It's 1935, and as the Nazis make
their first moves on the European stage, the fortunes of some leaders are up... Hail Hitler! ...and some are down. Hail victory! [James] What everyone's trying to do
is get close to the Führer and there's lots and lots
of backstabbing. Everyone is jockeying for position. Joseph Goebbels is riding high
with his Nazi feelgood propaganda. Hermann Göring is fighting rivals
and inner demons. But it's Rudolf Hess
who's the biggest loser. [Guy] The inner circle around Hitler
are like cats in a bag, they're all fighting each other and the
man holding the bag is Hitler himself, and he's willingly
letting this fight continue. And now they're joined by
a dangerous new player, Martin Bormann. Cunning and ruthless, he'll work behind
the scenes to undermine them all. This is the inside story
of Hitler's henchmen, the power struggles, blind ambition
and fawning sycophants that would create a monster and fuel the
most brutal horrors of the Third Reich. It's 1935 and Rudolf Hess,
the Deputy Führer, is given a request by his leader,
a request which he cannot refuse. Adolf Hitler wants him to turn
his country retreat, at Obersalzberg, into what will be, in effect,
his second seat of government. It will be his Berghof,
his mountain court. Now, of course you can't say no to Hitler,
when Hitler asks you a question, no matter how tightly
you're in that inner circle, you've got to jump as high as possible. Hess is Hitler's longest-serving
and most loyal supporter. As a devoted disciple, doing his leader's bidding
is his reason for being. [Hess, archive] Heil Hitler! Sieg heil! What you have to remember about Hess is
that Hess is slavishly devoted to Hitler. He's an absolute yes-man. Intellectually,
he's not a complete dolt. [archive German speech] Hess likes to think
of himself as Hitler's right-hand man and the architect of the great Nazi vision
that will conquer Europe. But he doesn't get that most of the time the members of the inner circle
are fighting each other, not the world. And that's a battle
he's not well equipped to win. He's frankly all at sea
in this incredibly Machiavellian world of jockeying and positioning for power. Hess is more of an ideas man,
a thinker rather than a doer. Running a building project
at Obersalzberg, even for his beloved Führer,
is not up his street. [Frank] It's not a very glamorous task,
really. I mean, here is a man
who is nominally the Deputy Führer and he's been given a role of, sort of,
really, refurbishing Hitler's house. So Hess decides to delegate. And he knows just the man to take
the job off his hands, his own deputy, Martin Bormann. [James] He passes the buck
to Martin Bormann and says please organise
the Obersalzberg, get it sorted. [Guy] Now, this is going to be
a very fateful decision because from that delegation there comes
this accidental transference of power, from Hess to Bormann. Martin Bormann has a low profile
in Nazi circles and is virtually unknown
in the country at large. He is not a polished politician
or an orator. What marks him out is his skill
as an organiser. If you need a go-to man,
Bormann will make things happen. [Emma] Bormann is seen as a kind of oaf,
as a thug. He is not sophisticated and there's
definitely a kind of class thing operating in which he's looked down
on as kind of rough on the edges. [James] If Bormann were to walk
into this room right now, you wouldn't take any particular note. He's not one of these people
who fills a room with his charisma. He's not a Hitler,
he's not a Göring for that matter, nor is he even a Goebbels.
He is a quiet man. But beware the quiet man.
He can be dangerous. The post of deputy at Hess's office
in Munich is just a stepping stone to Bormann. He does servile well, but it's a front. Bormann is determined to get to the
real centre of power, whatever it takes. [man] This man is completely ruthless. Very ambitious and he will do anything
that he can think of to please Adolf Hitler...
