Hitler (2016–2017): Season 1, Episode 4 - The Victor - full transcript

In April 1939,

fearing Adolf Hitler's landgrabs
could trigger a Second World War,

US President Franklin Roosevelt
sent the Fuhrer a telegram.

Roosevelt has asked Hitler
to promise not to invade

this long list of countries
over the next decade.

Hitler's response was defiant.

This is underpinned by his view that
the United States is too generous,

that Roosevelt is an imbecile, that
the United States Army is nothing.

What Roosevelt is doing here is
basically feeling Hitler out.

Is Hitler this dynamic, energetic, new
statesman just trying to rebuild a Germany

that was destroyed by the First World War?
Or is Hitler plotting a war of aggression?



But the speech was more than a
mockery of Roosevelt's request.

Hitler told a national radio audience,

he had established a greater living space
for Germany without bloodshed or war.

But his goal would ultimately
cost 60 million lives.

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 CONQUEROR

Adolf Hitler regarded himself
as a leader driven by destiny

to make Germany great again.



This cast iron self-belief would soon see
him march Germany into a Second World War

and six years of carnage.

By April 1939, Hitler had assumed
control of Czechoslovakia.

And he celebrates it by throwing himself
an extravagant 50th birthday party.

It featured the biggest parade in
German history, five hours long,

50.000 soldiers and
a crowd of two million.

When Hitler celebrates
his 50th birthday,

he thinks of himself as being
messianic figure, of course,

having huge festivities to mark his birthday
is a classic dictatorial thing to do.

It represents a triumph, not just of
the will, but also of his own ego.

The endless spectacle was just
the beginning of the festivities.

Across Germany people send Hitler presents;

gifts of food or ornaments, books,

and they write him poems, telling him,
what a great leader he is, what a hero.

What the German people
actually like about Hitler is

that he's simply torn up
the Versailles Treaty.

This is a remarkable achievement,
he's done all this

without having to risk a World War.

His high command also
lavished him with gifts,

including statues,
paintings and tapestries.

Himmler gives him a portrait of his
great hero, Frederick the Great;

Goering gives him a kind of hideous,

gaudy model of the Museum of German Art.

Gift-giving becomes
extremely competitive.

But despite all the adulation
Hitler wasn't satisfied.

Hitler assumes that there's one genius
born a century and that he's that guy

and that he's attained the age of 50
and hasn't enacted that genius yet.

And this is why he's so keen to invade
other countries and get things done.

He is a man who feels he's got a destiny
that has to be achieved very, very quickly.

Hitler's rise to power had
been built on his skills

at manipulating the image of himself
and the Nazi Party.

Now he focused on
reinventing Germany's image.

Hitler wants to transform Berlin from a
simple capital of Germany to a world capital.

He really wants it to be seen as
the dominant city in the world

that is it literally
dominates the world.

He gave this monumental
task to Albert Speer,

his top architect and one of
his few personal friends.

So this is really that moment in
which the world of architecture

in the world of
conquest come together.

Hitler's office, the New Reich's Chancellery,
is really a very important building

that shows us how Hitler is staging his
power for the foreign diplomatic corps.

The idea is that you have to walk
through these series of spaces

before you got to the very middle of
the Chancellery, which is a long hall,

modeled after the Hall
of Mirrors in Versailles

and in the middle of that
hall is Hitler's office.

So you would have to make
this very long trek

before you actually came to the point,

which was to meet and
greet and talk to Hitler.

The new Reich Chancellery was
just one part of Hitler's vision

of a Nazi super city called Germania.

It is going to be vast, it is going to be
the center of the world's strongest military

and of the strongest people,
this racial view of the world as well.

These private images taken by his
personal cameraman Walter Frentz

show how Hitler scrutinized
Speer's designs.

There are models of Germania and all
the buildings in the Reich Chancellery,

and after dinner,
like a little boy with his train set,

the obsessive Hitler will go and
walk around these models and peer

through the little windows and
archways and imagines himself

at the heart of this new Nazi
utopia that he will one day build.

