Spying on Hitler's Army: The Secret Recordings (2013) - full transcript

In the aftermath of World War Two,

ordinary German soldiers

claimed they knew nothing

about the Holocaust.

They blamed all its atrocities

on the SS.

We were actually there

when a pretty girl was shot.

That's too bad.

But she knew she was

going to be shot.

Now new evidence,

only recently discovered,

exposes the full extent of that lie.

What did they do to the children?

They seized

three-year-olds by the hair,

held them up and shot them with

a pistol and threw them in.

I saw it for myself.

The evidence comes from one

of the most audacious operations

ever conducted

by British intelligence.

German prisoners of war

were secretly bugged

and the conversations they thought

private, transcribed word for word.

In the transcripts, we found totally

new knowledge about war crimes.

About huge war crimes.

I had an hour to spare

and we went to some barracks

and there we slaughtered 1,500 Jews.

These were German soldiers

as they'd never been heard before,

uncensored and unguarded.

But the recordings were destroyed

and the transcripts

locked away for decades.

This operation was what

was called Top Secret.

I did not tell even my closest

family what I had been doing

for about 50 years after the war.

Now declassified, some of the most

chilling of these conversations

can be reconstructed

for the first time.

I bet she let you sleep

with her too?

Yes. You couldn't tell

that she was a Jewess.

She was quite a nice type, too.

It was just a shame that she had

to die with everybody else.

75,000 Jews were shot there.

These are their stolen confessions.

We are in the preliminary stage

of one of the greatest battles

in history.

I have nothing to offer but blood,

toil, tears and sweat.

In the chaos and carnage

of total war,

high-grade intelligence

was as vital as fighting power.

MI19, a department

of the War Office,

set out to exploit

German prisoners of war

in the most ambitious surveillance

operation ever attempted.

Three stately homes were converted

into unlikely prison camps

and wired for sound.

Nowhere was out of range of MI19's

specially-designed microphones.

There were bugging devices in the

lamp fittings, behind mirrors,

in the fire places.

It was a huge operation

and something this technical

and sophisticated had never

been undertaken before.

The British were very clever

at thinking into the mindset

of how they could get intelligence

from the enemy

and it was a very British thing

to do actually.

We're very used nowadays to the

idea of conversations being bugged.

People weren't during

the Second World War.

This was the beginning

of modern surveillance.

This was entirely new.

Hidden away out of view

were the listening rooms,

filled with state-of-the-art

disc recording equipment.

I was told to report

to the Commanding Officer

that what I was going to do

was probably more important

for the war effort than if I drove

a tank or fired a machine gun.

So, what can you tell me

about Knickebein?

Captured German soldiers were

brought to the UK and interrogated.

Those considered

an intelligence asset

were sent to the wired locations...

..where listeners were ready and

waiting for them to start talking.

..I had to drop bombs

on a station at Posen.

Now eight out of the 16 bombs

fell on the town and on the houses.

I didn't like that but I said to

myself, "Hell, orders are orders."

We knew that the microphones

must have been of very high quality

because we could hear

the prisoners very clearly

and even if they whispered

to their cellmate,

it was very often possible

to pick up what they said.

On the third day I didn't care, and

on the fourth day I was enjoying it.

It was our before breakfast

entertainment

to chase single soldiers over

the fields with machine gun fire

and to leave them lying there

with a few bullets in the back.

They weren't being interrogated,

they weren't minding

what they were saying.

They weren't being careful

to not give anything away.

They were speaking to their equals

in what they thought was privacy.

We attacked civilians

in the streets,

all machine guns firing like mad.

You should have seen

the horses stampede!

The recordings were translated

into English

and transcripts circulated

right up to Churchill himself.

The system is called X-Gerat.

I'll tell you how it works.

A beam is sent on a short wave...

Day in, day out, they're picking up

snippets of information

from the prisoners,

and in fact there was very little,

when one works with the transcripts,

there was very little that we didn't

actually know about

the German military capability.

Only now is the full story

of this unprecedented

bugging operation becoming clear.

And it was only by

chance that the secret transcripts

were discovered at all.

German historian Sonke Neitzel

was on a routine research trip

to the National Archives

in London.

