Rise & Fall of the Nazis | Episode 10: Aftermath | Free Documentary History

foreign 1945 Germany is defeated now the awful reality of what Adolf Hitler and his cronies have been up to is revealed Germany has been mind captured and committed the most heinous crimes in history the Allies are adamant that this must never happen again this is the story of the struggle to de-notsify Germany [Music] [Music] foreign advancing through Germany Allied Forces make a gruesome discovery on forward Patrol American soldiers of the U.S third Army come across a site that defies description they found emaciated prisoners they found disease they found starvation this was a huge shock to see this but what stuck in the memory of course were the Corpses it is estimated that as many as 56 000 people died in the book and Val concentration camp in some of the worst conditions imaginable was the second largest concentration camp on German soil [Music] some 900 children were liberated at buchenwald many of them made an absolutely terrible condition many of them died shortly afterwards children some so young as three or four in these camps and allow them to starve because they were useless eaters as the SS put it that was a level of inhumanity that I think shocked many of the Allies in a manner they simply could not come to terms with [Music] the news is passed up the chain of command right to the top eight days later the highest ranking American generals in Europe Eisenhower Patton and Bradley visit the camp when the camps were opened up there was an intense feeling of anger that people like Eisenhower very strongly expressed we must make these people suffer they must punish them for what they've done in the eyes of Supreme Commander Eisenhower and of the world this kind of torture and beating practiced on the prisoners is a crime he became determined that the world should know about these crimes he became determined that they should be broadcast throughout Germany the scene of death repeats itself in concentration camps along the path of the Allied advance films were made photographs were taken and as far as Eisenhower was concerned he was a crime that the world was never to be allowed to forget and the Germans never to be allowed to forget this film shows the first time ordinary Germans are made to confront the horrific reality of what their beloved regime has been up to but even worse than the concentration camps in Germany are the extermination camps like Auschwitz and maidanek in Poland liberated by the Russians [Music] the discovery of a network of these camps provides solid evidence of the systematic wholesale industrial murder of millions of people by gassing and extreme work under starvation conditions the Allies realize the Nazis are an enemy the like of which has never been seen before they haven't been fighting against any Old Nation here they've been fighting against a gangster regime that kills Jewish people and they can see just the depth of humanity to which this regime has sunk as the scale of the atrocities becomes apparent it reveals the number of people that must have been involved it seems that almost every German is implicated you've got the train driver driving a trainload of Jews across Europe he knows what's going on but he's not asking any questions you've got the civil servant working in some small Department in Berlin who's probably responsible for supplying the cattle trucks you've got obviously the kind of bigwigs making his decisions but when you put all those cogs together then you've got a murder machine this sophisticated organization illustrates one of the Nazi regime's most Insidious skills making it easy for individuals to be part of this killing machine without feeling personally implicated even if it was happening on their doorstep the Blind Eye to it so either they were ignoring you and ignoring all the rumors that were obviously going about or they knew about it and they were lying about what they knew about either way it's just kind of morally bankrupt position [Music] the extent of the crime is so great that the Allies realize that they need to change the mindset of the entire German people the Allies think long and hard about what's appropriate and what's fair and what's just at the end of the second World War this has been a a regime that has gone out consciously to exterminate whole populations millions of people have died enormous areas have been destroyed so the sense is this needs something special this needs something new [Music] the Allies need to undo years of Nazi indoctrination and prove to the German people that everything they have believed in and been acting on is wrong the Allies decide that they need to adopt a program of denotification they need to re-educate the German people this is a huge Challenge and will take time the country is under military occupation governed by Regional commanders with differing agendas a uniform Nationwide approach is needed the Allies decide to implement a three-point plan [Music] they abolished the Nazi party crowds Gather in the marketplace to hear Allied orders to read the Allied proclamations disbanding the Nazi party Nazi laws and institutions secondly they need to identify its criminal members finally they need to bring its leaders to Justice this is harder than it seems Adolf Hitler the criminal mastermind behind the Third Reich is dead Joseph Goebbels is propaganda Minister also commits suicide as does Heinrich Himmler the man responsible for the Holocaust [Music] but they have captured hair man guring he had been with Hitler from the very beginning he had led the brown shirts fought in the attempted coup in 1923. and built up and led the Nazis Air Force here is a man known throughout the world as being Hitler's number two he's been involved in everything the Gestapo the final solution everywhere his finger is in every single pie here is the man that they can hold up as one of the chief perpetrators of the whole war crimes machine of the Third Reich [Music] following the official German surrender the Allies quickly round up other senior figures in the regime they found representatives of the Armed Forces so kind of yodel who are the senior generals Donuts who had been in charge of the U-boats and then had been briefly Chancellor after Hitler's suicide spare the armaments minister who had drafted in millions of people from all over Europe to serve as slave