- 5/15/2025
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00:00Germany 1937 a young woman with a passion for her movies is filming
00:26herself doing gymnastics
00:36she is full of hope for the future convinced her beloved Germany is on the
00:41rise again the country has a leader who promises to build an empire that will
00:47last a thousand years but this filmmaker has good reason to be proud this is Ava
00:54Braun companion of the German Fuhrer
01:06a viewfinder is trained on her idol Adolf Hitler captured as the public
01:13never saw him relaxed informal and playing uncle
01:25but Braun and Hitler were not alone in their love of home movies across Germany
01:33thousands record every aspect of their lives convinced they are filming the
01:37dawn of a new age
01:45others record their thoughts in diaries taken together ink and 8 millimeter film
01:52provide an unprecedented insight into life in the Third Reich
02:01the footage and diary extracts come from civilians but also from Nazi groups
02:07firemen and soldiers they all play a role capturing the new Reich
02:13we know how the story ends with Hitler and Ava Braun dead and Europe in flames
02:23as Germany lay vanquished much of this footage was hidden away a reminder of a
02:29time most want to forget
02:35but over the years as the war generation has died their descendants are finding
02:41the footage revealing a candid insight into life under the swastika this
02:47footage has the power to surprise and shock while also showing how ordinary
02:51Germans experienced Hitler's war but it also poses a question what did the
02:58ordinary Germans know about the things being done in their name this is more
03:03than just an archive of domestic amateur film it depicts life around the edges of
03:08the darkest moral catastrophe the world has ever known
03:31this is Klaus Hopper from Perleberg a hundred miles northeast of Berlin
03:36play-fighting with his father Albert
03:42like thousands of others Albert Hopper loves to make home movies meticulously
03:47documenting Klaus's childhood after four years of Nazi rule the regime has spread
03:56its tentacles into every aspect of people's lives for Klaus and his friends
04:01the pathway international socialism is no longer left to chance as he reaches
04:10his 10th birthday it's time for him to join the children's section of the
04:14Hitler Youth amazing how much they look like Boy Scouts which of course is
04:20really what the Hitler Youth was in many ways sort of adopted put under the Nazi
04:26banner of course what you're getting with the Hitler Youth is massive
04:30indoctrination as well but you can see why a lot of these young lads found
04:35camps and Hitler Youth and everything really good fun I mean what's not to like
04:39when you're a young kid going on hikes camping cooking outdoors I mean it's
04:44quite fun to me well Hitler Youth is really important because of course what
04:48you're doing is you're getting children at a young impressionable age and you're
04:51starting to kind of indoctrinate them so brainwash them effectively that is what
04:55Hitler Youth is doing you're giving them enough fun enough entertainment camping
04:58cooking hiking all that kind of sort of sports and so on which is very attractive
05:02but at the same time you're also hammering home the Nazi message you
05:07know racial supremacy anti-semitism militarism and so on and so by the time
05:13that they get to a later age they're already primed and ready and plump for
05:17for the cooking effectively
05:21the Hitler Youth has been around since 1926 but in 1936 membership for boys
05:31like Klaus became mandatory
05:43I think if I had a son I would I would be even more struck emotionally by this
05:49but yeah it's deeply deeply disturbing when when you start a family and then a
05:56political system is in place that you know was was wanted by the majority of
06:02the Germans but that that really takes your child away from you ideologically
06:08it must be very must have been very disturbing to some parents if they had
06:13a more critical mindset to see their child come home say things that you know
06:19were completely different from your own ideology
06:31over the next five years Albert's films document Klaus becoming a teenager and a
06:36National Socialist as laid out in chilling detail by Hitler himself our
06:45youth shall learn nothing but to think and act German a boy or girl enters into
06:55our organizations at age 10 then moves on from the junior Hitler Youth to the
07:01Hitler Youth four years later we will keep them for another four years and
07:10then put them into the party or the labor front the assault division or the
07:14SS they shall never be free again for the rest of their lives in 1943 Klaus
07:27just 15 years old will be sent a man an anti-aircraft battery a hundred miles
07:32from home the Nazis came to power promising national rebirth and many
07:52Germans are thrilled new autobahn snake their way across the country a potent
08:05symbol of a modern nation Hitler yearns for a fairytale world of healthy Aryans
08:13bound together by blood and soil but there is an unrelenting hatred directed
