THE NAZIS: A WARNING FROM HISTORY (2007-Lawrence Rees)

This excellent BBC TV production by Lawrence Rees gives you the complete rise and fall of the Nazi Party of Germany, in six parts.
I have to correct the date- this series was made in 1997, not 2007- I can't seem to edit the top line of the post...

I'll post about each part. It is history, and it is fascinating. And it is definitely a warning from history.
Some of the images and stories and testimonies here are horrific. This is about humans, and how they relate/react to their surroundings in times of crisis.
It contains some of the harshest and cruellest lessons history has to teach us. I'll do my best to review the series.
It is narrated by Samuel West and I recommend it to anybody.

To see how World War I shaped what was to become World War II is a steep learning curve, how the armistice on Nov. 11, 1918 angered every German and planted a seed for the future that would horrify the world.
After I've posted on the six parts I wouldn't mind people's thoughts. I'd like to hear everybody's opinion here, whomever is willing to discuss it.

Narrator Samuel West informs us that Nazism was borne out of the first World War.
To Germany's surprise, the war suddenly stopped on November 11, 1918.

Herbert Richter, a German WWI vet tells us: Of course we were angry. The front line troops didn't feel defeated. We wondered why the armistice occured so quickly. Why did we have to vacate our positions in such a hurry?
The German troops felt betrayed. They felt that the 2 million Germans who made the ultimate sacrifice were betrayed.
Betrayed by Marxists and Jews.

We're told that after the war the allies continued to blockade Germany. Certain conditions created a Revolution. In Munich, the capital of Bavaria, families were still suffering, and it shocked the troops. Millions of Germans were hungry. Thousands more were dying of tuberculosis and influenza. Politics were polarized. In the face of crisis, Conservatives and Socialists each became radicalized. In 1919 there was lots of turmoil, and in Munich a left-wing takeover took place. A Soviet-style government was created, and government troops were sent to quash the rebellion.
There was open fighting in the streets of Munich- firefights, and we see historic footage of it.
More than 500 were killed. A participant right-wing mercenary Fridolin von Spaun testifies: They got what they deserved. They wanted to plunge Germany into chaos.

Son of a Jewish Communist Leader Eugene Levine enlightens us: In Germany the impression gradually took hold that Bolshevism and Judaism are basically the same. I find it natural that a generally anti-Jewish attitude became widespread. The Jews were convenient scapegoats, totally to blame for the country's ills.

Captain Ernst Rohm and Corporal Adolph Hitler had the same deep hatred of Communists and Jews. They met when Hitler was 30, in 1919, and they both were part of the small German Workers party. Like thousands of ex-soldiers in Munich, Hitler was drifting, without a regular job.
Narrator Samuel West kindly tells us that Hitler found out he had a talent for channelling his anger at the way the war had ended into fiery powerful speeches. When he spoke, he was able to convince anyone within earshot that he was a man with a point.

The Versailles Peace Treaty was brutal- Germany had to pay reparations to the Victors of the war. In the 1920's, inflation in Germany spiralled out of control.
You'd pay billions in Reichsmarks for one sausage. Batshit nuts. People would bemoan that it couldn't go on anymore. We're told it was a real collapse of society. Then we're told of how the debate began for the need for a strong man.
That call for a strong man got louder and louder, simply because democracy achieved nothing.
The German Workers "National Socialist" party (NAZI, for short) stood up and said Versailles was a crime and the Jews were behind it.
Hitler would deliver these rousing, dynamic, uncompromising speeches and he started to attract prominent Bavarians to the Nazi party.
WWI flying ace Hermann Goering joined because it was Revolutionary to him, not ideological.
Heinrich Himmler wanted Germans to be Heroes, not cowards, so the Nazi party appealed to him.
Many more would join the Nazi ranks in the years to come.

We're told of the French troops, and how they would humiliate Germans when collecting reparations in the early 1920's. There was widespread hunger, squalor and poverty. "The French ruled with an Iron Hand" we're told by ex-Nazi party member Jutta Rutiger. "Perhaps they simply wanted to take revenge".
French troops violently occupied the Ruhr, and it was a crisis. Hitler and the Nazi party decided to ACT.
On November 8th, 1923 Hitler interrupted a right-wing political meeting and called for a National Revolution to start in Bavaria and overthrow the left-wing government in Berlin. The next day the Nazis marched through Munich to gain support. They were stopped by the police. Shots were fired, the marchers were routed, Hitler fled the scene and when the dust settled, 4 policemen and 16 Nazi party members were dead.
Hitler was tried, and he served one month in prison. In 1924, the Nazis seemed almost irrelevant. The German economy was turning around, shit was becoming increasingly bourgeoisie. Inflation was back to single digits. The Weimar government had solved the reparations problem we're told by borrowing cash from the USA, using it to pay back the Brits and the French.These good times were financed by short-term credit, and there were Germans against this "Weimar Decadence". The Wandervogel movement were anti-rich Germans who wanted an old-fashioned lifestyle.
We're told the Hitler Youth movement capitalized on this. Here were young people and their mentors shouting "GERMANY FIRST!"
Their slogan was "GERMANY AWAKE!"

In the 20's, the Nazi party was small, but radical. They promised that if elected, they would strip German Jews of their citizenship and would even expel them. They held an opinion of "WORLD JEWRY", which they believed wanted to gain power, to Rule the World. They believed in and openly preached about this "World Jewish Conspiracy". Along with their anti-Semitism they felt VIOLENCE was necessary. They had their own para-military wing, the Brown Shirts, whose job it was to intimidate others and to drum up support.

Towering over this small party was the personality of the man called "The Fuhrer", Adolph Hitler. The whole party was structured around his Leadership, and would continue even when Germany ruled much of Europe.

We're told the Nazi brown shirts/stormtroopers would march on weekends, through the middle of towns, marching behind the swastika flag held high.
Despite outward appearances, the party was disorganized. The administration of the party was chaotic. Hitler hated committee meetings, he hated arbitrating. And he was often late. One prominent Nazi wrote to Hitler: I regard your time management as very damaging to the Movement.
But the party still functioned. They were passionate believers in "Natural Selection", in "Survival of the Fittest". in the "Law of the Jungle".

Hitler: Men dispossess one another, and one perceives at the end of it all it is always the Stronger who Triumphs.The Stronger asserts his Will. It is the law of Nature.