laborers in Nazi Germany they decide to prove to the German people once and for all that their leaders are no more than criminals the Allies decide on an unprecedented step to put them on trial for war crimes [Music] by the summer of 1945 the Allies are in full control of defeated Germany now they can begin the process of making sure atrocities like the Holocaust never happen again the German mindset must be cleansed they need to prove to the public that the Nazi leadership they so trusted and believed in are no more than a common criminal conspiracy it was no longer sufficient for these individuals to say we were following the orders of the state the Allies wanted to demonstrate that these actions these decisions were not merely political actions but actions that across the line into illegality during June 1945 the world's first International tribunal drafts an entire new set of laws these laws Define the crimes the Nazis have committed there were four crimes crimes against peace which is waging illegal War crimes breaking the rules on methods and means of warfare the hay conventions war crimes include shooting prisoners of War but there is worse crimes against humanity terrible atrocities against individuals [Music] and conspiracy essentially membership of criminal organizations like the SS [Music] participation in those organizations participation in the regime became a criminal act what's better place to show the world how evil the Nazi regime is than in its propaganda Homeland Nuremberg [Music] Nuremberg had been the site of the great Nazi party rallies in the 1930s and was where the infamous laws on German citizenship had been passed in its favor Nuremberg also has a surviving building suitable enough to house the proceedings [Music] the courtroom is being made ready the tribunal before which top-ranking Nazis will appear for the war criminal trial the scarred Palace of Justice with a bit of renovation is an ideal location this courtroom is temporarily expanded to provide a gallery for 350 representatives of the world's press and seating for 400 members of the public this will be the venue for the trial of the century early in the morning six months after the end of the war hair man guring and the other defendants are ushered from their cells into the flood-lit courtroom taking the Western legal approach it will be up to the prosecution to prove the individual defendants guilty of the charges beyond all Reasonable Doubt Britain's Lord Justice Lawrence addresses the defendant not guilty the proceedings soon become bogged down establishing guilt especially linking witnesses to the final solution proves surprisingly difficult perhaps I ought to just remind the tribunal that in the in the course of the trial the prosecutors ran into all sorts of difficulties the individual defendants were able to claim that these documents didn't bear their signatures that they didn't relate to the particular branch of the administration they had worked with and in some cases the defendants knew that context rather better than the prosecutors um but I I trust the court the court that outside of this courtroom after four months the prosecution finally rests and Gering takes the stand off the drugs slim down and fit he is a skilled and formidable adversary the responsible he's cross-examined by Robert Jackson and for Robert Jackson it goes disastrously wrong it turns out that gurring is a formidable individual with a remarkable memory the showman is in his element he was the star of the trial every newspaper reporter who was there mentions this in the dispatchers how he keeps shaking his head taking off his headphones laughing at every moment when he thinks they're they're saying something ridiculous Heinrich you're right about that aren't we that is rings around Robert Jackson all right caring was more on top of the facts about the Nazis guring was able to point to the paradoxes of British and American actions which appeared to be unlawful and Jackson made no progress with him at all he tries to influence the other Defenders to keep on following this line and to say this course has no legitimacy let's stick to that line and he does get through to many of them and that one of the purposes here of the defendant Gary things aren't going to plan for the allies gurring in particular is skilled at fighting the prosecution his clever challenges and bold statements hold the courtroom's wrapped attention but it can't last eventually the Allies nail him their trump card is the testimony obtained from the camp commandant of Auschwitz whilst in prison he then tells the cause all about the complicity of gearing in the final solution which of course Maps out the slave labor and the killing process of the Jews in Europe gurring's co-defendants are all cross-examined before the defense rests in June 1946 the evidence was so overwhelming and so comprehensively proved on the basis of documents and witness testimony and images and video footage that I think there wasn't a hope in hell that the major perpetrators were going to get off what remained was what the sentence would be [Music] at 3 P.M in private away from the glare of the cameras and public the defendants are returned from the cells to the court to hear the verdicts as the highest ranking remaining Nazi gurring is sentenced to death chief of operations staff General yodel and his boss General Keitel are also condemned to death along with foreign minister Von ribantrop for others it's a prison sentence Admiral dernitz Hitler's official successor gets 10 years armaments Minister Speer gets 20. and former deputy fuhrer Rudolf Hess gets life imprisonment [Music] the message to the German public is clear the people who had led them and who they died for are no more than common criminals [Music] but going has no intention of making it easy for the allies with his fate sealed he faces two final decisions how and when he will die he's faced with the guilty verdict he knows he's going to be executed he even tries to negotiate his form of execution he says that as a military man he should face a firing squad and not be hung but the Allies insist he be hanged just two hours before he is due to be executed gurring has brought his personal effects amongst his toiletries is a jar of hair cream it seems that hidden within it was a capsule of potassium cyanide at 10 minutes to 11 the last of the Nazi leaders takes