Hitler (2016–2017): Season 1, Episode 2 - The Actor - full transcript

January 1932. Adolf Hitler
was taking Germany by storm.

With only two months until
the presidential elections,

he was converting recently enfranchised
voters to his Nazi party cause.

German women voted for him
in stunningly large numbers.

There's all this newsreel footage of
Hitler on the street being mobbed by women

like he was the Beatles or something.

And it's not just women who were
transfixed by his performance.

But behind the scenes,
the campaign was taking its toll.

Backstage, after one of his speeches
he’s sitting drenched in sweat,

he's eating a bowl of soup.
His hand is shaking uncontrollably.

This is a man who has sweated out every
ounce of energy in the last two hours.



For the Nazi Fuhrer,
it would all be worth it

if he achieved his ultimate goal -
absolute power.

Hitler, who was the man
behind the monster?

There were just so many parts of
this story that didn't add up.

Teenage loner turns national hero.

He was the Messiah
for the German people.

How was he able to achieve it?

All of it was an act.
All of it was a show.

This is the definitive guide to
the most hated man in history.

HITLER
THE ACTOR

Adolf Hitler was the
ultimate political Phoenix.

Between 1928 and 1934,
he would confront election disaster

and scandal in his private life in his quest
to become supreme dictator of Germany.

By 1928, Germany's economy was getting
back on its feet after World War One.



But 39-year-old Adolf Hitler knew his
party thrived on public discontent.

And the upcoming federal elections would
be a political litmus test for the Nazis.

His propaganda team was
sent into overdrive.

Hitler and his brain trust had high
hopes going into the 1928 elections.

They'd done an extraordinary
amount of work.

May 1928, despite their optimism,

the election was a disaster
for the fledgling Nazi Party.

A mere 2,8% of the German electorate cast
their votes for the National Socialist Party.

A total of just 12 seats in a 500-seat
Reichstag, it's a shattering blow.

Hitler and his Nazis are increasingly being
seen as an irrelevance by many people,

just a rabble of thugs from southern
Germany who are particularly nasty,

an unpleasant bunch of people,
they're anti-Semitic,

they prey on the worst parts of human nature.

The dismal results left the Nazis
looking to their Fuhrer for inspiration.

Achtung!

At the Bürgerbräukeller Beer Hall in
Munich, Hitler took to the podium.

He said the struggle continues.
We're going to go on fighting this fight,

but now he says,
"We're going to take the kid gloves off."

Now they're really going to
target the enemies of Germany

and make those enemies of Germany
pay for what they've done.

What he really means, of course,
is the party is not going to go out

and fight communism on the streets.

Hitler galvanized his followers
and positioned himself

as the indispensable head of the Nazi Party.

Hitler clearly sees himself as
the leader who will save Germany.

He will save Germany in body and soul.

But if Hitler's party was to gain
ground, their luck needed to change.

In October 1929, the Wall Street crash
sent the US economy into freefall.

Loans from American banks helped
rebuild Germany's postwar economy

but now the country faced financial
meltdown as the US demanded repayment.

Now that there's a crisis; now, the Germans
have lost faith in the economic system

and the German government's
ability to take care of them.

Suddenly, Hitler is the man of the hour.

The important thing about the
political strategy of the party is

that it depends on people finding
Hitler rather than identifying Hitler

in the National Socialist
Party as the movement

that will somehow solve their grievances.

As establishment politicians failed
to get the crisis under control,

Germans turned to the political extremists.

They see voting for Hitler as a protest vote,

it's a protest against
the wider economic world,

it's a protest against big business.

If Hitler knows anything by now,

it's that his party thrives in
just this sort of unsettled times,

Nazi membership begins to soar.

With his eye on Germany's
next elections in 1930,

Hitler unleashed his
party's propaganda machine,

led by former Nazi Party
rival Joseph Goebbels.

They created a series of rallies
with Hitler as the star attraction.

Thousands filled the streets to hear Hitler
speak at a Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg.

He promoted nationalism, but carefully
softened some of his extremist views.

He plays down the antisemitism,
because he's not confident,

that the majority of the German public
is really that interested

in antisemitism as a movement, but they're
very interested in economic revival,

are very interested in the future
of Germany as a great power.