the man is a complete psychopath. [James Holland] He sort looks a little bit
like a Mafioso thug. He has a photographic memory as well. So for someone who has
that attention for detail, there are opportunities to rise up
the greasy pole very, very quickly. And that's exactly what he does... ...thanks to the opportunity
his boss Hess has unwittingly given him. Martin Bormann understands
how important Bavaria is to the Führer. Hitler had first visited the small town
of Berchtesgaden 12 years before and fell in love with the area. He had rented, then bought,
a holiday home nearby at Obersalzberg. [James Wilson]
That house was called Haus Wachenfeld. And he spent considerable time
living in that house on the Obersalzberg and eventually came to buy the house. That house is now
being completely rebuilt as the centrepiece of a massive complex
on the mountainside. Others might see the Berghof project
as little more than an admin job, but Bormann is shrewd enough to realise that taking the assignment on
could be his ticket to the big time. It has the potential to place him in direct, and frequent, contact
with the Führer. [James Holland] So for Bormann,
the opportunity to develop Hitler's favourite place in the world, well, that's a really,
really great opportunity for him. And he knows this
and is going to grab it with both hands. As work continues on the ambitious
rebuilding of Hitler's mountain retreat, the whole country is also undergoing
something of a revival. [Guy] Even some of
the Nazi Party's greatest detractors would have looked at Germany
at this stage and seen what the regime was bringing
and looking... it's not all bad. Unemployment is falling,
GNP is going up. Therefore maybe Hitler
and the Nazi Party are bringing this kind of
economic miracle he had promised. A new Germany is taking shape. In March 1935, there was the first
television broadcast in Germany. There were
a very, very small number of people who could receive the broadcasts
and this was a very early experiment. [archive, musical whistling] [Guy] TV, of course, is a great symbol
of modernity and, of course, anything modern was lapped up
by the Nazis because it enabled them to project
the Third Reich as this very forward-,
futuristic-looking movement. [James Holland]
It is rebuilding, it is regrowing. All this can be pushed out
via radio, via television, via film. The point is the message
is getting across, and everyone in Germany and beyond
the German borders starts to believe it. And Bormann is determined that nothing
will reflect this growing confidence in the new Reich more powerfully than the Führer's Camelot
rising high in the Bavarian Alps. But there's a problem. To fulfil his lavish plans,
he'll need to acquire more land. It's a challenge he takes on
with characteristic brutality. Bormann visits neighbours
with a request: sell up and move out. It's a proposition
that's hard to refuse. [Emma] Right next door
to the Berghof itself is a hotel and the owner of the hotel
doesn't want to sell. But Bormann's methods
can be very persuasive. Martin Bormann is determined
to buy this building and he approaches the owner, and the
owner is reluctant. He refuses to sell. Bormann's response
is swift and merciless. WORK LIBERATES He sends the owner
to Dachau concentration camp. The owner comes around
to the idea of selling the hotel. Bormann offers an amount of money, which was a fair market value at the time
for the building, but then at the last minute,
he pays a considerable amount less. He holds back
on a large amount of the agreed sum. Bormann's methods
are blunt but effective. [Emma] He forces the purchase of land all around what is initially quite
a kind of modest mountain chalet, and in order to create this enormous sort
of empire that becomes Hitler's court. As the new Berghof takes shape,
Bormann is in his element, driving his workers on and stopping
at nothing to fulfil the Führer's wishes. He oversees this very, very fully, and of course, you know,
he's an incredibly hard taskmaster. He's a complete bully. He makes the life of his foremen
an absolute misery, but it gets done. [archive, German speech] While Bormann begins to make a name
for himself, his boss, Rudolf Hess, is too busy to notice that his own
deputy is stealing a march on him. And having given Bormann a leg up to
the Führer, he doesn't learn his lesson. He's about to make
the same mistake again. Albert Speer is a young architect working on various projects
in Hess's ministry... ...including for the Nuremberg rallies,
where the faithful come to reaffirm their loyalty to the Führer
and the Nazi Party. Speer has designed an enormous eagle
to use as a backdrop. Not wanting to take the responsibility for signing off the design himself,
Hess sends him to Hitler. It's an introduction
that will change Speer's life. Hitler warms to this new whizkid. [Emma] Hitler has seen Speer,
this rather glamorous young architect, and whisked him up to work
for this wonderful Nazi project. So for a period, Speer is in this golden world
where he is achieving so much. He's so on top of things, and he's in the kind of glow
of Hitler's appreciation. Before long, Speer is appointed
Hitler's official architect. He's completely overwhelmed,
having come from nowhere to being a fully paid-up member of
the inner circle in less than four years. After his eagle design, the young star has more big ideas
for the annual gathering. He wants something dramatic
for the Nuremburg Rally, so he's heard that in America
they use these searchlights that go into the sky,
so if you turn them upwards to the sky, they look like never-ending
