I die with a joyful heart, in the knowledge of our infinite achievements and of a contribution unique in the history that bears my name. This war will not come to an end the way the Jews imagined, with the extermination of the Aryan people. Instead, it will see the complete annihilation of the Jews.
I do not play at war. I shall not allow myself to be ordered about by Generals. With iron will, I shall determine the moment to attack.
That is my mission. Since the end of the First World War, the Germans have been living with the consequences of a catastrophic defeat. Almost half of the workforce is unemployed.
One of them is labourer Hans Bakker: Thousands of factories closed their doors. Many honest German had to resort to theft to obtain food. All of us yearned for better times.
Like many, I've lost all my possessions. So I have drawn to the National Socialist Party. The National Socialists, the Nazis, have been in power for 20 months.
On September the 15th, 1934, at Bückeberg, three-quarters of a million Germans, have come to see their new leader, Adolf Hitler. The misery of our people is horrible to behold. Unemployment must be overcome.
People of Germany. Give us four years. May God Almighty give our work his blessing.
Schoolteacher Louise Solmitz: A thrill shot through the crowd. The Führer is coming. The excitement of the moment, gave vent to a rousing cry.
So many worship him as their Savior, the Redeemer from unbearable poverty. It is our task to make certain that the pages in German history that bear witness to our disintegration, are torn in half. From neat misery shall arise a new German Reich.
Hitler's rise to power creates a new air of optimism. Jewish doctor Hertha Nathorff: Hitler as chancellor. Everyone is full of it, it's all they talk about.
Many are filled with happiness. Some have worry written in their faces. However, all are united in the words: Now things will change.
Hitler gradually transforms the lives of the German people. Unemployment is almost eliminated, and workers are even given holidays abroad, heavily subsidized by the state. Hans Wieners: Who would have thought a German worker would one day be able to go to the Italian Riviera?
We will all return to Germany full of thankfulness, and be able to work doubly hard to realize our Führer's goal. At home in Germany, the Nazis stamp out all political opposition. The police and courts are placed under Nazi leadership.
All power is concentrated in Adolf Hitler. Not everyone of you can see me. Yet I feel you, and you feel me.
The miracle of our age is that you have found me. Germany's fortune, is that I have found you. September 1935.
Hitler announces new laws that turn Germany's Jews into second-class citizens. Children are given new textbooks with lessons in racial education. You can most easily tell a Jew by his nose.
It looks like the number six. His lips are usually puffy. You can tell by his eyes that he is deceitful.
If you have a good nose, you can smell the Jews. Any opposition to Hitler is ruthlessly eradicated. Tens of thousands are imprisoned.
Journalist Stefan Laurent dared to criticize the Führer. I am writing in cell number 24. Outside, a new Germany is being created.
Many millions are rejoicing. Hitler is promising everyone precisely what they want. I think that when they wake to their sober senses, they will find that they have been led by the nose and duped by lies.
August 1st, 1936. Adolf Hitler arrives to open the 11th Olympic Games in Berlin. Hitler is determined these games will be a showpiece for his new Germany.
Jewish professor Victor Klemperer: I find the Olympics so odious. The chanted slogans on the streets have been banned. Jew-baiting, warlike sentiments.
Everything offensive has disappeared from the papers. The attention of our guests is repeatedly drawn to how peacefully and pleasantly things are proceeding here. By the end of the games, the Germans topped the medal table.
It is a personal triumph for Hitler. In 1940, the Olympic Games will take place in Tokyo, but thereafter, they will take place in Germany for all time to come. Three weeks after the Olympic Games, Hitler welcomes David Lloyd George, Britain's former prime minister, to the Berghof, his mountain home in Berchtesgaden, Bavaria.
At Hitler's side is his interpreter, Paul Schmidt: Hitler was delighted with this visit from the world-famous statesman. We sat at a table near the window. He began to speak with excitement of his experiences as a humble soldier during the Great War.
"I often faced the English", he said. Lloyd George is so impressed by Hitler, he publishes his thoughts in the Daily Express. The idea of a Germany intimidating Europe forms no part of Hitler's new vision.