He is what we would today call even
a political celebrity, if you like.

He would be invited on chat shows,
he would be on TV all the time.

He has his immense appeal across Germany,
has immense appeal to women,

particularly who like to mother him,
and even very young women

kind of look up to him as a father figure.

Hitler's promise to restore German
greatness connected with the public,

and the results of the
1930 election proved it.

6,5 million voters,
107 seats in the German Reichstag

to become the second
largest party in the Reich.

The September 1930 elections are the moment
when he truly becomes a global figure,

as well as an important German one.

Hitler was now living
a life of privilege.

He's split his time between
his Alpine retreat in Bavaria

and a lavish nine room bachelor pad in Munich.

A chauffeur driven Mercedes and
uniformed staff were at his disposal.

By 1930,
Hitler has become a relatively wealthy man;

sales of Mein Kampf have tripled,
so he's earning a lot of royalties.

And to top it all, he's a tax dodger.

He lived this enormously expensive lifestyle,
a lifestyle in this very posh flat in Munich.

His expenses were great, but the
income he declared was nothing like it.

August 1931, as a wealthy statesman,

Hitler's dream of becoming Germany's
supreme leader was now within reach.

Hitler is for the first time in
his life, a respected political.

At the same time, his personal life
seems to be careening out of control.

Hitler was a 42-year-old bachelor,
so he portrayed himself

as being married to Germany,

but being single was more the result of
his rocky past with much younger women.

Hitler's romantic relationships replicate
the pattern that he saw in his own parents,

the dominant man, the submissive woman.

The relationships he has with women are not

that of a kind of boyfriend and
girlfriend or husband and wife.

They're almost more like father and
daughter or even father and dog.

These people have just got to
be utterly compliant to him.

But when one such relationship
ends in tragedy,

it threatens to destroy Hitler's
plans to become Germany's savior.

September 1931, Adolf Hitler's most
important relationship is with a woman

who lives in his Munich apartment and
routinely appears with him in public.

His 23-year-old niece, Geli Raubal.

Hitler used Geli to promote his
image as a wholesome family man,

but speculation mounted over the
exact nature of their relationship.

His niece, Geli is described as
this wonderful, beautiful girl,

and he's obviously attracted to her.

He has around all the time, but was he
attracted to her sexually? We don't know.

Lovers or not, Hitler was the
dominant figure in Geli's life.

Hitler wants to control her life.
He should be the only man in her life.

And then he finds out that she has an
affair with his chauffeur Maurice,

he is devastated and upset.

He is terribly jealous.

There's this chilling sentence that
Geli Raubal says to her friends,

“My uncle is a monster,
nobody understands what he demands of me.”

Rumors began swirling in the press

that Hitler was keeping Geli a
virtual prisoner in his apartment.

She is by now in love with
a young man in Vienna,

so she wants to go to
Vienna, he won't let her.

On the 18th of September, neighbors overheard
a fight between Hitler and his niece.

Later that day, Hitler left
Munich and headed for Nuremberg.

The next day she is found dead.

It was his revolver. Did he shoot her?

There are lots of witnesses who
said he wasn't there that night

so we don't know whether he shot her,
she shot herself or third party shot her.

That is the great mystery to this day.

Whether suicide or murder, Geli's death
pushed Hitler towards a breakdown.

He misses her funeral and takes
himself off to be on his own by a lake.

There are rumors and certain
fears among those close to him

that he's contemplating suicide,
this is a loss which he can't cope with.

And things soon went
from bad to worse.

The press unearthed another
scandal involving a former lover.

Five years earlier, 16-year-old
Mimi Reiter attempted suicide.

There was also speculation
about Hitler's association

with a known homosexual Ernst Röhm,
head of the Nazis SA paramilitary force.

There are some extraordinary
headlines in the press

that most political leaders
could never recover from.

Hitler's lover commits suicide.
Nazi leaders or bachelors and homosexuals.

Hitler had to respond fast
to safeguard his image.

Hitler falls back on some of the
tools that he's most crafty with.

He uses Heinrich Hoffman to
present photos of him as anything

but the deviant that he's portrayed is.

In early 1932, Hitler's private photographer,
Heinrich Hoffman,

published a book called
The Hitler Nobody Knows.