08:20at one particular group Germany's Jews the process of demonizing the Jews
08:30started immediately after the party came to power in 1933 the Nazis have one
08:42brutal idea that they repeat again and again a hypnotic repetition the Jews are
08:48Germany's misfortune Germans grow accustomed to the sight of paramilitary
09:16brownshirt thugs harassing Jews and vandalizing their businesses again and
09:30again we see how few aspects of German life survive untainted by an incessant
09:35drumbeat of hatred for the Jews
09:49the Nazis have taken control of the carnival associations this is 1938 as
09:57the camera pans past the floats one image leaps out grotesque caricatures of
10:03the Jewish population followed by someone literally sweeping them from the
10:08streets
10:14well anti-semitism is is quite deeply entrenched throughout Europe at this time
10:18it's not something that's peculiar to the to the Nazis but it is a very strong
10:22part of their ideology but how that anti-semitism manifests itself isn't
10:28immediately apparent it's not until the Nazis actually get power that they
10:33start to implement anti-semitic laws the Nazis proceeded by passing just hundreds
10:41and hundreds and hundreds of laws and edicts and regulations and there's a
10:46book was published that compiles them all just the anti-jewish laws and it
10:53comes to five or six hundred pages just hundreds and hundreds of them and they
10:58were very many of them were so incredibly mean-spirited to attack the
11:05dignity of people by not letting them own cats or taking the radio away or
11:10making them give up fur coats or whatever these very very petty horrible
11:16spiteful attacks for individual Jews living in Germany it is a bewildering
11:24experience to be on the receiving end of such state-sponsored malice one such
11:30victim is Jewish professor Victor Klemperer. Victor Klemperer was an amazing
11:36figure he was born in Germany Jewish very very well-traveled well-read
11:43tremendously sophisticated he married a non-Jewish woman and he had a job at
11:49the University in Dresden and he was he was injured in World War One in some
11:55cases as very specific cases if you were a World War One veteran particularly if
12:00you'd received a decoration you were sometimes treated a little bit better
12:04than than other Jews who hadn't fought in World War One. He becomes one of the
12:09most prolific but also amazing diarists of the rise of Hitler of the rise of
12:15fascism and of the Third Reich and how it was to experience and witness the
12:20increasing persecution of the Jews in Germany for example but many many other
12:24things besides.
12:32Klemperer's diaries reveal what it is to be an outcast in your own society life
12:38ruined by endless petty rules. He writes with a finely tuned ear for the
12:43language of Nazi Kant. The healthy sense of justice of every German was on
12:50display yesterday in a decree from Himmler with immediate effect the
12:54confiscation of driving licenses from all Jews justification Jews are
13:01unreliable and therefore should not be permitted to sit behind the wheel also
13:06allowing them to drive offends the German community of road users especially
13:12as Jews presumptuously make use of the right highways built by German workers
13:17hands. While life for Klemperer grows unbearable for the Nazi faithful things
13:25could not be better. After annexing Austria in spring 1938 Hitler turns his
13:31sights on the Sudetenland a strip of land along the Czechoslovakian border.
13:41The map of Europe and Central Europe particularly is completely redrawn in
13:45in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles following the end of the First World War
13:48and one of the creations is Czechoslovakia and within Czechoslovakia
13:52particularly along the German border is an area which had previously been part
13:56of Germany and where there are predominantly German speaking people and
14:00actually frankly you can understand why Germany would want in the late 1930s to
14:04take that bit back and have that incorporated back into Germany's
14:09borders and so what they do the Germans do is they go in the autumn of 1938 and
14:12go right we're having it back thank you very much and unfortunately for
14:17Czechoslovakia that is where most of their defenses are and they are just
14:20surrendered to Germany in the Munich agreement.
14:29The British and French allow the invasion to proceed. For those now under
14:39Nazi control the future is uncertain. For two Jewish families in Czechoslovakia
14:461939 will be one last summer of normality before the world turns upside
14:51down.
15:09This is the Lederer family from Prague.
15:14They're on holiday with their friends the Brooks. The father's name is Robert
15:25his wife is Rose. The two children are Nina and Peter. The children can have no
15:35idea of the potential danger their family now faces.
15:41They're enjoying the sunshine.
15:53The adults seem relaxed.
16:05Or perhaps they're simply unable to fathom the magnitude of the horrors that
16:09lie over the horizon.
