1 00:01:14,078 --> 00:01:17,377 The Nazis were obsessed with images of order. 2 00:01:18,316 --> 00:01:21,717 In their museums, exhibits like this glass man 3 00:01:22,053 --> 00:01:27,013 showed how the perfect human body was ordered into one interlocking whole. 4 00:01:30,228 --> 00:01:32,628 Through their parades and pageants, 5 00:01:32,964 --> 00:01:36,422 they sought to show how one individual human being 6 00:01:36,634 --> 00:01:39,660 was but a part of the ordered national community. 7 00:01:44,976 --> 00:01:49,106 But in Germany, the Nazis only created an illusion of order. 8 00:02:26,484 --> 00:02:29,214 On January 30th, 1933, 9 00:02:29,420 --> 00:02:32,651 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. 10 00:02:39,764 --> 00:02:42,232 Chief among those who rejoiced at this 11 00:02:42,433 --> 00:02:46,392 were the Nazi Storm Troopers, the party's paramilitary wing 12 00:02:46,604 --> 00:02:50,131 led by Hitler's old party comrade, Ernst Rohm. 13 00:03:08,159 --> 00:03:11,390 (MILITARY BAND PLAYS) 14 00:03:11,562 --> 00:03:14,360 (SINGING) 15 00:03:23,808 --> 00:03:26,743 In '33, you thought it was the beginning 16 00:03:27,111 --> 00:03:29,739 of a new, German, wonderful period. 17 00:03:30,081 --> 00:03:33,676 It was a true, enthusiastic movement in the people, 18 00:03:33,851 --> 00:03:35,819 except the people who were, 19 00:03:36,154 --> 00:03:38,281 by their hearts, socialists, 20 00:03:38,489 --> 00:03:40,548 and were, from the beginning, 21 00:03:40,725 --> 00:03:45,128 prosecuted and had to emigrate or went in concentration camps. 22 00:03:45,296 --> 00:03:47,594 One knew of these concentration camps. 23 00:03:47,765 --> 00:03:51,724 We said, "So what? The Communists would have done the same thing. 24 00:03:51,903 --> 00:03:53,871 "This is a revolution." 25 00:03:56,207 --> 00:03:58,334 First to be imprisoned in this revolution 26 00:03:58,509 --> 00:04:00,602 were the Nazis' political opponents, 27 00:04:00,778 --> 00:04:02,746 Communists and socialists, 28 00:04:02,914 --> 00:04:06,873 who were rounded up and thrown into hastily-built concentration camps. 29 00:04:07,218 --> 00:04:10,676 Hermann Goring boasted that scores were being settled, 30 00:04:10,855 --> 00:04:13,323 all in an atmosphere of chaotic terror, 31 00:04:13,491 --> 00:04:15,618 as one Nazi Storm Trooper admitted. 32 00:04:15,793 --> 00:04:18,421 "Everyone is arresting everyone else, 33 00:04:18,596 --> 00:04:20,894 "avoiding the prescribed official channels. 34 00:04:21,232 --> 00:04:24,895 "Everyone is threatening everyone else with protective custody. 35 00:04:25,236 --> 00:04:28,603 "Everyone is threatening everyone else with Dachau. 36 00:04:28,773 --> 00:04:31,241 "Every little street-cleaner today feels 37 00:04:31,442 --> 00:04:33,410 "he is responsible for matters 38 00:04:33,578 --> 00:04:35,705 "which he has never understood." 39 00:04:37,615 --> 00:04:41,915 Amongst the first to suffer was Josef Felder, a Social Democrat MP. 40 00:04:42,920 --> 00:04:47,380 He was sent to the newly-opened Nazi concentration camp outside Munich, 41 00:04:47,558 --> 00:04:49,321 Dachau. 42 00:05:45,316 --> 00:05:47,443 Josef Felder was released from Dachau 43 00:05:47,618 --> 00:05:49,586 after 18 months. 44 00:05:49,754 --> 00:05:54,623 The majority of those imprisoned here in 1933 were released after less than a year. 45 00:05:55,526 --> 00:05:57,494 The regime here was brutal. 46 00:05:57,662 --> 00:06:00,324 Beatings and psychological torture were commonplace. 47 00:06:00,865 --> 00:06:04,494 But the Nazi extermination camps were not yet born. 48 00:06:05,336 --> 00:06:07,634 The camps were a tool of oppression, 49 00:06:07,805 --> 00:06:09,932 not yet of systematic murder. 50 00:06:10,274 --> 00:06:12,504 In 1933, to many Germans, 51 00:06:12,677 --> 00:06:16,477 they were an acceptable part of the Nazi revolution. 52 00:06:16,647 --> 00:06:19,275 The closest is the French Revolution. 53 00:06:20,251 --> 00:06:24,881 To be a French nobleman in the Bastille was not so agreeable, either. 54 00:06:25,256 --> 00:06:27,554 So people said, "This is a revolution. 55 00:06:27,725 --> 00:06:32,355 "It was an astonishing, peaceful revolution, but partly it is a revolution." 56 00:06:32,530 --> 00:06:34,498 And that sort of thing. 57 00:06:34,665 --> 00:06:37,634 The concentration camps, everybody said, 58 00:06:37,802 --> 00:06:41,761 "The English have invented them in South Africa with the Boers." 