Hitler (2016–2017): Season 1, Episode 5 - The Monster - full transcript

Spring 1942.

While war raged across the
battlefields of Europe,

North Africa and the Pacific,

Adolf Hitler settled into his
newest bunker - The Wolf's Lair.

People are dying across the
world because of Hitler.

Rather than focus on that huge issue,
he's focusing on a microcosm.

He's taking a little tiny detail of
control and practicing, practicing,

practicing how perfectly can he get
his dogs to do what they're told.

He's fiddling while Rome burns.

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 MONSTER

For almost 10 years, Hitler had reveled
in his success as a leader of Germany.

But the tides of war would
soon turn against him,

resulting in millions of deaths and
marking the start of his downfall.

Seven weeks after Hitler declared
war on the United States,

a capacity crowd gathered at
Berlin Sportpalast Arena,

eager to hear him speak.

The Sportpalast speech represents
the restatement of Hitler's prophecy

that the Americans have forced
the Germans into a World War



and a World War will result in the
annihilation of the Jews of Europe.

We can read it as an initiation into
this huge program of mass killing

that is now about to really take off.

So rather than a threat,
as it was in Hitler's 1939 prophecy,

this is now something
that's actually happening.

This speech was the closest Hitler ever came
to publicly acknowledging the Holocaust.

Three years earlier, Hitler
endorsed a Nazi euthanasia program,

which systematically murdered Germany's
physically and mentally disabled.

The T4 program is one
of the most disturbing elements

of the early years of the Third Reich, and
Hitler was directly associated with it,

and it stained him irrevocably.
The German people reacted against it

and they associated Hitler with it.
But he had learned his lesson.

Hitler became scrupulous
when it came to keeping the blood

of the Jewish slaughter off his hands.

There is no paper trail linking
Adolf Hitler to the Holocaust,

and this is an extraordinary thing in
such a highly bureaucratized state

that kept meticulous records of
every single minor activity.

Great lengths were taken to ensure
that there wouldn't be a written order

to the effect of “OK,
murder all the Jews in Europe.”

Hitler demanded his
world remain insulated.

He never visited an extermination camp,
nor did he ever witness an execution.

I think the most surprising thing
about Adolf Hitler is his inability

to face up to his actions.

He's someone who needs to be in a
closed society, almost a closed world.

But also connected with that
is the fact that he believes

that he may be killed and that his
destiny would not be fulfilled.

He's like a kind of classic gangster.
They don't want to be reminded

of the deep immorality that
absolutely mired in up to their necks.

It is murder and it's blood soaked.

When he's patting those
small children on the head,

there are small children,
several hundred miles the East,

having their heads smashed against
the side of railroad carriages,

but it's a reality that
nobody wants to acknowledge.

At his country headquarter's, the Berghof,
Hitler held forth on many subjects,

but he never mentioned the Holocaust

and his entourage were
careful never to bring it up.

In her memoirs,
Henriette von Schirach,

the daughter of Hitler's
personal photographer,

recalled breaking the unspoken rule.

She's seen Jewish women being
brutalized in Amsterdam,

and she's determined
to raise it with Hitler

under the almost
charmingly misguided belief

that Hitler would be appalled
in the same way as she is.

So she goes to the Berghof,
she had some tea, a slice of cake,

and she mentions this horrible, horrible
thing that she's seen in Amsterdam

and Hitler just snaps, “Jewish women in
Amsterdam. What they going to do with you?”

Literally shout to her and just orders
her out and she leaves the room in tears.

And she's never to be seen
at the Berghof ever again.

On the 23rd of January 1942, Hitler
invited SS-Chief Heinrich Himmler

and other senior aides
for a quiet meal.

According to his staff's
official memos, private moments

like this allowed the Fuhrer to
give the Holocaust his blessing

without issuing a direct order.

They're having a fine meal,
immaculate tablecloth,

everything just so very civilized
encounter in which the conversation turns,

as it often does with Hitler,
to the Jews.

