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When Adolf Hitler led the German nation into
the most horrific war humanity had ever witnessed,
a conflict that would cause an unimaginable loss
of life spreading far into the East and
penetrating beyond the borders of the West, few
would have imagined such a meteoric rise to
global dominance by any nation was possible.
Allied with fascist Italy and imperial Japan, Nazi
Germany would form an axis of evil to
fight against the Allied forces of Great Britain
and the Commonwealth, France and later Russia, followed by America.
Waging relentlessly for six gruelling years from 1939
to 1945, the Second World War claimed in
excess of 50 million lives and the question
of how Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, once a
destitute artist living on the streets of Vienna,
inspired generals, politicians and the German people themselves
to embark upon a catastrophic journey that would
alter the course of history has never been fully explained.
Not all Germans supported Adolf Hitler and many
risked their lives to shatter his cruel regime,
but equally there were also those who were
as dangerous as the foundation of the Third Reich.
Josef Goebbels, the brilliant propagandist, faithful to Hitler
to the very end, Heinrich Himmler, the leader
of the deadly SS who oversaw the extermination
of millions of Jews, and Hermann Goering, who
was at the Fuhrer's side from the beginning of his rise to power, are just a
few of the protagonists who will be featured
as we consider Adolf Hitler and the Germans at war.
But before we step back in time to
explore the dramatic events of the Second World
War, we should travel even further back to
the 19th century and rural Austria, where Farmer's
daughter Maria Anna Schickelgruber gave birth to an illegitimate son.
Maria was Hitler's grandmother and when she later
married a man called Hiedler, he gave his
name to her son, Adolf's father Alois, which in turn was changed to Hitler.
There's no clear evidence who Hitler's grandfather was
but Maria's relationship with her Jewish employer's son
may well have had a dreadful irony suggesting
that the man who persecuted the Jews so
vehemently may in fact have had Jewish ancestry.
Despite the humiliation of his illegitimacy, Alois Hitler
was determined to make his way in the world and by the time he married his
second wife Clara in 1885, he had a
successful career working as a customs official.
Clara was in fact Alois's niece and papal
dispensation had to be sought to allow their marriage.
Long after they were married, Clara continued to call her husband uncle.
The couple lost their first three children to
diphtheria but in 1889 they were blessed with
a healthy baby boy who they named Adolf,
meaning noble wolf.
Five years later another son, Edmund, was born followed by a daughter, Paula.
As the children grew, a strong bond formed
between Adolf and his mother but his relationship
with his father was far from affectionate and
he received plenty of beatings from the domineering Alois.
Young Adolf was the apple of his mother's
eye, a creative though lazy boy who found
it difficult to socialize with others.
He was determined to become an artist and in 1907 sat the entrance exam for the
academy of fine arts in Austria's capital Vienna but failed to impress.
When he returned home to Braunau am Inn, there was little to console him as the
family doctor had diagnosed Clara with cancer, giving her only months to live.
Adolf was devastated and did everything he could
to care for his mother, tending to her
every need and begging the doctor to relieve her pain.
Just days before Christmas on December 21st 1907,
Clara died and Adolf lost the only person he'd ever loved.
Distraught with grief, Adolf left Braunau am Inn
after Clara's death and returned to Vienna, using
money that had been left to him to
live in relative comfort only streets away from
the Hofburg Palace, where Austrian politicians planned the
future of the empire.
Enjoying life in the glorious city, Hitler was
a regular visitor to the opera house, particularly fond of Wagner.
He continued to study art, determined to fulfill
his dream of becoming a painter.
But such aspirations were beyond his grasp.
When he sat the exams the second time, he fared even worse than he had on
his first attempt.
Hitler fell into a deep depression and haunted
by the memory of his dying mother, the
tortured 18-year-old's life seemed to collapse around him.
The pathetically bedraggled figure that roamed the streets
and alleys of Vienna was almost unrecognizable as
the young man who'd previously dressed so immaculately.
Now penniless, Hitler was utterly alone and as
he sought someone to blame, it was in this dark period that he began to meet
others living in poverty who blamed the Jews for their predicament.