59 00:06:41,939 --> 00:06:43,736 You know... 60 00:06:45,042 --> 00:06:47,010 People couldn't look ahead. 61 00:06:47,345 --> 00:06:49,643 It's impossible for somebody in '33 62 00:06:49,814 --> 00:06:51,782 to look ahead to '45. 63 00:06:52,817 --> 00:06:54,614 You can't. 64 00:06:57,655 --> 00:06:59,623 It was only 12 years, 65 00:06:59,790 --> 00:07:03,658 but it seems to be too much to look ahead for 12 years. 66 00:07:05,429 --> 00:07:09,889 But Germans only had to look fewer than 12 weeks into Hitler's chancellorship 67 00:07:10,067 --> 00:07:14,026 to see what the status of the Jews would be in the new Nazi state. 68 00:07:18,576 --> 00:07:20,703 On April 1st, 1933, 69 00:07:20,878 --> 00:07:25,508 the party organised a boycott of all Jewish shops, which lasted one day. 70 00:07:26,684 --> 00:07:31,314 The Nazis had made the Jews scapegoats for the loss of World War One, 71 00:07:31,489 --> 00:07:33,457 and much else besides. 72 00:07:40,865 --> 00:07:43,698 In those early months of the Nazi reign, 73 00:07:43,868 --> 00:07:48,396 German Jews also fell victim to the Storm Troopers' violent attacks. 74 00:07:52,410 --> 00:07:54,537 In 1933, 75 00:07:54,712 --> 00:07:56,839 the Storm Troopers came 76 00:07:57,014 --> 00:07:59,312 and took my father away. 77 00:07:59,483 --> 00:08:02,941 Together with many other Jews in Nuremberg, 78 00:08:03,120 --> 00:08:05,418 they were taken to... 79 00:08:05,589 --> 00:08:08,057 a sports stadium with a lot of grass. 80 00:08:08,392 --> 00:08:13,420 They were made to cut the grass with their teeth by sort of eating the grass. 81 00:08:13,631 --> 00:08:15,758 But I found that out afterwards. 82 00:08:15,933 --> 00:08:18,060 My father never talked about it. 83 00:08:19,870 --> 00:08:21,997 They used to humiliate them 84 00:08:22,173 --> 00:08:25,802 to show them that they were the lowest of the low. 85 00:08:25,976 --> 00:08:28,444 Simply to make a... a gesture. 86 00:08:31,749 --> 00:08:35,150 Nazi Storm Troopers made other violent gestures. 87 00:08:35,486 --> 00:08:38,785 In 1933, together with sympathetic students, 88 00:08:38,956 --> 00:08:42,357 they organised burnings of unsuitable books, 89 00:08:42,526 --> 00:08:44,824 particularly those by Jewish authors. 90 00:08:46,931 --> 00:08:49,559 (SINGING) 91 00:08:51,068 --> 00:08:55,562 Rohm wanted his Storm Troopers integrated into the regular German army. 92 00:08:55,739 --> 00:08:57,707 The army was horrified. 93 00:09:42,753 --> 00:09:47,713 Hitler sympathised with the revolutionary zeal of Rohm and his Storm Troopers, 94 00:09:47,892 --> 00:09:52,522 but by the summer of 1934 he knew that their power had to be curbed - 95 00:09:52,696 --> 00:09:55,164 and not just curbed to please the army. 96 00:09:58,102 --> 00:10:02,232 Rohm had made a more dangerous enemy than the army leadership. 97 00:10:02,573 --> 00:10:04,973 Heinrich Himmler, ambitious for power, 98 00:10:05,142 --> 00:10:09,442 and still technically working to Rohm in the Nazi hierarchy, 99 00:10:09,613 --> 00:10:11,581 plotted his downfall. 100 00:10:11,749 --> 00:10:16,550 He concocted a story that Rohm was plotting a coup, and Hitler believed him. 101 00:10:16,720 --> 00:10:20,850 On June 30th, 1934, when Rohm was on holiday in Bavaria, 102 00:10:21,058 --> 00:10:24,687 he was arrested and taken to a nearby prison. 103 00:10:24,895 --> 00:10:27,022 Two days later he was shot. 104 00:10:27,998 --> 00:10:30,125 The armed forces were grateful, 105 00:10:30,301 --> 00:10:34,101 glad to see the power of the Storm Troopers moderated. 106 00:10:34,271 --> 00:10:38,674 In gratitude, they volunteered to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler - 107 00:10:38,842 --> 00:10:43,074 the man who, on Hindenburg's death, was not just Germany's Chancellor 108 00:10:43,247 --> 00:10:45,545 but also her head of state. 109 00:10:51,522 --> 00:10:53,717 (TROOPS REPEAT) 110 00:11:09,640 --> 00:11:11,608 Somebody was reading, 111 00:11:11,809 --> 00:11:14,175 and we had to lift our arm, 112 00:11:14,445 --> 00:11:17,005 and at the end say, "That's my oath." 113 00:11:17,214 --> 00:11:21,310 (INTERVIEWER) And how seriously did you take this oath? 114 00:11:21,485 --> 00:11:23,783 Very serious. I mean, a soldier... 