We're told that in 1928 the Nazi party only got 2.6% of the vote. Over 97% of Germans rejected them and their Leader.
After that years' election the party compiled a report and had to admit to themselves that they had "no noticeable influence" on the population.
They were a tiny fringe party, a joke. Yet just 4 years later Hitler would be Chancellor of Germany. They were helped into power by circumstance.
Germany was suffering severely at this time. Poverty wasn't just in towns- it was brought to the countryside too. Then the Wall Street crash held the world in an economic slump. By 1931 the unemployed in Germany rose to 5.5 million.
Welfare was a totally new and foreign system to Germans, to line up at the dole office and collect 5 Reichsmarks, to carry a spoon in your pocket for lunch when you redeemed your ration ticket. Many didn't have the means to buy simple foodstuffs. It was a miserable existence, and we see archive footage that proves it was real. It was awful. You can tell from the footage it was dire. The unemployed lived ROUGH.
Germany became the most economically hardest hit country in the world.
Just when things couldn't get any worse, they did.
The 5 major banks crashed. More than 20,000 German businesses folded. Now the middle class was suffering. Remind you of anything?
Today? Hmmm?
During this economic crisis, the Nazi party expanded. Their vote increased. They were still saying Versailles was a crime, they were still saying Jews should be denied citizenship, Marxism should be destroyed, and that Germany must be REBORN.
The message hadn't changed, it's just that more Germans were willing to listen to it.
The Communists started to pick up votes too. We're told that any young man at that time was either a Commie or a Stormtrooper. There was no other option. You were one or the other. Period. Voters were rushing to extremes. Something Sinister was happening to this new democracy.
There were clashes between parties we're told, and that they had no weapons, only their fists. We're told that it was necessary to rough up opponents on a fairly regular basis. On all sides.
Songs were written and sung and recorded- we hear a few on the soundtrack, songs with lyrics plainly saying they will light a fire under the arse of the Bourgeoisie, that they will bloody the faces of the Ruling Class. They said they were building a better place- the German Soviet Union! ACHTUNG!

Hitler told the people that he was the one man, the one strong man who can solve the economic crisis. The desperation and poverty caused by mass unemployment was really terrible. In this situation Hitler seemed to provide Salvation.
He said: "I will get you out of this misery if you all join in". And Everyone understood.
Democracy arrived after WWI, but by 1932 Germans wanted to be rid of it. Hitler's whirlwind 1932 flying tour to 27 cities in 7 days heightened his profile. The Nazis now, in 1932, had 37% of the vote.
President Hindenburg couldn't bring himself to give power to a party that did not represent the majority of the electorate, an intolerant party, lacking in discipline and even appeared frequently violent.
But powerful pressure groups started to lobby Hindenburg. They argued that Hitler must be given Chancellorship, for the greater good of Germany.

Johannes Zahn: At the beginning, you couldn't tell if National Socialism was something good with a few bad side effects or if it was something evil, with a few good side effects. YOU JUST COULDN'T TELL.
The German Army made it clear that if there was civil unrest, they couldn't take on both the Communists and the Nazis AND defend the borders. In 1933 the Nazi party seemed as if their popularity had peaked. They were actually near bankrupt. Their election campaigns cost them dearly. And the Communists? well, they felt that it was quite alright, quite OK if Hitler came to power. They figured he would prove himself incompetent in short order and then it would be their turn to rule. How shocked would they be that Hitler would change the law once he got in power? They didn't fully realize what it would mean, to make Hitler Chancellor. They thought he could be controlled by Parliament.

January 30, 1933. Hitler is Chancellor. Watch the episode to see exactly how he got it, through the mistakes of others.
The Revolution had begun. Part 1 ends with footage of the Torchlight Parade in Berlin the night of Jan. 30th.
The Nazis were elated. They had achieved what they had demanded for 7 years. And they were PROUD.
Even if you weren't proud as a German, you expected something from Hitler coming to power.
The danger always exists in crisis that someone will come along who says they can bring Salvation to everyone.
BEWARE.

Our narrator Samuel West lays it on us that the Nazis were obsessed with images of "order".
Their mentality was that one person is a part of the National Community. But in Germany the Nazis only created the illusion of order.
In the beginning of 1933 there was a feeling in the air for a wonderful period, era- the True Movement- the German Heart was welling with National Pride.

Manfred von Schroder (Nazi German diplomat 1933-45): The concentration camps- so what? What, the Communists wouldn't have done the same thing? This is a revolution.

Concentration camps were hastily built for Communists and Socialists. They were all rounded up and put in camps. Not death camps- those weren't in the cards just yet, and most prisoners were out within one year. Herman Goering announced that "Scores were being settled".
This was an atmosphere of chaotic terror, we're told.
People were arrested left and right, being threatened with time in Dachau. Each street cleaner felt he was responsible for matters that he never understood!

One of the Jewish Communists who was imprisoned, Josef Felder, speaks: I was put in chains.And the guard brought a plate with white sausages and pretzels. He held them out to me. "This would make a nice last meal before your execution", he said. "But you're not even worth this, you Scoundrel". Then he brought me a rope, showing me the best way to hang myself. I told him I won't do it. I have a family.
Beatings and psychological torture were commonplace. There is lots of historic footage in this series- it is seriously chock full of vintage film of these desperate times. In 1933 the camps were an oppressive tool, but not yet for systematic murder. In fact, to many Germans these camps were an acceptable part of the Nazi Revolution.The Nazis had made the Jews scapegoats for World War I and boycotted them. They boycotted their shops, they held public burnings of Jewish books.

Ernst Rohm wanted his stormtroopers to integrate into the German Army, and the Army was horrified. German Army Officer Johann A.G. Kielmansegg tells us: The stormtroopers were almost hated by the soldiers. Because of their appearance, their behavior. It became incresingly clear to the Army that Rohm, the highest commander of the stormtroopers, was attempting somehow to take over the Armed Forces. He was trying to become Minister for the Armed Forces. He wanted to create his own army.

Rohm made an enemy out of Heinrich Himmler. Hitler had to curb the "zeal" of the stormtroopers' effects on the party. Himmler plotted Rohm's downfall. We're told he concocted a story that Rohm was plotting a coup. Hitler believed him. 1934- Rohm is arrested at home and taken to a prison. Two days later he was shot. The Army is glad that the stormtroopers' power is now moderated. To show their gratitude, they publicly pledge allegiance to the Fuhrer en masse, who, after Hindenburg's death wasn't just Chancellor, but Germany's Head of State.
A German soldier is asked how seriously he and his comrades took that Oath to Hitler:
A soldier takes it very serious. Oath is Oath. I can't break my Oath. I might commit suicide if I planned something else! This is very serious, the Oath, for a Soldier.

Next we learn of Hitler's daily routine, and he was a fairly lazy fuck, by my estimation.
He normally appeared just before lunch, read some newspapers, read press briefs, and then went in for lunch. At his mansion on top of the mountain it was even worse. He often wouldn't leave his room until after 2 PM, and then go for lunch. He spent most afternoons taking a walk, feeding deer. In the evening, straight after dinner, there were films.
We're told that in 12 short years Hitler created more confusion in government than has ever existed. He took the view that on certain files, most things would work themselves out. IF one did not interfere...