Antisemitism was not a new ideology for the
Austrians and Hitler hungrily consumed political articles and
speeches that gave him a reason to hate.
Spurred on by anger and a little financial
help from his half-sister, Hitler began to
recover himself and even earned a little money from his painting.
But without warning, his entire world and that
of millions of Europeans suddenly changed.
On June 28th, 1914, the heir to the
Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated
by a Bosnian Serb, a member of the Black Hand gang.
The retaliation of the empire against the tiny
Serbian kingdom triggered a series of alliances which
propelled the world into war.
Britain, France, Russia and later America amongst others
would form the Entente powers which now confronted
the central powers of Austro-Hungary, Germany and the Ottoman Empire in Turkey.
The all too familiar images of vast tracts
of muddy trenches that characterize World War I,
where so many soldiers struggled and died, make
it all the more extraordinary today that when
war was first declared, it was celebrated with great exuberance.
Soldiers readily enlisted on all sides to fight
for king and country, convinced that they'd be home within months.
Hitler was among those joyfully celebrating and later wrote,
“to me, those hours seemed like a release from the painful feelings of my youth.
I fell down on my knees and thanked heaven from an overflowing heart.
Our fight for freedom had begun.”
But although Hitler was quick to enlist, it was not in the Austrian army.
He'd left Austria for Munich in 1913 and
asked permission to join the Bavarian army to fight for Germany.
It seems the Hitler's life in Austria and
the prospect of fighting alongside Czechs and Jews
had driven him from the nation of his birth.
When he was called upon for conscription into
the Austro-Hungarian army, he was safely on German soil.
Now aged 25, Hitler traveled to the front on October 21st, 1914.
However, Kaiser Wilhelm's promises that the soldiers would
be home before the autumn leaves had fallen
from the trees proved to be wildly inaccurate.
It was soon obvious that this terrible conflict was nothing to celebrate.
In a letter, Hitler described lying huddled together
with his fellow soldiers as a terrible shindig
that began in the distance as the shell
bursts came so thick and fast they merged into one continuous roll.
Despite the shocking conditions, Hitler would prove his
worth as a soldier, even being awarded the iron cross for his efforts.
But after four years of fighting for his
country, he was only promoted to the rank
of lance corporal because his superiors, ironically, were
convinced that he lacked the ability to lead others.
During those dreadful war years, Hitler miraculously escaped
death many times and one day, as he
limped within the range of a British soldier,
the fate of millions may have taken a very different turn.
But Private Henry Tandy, pitying the thin injured
soldier, didn't pull the trigger.
Two decades later, the British Prime Minister, Neville
Chamberlain, on a mission to forge peace with
Germany, would be astounded to find a photograph
of Tandy at Hitler's Berghof Villa.
Chamberlain was quick to inform the soldier, by
then the most decorated private in the British
army, who he'd saved with his merciful act.
As Tandy took shelter, while Coventry was decimated
by a Nazi bombing raid in 1940, he
no doubt deeply regretted his compassionate act.
This was just one of Hitler's many extraordinary
escapes, but just months before the war ended,
he became a victim of a gas attack in August 1918.
He stumbled off the battlefield, seized with pain,
and later recalled how a few hours later,
his eyes had turned into glowing coals and everything had grown dark.
Hitler had been blinded.
It was only a matter of months, as
Hitler still lay recovering in a military hospital,
that Germany surrendered as the Entente powers were victorious.
On November 11th, 1918, the armistice was signed
in a railway carriage in the Compiègne forest
in France, and the outcome of the First
World War couldn't have been more disastrous for the proud German nation.
There had been six million German casualties, and
a year later, at the Palace of Versailles,
the leaders of the Entente powers stripped Germany
of valuable industrial land, all of its overseas
colonies, and perhaps worst of all, its pride.
Hitler's adopted homeland had to take full responsibility
for the war, pay huge reparations to the
victors, and while the Kaiser abdicated as the
country became a republic, Hitler later expressed the
horror he'd felt on receiving the news that he'd fought in vain.
There followed terrible days and even worse nights,
he wrote.