115 00:11:27,324 --> 00:11:30,452 This accompanied my life till the very end. 116 00:11:30,661 --> 00:11:32,629 I mean, er... 117 00:11:32,796 --> 00:11:34,764 oath is oath. 118 00:11:35,099 --> 00:11:37,624 There's no doubt that I can't break it. 119 00:11:37,835 --> 00:11:40,303 Otherwise I'm meant to commit suicide 120 00:11:40,471 --> 00:11:42,666 if I planned something else. 121 00:11:42,840 --> 00:11:45,308 But this... this... this is... 122 00:11:45,476 --> 00:11:48,001 very serious, the oath, for a soldier. 123 00:11:54,852 --> 00:11:58,811 With Rohm dead, Hitler appeared to have restored order. 124 00:11:59,156 --> 00:12:01,454 Revolution on the streets had subsided. 125 00:12:01,625 --> 00:12:05,584 With his hold on power secure, Hitler would come here to relax 126 00:12:05,763 --> 00:12:09,722 in the mountains above Berchtesgaden in southern Bavaria. 127 00:12:10,067 --> 00:12:14,026 In 1938, a tea house was built on top of the high Obersalzberg 128 00:12:14,204 --> 00:12:17,833 so that Hitler and his guests could enjoy the view. 129 00:12:20,277 --> 00:12:23,474 Hitler's house was lower down the mountain. 130 00:12:23,580 --> 00:12:26,378 A complex of buildings grew up around it. 131 00:12:26,550 --> 00:12:28,848 This was the official guest house. 132 00:12:35,693 --> 00:12:40,153 But all that remains of Hitler's own house, the Berghof, is rubble. 133 00:12:43,867 --> 00:12:47,667 The building was demolished to prevent it becoming a memorial, 134 00:12:47,871 --> 00:12:51,671 and quick-growing trees planted to obscure the famous view. 135 00:12:54,178 --> 00:12:57,807 When Hitler stayed here, as well as when he was in Berlin, 136 00:12:58,148 --> 00:13:00,514 the Nazi regime revolved around him. 137 00:13:00,617 --> 00:13:05,247 His personality determined the way in which Germany was governed. 138 00:13:07,658 --> 00:13:10,525 His was not the regime of a workaholic. 139 00:13:10,627 --> 00:13:15,530 Hitler was indolent, as those who worked closely for him discovered. 140 00:13:16,266 --> 00:13:18,564 Hitler appeared shortly before lunch, 141 00:13:18,736 --> 00:13:22,866 read through the newspaper cuttings of Reich Press Chief Dietrich, 142 00:13:23,207 --> 00:13:25,175 and then went in to lunch. 143 00:13:25,342 --> 00:13:29,301 When Hitler stayed at the Obersalzberg, it was even worse. 144 00:13:29,480 --> 00:13:34,440 There he never left his room before two in the afternoon, then he went in to lunch. 145 00:13:34,618 --> 00:13:37,178 He spent most afternoons taking a walk. 146 00:13:37,588 --> 00:13:41,547 In the evenings, straight after dinner, there were films. 147 00:13:41,658 --> 00:13:44,286 In the 12 years of his rule in Germany, 148 00:13:44,461 --> 00:13:47,760 Hitler produced the biggest confusion in government 149 00:13:47,931 --> 00:13:50,365 that has ever existed in a civilised state. 150 00:13:51,468 --> 00:13:54,437 I've sometimes secured decisions from him - 151 00:13:54,638 --> 00:13:56,936 even ones about important matters - 152 00:13:57,274 --> 00:14:00,732 without his ever asking to see the relevant files. 153 00:14:00,911 --> 00:14:05,211 He took the view that many things sorted themselves out on their own 154 00:14:05,382 --> 00:14:07,350 if one did not interfere. 155 00:14:17,494 --> 00:14:19,962 A different picture of Hitler was projected here 156 00:14:20,297 --> 00:14:25,257 at the vast complex of stadiums built in Nuremberg for the party's annual rally. 157 00:14:26,637 --> 00:14:29,731 (ECHO OF MASSED VOICES) 158 00:14:31,408 --> 00:14:35,208 What the public saw of Hitler in Nuremberg in the 1930s 159 00:14:35,412 --> 00:14:37,744 was a confident and strong leader 160 00:14:37,948 --> 00:14:41,907 whose oratory promised a new, dynamic and powerful Germany. 161 00:14:42,252 --> 00:14:44,220 Heil, mein Jugend! 162 00:14:44,388 --> 00:14:46,356 Heil, mein Fuhrer! 163 00:15:14,985 --> 00:15:17,385 (CHEERING) 164 00:15:35,005 --> 00:15:39,567 He was meant to be seen as the all-powerful, all-knowing leader 165 00:15:40,844 --> 00:15:43,312 who prevailed over a system 166 00:15:43,514 --> 00:15:48,474 of total order, but the contrast between image and reality was a stark one. 167 00:15:48,719 --> 00:15:52,746 Far from it being a very orderly structure of command, 168 00:15:52,956 --> 00:15:56,289 in fact it was very disorganised 169 00:15:56,460 --> 00:15:58,428 and rather chaotic. 