Berlin the summer of 1940 welcomed victory beyond belief. The soldiers of the Third Reich came home after only a year of war. They had conquered France, central and northern Europe had fallen too. Crowds were delirious with exhortation and relief. They turned to their Fuhrer in a frenzy of gratitude. The World at War 16/26: Inside the Reich, ITV 1974
The pram was the tank of the home-front. ibid.
For the Jews there was deportation to Eastern ghettos and then the gas chambers of the SS. The official word was Resettlement. Most Germans preferred to believe it meant no more than that. ibid.
150,000 Germans suffered prison or worst for political resistance. ibid.
Dresden. A great beautiful historical city so far barely touched by the war ... A severe case of over-bombing ... 100,000 died. Dresden was another monument to total war. The World at War 21/26: Nemesis
The Great Third Reich was shrinking. Germans were coming home. ibid.
Germany was an ant-heap some giant had kicked to pieces. ibid.
‘I went into Hitler’s workroom with the former Reichsleiter Bormann. And this picture presented itself to us: Hitler was sitting on the left of the sofa with his face bent slightly forward and hanging down to the right. With the 7.65 he had shot himself in the right temple. The blood had run down on to the carpet; and from this pool of blood a splash had got on to the sofa. Eva Braun was sitting on his right. Eva Braun had drawn both her legs up on to the sofa and was sitting there with crampt lips so that immediately it became clear to us that she had taken cyanide. I took Hitler by his neck, behind me were two other officers, his body-guard, and so we took Hitler’s body and proceeded with it into the park. In the park we laid the bodies together next to each other and poured the available petrol over them. In the Reich-Chancellery Park there was fire all around ... I threw the taper on to the bodies and in an instant the corpses were on light.’ ibid. interview
It was the ordinary German who paid. ibid.
In January in 1933 in a coalition government Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany. Almost immediately Hitler dissolves the Reichstag and calls for new elections. Visions of War: The World in Flames, 2005
The independent trade unions are dissolved. ibid.
Britain is more sympathetic to German demands for military parity. ibid.
A boycott of Jewish shops and businesses. ibid.
Hitler again flaunts international agreements. ibid.
In 1945 Germany lay in ruins. The heart had been torn out of her cities. This was the result of a secret revolution in the technology of air warfare. Secrets of World War II e15: How Germany Was Bombed to Defeat, Yesterday 1998
This is the story of how and why the German people gave it to him [Hitler] ... This is the rise of the Third Reich. Third Reich: The Rise I, History 2010
The 1919 treaty that ended the First World War had 440 clauses. 414 were devoted to punishing Germany. ibid.
‘A Man to Lead the Fatherland’ 1923-1928. ibid.
On November 8th Hitler tried to incite revolution from a Munich beer hall. 16 of his followers were killed. ibid.
Nazi Party Rally Film 2nd August 1929: 100,000 Nazis attended. ibid.
Most Germans still thought of Hitler as too radical. If they thought of him at all. ibid.
On March 13th 1932 Hitler received eleven million votes in the presidential election. He lost. ibid.
The Nazis were by now the largest political party in Germany. ibid.
During the night someone had set fire to the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament ... Within 24 hours of the fire freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of public assembly, were suspended. ibid.
Within days of the fire thousands of communists were arrested. ibid.
He was dictator. ibid.
The Nazis were boycotting all Jewish businesses in Germany. ibid.
By the end of 1933, 100,000 Germans had been arrested. At least 600 of them were murdered while in police custody. ibid.
The message was clear: opposition of any kind would not be tolerated. ibid.
At least 400,000 Germans were sterilized for blindness, epilepsy, homosexuality, mental depression, alcoholism, deafness, sexual promiscuity and physical deformity. ibid.
In public at least it seemed everyone was a Nazi. ibid.
One People, One Germany, One Fuhrer: September 1934. ibid.
The Rally of 1934 would be particularly special because this year they would film the most influential piece of Nazi propaganda ever made: Triumph of the Will. ibid.
Hitler: Time magazine’s Man of the Year. ibid.
Jews were no longer German citizens; marriage between Germans and Jews was now outlawed; sexual intercourse between Jews and Germans was now outlawed. ibid.
The summer of 1936 and the world was coming to Berlin ... Germany won 89 Olympic medals – more than any other nation. The United States ranked second, with a total of 56. ibid.
In 1936 900 girls came home from the Nuremberg rally pregnant. Unwed mothers were known as the Fuhrer Brides. ibid.
1938: The majority of Austrians welcomed it. ibid.
Within days 70,000 Austrians would be sent to concentration camps. ibid.
Hitler had demanded that Czechoslovakia cede a large portion of its German speaking territory – the Sudetenland – to the Third Reich. ibid.
The Third Reich would bring every German eternal shame. Third Reich: The Fall II
The miracle was being financed in part by land and raw materials stolen from other countries. ibid.
On 9th November the Nazis unleashed a two-day orgy of violence against Jewish businesses, places of worship, and Jews themselves. ibid.
Across Germany 1,200 synagogues and prayer rooms were destroyed. 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. ibid.
During the Third Reich close to 300,000 German Jews applied for American visas. Only one third of these were granted. ibid.
1 September 1939: If you were German, you knew that this finally meant war with England and France. Another world war. ibid.
The German onslaught lasted for twenty-eight days before Warsaw finally surrendered. ibid.
An average of 3,000 Poles a day died under German occupation. ibid.
June 1940: in only six weeks Germany had conquered the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Belgium ... By mid-June Germany had also conquered France. ibid.
The fall of the Third Reich would begin in the east. ibid.
Nearly one million Jews had been murdered in the east. ibid.
Not all Germany’s enemies would be merciful. ibid.
The Allies were closing in on Germany. In the east there was chaos. ibid.
The recruitment age would soon be lowered to thirteen. ibid.
Many simply couldn’t imagine Germany after the Third Reich. Mass suicide occurred across the country on a scale never before seen in western Europe. ibid.
In April and May of 1945 there were 5,000 suicides in Berlin. One of these was Adolf Hitler’s. ibid.
As many as two million German women were raped by Red Army soldiers. One in ten women raped in Berlin died as a result. Most from suicide. ibid.
Across Germany the Allies forced local Nazi party members to bury the dead. ibid.
At the time of surrender more than eleven million Germans were prisoners of war. ibid.
Nowhere to live and little to eat. Millions died. And those who survived would live on near-starvation rations for three more years. ibid.
Germany’s reconstruction was not complete until the 1980s. ibid.
Germany: Yes 99.02%
Austria: 99.75% Der Triumph