The talk is chilling. It's not bureaucratic,
but it's Hitler saying things like,

“If I had to say to the Jews,
could you just go voluntarily?”

And they said they didn't want to. "Then
I’d see no other option, but extermination."

Notice here how Hitler doesn't tell
anyone to do something specific.

He allows those around the table
to draw their own conclusions.

Hitler didn't need to deal with the
practicalities of Jewish genocide.

Because he knew Heinrich Himmler would
a process known as working towards the Fuhrer.

Everyone knows how Hitler
feels about the Jews

and the way to curry favor with
him is to anticipate his hatred.

The more radical solution is the one likely to
be adopted in Nazi Germany as the war goes on.

Different bodies and individuals
compete to have access to Hitler

and to have their ideas authorized by him
and the SS is control over Jewish policy

is because Himmler is,
at this point, Hitler's favorite.

If you wants to know what Hitler is
thinking, you look at what Himmler is doing.

Three days before
his meal with Hitler,

Himmler's Nazi SS met at this
stately home in a Berlin suburb.

On the agenda, the final
solution to the Jewish question.

Ever since Hitler passed
antisemitic laws in 1933,

Jews had been brutally persecuted and 1,2
million had been killed in the past year.

Now, the Nazis aim to
deport every Jew in Europe.

Their fate was industrialized murder in
new extermination camps with gas chambers.

In Hitler's last will and testament,
he makes clear

that he is very proud of
the way in which the people

that have had to be killed for the greater
Germany have been killed in a humane way.

He thinks the whole concept of gassing
is a good, clean way of killing people.

He knows what's going on when
they arrive at Treblinka,

Sobibor, Auschwitz, when they
are herded into the gas chambers.

But for Hitler the Holocaust is
something which is done by other people.

Hitler had experienced unbridled success
as leader of Germany for nearly a decade.

But the tide was starting to turn.

The US and Soviet Union were
proving formidable enemies.

Hitler was undeterred.

For Hitler, this is to be a war of
annihilation is a clash of civilizations.

It is a clash of races and
there will be no second place;

either Germany or the Soviet Union
will be completely destroyed.

Winter 1941.

At his Wolf’s Liar HQ,
500 miles from the frontline,

Adolf Hitler decided to take personal
control of a new eastern offensive.

You've got a man who wants
to be the supreme warlord,

but desperately also wants to be the person
right there in the middle of operations

and you can't do all that.

But when a devastating Soviet
counteroffensive let his generals

to recommend tactical withdrawals, Hitler
overruled them and issued a halt order.

His troops have to stand
and fight to the death.

In human terms this is a very,
very expensive order.

The number of men who are
lost hundreds of thousands,

but that doesn't matter because
Hitler only thinks in the short term.

As far as he's concerned,
the halt order is worked.

The idea of strategic withdrawal,
which every military commander knows

is necessary in certain circumstances;
for him, is irrational,

it's going to lower morale,
and it certainly shouldn't happen.

It draws attention in Hitler's mind
to the ability of his generals.

There's always been a fragile
relationship between the two.

While things are going well, he's
prepared to let them get on with it,

but as soon as they don't go so well, he
begins to take a more hands on approach.

On the 20th of April 1942,
Hitler celebrated his 53rd birthday.

He was so determined to tighten
his grip on military command,

he refused to leave the Wolf's Lair.

His political and military leaders
were forced to come to him.

Hitler is, what we would now call,
a control freak beyond all bounds.

He needs to assert his
dominance over other people

without exception at all times.

We see somebody who as a child,

had this overbearing father
beating him and humiliating him.

So Hitler starts off from
a position of extreme weakness,

and it's something he never
wants to experience again.

What it looks like, everybody's smiling,
but there are some subtle non-verbal things

that we can identify that suggest
that all is not going well here

and there is an undertone of tension.
Let's stop right here.