I knew that all was lost.
In these nights, hatred grew in me.
Hatred for those responsible for this deed.
Many speculate about what exactly happened to Hitler
during his time in hospital, but it seems
that when he eventually regained his sight, he'd
become convinced that he'd been shown the way to restore German pride.
He believed it was now his duty, and his alone, to save the nation from Marxism
and capitalism.
His passionate, anti-semitic feeling and oratory skills
impressed the army, and when he finally left
hospital, he was made an educational officer to
lecture new recruits before becoming an undercover agent
in 1919 to inform on Marxist uprisings in
the increasingly unstable German cities.
In September 1919, he was sent to investigate
a small group in Munich known as the
German Workers' Party, but rather than find fault
with the organization, their anti-semitic ideology gripped
Hitler, and he quickly joined them.
Among the men within the party, Hitler found
many companions who would accompany him on his journey to ultimate power.
One of them was Hermann Göring, who was
as furious as Hitler about the defeat of
Germany, feeling that the nation's politicians had stabbed
their glorious army in the back by accepting the Treaty of Versailles.
He also met Rudolf Hess, a young political
student who became devoted to Hitler after hearing him speak.
It didn't take long for the man the
army officers had dismissed as incapable of leading
to work his way up to become the Führer of the party, and by the time
it had been renamed the Nazi party, with
the swastika established as the party symbol, the
number of members had grown by thousands.
Hitler now had his own private army of
stormtroopers, commonly known as the Brown Shirts or
the SA, whose aggressive violence would form a
vital part of the Nazi party's character.
In 1923, along with his troops and accompanied
by Göring and Hess, Hitler seized his chance
to take on the German government in the famous Munich Beer Hall Putsch.
At this early stage, they were unsuccessful, however,
and Hitler fled as national troops arrived on the scene.
Both he and Hess were given jail sentences,
while Göring recovered from the wounds he'd received,
which would trouble him for the rest of his life.
Once behind bars in Munich's Landsberg prison, Hitler
didn't stop his quest for power, as the
stream of feelings and anger he felt were
written down by Hess to create Mein Kampf,
or My Struggle.
The ideas in this book would form the blueprint for Nazi ideology.
He discussed the Jewish conspiracies and hailed the
Aryans as the supreme race over the inferior Jews, Czechs, Poles and Russians.
The Aryans were entitled to more living space,
or Lebensraum, and this land would be acquired
by force, beginning with France in the West,
to avenge Germany's defeat in World War I.
Little attention was paid to the work at
the time, but as life became harsher in
the country within a few years, people began
to take Hitler's radical ideas more seriously.
On 29th of October, 1929, the Wall Street
crash in America threw Europe into an economic
depression that had devastating consequences for Germany.
Inflation rocketed, and as the economy froze, millions were made bankrupt.
Verging on starvation, the desperate nation now soaked
up the passionate speeches of Adolf Hitler as
he offered them salvation and hope.
Hitler had also added other important members to
the party, who now stood by his side.
Heinrich Himmler was a fanatical nationalist with a
deep-seated hatred of the Jews who was
appointed leader of Hitler's bodyguard, the SS, and
later became commander of the Gestapo.
This terror-fuelled organisation was responsible for the
administration of the dreaded concentration camps and the
coordinated killing of millions of Jews, Poles and
Communists, along with other ethnic groups, as well
as imprisoning and torturing countless numbers of Germans.
Another member of Hitler's Nazi party was Josef
Goebbels, a talented propagandist who became crucial in
gathering support for Hitler.
Although Goebbels was rejected from the army because
of his physical limitations due to a club
foot, he was intellectually brilliant and prepared to
do anything for his Führer, even when Hitler's
policies went against his socialist principles.
To him, Hitler was both great and simple at the same time, what one calls a
genius.
Goebbels waged a furious poster campaign in preparation
for the election of 1932 as Hitler aimed
to become leader of the country legally, and
thousands of Nazi rallies were held all over Germany.
He even made use of the latest technology,
producing films that could be distributed to the public.