16:27As the summer fades Hitler invades Poland and British and French patience
16:32comes to an end.
16:36We are used to hearing Chamberlain announce that Britain is now in a state
16:40of war with Germany. The Germans learn about it very differently.
16:46This footage was taken on the 1st of September 1939.
17:06Hitler can be heard to say since 545 a.m. we have been shooting back.
17:17In Britain it is widely understood that the Germans started the war but this is
17:22far from how it is seen in Germany.
17:27German propaganda was to try and stitch up the polls and say you know they've
17:31been provoking us and all the rest of it and there was the kind of sort of fake
17:34attack on the radio station by German SS troops who were dressed up as Polish
17:39troops to kind of make people think you know look at this outrage they started
17:41it first all the rest of it but you know there is this other point that Western
17:46Poland was largely dominated by German-speaking people that had been
17:50within you know East Prussia back up until 1919 the Danzig Corridor had been
17:55part of Germany up until 1919 and a lot of Germans think you know hang on a
17:59minute you know that was stolen from us it's German-speaking peoples they should
18:02be part of Germany it's only right that we should have us back. So most Germans
18:06felt that the invasion of Poland was entirely justified. Even on the 1st of
18:10September 1939 when the Germans do invade Poland in Germany that's not
18:16treated as the outbreak of war proper it's treated as a police action as
18:22retaliation for Polish incursions on the border for Polish treatment of ethnic
18:27Germans in the western borderlands and not as an outright invasion let alone a
18:34planned imperial expansion. The vast majority of German people in 1939 when
18:40Germany invades Poland are really dismayed about it I mean no one wants
18:44war the whole point you know they've lived through the First World War most
18:46you know adults can remember the First World War and they don't want to have it
18:50again they don't want their children growing up having to fight in another
18:53war. The fear of war in September 1939 is that Britain and France will declare war
18:59and that once they do as they do on the 3rd of September that they will
19:03immediately attack and we'll have a repeat of the First World War but that
19:06doesn't seem to happen initially because of course the phony war and
19:10although Britain and France have declared war on land at any rate there
19:13isn't much activity until the following spring so a lot of Germans are kind of
19:18thinking okay phew you know that's we've got past that one okay. In Dresden
19:23Victor Klemperer is blunt about what this means for Jews like him. On Friday
19:29morning the butcher's boy came and told us the war is upon us I said to Eva a
19:34morphine injection is the best thing for us our life is finished.
19:42The invasion of Poland is over in a month and for many in Germany the war
19:47starts to feel all rather unreal. Walter Lange a keen filmmaker has been
19:53conscripted as part of the general mobilization. His posting is to a prison
20:00camp just outside Leipzig better known to us as Kolditz castle.
20:10Kolditz is home to Polish prisoners of war and the furtive shooting angle
20:15suggests he isn't really supposed to be filming this. For Lange the war is a good
20:24excuse to mess around while playing soldiers.
20:38Another filmmaker now back in uniform is Adolf Dussel.
20:44Dussel fought in the First World War.
21:02Now 41 he is back in uniform as an infantry medic. His camera captures a
21:13vivid sense of life during the winter of 1939. For men of Dussel's generation the
21:24return to the army brings back many ghosts from 20 years earlier.
21:43The Germans make their move on the 10th of May 1940. This is the second time he
22:00has made the invaders journey but now he has a camera to capture it forever.
22:13What he sees is a far cry from the picture we usually have of the fabled
22:17German blitzkrieg. Germans on horses you see you can tell this is a private video
22:24because if it was a public video Germans wouldn't allow you to see. On
22:28Devockenshaw or on newsreels sent out around the world you wouldn't be seeing
22:32German troops on horses you'd see them on machinery.
22:38They kept bicycles. Germans had lots of bicycles in France and lots of horses, lots of
22:45surrendered troops.
22:52So this is a series of home movie footage from the campaign in France in
22:58the summer of 1940. What's interesting about it is the sense of orderliness as
23:05the Germans march in and also orderliness as the French surrender.
