The Nazis: A Warning from History Season 1 Episodes

Episode 1

Helped Into Power

50 mins

How was it possible that the cultured nation at the heart of Europe ever allowed Hitler to come to power? With the help of film archive discoveries from Russia and interviews with eye witnesses, many of whom are former members of the Nazi party and have never appeared on television before, this film reveals how the Nazi party was born and grew in support in the late 1920s, and shows just why in January 1933 Germany's President Hindenburg appointed a new popular chancellor who was openly committed to overthrowing Germany democracy - Adolf Hitler. Hitler's personality was to dominate the Nazi party. But eyewitnesses have very different recollections of his effect upon them. To Nazi supporter Fridolin von Spaun 'the long gaze which he gave me convinced me completely that he was a man with honorable intentions.' But to German diplomat Herbert Richter, who saw Hitler in the 1920s, 'he wasn't quite normal. He was spooky.' The Nazis wanted the world to believe that Hitler's rise to power was inevitable - this program shatters that myth.

Episode 2

Chaos & Consent: The Nazi Rule of Germany

A look at the extraordinary popularity of both Hitler and the Nazis, as well as the astonishing degree of voluntary support ordinary Germans gave the infamous Gestapo. Despite the popular mythology of Nazi efficiency, Dr. Gunter Lohse, a former German Foreign Office official and member of the Nazi party, recalls that behind the scenes 'it was total chaos'.

Episode 3

The Wrong War

Adolf Hitler loved to watch feature films and he liked one film in particular, the Hollywood epic The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. 'It was certainly his favorite film,' says Herbert Dohring, a member of Hitler's SS bodyguard, 'and he would always talk about it - this huge English empire - how such a relatively small people could establish and manage something like that.' Hitler would later say, 'What India was for England, the territory of Russia will be for us.' How was it possible then, that in 1939 Hitler found himself at war with a country whose achievements he admired, Great Britain, and allied to his ideological enemy, the Soviet Union? With the help of archive footage and interviews with eye-witnesses, including former diplomats and members of the Nazi party who had never appeared on television before, this film charts the course of Hitler's road to war.

Episode 4

The Wild East

49 mins

Part 4 looks at the occupation of Poland, the "one country that suffered more than any other under the Nazis," according to narrator Samuel West. The hour dispels the notion that Nazi commanders who committed atrocities were "only following orders."

Episode 5

The Road to Treblinka

How could it happen? How was it possible that the Nazis created killing factories in order to exterminate the Jews and others they thought 'undesirable'? Filmed in Poland, Germany and Lithuania, this documentary demonstrates how the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, in the fulfillment of Hitler's ideological vision, was a crucial catalyst to the radicalization of the Nazi policy against the Jews. With the help of archive discoveries and frank interviews with victims, bystanders and a former member of a Nazi killing squad, The Road to Treblinka traces the decision-making process that led to one of the greatest crimes the world has ever seen - the Holocaust.

Episode 6

Fighting to the End

In the summer of 1943 the Italians, seeing which way the war was going, voted Mussolini out of office and declared the war over. Why couldn't the Germans do the same? Why did it take the near total destruction of their country for them to give in?