classical Roman pillars. But Speer's ambitions bring him
into conflict with one of the Reich's heavyweights. Naively, he thinks he can just ask
the Luftwaffe to lend him
130 anti-aircraft searchlights. But he's treading
on the toes of the wrong man. Commander-in-chief Hermann Göring
throws a fit, saying it'll jeopardise national security. Göring makes the point that, you know,
you can't just take bits of my Luftwaffe and use them
for some ceremonial occasion. Of course, he's just jealous
that, you know, that really Albert Speer has risen as this young man, but it does
reveal that his ego can be pricked. Undeterred, Speer goes over
Göring's head direct to the Führer. Hitler agrees with his golden boy
and overrules the revered war hero. [James Holland] What you've got
is a kind of rather cheeky upstart, a young whippersnapper who's coming in and actually bending the ear
of the Führer... and that's annoying. Speer gets his way,
and his so-called Cathedral of Light becomes an iconic image
of Nazi propaganda. The newcomer to Hitler's circle
has got the better of the Nazi stalwart, but he's made an enemy
who won't forgive or forget. That's the sort of thing that's going
to wind up people like Göring, and from Speer's point of view,
he just needs to watch it a little bit. Rudolf Hess's introduction
of new members to the inner circle isn't helping his relations
with the old guard. And to make matters worse,
too late, Hess begins to realise that his own deputy is making himself
rather too indispensable to Hitler. Martin Bormann
is using the Berghof project to worm his way ever closer
to the centre of power. And the Deputy Führer is beginning
to feel surplus to requirements. [Frank] So I think this is
a really important moment, really, in the schism between these two men. And also, Bormann wins on this one,
he's given this huge task. And of course, he does it very well. Hitler is very impressed
by the whole project. Hess isn't the only member of the inner
circle's old guard under pressure. Hermann Göring is starting
to become concerned about Hitler's expansionist plans as his Führer prepares to seize
a first objective, the Rhineland. Since the end of the First World War, Germany has been banned
from having any soldiers stationed in this region
along its western border. But in 1936, Hitler decides to reoccupy
the buffer zone with troops. He knows it'll be a popular move at home
and a signal to France and Britain. It was a way of saying we are no longer
going to be a vassal state, told what to do
out of the terms of Versailles, we are reasserting our German freedom. But it's a gamble. Göring fears the Allies will retaliate to this blatant provocation
with military force. Göring was undoubtedly correct
in feeling that this was an unnecessary provocation,
but, of course, he's overruled. Once again, Göring is forced
to back down, his pride wounded. You could clearly see
that Göring followed Hitler. He was very loyal to Hitler,
but he could not quite get the point what Hitler wanted to achieve,
he didn't understand that. And he definitely wanted
to avoid a great war. [archive, German speech] But things are even worse for Hess. He may be Deputy Führer,
but he's not even been consulted about the plans
to reoccupy the Rhineland. [Michael] Hitler doesn't allow others to
be informed who should have known. And Hess is one of those, suggesting
he wasn't high in the pecking order. He would use him but he's not prepared
to give him information you would think would be critical
to a major minister. But while Hess is excluded... REPORT ...a more savvy member of the inner circle sees the Rhineland as a golden
opportunity to impress the Führer. Joseph Goebbels has the job
of selling the Nazi dream. And this is
the kind of propaganda opportunity he's dreamt of for years...
it's his moment to shine. The troops march in. And alongside them are an army of
Goebbels' film crews and news men. For the first time since 1918, he says,
Germans have something to be proud of. The message is loud and clear:
Germany is on the rise again. [Guy] We see the soldiers marching along and we see this woman rush up to one of
them and pin this flower to a tunic, and with that flower onto that lapel is the kind of hopes of Germany in what Hitler has done
and this great gamble's worked. As the Nazi Party takes stock after
this first move on the European stage, the fortunes of some of the leaders
are up and some are down. Hail! Hail! Goebbels has created
a wave of euphoria in Germany and is in Hitler's good books. Göring has been put in his place,
and Hess has been sidelined. But for Martin Bormann,
things couldn't be better. In the Bavarian Alps, he's ensured
that the building of Hitler's Berghof, mountain court, is completed on time
and to the highest possible standard. So, Bormann's stock as being the man
behind the redeveloped Obersalzberg is in a much stronger position
than he was before. Where the old house stood, there's now a new, much more impressive residence
befitting the status of the Führer. The secure compound includes
administration buildings, barracks and guest houses. For the German people, the Berghof
becomes a place of pilgrimage. Parties of school children
and admirers of their beloved leader travel to Bavaria
from all over the country. And favoured foreign dignitaries
are invited to visit. Among them, Italian dictator Mussolini... ...and the former king of England,
Edward VIII, and his wife, the Duchess of Windsor. [James Holland]
When you get to the Berghof, you're treated with lots of smart salutes and SS sentries and guards, you're ushered in,