For all his laziness in his castles, when he was out in public, especially at the stadium in Nuremburg, he was Mr. Fiery Speech. He was a man of ACTION. Here's Hitler giving a speech, which we see him deliver with fire and brimstone:
We want to be one people. And you, my young people, are to become this people.
You cannot help but be joined with us. Today, the extended ranks of our movement are marching victoriously through Germany, and I know that you will join those ranks. And we know, before us lies Germany. Within us resides Germany. And behind us comes Germany.

We're told that he was meant to be seen as the all-knowing, all-powerful Leader.
The system he prevailed over represented order, but the reality was anything but.
Far from being a very structured order of Command, in fact it was very disorganized and chaotic.
There was no collective Head of State, and the Leader is doing nothing but DICTATING. It was remarkable.
He was surrounded by acolytes, people who went out of their way to find favor with the Fuhrer. They strove to be near him, accompanying him on trips that suited his fancy. Even though he was a lazy sod, Hitler DID have a vision for Germany. From the start, he said he didn't have detailed policies. Here's him giving another speech:
And when they say "What is your detailed program?" I can only answer: After a government with your kind of economy, with your kind of administration, your decay, the German people have to be rebuilt from top to bottom. We do not want to lie. We do not want to cheat. Therefore, I have refused ever to appear in front of this people and make cheap promises.

Hitler wanted Germans to give him weapons to rebuild the German Army. Re-Armament became his economic priority.
The Nazis increased the Army's budget so much in it's first year of power that the Army couldn't even spend it all.
They promised to rid Germany of unemployment. And they did. Mainly through huge work creation schemes, like the Autobahn-building program.
Johannes Zahn: the building of the autobahn's didn't result in a single pack of coffee or in a single bread roll being put up for sale in a shop window. Both were financed on an inflationary basis. At first, the population didn't see this, because the understanding of these monetary connections is too complex for the man on the street.

It would take time for the inflation pressure to be felt, but for the moment, shit was ROSY!

Especially in 1936, when Hitler ordered German troops to enter the de-militarized zone of Germany- the Rhineland.
There was little national protest. Germans were gaining their self-respect. The Olympic Games were held in Berlin that year.
Erna Krantz (resident of Munich): It definitely was a positive thing. Why, otherwise, did the masses follow this man? Why? There must have been a reason. That's the way it was. A lot of things got better. Things were improving.

The Nazis organized pageants, like THE NIGHT OF THE AMAZONS, which had naked babes, garish costumes, horses, flames, spectacles, all to entertain.

The pageants had participants that the Nazis considered "racially pure". There was a certain arrogance about it- that Germans were somehow special. It was said that German people should be a pure race, that they should stand above others. The girls were naked on these floats and horses, naked as a jay bird, as GOD had created them. The real purpose of the pageants was to create a feast for the eyes. It was for the edification and joy of the people who went. They were held in Munich, with a huge fireworks display afterwards.
And in the same city, the largest synogogue was being torn down to make room for a car park.
If you didn't fit the image of the perfect German, then life was no pageant. Life for you was quite different.
The Jews were systematically excluded from German life. It became outlawed for Jews to marry Germans. Jews were not considered German citizens.

A Nazi party member is questioned: "You worked within a system that allowed Jews to lose their place in society. You took their wealth, their property. Surely, this is a great Injustice. How do you feel about that?"

He replies: Well, the general opinion was that the Jews had gone too far. In Germany, out of 4800 lawyers in Berlin, 3600 were Jewish. Apart from Furtwangler, there was hardly a theatre director who wasn't a Jew. And one day it just became too much. The general feeling that the jews should be driven back was not opposed.

Jews fled Germany. In Droves. Those that remained were at risk of the attentions of the Gestapo, the secret state police.
We learn that the Gestapo was actually only 28 officers per town, which meant that the Gestapo could not have operated without the consent of citizens. It would have been structurally impossible to operate otherwise. We're told that 80-90% of the crimes reported to the Gestapo were from ordinary private citizens. The main job of the Gestapo was sorting out all of the Jewish sightings and denunciations. It was their preoccupation. Citizens didn't have to worry about the Gestapo. They had to worry about their fellow citizens ratting them out. A relative could denounce you to the Gestapo! Shit was Wack!

We get to see a German woman be confronted with her own paperwork denunciation of a neighbor who ended up being killed eventually by the Gestapo. She is clearly guilty, and she says she can't explain the document. She agrees it's her name and her signature on the denunciation, but that she didn't rat out that woman. I don't believe her. You watch it and tell me if you do.

A scholar on the Gestapo tells us that the idea that Germans were manipulated and brainwashed from above isn't quite true. Social conditions also made the brainwashing come up from below, by lots of people for lots of different reasons. Some selfish, some idealistic.
What the system was really like is different from the common perceptions.
Ordinary Germans could influence the Gestapo just with one denunciation. But nothing changed without Hitler's blessing, and for the Nazi Elite, they bent over backwards to find new ways to please the Fuhrer.
Josef Goebbels boasted that Germany had successfully excluded Jews from German cultural life. A brutal speech by Goebbels is shown:
We have German films, German theatre, a German press, a German literature, German art, and German broadcasting. The objection that was often raised against us in the past, that it was not feasible to remove Jews from the arts and from cultural life, because there were too many of them, and that we'd be unable to fill all of the vacant positions- All This has been brilliantly proven wrong.

We're told that in 1938 Goebbels saw another opportunity to please Hitler even more.
THE NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS was born because a German diplomat was assassinated by a Jew who hated what the Germans did to his family. Goebbels wanted permission to unleash the stormtroopers. Hitler agreed. In an act of Vengeance, Jews were attacked, in their homes. More than 800 were massacred, and as many as 1000 synagogues were destroyed.

Erna Kranz: It was a shock. And from that moment on, you actually thought about things a little more. At first you allowed yourself to swim with the tide. You were carried along on a wave of hope. Because we had it better, we had order. We felt secure. But then you really started to think (after that massacre). It was a terrible shock. I have to admit it.
Q: "But you didn't become an opponent to the regime?"
Erna: NEIN. Nein. Nein. Nein. One could have, but then when the masses yell "HEIL!!" you went along with it. We went along with it.

And curiously, no one in the streets expressed any sympathy for the Jews. Nor did they even offer an opinion on the matter.
It was what it was.
Hitler's popularity didn't suffer. He never spoke publicly about the massacre, so some believed that the responsibility lay with the stormtroopers.
The love affair between Hitler and his followers continued unabated.