He'd ordered up some files

on U-boat crews.

What arrived on his desk was

the discovery of a lifetime.

I just ordered three files,

and had these three huge,

massive files on my desk,

and so I start reading that.

September '43,

German Navy personnel.

And it was, I mean,

it was so authentic.

You could really just see

the people speaking to each other.

Sonke had been given

800 pages of transcripts.

The archives contained

a further 49,000.

And then at that moment, I realised,

I might be standing

on the tip of an iceberg.

The recordings themselves

appear to have been destroyed,

only the transcripts remain.

The transcribers had even faithfully

noted how the original words

were spoken.

You were really able to see these

people talking, you were able

to get a feeling of the killing,

the fighting, the dying, the war.

When I saw the documents,

one of the things that struck me

was how real they were.

I mean, the discussions,

the way they conducted themselves,

this is how soldiers talk.

For the first,

desperate years of war,

British Intelligence

had few prisoners to spy on.

But in 1942,

Britain's fortunes changed.

Victory over the Germans in North

Africa brought thousands of POWs.

Among them,

the first senior officers,

including the highly prized

General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma.

Von Thoma was taken back to London

to be confined in the bugged

stately home

reserved for officers -

Trent Park.

His capture was a coup.

Von Thoma knew the intimate secrets

of Hitler's military machine,

but though a proud patriot,

he was not a Nazi party member.

He was met by the Welfare officer,

Lord Aberfeldy.

When I was captured, the Italian

generals who were taken

at the same time arrived

with a load of luggage.

They looked like tourists!

I immediately said,

"Please, don't put them with me!"

Von Thoma is very intelligent

and exceedingly well read.

He has a striking personality

and is violently anti-Nazi.

Von Thoma joined

General Ludwig Cruwell

who'd also been captured

in North Africa

when his aircraft accidentally

landed at a British airfield.

Cruwell is a follower

and admirer of Hitler.

An ignorant, stupid,

sentimental, vain and self-satisfied

type of Prussian senior officer.

Holding such strong,

opposing political views,

von Thoma and Cruwell

inevitably clashed.

And when they did so,

the recorders were ready.

The stupid thing about our propaganda

is that it's entirely negative.

Your attitude is negative.

No, but the propaganda...

Oh, no, everything else is bad.

Wherever you go, things are bad,

according to you.

There are a lot of things

which are bad.

Of course there are! And with

the English, everything's all right!

For British Intelligence,

this infighting between their lab

rats was a revelation.

I think you have to understand that

German was not synonymous with Nazi.

Not every German officer was

necessarily Nazi in outlook.

And the British needed to understand

why some Germans were Nazis

and others weren't.

Lulled into a false sense

of security,

the prisoners talked freely

amongst themselves.

The trap, so carefully set

by MI19 was working as planned.

(CHURCHILL) 'Now this is not the end.

'This is not even

the beginning of the end.

'But it is perhaps the

end of the beginning.'

The captured generals

brought to Trent Park

were shown full respect

for their rank.

They never imagined the courtesy

and luxurious surroundings

were part of an ingenious plan

to lure them off guard.

'The German generals

were really astonished

'how nice it was in Trent Park.'

They were supplied with newspapers,

they could listen to the radio.

Sometimes they struggled

with the British food,

but normally they were quite

comfortable.

The British obviously did this

not because they were caring

for these generals,

because they knew, "If we treat them

well, they will speak."

I am firmly convinced that

is the only way

that Western Civilisation

can be saved.

'Tapping the conversations

of the German generals

'would provide for British

intelligence far more

'than they were ever anticipating.'

Now we get an insight

into the mindset

of the higher echelons

of the Nazi regime.

To break the monotony of confinement

and disarm them further,

the guests, as MI19

liked to call their captives,

were indulged with day

trips to London...

..and on occasion to luncheon at the

exclusive Simpson's on the Strand.

The generals were

trapped in a world of deception.

Nothing was what it seemed,

and that included Lord Aberfeldy,

their welfare officer.

Of course, he wasn't a real lord,

he was a MI19 officer.

'But he gained their trust,

because they kind of began to believe

'that he was on their side,

in an odd sort of way.

'But, of course, little did they

know, these German generals,

'that even the trees were bugged!'