it's all very luxurious. You're left with no doubt that this is the
place of the leader of the Third Reich. The whole site covers
26 square kilometres. And below ground,
Bormann has plans for a Nazi stronghold. [James Wilson] A vast area,
probably capable of accommodating up to as many as 1,000 people
below ground, in what the Allies believed
would have been an underground fortress where Hitler might make a last stand. But in the summer of 1936,
there is no talk of defensive fortresses. No thoughts about a last stand. Bormann has created for Hitler a
fantasy rural escape and an HQ all in one. I think Hitler had this idea
he was going to have the Berghof as a kind of alternative seat
of government, partly because he was lazy. He liked to run Germany
from his living room. All the decisions that Hitler takes,
and all these plans and schemes, are thought up on a chintz settee
in his living room. I mean, that is pretty amazing. And for the cronies at the top
of the heap, this is the best of times. They will become known
as the Berghof Set. But although an invite to Hitler's Camelot
is seen as a sign of approval, it comes at a price. If you were transported to the Berghof
after it was completed in the late '30s, it would have been like going to kind of the most difficult and awkward weekend
house party you could possibly imagine. Let's just look
at your host for starters. This is Adolf Hitler, this is a man who
gets up late and goes to bed very late, and every evening, you've got to spend
your night listening to him holding forth in the drawing room
until three or four in the morning, and, you know, to leave early
would be treacherous and disloyal. [Frank] Everybody else was bored stiff,
but he loved the idea of, you know, a nice meal followed
by a Hollywood film, followed by a ranting monologue
that went on till three in the morning. He thought this was wonderful. And the new Berghof is the stage
on which the rivalries and intrigues between Hitler's courtiers
are played out. [Guy] So you're there on a balcony and
you're wearing your kind of Sunday best and then out comes Hitler,
and you'll have to jostle around him and sort of allow your heads to be patted
and make all the right noises. And at the same time,
you're aware of the fact that your other member of the inner circle
next to you is trying to be even more oleaginous and greasy
than you are. And so there's almost a kind of
horrible vicious circle, if you like, amongst the inner circle of who can
basically suck up to Hitler the most. [James Wilson] So we've got all these
huge egos, these big personalities, the neighbours-from-hell scenario, with all these people
wanting to curry favour with Hitler, maintain their positions
and climb that ladder. They weren't friends,
they weren't personal friends. Bormann and Göring, for instance,
are mortal enemies. They absolutely hate each other. Himmler hated Goebbels,
Goebbels hated Himmler. Himmler and Goebbels hated Göring. None of them really liked each other,
except the relationship with Hitler. [Guy] And amongst some of the Nazi wives,
there's quite a lot of friction, so some of the older children
may have been aware of that, but most of the time,
there was this very nice man who would have been called Uncle Adolf who would have kind of pinched
your cheek and you would have played with a puppy with him and actually would
have been probably very agreeable. But beneath it is something
very, very disagreeable. And as the court plays on, the master of ceremonies is that ambitious
man in the shadows, Martin Bormann, who is despised by all his rivals. But that doesn't bother him. He's developed a taste for power
and having gained his leader's trust, he revels in the attention. The Berghof becomes a place where
Bormann really is the person in charge. It becomes like it's Hitler's court but it's Bormann's fiefdom
and these are his glory days. And Bormann is about to pull
a masterstroke. He commandeers a local children's home
and moves in. It's one of the largest houses in the area
and right above the Berghof. Bormann had already
started to control access to Hitler. Now he is literally his gatekeeper. [James Wilson]
This house overlooks the Berghof and so he can see all the comings and
goings to the Berghof from his own home. He doesn't have to rely
on being kept informed. Too late, the other members
of the circle realise that they have been outmanoeuvred
by Bormann and scramble to reassert themselves. [Emma] Everybody gets frantic about
who Hitler's inviting to the Berghof, who's kind of hanging out with him
and they want to be nearby so that they can join in
and not see anybody sort of getting closer to Hitler
than they are. Each tries to outdo his rivals
by displaying his craven loyalty to the leader, the Reich,
and everything it stands for. And in this private world of the Berghof, they feel safe formulating plans
for the "Jewish problem"... For as cultured, urbane and
sophisticated as the Berghof set seems, it is easy to forget
that on these chintzy sofas, the most depraved ideologies were crafted. There's a curious paradox
and it's only really made sense of by the fact that there is a new morality,
if you like, in inverted commas, a new morality within Nazism
which allows people to be cultured, intelligent, educated,
and at the same time... ...espouse those most radical,
hideous, racist ideas. Behind the scenes, Bormann is ever
tightening his grip on his rivals and moulding himself as Hitler's enforcer. He takes charge of the Führer's
personal finances and the coffers of the whole Nazi Party. He says who gets what.