23:10French prisoners of war here in their ridiculous long wool coats which are just so
23:16ill-suited for the job left over from the First World War. They've hardly even
23:24got their uniforms dusty and it conjures up a sense of how easy the victory was
23:29in 1940. For somebody like Adolf Dassel that really mattered because they'd gone
23:36through the static trench warfare of the Western Front through the First World
23:41War where they'd got nowhere and they'd gradually been worn down. That's a French
23:48stolen vehicle that's interesting because again Germans don't have
23:51anything like as much vehicles as we think they do. They always talk about the
23:55Nazi war machine but actually that's kind of, that's not really being very
24:00accurate. Lots of abandoned French vehicles.
24:06Then we get into the trophy footage of the wrecked bridges, the wrecked cities
24:13and towns and villages. Some of which are already being repaired. There's a moment
24:18where you see somebody starting to mend a window frame while the young Germans
24:24in uniform are inspecting or trying out what it would be like to be the French
24:29artillery gunner. And part of what they're admiring is military hardware
24:35which they didn't themselves possess. The French in 1939 not only had a bigger
24:41army but they had far, far, far bigger and more sophisticated armaments than
24:46Germany had. And so part of the miracle of the summer of 1940 from a German
24:50point of view is this idea that something impossible has been achieved.
24:57In 1939 even the commanding generals on the Western Front on the German side did
25:03not see that they have a war plan that could possibly work. All they have until
25:08February 1940 is more or less the same plan as they had in August 1914. And it's
25:14not until the spring that they come up with a faint attack through the north
25:20and then a real attack through the southern sector of the Ardennes Forest.
25:24And this works simply because the Allies rush into the trap.
25:38Well it's amazing to see immediately the 14th General Hospital because obviously
25:41it's a British hospital with shrapnel marks on it and actually my best mate's
25:44father was a doctor who managed to get away and I kind of wonder whether this
25:49is the sort of place he was working.
26:06You can see British trucks in the background ruined. More prisoners. Those
26:11are French prisoners again. Abandoned guns. German troops fiddling. Another tank
26:17that's just been left. Lots and lots of abandoned vehicles. That's a British
26:25British vehicle. The sense that you get as you see these kids all cramming
26:33onto their tiny tracked vehicle with their trophy dog brings out the absolute
26:40euphoria and the sense of elation that they've achieved something miraculous.
26:45The damage. The damage is just amazing. I mean you know Dunkirk was ruined. You know
26:52when you look at the movie they're going down a street and they're all in
26:54perfect perfect nick. It wasn't. It was absolutely trashed and this this footage
26:59you can see here there's just oh my god look at the debris all over the place. I
27:02mean he's really properly trashed and if you look at memoirs you look at diaries
27:06people they talk about the rubbish on the roads.
27:11We see the destruction and devastation of the Dunkirk aftermath. It's a very
27:18different vantage point from that of the British evacuation and it's a sense that
27:24the war is over. And the images of Germans rescuing these abandoned horses
27:33presumably from baggage trains gives you a sense that this is now no longer a
27:39destroyed landscape. It's going to be one which is made good again and it's a
27:44sense of restitution and of people coming back together and remembering
27:49their roles in civilian life as well as in military life.
28:01Here we are back on seafront. Yeah look at all those ships. Look at those
28:07abandoned again. Abandoned boats. That's a very famous image. That broken vessel
28:12you can see it's just been completely destroyed. Just left there. Look at that.
28:19The ship Dassle is filming is a French destroyer called Le Droit hit by a
28:24German bomber during the evacuation. After beaching the ship's magazine blew
28:29up tearing the hull apart. Amazingly none of her crew was killed.
28:37And again when you see footage like this it just sort of it strikes
28:43home a little bit more than just a black-and-white photograph stilled
28:46picture. Really properly wrecked. Blimey. I think what matters psychologically and
28:53emotionally for Germans as a population both civilian and military is this sense
28:59that the war is actually won now. The war is over and they cannot believe that the
29:05British don't give up. So one of the other interesting things about Dassle is
29:10that he's a First World War veteran and the legacy of 1914 to 18 is a dire one
29:18because German defeat in 1918 both fueled national resentment at the sense
29:25that they'd been unfairly treated with the war guilt clause, the reparations
29:29bill and that the peace treaty itself had been wrung out of Germany through
29:35the continuation of the British blockade. And so part of the euphoria and relief
29:40in this footage of having driven the British off the continent having
29:44conquered France Dunkirk in a sense is the final victory of this war as it
29:49should be. That is really palpable. It confirms a sense of intergenerational
29:55responsibility that Dassle belongs to the generation which lost and now he
30:01belongs to the generation which has won.