By May 1939,
Hitler was in no mood to waste time.

Out of sight from foreign eyes and the
German public Hitler hatched a plan

to take back lands he believed
belonged to the German Reich.

There's never any question
he's going to invade Poland.

Poland for German nationalists
is a sacred space

because Germans feel of all the losses in
World War One of the Treaty of Versailles,

the one they feel most keenly is the
loss of the old Prussian heartland.

These places have to
be reclaimed for Hitler

to really stake his
place in German history.

But there was a major
obstacle in Hitler's way.

When Hitler learns that the British
have signed an agreement with Poland

to guarantee their independence
and freedom from invasion,

Hitler goes absolutely apoplectic.

"I'll cook a stew that guarantee
to choke on," he says.

A key ingredient of that recipe was an
alliance with Poland's eastern neighbor,

the Soviet Union.

It required Hitler to join forces with
a communist nation he professed to hate.

But the strategic benefits meant
he was ready to make a deal.

German and Soviet foreign
ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop

and Vyacheslav Molotov met to agree a
non-aggression pact between the two nations.

The German-Soviet pact was a shock
not just for the wider world,

but it was also a shock, I think,
for many of those around Hitler.

For Stalin the big advantage
of the pact, of course,

is that he keeps the
Germans at arm's length.

Josef Stalin, a man who usually trusted
no one, put his trust in Adolf Hitler.

Signing the treaty with the
Soviet Union in August of 1939,

is one of Hitler's master strokes.
Hitler has now signed a non-aggression pact

that will allow him to
begin his war with Poland

without having to worry about
war with the Soviet Union.

And in time honored fashion, he slaps his
knee. You order champagne to be opened.

He doesn't actually drink any
champagne because he's a teetotaler,

but nevertheless this
is celebration time.

What the Soviets didn't realize was
that Hitler had a hidden agenda.

Hitler, in this respect, is a master
tactician. He's incredibly cynical.

He's breaking every
diplomatic rule in the book.

He is forging an agreement
he fully intends to break.

As Hitler toasted the
successful peace accord

he was just days away from
igniting a World War.

Adolf Hitler believed he was destined
to reclaim living space for Germany.

On the 1st of September 1939, he gave the
order for the Wehrmacht to invade Poland.

The Fuhrer was certain Britain and
France would not honor their guarantee

to defend its borders.

You have to sit down with
the British and French

and had to discuss and
negotiate about Czechoslovakia.

But afterwards he thought to himself,
"I made a mistake."

"Our enemy is a little worms are
not going to go through that again."

Hitler had made
a major miscalculation.

Two days after his forces invaded
Poland Britain declared war on Germany.

France followed less
than six hours later.

Hitler makes a massive misjudgment.
He thinks that this pact that Britain

and Poland had signed to guarantee
Polish safety is just British bluff.

It's meaningless, Britain's no way are you
going to step in if Germany invades Poland,

and it therefore comes as
a massive shock to Hitler

when Britain reacts the way she does.

He's absolutely furious.

He accuses Britain of trying
to exterminate Germany,

I mean, ludicrous kind of language, but
it'll give you a level of his anger.

And the British weren't the
only ones Hitler had misjudged.

With the invasion of Poland, the relationship
between the German people changes.

They're suddenly beginning to get
a glimpse of Hitler as a gambler.

And I think that for many German
people, there's a worry about

whether he's now bitten
off more than he can chew.

The German people have no appetite for war.
They were looking at Hitler as somebody

that would rebalance the German economy,
bring back peace and prosperity and security.

They didn't want any
part of another World War

and yet this is exactly what
Hitler is going to give them.

To reassure the public Hitler
traveled to the Polish frontline.

He is technically supreme
commander of the Armed Forces,

and he wants to be seen
as the supreme commander,

not just sitting at a
desk somewhere in Berlin.

Hitler boards his Fuhrer-train as
it's called his armored train,

and he sets off to the front.

He uses it to become almost like
a kind of battlefield tourist.

He's not really there as the
head of the Armed Forces.

He's simply there to bask in any
German military glory as a politician.