He is seen in the family atmosphere
where he is nice parental type.

Of course, all staged, totally staged.

Hoffman's book became a bestseller,
restoring Hitler's public image

and his political career.

It's extraordinary that within a year,

Hitler has recovered from this scandal,
and there's simply no dirt on him at all.

But Hoffman was responsible for more
than just saving Hitler's future.

During a visit to the photographer's
studio in October 1929,

Hitler met the woman who would become
his lifelong partner, Eva Braun.

She's 17 years old.
She's slim, she's blond,

she's rather glamorous,
but she's very innocent,

young, naive girl who's had kind of
quite a strict conventional upbringing.

She fits in very well in
the way Hitler likes women.

They always have to be very young,
very childlike,

a bit trivial and superficial,
and he wants to mold them, really.

In a way, she is the second Geli.
She is the reincarnation of his niece.

Just as he did with Geli, Hitler showed
the same controlling behavior towards Eva,

even though they were lovers.
He learned not to get too close.

She falls madly in love with him,

but he keeps her at a distance.

Eva didn't settle for being
kept at arm's length for long.

In the middle of the 1932
election she took drastic action.

It's only just over a year
after Geli Raubal’s death

that Eva Braun attempts
suicide for the first time.

She shoots herself in the neck.

So there's a kind of question
mark about what exactly is this?

Is this a cry for help?
Is it an attempt to manipulate Hitler

or is it a genuine expression
of kind of absolute despair?

It's very interesting that all the women
that Hitler's romantically engaged with

appear to end up attempting
or committing suicide.

Eva survived, but after Geli's death,

Hitler couldn't risk another scandal
getting outs, so he buried the incident.

Adolf Hitler would allow nothing, and no one,

to interfere with his plan to
become absolute ruler of German.

March 1932,

with his public image restored and
his private life under control,

Adolf Hitler could focus on his ambition
to become supreme ruler of Germany.

There was now just one
obstacle in his way.

Hitler's rival was a national
hero and Germany's president,

84-year-old Paul von Hindenburg.

It's hard to imagine two
men more different.

Hitler was a former army private,
Hindenburg the famous Field Marshal.

Hindenburg represented Germany's old guard

while this working class Austrian was
every inch the modern political pioneer.

During the 1932 presidential election,
Hitler took his campaign to new heights.

This is an incredibly new idea to use a plane

to get around Germany in the 1930s,
it's revolutionary.

Like Mussolini,
Hitler believes in futuristic technologies,

most importantly, the airplanes.
It's used in the first war,

but then there's this big explosion
of air travel in the interwar period,

and Hitler sees the airplane as something
that's very striking to the masses.

And Hitler obviously runs
amok with airport officials,

so the idea of flight plans
that just for little people

when Hitler's flying,
he just goes where he wants.

So he'll drop into a city in the morning,
fly off again, another city in the afternoon.

It's a tremendously modern
and sleek way of campaigning.

He delivers speech after speech,
after speech, sometimes five, six,

seven speeches a day.
He seems to be everywhere.

This new style of campaigning turned the
Nazi movement into a political juggernaut,

attracting millions of supporters.

In less than a week, Hitler delivered
20 speeches at rallies all over Germany,

reaching nearly a million people.

Compared to Hindenburg,
Hitler was a dynamic political force,

and Joseph Goebbels' slick PR machine
ensured brand Hitler created maximum impact.

He's a celebrity.
People stand in line for hours

to get him to sign an autograph
or to shake his hand,

or merely to touch his shoulder.

It's clear by now that there are millions
of Germans, tens of millions perhaps,

who would have no problem at all in
seeing Hitler at the pinnacle of power

in their country.

July 1932, the Nazis won
230 seats in the Reichstag election,

making Hitler the leader of the
largest party in parliament.

In a personal meeting with
President Hindenburg,

he has offered the post of vice
chancellor that is second in command,

and Hitler has no desire
whatsoever to do that.

He will hold out for nothing
less than total power.

He thinks his time has come.

This is confirmation of the Messiah
complex that's been in place now since,

let's say, the mid-1920s, that his will has
dictated that he should become chancellor.

But there was one last hurdle.