Once Lord Aberfeldy had

earned their trust, he exploited it.

His casual questions

were deliberately leading

and timed to be within

range of a microphone.

I've read that the

generals are taking over now,

and that the Nazi Party is being

pushed aside, to some extent?

If things get really bad,

the party will go, I can assure you,

because so much hatred

has been stored up.

Of course, they will try everything

possible in order to stay in power.

But a few thousand Gestapo men can't

keep down a people of

80 million

if the people are no longer willing.

But the SS at home...

Couldn't the SS suppress

a revolutionary movement?

No. If it really broke out,

it would be impossible.

His real name was Ian Munro.

The British went even so far to put

him in a distant relationship

to the Royal Family.

So they felt quite impressed.

MUSIC

The generals were supplied with a

radio, books, newspapers...

MI19 hoped that keeping them

in touch with the outside world

would provoke useful conversations.

(NEWSREADER)

The triumphant conclusion

of the Battle of Stalingrad,

with the capture of eight more

German generals and 45,000

other prisoners

in the past two days,

has overshadowed the rest of the

news from Russia...

And it was radio news of

the German defeat at Stalingrad

that would give Trent Park

its biggest breakthrough.

'The defeat at Stalingrad affected

the German generals profoundly.'

This is the first all-out defeat.

It was

unambiguous, it was a disaster.

The humiliating surrender

of General Paulus

brought even von Thoma and Cruwell

together in shared dismay.

I would have rather

blown my brains out.

I am bitterly disappointed,

bitterly disappointed in Paulus!

Yes, it's terrible.

And that

so many generals surrendered...

It's frightful!

26 of them.

The possibility of military defeat

was a bitter prospect

for such proud warriors.

Later, von Thoma discussed

with Cruwell a new secret weapon

that might yet

save their beloved fatherland.

'This rocket business.'

I saw it once.

There's a special testing site.

They've got these huge things.

They said they'd go up 15 kilometres

into the stratosphere.

And how do you aim?

You can only aim at an area,

at some central point.

You're bound to hit somewhere.

It's horrible.

But the major there was

full of hope. He said,

"Wait until next year

and the fun will start."

It was all very secret.

Von Thoma was

talking about the deadly V2

being tested at Peenemunde

on the north German coast.

It was the first rocket to be fired

through the stratosphere,

and there was no defence against it.

Now von Thoma had given conclusive

evidence that it was not a fiction.

This is crucial information

for British intelligence.

No longer is it in the realm of

whispers, or hearsay, or what it is.

These are two high-ranking

individuals that have knowledge

of a top secret programme

that the Germans hope

will turn the war in their favour.

Von Thoma's evidence persuaded

Bomber Command to carry out

a high risk raid on Peenemunde.

The V2 site was destroyed

and the rocket's use delayed

by several months,

buying the Allies valuable time.

'The V2 certainly could have had

a dramatic impact

'on the Allied landings at Normandy.'

Certainly they would not have

gone off as planned,

and they might have failed overall.

But it wasn't just

operational secrets

that MI19 was hoping to gather.

The generals were dividing

into factions -

those who supported the Nazis

and those who did not.

'Every day that this war continues

constitutes a war crime.

'They should put

Adolf Hitler in a padded cell.'

'And it was very important that these

people revealed their secrets,'

because if they were with the Nazis

then Hitler had a future.

If they were against the Nazis,

there was the possibility

that there might be a coup,

that Germany might go in a different

direction.

So it was very important

the British understood

'the thought processes

of this officer class.'

General Cruwell headed those

who supported the Fuhrer,

while General von Thoma led

the anti-Nazi faction.

I always say no matter how many

faults the system has,

nor how wrong it is,

I have served under this system,

I have fought under this system,

my soldiers have fallen

under this system...

so I can't, the moment things

go wrong, say, "To hell with it."

I won't do that.

Cruwell was fighting for his Fuhrer,

he was fighting for Hitler.

He tried to take all these

ideas of the Third Reich seriously.

Obviously he also saw

negative things,

but he tried to avoid that, to put

this under the carpet somehow.

I regret every bomb,

every scrap of material

and every human life that is still

being wasted in this senseless war.

