Hitler's Riches (2014) - full transcript

When the Third Reich fell in 1945,

the world had no idea

Adolf Hitler was a secret billionaire...

He loved money all the time,

he just wasn't prepared to do
much work for it.

Who had stolen from his own countrymen...

He looks at Germany and he
looks at himself as being one.

Who dictated a last will and testament

just hours before committing suicide.

A tax evader who tried to hide
the true nature of his wealth.

And here you can see a lot of the things



he just put a line through.

Who collected great
works of art for his own glory.

He set out to form
the world's supreme museum.

Who built a secret property empire.

All of these blue dots
having something to do

with Hitler and the Nazi party.

And whose name and image
could make another fortune.

Whoever owns those
intellectual property rights

can continue to receive
the income stream.

This film will reveal

how the fuhrer really made his money.

This is Hitler the man.

And the man who translated his will

tells his story for
the first time on television.



We were absolutely shocked
at what was discovered.

In every city and town,

the Nazis fight back
with furious desperation.

As the Russian army closed in

on Adolf Hitler
and his fellow Nazis in 1945,

the fuhrer realized the game
was up and he'd lost the war.

On the final lap
of their drive on Berlin,

Russian troops send the Germans reeling.

Just before dawn, on April 29th,

in his underground bunker in Berlin,

he gathered his most trusted
staff and aides together,

married his longtime mistress, Eva Braun,

and then began to dictate a will.

It took ten pages to set out

what he called his political testament...

A rant against the Jewish people,

blaming them for the war.

And then he devoted just three pages

to his personal wealth and wishes...

Leaving it to his executor,
Martin bormann,

to decide what each friend
and relative got.

Adolf Hitler.

It was nine days after his 56th birthday.

This is London calling.

The German radio has just
announced that Hitler is dead.

Two days later,

when the Russians finally
broke into Hitler's bunker,

they were able to see how the
fuhrer had spent his final days,

surrounded by oil paintings
and fine furniture.

But no trace of his will was found.

It had already been smuggled
out of Berlin.

It's been almost 70 years
since Herman Rothman first came

to this part of northern Germany

as an intelligence officer
in the British army.

I thought I would have an odd feeling.

We mustn't forget it was 1945.

We're now in 2013.

It's like entering into something new,

which I've never seen before.

This was once
a German prisoner of war camp,

called stalag 11-b.

Almost 100,000 allied troops
were interned here.

In the summer of 1945, the camp
was in the hands of the allies,

processing captured Germans.

Rothman was part of a specialist
German-speaking team,

trained to weed out ss and
Nazi officers on the run.

We decided whether people are
going to stay in this camp

or what's going to happen.

Some were quite open and frank.

Some were not.

Some concealed what really happened.

And we had to make up our mind

whether they were speaking
the truth or not.

Rothman's motivation for finding Nazis

was stronger than most.

My father was taken
to a concentration camp.

And once I heard that, I think I cried,

because I knew that I wouldn't
see my father again.

A lot of people like myself...
Jewish refugees...

It was our desire to see
that Hitler should be beaten

as quickly as possible,

and I joined the army.

I was 18.

Then Herman Rothman's world changed

when he received an early morning call

from his commanding officer.

I remember that I was woken up

at five o'clock in the morning.

I was told that I must come immediately.

I said, "what's so urgent?"

And he said, "I can't explain
anything on the telephone!

Please come in."

Rothman's colleagues
had identified a German

who they believed
was not telling the truth.

The man had been attempting to
sell a story to the newspapers

about Hitler's last days in the bunker.

A routine search had already
been carried out.

But one of Rothman's colleagues
wasn't satisfied.

In our unit, there was a man

who was a tailor by profession.

He saw immediately
there was something wrong.

The shoulder pads don't look right.

And he ripped it open,
and he found documents.

It's difficult to describe

a reaction which one had at the time.

We were absolutely shocked
at what was discovered.