170 00:15:58,629 --> 00:16:03,430 It is really quite a remarkable system, if you can call it a system at all, 171 00:16:03,600 --> 00:16:06,068 where there is no collective government, 172 00:16:06,403 --> 00:16:11,500 but yet where the head of state actually doesn't spend all his time dictating. 173 00:16:12,409 --> 00:16:15,037 # Wochenend und Sonnenschein 174 00:16:15,379 --> 00:16:18,610 # Und dann mit dir im Wald allein 175 00:16:18,782 --> 00:16:22,411 # Weiter brauch' ich nichts zum Glucklichsein 176 00:16:22,586 --> 00:16:25,714 # Wochenend und Sonnenschein! # 177 00:16:27,591 --> 00:16:32,528 Hitler and the Nazis created a unique and peculiar form of government. 178 00:16:32,763 --> 00:16:35,027 Hitler was surrounded by acolytes 179 00:16:35,365 --> 00:16:39,324 who knew that their future depended on pleasing their Fuhrer. 180 00:16:39,503 --> 00:16:41,801 They strove always to be near him, 181 00:16:41,972 --> 00:16:45,772 accompanying him on whatever trips took his fancy. 182 00:16:47,911 --> 00:16:50,880 # Tief im Wald nur ich und du 183 00:16:51,048 --> 00:16:54,506 # Der Herrgott druckt ein Auge zu 184 00:16:54,685 --> 00:16:58,314 # Denn er schenkt uns ja zum Glucklichsein... # 185 00:16:58,488 --> 00:17:03,619 Though Hitler had little interest in regular hours of work or the detail of policies, 186 00:17:03,794 --> 00:17:07,127 he had visions of what he wanted for Germany. 187 00:17:07,497 --> 00:17:10,466 As Hitler talked in an endless monologue, 188 00:17:10,634 --> 00:17:13,102 ambitious Nazis listened to him closely. 189 00:17:13,437 --> 00:17:18,397 # Wochenend und Sonnenschein Und dann mit dir im Wald allein... # 190 00:17:19,676 --> 00:17:21,644 Then, on their own initiative, 191 00:17:21,812 --> 00:17:26,112 they tried to think of ways in which his vision could become a reality. 192 00:17:26,450 --> 00:17:31,478 They made up the policy and said they were acting on the will of the Fuhrer. 193 00:18:01,118 --> 00:18:05,418 From the first, Hitler openly said he didn't have detailed policies. 194 00:18:33,717 --> 00:18:35,947 (CHEERING) 195 00:18:55,906 --> 00:19:00,036 But Hitler was open in saying what he wanted from the German economy - 196 00:19:00,210 --> 00:19:02,678 weapons to build a new German army. 197 00:19:02,913 --> 00:19:06,144 Rearmament became his economic priority. 198 00:19:12,122 --> 00:19:16,752 The Nazis increased the army's budget so much in their first year of power 199 00:19:16,927 --> 00:19:20,226 that the army wasn't even able to spend all of it. 200 00:19:26,503 --> 00:19:30,633 The Nazis also promised to rid Germany of unemployment, and they did - 201 00:19:30,807 --> 00:19:35,210 mainly through work creation schemes like the autobahn building programme. 202 00:19:43,253 --> 00:19:45,721 But building armaments and autobahns 203 00:19:45,956 --> 00:19:47,924 could only be a short-term solution 204 00:19:48,091 --> 00:19:50,491 to Germany's economic problems. 205 00:20:24,094 --> 00:20:27,894 It would take time for these inflationary pressures to be felt. 206 00:20:28,064 --> 00:20:31,227 And so, for the moment, everything looked rosy, 207 00:20:31,735 --> 00:20:36,968 especially when Hitler ordered troops into the demilitarised portion of Germany, 208 00:20:37,174 --> 00:20:38,971 the Rhineland. 209 00:20:39,142 --> 00:20:41,610 There was little international protest. 210 00:20:42,879 --> 00:20:45,177 Germans saw all this as one more sign 211 00:20:45,382 --> 00:20:47,850 that they were regaining self-respect. 212 00:21:41,238 --> 00:21:43,604 Nazis organised pageants to entertain, 213 00:21:43,773 --> 00:21:47,732 like the Nacht der Amazonen, the Night of the Amazons, 214 00:21:47,911 --> 00:21:50,209 held in Munich in the 1930s, 215 00:21:50,380 --> 00:21:54,578 celebrations in which only those the Nazis considered racially pure 216 00:21:54,751 --> 00:21:56,719 could participate. 217 00:23:54,704 --> 00:23:59,664 But if you didn't fit the Nazi image of the perfect German, life was very different. 218 00:23:59,843 --> 00:24:03,802 Here in Munich, the same city where the Night of the Amazons was held, 219 00:24:03,980 --> 00:24:08,314 the Nazis demolished one of the biggest synagogues in Germany. 220 00:24:08,518 --> 00:24:11,681 They said they wanted the space for a car park. 221 00:24:14,824 --> 00:24:17,952 The Jews were excluded from German life. 222 00:24:18,294 --> 00:24:20,694 The 1935 Nuremberg Laws 223 00:24:20,897 --> 00:24:23,866 outlawed marriage between Jews and other Germans 224 00:24:24,034 --> 00:24:27,299 and declared that Jews were not German citizens. 