This man and Hitler are shaking hands.

One thing that's very telling
here is there's personal distance

that he wants to close because we tend
to draw closer to people we like.

So he tries to pull them in,
but Hitler clearly is very reluctant.

There it is, right there;
he's pulling them in and he steps in.

He's trying to send
a non-verbal message to Hitler,

“Let bygones be bygones,
whatever problems we had in the past."

"They're over with,
let's be friends again.”

This man was Nazi Foreign
Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop,

who strongly opposed Hitler's
invasion of the Soviet Union.

The gentleman in the back is
trying to read what's going on

because he knows there's tension.

This is not a happy birthday.

There's some kind of undercurrent
going on there that lets us know

that this may be the beginning of
a break with Hitler and his generals.

Isolated at the Wolf's Lair,
Hitler's controlling nature worsened.

His days were spent training
his German Shepherd, Blondie,

and interfering in every military
decision, no matter how small.

Hitler insists that any German soldier
wanting to marry a foreign woman

submit photographs in a resume
of the foreign woman to him

for his own personal review. This
was just the madness that drove him.

His ability to obsess about
little details like that,

even as this titanic war was raging.

On the 28th of June 1942, Hitler
launched his new Eastern offensive,

demanding the final say
on all military strategy.

He decided to send over a million troops
towards the southern Soviet Union.

Instead of heading for Moscow, which is
where most of his generals want to go,

he now redirects the efforts south
of that, towards the Caucasus,

the oilfields of the Caucasus,
but also this symbolic prize,

which is Stalingrad on the Volga
River. The city, of course,

named after his great foe
and the leader of Russia.

He's going to capture that
city because if he does it,

it's is going to be huge
humiliation for Stalin.

These private photographs show Hitler
imposing his will on seasoned commanders.

It's command by remote control.
There's Hitler sweeping his hand

across vast maps of the USSR
and that's where the problems come,

because the German generals
are consummate professionals.

They would have done what was
militarily most effective.

They would have withdrawn before
Moscow, regrouped in order

to attack from a more favorable
position at a better time.

They would not have
sidetracked themselves

to fight for this symbolic city
that had no real significance.

They know about logistics. They know about
the twin tyrannies of time and space.

Hitler is not.
He goes with his intuition.

Eleven days into the
new Eastern offensive,

Hitler ignored the
objections of his Generals

and split one of his army
group’s to attack Stalingrad.

The decision weakened his forces in the
South, and they struggled to gain ground.

At a forward command based in the
Ukraine Hitler's frustration boiled over.

“It's hot, it's humid. The news
from the front is increasingly bad.”

He turns to his Chief of the
General Staff, General Franz Halder,

and says, “You don't know
anything about making war."

"I was a soldier on the front in World
War One. I know more than you do."

"What did you do in World War One?
You sat there on that same stool

in front of that same table, drawing on
your maps. You don't have a wound badge.”

In an unprecedented move,
Hitler fired General Wilhelm List

and took personal command
of his army group.

Germany's supreme leader
was now micromanaging

the day to day logistics
of 300.000 men.

We have Hitler calling up
front commanders and saying,

"Where are your anti-tank guns in
placed," calling up the Air Force

and saying, "Send three JU-52 transport
aircraft to such and such an airbase."

These are things that should be
done by the men on the spot,

men who have the technical expertise.

The thing that made the Germans better
than anybody else in Europe at war

was the clean,
crisp communications between all arms.

Along comes Adolf Hitler, who throws
all that stuff in the dustbin.

Under Hitler's command, the eastern
offensive stuttered to a halt.

As winter descended on Stalingrad,
exhausted German troops

asked their Commander in Chief to let
them retreat for warmth and supplies.

He's sitting in the Fuhrer-train, the
dining car, the rosewood paneled dining car.