Getting control over Hitler's mail was a priority, and one man was able to gain control over Hitler's personal mail. Hitler got thousands of letters a week, from everyone including Jews who are asking for leniency to citizens like the man who wanted permission to kill his mentally ill child, which Hitler agreed to. Philipp Bouhler gave that letter to Hitler, and it created a new policy: the systematic killing of Germans with disabilities.
Forms had to be filled out whenever a baby was born with obvious disabilities. Hitler had already overseen the sterilization of disabled folks, and now, if 3 doctors agreed that a baby was defective, they'd all mark it with a cross and the baby was scheduled to die. Within months, it was no longer just babies who would be killed. Special "hospitals" were set up for mentally challenged children. And the form policy could be ignored. Doctors would decide on their own who would be killed. The children were given lethal doses of luminal or morphine.
Of course, they didn't write "murdered" in their patients' notes. No, they would write "measles" or some other inconspicuous disease. Disabled people were not wanted in the Nazis "Perfect State". In almost an instant, the Nazi party became insanely radical.
This was how Germany was ruled in the 1930's.

We're told of how Hitler was fascinated with the British empire, and how such a relatively small people could establish and manage something like that and keep it in order. To him, British rule over India was living proof of the superiority of the Aryan race.
Later in 1941, he said: Let's learn from the English, who, with 250,000 men, governed over 4 million Indians. What India was for England, the Russian territories will be for us!
Yet in 1939, Hitler ended up being at war with the country he admired most, and allied with the country he hated the most. (And wanted to colonize): Russia.

This episode illustrates Hitler's aims in the late 1930's and culminates with this "wrong war", how he went from National Socialist to full-blown Imperialist.
The radical-ness of the Nazi party cannot be understated. These fuckers were real pieces of work. You would think that re-establishing their self-determination would be enough. You'd think that correcting the perceived wrongs of the Versailles Treaty would be enough. But no, Hitler just couldn't stop. He had to forge on as a stubborn prick. He believed that the entire world was engaged in a struggle in which the stronger must prevail. In 1924 he wrote "MEIN KAMPF", a book about his worldview post-WWI. In it, he wrote that Germans were a nation that needed to expand. Like the British, they needed colonies, and he was clear where he would find them: toward the East. (Russia).
Germany simply wasn't big enough. The Reich was crammed with people with few necessities of life, and needed the international connections the British had access to with their vast empire.

He set to organizing this "aggressive expansion" with his foreign policy. Germany had lost territory as a result of WWI, and those consequences had to be corrected.
Hitler hoped that Britain would see what he was planning and share in the spoils of Europe, share in the politics.
England realized that for their part, with France, they were perhaps a bit too harsh in their settlements of WWI. It wasn't guilt, per se, just that they felt that they should've done better with the settlements.
Hitler secretly planned to invade Austria. He felt that Germany's problems could only be solved with the use of force. And after making sure no foreigners would stop him, he did invade Austria. Czechoslovakia was next. Austria had political instability, and Hitler capitalized on it.
When German troops crossed the border, Austrians welcomed them as liberators. Now united with Germany, they were a power once again.
But the takeover was clearly nasty, and of course, Austrian Jews were instantly persecuted.
The footage of the invasion is wild- surreal to watch almost. Hitler speaks at a Nazi-adorned podium with huge Nazi banners in Vienna. He proclaims that Austria is the youngest bastion of the German nation and tells Austrians that they will help him build his empire, his "Good" empire.

But this was not to be a "Good" empire.

The Nazis wanted to create a Germanic empire that would dwarf any other empire that ever existed.
In Austria, they wasted no time in showing how they will rule their newly acquired territory: with intolerance and cruelty. Just like in Germany, the Jews were made scapegoats. Austrian Jews were humiliated in public, shamed and forced to do humiliating tasks, like scrubbing the streets clean on their hands and knees. They were persecuted and humiliated so bad that most of them fled, but not before SS Officers robbed them of their money. It was a nightmare for Jews.
Hitler returned to Berlin to a tumultuous welcome, more popular than ever. His new Reich contained over 80 million German souls, and the humiliations of Versailles were almost forgotten. But not quite. In this euphoric mood, he turned his sights on Czechoslovakia. He looked at border-area Germans and felt that they too should be under his rule. Some german generals felt this was not a good thing, that Hitler could be leading them into another World War. They even secretly tipped off England as to what he was up to and were told point-blank to curb him themselves. They clearly couldn't. Hitler had had success after success and right now he was an unstoppable train. He was gonna invade whomever the hell he wanted to. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain tried to prevent war and met with Hitler. Hitler increased his demands.
Goering and Mussolini brokered a deal with Hitler: he could have Czech, as long as that was his last territorial demand.
Shortly after signing the agreement Hitler said he'd been tricked, that he'd "failed to get his war".
Hitler humilates the Czech President by having him wait while he watches films all night. At 1:15 in the morning he met with the President and informed him that Germany would be invading his country in a few hours. At 4AM, he signed over his country to Hitler's care.
At dawn, Hitler broke out the champagne and celebrated. Within 24 hours he was looking over Prague, full of Joy.
With this invasion, he proved that his claim to unite all German-speaking people was a sham. This country had never been German.
Czech's were beaten, mocked and forced to flee. It was shocking. Neville Chamberlain was stunned. His eyes were opened.
Who was this guy? This fucking "Fuhrer"? He's walking mighty tall!

We hear testimony from Czech's who say the Nazis were heartless, merciless, swearing at the Czech's in their own cities and towns.
Gone were the cheering "liberated' faces of Austria. The Czech's watched the Nazi parades in SILENCE.
From now on, this wasn't about German self-determination. This was outright terror. Hitler would be a terrorist from this point on in human history. History made a sharp change. It showed Hitler wasn't a Nationalist, but a Conqueror. It was like Saul on the road to Damascus to Neville Chamberlain. Hitler's next demand was the return of former German territory now in Poland.
This time, Chamberlain pledged to resist.
He told the world that if Germany made a threat (by force) on Poland's independence, war was on and England would be involved.
Hitler demanded the return of Danzig, a city that sat in the so-called corridor of Polish land between east-Prussia and the rest of Germany.
The crisis intensified, almost to the breaking point. Things became critical.
England signed an assistance pact with Poland.
Hitler was beside himself. He became sullen. His dream of a global alliance with Britain was toast.
He faced war if he invaded Poland.
He needed a radical solution, and he decided to sign a non-aggression pact with Russia. It guaranteed Stalin a share in the spoils when Hitler invaded Poland. He was now allied with his ideological enemy and facing war with the empire he admired. BIZARRE, NO?