225 00:24:27,537 --> 00:24:29,732 Other discrimination followed. 226 00:24:29,939 --> 00:24:32,066 (INTERVIEWER) Wasn't it a problem for you 227 00:24:32,409 --> 00:24:35,378 that you were working in a system 228 00:24:35,545 --> 00:24:37,706 that allowed Jews 229 00:24:37,847 --> 00:24:40,315 to be pushed out of this? 230 00:24:40,483 --> 00:24:44,283 Out of their position. To lose their wealth, their property. 231 00:24:44,454 --> 00:24:46,752 Surely this was a great injustice. 232 00:24:46,923 --> 00:24:49,391 How did you feel about that? 233 00:25:29,165 --> 00:25:34,467 Anti-Semitic propaganda exaggerated the number of Jews in professions 234 00:25:34,671 --> 00:25:36,764 like the law or the theatre. 235 00:25:36,940 --> 00:25:41,900 Nazis never gave the reason why Jews were concentrated in some walks of life - 236 00:25:42,078 --> 00:25:47,038 that the Jews had been banned from other careers for hundreds of years. 237 00:25:47,383 --> 00:25:51,683 Thousands of Jews emigrated from Germany during the 1930s, 238 00:25:51,855 --> 00:25:56,155 realising that there could never be a safe place for them in German society 239 00:25:56,493 --> 00:25:58,688 for as long as the Nazis ruled. 240 00:26:01,731 --> 00:26:06,031 Those who remained always risked the attentions of the secret state police, 241 00:26:06,202 --> 00:26:08,170 the infamous Gestapo. 242 00:26:08,505 --> 00:26:11,565 Here in the town of Wurzburg lies a clue 243 00:26:11,841 --> 00:26:15,072 to how the Gestapo operated under the Nazis. 244 00:26:15,411 --> 00:26:20,041 Almost all Gestapo files were burnt by the Nazis as the Allies entered Germany, 245 00:26:20,216 --> 00:26:24,175 but in Wurzburg, American soldiers prevented their destruction. 246 00:26:27,157 --> 00:26:29,625 Only recently have the files been studied, 247 00:26:29,859 --> 00:26:33,818 and a surprising picture emerges of how the Gestapo functioned. 248 00:26:33,930 --> 00:26:38,162 To start with, far from there being a Gestapo officer on every street corner, 249 00:26:38,535 --> 00:26:41,436 there were only 28 secret police officials 250 00:26:41,638 --> 00:26:44,539 for Wurzburg's nearly one million people. 251 00:26:44,741 --> 00:26:48,199 I think the Gestapo could not have operated 252 00:26:48,545 --> 00:26:50,843 without the cooperation 253 00:26:51,014 --> 00:26:53,482 of the citizens of Germany. 254 00:26:53,650 --> 00:26:57,848 By that, I mean it would really have been... 255 00:26:57,954 --> 00:27:00,923 structurally impossible for them to do so. 256 00:27:01,090 --> 00:27:05,550 There were simply not enough Gestapo officials to go around. 257 00:27:05,728 --> 00:27:10,688 Somewhere between 80 and 90% of the crimes that were reported to the Gestapo 258 00:27:10,900 --> 00:27:13,095 came from ordinary citizens. 259 00:27:14,270 --> 00:27:16,738 The main job for the Gestapo 260 00:27:16,906 --> 00:27:19,204 was... sorting out... 261 00:27:19,542 --> 00:27:21,510 the denunciations. 262 00:27:21,678 --> 00:27:24,476 This seems to have been their preoccupation. 263 00:27:26,649 --> 00:27:30,608 (NARRATOR) The citizens of Wurzburg didn't so much have to fear the Gestapo 264 00:27:30,820 --> 00:27:34,449 as what their neighbours might tell the Gestapo. 265 00:27:34,624 --> 00:27:37,923 Every German was at risk from denunciation. 266 00:27:38,094 --> 00:27:42,622 A woman who lived in this house on the outskirts of Wurzburg in 1938 267 00:27:42,799 --> 00:27:47,600 first came to the attention of the Gestapo when she was denounced by a relative. 268 00:27:47,770 --> 00:27:50,238 She was called Ilse Sonja Totzke, 269 00:27:50,573 --> 00:27:54,532 and her Gestapo file lies in the Wurtzburg archive. 270 00:27:54,711 --> 00:27:58,169 After years of denunciations and Gestapo harassment, 271 00:27:58,514 --> 00:28:03,474 she was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp, where she died. 272 00:28:03,653 --> 00:28:05,621 Her crime was simple. 273 00:28:05,788 --> 00:28:10,919 She didn't fit in. She avoided her neighbours and had Jewish friends. 274 00:28:12,262 --> 00:28:14,662 She is put under 275 00:28:15,331 --> 00:28:17,731 very general surveillance, 276 00:28:17,967 --> 00:28:20,026 not by the Gestapo 277 00:28:20,203 --> 00:28:24,833 but by the Gestapo asking her neighbours to keep an eye on her. 278 00:28:25,008 --> 00:28:28,967 What happens is that one neighbour after another, 279 00:28:29,145 --> 00:28:33,104 for one reason or another, come forward with information. 