The Germans have definitely made up their minds never to quarrel with us again. As Lloyd George leaves, Hitler presents a secret memo to his ministers. The world is moving towards a new conflict.
Making the German army into the first in the world, is vital. If this does not happen, then Germany will be lost. We must be ready for war in four years time.
July the 18th, 1937, Adolf Hitler's personal pilot SS-Oberführer, Hans Baur, accompanies him to a pageant to celebrate 2,000 years of German culture. Bauer is permitted to film his Führer with his own camera. Fourteen year old Ingeborg Weber: The four years the Führer asked for to fulfill his promises, are up.
What great things he has achieved. The communists have disappeared from Germany. There is no unemployment.
The Führer has given us back our self-respect. For the past six years, Adolf Hitler has kept a secret from the German people. Hidden away from all but his closest companions, is his mistress, Eva Braun.
The weather is so wonderful, and I, the mistress of the greatest man in the world, am sitting here and gazing at the sun. With a camera given to her by Hitler, Eva Braun films his private life. I'm so terribly happy that he loves me so much, and I pray that it will always be like this.
He has had a head full of politics all this time, but surely it is time he relaxed a little. Only members of Hitler's inner circle are allowed to meet Eva. One of them is Hitler's close friend, architect Albert Speer.
Never have I met a person who so seldom reveals his feelings. Even towards Eva, he is never completely relaxed and human. Hitler and Eva avoid anything that might suggest an intimate relationship.
Only to go upstairs to the bedrooms together late at night. Out of sympathy, I began to feel a liking for this woman, who was so deeply attached to Hitler. 25 year old Eva is from a traditional Catholic family.
When Hitler provides Eva with a flat of her own, her father writes a letter. Your Excellency, I find myself in the extremely unpleasant position of having to express to you my distress. I believe that parent supervision of the children until they get married, is a sacred principle.
This is my code of honor. Please advise her to return to her family. Yours very respectfully, Fritz Braun.
Eva intercepts the letter. It will never reach the Führer. Eva always appears happy, the center of attention.
However, the only surviving fragments of her diary, reveal a different story. When he says he loves me, it only means he loves me at that particular moment. Like his promises, which he never keeps.
I am utterly miserable. I shall go out and buy some sleeping pills. Then I won't think about it so much.
Eva has already made two attempts at suicide, but Hitler still refuses to marry her. A highly intelligent man should take a primitive and stupid woman. Imagine if I had a woman who interfered with my work.
In my leisure time, I want to have peace. I could never marry. It's the same with a movie actor.
When he marries, he loses a certain something for the women who adore him. Then, he is no longer their idol. September 28th, 1937.
The people of Berlin are preparing for a state visit from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Hitler is building a new military alliance in Europe. We do not intend, in rearming Germany, to create an instrument of military aggression.
On the contrary, exclusively for defense and the maintenance of peace. Hitler parades his new army in front of Mussolini. Accompanying the two dictators is Hitler's interpreter, Paul Schmidt.
I had ample opportunity of observing the two of them. Hitler's voice was rough and often hoarse. Sometimes his eyes blazed.
His laugh always had a flavor of sarcasm. There was an interesting ceremony with Mussolini appointing Hitler an honorary corporal in the fascist militia. Hitler has also signed a pact with Japan.
With his new axis of power in place, he is ready to make his next move. March the 12th, 1938. Hitler announces the Nazi takeover of Austria.
Born in Austria, Hitler has always dreamt of merging his homeland into a Greater German Reich. Carl Toussaint is a soldier in the Austrian army. We've been told German troops should not be met with any resistance.
God save Austria. Everywhere there are people on the streets and swastika flags. Germany has apparently saved us from the communists.
Now everyone is on the side of the winners. In the town of Dornbirn, 10,000 people celebrate in the renamed Adolf Hitler Square. I believe that it was God's will to send the boy from here into Germany.
To raise him to be leader. To return his homeland to the Reich. For me, this is the proudest hour of my life.
