They invaded peaceful nations. Slaughtered innocent people. Committed genocide. But how did Adolf Hitler and his small band of criminal conspirators persuade the German people to follow him? The Rise of the Nazi Party s1e1: The Misfits Gather, Discovery 2014
A young soldier called Adolf Hitler is in hospital; he has been blinded in a mustard gas attack and he is recovering from his wounds. ibid.
An aversion to smoking, drinking and women. ibid.
For a patriotic German soldier there is nothing … zero prospects. ibid.
He gave the party a new name and a new emblem. ibid.
By 1921 Hitler becomes leader of the Nazis. ibid.
In the winter of 1923 Adolf Hitler is at an all-time low. His audacious attempt to seize power in a coup has been an embarrassing failure, and he’s going to jail. The Rise of the Nazi Party s1e2: Becoming Respectable
To win the hearts and minds of the German nation ... In a series of speeches he lays out his case. ibid.
He portrays himself as a patriot trying to restore the nation’s honour. ibid.
Mein Kampf: the concepts within it are not his own. ibid.
The Aryan German people are the natural master race. And that Germany's biggest enemy are the Jews. ibid.
Hitler decrees that the Nazi Party will be relaunched. It will be reputable and democratic. ibid.
Goebbels’ diary entry 23rd November 1925: Great Joy. He greets me like an old friend. How I love him. ibid.
Behind the smart exterior Goebbels is a thug. ibid.
Adolf Hitler, the one-time jail bird, looks like a prophet and he says there is only one solution: put him in charge. The Rise of the Nazi Party s1e3: Seizing Power
The Jews: he blames the economic crisis on them. ibid.
Their very best propaganda tool is the rally. ibid.
In private Hitler has fallen in love; the object of his affection is the 23-year-old daughter of his half-sister. ibid.
Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany. ibid.
This is the story of how Hitler and the Nazis bend an entire people to his will and groom them into participating in the most evil regime in history. The Rise of the Nazi Party s1e4: In Power, Discovery History 2015
Rather than tackle unemployment, Hitler targets the Jews. ibid.
Unemployment goes down to virtually nothing. ibid.
Hitler has won the people’s hearts and minds and he has groomed them to his way of thinking. ibid.
Adolf Hitler has risen to power pretending to be a man of peace. He tells his people he can make Germany great again without war. The Rise of the Nazi Party s1e5: Preparing for War, Discovery History 2014
Then Chamberlain offers a new extraordinary compromise – Hitler can have the Sudetenland provided he promises this will be the last of his territorial ambitions. ibid.
Soon afterwards, German forces storm into Belgium and Holland. By mid-summer 1940 Hitler is in Paris at the head of a victorious army. bid.
Adolf Hitler is at the height of his power. He had conquered Europe. For millions of Germans he is the greatest military and strategic genius of all time. Yet the German people are about to discover that what they have been told is a tissue of lies. The Rise of the Nazi Party s1e6: Hitler’s Biggest Blunder
The Hess crisis passes, but for the first time the image of Hitler’s leadership is exposed as seriously out of line with the reality. ibid.
There will be no more easy victories. ibid.
His biggest blunder ... The most powerful country in the world. Germany is about to be hit by a serious of ferocious hammer blows ... Hitler has declared war on America. ibid.
Stalingrad: Around a quarter of a million German troops are cut off from their supply lines. ibid.
Over the skies of Germany, Allied aircraft bomb the country’s cities day and night. ibid.
Hitler is a shadow of his former self. ibid.
Of all their evil actions nothing defines the Nazis like the Final Solution – the murder of some six million Jews. The Rise of the Nazi Party s1e7: The Final Solution
The film – The Eternal Jew – produced by Goebbel’s Propaganda Unit, has a stark message: wherever Jews settle they behave like rats and parasites. ibid.
With this complicity of silence no German needs to speak openly about the Final Solution. No-one needs to take responsibility. ibid.
Hitler’s control over Germany is built on a simple illusion – people believe the Fuhrer is an all-wise genius leading them in a noble enterprise. But now the reality is breaking through. The Rise of the Nazi Party s1e8: Nazis Outfought
Stauffenberg’s treasonous views are shared by fellow officer Colonel Henning von Tresckow. ibid.
People are still losing faith in the Fuhrer. ibid.
The last throw of his dice has failed. ibid.
January 1945: End game for Nazi Germany as the Allies advance on all sides ... What now for Adolf Hitler and the band of criminal conspirators around him? The Rise of the Nazi Party s1e9: End Game
An aged grey wreck of a man increasingly dependent on a sinister quack. ibid.
Goebbels is creating an alternative reality. ibid.
1945: Germany is defeated. Now the awful reality of what Adolf Hitler and his cronies have been up to is revealed. The Rise of the Nazi Party s1e10: Aftermath
This is the start of the Cold War: an escalation of political and military tension that would set the Allies against each other and take the world back to the brink of war. ibid.
765 top scientists and engineers from Hitler’s military research programmes are whisked away to America without undergoing any process of de-Nazification. ibid.
The Nazis believed some relics could even guarantee victory on the battlefield. Ancient X-Files s2e2, National Geographic 2012
The Nazis claimed that the Germans were the master race destined to rule .. For his proof he [Himmler] turned to an ancient myth – the lost world of Atlantis. Raiders of the Lost Past: The Nazi Hunt for Atlantis, Yesterday 2013
Schafer’s vision was very different and very clear: he wanted to conduct an objective scientific survey in Tibet. ibid.
‘Naturally, we peeped. We saw the grey uniforms of German soldiers on foot. They all held machine-guns. The next thing we know they had taken control of the town.’ Darcey Bussell’s Looking for Audrey, Audrey Hepburn’s war diary, BBC 2014
By gas we mean those products of the chemical industry that can be used as chemical weapons during battle with the aim of acting on the enemy and putting him out of action. In the same way, chemical substances, developed by the minds and work of hundreds, were already an effective weapon during the First World War. We must therefore expect the enemy to use them again in this war and be prepared at any time. (Bio-Chemical Weapons & Nazis) Kampfstoffe, National Socialist propaganda film 1940
Deep in a forest in the heart of Europe lie the remains of a bizarre Nazi experiment. A plan so strange that only now can the full story be told. Scientists from the SS plan to recreate prehistoric animals that had vanished from the Earth. Beasts they believe a new Nazi super-race would hunt in ancient forests across Europe. Hitler’s Hunting Experiment, Channel 4 2015
On August 3rd 1944 a Royal Air Force reconnaissance plane flew a routine mission over German occupied Amsterdam. Among the structures photographed was an office located at Prinsengracht 263. The next day, in that building, Anne Frank and her seven companions would be arrested. Anne Frank: The Nazi Capture, caption, National Geographic 2015
Anne’s father chose exile rather than live under the new Nazi government in his native Germany. ibid.
Holland surrendered within one week. At the time of this surrender 140,000 Jews lived within its borders. ibid.
In July of 1942, when the Frank family went into hiding, over 20,000 concentration camps were under construction. ibid.