And where there's money, there's power. [Guy] The ever-cunning Bormann, who now is
becoming known as the Brown Eminence, which is a kind of vaguely scatological
phrase to describe him, is gaining more and more power by having the keys to the Party treasury
and the Party finances. That gives him enormous power
and leverage over the person who's, you know, borrowed the money. As Bormann's power grows, the fortunes of Hess, still his boss,
in theory, continue to fall. He is the one person missing from these
carefree images at the mountain retreat. [Guy] You can look at no better evidence
for Hess's marginalisation by the fact that he is not in this footage
on the Berghof, he is very rarely there. He is not a very clubbable figure.
He's an outsider. Hess's refusal to engage
in the inner circle's vicious power plays means he's slipping ever further down
the pecking order. With each slight, real or imagined,
his hurt increases. He becomes a hypochondriac, trusting in alternative therapies to treat
his various perceived ailments. His behaviour grows increasingly bizarre. Göring, after mentioning to Hess
his neuralgia, one day receives a surprise bundle
of packages. [Thomas] To his great amusement, Hess told
him that he should use those pots and pans in order to treat his neuralgia and that he fill them up with water
at different temperatures and then immerse
different parts of his body in them. And ever since, Göring really
had difficulties taking Hess seriously and really thought
that he had gone off the rails. [Guy] Hess was a deeply troubled man, he was deeply insecure about his role
within the inner circle. And I think that he was becoming
more withdrawn, into the kind of slightly out-there weirdo
that he always was. But one area where Hess is still useful is in nurturing his links
with Nazi supporters in Austria, where the Party has been banned
following a failed uprising. Hess's work as a go-between
helps to prepare the ground for the takeover of Germany's neighbour which Hitler dreams of achieving
as his first step to European domination. FEDERAL STATE OF AUSTRIA But when words become action and
the operation to take over Austria begins, the Deputy Führer is elbowed aside. Instead, it's Göring that forges the way. [James Holland] Göring first of all
puts on a massive demonstration of Luftwaffe strength, there's a huge fly-past, and they sort of
keeping coming over and rotating, going back, refuelling and continuing on. The overwhelming show of force
has its desired effect. The Germans march in
without a shot fired. Again, the gamble has paid off. They walk in unchallenged
and it is without casualty. An extraordinary piece of diplomacy
backed by force, but it works. The Anschluss, or "joining together"
of Germany and Austria is Hitler's greatest triumph yet and the Austrians seemingly welcome
their new master with open arms. [Michael]
It's like the Rhineland, it worked. If it works, it's great,
if it fails, it's disaster. But it worked. It's a bluff that's not called. After laying much of the groundwork,
this should be Hess's finest hour, but when Hitler is hailed
by the vast crowds in Vienna, the Deputy Führer is nowhere to be seen. [Michael]
It's very possibly Hitler's way of saying you are not in the front rank of those
who are going to serve from this point on. -Hail victory!