He comes back and ostentatiously
displays the dust on his trousers,

becoming perhaps once again the frontline
soldier he was in World War One.

Within a month, Poland fell and was divided
up between Germany and the Soviet Union.

The Nazi-Soviet pact left Hitler free
to target an even more ambitious goal.

Hitler is asking the Armed Forces,
how about the invasion of France?

The French and the British
would be caught off guard,

the British not even there yet.
This is the moment and we need to attack.

The army leadership says to Hitler,
"You just can't do it."

"We need a period of rest,
reorganization, regrouping and so on."

For the German generals have
been commanded now by somebody

who does not understand many of the
things they are talking to him about.

This does produce a
very obvious tension.

Hitler's commanders were
divided on an invasion strategy.

They offered him two very different options
for sending German forces into France.

Some officers argue for a conventional
approach, a drive through Belgium

and an invasion of
France from the North.

But a few officers want a
more unconventional approach.

They're going to slice between
the French Army to the South

and the British Army to the North,
cut them in two.

This is an incredibly
bold and daring plan.

This unconventional approach appeals
to Hitler. He is not a trained staff officer.

He is not an officer of any sort and
has never done military planning.

But something about the surprising
nature of this suggestion appeals to him.

Hitler took the gamble, his panzer
divisions powered through Belgium,

Luxembourg and across
northeast France.

Thousands of British troops were forced
to evacuate from the beaches of Dunkirk.

And then in less than seven weeks,

their victory over the French
opposition was complete.

All of this gives Hitler a sense of
his own superiority and indomitability,

but it also gives the Germans a sense
that, wow, maybe Hitler is a genius.

The German generals also saw
the Fuhrer in a new light.

Suddenly, even they begin to think
that perhaps Hitler actually has got

some magic touch when it comes to strategy

and Hitler certainly thinks
he's got a magic touch.

For Hitler, victory over
France was all down to him.

In this footage,
shot inside his Belgium war room,

he made the point crystal
clear to his commanders.

So we see in this footage -
there is general with the pen,

and Hitler was said, "No,
no, no, this is my victory."

And he steals the pen out
of the general's hand.

He wants to take
ownership of that victory.

Look at their heads place
close together in this footage.

Hitler holds his head right in line
with the general saying, "I own this."

With France conquered, Hitler was
determined to exact maximum revenge.

Now we're doing more see
Hitler's theatricality

and sense of revenge better displayed
than when he forces the French

to sign the armistice in the
railway carriage at Compiegne.

Carefully choreographed to bring
defeated France the maximum humiliation.

This is an incredibly symbolic
act that railway carriage is

where the French made the Germans
sign the armistice in 1918,

and since then that railway carriage
have been stored in a museum for 20 years

and Hitler has it brought back to the
exact spot where the armistice was signed.

Adolf Hitler had dreamed about this moment
of revenge for the Treaty of Versailles

and he milked it for all it was worth.

He makes the French generals
sit in that carriage.

And he makes them wait,
and he makes them wait.

He doesn't say a word for ten minutes.

And then walks out while
his generals read the terms.

There's a piece of
paper for them to sign.

Hitler's victory is
absolutely complete.

It is the greatest day of his career.
He has re-fought World War One,

only this time with a more successful outcome.

Two days later, Hitler made his one
and only trip to occupied Paris.

After the defeat of France, Hitler
visits Paris with two architects,

Albert Speer and Giesler,
and his initial thought had been

that as a punishment of the French people,
he would destroy their capital city.

He decides instead he can
outdo the beauty of Paris;

he doesn't have to destroy it.
What he will do is eclipse it.

He will create in Berlin, Germania,

this city that is even more magnificent.

Hitler also goes to visit
the tomb of Napoleon.

That's no accident that he does that because
he identifies with a man like Napoleon.

Napoleon, of course,
was a great military leader,

had conquered many countries,
and Hitler sees himself in that mold.

Hitler was confident national euphoria
would greet the return of Germany's savior.

And with supreme power, he was ready
to unleash a world of destruction.