280 00:28:33,283 --> 00:28:35,945 But all of it adds up to really one thing. 281 00:28:36,085 --> 00:28:40,613 She may be just too unconventional for her own good. 282 00:28:40,790 --> 00:28:43,020 Of course, what this does 283 00:28:43,192 --> 00:28:47,185 is that small-town mentality people keep after her. 284 00:28:47,563 --> 00:28:49,690 They keep noticing her. 285 00:28:49,866 --> 00:28:52,164 And it's fuelled again and again 286 00:28:52,335 --> 00:28:54,803 by yet another denunciation. 287 00:28:56,372 --> 00:29:00,331 (NARRATOR) The denunciations in her file contain mostly gossip about her - 288 00:29:00,677 --> 00:29:04,636 that she is acting suspiciously and has shady friends - 289 00:29:04,814 --> 00:29:09,114 but her file contains little that amounts to firm evidence against her. 290 00:29:09,285 --> 00:29:13,085 One denunciation hints that she may be a lesbian. 291 00:29:13,256 --> 00:29:18,558 It says, "Miss Totzke does not seem to have normal predispositions," in red. 292 00:29:18,761 --> 00:29:21,059 It is signed only "Heil Hitler." 293 00:29:28,604 --> 00:29:34,236 One denunciation bears the signature of a 20-year-old neighbour, Resi Kraus. 294 00:29:35,545 --> 00:29:37,672 "Since March, 1938, 295 00:29:37,847 --> 00:29:42,648 "Ilse Sonja Totzke is a resident next door to us in a garden cottage. 296 00:29:42,819 --> 00:29:45,117 "She rarely has visitors. 297 00:29:45,288 --> 00:29:49,247 "Now and then, a woman of about 36 years old comes, 298 00:29:49,425 --> 00:29:51,655 "and she is of Jewish appearance. 299 00:29:51,828 --> 00:29:54,296 "She has always been sympathetic... 300 00:29:54,464 --> 00:29:59,094 "Miss Totzke never responds to the German greeting 'Heil Hitler'. 301 00:29:59,268 --> 00:30:03,204 "To my mind, Miss Totzke is behaving suspiciously. " 302 00:32:18,441 --> 00:32:20,409 We used to think 303 00:32:20,576 --> 00:32:25,036 that the population was manipulated and brainwashed from above. 304 00:32:25,381 --> 00:32:27,679 Now what we're beginning to see 305 00:32:27,783 --> 00:32:32,584 by looking at the social history of the kind one sees in these Gestapo dossiers 306 00:32:32,755 --> 00:32:36,714 is that the system is actually manipulated from below 307 00:32:36,893 --> 00:32:39,691 by lots of people for all kinds of reasons, 308 00:32:39,862 --> 00:32:43,821 some of them selfish; some of them - fewer - idealistic. 309 00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:48,562 But what we get now is a dramatically different picture 310 00:32:48,738 --> 00:32:51,036 of what the system was like. 311 00:33:00,917 --> 00:33:05,320 Ordinary Germans could influence the Gestapo through denunciations, 312 00:33:05,488 --> 00:33:10,289 but no major policy could be successfully instituted unless Hitler blessed it. 313 00:33:10,459 --> 00:33:12,757 So for members of the Nazi elite, 314 00:33:12,929 --> 00:33:17,457 the search was always on for a new way of pleasing their Fuhrer. 315 00:33:19,635 --> 00:33:23,093 One way to his heart was to feed his anti-Semitism. 316 00:33:23,439 --> 00:33:28,308 Josef Goebbels, propaganda minister and hater of Jews, sought to do just that. 317 00:33:31,380 --> 00:33:35,009 Goebbels boasted that the Nazis had excluded Jews 318 00:33:35,351 --> 00:33:37,319 from German cultural life. 319 00:34:05,615 --> 00:34:09,915 In the autumn of 1938, Goebbels saw a chance to please Hitler more 320 00:34:10,119 --> 00:34:14,078 when he heard the news that Ernst von Rath, a German diplomat, 321 00:34:14,323 --> 00:34:19,283 had been assassinated in Paris by a Jewish man, Herschel Grynszpan, 322 00:34:19,395 --> 00:34:22,990 angry at how his family had been treated by the Nazis. 323 00:34:23,532 --> 00:34:28,060 The Nazi elite were in Munich for the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. 324 00:34:28,337 --> 00:34:32,296 Goebbels asked for Hitler's permission to let loose the Storm Troopers 325 00:34:32,408 --> 00:34:35,377 in an act of vengeance against innocent Jews. 326 00:34:35,544 --> 00:34:39,310 Hitler agreed, and so began Kristallnacht, 327 00:34:39,415 --> 00:34:41,542 the Night of Broken Glass. 328 00:34:58,067 --> 00:35:00,365 In the early hours of the morning, 329 00:35:00,536 --> 00:35:05,064 they broke the front door down and started to smash the place up. 330 00:35:05,241 --> 00:35:07,471 Hordes of Storm Troopers. 