When we saw the signature
of Adolf Hitler,

it became evident that this

was an exceptionally important document.

Rothman realized
he was looking at what might be

the fuhrer's last will and testament.

What I knew by interrogating Nazis,

I had a picture of Hitler

which made me think it was genuine.

The way he spoke, he kept in character.

The man's name was heinz lorenz.

A deputy press officer on Hitler's staff,

he'd been on the run
for more than two months.

He confessed that he'd been
entrusted by Hitler

to smuggle the will out of the bunker.

My commanding officer
said please close all the doors.

Close the windows.
Lock them.

Behind the closed doors,

Rothman and the rest of the team
begin translating the will.

It was on parchment.

Hitler's character shone through.

It was in two sections.

One was a private one, in which
he disposed of his goods,

which he had very little of, apparently,

and gave it back to the German reich,

and on the other hand
he made a political will,

which was of course a diatribe

against who was responsible for the war,

which was the Jewish people.

The rant against
the Jews in the political will

is followed by the naming
of a new Nazi government.

And Hitler's brief
three-page private will

disguises the fact
that he was a rich man.

I think the private will

was also for consumption
to the German people.

He wanted to show in his private will

he had very little.

I always felt that he thought
about it very, very clearly.

"I wanted to show the people
I had no benefits.

My life was purely devoted

entirely to the wealth
of the German people."

And that is what came,

was evidenced
by reading the private will.

Hitler leaves his possessions,

"in so far as they are worth anything,"

to the Nazi party.

He leaves his paintings...
"the ones bought by me"...

To what he calls a "picture gallery"

in his home town of linz.

Martin bormann becomes his sole executor,

with the full legal authority
to make all decisions

relating to personal mementos
and the distribution of money

to maintain the present
standard of living

of Hitler's siblings, mother-in-law

and faithful fellow workers.

Adolf Hitler.

Reading Adolf Hitler's
will for the first time

made Herman Rothman want to know more

about the motives of the man
who dictated it.

What was the real Hitler?

What makes this man tick?

How did he get all this power...

This immense power?

How he used the power.

Did he use it entirely
for the German people?

Well, some will say, think, yes.

On the other hand, you'll find
that people will say no.

He projected one image
to the German people,

and there was a real Hitler.

After the war,

the "real Hitler" was hard to find.

Whatever he left behind
in the fuhrer bunker

was taken by the Russians
or souvenir hunters.

The allies seized his Munich apartment

and bombed his country residence
in the bavarian mountains.

Most of his huge personal
art collection was missing.

And the man who knew how to get
his hands on Hitler's money,

Martin bormann, was found dead
in a Berlin street

two days after his boss
committed suicide.

Finally, in 1948,
an allied de-nazification court

valued his entire estate
at just 200,000 deutschmarks...

Roughly $60,000.

The bavarian state archives

keeps German artifacts
of great historical value,

particularly those
from the second world war.

Dr. Helen fry is a historian

who's discovered there are
traces of the real Hitler

to be found, if you know where to look

and can get permission...

Hidden away in cardboard boxes.

After Hitler's death,
a number of his belongings

were gathered from different residences

all over Germany and Austria.

And here, gosh.

This is his gun license.

A very young Hitler here,

and he's actually signed
across the photograph.

Oh, look.
Hitler with his mother.

There are rumors that this was

a very important personal
photograph for him.

He used to keep it at all times on him.

Klara Hitler gave birth to six children.

Adolf was one of only two
to survive childhood.

The other was his sister, Paula.

His father, alois,
had been married twice before,

and so Adolf already had
an older half brother and sister

when he was born in April 1889.

Ah, now here we have a document.

In this box there are more

than just personal and family mementos.

This is his original...
Well, first will. 1938.

Hitler had set out plans

for the distribution
of his wealth once before...

Written in his own hand,

at the age of 50 when he was
already ruling Germany.