On the 6th of July 1940, two weeks
after his lightning victory over France,

Adolf Hitler returned to
Berlin as the conquering hero.

It's like a scene out of Imperial
Rome with Caesar coming back,

Hitler is now a conquering emperor.
He's a messianic figure.

The German people greet the onset
of war with a certain trepidation.

There have been no great enthusiasm
that anxiety had been modified somewhat

by the easy and rapid victory in Poland.
But now it has been erased altogether.

There is a jubilant reception
for Hitler back in Berlin.

It is one of the greatest days for
any statesmen in the 20th century.

He's feeding on the
energy the crowds give him

and it's making him stronger with every
Sieg Heil, with every arm outstretched,

with every flower that comes towards him.
It builds him up as this God.

Stop the frame right here.
You notice Hitler.

He's grabbing the rail.
He's leaning towards the crowd.

He's soaking it in.

"I deserve this.
I've worked all my life for this."

"Now I'm here, I've arrived."

Let's take a look at Goering.
He's over here with a grin on his face,

sending the signal.
He's not quite sure.

"I'm a little nervous.
I don't know what to do with this."

And that's the difference between a
more normal person and megalomaniac.

On the 10th of July 1940,

Hitler assigned Hermann Goering the task of
testing their one remaining enemy - Britain.

The Luftwaffe's mission was to
destroy British ships and ports.

Nine days into the
Luftwaffe's air strikes

Hitler's cast-iron
belief in his own destiny

saw him make a bold appeal
to Winston Churchill.

After the defeat of France, the real problem
for Hitler is what to do about Britain.

Hitler's view is basically schizophrenic.
At one level he clearly admires Britain.

On the other hand, he thinks Britain is
the chief enemy to be smashed, destroyed.

It's not really a peace offer at all.
I mean, it opens the door a little bit.

It says, "Why didn't you
come to the conference table

and we can start to discuss things?"

It's not at all clear, in fact,
what Hitler has in mind

and perhaps not surprisingly,
the British rejected.

Hitler realized the only way
he could bring Churchill

to the negotiating table was by force.

By August 1940, as the Battle of
Britain raged in the summer skies,

he aimed to strengthen
his hand elsewhere.

Despite their non-aggression pact,

Hitler felt the time was ripe
to invade the Soviet Union.

He reacts to the fact that
the British won't make peace,

he doesn't quite know
what to do about that.

Stalin is now pushing into Eastern
Europe and he thinks in the end,

by invading quickly, he will get
extra resources and he'll be able

to use those resources for
the final defeat of Britain.

Invading the Soviet Union would
achieve an ideological goal

he first outlined in Mein
Kampf 16 years earlier -

to destroy Jewish Bolshevism.

The Soviet Union and Hitler were never
destined to be longtime partners

and definitely not
destined to be friends.

Hitler perceives this to be his
destiny the smashing of communism,

the building of a great
Germanic empire to the East.

March 1941, despite airstrikes on Britain

and his plans to invade the Soviet Union,

Hitler was still obsessed
with his public image.

He invited the foreign press to run a feature

on his life
as a Bavarian country gentleman.

It's a terrible irony that during this time,
while Hitler is overseeing

dreadful atrocities against the Jews
and greater use of concentration camps

throughout Germany,
that his international reputation

is being nicely burnished by the liberal
press, such as the New York Times.

These fantastic profiles of
Hitler showing him with his dogs

and his whole retinue
up in the Berghof.

It's an indication of how
deluded Hitler is becoming

that he thinks
that he can win over countries

who are absolutely antagonistic towards him.

As his army geared up
for the Soviet invasion,

the Fuhrer gave much thought
to the name of the offensive.

Once again, he took inspiration
from his boyhood heroes.

The original codenames for Germany's invasion
of Russia were pretty mundane actually,

they got Fritz and Otto.
And when Hitler hears about these names,

he thinks that is not symbolic enough,
let's go with Barbarossa.

The emperor of Germany's First Reich

is very much tapping into that Teutonic myth
of the endless struggle against the Slavs

that we as a nation of ultimately got to
overcome to guarantee our future survival.