When another train pulls up alongside,
a boxcar,

carrying German soldiers,
bedraggled, demoralized,

some grievously wounded.
These are troops from Stalingrad

as those ragged scarecrows peer
into the window of his dining car,

he reaches across the table
and pulls down the shade.

In January 1943,
news from the Eastern Front

had gone from bad to worse for Hitler.

After five months of bitter
fighting for control of Stalingrad,

the Soviets had surrounded his troops.

As the Battle of Stalingrad
begins to go badly

and as the German army there
is cut off,

Hitler begins to
think in terms of German honor,

German strength,
German racial superiority.

Germans wouldn't be taken by
mere Slavs, that sort of thing.

As far as Hitler's concerned,
this is now ideological.

This is an end game to deal with
Bolshevism and to deal with the Slavs.

And so this racialist nonsense that forms
Hitler then comes to drive his decisions.

So far, 50.000 soldiers had
died in the siege of Stalingrad.

But Hitler once again refused
to let his army withdraw.

There's a complete lack of reality
at the Fuhrer's headquarter.

In Stalingrad, men are starving,
they've seen their comrades killed,

the freezing subzero temperatures.
It's a cataclysmic scene,

but Hitler doesn't want to face up
to the realities on the ground.

The image of Hitler is
that he spent four years

during the First World War in
the front line in the trenches,

and this is partly because he gives
that impression in Mein Kampf.

The truth is very different because
he's given the job dispatch runner,

quite a long way
behind the front lines.

He's not aware of the sacrifice of
the troops in quite the same way

as if he was sharing the
experience with them.

It's ironic because during
the siege of Stalingrad,

Hitler berates his generals for
not having been frontline soldiers

during the First World War and yet Hitler
didn't actually understand what it was like.

He's created this kind of fantasy world,
I think about what German soldiers can do,

which bears no reality, in fact,
to the extraordinary conditions

they had to face on the Eastern Front.

On the 22nd of January 1943,

Hitler received a desperate appeal from
the German commander inside Stalingrad.

His men were surrounded, out of ammunition,
and forced to eat their horses to survive.

General Friedrich Paulus
wanted permission to surrender.

It's a completely logical request
from a military commander.

Hitler won't allow it because he's
still fixated with this idea,

“You're going to go down in history
if you make the Russians know

that the Germans will never give in.”

He insisted that the troops
would never surrender,

however big a hole they were in and often
they would not withdraw from situations

from which they could escape
simply as a matter of principle.

And that's in more general terms and over
the course of the war was a disaster.

He promotes Paulus to Generalfeldmarshall,
because he expects these generals

and Feldmarshals to fight to the
last man and the last cartridge;

if not,
he expects them to commit suicide.

Hitler thinks of his soldiers are
ideological warriors for a great idea.

But they're the ones stuck
out in a frozen waste

thousand miles from home
trying to eat a frozen horse.

A few days later, General Paulus and
the troops in Stalingrad surrendered.

The German army had lost almost a quarter
of a million men during the battle.

To Hitler, this is the ultimate betrayal,
the worst cowardice any of his generals

could actually perpetrate is surrendering
to the arch enemy, the Bolsheviks.

Hitler is distraught and shocked that he
didn't just put a bullet in his own brain.

Hitler says that the remains of Sixth
Army should gather round in a circle

and shot each other
with their last bullet.

At the Wolf's Lair, Hitler struggled
to deal with the reality of defeat.

Privately, Hitler is in a really,
really bad place.

Anything he has a company
is one of his Alsatians.

It's emotionally very, very dark
and gloomy places inhabiting.

Up to that point during the war,
he has been having lunch every day

with his adjutants and discussing
military progress and so on.

But he can't bear
the reality of this defeat

and so from then on,
he eats only with women,

usually his secretaries
and those women are under orders

to keep the conversation
light and cheerful.

You couldn't bring him bad news.
If you brought him bad news,

you'd be exiled, demoted, executed.

Even when a brave subordinate
would give him the real estimates,

Hitler would often respond, “Well, he'd write
in the margin. This just can't be true.”