Within weeks, the Jews of Vienna are feeling the real impact of Austria's savior. Twenty-four year old Jewish student Edith Haan: The Nazis are putting up signs on Jewish shops warning people not to buy there. Anybody who resists is beaten up, killed or taken away to a concentration camp.
Everyone around us has gone mad. They were born hating us. Raised hating us.
Now the veneer of civilization which had protected us from the hatred has been stripped away. High in the Bavarian Alps, at his mountain hideaway, Hitler is already planning his next conquest. The diary of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
Now comes Czechoslovakia. The Führer is wonderful, a true genius. He sits for hours over the map and broods.
The Führer is pleased that Czechs are being so stubborn. All the more will they be torn to pieces one day. They haven't the slightest idea what's going to happen.
Poor fools. Hitler claims that ethnic Germans living in the Czechoslovak province of Sudetenland, are being oppressed. German newspapers are full of fabricated stories of violence and rape.
Reports of German troop movements convinced the western allies, Britain and France, that this distant border dispute could lead to war. During the annual Nazi Party rally, the news is announced that negotiations with the Czech government have broken down. When Hitler begins his closing speech, the whole world is listening.
I demand the right of self-determination for the 3. 5 million Sudeten Germans. They themselves have a right to decide to which country they belong.
I demand that the oppression of these Germans in Czechoslovakia ceases. Two weeks later, Czechoslovakia's fate is sealed, when Hitler meets British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The agreement signed last night, is symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
I believe it is peace for our time. Hitler's troops are allowed to march into the Sudetenland without a shot being fired. I have made sacrifices, and I have shown great restraint.
It is the last territorial demand I shall make. June the 12th, 1939. Adolf Hitler visits his childhood home, the small Austrian village of Fischlham.
Son of a local customs officer, Hitler lays flowers on his parent's grave, and then visits his old school. It was here that my first ideals took shape. My association with the rougher boys, made me the very opposite of a stay at home.
Even then, my speaking talents were being developed in violent arguments with my school friends. Woods and meadows were then my battlefields. Hitler is now 50 years old.
On his birthday, a woman writes to her local newspaper: My children look upon the Führer as he who gives the orders for everything. To them, the Führer is the creator of the world. Schoolchildren are even being taught a new song.
Adolf Hitler is our savior, our hero. He is the noblest being in the whole wide world. For Hitler we live, for Hitler we die.
Our Hitler rules a brave new world. All over Germany, thousands of new recruits swear allegiance to their Führer. Hitler's adjutant, Lieutenant Colonel Schmundt: The Führer says that the solution to our problems demands courage.
It is a question of expanding in the east. No other openings can be seen in Europe. We are left with no alternative but to attack Poland, at the first opportunity.
This time, Britain and France warn Hitler, if he attacks Poland, they are prepared to go to war. Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels: We know for sure that the British are too weak and too cowardly to get in our way. The Führer says that Britain now has the most rotten government imaginable.
Believe me, we're going to see things develop just like the last time. A war of nerves, but they'll end up giving in. Hitler must remove one vital threat, before he can launch his attack on Poland.
He sends a secret telegram to the Soviet leader. Herr Stalin. The tension between Germany and Poland has become intolerable.
A crisis may arise any day. It is desirable to enter into a new relationship with each other. I should be glad to receive your early answer.
Adolf Hitler. Forty-eight hours later, Stalin agrees not to interfere with Hitler's plans. More than two million men await their Führer's orders.
No one will ever again have the confidence of the whole German people. All depends on me. Our enemies have leaders who are second-rate.
I saw them in Munich. They are little worms. Close your hearts to pity.
Act brutally. When starting a war, it is not right that matters, but victory. Early on the morning of September 1st, 1939, the German army invades Poland.
The news is broadcast throughout Germany by Adolf Hitler himself. Verna Hartz is in Berlin: The streets are empty and there are no troops to be seen. There are no cheering people, such as we had at the start of the Great War.