Hitler was convinced he would
die young from a major illness,

just as both his parents had
while he was still a child.

But unlike his final will,

this one gives much more
financial detail.

It names his heirs

and exactly how much
he wishes to leave each.

This is Hitler the man.

You know, he's leaving
ordinary possessions,

a certain amount of money to his sister,

his step-brother, his housekeeper.

He left his sister,
Paula, 1,000 marks a month.

Equal to $650 back then.

Had Hitler died in 1938,
in the first year alone

his estate would have had
to pay out nearly $60,000...

Over a million dollars in today's money.

Oh, here, Hitler the artist.

But Hitler was not always rich.

In fact, he was once very poor...

Selling his own drawings on
postcards for just a few cents.

Homeless and hungry,

he gave up his artistic career
and fashioned a new image.

Image was very important to him.

He took acting lessons,

he took speaking lessons
from professionals,

how to present himself on stage.

Photographs were taken
so that he could view himself

and decide just how to be.

It was the image of power.

Heil! Heil! Heil!

Hitler styled himself
as the people's leader.

Sieg heil! Sieg heil!
Sieg heil!

He quickly realized
the money-making potential

of personal appearances

and, right from the start,
misled his followers.

His notepaper
is very pretentiously labeled,

"from the chancellery
of Adolf Hitler."

This is, we're talking 1920s,

before he'd come anywhere near power.

He used to say that he took
no fees for his speeches.

Oh, yeah?

He didn't even have a bank account,

and yet underneath the chancellery,

on the notepaper,

it gives you his bank account number.

Cris whetton is a British author

who has spent a decade trying to work out

what Hitler was worth when he died.

Let's try to talk in today's figures.

I would say, for his lifestyle,
that he was probably pushing

30,000 to 50,000 Euros a year.

But by the time we get to 1944,

he's definitely in the billions
of reichsmarks,

which would not be far off
billions of Euros today.

Hitler set
the foundation for his billions

way back in 1923,

when he was sent to prison
for nine months

for trying to overthrow
the German government.

While inside, he wrote the book

which was to become the basis
of his fortune...

"Mein Kampf."

Published in 1924,

Hitler received a 10% royalty
from every sale.

But it took a while to get going.

Concerning the different versions

of "Mein Kampf," there are many of them.

I just picked out some
to give you a general idea.

I brought along the very first edition,

which appeared in two volumes.

It was pretty expensive
at the time. 10, 12 marks.

This was a lot to deal with
during the early 1920s.

And they sold so-so.

To be perfectly frank,
it's not exactly a good read.

So later on they got this idea
to produce a popular version.

The popular version
changed Hitler's fortunes.

As soon as the money started to roll in,

Hitler raised his standard of living.

He bought himself a luxury Mercedes...

And came up with the idea that
would make him even richer.

When Hitler was elected
chancellor in 1933,

newlywed German couples would
get a free copy of "Mein Kampf."

Of course there were a lot of marriages.

There always are.

And they all had to be paid for
by the state.

So the state bought the books

to present to every wed, married couple,

and Hitler reaped the profits.

At its peak,
"Mein Kampf" was earning Hitler

$1 million a year in royalties alone...

Equivalent to $12 million today.

By the time the war ended,

nearly ten million copies of
"Mein Kampf" had been printed,

and Hitler once boasted

that his book was only outsold
by the Bible.

He loved money all the time.

He just wasn't prepared
to do much work for it.

He liked having it.

It gave him the freedom
to do whatever he wanted.

Whatever he wanted wasn't enough.

In 1938 he owed
400,000 deutschmarks in tax...

$120,000 back then.

He felt that
paying taxes was beneath him.

By the time he's become
chancellor, the authorities,

presumably with a little bit
of pressure, said, uh,

we think it's reasonable
that as chancellor

herr Hitler should not pay tax,

and therefore we will take
all of his tax papers,

and they will be destroyed.

Well, they weren't.

They were locked away in a safe.