On the 12th of November 1940, Hitler
arranged the meeting with the Soviets,

this time on German soil.

Stalin sends the Soviet Foreign
Minister Molotov to Berlin.

From Stalin's point of view, this
is an opportunity to renew the pact,

from Hitler's point of view,
he's trying to find out

what's really Stalin is thinking now.

It's all about keeping
the Soviet Union sweet

until the time is right for Hitler and
Nazi Germany to invade the Soviet Union.

So, of course, Hitler is the great
tactician, he is the great chess player,

and he goes into this meeting
trying to play Molotov.

Hitler aimed to keep the Soviet
Union out of Eastern Europe,

so he could take it for himself.

He offered Molotov territory
from the British Empire instead.

He promises Molotov India,
a portion of the British Empire,

he is not yet even conquered.

But in Vyacheslav Molotov, the
Fuhrer faced a formidable opponent.

Molotov is a tough cookie
and a tough negotiator.

He peppers Hitler with very, very
pointed questions, they don't stop.

Hitler was always the one doing the
intimidating, he's the one shouting,

he's the one pointing, he's the
one making these people tremble.

Yet it's Molotov playing
that game back at him,

and Hitler starts trembling with anger
that he's been made to look bad.

Molotov left with many
unanswered questions.

But crucially for Hitler,
he had no inkling of war.

Molotov thinks the Germans
are going to stay peaceful,

Russia is not in any danger and in
fact, Hitler has fooled him completely

and intensifies his plans on
the attack of the Soviet Union

shortly after Molotov leaves.

Hitler's master plan for
a new order of Europe

led by the Aryan race
appeared to be on track.

11th of May 1941.

The sunny day was about to darken
for Germany's supreme leader.

A letter arrived from
Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess.

He is one of Hitler's
most loyal henchmen.

But he's actually a slightly pathetic
man, and he's clearly out of his depths.

Hitler starts to sideline
him and Hess decides

that he's going to do his bit to win
back the affections of the Fuhrer.

And he wants to pull off something
big, he wants to impress Hitler.

Hess wrote that he had flown to Britain
on his own to try and broker a peace deal.

When Hitler hears about Hess'
flight to Scotland,

he goes absolutely
apoplectic with rage.

He omits apparently this almost
animal like scream, he's so angry.

This is a recurring pattern in Hitler's
life when things go badly for him

he has a meltdown.

He's horrified because he sees
it as a personal betrayal.

But politically, this is going
to create all kinds of problems.

His closest comrade is actually
trying to broke a peace with Britain.

Is there a possibility that Hess is
going to let the cat out of the bag

about the invasion of Russia?

So this is probably one of the
biggest shocks of Hitler's life.

After several attempts, Hitler came up with
what he thought was the right cover-story.

He announced that Rudolph
Hess had lost his mind.

If you're number two, he's going on
this such an idiotic trip,

it makes your whole
regime look laughable.

And that was exactly the reaction reported
in newsreels when Hess was taken prisoner.

And now the amazing story of
Rudolf Hess, the Fuhrer's deputy,

what the inside story is
behind this dramatic episode,

we shall probably learn in due course.

But on the general principle of Nazi leaders
coming over here to give themselves up,

the more the merrier.

Hitler is worried that his credibility
is going to be reduced to such a level

that he may never recover from this,
which is why, of course,

he very quickly organizes a meeting
with his senior party officials

to try and shore up his authority
and say, "Look, nothing's changed."

In the wake of the Hesse affair,
Hitler summoned 70 of his top officials

and in a tearful speech,
demands their loyalty.

It's a form of emotional blackmail.
Hitler learns a lesson from the Hess affair,

and that is perhaps never
to bring anyone too close.

There will never be another
Deputy Fuhrer in the Third Reich.

Hitler abolished Hess'
position of Deputy Fuhrer.

And bit by bit by bit,
he's reducing the possibility

that anyone else in the
Nazi power structure

is actually going to
help him make decisions

or at least influence him in his decision
making process, and that ultimately,

unfortunately in the middle of a World
War is not necessarily a good thing.