331 00:35:07,643 --> 00:35:10,009 And we had two lots. 332 00:35:11,013 --> 00:35:14,642 One lot just concentrated on smashing things up, and left. 333 00:35:14,984 --> 00:35:17,452 And then the second lot arrived. 334 00:35:19,021 --> 00:35:23,219 Three elderly ladies were living on the first floor with us. 335 00:35:23,392 --> 00:35:26,020 One was dragged out and beaten 336 00:35:26,195 --> 00:35:30,564 for no reason except she probably got in the way of something. 337 00:35:30,733 --> 00:35:33,361 I was sort of knocked about, 338 00:35:33,536 --> 00:35:36,937 and finally ended up in the... 339 00:35:37,106 --> 00:35:39,666 in the cellar, where the kitchens were. 340 00:35:40,009 --> 00:35:43,240 In a back room, I was being knocked about. 341 00:35:43,412 --> 00:35:45,710 When I came back, I went upstairs 342 00:35:46,082 --> 00:35:48,710 and found my father dying. 343 00:35:49,051 --> 00:35:50,518 Dead. 344 00:35:51,687 --> 00:35:53,655 I tried, erm... 345 00:35:53,989 --> 00:35:56,457 as far as I could to, erm... 346 00:35:56,625 --> 00:35:59,025 artificial respiration, 347 00:35:59,195 --> 00:36:01,720 but I don't think I was very good at it. 348 00:36:02,098 --> 00:36:05,556 In any case, I don't think... It was too late for that. 349 00:36:06,302 --> 00:36:10,261 I was absolutely in shock. It was beyond my comprehension. 350 00:36:10,473 --> 00:36:13,601 I didn't know the people. They didn't know me. 351 00:36:13,776 --> 00:36:16,244 They had no grudge against me. 352 00:36:16,445 --> 00:36:22,213 They were just people who'd come to do whatever they thought they should do. 353 00:36:24,587 --> 00:36:29,786 (NARRATOR) More than 800 Jews lost their lives as a result of Kristallnacht, 354 00:36:30,159 --> 00:36:33,686 and as many as a thousand synagogues were destroyed. 355 00:37:53,142 --> 00:37:56,600 What was the reaction of the non-Jews you knew 356 00:37:56,779 --> 00:37:59,407 when they heard of your circumstances? 357 00:37:59,582 --> 00:38:03,541 You'd been badly beaten up. Your father had been killed. 358 00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:06,187 Did anyone say what they felt about it? 359 00:38:06,355 --> 00:38:08,653 No. In fact, erm... 360 00:38:09,658 --> 00:38:13,219 Er... The people passing the next morning, 361 00:38:13,395 --> 00:38:17,161 ordinary Germans, threw stones at the windows. 362 00:38:20,769 --> 00:38:22,896 Nobody expressed any sympathy? 363 00:38:23,239 --> 00:38:24,536 No. 364 00:38:33,282 --> 00:38:35,580 In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, 365 00:38:35,751 --> 00:38:38,311 Hitler's popularity did not seem to suffer. 366 00:38:39,588 --> 00:38:42,182 As Hitler never spoke in public about it, 367 00:38:42,358 --> 00:38:46,852 it was possible to believe, for those who wanted to, that the responsibility lay 368 00:38:47,229 --> 00:38:49,459 with the hot-headed Storm Troopers. 369 00:38:49,665 --> 00:38:53,624 The love affair between Hitler and his followers continued. 370 00:39:09,652 --> 00:39:13,281 (MALE SINGER) 371 00:39:43,752 --> 00:39:46,619 In 1938, a new Chancellery was built, 372 00:39:46,722 --> 00:39:50,180 symbolising the power and order of Nazi rule. 373 00:39:51,794 --> 00:39:54,763 But inside, Hitler was pursuing methods 374 00:39:54,930 --> 00:39:57,728 which resulted in administrative chaos. 375 00:39:57,900 --> 00:40:02,860 The Grand Reich Chancellery was a hive of political infighting and backbiting, 376 00:40:03,038 --> 00:40:07,998 as rivals with ill-defined jobs fought against each other for Hitler's favour. 377 00:40:10,012 --> 00:40:14,915 Hitler's working life was organised not by one private office, but by five: 378 00:40:15,250 --> 00:40:19,710 The office of the Reich Chancellery, under Hans Heinrich Lammers; 379 00:40:19,888 --> 00:40:24,257 the office of Hitler's personal adjutant, under Wilhelm Bruckner; 380 00:40:24,426 --> 00:40:28,385 the office of the Presidential Chancellery, under Otto Meissner; 381 00:40:28,564 --> 00:40:32,523 on the second floor, the office of the Chancellery of the Fuhrer, 382 00:40:32,701 --> 00:40:34,828 under Philipp Bouhler; 383 00:40:35,004 --> 00:40:39,532 and finally, the office representing the Fuhrer's deputy, under Martin Bormann. 