In the spring of 1932, with six million
unemployed, starvation rife and Berlin in chaos, people
now turned to Hitler in their millions, and
Goebbels' posters and lavish events attracted more and
more people to the Nazi ideology.
However, as the election campaign gained momentum, another
family tragedy hit the Führer hard.
In 1929, his half-sister had moved to
his Bechtesgaden villa to work as a housekeeper,
bringing her daughter, Julie, with her.
Hitler adored the young woman and would do
anything for her, but was also insanely jealous,
despite the fact that he was already embroiled
in an affair with the 19-year-old Eva Braun.
The pressure must have been immense on the
21-year-old Julie, who found herself a prisoner in her own home.
On 18th September 1931, she shot herself in the heart.
Hitler was devastated, and official Nazi photographer Heinrich
Hoffmann said that after her death, the seeds
of inhumanity began to grow inside him.
What's more, Gailey wasn't the only woman Hitler
was involved with, who attempted to take her own life.
Just a year later, Eva Braun, who was
always kept from public view, tried to shoot herself in the neck.
Unlike Julie, Eva survived, and her secret relationship
with Hitler would continue right through until their deaths in 1945.
By 1932, the presence of the SA, the
Nazi stormtroopers now led by Ernst Röhm, began
to strike terror into the heart of the
democratic government, and many believed that the brown
shirts, now reaching 400,000 in number, would take over Germany by force.
Heinrich Brüning, the Chancellor of the German Republic,
attempted to stand up to Hitler and the Nazis by banning the SA and the SS,
but the Führer was one step ahead and,
using contacts in the Reichstag, ensured the swift
removal of the dissenting politician.
When Chancellor Brüning handed in his resignation to
the ailing President Hindenburg, chaos ensued.
On 15th June, the ban on the Nazi
brown shirts was lifted, and violence erupted on
the streets on a scale that Germany had never seen before.
This was only the beginning, because by January
1933, when Hitler was finally made Chancellor of
Germany, millions rejoiced, although there were those who
were less than enthusiastic.
General Erich Ludendorff, one of the great German
commanders of the First World War, who'd fought
alongside Hitler at the Beer Hall Putsch, sent
a telegram to President Hindenburg, voicing his concerns.
“You have just handed over our sacred German Fatherland
to one of the greatest demagogues of all time, I prophesy to you, this evil man
will plunge our Reich into the abyss and
will inflict immeasurable woe on our nation.
Future generations will curse you in your grave for this action.”
As the Reichstag was burnt to the ground
and bonfires of books blazed on Goebbels's orders,
it seemed Ludendorff was not mistaken.
A hundred years before Hitler rose to power,
a German-Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, had said,
wherever books are burnt, human beings are destined to burn too.
As the profound writings of Proust, Freud and
Hemingway turned to ashes, many feared the worst.
Within months of Hitler's rise to power, individual freedom no longer existed.
With his regime of terror led by the
dreaded Gestapo, thousands began to flee the fatherland in fear.
Even members of Hitler's own party, the brown
shirts led by Ernst Röhm, were murdered for becoming too independent.
When President Hindenburg died on the 2nd of
August 1934, Hitler added the presidential powers to
those he already held as Chancellor, and effectively,
Germany became a dictatorship totally under Hitler's control.
A nation that had once boasted fine universities
among the world's greatest centres of learning and
scientific innovation, sacked its professors and exchanged rational
thinking for Nazi propaganda.
Believe, obey, fight, was now taught in schools
as Hitler demanded a brutal, domineering, fearless, cruel youth.
The free splendid beast of prey must once again flash from its eyes.
This is how I will eradicate thousands of years of human domestication.
That is how I will create the new order.
Anyone refusing to conform was sent to concentration
camps, but those who remained to do Hitler's bidding were rewarded.
Among the gifted Germans who didn't flee Hitler's
regime were Albert Speer, who became the first
architect of the Reich, and Leni Riefenstahl, a
beautiful actress turned director who recorded the extraordinary
Nazi rallies that elevated Hitler to an almost
godlike status, an effort crucial to Nazi propaganda.