Conscientious civil servants.

And here is a copy
from 1925 through to 1933.

A lot of the things
he just put a line through.

Look, everything dashed out.
Blank. Blank.

The tax authorities,
they always wanted to know

what happened to the collections,

the admission fees for
the meetings that he spoke at.

And he would say, "I don't know,

it doesn't come to me!"

It goes to the national socialist party.

Sieg heil!

Sieg heil! Sieg heil!

Hitler was also
secretly investing his money

in a property empire.

He had a luxury apartment
in the center of Munich

and also an interest in a villa
used by his mistress, Eva Braun.

But his real home,
and most valuable asset,

was in a far more desirable location.

Since the early 1920s, Hitler holidayed

near the alpine village of Berchtesgaden,

on the southern tip of Germany,

close to the border with Austria.

He fell in love with Berchtesgaden area.

It was his ambition to get
a house there, which he did.

There's a lot of documentation

about the property
around the obersalzberg,

particularly this one from 1937.

And here we see the haus wachenfeld

as it was when Hitler bought it.

And we have the price here,
40,000 goldmarks.

And he slowly enlarged it.

He was very, very proud of it.

Hitler called his home the berghof.

30 rooms filled
with expensive furniture...

Rare persian carpets,

tapestries,

and paintings by Dutch, Italian
and German masters.

Table silver engraved
with the initials a.H.

And stamped with the German
eagle and Nazi swastika.

And there were other changes,
by his own hand...

But not always successful.

He fancied himself as an architect,

although he had
no formal training whatsoever.

And he went ahead to modify
the house himself

to suit his grandiose vision.

He had this huge picture window,

and right underneath it was the garage.

So any time anybody
started a car in the garage,

up came the fumes from the exhaust

straight through the open picture window.

The berghof was one of the few places

Hitler could relax with Eva Braun.

From the very beginning,

he had tried to keep their relationship

a secret from the German people.

We are only able to see this today

because Eva Braun
was a home movie fanatic,

and no one dared stop her
from filming or being filmed.

Hitler spent more and more time
at the berghof,

surrounded by loyal henchmen,

barely recognizable
without their Nazi uniforms.

And we see here on the map, point 16...

Point 16, this was haus wachenfeld,

which became the berghof.

But by 1944, all of these blue dots,

each one having something to do
with Hitler and the Nazi party.

The hangers-on...
Goebbels, goring, speer...

Plus ss barracks,
anti-aircraft emplacements,

and so on and so forth.

Eventually Hitler's mountain retreat

became the unofficial
second seat of the Third Reich.

Hitler wasn't just focused
on military victory.

He was also fighting
a dirty cultural war.

Hitler, the man
who wanted to rule the world,

is only the public face.

The private man is something

that few people seem to understand.

His beating heart was all to do with art,

on which he had strong judgments.

He held dinner parties at Berchtesgaden

in which the arts were freely
discussed with visiting generals

and not a word is spoken

about the blood spilled
in camps within 50 miles.

Dachau, the village
south of Munich which housed

one of the filthiest
of the concentration camps,

was also a place where Hitler housed art.

Somehow this schizophrenic person

managed to live in two different worlds.

Godfrey barker is an expert
on Hitler the art lover.

Hitler was an artist.

He leaves behind about 2,300 watercolors,

mostly of fine classical
architecture and buildings.

They're meticulous.

They're well executed,

but they're invariably
wooden and lifeless.

Hitler became
an art collector in the 1930s.

In his will, he leaves his paintings

for to an as-yet-unbuilt fuhrer museum

in his hometown of linz in Austria.

By the end of the war

he'd gathered 8,500 paintings
for this purpose.

That aroused my interest.

Hitler and his fellow Nazis

were art collectors
on an industrial scale.

The whole of Europe was at their mercy.

What they liked, they took.

But the fuhrer was an exception.

He not only stole, he also
used his own money to buy.