Hindenburg didn't want Hitler as chancellor,
telling him directly,

“I cannot justify before God my
conscience and the fatherland

transferring the authority of
government to a single party

that is biased against people who
have different views from their own.”

But Hitler was relentless
in his pursuit of power.

And six months later,
Hindenburg bowed to the inevitable.

30th of January 1933,

Hindenburg appointed Adolf
Hitler chancellor of Germany,

expecting him to tone
down his extremist views.

This is an exceptional miscalculation, I think
Hindenburg and many of those around him

really failed to understand entirely
in nature of popular politics,

but this is not a question of controlling
Hitler. If you give Hitler the chancellorship,

the chances are you're the ones
who are going to be controlled.

A month later, at the Berlin Sportpalast,

Chancellor Hitler prepared
to address the nation.

His first speech as chancellor is
the biggest moment of his life.

It is his opportunity to set
the tone to make his mark

and to prove that he really
is worthy of leading Germany.

This is not a typical
speech of a politician.

You have stormtroopers; you have Nazi flags,
already you get a sense

that somebody brand new is on the scene.

After a decade of meticulously
crafting his image,

this was the moment Hitler
had been destined for.

Typically, politicians always came in from
the front, Hitler comes in from the back,

which creates this enormous sense of
excitement as he comes through the crowds.

Hitler prepared to give the
performance of his life.

They're waiting for Hitler to speak,
they're in anticipation,

they've been high Hitlering,
and what is he doing?

He's pausing.

There's power in this silent pause.

The power of that pause gives him status.

Germany's new leader was
silent for almost a minute.

He says, “I'm presenting myself to my people.
I am the Messiah,"

and he waits and he takes in the adoration.

He starts off very slowly.
It's like the beginning of a relationship.

Now comes part two, after he's developed
that rapport with the audience,

and this is where he speeds up the cadence.

He increases the tone,
and he wants to send his message.

He’s increasing the emotion; he’s starting
with the chopping, making his points.

He starts the staccato burst.

He talks very fervently,
and he's sweating, and he's spitting.

Hitler had his audience spellbound.

But Hitler's path to rule Germany unchallenged
was still blocked by President Hindenburg

and the persistent threat
of the Communist Party.

27th of February 1933,

the Reichstag, the heart of German democracy,
was set ablaze.

The Reichstag fire comes at a particular
moment of real political tension

between the new government,
National Socialists and the German left.

Hitler tells the reporters that he
knows who set fire to the Reichstag.

It was the Communists,
a well-prepared communist plot, he says,

and calls for a ruthless settling
of account with the Reds.

A Dutch communist was arrested, and Hitler
used the crime to attack the entire movement.

Millions of Germans believe Hitler when he
says that the communists are on the march

and that they're forming up for some
kind of assault on the German state.

Now, Hitler had a pretext to get
Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree.

It granted Hitler the authority
to restrict free speech

and imprison enemies without trial.

It marked the birth
of the Third Reich.

The emergency decree is broadly approved of,
what people don't understand

is the emergency decree is never
going to leave the statute book.

This is a brilliantly
calculated act of manipulation.

In one stroke, Hitler is now free to
wipe out all his political enemies.

By dawn the next morning, 4000 members of
the Communist Party have been arrested

and are being shipped to the
brand new concentration camps

that even then are being built
at Dachau and at other towns.

But even with opposition leaders imprisoned
and the threats of the Left removed,

Hitler was still cautious
not to overplay his hand.

21st of March 1933,
celebrations of the newly elected Reichstag

were held outside Potsdam Garrison Church.

Hitler now wants to portray to the German
people and to the German government

that he is no longer a threat.
He's not a whacked out right-wing nut.

Stop right here.
You see, this is Hindenburg.

You'll notice that he has is
in full military uniform,

and Hitler certainly doesn't
want to let the people know

that he is challenging Hindenburg’s power.

So he's deliberately dressing in
civilian garb, and you'll notice,

Hitler is not even in sight here
of Hindenburg; so basically,

the psychology in this is, he's backing off.

So, he in essence,
here is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

In public Hitler was careful to
maintain a trustworthy image.

But behind the scenes, he was manipulating
the media and ruthlessly settling scores.

Hitler smashes any opposition or potential
opposition to his new dictatorship.