-Hail victory! On the surface, the Anschluss appears
to be a peaceful uniting of nations. But the day after Hitler's victory speech,
the terror begins. It's led by Heinrich Himmler,
one of those men at the Berghof who like to think of themselves
as cultured... NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY ...and sophisticated. He's the cowardly wannabe soldier who doesn't have any military experience
to fight armies. Instead, he wages war
on defenceless civilians. His SS starts rounding up
thousands of Jews and taking them into protective custody. [Richard] Jews were being arrested,
their property was being taken, they were taken off to camps and, in some
cases, murdered by Austrian Nazis. This was really the start of
an open programme of antisemitism and it became a model that was
then transferred to Germany itself. [cheering] But back in Berlin, Göring takes
the plaudits alongside his Führer as an adoring and oblivious
German public celebrates another great,
and apparently peaceful, victory. Now, far from the horrors
unfolding in Austria, Hitler immerses himself in the high ideals
of his architectural vision for the Reich. Albert Speer beguiles his patron with plans to redevelop
the heart of the capital. It will be on a breathtaking scale, fit for an empire
that will last a thousand years. They both had grandiose plans
for what Germany was going to look like, these enormous buildings, these big domed
buildings, and these big arches. And Hitler's going, yes, I love it, tell
me more, and how about if we do this? "That's a brilliant idea, mein Führer!" Hitler even wants to rename
Berlin Germania, the name given to the region
by the ancient Romans. The new city will be his legacy
to the grateful German people, and Speer will make it happen. [Guy] What you see is that Speer and
Hitler are kind of egging each other on. [Guy] Both men were visionaries,
both men regarded themselves as artists, but then there's a fine line between
being a visionary and being a dreamer. And I suggest that both of them,
ultimately, were dreamers. Their shared vision and passion
means the two men become close. Speer is one of very few people who can bypass Bormann's increasing ring
of steel and approach Hitler directly. To Bormann, Speer's relationship
with the Führer is a threat he'll need to address. But there's another member
of the inner circle whose personal ties to Hitler
he cannot interfere with. And that person is Eva Braun. She has been Hitler's mistress
for at least the past six years. Eva was 17 when she was introduced
to the 40-year-old Nazi Party leader whilst working as an assistant
to his official photographer. [Thomas]
Eva Braun was quite an outgoing person. She was fun-loving, she liked exercise, she liked to smoke and these were all
things that Hitler did not really like. So when Eva Braun was on her own
on the Berghof with a small number of close friends, she led a totally different kind of life
than from the time that Hitler was there. While Hitler was around, which
she of course was always longing for, she had intimate moments with him
which she really cherished but she also really resented
that she could neither be herself and that she was hidden away by Hitler. Eva is kept out of sight, a closely
guarded secret from the German people. It was necessary for Hitler's PR
that, rather like Elvis in his early days, he shouldn't have an open girlfriend
because it would turn off lots of fans. And it would have been
very, very bad for Hitler as Germany's rock-star politician
to be seen... in a loving marital
or sexual relationship with another woman. So that's why Eva was kept under wraps. Eva Braun may come across as a typical fun-loving girl
in her home-movie footage, but she had unique influence
over the Führer, and the competing rivals
of the inner circle knew it. [Emma] Unsurprisingly, it seems that Eva
Braun and Martin Bormann hate each other as they sort of jostle for supremacy
in this Hitlerian court. And the wives of the Nazi leaders
are wary of Eva too. They're embroiled with jealousy and
intrigue just as much as their husbands. But they know for their partners
to keep close to Hitler, they must ingratiate themselves with
young Eva, however galling that may be. [Emma] There are a lot of women
staying at the Berghof but they mostly despise Eva Braun
and look down on her as an unmarried woman,
as Hitler's mistress, as somebody who really shouldn't have
any position at all in their view. The one wife who is not seen
in Eva's footage is Emmy Göring, Hermann's larger-than-life partner. In public, the glamorous Emmy likes to
be thought of as First Lady of the Reich, a role model for German womanhood. She despises Eva and thinks
she is not worthy of the Führer. [Emma] They're also probably
an element of jealously because, through her relationship
with Hitler, she obviously is very close to the source of power
that their husbands are jostling for. Even the men tread carefully around Eva
and are not above trying to flatter her... ...as she records in her occasional diary. [as Eva Braun] Goebbels sent me a really
wonderful pearl necklace and wrote, "The prettiest gift I can present
to my honoured and beloved Führer is this small token of my respect
for you." But Goebbels' extravagant gesture to ingratiate himself with Eva Braun
misfires. [as Braun] "Goebbels, with all his brains,
is still an impossible man. He still does not know
that Adolf hates pearls and that I am never allowed
to wear them in his presence. He says they bring bad luck." Throughout 1938, the jostling
in the Führer's entourage continues as the next step in Germany's domination
of Europe begins to unfold. Once the Anschluss had been