384 00:40:39,708 --> 00:40:42,006 Although based in another building, 385 00:40:42,344 --> 00:40:44,904 Bormann was most often at Hitler's side. 386 00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:48,709 All of these different offices claimed to represent Hitler. 387 00:40:48,884 --> 00:40:52,445 A large portion of their time was spent fighting each other. 388 00:41:53,015 --> 00:41:56,974 One of the more vicious power battles was over access to the mail, 389 00:41:57,152 --> 00:42:01,953 to the thousands of letters that arrived each week addressed to "Mein Fuhrer", 390 00:42:02,124 --> 00:42:05,924 and which begged favours or blessings from Hitler. 391 00:42:09,131 --> 00:42:13,932 There were trivial letters asking if church bells could be named after Hitler, 392 00:42:14,103 --> 00:42:16,663 and serious ones from individual Jews 393 00:42:16,839 --> 00:42:21,799 pleading that they should be exempt from the Nazis' discriminatory laws. 394 00:42:24,012 --> 00:42:26,640 Access to this mail meant access to Hitler 395 00:42:26,815 --> 00:42:29,340 and a chance to form Nazi policy. 396 00:42:31,386 --> 00:42:33,854 Philipp Bouhler, an ambitious Nazi, 397 00:42:34,022 --> 00:42:36,820 managed to gain control over the mail 398 00:42:36,992 --> 00:42:39,460 and exploit it to his benefit. 399 00:42:41,497 --> 00:42:43,965 In late 1938 or early 1939, 400 00:42:44,133 --> 00:42:48,934 one letter which Bouhler's office showed to Hitler had a devastating effect. 401 00:42:50,172 --> 00:42:53,630 It was from the father of a mentally-disabled child. 402 00:42:53,842 --> 00:42:58,802 He asked the Fuhrer's permission to have the child killed. Hitler agreed. 403 00:42:58,947 --> 00:43:02,906 He had already ordered the sterilisation of the disabled. 404 00:43:03,085 --> 00:43:07,385 Now this one letter was to be the catalyst to their murder. 405 00:43:07,556 --> 00:43:10,525 Bouhler was authorised to devise a policy 406 00:43:10,692 --> 00:43:15,186 for the selection and killing of disabled children within days of their birth. 407 00:43:16,465 --> 00:43:18,592 This form had to be filled in 408 00:43:18,767 --> 00:43:21,133 every time a disabled baby was born. 409 00:43:22,704 --> 00:43:24,934 Three doctors read the form. 410 00:43:25,107 --> 00:43:30,067 If they thought the baby should be killed, they each marked it with a cross. 411 00:43:32,948 --> 00:43:36,748 Within months, it was no longer just babies who could be killed, 412 00:43:36,919 --> 00:43:38,887 but disabled children as well. 413 00:43:39,054 --> 00:43:41,614 Gerda Bernhardt's brother Manfred 414 00:43:41,790 --> 00:43:46,454 was one of more than 5,000 children who suffered as a result of this policy. 415 00:43:46,595 --> 00:43:49,530 Manfred was mentally disabled. 416 00:44:46,121 --> 00:44:50,251 But Aplerbeck was one of the Nazis' special children's units. 417 00:44:50,459 --> 00:44:53,758 By now, two years after the policy had begun, 418 00:44:54,129 --> 00:44:58,088 doctors in homes like this had stopped filling in Bouhler's form. 419 00:44:58,267 --> 00:45:01,725 In a typical example of how policies could spiral away, 420 00:45:02,070 --> 00:45:06,439 staff here, on their own, selected the children they wanted to kill. 421 00:46:03,231 --> 00:46:05,699 The official record of deaths at Aplerbeck 422 00:46:05,867 --> 00:46:10,497 lists Manfred Bernhardt as dying of measles on June 3rd. 423 00:46:10,605 --> 00:46:13,301 That same week, 11 other children died. 424 00:46:16,745 --> 00:46:19,145 Manfred Bernhardt was murdered 425 00:46:19,314 --> 00:46:23,114 because he was not wanted in the Nazi's perfect state. 426 00:46:23,285 --> 00:46:25,583 The catalyst that caused his death 427 00:46:25,754 --> 00:46:29,713 was a chance letter to Hitler on a subject close to his heart, 428 00:46:29,891 --> 00:46:33,349 brought to his attention by an ambitious Nazi. 429 00:46:37,132 --> 00:46:39,259 Any idea in this system could, 430 00:46:39,434 --> 00:46:42,835 with the combination of a leader who spoke in visions 431 00:46:43,171 --> 00:46:46,538 and enthusiastic supporters anxious to please, 432 00:46:46,708 --> 00:46:50,542 grow radically to an extreme almost in an instant. 433 00:46:54,383 --> 00:46:58,183 This was the way Germany was ruled in the 1930s. 434 00:47:08,296 --> 00:47:11,595 Now the world was about to suffer the consequences 435 00:47:11,767 --> 00:47:15,726 of the radical way decisions were taken in this Hitler state.