And so Hitler's defeat is written in
this inability to wrestle with reality.

The extent of Hitler's self-delusion
was captured on a secret audiotape,

made without his knowledge
by a sound engineer.

It's the only known recording of him
speaking in private and off the record.

Hitler can be heard explaining to
Finnish Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim,

why the assault on Russia
wasn't going to plan.

Hitler admits he was
not properly prepared.

He underestimated Russia,
but he can't admit he's wrong.

So the way for him to kind of
justify or rationalize his mistake,

he says,
“I would have done it anyway.”

When Hitler says,
“The Russians had 35.000 tanks,”

is clearly an exaggeration.

In truth, that maximum strength the
Soviet Army only had around 23.000 tanks.

Even in trusted private company
Hitler was manipulating the facts.

These are bald faced lies.
He states them with such confidence

that people in the background go:
“Yes, 35.000, yes, 35.000.”

What he does then,
is he has the audacity to say,

“Nonetheless, we knocked out 34.000
of those 35.000 thanks.”

When in fact, that's a fantasy.
He's in a fantasy world.

In summer 1943, Hitler's state of denial
was setting the tone for his entire regime.

Propaganda Minister Joseph
Goebbels had released films,

showing German women on the home
front enjoying the good life.

But when Hamburg was carpet-bombed,
Hitler could no longer hide the truth.

As the city burned Hitler was unmoved.

On the one hand, he has feelings
for animals and children,

but on the other, he has absolute
indifference to the suffering of human beings.

He believes that these hardships are

what the German people have to
go through for final victory.

Hitler does not make a gesture
toward his public that,

“I'm with you, still, I'm one of you.”

Instead, he buys 3000 paintings that are
going to be housed in a new Museum of Art.

In 1943-1944 the last
thing you want to do

is spend an exorbitant amount of money
on artworks, and yet he does it.

Not exactly a man who's staying
with his people to the bitter end

in the most horrible of conditions.

One of the funny things, well,
funny in a very sick way is

that Hitler hopes that the allied bombs
will destroy the Berlin Town Hall,

which he sees as an execrable
form of architecture.

Had he been in charge, he would
have built a better Town Hall.

And so he keeps looking, “Have they bombed
it yet? Have they destroyed it yet?"

"And if they don't bomb it, I'll be really
disappointed. I might even bomb it myself.”

Privately, Hitler was defiant,
but as the destruction mounted,

he lost his appetite
for public appearances.

The sense that Hitler has
retreated doesn't go unnoticed

and you even find graffiti smeared
around parts of the cities

that are critical of the government;
quickly erased, of course.

Once a prolific orator,

Hitler only made two speeches in 1943.

One of them shortly after
the defeat at Stalingrad.

It's really an issue for Goebbels
to try to coax Hitler to speak

to his people when he does speak
Hitler is himself dejected.

It's monotone compared
to his normal speeches.

He no longer brings
people to that crescendo.

Once Hitler loses his ability to move
the German people by his oratory,

he's losing the very thing
that brought him to power.

On the 9th of July 1943,
the allies invaded Sicily

opening up a new Western Front.

16 days later, Adolf Hitler's
closest axis ally, Benito Mussolini,

was taken into custody
by his own government.

The Fuhrer began to hatch
a daring rescue plan.

The idea of rescuing Mussolini
terrifically exciting for Hitler.

It's like a piece of boyish escapism
while the rest of the war is going badly

he could prove himself.

Ultimately, Hitler is a child.

He's someone who thinks
that getting Mussolini back

and putting him back atop a fascist state
will somehow turn things around for the axis,

and Hitler has a very curious
relationship with Mussolini.

1930s Hitler is very much an
acolyte of Benito Mussolini

and admirer his prized possessions
as signed photograph from the Il Duce.

I think there's a genuine fondness
that Hitler feels for Mussolini.