The political parties are smashed, the unions
are smashed until by the summer of 1933.

Germany had truly become
a Hitler dictatorship.

But one barrier to ultimate
power still remains.

The problem for Hitler is that as long as
von Hindenburg is alive and president,

there's not much that he can do about it.
He can't get rid of von Hindenburg on second,

can't kill him.
- With the communists out of the way,

Hitler's radical antisemitic ideas,
outlined in Mein Kampf,

were now close to becoming reality.

March 1933, with Adolf Hitler,
granted emergency powers,

violence broke out against Jewish
citizens and businesses across Germany.

There was a popular antisemitism
working in the party,

and coming to power made
them think they could now do

what they'd wanted to do for a long time.

When international Jewish groups
threatened to boycott German goods,

Nazi hardliners urged Hitler to retaliate.

Jews were removed from public office.

Laws discriminating against them in
most aspects of life were passed.

It's a statement, if you like,
to Jews outside Germany,

that they must be careful how
they treat the new German regime.

A regime whose guiding methods
were intimidation and persecution.

Third Reich remains a society to
a large extent, built on terror.

People soon realized that they need to keep
quiet if they don't like what's going on.

But Hitler was aware his actions had
generated intense feelings against him.

Hitler is obsessive
about personal security.

He has dozens of security people
at all times guarding his person

because he's constantly
in fear of assassination.

Hitler established his own personal
security force, the Schutzstaffel, or SS.

It was a very strange combination,
because on the one hand,

he's this incredibly reclusive, introverted,

paranoid guy obsessed with
his own personal security.

And on the other hand,
he has this craving for attention,

this craving for adulation
and so this manifests itself

also in his choice of vehicle.

He commissioned these fantastically expensive
vehicles that are bomb proof, bulletproof,

and yet the irony is that convertibles,
so it means he can easily be shot

as he's standing up in the back of the car.

By 1934, the biggest threat to Hitler
wasn't an attack from a communist or Jew,

but one from within his own party.

It must come very
surprisingly to Hitler.

It's centered around his great
and good old friend Ernst Röhm,

the head of the Stormtrooper SA organization.

Röhm has become a rival for
power within the Nazi Party

and a source of agitation to
Hitler's comfortable new rule.

February 1934, Röhm
suggested an audacious plan

to Hitler's Minister of Defense,
Werner von Blomberg.

To make the SA, Stormtroopers,
Germany's supreme military force.

He was really looking to sweep away the German
Army, sweep away the German bureaucracy,

judiciary, the Weimar Constitution,
create a new, truly Nazi Fascist state.

Hitler wants none of this.
Hitler says: “These guys are going to ruin

my prospects with the Army. The Army
will just crush us. If we go in and say,

“We're going to get rid of the German
army and create a people's army,

based on the SA and Ernst Röhm, the German
Army will crack down and destroy us”.”

So Hitler says,
“Something's got to give here.”

With Hitler, realizing he needed
the Army to help secure his rule,

he turned rumors of a coup,
circulated by senior members of the Nazi Party

to his advantage.

Likewise, the Army High Command is
horrified at the notion of Ernst Röhm

and his thugs taking over responsibility
for German national defense.

An alliance is forming between
the officers and Hitler,

both of whom have the same end in mind -
the taming of Ernst Röhm.

Hitler decides to go violent
to solve all his problems

in one bloody night of murder.

At Bad Wiessee in southern Germany, Röhm and
the SA leadership gathered to meet Hitler.

But the Fuhrer arrived early at dawn,
flanked by SS officers.

Röhm and the SA leadership are
totally unprepared for what happens.

He breaks into Röhm’s room, says,
“Get up, you pig, you're under arrest,”

and then storms out.

Hitler arrested his old friend,
but senior Nazi loyalists

wanted him to go one step
further and order his death.

He hesitates.
It's clear that even now, he isn't sure;

he wishes to kill his best friend.

The Adolf's loyalty is one of the most
important elements in his political life,

people who are loyal to him,
he's loyal to them in return.

And in the case of Röhm, I think, it's
a bond he finds very difficult to break.

First of July, 1934,
it was a pivotal moment for Hitler.

He ordered the SS to leave a gun in
Röhm’s cell along with newspapers,

branding him a traitor.