The stress of the crisis only added
to the Fuhrer's health problems.

Hitler suffers from a
numerous medical complaints,

and they've afflicted him for years.

He has all sorts of symptoms
of stress, so he has insomnia,

he has stomach problems,
he has terrible eczema.

These are the conditions that draw
him to seek medical treatment.

It's also important to remember
that a lot of Hitler's complaints

are probably in the mind.
He is a terrible hypochondriac.

He gets polyps on his vocal cords.

No doubt as a result for
that kind of shouting

and immediately suspects
that it's cancer.

He saw both his parents die
fairly young and of course,

he saw his mother's death from cancer.

During the war, Hitler had become
increasingly dependent on drugs

prescribed by Dr. Theodore Morrell,
his personal physician since 1936.

The people around Hitler don't
like Dr Morrell, he is smelly,

dirty and people
instinctively don't trust him.

Hitler just snapped back, "I don't
employ him for his fragrance."

"I employ him for how he can cure me."

Among his health issues was
a chronic sinus condition

for which Dr. Morrell
prescribed cocaine.

Dr. Morrell gives him what we today,
basically just term Class A drugs.

I think that probably explains the
sort of sudden frustrated outburst

that he makes every time he gets a
bit of bad news, it gets to the point

where his military staff are almost
terrified to give him bad news.

Hitler's body is just a
cocktail of different drugs

that are all reacting in the
sorts of strange ways within him

and increasingly creating very
strange and psychotic behavior.

May 1941.

As Hitler prepared to invade the
Soviet Union, he worked his racial

and ideological
vendettas into the plans.

He issued his so-called criminal
orders to the armed forces.

Hitler issues orders to free the
soldiers of any legal comeback

if they shoot civilians.

Hence the description of these
orders as criminal orders,

the end game for Hitler was to
deal with the Jewish problem

and to deal with Bolshevism
and criminal orders

that catered for both
these two groups.

There's the extraordinary kind
of distance between Hitler,

sitting in his headquarters, saying, "We've
got to be brutal against the Russians,"

and German soldiers on the Russian
front who are rounding up villagers,

put him in a
barn and burning this.

But it shows you how detached he
is morally from the consequences

of what he's asking people to do,
which is murder and murder civilians

and murder children as well, and
indication of how morally bankrupt,

frankly, Hitler has become by 1941.

The night before the Soviet invasion, Hitler
was in his apartment with Albert Speer,

listening to some of his favorite
music Les prelude by Franz Liszt.

And he says to Speer,
"Listen to that, Albert,

because you're going to be
hearing that a lot from now on."

"That's going to be the music for our
victory fanfare over the Russians."

He's so sure he's going to win.

On the 22nd of June 1941,

Adolf Hitler ordered three million
troops to march into Russia.

Like Napoleon before him, this decision
meant he was fighting a two front war

for the conquest of Europe.
- He's thinking that he's invulnerable.

Hitler sees the Soviet Union as a
necessary showdown between good and evil.

Adolf Hitler's racist wrath was unleashed
upon both Soviet soldiers and civilians.

Jews, gypsies, Slavs, Bolsheviks,
men, women and children

were massacred by the Nazi SS
as the German army advanced.

He thinks that the
salvation of the Aryan race

has to come through
the defeat of the Jews.

So this stage killing millions
is not a problem for Hitler.

He is starting the
biggest military campaign

the world has ever seen
result in millions of deaths.

Hitler still likes to see and
project this image of himself

is still being this slightly bohemian figure.
And he says,

"Rather than waging all this war,
I'd rather just be wandering around Italy."

He's a war leader, but he's also
has his gentle side, he's a painter.

It's complete nonsense.
Hitler does have a lust for war,

and he says that German gains
should be made in blood.

In November 1941, millions of German
troops advanced through the Soviet Union.

It was the largest army in history
ever mobilized for a single campaign.