War has broken out quietly, as if under a cloud. Two days later, Britain and France declare war on Germany. Adolf Hitler has started a Second World War.
A captured airfield on the outskirts of Warsaw. The Nazi invasion is only three weeks old, but already the Poles are facing defeat. A jubilant Hitler arrives to congratulate his troops.
Endless columns of the Polish army have become prisoners of war. Whatever remains must surrender and lay down its arms, or it will be destroyed. As part of the secret pact with Stalin, the Red Army invades eastern Poland.
When the Poles still refused to surrender, the city of Warsaw is devastated. Panzergrenadier, Gerhard Meyer: We encountered masses of refugees in carts. People are leaving town.
Our artillery has had a field day. Everything has collapsed. There are people standing at the side of the road, watching us with hatred.
Hitler's defeat of Poland leaves 70,000 dead. As a nation, Poland ceases to exist. Hitler hopes that his destruction of Poland will serve as a warning to Britain and France.
He makes them an offer of peace. When it is dismissed, he is enraged. Joseph Goebbels: The Führer believes England has to get a knockout blow.
England's power is now simply a myth, not a reality any longer. All the more reason why it must be smashed. Before then, there will be no peace in the world.
May the 10th, 1940. Hitler launches Blitzkrieg in the west. He catches the allies by complete surprise.
Private Hans Gothard: My darling wife. How can I start to describe this experience? From all sides, we can feel the march of thousands.
The thunder of artillery never ceases, and we just follow its echo. In just two weeks, the German Army has the allies on the run. At Dunkerque, more than 340,000 men of the British and French armies, are forced to abandon France.
Peter Soupf is one of the first German soldiers on the beach. It is hard to describe the panic of the English. Imagine a picture of absolute chaos on the beaches.
Weapons and guns, and lots of vehicles and tanks. It is the fall of Dunkerque. The whole of the Belgian and French coast is in our hands.
With the British Army beaten, France is now alone. Hans Bauer, Hitler's pilot, films the Führer's triumphal arrival in France. Soldiers of the Western Front, you have not disappointed me.
The most daring plan in the history of war was realized, thanks to your unequaled valor. Our victory shall teach our enemies an historic lesson. June 22nd, 1940.
The French formally surrender. Yet for some German soldiers, the price of victory is too high. Private Hans Gothard: My darling wife.
I am completely shaken inside. Our soldiers have become childlike and cruel. When we have won this war, I can imagine all the enthusiastic speeches at home, about our leadership, and the spirit of the troops.
I have to say, it is untrue. We have only won due to our wickedness. 6 a.
m. June the 28th. Hitler enters the defeated French capital.
Within barely six weeks of heroic struggle, our soldiers have ended the war in the west. Their deeds will enter into history as the most glorious victory of all time. I order flags to be flown throughout the Reich, and bells to ring for seven days.
Only Britain now stands in the way of Hitler's total mastery of Europe. A week later, he returns to Berlin. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets to greet him.
He makes yet another offer of peace to Britain. Mr Churchill should place his trust in me. The continuation of this war will end in the complete destruction of one of our two nations.
I know it will be Britain. I direct yet another appeal to reason. Winston Churchill refuses the offer.
The battle for Britain has begun. Hitler believes his pilots must eliminate the Royal Air Force, before an invasion can take place. This time they encounter a more formidable enemy.
Messerschmitt pilot Ulrich Steinhilper: I can report I've now shot down my fourth Spitfire, but it cost me an excellent pilot. The day before, we had three more losses. My wingman was also caught.
There are only twelve left from the old crew. The British have a new engine in their Spitfires and we can hardly keep up with it. A week later, Ulrich Steinhilper is shot down over Britain.
When Churchill orders the bombing of German cities, Hitler switches his attack from the RAF to the British people. If the Royal Air Force should drop 2,000 or 4,000 bombs, then we will drop 200,000 or 400,000, even one million bombs in a single night. If they then increase their attacks, we will obliterate their cities.
Hitler's pilots, blitz Britain day and night. Over the next nine months, more than 40,000 people are killed. However, the British still refuse to give in.