The sky was apparently blood-red and boiling at the exact moment the pact was being signed in Moscow. An SS Officer who was at the retreat in the mountains with Hitler says it was blood-red, with sulphur greys, greens and jagged yellows, an ominous omen.
A Hungarian woman who was on the terrace with them spooked Hitler by exclaiming that the sky augered nothing good, that it meant bloodshed, blood, blood and more blood.
Hitler snapped: If it has to be, then let it be now!
Then he said goodnight and retired for the evening.

On September 1st, 1939 Germany invaded Poland.
On September 3rd, Britain and France declared war.

This episode is grim viewing. Really grim.

We learn of the many ways Poland suffered under the Nazis, and it is harrowing, shocking, you name it- it's horrific.
The Nazis invaded Poland and began to ethnically cleanse the place immediately.
1 in 4 Poles died during WWII. Immediately after invading, the Nazis set about making Poland into the model Nazi State.
Within 5 weeks the Polish Army was pretty much destroyed, and Hitler's popularity soared.
All of the German territory lost in WWI had been reclaimed. German soldiers believed Hitler was a military genius for this.
Germany was now a global Super-Power, and all thanks went to Hitler.
Hitler divided up Poland into three areas, and Russia got one.
The two areas that he wanted domain over were given to Arthur Greiser and Albert Forster respectively. He told these two that he would "ask no questions" about their methods to Germanize Poland.
Greiser took that as a nod to profit off Jews in ways that were mind-blowing. His contempt for Poles was off the map.
Forster was kinder in his methods, but he was still a fucking Monster.

Over 700,000 Poles were evicted from their homes within one year. We're told from several eyewitnesses here that the Nazis acted like Gods when the war began. "They would slaughter you and be happy about it" one man recalls.
Ghettos were created in every city and town. In Lodz, there were 160,000 Jews confined to one area of less than 2 square miles, and the Nazis sealed them in with barbed wire. The Jews were forced to sell whatever they had to eat, and the food prices were inflated so high that eventually they had nothing to sell. That's when they began to starve. These people were reduced to skeletons. One ethnic-German shopkeeper who profited massively off these Jews is interviewed. He states that jews couldn't nibble on a gold ring, so they had to sell it to eat- if they could get a slice of bread for it, then they could live another day. When asked if he felt pity for these skeletal people along the fences, he said sure, but there was nothing he could do about it. If you were caught with them you risked being shot dead. He says Everyone got rich off the Jews' plight. He said if he could buy something from a Jew for 100 marks that was worth 5,000, he would be a fool not to take it. You don't have to be a businessman to see that!

Thousands and thousands of Poles were deported to the General Government, overseen by Hans Frank.
They were all loaded up onto dirty filthy trains with no food or water and rode for 7-8 days to the General Government drop off points, where they had no shelter, no food, no nothing. And no one gave a damn. Hans Frank we're told, was a Hitler sycophant, and would get upset about the numbers of Poles arriving to him on a daily basis. His dumping ground for displaced Poles was overflowing. Their fate hadn't yet been decided on by the Nazi party. Rape and murder was common in the ghettos. We hear horrific stories of German soldiers raping. Nazis were vicious fuckers. They forced Jews to work, making goods to be exchanged for food. The ghettos were allowed to operate with no questions asked, and many Nazis brought presents to Greiser and Forster to make sure they could keep their "Masters of Jewish Life and Death" system going full tilt.

The "Germanization" of Poland was taken to ludicrous extremes, with Poles having their faces measured, to determine how "German" they were in terms of looks, language and attitude. Himmler believed it was scientifically possible to determine the true Germanic race.

Ethnic-German Poles were happy as hell, that a "NEW, GREAT GERMANY" was unfolding. They were happy and excited to be back in the Reich. They felt that Germany was whole again, with Ancient borders dating back to God knows when.
Seeing the Polish army in a disorderly shambles confirmed it for them. Germany was on the March!
The Nazis believed that they were racially superior to the Poles, and those Poles who weren't German faced deportation or arbitrary arrest.
Those who were allowed to stay were treated as slaves.
Thousands of innocent Poles were shot dead or hanged. There is one story of public hangings here that is so brutal- involving slowly lowering the people, who had huge rocks tied to their feet, to die slowly, turning blue, with their tongues hanging out. A former german soldier speaks here, and he says at that moment he didn't know if he was in reality any more or not, that he didn't feel like a German anymore, witnessing those dreadful hangings. (which were happening while the SS band played the national anthem).

Arthur Greiser and Albert Forster were two of the most vicious Nazis in the Regime, and they were Terrorists in the areas of Poland that they ruled over. Both were tried for war crimes after the war and both were publicly hanged. Read up on those two Monsters- your blood will run cold about what they perpetrated. Greiser tried to make Poles suffer as much as possible. The mere mention of his name in Poland would make people tremble. He took their hope from them, made them believe that he would be their King for eternity.
The Nazis were getting away with horrific crimes against humanity, yet no one put a stop to it.
Some Germans felt Hitler must not be aware of what Forster and Greiser were up to, because if he was, he'd put a stop to it. There's no way the Fuhrer is condoning this ethnic cleansing? Right?
Wrong. SS Officers could do anything they wanted in Poland, with no repercussions whatsoever.
Poles were shot, hung, starved, beaten, treated like dogs to be scorned.
Some army Generals started to gain a conscience about the brutalities and brought it up to Hitler face to face.
His response?
That they were being childish, that you can't win a war with "Salvation Army Methods".

Poles were evicted quickly from their homes, all of their property confiscated, and it was in turn handed over to new ethnic-Germans, who were being re-distributed to all of the towns and cities. Hearing the testimonies of these new ethnic-Germans moving into former Polish homes was brutal. The glaring "WRONG-NESS" of this whole mess hits you right between the peepers with this episode. It was fucking EVIL.
Our narrator tells us at the end of this part that in the first 20 months of German occupation of Poland the Nazis showed the world that they were among the most cruel conquerors the world has known.

But even worse was to come.

I've been reading your commentary here with great interest. It is fascinating, and you provide a wealth of information in your engaging style. It seems to be a very comprehensive documentary series. However, I am surprised that that the Spanish Civil War has not been mentioned. Its importance/significance to what was to come cannot be overestimated.

Thanks Oscar.

This series could actually be expanded into a 40-50 hour series. It seems the BBC tried to cram all of the essential information about the Nazis into it. The scope of what they did is astonishing, and that's the "warning" from history. If it happened once, it's possible it can happen again.
The series is 290 minutes in total, and the amount of stock film footage is amazing.