Why? Because he's the only
other man on the planet

who has any idea of what it's
like to be a jackbooted dictator

of a European fascist state, but
of course, the relationship falters

as Mussolini's political and
military campaigns falter.

And so therefore it's Hitler who
has to end up bailing them out.

German intelligence informed Hitler,
intercepted messages had revealed Mussolini

was being held in the Italian Alps.

SS-Commander Unit Crash Land, a load
of gliders on the side of a mountain

and storm a hotel, rescue Mussolini in a
tiny, little featureless stork aircraft

and back in time for tea and medals.

Hitler is completely delighted
because it's a great coup.

It's done under great cloak
and dagger and daring do.

It's a fantastic story. He's ecstatic.

He wants the details repeated again and
again, over and over again, savoring them.

Perhaps it is a reminder to him
of the sweetness of victory,

but of course it is far from that.

It's the rescue of one man and one man

who can no longer play an
active role in the war.

When Mussolini is brought before
Hitler, the Fuhrer is distraught

to see the state he is.

He is no longer the once
great warlord of Italy.

He is an old man in a shabby coat.
He's broken.

The glow of Mussolini's
rescue quickly wears off

and within hours he is treating
Mussolini as a nobody.

In September 1943, Hitler's
forces occupied most of Italy,

and despite Mussolini's condition, put
him in charge of a puppet government.

Meanwhile, on the Eastern front, German
troops were being overwhelmed by the Red Army.

Two months earlier, a German
offensive called Operation Citadel

was smashed by a Soviet counterattack.

50.000 troops were killed or injured.

When German army units, army groups,
generals, countenance withdrawal,

he believes that they're not worthy.
And he said,

“Those men with their purple stripes
down the trousers make me sick."

"They're worse than Jews.”

That is how strong Hitler feels
about the German General Staff.

For one of Hitler's most senior
commanders, the feeling was mutual.

Field Marshal Eric von Manstein was openly
critical of the Fuhrer’s aggressive tactics,

earning him several visits
from Hitler himself.

This is a rich piece of footage,
historical context.

Hitler, after winning so many battles, now
is losing, and his general von Manstein,

is trying to get this message across
to Hitler, and he's trying to say,

“Hey, occasionally we need
to do a tactical retreat.”

But Hitler is not about retreat at all.
He's forward, forward, forward thinking.

And so,
you know the relationship here -

the General is not pleased,
"I don't like what's happening here."

And Hitler is not interested at all.
In fact, for most of this footage,

he's actually disengaged. You can see
that he’s not even really listening.

He doesn't really even care about
all these passionate details

that the general is giving him. Instead,
he wants to gain power over the situation.

He's trying his hands on his hips to
look powerful, but the hands go up high,

so he looks like he has little chicken wings
and he's clucking about this situation.

Then there's the big reveal, the handshake.
This is the not “let go” handshake.

In this handshake is not the
normal three to five seconds.

In fact, it last for over 30 seconds.

It goes on and finally,
finally, it disengages,

but it tells me, Hitler is saying,
“I am done with you."

"You have no power.
I am the one with the power.”

Hitler later fired Manstein.

He was determined to cleanse the army
of anyone who disagreed with him,

even his best men.

Generals Halder,
Guderian and Runstedt,

heroes from the French campaign,
were also dismissed.

Hitler replaced them with inexperienced
men, who would do as they were told.

There are generals who are being
paid by Hitler under the table

outside of their normal salaries,
large sums of money to supporting him.

He's paying them for loyalty.

He's paying them just
shut up and do their job.

In May 1944,
enemy forces converged on the Reich.

The Red Army was less than
400 miles from Vienna.

The allies were closing in on Rome and
preparing a huge invasion force in England.

But Hitler was back at his Alpine HQ,
the Berghof

and relaxing with his mistress,
Eva Braun.

Eva Braun says,
"It reminds her of the good old days.”