The Luftwaffe is starting to suffer heavy losses. Bomber pilot Peter Stahl: 16th of October. Our losses amount to four bombers and their crews.
This is a heavy blow. Tomorrow, the official communicator will state that our brave aircrews have inflicted devastating damage on vital targets, and our own losses were only minimal. Our crews are reaching the limits of their nerves.
By May 1941, Hitler has lost the battle for Britain. For the first time, he has met his match. I am not a man to abandon a fight once begun.
I've proved this in my life and I will prove this to Churchill. In Hitler's new eastern provinces, victory has brought a brutal new regime. The Poles have a thin Germanic layer.
Below that, is foul material, the Jews. The most disgusting thing imaginable. If Poland had lasted any longer, everything would be lice for him.
A clear, masterful hand is now needed here. Hitler requires all Jews to be marked with a special armband. They're rounded up and forced to live in ghettos.
The largest ghetto is in Poland's old capital, Warsaw. Four hundred thousand Jews are confined within its walls. Seventeen-year-old Mary Burge: The ghetto is becoming more and more crowded.
There is a constant stream of new refugees. People are ragged and barefoot. With the tragic eyes of those who are starving.
Starvation alone is killing 40 to 50 people each day. I saw a little girl crying. She looked at me with her blue eyes and said: "I'm hungry.
" Why does no one come to our aid? How long are we going to be kept here? Joseph Goebbels: The Führer prophesied that if the Jews brought about another world war, they would experience annihilation.
The World War is here. The extermination of the Jews, is the necessary consequence. By the end of 1942, almost 300,000 men, women and children, have been taken from the Warsaw ghetto to the death camp at Treblinka.
Hitler's final solution has begun. After his defeat at the hands of the RAF, Hitler has abandoned his plans for an invasion of Britain. He prepares orders for a new war.
This time against his ally, the Soviet Union. Chief of Staff, General Halder: The Führer says that if we can defeat Russia, Britain's last hope will be gone. He believes a campaign against the Soviet Union, will be child's play.
Some of Hitler's generals are beginning to doubt his leadership. Deputy Chief of operations General Warlimont: This means that we are bringing on ourselves a war on two fronts. That up to now, we have been lucky to avoid.
What we need is someone to oppose the Führer, but there is no one. A war to destroy communism has been Hitler's dream for the last 20 years. Communism is an enormous danger for our future.
We must forget any idea of comradeship between soldiers. This will be a war of annihilation. Dawn, June 22nd, 1941.
More than three million German soldiers crossed the border into the Soviet Union. Hitler's treaty with Stalin is over. Operation Barbarossa has begun.
Karl Fuchs is a gunner in the seventh Panzer division. War isn't half as bad as it sounds. The Russians are fleeing everywhere.
Yesterday I shot up a Russian tank. If I get another one, I'll get my first battle stripes. We're going to show those Bolshevik pigs who's who around here.
I wish you could see me now, all tanned by the sun. We all believe in an early victory. An officer in the 105th Police Battalion, writes home: Dear Hannah.
The number of prisoners we take increases day by day. Our battalion has to take care of them. We shoot them there and then.
When you know that these men have killed German soldiers, it is not such a difficult job to shoot them. Please don't read this to our son. By the war's end, more than three million Soviet prisoners of war will have been killed.
August 26th, 1941. Hitler visits the Eastern Front. With the Red Army in full retreat, and large parts of the Soviet heartland in his grasp, his plans for an eastern empire are beginning to take shape.
What India is for Britain, Russia will be for us. If only I could make the German people understand what this space means for our future. Let's learn from the British.
It is just a matter of dividing up a giant cake. So that first, we rule it, then administer it, and finally exploit it. However, Hitler and his generals failed to defeat the Red Army, before the start of the severe Russian winter.
They are forced to call a halt to Operation Barbarossa. Then, on December the 7th, Hitler receives the news that his allies, the Japanese, have bombed Pearl Harbor. Adolf Hitler is faced by a new enemy.