He expected Röhm to seal his
own fate and commit suicide.

They wait.
Minutes passed but there is no gunshot.

The SS took matters
into their own hands.

Röhm's death was part of an
organized mass slaughter

that became known as The
Night of the Long Knives.

All over Germany,
Nazi death squads target various individuals;

opponents of the regime,
those who have spoken out clearly.

Hitler is using the wrong
crisis to settle old scores.

The official death toll was 85,
but the real number is much higher.

The message that would have
been sent out to anybody else

who thought about challenging Hitler is
that this is a dangerous thing to do.

I'm going to end up dead if I do that.

Among those happiest with Röhm's
murder are officers of the German Army.

They have demanded that Hitler do
something about this problem, and he has.

The SA has been reduced to parade functions.

No more silly talk about the stormtroopers
becoming Germany's National Army.

The Army is confirmed as the sole
bearer of arms in the nation,

and in the ensuing weeks,
every unit in the German army

swears personal allegiance to Adolf Hitler.

In a speech to the Reichstag that
was broadcast across Germany,

Hitler justified his actions, claiming they
were necessary for the country's security.

Hitler skillfully
avoided recrimination.

Political leaders, the public,
and most importantly,

the Army all praised him for averting treason.

Two weeks later, 86-year-old
president Hindenburg died of cancer.

With his last obstacle to power gone,
Hitler seized the moment,

assuming the roles of both
chancellor and president.

Nobody opposed it,
the Reichstag fully approved, and of course,

for the people too, who come to regard
Hitler of the previous 18 months

as basically the leader of Germany.

Hitler's meteoric rise was the result of
relentless drive, ruthless intimidation

and a cult of personality, but now he
had to cement his position as Fuhrer.

Hitler is clearly a leader,
perhaps unlike any other at that moment

who sees the power of film and the
power of this modern media as something

that is really going to be important
for establishing his power

and continuing his power.

Hitler had so far used photography
to help shape his public image.

Now, with celebrated film
director Leni Riefenstahl,

he promoted a grander vision of
himself and his plans for a strong,

united and independent Germany.

The result was the ultimate
propaganda film Triumph of the Will.

What makes this opening piece of the
Triumph of the Will very important

is she has Hitler coming down in an airplane,
and it's shown though it's a Messiah

coming from heaven to save the people.

You see, the shadow of his
aircraft crossing Germany.

Again, the shadow of this
godlike Fuhrer figure and then,

as you proceed through this film,
Hitler really shows you

that there are no more divisions
in Germany thanks to him.

Workers, peasants, shopkeepers, professionals,

they're all arrayed in their various groups,
saluting the Nazis.

What's interesting is also how much of that
crowd is predominantly women and children.

He is quite literally kind of
represented as the father of the party.

It was a PR masterpiece.

Hitler's carefully cultivated image,
15 years in the making,

was delivered to Germans with the
craft of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Triumph of the Will documents the
1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg

and events specifically
contrived for the film.

It was Adolf Hitler,
as he wanted the world to see him.

You can imagine the German public going into
cinemas, sitting down and watching this,

and if they didn't know much about
Hitler before, about Hitler,

this would have an extraordinary impact.

Their reaction must have been
to look at Hitler and the Nazis

and recognize them as not only a
force of the future but also a force

that could get things done,
a force that could drive and pull Germany

out of the chaos she was in.

The film was a celebration of both -
power and the German people.

I think the Triumph of the Will is
perhaps the most extraordinary statement

that comes out of a whole dictatorship.

He is actually the Messiah,
presenting Paradise to the German people,

and who wouldn't want to join the
Paradise after what they've been through?

It’s brilliant use of propaganda.

And a world away from
Hitler's early years.

From teenage loner and failed art
student to Fuhrer of the German nation,

Hitler had staged-managed every
aspect of his rise to power.

How far he has come from the homeless shelter,
from the streets of Vienna,

from selling his postcards on the street
for pennies to the very pinnacle of power.

Think of walking through an American city
in Philadelphia or New York or Detroit

and seeing the homeless man on the street
and imagine him

in the White House in 20 years.

Adolf Hitler had conquered Germany.

Now he was ready to take on the world.