Adolf Hitler would oversee the invasion
from the dense forests of East Prussia

at his new command center,
The Wolf's Lair.

Hitler very much has in mind that he has
to appear to be the general at the front

in contact with his own troops,
absorbing the realities of the war.

It's not a nice place to be and
Hitler, with his sort of noted

and malignant illnesses and hypochondria,
it was not the type of place

where he really wanted to be,
he festered in places like that.

It was not a choice posting for most
people because it was it was remote,

it was mosquito ridden and
you had to endure Hitler.

Amongst Hitler's many failings is an
inability to stick to a schedule,

and the schedule at Wolf's
Lair was a constant problem.

There is a situation report sometime
around noon lasts a couple of hours,

followed by a lunch,
followed by another situation report.

The boredom sets in among the officers.
They begin to stifle yawns.

Hitler in a place like that was insufferable,
because all of his little petty

bourgeois habits were accentuated,
sitting around long after lunch,

telling stories, talking about his rise.

And so people just found
it absolutely stultifying.

We can be talking one moment about an
armored operation on the Eastern Front.

Hitler will suddenly stare off into
the distance and begin talking

about how the Crimea will become
a vacation spot for Germans

after the victorious war is concluded, he
will then drift back into the topic at hand.

But meanwhile,
the staff may have drifted off.

It's a nightmare for
systematic planning.

These private images, taken by Walter
Frentz, the Fuhrer's personal cameraman,

masked his weaknesses
as supreme commander.

The generals try and skirt around him.

They try to carry out their
operations, I think regardless.

He will reject a lot of the analysis
that is given until late in the afternoon

then he'll sort of absolutely look
over it, make a few bad decisions.

So this is a guy who's not in any way,

shape or form acquainted with the actual
physical realities on the Eastern Front

or the Western Front.

On the 5th of December 1941,
Hitler took tea and watched movies,

while his five month old assault against
the Soviet Union began to unravel.

Red Army counterattacks forced
Germany's troops back from Moscow.

This is a man who thinks that he could
invade the Soviet Union

and conquer it
in a matter of a few months.

It is patently absurd
and totally unrealistic.

Hitler's shambolic leadership has a directly
negative impact on military performance.

Two days later, the Japanese
attacked US forces at Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese have attacked the US Navy

and forced the Americans
to pursue the war in the Far East,

giving Germany a decent interval
to try to win the war in Europe.

When he hears about Pearl Harbor and
the fact that he's got another ally

in this great struggle of
the Second World War, he's euphoric.

Four days after Pearl Harbor,
Hitler addressed his deputies,

the Reichstag,
and officials from Italy and Japan.

Hitler declared war
on the United States.

Any sane onlooker has to be
thunderstruck by the complacency

with which Hitler greets the US entry
into the war. Hitler really doesn't care.

Hitler's counterargument to
that at the time would be,

"Well, the Americans are effectively
supporting the British anyway."

"War is inevitable sooner or later.
So why not go on our own terms?"

You are the one who makes the decision.
You don't allow America to declare war on you.

You declare war on America.

Hitler is now living in
the realms of fantasy.

Hitler isn't just monumentally
misguided and arrogant at this point.

He's also totally paranoid.

Among his delusions was
his long held belief

that the Jews were responsible
for all his troubles.

Hitler points to the entry
of the US into the war

as yet more example of this internationalist
Jewish conspiracy, through the banks,

through the media, through political
elites, they're ganging up against him.

And of course,
like all good conspiracy theories,

there is one underlying theme behind
both of those threats from East and West

for Hitler is the sinister
figure of the Jew.

Hitler is losing the plot.
To him, this all makes complete sense.

As the Soviet Union prepared to
push back the British stood firm

and America ready to join the war.

Hitler's path to victory was blocked.

But Germany's messianic dictator
still predicted triumph.

To Hitler, this ideological crusade was
worth the sacrifice of millions of lives.

This is someone who is inhumane.
This is someone who would stop at nothing

to inflate his own
position in that of German.

This is the moment when Hitler has decided,
he's going to drag everyone down with him.

After this there's no going back.