The United States. No power can shake us. I am Führer of a Reich that will last for a thousand years.
Churchill and Roosevelt are sitting over there, in their plutocratic little world. Behind the scenes, the Jews run their show. I have my people behind me.
With winter over, Hitler launches a new offensive. He is convinced that the Red Army is on the brink of destruction. Lieutenant Wilhelm Pruhler: At last, we're in our element again.
It is we who are taking the initiative, Mr Stalin. Neither you nor your beasts can stop us. All about is an ear-splitting, gigantic record.
Shot after shot. A never-ending inferno. The land is bathed in a thick fog.
We thank God that this war is not being fought on German soil. When the German army reaches the River Volga, Hitler orders the capture of Stalingrad. His soldiers are now over a thousand miles from home, and dangerously exposed.
When his generals suggest a retreat, Hitler confronts them. Do you think that you can teach me what a man at the front is thinking? Where were you in the First World War?
I demand from you the same toughness as from the front-line soldiers. Hitler orders no retreat. Three months later, the Red Army surrounds, and traps a quarter of a million German soldiers in Stalingrad.
On the home front, the people of Germany are preparing for Christmas. Some of the families of soldiers trapped in Stalingrad, have letters brought out by air. Private Werner Bunnerman: My dear son, I hope that this is the last Christmas that you celebrate without me.
The Russians have dealt us a nasty blow. It is now minus 30 degrees here. How nice it must be in warm rooms.
Next year I will hopefully be back with you. Love from your father, Werner. Five weeks later, 90,000 surviving German soldiers in Stalingrad, surrender.
80,000 will die in Soviet captivity. Private Werner Bunnerman is one of them. With Hitler's war claiming more and more German lives, even old men and boys are now called up to fight for the fatherland.
The diary of 15 year old Wolfgang von Deichen We have replaced the men so that they can go to the front. Soldiers had manned these guns until now. It's very exciting.
I like this much more than school. We are now on duty 24 hours a day. We are boys no longer.
Now we are men. Hitler's homeland is under attack from the air. The allies have begun firebombing Germany's cities.
On July the 27th, 700 British bombers target Hamburg. The firestorm is filmed by Hamburg fireman Hans Brunswick. The fire is like a thunderstorm without rain.
The heat is unbearable. I see people lying in the street. I tried to help them, but they are already dead.
Hamburg streets are littered with bodies, some of them so burnt that they're only skeletons. Some, are reduced to small heaps of ash. In Hamburg alone, more than 40,000 people are killed.
Hitler's advisers want him to tour the ruins and raise the morale of his people. Minister of Supplies Albert Speer: I tried a few times to persuade Hitler. Goebbels had tried to put over the same idea, but in vain, and referred enviously to the conduct of Churchill.
"When I think of the propaganda value I could make of such a visit", he'd say. Hitler remains hidden away in his command bunker on the Eastern Front. If the German people are no longer so strong and ready for sacrifice, that they will not stake their own blood on their existence, they deserve to pass away, and be annihilated by another, stronger power.
If that is the case, I would not shed a tear for them. Hidden in the forests of eastern Germany, is Hitler's secret headquarters. The Wolf's Lair is a huge complex of camouflaged buildings and underground bunkers.
From here, Hitler directs his war. His health is now failing. He has a heart condition and the early signs of Parkinson's disease.
General Heinz Guderian: Since I last saw Hitler, he has aged greatly. His back was bent. His hand trembled.
His eyes lacked the former luster. He easily lost his temper, and was then unpredictable in what he said and did. Hitler's ally, the fascist dictator of Romania, Marshal Antonescu, is here to discuss the worsening war situation.
Hitler's adjutant Nicolaus von Below: I had the impression that Hitler now believed that a war against both the Russians and the allies on two fronts, could no longer be won. Dawn, June 6th, 1944. The allies begin an invasion of Nazi-controlled France.
D-Day. When Hitler is informed, he is delighted. The news could not be any better.