30:07On the 6th of July 1940 France capitulates. The Führer parades himself
30:13on the streets of Berlin lovingly captured by Eva Braun. Her relationship
30:18with Hitler is a secret closely guarded from the German people.
30:26She has to make do with filming from the window of the Reich Chancellery. It's a
30:36far cry from the intimate private portrait of a few years earlier.
30:45Keen diarist Julius Puttwerken, born in 1877, applauds the news of victory in
30:52France. He spent the First World War in a British prison camp. For him German
31:00national pride has been restored and he is thrilled.
31:05Today the Führer has returned in triumph to Berlin. No man has ever been
31:10cheered like this before. It is unbelievable all that the Führer has
31:15achieved for our fatherland without a single forced step. Two months ago the
31:20dreaded France wanted to smash Germany into smithereens and now France lies
31:25powerless on the ground. Betrayed and abandoned by England its boastful ally.
31:32Across Germany there are similar scenes. In Dresden a shopkeeper called Kurt
31:38Ehler films a returning infantry division.
31:50For Jewish diarist Victor Klemperer the news brings only despair.
32:04It's all turned much gloomier. France the boundless German triumph. It's been
32:11reported that synagogues have been set on fire in Toulouse and several other
32:15places. On language I note the ruthless lightning-fast changes of tone. In autumn
32:22France was a chivalrous nation led astray by England and it was courted.
32:27Then during the offensive in ever-increasing measure Jew-ridden,
32:32decadent, sadistic. Their language is intensified by the frenzied arrogance of
32:38the victor.
32:48The conquering Germans have the playground of Paris at their mercy.
33:00So now we're having Paris style breakfast. Great we've established ourselves now
33:08in this beautiful country. Yeah the fashion, horse racing, everybody's having
33:17a great time.
33:22What fun we're having in Paris. Why not the city of the city of gaiety and
33:28jollity. Arts and music. And these French people seem seem okay about it
33:35don't they?
33:40You know there's this sort of impression that just life goes on you know Paris
33:45has fallen, France has fallen but there's still time for sports and athletic tracks
33:49and so on. So Luftwaffe officers here. It seems like they're trying to adopt that
33:57culture that they secretly admired. Yeah I mean this is pure propaganda obviously.
34:07Excursions on boat. And again always this facial expression of being really pleased
34:16with yourself.
34:20Wow and a guy going on a little mini bicycle advertising the cabaret and here
34:29is the cabaret. Again it's just this sort of suggestion that nothing's really
34:36changed you know it's just gone from French control to German control but
34:41Paris is still unmistakably Paris. German officers having a lovely time, lots of
34:46drinks, cigarettes, dancing, music. Reality very different for French people though.
34:56The Germans were absolutely appalling occupiers. Stole everything, nicked all
35:03the cars, nicked all the wine, nicked all the champagne, made sure that they came
35:07first in absolutely everything.
35:11It makes you feel really angry. I've got to say if I was a Frenchman I was
35:20watching this this would just be making my blood absolutely boil. And you can
35:26also understand when you see footage like this of Germans kissing French
35:30girls and so on and everyone having a lark and raising bottles of champagne
35:34you can see why at the end of it all those who suffered were not a massively
35:41impressed by those who'd collaborated.
35:46Yeah I don't know I mean it's just disturbing.
35:54Throughout 1940 there is a feeling that Hitler can do no wrong but for diarist
36:02Julius Puttvargen Britain's refusal to negotiate is beyond the pale.
36:08We Germans love the Führer ever more deeply and thank him for what he has done
36:13for our people. To us he is a gift from God.
36:21Even though we thought the end was close after the armistice with France it will
36:26not come to an end with England. Churchill is a ruthless sneak propped
36:34up by Jews around the world especially in the USA who long for financial
36:40dominion. Yet while Puttvargen fixates on war with Britain Hitler's gaze turns to
36:47the nation that has obsessed him his entire political life the Soviet Union.
36:57Not only a source of coveted natural resources but home to tens of millions
37:02of people the Nazis view as racially worthless.
37:17This is Helmut Mackemer a medic in a panzer unit. He took extensive footage
37:23during the invasion of Russia.