successfully completed, it was apparent to everyone that Hitler would be turning his attention
towards Czechoslovakia. An area of Western Czechoslovakia,
the Sudetenland, includes a sizable minority
of German speakers who are already being mobilised
to support the Nazi cause. Hitler's plan is to use them
as an excuse to invade... ...but he can't just march in
without justification. So once again, he turns to
his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to come up with a pretext. [Frank] And this really explains
how much Goebbels is involved in the foreign policy and also
the ideological aims of Adolf Hitler. You know, if Hitler had decided
to invade the moon, Goebbels would have dressed up
as an astronaut. That is the kind of person that he was. He was intimately involved
in all of Hitler's actions and he didn't question this one. Goebbels' propaganda machine
goes to work again. He stokes up division and hatred by portraying these Germans
as victims of Czech oppression. There are calls for the Sudetenland to be brought into the Fatherland
to restore order. [Thomas] He cooked up bogus stories
about aggression against ethnic Germans in order to present Germany
as the protector of ethnic Germans. So, Goebbels very much sold
German intervention there as a humanitarian intervention. Having won back Hitler's respect
following the success of the Anschluss, Göring urges caution once again. [man] His warrior instincts may have been, we must go forward, we must
take territory, we must conquer, but he also was practical enough to
understand that military action is risky, and you make the bad choice, then the whole house of cards
could come tumbling down. But again, Hitler ignores Göring's advice. The old war horse hasn't learned that his leader can't be talked round
once he's made up his mind. German troops pour into the Sudetenland
and they don't stop there. Six months later, they push on and take
another large chunk of Czechoslovakia. Another gamble has paid off, and Hitler's
house of cards remains standing. [marching band plays] Yet once again,
Göring must swallow his pride. [Sönke]
For Göring, it was a disappointment. I mean, Göring was in his perception
the second most important man in Germany and now from autumn '38
to spring '39 onwards, for the first time, he was losing power,
not gaining power. So it was definitely a blow for Göring. Knocked back, Göring has another
problem, an old addiction rears its head. Fifteen years earlier,
during the attempted Munich Putsch, Göring had been shot
and seriously injured. Treated with morphine to kill the pain,
he became hooked on the drug. It took him two years to kick the habit. But now, another medical problem leads
to him once again taking morphine. [James Wyllie]
Göring suffered some severe dental issues that involved
some quite painful dental surgery. And as part of his recovery,
the dentist gave him some painkillers that had a certain amount of opiate
in them. He is soon hooked again
and in the war years to come, strong rumours of this addiction
to morphine will blight Göring's career and his reputation will continue
to seesaw. His focus is taken away
from the job of running the Luftwaffe and, you know, he is seen kind of lying
on couches in the middle of the day in a sort of haze of overeating,
overdrinking and taking too many drugs. Hitler's 50th birthday,
everything is going according to plan. Austria and Czechoslovakia have been incorporated
into the new Germany without bloodshed. The Führer reigns supreme
and the Berghof set is in Party mood. [James Holland] These leading Nazis
all recognise that this is a key moment, that this is a time where if you can
just curry a little bit more favour that you can just manoeuvre yourself
into a slightly stronger position. But what present do you give the man who
has the biggest empire since the Kaiser? [James Holland]
All these leaders are jostling to give the ultimate leader
the best present. It's like a kid's birthday party, they're hoping that the recipient
is going to pat their head the most if they've given him the nicest present. Each member of Hitler's entourage
tries to upstage the others with extravagant gestures
to show their loyalty. Goebbels organises
the largest military parade since the Third Reich came to power. Göring lays on an impressive fly-past
of his Luftwaffe. Speer presents an enormous model of a victory arch he wants to build
in the Führer's honour. It's actually childish, you know, it's actually sort of showboating
to each other. "Look how much I care for the Führer,
compared to you." But Bormann, predictably,
trumps them all. At vast expense, he has built a stunning mountaintop tea house
for Hitler above the Berghof. It's later to be dubbed by the Allies
the Eagle's Nest. [James Wilson] The Eagle's Nest
is a spectacular building, it dominates the area. It is really the icing
on the birthday cake. The Third Reich is reaching
the zenith of its power. These are giddy times for the inner circle
around its triumphant leader. They are on the sunlit uplands and
they look to the future with confidence. All except one. [archive, crowd] Sieg heil! Sieg heil! There is perhaps one leading Nazi for whom the future isn't quite so bright,
and that's Rudolf Hess. He's been superseded by people
who are simply better than he is, cleverer, cannier, more Machiavellian, more ruthless and more ambitious. So the future for Hess
doesn't look quite so sunny. But the Deputy Führer
is not ready to give up yet. A radical idea
is starting to take shape in his mind. It's his way to outflank his rivals,
win back Hitler's favour, and create a pact to enable Germany to have total domination
over the European mainland. Hess's secret plan will lead to the most
bizarre episode in the Second World War.