The only gain that it will bring us

is an end to ten years of gangster

rule.

'Von Thoma represents

the traditional German officer.'

He's well read, he's old world,

if you would,

he's very comfortable and academic

in intellectual circles.

'Such an individual with such

a background would look at

'a relatively low-born, coarse

individual like Adolf Hitler,'

he would've looked at him with

suspicion if not outright disgust.

Hostilities reached a climax

when a young officer,

Lieutenant Klaus Hubbuch,

told Cruwell that von Thoma

had made derogatory remarks

about the Fuhrer.

Acting on this report,

Cruwell confronted von Thoma,

and the recorders

were running.

I would like to discuss

something with you.

Certainly.

Hubbuch came to see me

and asked me to tell you

not to try

to influence him with propaganda.

What's all this about?

He said you gave him

your views on the situation.

Because he talked such a damned

lot of nonsense.

Fancy saying all English newspapers

are Jewish.

I have a thoroughly good

impression of him.

But the boy is bound to feel upset

when you say to him

Hitler isn't normal.

It's common knowledge

he's not normal.

I don't agree.

I also know that you're saying

that to everyone,

and I know that a great many people

take exception to it.

Don't make any mistake about that.

A great many people here are not

at all amused when you say that.

All right, tell me who they are.

I shall be delighted to tell you.

Well, tell me then!

I must ask them first.

All right, bring them to me!

I will!

We'll see what happens.

I will!

They should come with you!

I'll see to that.

With you!

I will!

As the generals in Trent Park argued

over Hitler's sanity,

the listeners were hearing accounts

of how far that madness had spread.

'We saw one of these

executions once.'

Believe me, if you'd seen it,

it would've made you shudder.

Did they shoot them

with machine guns?

With sub-machine-guns.

Horst Minnieur was one of

a new intake of POWs

who had seen

action on the Eastern Front.

They were the shock troops of

the Nazis' ideological fight

against Jews and Communists.

And, in a special decree

signed by Hitler himself,

they'd been given free rein

to act without restraint.

'The war in the East is

a completely different war.

'Torture is not prohibited.

'In fact, the civilian population

is quite literally eliminated'

in many cases, and

always treated ruthlessly.

We were actually there

when a pretty girl was shot.

That's too bad.

But she knew she was going

to be shot.

We were going past on motorcycles

and we saw a procession.

Suddenly she called to us.

She said they were going to be shot.

At first we thought she

was making some sort of joke.

Did she walk there in her clothes?

Yes, she was smartly dressed. She

certainly was an incredible girl.

Surely the one who shot her

shot wide.

Nobody could do anything

about it.

The guys were standing there

with their machine guns.

They clipped on a magazine,

fired to the right and to the left.

It didn't matter whether

they were still alive or not.

When they were hit,

they fell over backwards into a pit.

Then the next lot came up.

What about the people who

were in there who were not yet dead?

That was bad luck for them,

they died down there.

I can tell you, you heard a terrific

screaming and shrieking.

Were you watching

when the pretty Jewess was there?

No, we weren't there then.

All we know is that she was shot.

Had you met her before?

Yes, she cleaned our barracks.

The week we were staying there,

we went to the barracks to sleep

so that we didn't have

to stay outside.

I bet she let you sleep

with her, too.

Yes, but you had to be careful

not to be found out.

It's nothing new.

It was really a scandal,

the way we slept with Jewish women.

What did she say?

Well, we chatted together

and she said

she was at Gottingen University.

And a girl like that let anyone

sleep with her!

Yes. You couldn't tell

that she was a Jewess.

She was quite a nice type, too.

It was just her bad luck that

she had to die with the others.

75,000 Jews were shot there.

For many of the listeners,

these shocking confessions

carried an added chill.

The stories of killing Jews

touched them personally.

'We all tried not to get emotionally

involved in it.'

We tried to remain detached from

what we heard.

Fritz was a German Jewish refugee

with relatives left behind

in Berlin.

For the bugging operation

to work properly,

MI19 would need hundreds

of such native German speakers,

men who were also

committed to the cause.

The answer was actually staring

them in the face,

and it was in the British Army's

pioneer corps,

where a number of German Jewish

refugees were serving

in British Army uniform.