37:43It's really interesting how the Germans perceive the invasion of Soviet Union
37:48but the truth is the Germans don't really have any choice or Hitler doesn't
37:50have any choice in the matter you know they've they've they've had their
37:53victories they've rampaged these occupied territories like kids in the
37:57sweet shop and by the end of 1940 the you know the cupboard is pretty much
38:01bare so what are you gonna do you know if you can't actually manufacture
38:04because you're manufacturing for your own war effort you can't sell it and you
38:07can't actually get anything in where you're gonna get this stuff well you
38:10have to go and get it and there's only one place where this can be got from and
38:13that is the Soviet Union.
38:20Look at that, wow, that's amazing isn't it? I mean you know unmetalled roads just vast open spaces of nothingness and this is a problem because literally the wheels start to come off because the distances are just so great.
38:44Mackemer's footage is fascinating in a number of ways one of them is simply that
38:48he wants to show that he's a good filmmaker and so he tends to copy
38:53things which he would have seen in the fochenschau the newsreels which are shot
38:58by splicing together the film recorded by thousands of cameramen and photojournalists
39:08who are embedded in the Wehrmacht but in most cases even serving soldiers go and
39:16see film footage of where they've been when they're on leave they find
39:21confirmation of themselves and confirmation of what they've done by
39:25looking at footage like this. I mean that is for me that's that's in my mind's eye
39:33that's what I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about the absolutely insane
39:37decision to go into the Soviet Union I mean that vast open space you know
39:41problems I mean this is not easy thing to get across it's a dried riverbed you
39:45see it's some of this awesome dust there's a Panzer Mark three problem is
39:48you've got to keep these vehicles going in the field and over vast distances
39:52where there's no infrastructure there's no workshops and stuff you know how do
39:57you repair them? Lone cow standing pathetically by a burning village it's
40:04just so counterproductive and it's a reminder that this is an ideological war
40:08suddenly. And we're into the morass and we're into the torching of village
40:17houses and even this is sort of posed for the cameras the as the man with the
40:22flame looks back over his left-hand shoulder at the camera which is
40:26lingering on him and he's lingering on it and so there's a sense not that this
40:31is a covert activity but that it's part of what you would do and this is what
40:38they do do all the way through and of course means that the liberating Red
40:43Army troops as they come back westwards find destroyed village after destroyed
40:49village all they see is the brick chimneys of houses which had stood there
40:54because the wood and the thatch and everything that was flammable has gone.
41:01Again no asphalt on the roads lots of Soviet prisoners massive problem
41:06because what do you do with them all you know there's almost half again what
41:10they're expecting.
41:14The clusters of Red Army prisoners in the snow sitting outside with no cover
41:21no accommodation insufficient food and they gradually collapse and filmed as
41:29dead prisoners. There's no sense that the Germans should have provided better.
41:40Although the victories are enormous to start off with nothing less and total
41:46annihilation of the Red Army will do. There is no alternative this is an
41:50ideological war not just a war of military conquest and the violence which
41:56is unleashed right from the outset that the moment they go in the burning of
42:00villages in Ukraine and so on and Belarusia and all the rest of it and in
42:05the Baltic states that just sets the bar and it means that nothing less than
42:10complete conquest will do.
42:14This is of course the story of the first six months of the Soviet campaign where
42:19over 3 million Red Army prisoners are taken by the Germans with no provision
42:23for how they'll be treated and by the end of 1941 nearly 3 million of them
42:32have starved to death and terrible acts of cannibalism but also acts of
42:38starvation acts of disease and of random executions by the Germans have gone
42:45hand-in-hand with that horror.
42:54The fate of Russian POWs is bleak.
43:04Race and race hatred are at the core of Nazi ideology and now they have
43:10millions of their Slavic, Bolshevik and Jewish enemies at their mercy.
43:18This amateur footage was filmed by a member of the Luftwaffe's 51st fighter
43:23group. His camera captures what the relationship between conquerors and
43:30conquered really entails.
