Hitler wanted an affordable simple car that could be mass produced in German factories for use on his new road network. ibid.
The Nazis were early adopters of aviation technology. ibid.
Automobile companies such as Daimler-Benz went into the production of aircraft, tank’ and submarine’ engines, while also manufacturing parts for German guns. ibid.
Adolf Hitler has come to embody the ultimate evil. Dictator of Nazi Germany, orchestrator of the Holocaust, and instigator of a world war which left over 60 million people dead. But Hitler did not act alone. The atrocities of the Third Reich required a vast network of collaborators. Nazis: Ultimate Evil, History 2019
After treatment, Goering returned to Hitler’s side and helped orchestrate the Nazis’ earliest atrocities. ibid.
Goering helped fund his life of excess by stealing on a grand scale … ‘The most massive art theft in the history of the world.’ ibid. expert
A chicken farmer who many believe was even more depraved than Hitler: Heinrich Himmler. ibid.
At the end of World War II, the top Nazis leaders were put on trial. For ten months this trial revealed unknown details of major battles and wartime crime. Unknown to many, the entire proceedings were recorded. Nazis at Nuremberg: The Lost Testimony, National Geographic 2022
They arrest and charge just over twenty major officials who represent the full scope of the Nazi system. ibid.
‘None of them consider themselves to be guilty.’ ibid.
There was no masterplan for this. Its origins were chaotic and spontaneous in improvised mass executions. Its believed that more than a million Jews were murdered in thousands of random killings that erupted across Eastern Europe in the holocaust of bullets. How the Holocaust Began, James Bulgin reporting, BBC 2023
An SS organisation whose job was to use history and archaeology to prove the aims of the master race. Secret History s7e3: Hitler’s Search for the Holy Grail, Michael Wood reporting, Channel 4 1999
An astonishing story, a story which began with the search for Atlantis and the Holy Grail and which ended in genocide. ibid.
‘Never forget,’ Himmler told the SS, ‘we are a knightly order to which we cannot withdraw, to which we are recruited by blood.’ ibid.
The Americans carried out a top secret investigation into the sex life of Adolf Hitler. This film tells the story of the Allied secret sex files on the Nazis. Secret History s7e6: Sex and the Swastika
The PWE [Political Warfare Executive] used a variety of techniques to disseminate its black propaganda. ibid.
The PWE had a team of researchers based in Switzerland. ibid.
The government was split over the use of obscenity. ibid.
The [radio] station broadcast a mixture of sex and scandal about top Nazis. ibid.
When the [First World] War ended in 1918 even the victorious nations had little to celebrate … Up to 2 million Germans had died. Secret History: The War that Made the Nazis, Channel 4 2002
Defeat in 1918 was more than a military setback. It was a national catastrophe … For Germany, 1918 would only be the beginning of a titanic struggle to sweep away humiliation and once again achieve domination of Europe. ibid.
The German experience of the First World War would produce not only Adolf Hitler, it produced his politics too. ibid.
‘War had taken hold of them and would never let them go’. ibid. Ernst von Salomon, The Outlaws
For many German soldiers the experience of war was one of both camaraderie and beyond that the sense of being Germans. ibid.
It spurred many Germans on to even greater desire to sacrifice themselves for Germany. ibid.
The failure to bring home to Germany the reality of defeat led to the growth of a myth that Germany had not been defeated but betrayed. ibid.
Germans seethed with resentment … that would make further conflict inevitable. ibid.
Now Hitler was ready to revenge Germany’s humiliation in 1918. ibid.
Could Hitler have been stopped? Could the Second World War have been prevented by bolder and more assertive action? Need Britain have fought the Second World War at all? Hitler: Could He Have Been Stopped? I, 5 Select 2023
‘I don’t believe that anything is inevitable. And yet, at the same time, it was going to be extremely difficult to have stopped Hitler once he had come to power.’ ibid. Tim Bouverie
‘There is nothing inevitable about the period from 1933 up to 1939.’ ibid. Professor John Bew
‘If you want to know whether a war with Hitler was always going to happen, the answer is yes. Was Britain involved in it? That is Britain’s choice.’ ibid. Professor John Charmley
There is a powerful argument made that appeasement in the 1930s gave Great Britain the time to rearm and to build the Spitfires and Hurricanes that were going to win the Battle of Britain and eventually with help from the Empire, the United States and Russia, to win the Second World War. There was a counter-argument that Chamberlain and his government of appeasement were in retrospect both weak and deluded. But there is another perhaps more accurate narrative that British politicians under the influence of public opinion failed to understand to facts that Hitler was determined of war. ibid.
‘We made a big error in implementing the Treaty of Versailles.’ ibid. Frank McDonough
Nothing was done when Hitler invaded the Rhineland … Czechoslovakia was betrayed at Munich ibid.
‘The more Hitler had dealings with Chamberlain, the more contempt he felt for him.’ ibid. Professor Sir Richard Evans
Britain had changed its opinion. The reluctance of Britain and France to make an alliance with Russia … led Stalin and his new Foreign Minister Molotov to see that Russia’s interests lay in a treaty with Hitler. ibid.
Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement had completely failed and he was forced to resign. ibid.
On November 8th 1923 Adolf Hitler led the infamous beerhall putsch, an attempt to take power in Germany by force. It was a day that would change the world for ever. Hitler’s Coup 1923, Giles Milton reporting, History 2023
In some ways Hitler’s putsch on 8th/9th November 1923 was a complete failure. It didn’t bring about what he hoped to bring about. It didn’t bring about the national revolution. But without that putsch Hitler may never have come to power. It gave him time to reflect, it gave him time to think about how he would destroy the Wehrmarch regime. ibid.
‘Hitler’s model was of course Mussolini’s march on Rome.’ ibid. Sir Richard Evans
Now he makes a fatal mistake. He leaves the Bierkeller and he leaves the ruling triumvirate of Bavaria in the hands of Ludendorff … Everything starts to unravel. ibid.
On November 9th 1923 Hitler’s attempt to seize power in the Beerhall Putsch had ended in a deadly gun battle in the centre of Munich. ibid.
He’s going to be tried in a people’s court in Bavaria with a very sympathetic judge. ibid.
We had to swear, Don’t tell anybody where you are or what you are doing, not even your wife or your parents. The life of nation depended on you holding on to that secrecy. Camp Confidential: America’s Secret Nazis, young Jewish narrator, Netflix 2021
During World War II, the United States operated a secret military camp near Washington DC. It was kept classified for over 50 years. In 2006, the National Park Service conducted interviews with its veterans … ibid. captions
They called it PO Box 1142. It took quite a few weeks for us to be told that all these people that were gonna be there were Nazis. ibid. narrator
We were told to use our German to interrogate the German prisoners. ibid.
I’d been given $1,000 and we were driving to Lansburgh Brothers … I knew it was Jewish but it gave me a nasty pleasure … Four German guys ordering panties for their lives. ibid.
Wernher von Braun: They treated him like a hero … He knew what was going on. ibid.
They were sons of bitches and I wanted them dead. ibid.
We were not only interested in what the Germans were able to do, but we were also interested in knowing about our ally at the time, the Soviet Union. And that became an important element. ibid.