In fact, I think all the lessons of how NOT to run a Nation are on full display.
An Ideological Leader is a Dangerous Leader, one you have to pay extremely close attention to.
Stephen Harper: I Am Watching Your Every Move.

This episode is just as grim as the last one. Maybe even more so.

We're told as late as 1940 the Nazis still had no plan to execute the Jews. Up to then, Nazi planning was just expulsion of them.
Ideas are thrown around about what to do with the "Jewish Question". One idea was sending them to a tropical island, maybe Madagasgar.
In the Warsaw ghetto in Poland, Polish jews were imprisoned as a temporary measure while Nazis decided on their fate.
Jews were considered carriers of Bolshevism, and Germans had hated Communism since the 20's.
To Nazis, this wasn't just a normal war. This was a Crusade.

German soldiers knew the fight on the Eastern front was to be fought without rules- tanks, flamethrowers, and "if anyone moved they were shot" was the norm when Germans invaded Lithuania, Soviet territory. We see historic footage of sheer brutality, flamethrowers torching homes, buildings levelled to the ground, and a former German soldier tells us: We were ordered to torch the houses and destroy everything. If anyone came outside, they were shot at. The order from the top was to destroy everything and raze it to the ground. Anything moved-Bang! No scruples, only stubborness. Some of our people were really keen on it, to let them have it.

Goebbels made propaganda films that played in German theatres that told the German people what to think about the hundreds of thousands of Eastern Jews:
(narrator over footage of Jews en masse): "THESE ARE THE TYPES OF EASTERN JEWS WHO FLOODED EUROPE'S CITIES AFTER THE LAST WAR----PARASITES, UNDERMINING THEIR HOSTS COUNTRIES, THREATENING THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD CULTURES AND BRINGING WITH THEM CRIME, CORRUPTION AND CHAOS"

Hitler intended to colonize the captured territories in the East and eventually settle Germans there.
Special "Killing Squads" were now ordered to cleanse the area of "undesirables". They were given brutal directives:
The following are to be executed: all Officials of the Comintern, Officials of Senior and Middle rank, all of the extremists of the party, the central committee, the provincial and district commitees, the People's Commissars, or, Jews in the service of the party & the State. No steps are to be taken to interfere with the Purges that may be initiated by the Communist or Jewish elements in the occupied territories. On the contrary, these are to be encouraged.

The murder of select Commies and Jews was seen as a "Quantum Leap". Hitler always said that Jews were behind Communism.
This crusade in the East was an attempt to crush Both.
There were 4 killing squads, and each had between 600-1000 men assigned. Each squad was led by an educated German.
When Germans arrived in Lithuania, once again they were seen as Liberators. Throughout Lithuania symbols of Communism were destroyed, and another infamous massacre occured in Kaunas. Jews were bludgeoned to death with crowbars, and once they were all killed, a killer climbed on top of the bodies and played the national anthem on his accordian. People clapped. Indeed, they screamed during the massacre: BEAT THE JEWS! BEAT THE JEWS! We see photos of the horror.
We see footage of executions in Latvia- brutal. Every Jew was deemed a "military threat", and to justify killing children, Himmler made it known that the Nazis could not allow generations of Avengers to arise.
In 1941, Jewish executions increase- over 4400 in July, over 38,000 in August.
Himmler got a little worried about his killers when one of the "educated" Squad Leaders told him that the psychological effects of murder at such close quarters was affecting his men. So Himmler did experiments to find more humane ways of killing- Humane for the executioners, not the victims. The Nazis started to experiment with gas, and filmed their findings. Point-blank shooting executions kept on going, but gas chambers were on the way. The Killing Squads meticulously recorded their killlings. Records showed their numbers of murders dramatically increasing.
67 men. 370 women. 303 children- in one day in one town. In a nearby town, the killing book records 1,279 Jews murdered the same day. the next day, in Merkine, 831 killed. In the Baltic States, some 80% of the killing squads were made up of locals. They jumped on the anti-semitism bandwagon no problem! The interview with one of the killing squad killers is unreal. He has no remorse, he says he served 20 years for what he did.
The interviewer asks him: You soldiers who used to do the shooting- you were volunteers.
He replies: maybe you could call them volunteers, they certainly were given more vodka.
Q: More?
A: Yes. More and more. They drank it, then everyone becomes Braver. We would shoot them, give them up as lost, and that was it.
Q: Didn't you ever think you ought to refuse to shoot them?
A: This is all very difficult to explain today: whether to shoot or not to shoot. I do not know. The others did it because of their anger- they thought the Jews were very Selfish. What can I say?
Q: Imprisonment, that was an Official punishment. What does your conscience say?
A: I do not know. I am not going to answer such questions.

In the Autumn of 1941 Hitler conducted his invasion of the East from "THE WOLF'S LAIR", his HQ in a forest in east Prussia.
His talk was of annihilation. He said Leningrad should vanish from the surface of the earth. He was privately expressing his undying hatred of Jews: "That race of Criminals has on it's conscience the 2 million dead Germans of World War I. And now, already hundreds of thousands More" He talked of getting his revenge. Apparently he had said:
"If the Jews really manage to push America and Germany into war against each other, I will have No Mercy". The jews are never willing to sacrifice. They stay in the background and pull the strings. AND I WILL HAVE NO MERCY".

But even before America entered the war Hitler showed no mercy on the Jews in the East, and now, we're told, he was about to show no mercy to the Jews in the rest of the Nazi empire.

Jews became under increased threat with a new measure: being forced to wear the yellow Jewish Star of David on their person in order to be recognized in public as a Jew. This was a true humiliation. Now the Jews were MARKED.
Gunther Ruschin (German Jew from Berlin): There's nothing to say. It was Bad. It's Bad. You are "signed". You have a sign on you. Nobody would think I am a Jew, but this, we HAD TO wear it. The hate grew. We felt it. The Germans always said "The Jews are not Germans" And I said: "I am a German, of Jewish faith" and for them, I am NOT a German. But I am a German.

In Berlin, Berliners relaxed on the beach. So far, ordinary Germans had no clue of the atrocities the Nazis were getting up to, and they had only heard good news about the war in the East. But the Autumn of 1941 held signs that life was changing with the Jews being marked to wear the yellow star.