They had fled Nazi persecution,

and now they were giving something

back to Britain

for saving their lives.

We felt that what we were doing was

in a way retribution

for what the Nazis had done

to us and to other Jews.

We felt that we were getting back

at them,

and that was very satisfying.

When I told English people at first

that I had joined the British Army

during the war, their reaction

would often be,

"How awful for you to have

to fight your own people."

They cannot understand that they

were not our own people anymore.

They were our enemies,

and we wanted to fight them.

We had to fight them.

Fritz and his fellow listeners

were amassing damning evidence

of German war crimes.

Yet there were

still far darker secrets to come.

By the end of 1943,

the war had turned against Germany.

North Africa had been lost,

the Italians had surrendered

and in Russia the Germans had

been decisively

defeated at the world's largest ever

tank battle at Kursk.

# "Stille Nacht"

For the captured

generals at Trent Park,

the grim reality of Germany's future

was finally sinking in.

TRANSLATION FROM GERMAN

Only a few complete idiots still

believe we can.

For months the listeners had been

hearing a creeping

mood of anxiety,

recrimination and guilt.

He told me

the kind of things that happened.

I know myself that there were

savage, brutalised louts there,

who trampled on the bellies of

pregnant women, and that sort of

thing.

Yes, but these are very isolated

cases for which even

the SS can't be blamed.

I cannot believe that Germans

would do such a thing!

I don't think

I should have believed it myself,

if I hadn't actually seen it.

I am the last to defend such

atrocities but you must admit

that we were bound to take

the most incredibly severe measures

to combat the illegal guerrilla

warfare in those vast territories.

But the women had nothing

whatever to do with it!

'Cruwell probably finds it difficult

to believe these atrocities'

because now he's faced with

the spectre not only of a lost war,

but a criminal war as well.

If you listen to the gentlemen here,

we've done nothing else

but kill everyone off.

But if you ask,

they were never present themselves.

They heard about it from von Thoma!

Even Cruwell's convictions

would have been shaken

if he had heard the unwitting

confessions of other prisoners.

These recordings are powerful

evidence of atrocities committed

not just by Hitler's elite SS

but also by regular German forces.

After a routine transport flight,

Luftwaffe Pilot Fried

was taking a break...

I was at Radom once

and had my midday meal

with the Waffen SS battalion there.

An SS captain or whatever he was

said,

"Would you like to come along

for half-an-hour?

Get a machine gun and let's go."

So I went along.

I had an hour to spare

and we went to some barracks

and there we slaughtered 1,500 Jews.

There were some 20 men

with machine guns.

It was over in a couple of seconds,

and nobody thought anything of it.

You fired, too?

Yes, I did. There were women

and children there, too.

They were inside as well?

Whole families. Some were screaming

terribly. Others were just apathetic.

One of the myths to come out

of the war was that the mass murder

genocide was committed by

the Waffen SS.

We know now that that was just

that, a myth, that the army

was complicitous in carrying out

the crimes of the Third Reich.

This case shows us that

conclusively.

What - you fired?

Yes, I did. There were women

and children there, too.

The brutality is shocking, but

the transcripts raise a question,

how could an ordinary person become

a genocidal murderer?

'Some were screaming terribly,

others were just apathetic.'

What I find particularly

powerful about this extract

is precisely that it's

so matter of fact.

This man doesn't have to spit hate,

this man doesn't have to tell you

lurid stories about why

the Jews are so awful

and why it's OK to kill them.

He just assumes that nobody will

have a problem with doing this.

People can kill,

they can do appalling things

when they can believe that what

they were doing is good, is even

noble. And Himmler encompassed that

idea in a very powerful metaphor.

He described killing Jewish people

like killing the rats in the sewers.

It's a horrible job,

nobody wants to do it,

but only the noblest people are

prepared to descend into the sewers

to carry out the dirty task in order

to preserve civilisation up above.

'The British, Canadian

and American troops

'who landed on the coast of France,

north of the lovely town of Caen

'in broad daylight this morning

are already several miles inland.'

As the Allies advanced through

Normandy,

more prisoners arrived

from liberated France.

'They are pushing steadily on,

backed by the tremendous firepower

of heavy British and United States

warships.'