Now Hitler had reached an unassailable position in
Germany, he could concentrate on his two greatest
goals, Lebensraum, finding living space for the German
people and the destruction of the Jews.
He rapidly began building the German army and
increasing the naval fleet, flagrantly breaking the limitations
set after World War I.
In a secret conference on 5 November 1937,
he disclosed to his generals plans to invade
Poland and go to war with France and Britain.
Two senior generals, Werner von Blomberg and Werner
von Fritsch, were horrified and spoke out against
Hitler, but when the Führer ordered their humiliating
removal, he alienated traditionalists in the Wehrmacht.
By the beginning of 1938, the old generals
feared their country would once more be plunged
into war, but it was impossible to sway
Hitler from the decisions he'd already made.
When faced with opposition, he would remove it.
On the 4th of February 1938, Hitler abolished
the entire war ministry, sacking 16 senior generals
and announced, from now on I take over
personally the command of the whole armed forces.
44 generals resigned.
So, with the German nation and the armed
forces under his total control, Hitler prepared for
his first move, greedily eyeing the land of his birth, Austria.
Yet he was unaware that there were those
who stood in the shadows, ready to thwart his plans.
Wilhelm Canaris, a decorated officer fluent in many
languages, had been made head of the German
high command's counterintelligence service in 1935.
Canaris had been a major influence on Hitler's
decision to side with General Franco during the
Spanish Civil War in 1936, which led to
the terrible Nazi destruction of the village of
Chwernica, famously recorded in Picasso's painting of the same name.
Wever Canaris did not remain under Hitler's spell
for long, and after witnessing the terrible treatment
of Jews and the destruction being wrought by
the Third Reich, began his careful opposition to the aggressive new order.
As Hitler finalised his plans to occupy Austria,
fearing a war with Britain, Canaris sent a
secret emissary to communicate with MI6 in London,
presenting his ideas to overthrow the Nazis.
Keen to promote peace however, the Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain showed no sign of preparing to
take action as the Nazis marched into Austria,
and while Hitler's troops began to edge towards
Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain met the Nazi leader to ratify
a peace treaty accepting Germany's occupation of a
part of Czechoslovakia, on condition that Hitler agreed
to halt any further invasions.
The German generals who'd plotted against Hitler could
do no more than watch in dismay as
Britain stood back and appeased the Nazi regime.
Chamberlain's error of judgement soon became apparent when
Hitler revealed his horrifying plans for his next
invasion as Poland was targeted.
As Göring drove his army across the Polish
border, obliterating all that stood in his way,
reports of mass murder throughout the country filtered back to Canaris.
The nobility and clergy were targeted for extermination,
entire villages were wiped out and Jews burnt to death.
Efforts by regular soldiers to prevent brutalities were
swept aside by Himmler's Gestapo, and there followed
a rapid deterioration in army discipline.
Canaris warned General Wilhelm Keitel, the High Commander
of the Armed Forces, that the military would
be held responsible for the atrocities being committed,
but the General responded that he was simply following Hitler's orders.
Even so, some years later, just as Canaris
had predicted, Keitel was held accountable and executed by the Allies.
The situation in Poland forced Neville Chamberlain and
the British to go to war with Germany,
which was officially declared on September the 3rd, 1939.
An eyewitness account noted that there was no
joyous celebration in the German capital on the
eve of this conflict, unlike the excitement surrounding
the First World War, but rather shock and
the silent dread hung over the nation.
Nevertheless, the revolutionary tactics of the German army
would prove astoundingly successful, and despite the entry
of Britain into the conflict, quickly followed by
France, there was no halting the Nazi advance
and Poland quickly fell to be carved up
between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia before the Allies could act.
Denmark and Norway followed, being swiftly occupied by
the Nazis, and the Russian leader, Joseph Stalin,
ordered his troops into Finland, and while Hitler
made plans to invade Holland and France, the
German old guard, again, trying to warm the Allies.
Hans Oster, deputy to Canaris, trying to inform
the Netherlands military attaché in Berlin more than
20 times of the exact date of the
constantly delayed invasion of Holland, but the Dutch
government refused to believe him until the paratroopers
descended from the skies, by which time it was too late.