I had expected to find
that he was directly responsible

for looting and stealing of paintings

that he wanted for himself,

and I couldn't find any evidence for it.

I found evidence that he paid for them.

Sometimes at knockdown prices,
but not direct theft in any way.

I was quite surprised by this.

And I have to say in all honesty
that's what I found.

Didn't expect it, but I did.

When the allies started to look

for Hitler's art collection
after his death,

they couldn't find most of it.

Nor could they trace the vast art haul

stolen by his fellow Nazis.

It was if it had been spirited away.

The Austrian village of Altaussee

lies close to the southern German border,

50 miles from Hitler's house
in Berchtesgaden.

In April and may 1945,
as the Third Reich crumbled,

it was overrun by Nazis
looking for somewhere to hide.

But it also harbored another secret.

Deep inside the mountains,

40 miles of tunnels, on 18 levels,

had been carved out by miners

extracting salt from the limestone rock.

Many of these chambers date back
over a thousand years.

Helmut kalss, translated: Salt
has always been very important

and has given the community an identity.

This has led to uproars against
authority since the middle ages.

Helmut kalss is a leading authority

on the Altaussee salt mine,

which was used by the Nazis to store art.

They were inspired by a miners'
chapel deep below ground.

In the chapel there were
paintings for many years,

and they were well preserved.

So you realize that this might
be a great place to store art.

The wood is from 1943,
and it still looks new.

The 1943 wood
is shelving put in by the Nazis

to store more than 12,000 works of art.

But when American forces arrived
a month after Hitler's death,

the entrance to the mine
had been blown up.

The German commander in the region

gave the order to destroy everything.

The U.S. army sent in

a specialist military fine arts unit,

who became known
as "the monuments men."

They discovered the bombs

had not damaged any of the treasures.

By the time they had emptied the mine,

they had filled 80 truckloads

and recovered art worth
more than $3.5 billion.

But it turns out
the real heroes of Altaussee

were the mineworkers,

who have a long tradition
of resisting authority.

I believe from this tradition

there was a resistance to Hitler.

There were bombs in boxes here.

The mineworkers carried the boxes out.

They just destroyed
the entrance of the mine,

and the artworks were saved.

What the monuments men didn't realize

is that they had not only
recovered Nazi looted treasure,

but also Hitler's missing
"paid for" art collection.

At the time, no one cared.

They swept everything
into one clearing center

in, I think it was in koblenz.

And there everything got mixed up.

It doesn't seem to have been
properly documented.

And then it was decided

if it doesn't belong to the French

or Russia doesn't stake a claim for it,

then they gave it back to the states

of Austria or Germany,

from whichever country
it might have come from.

With his personal
art collection scattered

and his property empire in ruins,

the allies gave the German
rights and royalties

of "Mein Kampf"

to the state of Bavaria,

leaving little of any real value.

This is how they came to calculate

the worth of his estate at only $60,000.

But, as the file on Hitler's riches

was seemingly closed in 1948,

america's secret intelligence agencies

already knew this was by
no means the complete picture.

This rarely seen, previously
classified report,

by america's office
for strategic studies,

the precursor of the CIA,

reveals that, as early as 1944,
the oss knew

that Hitler had access
to a massive amount of cash.

In a secret operation,
codenamed "safehaven,"

they found Swiss bank accounts
holding 45 million reichsmarks,

including one controlled
by Hitler's business manager,

Max Amann,

containing the foreign royalties
from "Mein Kampf."

Amann was officially the owner

of the Nazi publishing house
which churned out "Mein Kampf."

He was also the sole guardian
of the fuhrer's money.

He had a foul personality.

But he was a good manager.

And it was he who came up
with the name "Mein Kampf,"

not Hitler.

Only Amann saw the books.

Amann personally brought
the account books to Hitler

wherever he was, whenever it was
an accounting period.

There are several witnesses to this.

Nobody else saw them.

If he wanted money for something,

he just used him as the bank.