"Short walks with the dogs, films in
the evening, sitting by the fire,

cake in the tea house, guests staying,

people out on the terrace, on the lounges."

However, we know that in his
relationship with Eva Braun,

as in so many other areas of his life,
Hitler resorted to drugs.

He was injected with testosterone,
cocaine eye drops, everything.

As his health worsened, Hitler's
leg was shaking uncontrollably.

His personal physician, Dr. Theodore
Morrell, noted in his diary,

“It was probably stress related.”

The treatment was an injection,
believed to contain methamphetamine.

One of the things that
we know more about today

than we did in the past
is Hitler's drug use.

He was on a cocktail of something like 74
drugs and so this clearly clouds the mind.

It'll keep you up, It'll keep you going,
but it really robs you

of a great deal of perspective.

He’s an addicted leader and so all of
the flaws that he brings to the table

before he gets into drugs become very
much amplified by that drug use.

Eva took advantage of
Hitler's detached mood

and hosted her sister's wedding
reception at the Eagle's Nest teahouse

above the Berghof.

At weddings and formal occasions,
he's wheeled out

as the kind of slightly
embarrassing relative,

who's a bit creepy and
austere and detached.

He's kind of glassy eyed,
and he's just not there anymore.

He's, of course, dealing with his
own health issues, his own insomnia,

his own worries about
where this is all leading.

From a propaganda perspective, this is
powerful because the whole Hitler myth

is built upon sort of accessibility to
Hitler; hearing his voice, seeing his face.

When all those things were absolutely
needed to convince the German people

that Hitler was still the
leader of the country,

he doesn't show himself at all.

Hitler now based his military
command at the Berghof.

Each day, a few hours was set aside
for strategy meetings with his Generals

in what was an otherwise
leisurely routine.

The whole kind of schedule of
the day is teenagerly

and Hitler talks about the four years
between the death of his father

and the death of his mother as one
of the happiest periods in his life

and he is absolutely
indulged by his mother.

He has to do nothing except
lie-in and enjoy himself,

and with the help of drugs,
and the mountains,

and that's what he
recreates in the Berghof.

So the long lie-in, the late breakfast,

the medical treatments, the injections

and the pills before lunch.

And then he will walk down
to the teahouse, eat cake,

and he gets driven back up hill because he
never likes to physically exert himself.

Supper, another vegetarian meal, and
then it's a very strong expectation.

Everyone gathers around the fire
and he starts talking and he talks

and talks and talks
about art, about race,

music, vegetarianism,
our history, differences about people.

You'll have to sit there and listen to
it and we have many memoir accounts

where people say, “My God, I was ready to
shoot myself. I thought he would never stop.”

More cake is served and he
bangs on and on and on,

and nobody can go to bed until he stops
and it can be two, three in the morning.

5th of June 1944.

True to his routine,
Hitler stayed up late, chatting

and watching movies with Eva before
going to bed around 3:00 a.m..

600 miles away in Normandy, American
paratroopers began the first phase

of the allied invasion.

At 6:30 a.m., massed allied forces began
landing on the beaches of Normandy.

D-Day was underway.

And the Fuhrer couldn't be woken.

Hitler was the only guy that could
release divisions, reserve divisions

to repel the invasion,
and yet nobody would wake it.

Hitler is literally asleep
at the wheel; landing craft

are bringing the troops to the various
beaches - Gold, Sword, Juna, Omaha, Utah.

The allies are ashore at Normandy while
Hitler is rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

And it's not until about 10 o'clock
that his staff dared to wake him up.

When he does awake,
this response is curious.

“Gentlemen,” he says,
“it's finally happened."

"They're finally here as I expected them
to come. Now let's see what happens.”

We hit the seizes as the moment,
this is a moment where the Germans

are going to show the British,
Americans a proper war.

He's facing disaster with open arms.

He's standing on a precipice
with the German people.

He's going to take them
with him to Apocalypse.