Finally, there was a glimmer of hope for
the conspirators when Winston Churchill, a man who'd
famously spoken out against Hitler since the early
1930s, took over from Neville Chamberlain as Prime
Minister of Great Britain on May the 10th, 1940.
Even so, Churchill had a tough task right
from day one because, while he was settling
into Downing Street, Hitler's panzer tanks stormed through
France using a sickle-cut manoeuvre to separate
Allied troops, trapping thousands of British and French
soldiers on the beaches of Dunkirk to face
almost certain death in Hitler's well-sprung trap.
However, Churchill put in place a daring plan
to rescue the stranded Allies, just as Hitler
made one of the most extraordinary decisions of
the war, calling on his panzer divisions to
halt within a matter of kilometres of Dunkirk.
Some have suggested the Führer was teaching his
generals that he was in charge and not
to be questioned whatever he did, while others
believe that Hitler intended a gesture of goodwill
as he still hoped to negotiate a peace treaty with the British.
Conversely, it may simply have been arrogance on
Hitler's part believing he had all the time
in the world, but Churchill, right from the
moment of his arrival at Number 10, gave
notice that he was not to be underestimated.
In just the few days of respite given
by Hitler's delay in finishing the task at
hand, Churchill's Operation Dynamo, complete with a fleet
of civilian craft, rescued more than 300,000
Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk.
Despite the fact that so many Allied soldiers
had escaped to fight another day, Hitler was
undeterred and quickly advanced to take Paris celebrating
his victory over the French.
Revenge being sweet, Hitler ordered that the very
carriage where France and Germany had signed the
armistice in 1918 be removed from its museum
and placed in the exact same spot in the forest of Campania where it had stood
on that fateful day.
Hitler wanted to sit triumphantly in the seat
that the French general, Foch, had 20 years
earlier, accepting the German surrender.
This time however, it would be the French
generals who would bow to Hitler and to Nazi Germany.
France was now under Nazi control and as
Hitler turned his gaze to Britain, a nation
standing alone against Germany across the English Channel,
he decided it was time to invade the United Kingdom.
Hitler quickly presented plans to destroy the British
Royal Air Force before attempting a landing as
part of Operation Sea Lion and in the
summer of 1940, Göring led the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain.
But again, Hitler underestimated his enemy, not only
the brave pilots prepared to give their lives
in the fight for freedom, but also the
nations, people who were determined that Hitler and
his cruel regime would never set foot on British soil.
What's more, Hitler got something of a shock
when on August the 25th, 1940, the RAF bombed Berlin.
Göring had assured the German people this could
never happen and although causing little damage, it
shook the confidence of the Berliners.
Hitler was furious and let his anger colour
his judgment when he sought revenge by bombing
London and other major cities day and night
rather than continuing to target the airfields of southeast England.
The RAF were totally exhausted and on their knees by the end of August 1940 and
had the Germans continue to targeting the RAF.
Victory was within their grasp.
Because of the bombing of Britain's cities, the
Air Force had time to recover and the
Nazis lost their advantage before even realizing they'd had it.
The British morale held strong and people continued
to doggedly brew their pots of tea spurred
on by the stirring words of Winston Churchill,
unwavering in their determination to defend their island.
As Erwin Rommel, Hitler's favourite general, was sent
to defeat the British in North Africa, he
boasted many victories much to Hitler's delight.
But Britain's spirit remained unbreakable and by spring
1941 the threat of a full-scale invasion was less and less likely.
Especially as by now Hitler had a more
pressing engagement, opening up an eastern front to
attack the Russians, something he'd always intended to
do disregarding the non-aggression pact with Stalin.
This was perhaps the most important invasion of
Hitler's military career and one he had waited for impatiently.
Along with the Jews, Hitler detested the Soviets
and had told Goebbels his main aim was
to finally eliminate the Bolshevik poison from Europe.
On June the 22nd, 1941, Hitler's troops marched
into the Soviet Union along a 1,800
mile front.
Only three days before Operation Barbarossa was set
in motion, the Führer had given specific orders
of a campaign should be waged with extreme brutality.
