The Nazis - A Warning from History (BBC, 1997) (540*960p, soft English subtitles) The myths, motives and mentality - Laurence Rees's acclaimed history of the rise of the Nazi party. How could a nation at the heart of Europe have allowed Hitler to come to power? E01 Helped into Power How was it possible that the cultured nation at the heart of Europe ever allowed Hitler to come to power?  With the help of film archive discoveries from Russia and interviews with eyewitnesses, many of whom are former members of the Nazi party and have never appeared on television before, this film reveals how the Nazi party was born and grew in support in the late 1920s, and shows just why in January 1933 Germany's President Hindenburg appointed a new popular chancellor who was openly committed to overthrowing German democracy - Adolf Hitler. Hitler's personality was to dominate the Nazi party. But eyewitnesses have very different recollections of his effect upon them. To Nazi supporter Fridolin von Spaun 'the long gaze which he gave me convinced me completely that he was a man with honourable intentions.' But to German diplomat Herbert Richter, who saw Hitler in the 1920s, 'he wasn't quite normal. He was spooky.' The Nazis wanted the world to believe that Hitler's rise to power was inevitable - this programme shatters that myth. https://i.ibb.co/j9QrCVfM/The-Nazis-A-Warning-from-History-s01e01-Helped-into-Power.jpg: https://ibb.co/8nf7yzs5 E02 Chaos and Consent A look at the extraordinary popularity of both Hitler and the Nazis, as well as the astonishing degree of voluntary support ordinary Germans gave the infamous Gestapo. Despite the popular mythology of Nazi efficiency, Dr Gunter Lohse, a former German Foreign Office official and member of the Nazi party, recalls that behind the scenes 'it was total chaos'. E03 The Wrong War Adolf Hitler loved to watch feature films, and he liked one film in particular, the Hollywood epic The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. 'It was certainly his favourite film,' says Herbert Dohring, a member of Hitler's SS bodyguard, 'and he would always talk about it - this huge English empire - how such a relatively small people could establish and manage something like that.' Hitler would later say, 'What India was for England, the territory of Russia will be for us.' How was it possible then, that in 1939 Hitler found himself at war with a country whose achievements he admired, Great Britain, and allied to his ideological enemy, the Soviet Union? With the help of archive footage and interviews with eyewitnesses, including former diplomats and members of the Nazi party who had never appeared on television before, this film charts the course of Hitler's road to war. E04 The Wild East Nearly one in five Poles died during World War II after the Nazi invasion in 1939 ushered in one of the most brutal episodes of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen. This film destroys the myth that Poland's Nazi leaders were acting under detailed 'orders' and that the country's Nazi administration was a model of German efficiency. Arthur Greiser and Albert Forster, the two Nazi leaders charged with Germanising Poland, could not even agree on who should be Germanised. Featuring interviews with former Nazis, moving testimony from witnesses to SS atrocities in Poland, ethnic Germans and Polish Jews, the programme provides insights into how the Nazis' reign of terror in Poland was characterised by huge population upheavals, chaos, petty squabbles and sheer bloodlust. E05 The Road to Treblinka 'We used to shoot them, give them up as lost, and that was it.' - Petras Zelionka, former member of the Nazi killing squad. How could it happen? How was it possible that the Nazis created killing factories in order to exterminate the Jews and others they thought 'undesirable'? Filmed in Poland, Germany and Lithuania, this documentary demonstrates how the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, in the fulfilment of Hitler's ideological vision, was a crucial catalyst to the radicalisation of the Nazi policy against the Jews. With the help of archive discoveries and frank interviews with victims, bystanders and a former member of a Nazi killing squad, The Road to Treblinka traces the decision-making process that led to one of the greatest crimes the world has ever seen - the Holocaust. E06 Fighting to the End After the Battle of Stalingrad in the autumn of 1942 and the winter of 1943, the German people experienced nothing but disaster. So why, when the war seemed lost, did the Nazis fight on? This programme examines why Germany had to suffer so much, and in her suffering inflict destruction on countless others. Between July 1944 and May 1945, more Germans would perish than in the previous four years of the war put together. The film shows how fear and hatred of Bolshevism drove many Germans to fight to the bitter end. The extent to which Germany had also become a dramatically racist country also played a part. A former member of t