Max Amann died in 1957,

taking the secret of
Hitler's money to his grave.

In New York, an American
forensic accountant,

Ken yormark, has spent a lifetime

trying to track down the cash

squirreled away in foreign banks
by the Nazis.

Hitler's bank accounts
are not very well known.

There is not a lot of
information that's out there.

He had accounts in Switzerland
and in Holland.

Yormark believes that
the trail to Hitler's millions

might not yet be stone cold.

I have been involved in cases

where we were able to recoup information

from 1937 going forward.

It was reported that
that information was destroyed.

Well, in fact it wasn't.

You have to follow the funds.

Following the funds
is easier said than done,

as far as Hitler is concerned.

Even in death, the Nazi leader

made it impossible
to separate what was his

from what really belonged
to the German people.

Looking at his will,

you can clearly see
his megalomaniac tendencies

where he looks at Germany and he
looks at himself as being one.

And as a result,
all the assets of Germany

are basically his own piggybank.

When Hitler died,

he left behind around 20
close living relatives.

His sister, Paula, was next of kin

and the one who followed the funds

to try and find the piggybank.

His will clearly stated
that Paula and a half sister

should have their standards
of living maintained

for their lifetimes.

When the allies confiscated
all his known assets,

she went to court
to try to get them back.

In 1960, after a 12-year battle,
a Munich court ruled

she was entitled to two-thirds
of his estate.

The remainder went to her
half sister and brother.

But they put no value on it.

The next step would have been to identify

what legally still belonged
to her brother

and how much it was worth.

Paula Hitler never got that far.

She died in June 1960 at the age of 64...

Four months after her victory.

The court subsequently ordered

that any benefit
from her brother's estate

would now pass to her heirs
and relatives.

The bank has the obligation

after an account has been inactive

for a specific amount of time

to reach out to that individual

and try and find out whether
they actually are still alive.

If in fact they can't find
that individual,

then they have the obligation

to reach out to an heir,
to try and find that heir.

If one of Hitler's relatives
were to attempt to do so today,

I think it would stir
some significant controversy.

They would potentially have the right

to attempt to try and claim
some of those funds.

Not only have
the banks failed to reach out

after all this time,

they've almost certainly
taken advantage of a new law.

When an account becomes dormant

and ultimately goes to the state,

they can't use those funds.

So there are big issues right now,

for example in Switzerland,

where there's just recently
been passed a ruling

that after 62 years

an account would actually pass
to the government.

It's now been more than 70 years

since Hitler's death.

So the new law ensures that
any cash the fuhrer did have

will never be seen,

meaning someone, somewhere
has made a tidy fortune.

Adolf Hitler's name and image
is still earning.

This is a music video from Thailand.

The band don't want it
to be seen anymore,

but it's still on the world wide web.

In India there was a chain
of Hitler tailors.

In Bangkok, there is a group
of fast food outlets.

When a collection of his luxury
Mercedes was put up for sale,

it fetched $8 million.

There are now all kinds of auctions

involving items said to have
been owned or used by Hitler.

A signed copy of a two-part
edition of "Mein Kampf"

went for $64,000

to an anonymous online buyer
in January 2014.

And "Mein Kampf" will soon be
available for all to cash in on.

Copyright ends 70 years
after the author's death,

which means copyright
will be free and open

and will pass into the public domain

at the end of 2015.

Well, starting on January 1, 2016,

everybody is basically
allowed to do with the text

whatever he wants.

Some are already doing

whatever they want with the book.

A colleague of ours
recently traveled to India,

and he discovered this
English version of "Mein Kampf"

in a bookstore in Delhi...
Or New Delhi it was, I believe...

Right next to a biography of Gandhi,

and it is presented here
on the back of the book

"that it will give you an insight

into one of the greatest evil
geniuses of the last century."

We were flabbergasted...
I think the British term is...

By this, because everybody
would probably subscribe to evil

but not so much to genius.