Himmler had instructed the security forces to act
against all populations who were potentially anti-German
or racially inferior by shooting indiscriminately at men,
burning villages to the ground and deporting women
and children to the concentration camps.
But despite the Russian people being abused so
viciously by October, when torrents of rain fell,
turning the roads and the battlefields into mud
swamps, before the onset of a bitter winter,
the Russian weather was able to dash Hitler's hopes of a swift occupation.
Hitler had promised that when he came to
Russia, the Nazis would have only to kick
in the door and the whole Russian structure
will come crashing down, but he was mistaken.
He had guaranteed Germany a victory within six
months, but as more of his troops were
killed or wounded, even Goebbels' propaganda machine could
do little to hide the fact that all was not going to plan.
Many began to despair and even Germany's greatest heroes lost hope.
Germany's first airman, Ernst Udet, frustrated by Göring's
lies about the lack of raw material to
build more planes, was plunged into a deep
depression over the war with Russia and committed
suicide, and it wasn't long before Hitler had
a great deal more to worry about than losing ground to Stalin's Red Army.
On December the 7th, 1941, the Japanese bombed
Pearl Harbour, an act that would at long
last bring America into the conflict, and just
four days later, Hitler declared war on America.
The Axis powers now faced a coalition that
included the world's largest empire, the world's greatest
industrial and financial power, and the world's largest
army, namely Great Britain, the United States of America, and Russia.
Those who had for so long supported Hitler
were now beginning to fear the worst, and
along with field marshals, generals, diplomats, and senior
officials, the German resistance gathered momentum.
Among them was Colonel Henning von Tresckow, who'd
been working on a plot to assassinate Hitler
after hearing the furious speech on the war
of annihilation against the Soviet Union.
So, on March the 13th, 1943, von Tresckow
gave a case containing two bottles of cognac
to a member of Hitler's staff, which had
a bomb concealed within it as Hitler flew to the Eastern Front.
Frustratingly, the bomb failed to detonate, and a
week later another attempt was made when a
close friend of von Tresckow went to meet
Hitler on Unter den Linden in Berlin, with his pockets filled with explosives.
He came close to being history's first suicide
bomber, but Hitler left before the bomb went
off, and the explosives had to be diffused as quickly as possible.
While von Tresckow waited for another opportunity, it
was obvious that not only military personnel were trying to resist the Nazis.
A group of working-class teenagers calling themselves
the Edelweiss Pirates pitted their wits against Hitler's
Nazi youth, regularly stuffing Allied leaflets into letterboxes
and using slogans and songs which were more
poignant than they could ever have known.
Hitler's power may lay us low and keep us locked in chains, but we will smash
the chains one day, we'll be free again.
But such was the sense of paranoia amongst
Hitler's henchmen that even gangs of 16-year
-olds were considered a threat by the Gestapo,
and many of the Edelweiss Pirates were brutally executed.
Worse was to come for the German people
when in November 1943 the Allies increased their
attacks, targeting the capital Berlin with a fierce
bombardment on the scale faced by London during the Blitz.
Many national monuments were obliterated and it was
clear that Hitler's war started with such a
flourish was now turning in favour of the Allies.
Goebbels did what he could through propaganda, conjuring
up images of a nation under siege as
he spoke to the public rallying the Germans
to defend the fatherland, but as Berlin was
laid to waste it became ever clearer to the rebels that the only way to end
the war was to kill Hitler.
As Mussolini was arrested in Italy and the
Italians turned against Germany, the members of the
resistance hoped they too might remove their leader
with a new and very valuable addition to
their ranks by the name of Klaus Schenk
von Stauffenberg, who'd returned wounded from the fighting in North Africa.
The plans to assassinate Hitler received a huge boost.
As a military man, von Stauffenberg had admired
Hitler's strong leadership when he came to power.
However soon the model soldier was disgusted by
the atrocities being committed and when approached by
General Friedrich Ulbricht, a central figure in the
resistance against Nazism, he immediately agreed to take
part in a coup against the Führer.
In June 1944 the Allies were closing in.