EXPLOSION

Among them was the anti-Nazi

General Paul von Felbert.

He'd surrendered with little

resistance and, in his absence,

been sentenced to death

for cowardice by Hitler himself.

Now von Felbert was to

provoke disturbing intelligence

when he met fellow inmate

General Heinrich Kittel.

Were you also in places where Jews

had been liquidated?

Yes.

And this was carried out

methodically?

Yes.

Women and children, everyone?

Everybody.

It was horrible.

For instance, in Latvia,

near Dvinsk,

there were mass executions of Jews

by the SS.

I got up and went outside and said,

"What the hell's all this shooting

about?!"

The orderly said to me,

"You ought to go over there, sir,

you'll see something."

300 men had been driven in

from the town,

they'd dug a communal grave

then marched home again.

The next day along they came again,

men, women and children.

The executioners first laid all

the clothes out in a big pile

and then 20 women were made to

take up their positions

naked on the edge of the trench.

Someone gave the command

and the 20 women dropped like

ninepins down into the trench.

I went away and I thought,

"I'm going to do something about

this."

So I went over to the security

service man and I said,

"Once and for all, I forbid these

outside executions

"where people can look on."

"If you want to kill people

in the woods

"or somewhere where no-one can

see, that's your business,

"but I absolutely forbid another

day's shooting here!"

We draw our drinking water from deep

springs,

we get nothing but corpse water.

What did they do to the children?

They seized three-year-olds

by the hair,

held them up and shot them

with a pistol,

threw them in.

I saw it for myself.

That's why everyone hates us!

Not because of this one incident,

because of all these murders!

If one were to destroy all the Jews

in the world simultaneously,

there wouldn't be anyone left

to do the accusing.

It's obvious. It's such a scandal!

We don't need a Jew to accuse us,

we ourselves must bring the charge!

We must accuse those who have done

it!

Then we have to admit

that our government is all wrong.

It is!

It's obvious that it's wrong,

there's no doubt about it.

Such a thing is unbelievable!

We are the tools!

Kittel's account of the massacre

was carefully filed for future

war crime trials.

He saw the mass killings,

he saw the mass shootings,

and he might have been

in the position to say,

"No, we have to stop this."

Tensions between the generals

at Trent Park

were reaching breaking point.

How far this mirrored the position

back in Germany

was revealed in an extraordinary

turn of events.

MI19 urgently needed the generals'

reaction

to this attempt on Hitler's life.

It made sure that no-one missed

the German radio broadcast.

Who is this Stauffenberg?

What happened?

He threw the bomb.

A Count Stauffenberg, a Colonel.

He was on my staff.

He's been shot.

Good God! It can't be true!

An excellent man like that.

He was my operations officer...

Has Himmler taken over the Army?

Yes.

Now there'll be massacre in Germany.

We can only guess the scale.

It's already started.

And no-one will die of natural

causes.

I heard Hitler's broadcast.

He said that the bomb exploded

two metres away from him.

Even so, he wasn't wounded.

Well, excuse me, gentlemen.

This is the end.

Good God! Why did the bomb

have to be so small?!

He didn't want to kill any of the

others.

Yes, but that just can't be helped.

It must have been a hand grenade -

it can't have been anything larger.

Good God! Good old Stauffenberg!

My God! It's a tragedy that he

missed.

Yes, it really is.

Though the assassination

had failed,

it signalled the start of the

endgame.

As the Allies advanced,

fresh prisoners brought news

of a regime in its death throes.

Four weeks after the

assassination attempt on Hitler,

the puffed-up General

Dietrich von Choltitz,

captured ex-commander of Paris,

arrived at Trent Park.

His capture brought direct news

of Hitler's state of mind.

As ever, the listeners were waiting.

Oh, yes, he hates us!

Yes! I saw Hitler four weeks ago.

What kind of

impression did he make?

Oh, God, well... It was shortly

after the assassination attempt,

and he was still rather

the worse for wear.

Was he still injured?

Well, he's more worn

out than anything else.

He had put on almost eight kilos.

Mentally, he's ill, very ill.

I went into the room,

and there he stood!

A fat, broken-down old man,

with festering sores on his hands.