Hitler has even become
a satirical attraction

on social media.

"Hipster Hitler" is a comic book

with a very 21st century genesis.

We were talking on Skype,

and we'd always wanted to do
a comic together.

One of us said something like
"ironic Hitler,"

and the other person said
"Hipster Hitler,"

and we were like,
oh, that has a ring to it.

So I said I'll draw something right now.

And we put it up, and then
we woke up the next morning,

and there were like 50,000 hits
on the website, which was weird.

So then that's when we decided

to actually make it a full comic.

"Hipster Hitler" is basically a comic

that envisions Hitler if he was
openly treated as a hipster

and acted to an extreme level
of hipsterism,

in that world war two period.

There were a lot of traits Hitler had

that were in line with what we
consider the modern hipster.

He was a vegetarian, he was
a big animal rights activist.

The comic I have open
is called "rhineland."

So it's about Hitler deciding
to reclaim the rhineland.

And in the comic, the reason
he takes it back

is not because of territorial issues,

it's because it contains hops,
flax and hemp,

which can be used to make beer,
and hemp for, like, t-shirts.

So he's happy for that reason.

I think Hitler would absolutely put this

on the list of books to burn.

An even greater irony

is that the publishers
of "Hipster Hitler"

pay nothing for the use of his image.

Any other well-known person
would cost them money,

because they would almost
certainly have an agent.

Like Mark Roesler,
who is based in Indiana

and specializes in representing
deceased stars like James Dean,

as well as other
more infamous celebrities,

earning him the nickname
"agent of the dead."

We've often been
approached by family members

of people like John Dillinger
to the son of Sam

to Al Capone, people like that.

Whoever owns those
intellectual property rights

can continue on
and not only protect those

but continue to receive the income stream

that comes from those
intellectual property rights,

which can often be very substantial.

In the case of Hitler,
we know about his book,

we know that upon his death

those copyrights were assigned
or conveyed to someone else.

In addition to that,

it is possible
that certain family members

could take out trademark registrations

to his name or even his image.

But the third area,
in the right of publicity,

it's a right that we all have,

whether you're famous or not famous

or infamous or not,

and that's generally the
right that someone would have...

A descendant or an assignee...

To protect the name and likeness
and the overall good will

associated with Hitler.

You know, so it could be
good will, bad will,

notoriety, infamy, whatever.

Infamy and notoriety

have always been part of Hitler's image.

And it's emerged that he was
well ahead of today's game

when it came to cashing in.

In 1921, when he became leader
of the Nazi party,

Hitler appointed this man
his official photographer...

Heinrich Hoffman.

It made them both rich.

Now, it was Hoffman
who had the great idea

of copyrighting Hitler's image.

And nobody then could do anything

without paying the fees
to Hoffman's agency,

which of course then came to Hitler.

They had a copyright on any Hitler image,

anything and everywhere.

When they put his head
on Germany's postage stamps,

few realized that the man himself

was getting a personal commission

for the use of his image.

It's almost certain
that no one will ever know

exactly how much Adolf Hitler
was worth when he died,

nor what the real intentions
of his personal will were.

For the man who first translated
Hitler's will in 1945,

the place where it was found

will always evoke strong memories.

I was a 20-year-old boy...

A boy, yes...

Who experienced quite a lot.

There's no life here whatsoever.

That's funny, isn't it?

You don't see any birds.

I think the birds must realize
what happened here before.

I think there must have been a Hitler

who wasn't exactly the type he
projected to the German people.

But there was an inner, private Hitler.

And that private Hitler

wanted to make use
of the position which he had,

use of the power which he had.

But he knew that he was going
to commit suicide, yes,

and therefore he said,
"now I have to make a will."

He wanted to show his ambition

as purely for the German people.

And a man like that wanted to
project that image for eternity.

That's why he made this
private will very, very little.

What was the real Hitler,

I think, will take
many years to find out.