The war was bogged down, and German soldiers knew that victory over Russia wasn't going to be easy. And in December a new enemy had to be contended with. After Japan bombed Pearl harbour Germany declared war on the United States. Hitler met with Nazi leaders to determine the consequences of all this to the Cause. The fate of the Jews was also discussed. Hitler and Himmler discussed the extermination of Jews as "partisans". Nazi sympathizers today say that the holocaust was not Hitler's idea or work, that it was all Heinrich Himmler. But that's bunk. Hitler knew full well about everything that was going on and he conveniently never allowed himself to be directly linked to it. Evidence from Himmler's diary shows Hitler was complicit in the execution orders. In January 1942 Hitler made it known and authorized that all Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe should be deported to their deaths. A plan was devised for "The Final Solution" to the Jewish problem.
The word "execute" or "execution" was never used. The watchword was "evacuate". Jews were to be "evacuated". On the outskirts of Berlin Top Nazis held the Wannsee Conference, where they asked point blank fellow officers: What will happen to the Jews? Do you imagine they will actually be settled into villages in the East?

Deportations were happening now all over Germany.
First, they had been denied Reich citizenship. Then the right to a State education. Then they had all of their property confiscated.
Now they were being told they were being deported to work camps in the East. We're told that more Jews were deported from Berlin than any other German city- 55,000 of them.
They were put on trains, crammed like cattle, given 4 slices of bread each and basically wallowed in an atmosphere described as "BIG FEAR".
There were some Germans who helped the Jews, some even hid them. But if you were caught helping a Jew....the very least you'd lose your job or your profession. At worst you were killed for it. The actual fate of these Jews on the trains was to be a secret.
While Hitler implemented his plan of annihilation on Jews, Goebbels was making propaganda films that showed what German life "was really like", and we see a few clips of one film and it is unreal to watch, like a Twilight Zone film. Choruses with sweet German children singing, lovely images of the perfect Christmas at the homestead, Hitler's picture framed and in prominent view in the home, candles, just all-round idyllic life...
Meanwhile, 20,000 Jews are being "liquidated" and "evacuated". We learn of Himmler being jacked up by Martin Bormann for announcing by wire that 20,000 Jews have been liquidated according to plan, with him correcting himself; "AH AH! -Oh, I mean Evacuated". Bormann yelled at him to never give those types of messages by wire or telephone! From now on, you send those by SS Courier to me directly, so I can deliver them to the Fuhrer.
We learn that it's impossible to know how many regular German citizens knew of what was really happening to the Jews.
The Nazis got a secret report that there was some "disquiet" from some Germans in the South, who had heard rumours of the mass executions in the East, and that if they were true, that this could be VERY BAD FOR GERMANY if they lost the war.
They figured Jews would certainly exact revenge for this.

The experiments with gas resulted in the creation of 6 special gas "exterminating centres":
Chelmno
Majdanek
Auschwitz/Birknau
Bdzec
Sobribor and
Treblinka

The sheer horrific inhumanity (and efficiency) of these "gas centres" is stunning. We're told it wasn't just German Jews who were sent to these new camps. Now that the Nazis had figured out how to efficiently kill them, they wanted to eliminate them everywhere in occupied Europe. Other groups the Nazis deemed threatening were also gassed: most prominently, Europe's gypsies.
At Treblinka, 875,000 Jews were murdered in one small area. It's mind blowing. We learn only 70 Jews escaped this place, and one of them speaks, at the exact site where it happened. Because of the handful of escapees, we know what the actual layout of the camp was- we see a drawing that shows you what it looked like at Treblinka. It was a sophisticated killing machine of a camp. Treblinka Station was designed to look as normal as possible, with train timetables and a waiting room. New arrivals would be driven through to the undressing barracks, where they were told they are at a hygiene stop, and ordered to strip nude. They were told they must take a shower to "disinfect" before they continue on their journey. A connecting path led from the undressing barracks through two high fences, to the gas chambers.
German soldiers would shout at them SCHNELL! SCHNELL!, and they would run along the pathway to the gas chambers, which the Germans named "The Pathway to Heaven". The Jews were unaware they were running to their deaths. They were pushed into the gas chambers, crammed in.
If any new arrivals said they were sick, the Nazis directed them to Treblinka's special hospital, where they thought they would be examined by a doctor.
Nope.
They were led out the back, to a huge pit that had been dug by an excavator and shot dead. 99% of those who arrived at Treblinka were killed there. The vast majority who arrived were killed within 3 hours of arriving.
A huge digger/excavator dug these huge pits as mass graves, enormous ditches. The scale of the crime is beyond normal human comprehension.
The Nazis didn't just kill. They stole.
The victims' clothing and valuables were sorted after death and the plunder was sent back to Germany.
In 1943, with their murderous work complete, they tried to erase all trace of the camp. But not because they were ashamed of their crimes.

Here's Heinrich Himmler speaking to his colleagues in the SS:

"We know what it means when 100 corpses are piled together or when 500 or when 1000 are piled together.
To have endured this, and at the same time, ignoring some of the moments of human weakness, to have remained Decent, this is what has made us tough. It is one of the most Glorious chapters in our history, which has not and may never be written".

But the Nazi crimes would be discovered. Because now, in 1943, they were losing the war.

In 1943 German soldiers saw the enemy Soviet soldiers doing the impossible. And Winning.
Germany was losing the war.

This episode sums up what happened to the Nazi Regime from 1943-1945. It opens with explaining how Fascism was created in Italy, and how Mussolini was an inspiration to Hitler and the Nazis. Mussolini was the first Fascist Leader of a country in World History, and Hitler was greatly impressed. An Alliance with Rome and Berlin seemed completely natural. But on July 19, 1943 the unthinkable happened. Rome was bombed. The alliance with Nazi Germany was nothing but a disaster. We're told that during 4 years of war Italy was half-destroyed. Everybody understood then that the war was lost. Nearly 250,000 Italian troops were dead or missing.
Everybody had it on their minds to GET OUT, to not stay with Mussolini anymore. So the government voted to give the King control of the Armed Forces. The Italians had had enough of Mussolini, and on the 25th of July 1943 the King summoned him and told him he was dismissed.
He was arrested by the Italian police and taken to prison. Italians were Jubilant. Now they were free of Mussolini and could change sides to end up with the winners. They declared war on their former ally Nazi Germany, Betrayed a friend. Italians were obviously more moralistic than Germans.