They'd been scratched a bit as a

result of the attempt on his life.

I almost felt sorry for him.

He said, "A people

which does not surrender

"can never be defeated!"

THEY CHUCKLE

We all went out for lunch -

250 generals were rushed

by air from the front.

And he talked and talked!

After about seven minutes,

40% of the generals were all snoring!

But as usual, once he's

worked up, he noticed nothing.

While von Choltitz amused the

generals with Hitler gossip,

MI19 was about to hear the

Nazis' darkest secret of all.

You've no idea

of the amount of people

killed at Buchenwald

while I was there.

It could easily be about...30,000.

Accused of being a Communist,

Private Pfaffenberger

had been a political prisoner

for over seven years

at the Buchenwald death camp.

He'd only been released when Germany

became desperate for soldiers.

'The senior inmate in

each hut told us...'

"All those who have tattoo

marks are to report to me."

He needed about 100 of them.

Those who had

attractive tattoo marks...

were injected and killed.

'They were handed over

to the pathologists,'

who removed as large a piece of skin

as they needed with

a tattoo mark on it,

and the rest of the body was

taken to the crematorium and burnt.

The pieces of skin were

impregnated and tanned.

The wife of the

commandant got them...

..and she had a

lampshade made out of them.

Any mention of

atrocities were recorded.

The records were specially

marked in red, because they were

possibly used later on

for war crime trials.

Pfaffenberger's account is one of

the earliest detailed descriptions

the Allies had of the death camps.

It says here, at the top of

Pfaffenberger's transcript, it says,

his statements "appear fantastic"

but "they're given

for what they're worth".

In other words, the people listening

to this were hearing it -

they couldn't actually believe

these could be true,

could be taken seriously.

And of course, this is

a legacy of the Nazis.

This is the great

tragedy in our history,

that we needed such a terrible, lost

war as this to come to our senses.

For Cruwell and his followers,

their world and its

values were in ruins.

Cruwell has been heading

for mental disaster.

He quite openly admits that

he's getting into a nervous state.

At any time, he's to be

found alone in his room,

staring into space

or fumbling with patients' cards.

We are interrupting our programme

to bring you a news flash.

The German radio has just announced

that Hitler is dead.

I repeat that, the German radio has

just announced that Hitler is dead.

As the end of the war approaches,

and it's clearly a lost war,

it's a day of reckoning,

if you will,

and they're going to have to account

how it got to be the way that it was

and what their individual roles

were.

I am certain to be

named as a war criminal.

18,000 Jews were killed at Rostov.

Of course, I had nothing to do with

the whole business!

I was the only known general there.

By the way,

I'm going to hold my tongue

about what little I do know

until such time as they pick me out.

The worst job I ever carried out -

which, however, I carried out

with great efficiency -

was the liquidation of Jews.

I carried out this order

down to the very last detail.

The whole thing was done

on Hitler's orders.

With the war over,

MI19 confronted their guests

with the shame of the regime

they had served.

(FILM) General Eisenhower

comes to see with his own eyes

the atrocities in Nazi prison camps

captured by the Allied armies.

He orders German civilians

to be compelled

to come and look at

the ghastly evidence,

among them a Nazi officer

who was a commander of the camp.

Reluctant, the Nazi officer,

a camp commander,

knows well enough what he'll see.

That's the only thing

about the "thousand-year Reich"

which will last for

a thousand years.

Yes.

We are disgraced for all time.

As they stripped the stately homes

of listening equipment,

MI19 faced a choice.

They had 50,000 pages

of damning transcripts.

But releasing them

would mean revealing their methods.

Now Churchill wanted them released

for war crimes trials.

And what's now emerging

is that there was an intense debate

within British Intelligence

over whether the files should

or should not be released.

So there is an exchange of letters,

"What should we do

with this material?

"Should we use this in the Nuremberg

Trials, for example?"

And the answer was very clear - no.

We were very successful, we want to

be successful in the future as well,

so keep it secret, close your mouth,

and we lock it away.

In the end, the British

chose to protect their new methods

for the coming Cold War -

even at the expense of justice.

On the basis of what they said,

not one of Trent Park's prisoners

was ever convicted

of a single war crime.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd