan was to wipe Poland off the map.
48:18But this might mean war with Soviet Russia,
48:21and he was not ready for that.
48:23His foreign minister, Ribbentrop,
48:25flew to Moscow on August 23rd
48:27to sign the Nazi-Soviet pact.
48:30Poland's fate was sealed.
48:35The new alliance stunned the unsuspecting West.
48:44Germany gloated.
48:56You will have read the report
48:58about the agreement reached
49:00between Russia and Germany
49:02which has surprised the world.
49:05As the life of all nations
49:07depends in the last resort
49:09on mutual respect for one another's rights
49:12and reasonable confidence
49:14that they can each live their life
49:16in their own way,
49:18I would earnestly hope...
49:26...which cannot be retraced,
49:28reason may yet prevail.
49:31The German newsreels tried
49:33to show Britain distracted,
49:35still uncertain.
49:54One young German left England for home.
49:58I had a girlfriend whom I wanted to marry
50:01and I said to myself,
50:03well, I'll dare go home.
50:08When I came to Cologne,
50:10I read the first German newspapers.
50:15And I knew at once
50:18there was great danger
50:21of a war.
50:22Now, the tone of the German press
50:25was absolutely hysterical.
50:29And I thought, what a fool I was.
50:33I had just gone home in that moment.
50:39All over Europe,
50:40the reservists got their telegrams.
50:43In the last hours of peace,
50:45the soldiers put on uniform
50:48with a tired grin.
51:25THE END
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