There were Germans who felt that what was happening under this Nazi regime during the war was wrong and that Hitler must go, and some of them were in his own SS. A plot was hatched to assassinate Hitler, and it was almost pulled off. Gaining access to Hitler was not easy, as he conducted the war from THE WOLF'S LAIR in east-Prussia, and it was protected by minefields, barbed wire, and Hitler's loyal SS bodyguard.
One man stood up to attempt the assassination: Claus von Stauffenberg. He said he was the only one prepared to do it.
He was able to plant a bomb in a briefcase on July 20, 1944, at the Wolf's Lair, in the conference room.
The bomb exploded as Hitler was being briefed.
It destroyed the conference room, but the wood walls were able to absorb a lot of the force of the blast. Hitler was burned, and had minor scrapes and bruises. He escaped unharmed. Now the search was on for all who were involved in the assassination plot.
Claus von Stauffenberg was shot, along with others. That conspiracy to kill Hitler had to be done in complete secret. It was the only way it was possible to work. And it almost did.
Hitler was clearly rattled by this assassination attempt. He gave an address to Germans on the radio, and his voice is starkly different from all of the sound clips of him we heard previously here. He is shook up. You can hear it in his voice. He says living through the attack was proof of Providence. He would carry on with his Life's goal.
Many Germans were disgusted at the attempt on Hitler's life, that something like that could ever happen. Hitler gained a lot of sympathy for it.
The Army was outraged. Every soldier was ordered from then on to realize that they were now political soldiers. Hitler decided that the Army needed to be in the Nazi fold much more.

The war in the East was getting more and more brutal. Partisans were hung at every spot they were found. If the Nazis didn't like you or your face then you were hung instantly, on the spot.We see horrific photos of partisans hanging dead and Nazis putting nooses around their necks.
Soviet forces were making huge advances in the East, putting big pressure on the German Army.
The British and the Americans were fighting their way up through Italy, and Allied Forces in Britain were preparing for the D-Day invasion in France. But the war in the East was where Germans were suffering their greatest losses.
We're told that the crucial reason Germans fought to the end was that they felt their opponents were sub-human.
Nazis would shoot children in front of the women, and then shoot the women, we hear testimony (from German soldiers even) that these were inhuman acts, that Nazis were sadists. Everybody was shot dead with no mercy. They loved hearing the women and children screaming. We're told some sick puppies really got off on that.
One former German soldier tells us that he saw a fellow soldier go into a house that had two elderly people in it and shot them dead in their chairs. He came out of the house and he had a go at him, shouting "How can you do a thing like that??" His response was " The only good Russian is a dead Russian".

We're told this "War of Annihilation" made it hard to remove Hitler.
The entire Nazi Leadership was riddled with dislike for one another, with serious suspicion of each other. Hitler liked to give two people the same or relatively similar tasks, and it would create infighting. They fought each other to gain the Fuhrer's favour.

A former German soldier says that at the time, he saw Germans as an "Invincible Master Race". He says it was "Unbridled National Pride", that "We Were SOMEBODY"

In this new Germany, there were 7.5 million forced labourers, which is described here as "a unique form of slavery". 1 million, 700 thousand of them were Polish. We're told that a half-million slaves from the concentration camps suffered even more than the Polish workers. Auschwitz was infamous. There were two types of camps there: concentration camps for workers, and the extermination camp with its gas chambers.
We hear of the horror of new arrivals being selected to go to one or the other. Selection for the work camp was often only a postponement of death. The life expectancy for a slave worker in Auschwitz was three months. We hear testimony from one worker who survived. He says he wanted to live, and strived to do that. He wanted to live to see Germany destroyed.
Regular Germans didn't know what was happening at these camps, but they definitely knew that Germany had become a racist State.
Germans regularly stated that a true German was a racially superior being.
We learn that 400,000 foreigners signed up to the Waffen SS, and fought right alongside the Germans.
Many were motivated by one reason alone.
Jacques Leroy (Belgian Waffen SS volunteer 1943-45): It was the war, the war against Russia, against Communism and Bolshevism, that was the motive for all enlistments in Europe. There are ideologies that I find repulsive. Any ideology that manipulates the individual like Communism, is repulsive to me. One fought to Conquer. To gain back lost land. Gain land from the enemy. You fought hand to hand for it.
Mr. Leroy lost his arm and his eye during the war, and he begged to stay in the Waffen SS and the Nazis allowed him to.
He is asked why he begged to stay in.
He replies: So as not to fall into mediocrity. And to stay with my friends, not to lose contact with my comrades. And I felt fine. My wounds had healed. I lost an arm and my eye, but when you're young you're not as affected as an older person might be.

As the war entered it's final phase, Allied bombing intensified.
In the last 15 months of the war 350, 000 civilian Germans died as a result of the bombing raids. (Three times the amount of Germans dead in the 3 previous years of war).
Wolf Falck (What a Great name!) -German fighter pilot: Goebbels called them "Churchill's Murder Boys". They were aiming for a destroyed industrial Germany. So we have nothing to lose. And so, we fought on, for our people, for our country, to protect them.

Germans hated the bombings but it didn't hurt their will to keep fighting.
Plus there was a more powerful reason to keep fighting: a real Dread of the advancing Soviet forces.
Both sides had committed atrocities on one another (and we hear them here- I won't repeat them for you-they are too disturbing).
The Soviets learned from the Germans how to be absolutely vicious to their enemies. They flipped it on the Krauts.
The Soviets were regarded as subhumans, yet these subhumans were now forcing the German Army into retreats, something they had never practised for. And if you've never practiced retreats as an Army then guess what? You are in PURE FLIGHT.

German troops had to face reality about the military situation they were in: Masses and Masses of aircraft were bombing the shit out of their cities and towns. They didn't know if their homes still existed, if their families were all dead. It was, as they say in soldier-speak, "A big shit sandwich. Everybody has to take a bite".
If the troops knew how bad it was, then Hitler must've known too. And may know it's worse than the troops think. But perhaps he knew it was better than they thought. That's how the troops looked at it, that the Fuhrer must be looking at opportunites to end the war. And that they should just keep on fighting, do their duty. It was all you could do in that situation.

6 million odds and sods citizens (old and young) were cobbled together in Berlin with Goebbels giving a speech telling them that Germany
will forge on. It's a joke. Watch it and be stunned. A lot of those faces we see in the clips wouldn't last an hour in war, yet Germany is calling on them to fight. Shit was Wack!
The End Was Near for Germany.

An ex-SS Officer tells us that at the end, it was clear that Hitler was a mentally ill man, to the extent that he suffered from excessive self-identification with what was happening to his fellow Germans. We're told he really lived that out. He was convinced that after him, after National Socialism, Germans could not survive, that Germany was destined to collapse. That Officer heard it from his own lips, and he knew right then that Hitler was mentally ill. He also was suffering physical ailments. He had a shaking paralysis on his right side apparently, with bad eyesight and he walked with a shuffling gait.
But those problems did nothing to erase his "Demonic Charisma", and he was still the undisputed Leader of Germany.
Italians could rely on their King to oust Mussolini. But Hitler controlled all levers of power in Germany. Germans were stuck with him.

This episode ends with Hitler's suicide in a bunker, with Soviet troops just yards away.
(But I don't believe it. I believe Hitler escaped in a U-Boat with over 50 SS Officers and lived in Argentina until 1985)
That's a controversial theory, I admit it. But I believe it.