43:35Leaning on the windowsill, ultimate imperial gaze of power, of condescending
43:47to have his palm read by the local gypsies, encouraging possibly even
43:53forcing one of them to dance semi-naked, they give a palpable sense of what it
43:58meant to conquer the East and Germans have been told for generations that
44:03Russia was barbaric and the Nazis added layers to this. They added the layers of
44:08anti-semitism, they added the layers of anti-bolshevism but underneath it
44:13there's still a fundamental sense that this is an alien and inferior culture
44:18and in that few frames of sitting on the veranda condescending looking down
44:28at the people you've just conquered but knowing that they are both exotic and
44:33inferior to you, you see all of those thwarted ambitions of Germans to be
44:38colonists, of people who'd lost their own colonies in 1918 and yet see the
44:44possibility of living this out in some vicarious way in the East. It's like
44:47they're suddenly in their own Museum of Ethnography and that tipping of
44:54condescension into atrocity is very easy as we see and partly it comes with the
45:01idea that these are not people who are individuals, they don't have individual
45:05conscience, they don't have individual soul, they don't have artistic depth,
45:09they've been hammered into a collective under the blows of Soviet rule and so
45:16the only way to treat them is also as a simple collective. Following behind the
45:21frontline troops are SS units on a mission to kill all the Jews and
45:26communists they can find. This footage was shot by a soldier called Reinhard
45:34Wiener in Latvia at the far north of the invasion. The phrase the Holocaust by
45:41bullets is is actually extremely important if you want to understand what
45:46took place once the war started and it refers to the fact that for for quite a
45:53long time after the invasion of Poland and even the invasion of the Soviet
45:57Union, most of the killing was done face-to-face. So they would round up
46:06groups of Jews, march them out of their village into a forest and then shoot
46:11them. So at least half the people who were murdered in the Holocaust were
46:17murdered in that face-to-face way. So the idea that the Holocaust is entirely a
46:23sort of industrialized process is very misleading but at least half the
46:28victims were kind of walked into muddy fields and just saw their killers down
46:34the barrel of a gun.
46:38This was a terrible, brutal, despicable phase of Barbarossa of World War II
46:44that's not so well known and in fact it's so brutalized as even the SS and
46:50the Einsatzgruppen and the special battalions that Himmler goes to a
46:54special program in Minsk to show him the brutality of this kind of murder and
47:03Himmler watches the execution of a hundred Jewish people and he sees for
47:09himself how difficult it is for his quote-unquote poor SS guys how
47:14psychologically they're being traumatized.
47:23Moving toward the creation of the extermination camps is not because it's
47:28going to be more humane to the victims, it's because it's seen to be more humane
47:32to those who are being asked to do the killing. But in 1941, in the invasion of
47:36Soviet Union, it is pistols out, it's machine guns, it's gallows up, I
47:42mean you know what's so amazing about that footage is just how medieval and
47:48barbaric it is.
47:51And yet it becomes normal and yet you know it's this sort of casual footage of
48:03people being strung up, casual footage of people being burnt and chucked in pits
48:08and being shot in the back of the head, I mean it is absolutely horrible.
48:21We have a school teacher from Eichstätt who writes home to his wife about the
48:33terrible images that he's seen. He doesn't describe them to her in the
48:36letters, he does in his diary. He promises to tell her everything when
48:40he's at home with her and at the same time he talks about the photos of the
48:49small child Reiner that she sent him. He was born at the outbreak of war and he
48:56says it's terrible where I am but it's better that I am here and that I go
49:02through this hell even if I have to die here rather than that Reiner should be
49:07the third generation who has to come and fight a war like this.
49:14These so-called special operations are repeated across the whole front line
49:19and are a common spectacle for German soldiers. This conversation was recounted
49:27by a Wehrmacht officer called von Rotkirch. I knew an SS leader pretty well and we
49:35talked about this and that and one day he said listen if you ever want to film
49:40one of these shootings, I mean it doesn't really matter, these people are
49:44always shot in the morning. If you're interested we still have a few left over.
49:49We could shoot them in the afternoon if you like.
49:56In time even the population back home begin to learn what is being done in
50:00their name. So much of the knowledge which we have was also knowledge that
50:06the German population had at the time. Soldiers' letters, the stories that
50:11people tell each other on trains, often talking in the darkness of night
50:16journeys to comparative strangers, trusting people whom you only know as a
50:22bird of passage. But also the photography, the photos that soldiers
50:27take of atrocity sites, of the mass hangings, mass shootings, the open graves,
50:33the ditches being covered in lime and then shoveled in by local Soviet
50:39civilians afterwards. These are images which were not kept just at the front
50:46because the films themselves, the photographic 35 millimeter film taken on
50:52the first SLR cameras were likers. They were sent back in little aluminium film
51:00canisters with letters and parcels from the front to be developed in the local
51:06town, in the photo studio, sometimes in the pharmacy. And the prints of the
51:12photographs were seen on the home front before they were sent back to the men
51:17who'd taken them. And yet what we have to think of is their provenance at the time.
