Adolf Hitler will go on to oversee the murder of millions of people. ibid.
Hitler has his base: the Stormtroopers, the paramilitary wing of the Nazis. Over two million angry young men. They are waiting for Hitler to deliver the Nazi revolution he promised. None more so than the leader of the Stormtroopers, Ernst Rohm. ibid.
So Goering orders his secret surveillance organisation, the Research Bureau, to go after Rohm. ibid.
And Hitler publicly forces Rohm to back down from his demands for the Stormtroopers to take over Germany’s army. ibid.
Himmler has taken over police forces across Germany. But the biggest and most powerful remains outside his control. ibid.
Rohm stages Stormtrooper manoeuvres across Germany. ibid.
Hitler travels through the night to personally arrest Rohm at his hotel. ibid.
By crushing the Stormtroopers, Hitler wins the support of most of the German public, the army, the elites and President Hindenburg. ibid.
June 1940, the German army has swept through France. Paris has fallen. Rise of the Nazis s2e1: Dictators at War: Barbarosa, BBC 2022
‘Hitler decides to make a private sightseeing grip to Paris on 23rd June 1940 when Paris is occupied and controlled by the German forces.’ ibid. Professor Sir Richard Evans
‘He comes to believe ever more strongly in his own invincibility.’ ibid.
Hitler offers Stalin a deal to split the world between them. But Stalin has to work out if Hitler can be trusted. ibid.
Molotov and Ribbenrop continue their negotiations in an air-raid shelter. ibid.
‘The Germans were quite good at deception. Stalin relies on what to me is a fairly transparent lie from Berlin that these assemblies of forces is just training.’ ibid. Mike Jackson
So Stalin makes no serious preparations for a German attack. ibid.
‘He believes this is going to be war of conquest. A bubble of eastern Europe and of course a war, and this is the most important core belief of Hitler, against the Jews. ibid.
Over 3 million troops are now stationed along the 1,100 miles of Soviet border. In just under a week they will attack. ibid.
‘There are spectres hovering over Barbarossa. There’s the spectre of Napoleon.’ ibid. Richard Evans
Suddenly Stalin is nowhere to be seen. ibid.
At the end of 1941 [Walther von] Brauchitsch was dismissed from the German army. After the war he was forced to appear at the Nuremberg Trials. ibid.
In June 1942 Hitler travelled to Finland to have talks with the Finnish leader, [Carl] Mannerheim, in a railway carriage. The talks were being recorded by the Finns for posterity. Rise of the Nazis s2e2: Dictators at War: Stalingrad
Furious with this failure, Hitler has sacked or sidelined his top Generals and appointed himself head of the German army. ibid.
Zhukov’s reward for the success of the Battle of Moscow is that he is sidelined and sent to the front. ibid.
So now both Hitler and Stalin have taken charge of their own armies; there’s no-one left to hold them back. ibid.
Tens of thousands die as he [Speer] tries to supply the Nazi war machine but it’s still not enough. So he decides to cook the books. ibid.
So both the Red Army and the German forces descend on Stalingrad. ibid.
Hitler has publicly tied his own fate to the conquest of Stalingrad. ibid.
By 1943 Hitler has lost the battle of Stalingrad. The German army are retreating across the Eastern Front. Rise of the Nazis s2e3: Dictators at War, captions
For once, there is no masterplan. Hitler leaves it to the men around him to pull Germany back from the abyss. ibid.
Ultimately, it’s a study of why dictatorships are flawed, and how those who rule through fear and terror can never trust even the people closest to them. ibid.
The RAF don’t just drop bombs; they also drop leaflets … The Allied bombing raids increase in volume and destruction. ibid.
With the war almost lost, the Nazi regime pushes to conclude the mass murder of European Jews. In 1944, in Nazi occupied Hungary, 430 Jewish people are sent to their deaths at Auschwitz. By the end of the Second World War, the Nazi regime will have murdered an estimated 6 million Jewish men, women and children. ibid. captions
December 1944: Germany is losing the war on all fronts. Its armies are depleted and demoralised. Rise of the Nazis s3: I II III The Downfall, captions, BBC 2022
‘Hitler always had a capacity to imagine things no matter what the reality was. He was very capable of self-delusion.’ ibid. Richard Evans
This is the story of the collapse of the Third Reich as the Allied troops close in on Germany. ibid.
This pursuit of total war will play out as a psychological drama in Hitler’s inner circle. ibid.
Hitler decides now is the time to launch his surprise attack on the west: the Battle of the Bulge. ibid.
Hitler descends fifteen metres under the Chancellery gardens in his heavily fortified hideaway – the Fuhrer-bunker. ibid.
20th March 1945: Hitler is filmed on camera for the last time. ibid. s1e2
By early April 1945 Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime is on the verge of collapse. In the west American troops have crossed the Rhine. The British are closing in from the north. The French from the south. From the east a vast Soviet army has paused to regroup just forty miles from Berlin. Allied aircraft now control the skies over Germany, launching devastating air-raids almost at will. ibid.
Hitler issues an order to fight to the last. ibid.
They [Nazi hierarchy] are all trying to come out of the war alive. They are essentially cowards. ibid. historian
April 1945: In this concert hall the Nazis organised a final concert by the Berlin philharmonic. ibid. Richard Evans
At the end of the concert there are Hitler youth handing out suicide capsules. ibid. Evans
Who will stay loyal to Hitler? And who will betray him. And when? ibid.
April 1945: The War Hitler started has come back to haunt him. Germany is on the brink of total defeat, and the all-powerful Fuhrer is living in an underground bunker. ibid.
Behind the Fuhrer’s back, Himmler is secretly making plans for peace with Germany’s enemies. ibid.
The Soviets are now taking Berlin street by street, hour by hour, brutalizing the German people as they go. ibid.
They didn’t stand up when he entered the room. Didn’t give a Nazi salute … Hitler is in some sense is already dead. No longer treated as if he is the great leader. ibid. Evans
‘Eva’s fantasy is about her place in Nazi history.’ ibid. Clare Mulley
End Game: With the Russians almost at Hitler’s door, staff in the bunker receive dramatic news from Italy: Hitler’s ally, dictator Benito Mussolini, and his mistress have been killed by communist partisans. Their mutilated bodies publicly strung up outside a petrol station near Milan. ibid. s1e3
Himmler is a traitor in Hitler’s eyes … After 22 years a member, Himmler is summarily dismissed form the Nazi party’ ibid.
Himmler offers his services as a second in command. But Donitz refuses. ibid.
The Goebbels children are sedated before cyanide capsules are crushed into their mouths. Their parents then shoot themselves. ibid.
After six years of conflict the war is over. Nazism defeated. ibid.
While Goering is behind bars, Himmler is on the run. ibid.
The British 11th Armoured Division reaches Belsen, north Germany. Deep in the woods, they approach a German camp. Bergen-Belsen is the first concentration camp encountered by British troops. British soldiers are confronted with both the victims and the perpetrators of these crimes. Rise of the Nazis s4e1: The Manhunt I, BBC 2023
After the Second World War some of the worst war criminals in history go to ground. Many change their names and the most wanted flee to South America. Others claim the Holocaust never happened or had nothing to do with them. ibid.
In the dock will be Goering, Hitler’s right-hand-man, Albert Speer … and Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister. In total 22 of the highest-ranking Nazis who will face charges of war crimes, crimes against the peace, conspiracy and crimes against humanity. ibid.
By 1949 the Allies had convicted 5,025 Nazi criminals in the western occupied zone, and subsequently carried out 486 death sentences. ibid.