I witnessed the festivities [Hitler’s 50th birthday 1939]. I heard the clamour. I saw the enraptured faces of the women. Through it all this moronic roar of ‘Heil!’ Hysterical females. Adolescents in a trance. An entire people in the spiritual state of whirling dervishes. These people are insane. Fritz Reck-Malleczewen, author
Warsaw 1939: One day I had a chance to take pictures of twenty or more German soldiers. I asked them why they were inflicting such terrible tortures upon the Polish people. They answered as one – we must. Julien Bryan, filmmaker
The Gestapo rounded up hundreds of these mixed-race children whom the Nazis called the Rhineland Bastards. They were ordered to attend clinics, and without warning were sterilised. Mixed Race Britain: How the World Got Mixed Up, BBC 2011
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. Kampfstoffe, National Socialist propaganda film 1940
The intention of the enemy to destroy the German armament production by systematic and massive bomb raids has failed. Timely and with German thoroughness the manufacture of key supplies has shifted underground. Weapons, Hands, Hearts: National Socialist propaganda film 1940
We present the first footage of the V2 missile on its flight to England. For reasons of secrecy it has been filmed from a long distance and offers only a vague idea of the real dimensions of the V2. National Socialist propaganda film 1944
We are cut off from the world at the mercy of the oncoming catastrophe. And we’re afraid. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Berlin writer
We had known. The world had vaguely heard. But until now none of us had looked on this. It was as though we had penetrated at last to the centre of the black heart. To the very crawling inside of the vicious heart. Meyer Levin, American journalist
They accuse all of us without exception of being fully responsible. But we hated the regime from the very beginning. Now our longed for deliverance means only we are despised and hated. It serves us right. No-one can escape this collective guilt. Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg, Hamburg resident
All I know is that we Germans are finished. Marta Hillers, Berlin journalist
The town was hung with National Socialist flags and the window of an outfitter's shop next door held a display of Party equipment: swastika arm-bands, daggers for the Hitler Youth, blouses for Hitler maidens and brown shirts for grown-up SA men; swastika buttonholes were arranged in a pattern which read Heil Hitler and an androgynous wax-dummy with a pearly smile was dressed up in the full uniform of a Sturmabteilungsmann. Patrick Leigh Fermor, Loose as the Wind
The SS files were packed with executions and torture. But these were not records of Nazi atrocities, they were ancient documents hundreds of years old relating to the trial and persecution of witches. Nazi Underworld s1e1: Hitler’s Henchmen, National Geographic 2011
The Christian faith was the enemy of Germanic culture and race. ibid.
Himmler’s SS was employed with ruthless efficiency to eradicate their brown-shirt rivals. ibid.
At the end of 1941 Himmler was working on the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish question. ibid.
In September 1944 the British Intelligence Service listened in on the conversations of captured German generals ... Hitler’s favourite General, the legendary Desert Fox, had apparently turned against the Fuhrer he had so gallantly fought for. But just a month later it was the Great Field Marshal who was dead. Nazi Underworld s1e2: Hitler’s Desert Fox, National Geographic 2013
Germans were told he had died from injuries sustained in a car crash; the real cause of his death was covered up. The great general was forced to poison himself. ibid.
It was in the Libyan desert where Rommel’s reputation flourished. ibid.
Rommel even made it on to the cover of Time magazine. ibid.
In private the great Field Marshall, once Hitler’s favourite, was becoming increasingly critical of Hitler, the war, and German defences. ibid.
A memorial marks the spot where he committed suicide. ibid.
Adolf Hitler’s girlfriend: he was 23 years older. She was a strictly kept state secret. Their relationship could never be made public. Nazi Underworld s1e3: Hitler’s Women
Maria Reiter was 16: her brother-in-law only just saved her from suicide when Hitler spurned her; Geli Raubal was Hitler’s niece; she was only 23 when she killed herself in Hitler’s apartment; Unity Mitford was the English aristocrat infatuated with Hitler who shot herself when she was 25. ibid.
‘Magda is a little too friendly towards the boss.’ ibid. Goebbels
Unity Mitford became a kind of Nazi Party groupie. ibid.
A remarkable survivor: Hitler’s architect and armaments minister Albert Speer. He was Hitler’s favourite. Nazi Underworld s1e4: Hitler’s Architect
His meteoric rise in Hitler’s regime was secured in 1933; the 28-year-old became the dictator’s architect, employed to bring Hitler’s grandiose plans and visions to life. ibid.
Speer became one of the biggest buyers of ‘acquired’ art. ibid.
The image of the Good Nazi was a highly profitable one. ibid.
Hitler’s Nazi cult was built on the myth of racial purity. Family background was critical. The Fuhrer’s followers had to prove they came from solid German stock. But while others were excluded and eventually murdered because of their family backgrounds, the Fuhrer’s family were a mystery. It turned out that his ancestors were far from the ideal of the superhuman Nazi master race. Nazi Underworld s1e5: Hitler’s Family
The product of a dubious dysfunctional background … There were cases of insanity in the family. ibid.
Rumours circulated that Hitler had Jewish blood. ibid.
His mother and father were distant cousins. ibid.
Hitler was the almighty leader who claimed to be a modest man of the people … It was a distortion of the truth. Far from the working class hero confected by Nazi propaganda it seems that Adolf Hitler, the pampered Bohemian, feasted on cream cake and was also a tax evader. His tax file still survives. Nazi Underworld s1e6: Hitler’s Money
It was among Munich’s conservative and predominantly Catholic upper classes that Hitler found much of his financial support. ibid.
Valuable foreign currency came from oversees benefactors including American companies. ibid.
Even some of the Nazi faithful began to question the lavish lifestyle of their leader. ibid.
He continued to portray himself as a poverty-stricken man with no assets anywhere. ibid.
Much of that income came from sales of his book Mein Kampf. ibid.
Hitler’s right-hand man. The Deputy Fuhrer who thought that thoughts could move objects and that Britain would make peace with Hitler. Rudolf Hess was on a ride that ended in a spectacular fall: he rubbed shoulders with the Nazi elite yet abandoned the Reich at the height of its power on a secret quest to strike a deal with the enemy. Hitler’s deputy flew a gruelling thousand mile secret flight to Britain – in the middle of the Blitz. Nazi Underworld s2e1: The Hess Enigma, National Geographic 2013
An old man pacing the yard alone. ibid.
He would reach out to Britain, make peace, and re-establish himself as a bright spark in the Nazi elite. ibid.
Churchill: Do you mean to tell me that the Deputy Fuhrer of Germany is in our hands? … Hess or no Hess, I’m going to see the Marx Brothers. ibid. attributed
A life in captivity. ibid.
He was supposed to be the supreme leader of a master race. A paragon of physical and mental health. To lead Germany to a glorious future. But behind the Fuhrer façade was a fragile pill-popper. Dependent on a dubious daily diet of injections, tablets and tonics. Nazi Underworld s2e2: Hitler’s Drug Use Revealed *****