The Soviets had cleared the Nazis from Russia
and were heading towards Germany and the D
-Day landings along the beaches of Normandy were
well underway, so the resistance knew they had to act quickly.
On July the 1st 1944 von Stauffenberg was
appointed chief of staff to the army reserve
in Berlin, putting him in regular contact with Hitler.
It was the perfect opportunity.
Twice he arrived at conferences carrying briefcases containing
explosives, but twice he had to abort his mission as Himmler wasn't present.
Finally on the 20th of July 1944 von
Stauffenberg carried out Operation Valkyrie and took a
briefcase containing a bomb to a meeting at
Hitler's war headquarters in East Russia.
After half an hour he made his excuses
and departed, leaving the briefcase beneath the table.
Hearing the bomb explode from outside the building
he was convinced Hitler would be dead and
flew immediately back to Berlin to organise the coup.
However when von Stauffenberg had left the room
an officer sitting near the briefcase had moved
it further beneath the table and the blast,
although killing some, was minimised by the solid oak table.
As realisation dawned that Hitler had only been
slightly injured the resistance were horrified and knew their fate was sealed.
When von Stauffenberg returned to the army headquarters
where his compatriots stood poised to take on
the Nazis he was captured and executed along with Ulbricht and many others.
Thousands more were arrested in connection with the
assassination attempt and today a memorial now stands
where Stauffenberg bravely uttered his last words,
“Long live holy Germany.”
With the failure of the assassination attempt the
Second World War would continue for another year
claiming many more lives but the Third Reich's days were numbered.
Berlin was left virtually unprotected as the Red
Army speedily advanced towards Hitler's headquarters from the
east and the Americans marched in from the west.
On the 20th of April 1945, Hitler's birthday,
the Soviet artillery began to shell the centre of Berlin.
The Nazis had forbidden civilians to leave the
city in a bid to boost military morale.
Some were even shocked by their own countrymen
for putting white flags outside their houses.
Goebbels propaganda slogans had been scrawled on any buildings left standing.
Every German will defend his capital.
We shall stop the red hordes at the walls of our Berlin.
Now terrified by the approaching Red Army, already
renowned for its own atrocities in Poland, many Berliners began to flee.
In the rubble that had once been the
proud beautiful German capital Hitler's dream of a
thousand-year Reich had crumbled into oblivion.
As elderly men and youths were employed to
defend the city, fighting a hopeless battle, Hitler
and Goebbels hid beneath the city in a
bunker under the Reich Chancellery along with Eva
Braun, Goebbels' wife and children and other Nazi officials.
On April the 28th 1945, Hitler heard the
news that Himmler, his most loyal commander, had
contacted the Allies to negotiate a surrender.
Hitler exploded in a rage and even that
to this late hour sought someone to blame
executing one of the commanders in the bunker.
Later that night Hitler married Eva Braun before
dictating his last political testament which claimed the
war would one day go down in history
as the most glorious and heroic manifestation of a people's will to live.
But Hitler's ultimate demise was far from glorious
and on April the 30th 1945, having heard
that Berlin was on the verge of collapse,
he and his new bride bit into vials
of cyanide and perhaps fearing that even this
would not kill him, Hitler shot himself in the head.
Only two days later the Red Army found
their charred remains in the Reich's Chancellery along
with the bodies of Goebbels and his family who had also taken poison.
Goring and Himmler were captured but they committed
suicide before the sentence could be carried out.
And while the men who had led them
into the abyss were now free from retribution
the people of Germany were left to face the consequences.
Control of Germany was split between the Western
Allies and the Soviet Union and as the
prisoners were freed from the concentration camps the
task of rebuilding what had once been such a proud nation began.
During the years of the Nazi regime there
were no less than 44 attempts on Adolf
Hitler's life but as he cheated death again
and again millions of innocent souls would perish.
Today Berlin has been rebuilt and a spirit
of hope and reconciliation has replaced the Nazi
ideology but if you look carefully the scars
still remain to remind those who come here of the reign of one of the world's
most terrible dictators warning mankind for all eternity
that absolute power corrupts absolutely.