As long as they were in Britain, we could not get at them. Now we have them where we can destroy them. However, by the end of the first day, the Allies have overwhelmed the German soldiers, and fought their way inland.
Private Robert Vogt: We only had infantry weapons. We didn't even have a bazooka. We were even short of ammunition.
The Americans were right. They dropped leaflets in German, which read: Attacked from the front. Cut off from behind.
Written off by Hitler. In Germany, the news is announced, that a bomb has exploded in Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters. A group of army officers has been secretly plotting his downfall.
Hitler has a lucky escape. Now I have proof. The entire General Staff is contaminated.
Now I have the swine who have been sabotaging my work for years. Now I know why my great plans failed. It was treason.
Hitler orders the arrest of 5,000 people. 200 are executed. With his empire under attack from all sides, Hitler puts his faith in a new weapon.
For more than twelve years at a secret location in northern Germany, a team of Nazi scientists have been testing a long-range ballistic missile. They make a special color film of their first successful launch. Head of the research team, Major General Walter Dornberger shows it to Hitler.
A strange, fanatical light flared in Hitler's eyes. "What I want is annihilation", he raged. I realized that he expected this new weapon to produce a turning point in the war.
Our missile has been renamed the V2. Vengeance Weapon number two. 1,300 V2 rockets are fired on London, killing almost 3,000 people.
Not the annihilation Hitler has demanded. The allies are closing in on the Fatherland itself. Hitler is still telling his people that the war can be won.
However, in private he is a changed man. I know the war is lost. The enemy's superiority is too great.
I have been betrayed. I ought to put a bullet in my head. However, we will not capitulate, ever.
We may go down, but we will take the world with us. April 11th, 1945. The allies arrive at Buchenwald.
It is one of over a thousand of Hitler's concentration camps. Udo Dittmeier is one of the few survivors: The conditions in Buchenwald had reached the height of horror. People were starving.
A few of those who could still move, broke down, and died. There were mountains of corpses. The crematorium and the courtyard were overcrowded with skeletons.
I can still hear my dead friends. If you should survive, don't forget to tell the world of our destiny. I will never forget.
The Americans round up people from the nearby town and force them to witness the horrors, that have been committed in their name. Eighteen-year-old, Renata Simone: I could hardly believe what I was seeing. They had piled up the corpses of people who had died.
The smell was just too much. I couldn't take it anymore. However, someone shouted at me: "You Hitler fräulein, here, look, look.
" The Nazis have murdered six million Jews. January 1945. The Red Army has reached the Oder River, just 50 miles from Berlin.
From his bunker beneath the center of the city, Hitler orders every able-bodied male to defend Berlin. Every soldier must fulfill his duty. Whoever does not is a traitor.
Anyone who gives you an order to retreat, must be arrested, and executed immediately. Outnumbered more than five to one, the German cause is hopeless. On April the 21st, the Russians enter Berlin.
With more than 20 million Soviets already killed in the war, the Red Army allows its soldiers to celebrate. Twenty-four-year-old, Hildegarde Krystof: The Russians came. We weren't allowed to lock our doors.
Holding machine guns, they herded us into an empty house. Other young women had also been dragged in. The beasts pounced on us again and again the entire night.
A whole mob of them. At dawn, they disappeared. We crept back to our family.
Many committed suicide. As many as two million German women are raped. In the ruins of the Nazi Chancellery, Hitler's underground bunker is discovered.
It is deserted. After finally marrying his mistress, Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler has committed suicide. In order to escape the disgrace of surrender, my wife and I choose death.
It is our wish to be burned immediately. All that is found are a few charred bones. Hitler's war is finally over.
Seventeen-year-old schoolgirl, Edelgard Sidle: We believed in victory, and now this is the end. Hitler is responsible for destroying our nation. We will always have to live under this shame.
Across Europe, 50 million people are dead. Before killing himself, Hitler wrote his last testament. It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war.
It was provoked solely by the Jews. I die with a joyful heart, in the knowledge of our infinite achievements, and of a contribution unique in the history, that bears my name.