51:23They were known and they were part of a spreading knowledge, a web of knowledge,
51:28of mass eyewitnessing of mass executions in which between one and two
51:37million of the Jews who fell victim to the Holocaust were killed in this way on
51:42the Eastern Front. And there was no secret about this. These were not secret
51:47death camps to which no unauthorized eyewitnesses could visit. They're
51:53endlessly visited. And by early 1942, Germany is awash with stories and
52:00rumours about what is happening to the Jews.
52:07Hitler loyalist Julius Puttwerken has no difficulty justifying these reports of
52:13atrocities.
52:17The Jews are particularly hated. In Litzmannstadt, this hatred was expressed
52:23as retaliation after the Russians had pulled out. When a large number of Jewish
52:28men, women and children were beaten to death. That brings order. One human life
52:33is currently worth very little on the Eastern Front.
52:38Hitler's invasion of Russia needs to be over quickly. The Germans cannot sustain
52:56a war of attrition. This desire to get it over with leads Hitler to one of his
53:02greatest moments of hubris. As his forces approach Moscow, he gives voice to his
53:08most heartfelt wish. I declare today and I declare it without any reservation
53:15that the enemy in the east has been struck down and will never rise again.
53:23But it was not to be. This footage is by an amateur filmmaker in a Panzer unit
53:3070 kilometers from Moscow.
53:34The lead German units come within just 15 kilometers of Moscow. But on the 5th
54:01of December 1941, Soviet forces and the Russian winter stem the tide and force
54:07them back.
54:21Two days later, the Japanese launch their attack on Pearl Harbor. Hitler is thrilled
54:28saying, we now have an ally which has never been conquered in 3,000 years. Four
54:35days later, Hitler declares war on the United States. It will prove as
54:42catastrophic a miscalculation as his invasion of the Soviet Union and all
54:47hope of a swift end to the war is gone.
54:53This afternoon, Germany declared war on the United States, which the Fuhrer
54:58justified in one of his great speeches. This gives us clarity and the mood is
55:04calm and confident. But there will be heavy fighting before we win peace and
55:09victory. Hitler also announced the Russian winter would interrupt the
55:13fighting in the east. How much noble German blood has flowed there against
55:18these Soviet beasts. On the 19th of December 1941, Julius Putvakin makes one
55:28brief final diary entry. It's an unfriendly, hard week for me. He dies
55:39after a short illness just three weeks later. The Hitler loyalist will be spared
55:45the sight of his leader's slow downfall.
55:51For Victor Klemperer, the future is uncertain. His veteran status and Aryan
55:57wife have saved him from deportation thus far. But for how long? He is under
56:04virtual house arrest as Jews are forbidden to leave their homes between
56:07Christmas and New Year. He is scathing about Hitler's latest proclamation. A few
56:15weeks ago, the Russians were officially annihilated. Now they are to be
56:19annihilated in spring. We just need to hold on fanatically. Certainly Hitler
56:25will fall, but before we do... For the Laederer family from Czechoslovakia, the
56:31descent into the night and fog has already begun. Robert Laederer, who took
56:37his footage in the summer of 1939, is in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
56:42He will never return. His wife, Rose, and their children, Nina and Peter, are headed
56:49into the Theresienstadt ghetto. From there, they will be deported to Auschwitz
56:54in 1944. On arrival, Rose and Nina were eligible for work, but Rose refused to
57:03leave Peter to face his fate alone.
57:07They died together in the gas chambers.
57:37In the next episode of Lost Home Movies of Nazi Germany, cracks are starting to
57:42appear. The Allied bombing threatens the very future of the Reich, and life for
57:51internal enemies of the Nazis becomes unbearable. One soldier hatches an
57:58audacious plan to save his Jewish wife. This is my father now, who is just giving
58:05a narcosis to a wounded man, you know. Yeah. While from Holland to Stalingrad,
58:15Normandy to the final desperate stand, Home Movies chart Germany's slide
58:22towards ruin.
58:35And that's tomorrow at 9, and there's a powerful account of escapes beneath the
58:41Berlin Wall after the war, with Tunnel 29 on the BBC Sounds app.
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