his own life he escapes the hangman right at the 11th Hour right to the very end he's a Survivor and he leaves the Earth on his own terms so he's one of denotification is successfully completed the Nazi leadership have been dealt with but now the Allies face a much bigger problem how do you de-notsify 70 million Germans following the execution of the Nazi leadership the Allies face a massive task the denotification of the German people themselves the point but not is that it overtook every facet of life so you almost impossible to avoid in some way being associated with Nazism [Music] only now does the truly Insidious nature of Nazism become clear it pervades all aspects of life from birth through marriage and into death it even dictated what you ate for dinner on Sunday [Music] this regime that have held on to the society whose tentacles have gone right through almost every organization every community of influenced people's almost every aspect of people's lives this has to be removed from German Society for Europe to move forward as the scale of the Holocaust becomes apparent the wholesale murder of six million Jews it reveals the full extent to which everyone in Germany is implicated one war crimes investigator actually told me we were unprepared for the sheer volume of criminality that we encountered and there were so many people who had committed just an inverted commas one or two murders I mean you're looking at around a hundred thousand people you've got to track down so that's a major challenge [Music] it's a place to look is within the military but that also presents a problem by the end of the war five million German soldiers are pows held in temporary camps in appalling conditions across Europe waiting to be processed prisoners are interviewed the interviews are analyzed and a check is maintained on the trends of German morale right through 1945 particularly through the summer of 1945 there is a process of vetting going on and in all of the Allied prisoner of war camps there was an attempt to screen these millions of people and to sift out from amongst them those who were potentially war criminals and should be subject to some kind of legal process even capture cannot shake the Arrogant faith in the Nazi Creed has been bred in them from childhood you've had this criminal mentality that's overtaken a nation and you need to eradicate it and what you can't do is allow the idea of Nazism to be involved in public life at all [Music] eradicating every aspect of Nazism is a mammoth task the visible signs are the easiest to remove the swastika is banned and symbolic Eagle imagery is destroyed but breaking down the Nazi mentality is much harder there are eight million members of the Nazi party ten percent of the population with Millions more enrolled in Affiliated organizations the denotification is is that just if you remember the Nazi party it doesn't automatically make you a Nazi with a capital N there were people joining the Nazi party simply because if they weren't in the party they couldn't keep their jobs and therefore you know they would be able to work and their children and families would suffer anybody who's been in any position of leadership or authority for the last decade and a half is going to in some way have some sort of uh tainting with Nazism the Allies initially decree that all party members be removed and excluded from public office and positions of power but this proves impractical it's a very complicated difficult thing to do because Nazism had gone so deep in German society that if you literally remove all people who had any link with the Nazi regime you're going to be left with almost nobody you know maybe a few basking doctors or Railway clerks or people whose jobs were completely unpolitical foreign with so many people involved in every aspect of the Nazi regime the Allies decide to focus their attention on locating and pursuing the most committed Nazis people working in the public services in education in the police the Judiciary were required to fill in a questionnaire a lengthy questionnaire upwards of 80 questions which effectively probed their political history by Christmas 1945 500 000 forms have been processed at a rate of 10 000 a day but with 7 million still to assess the task will take another two years and even then only a small proportion are prosecuted on trial or awaiting trial before special German courts or some 2 million invited Nazis penalties for the guilty range from long terms at hard labor for the worst offenders to fines for those less culpable [Music] but what many people don't realize is that many of the most serious perpetrators are being allowed to slip through the net and get away with it deliberately as denotsification progresses the Allies discover they have more important issues to deal with it becomes increasingly apparent that Nazis are yesterday's enemy there's a new enemy to the East and if you're a Russian you've got a new enemy to the West this is the start of the Cold War an escalation of political and Military tension that would set the Allies against each other and take the world back to the brink of War I mean the Cold War pretty much starts You could argue on the 9th of May 45 the day after the collapse [Music] so whilst the official public policy might be to hunt down Nazis secretly the West takes a leaf out of the Nazi handbook and pursues a very different agenda in private they actually seek them out and protect them I think that there's a large amount of cynicism that you can attach to the behavior of the Americans and the British and indeed the Soviets in the wake of the collapse yes they want to find war criminals but at the same time you are taking over a country which has got a lot of very important people who are extremely well qualified to help you with your projects back at home there's no clearer example than in the case of the German rocket scientists extraordinary rocket program that the Germans developed from the mid-30s onwards is led by a young Aristocrat a man called venavon Brown and he has the science and the leadership powers to drive a community a very brilliant scientists really into the future into the next generation of science [Music] Werner Von Braun's weapons the V1 flying bomb and V2 rocket had terrified London killing over 15 000 civilians and damaging up to 20 000 houses a day at the height of the campaign his V2 is capable of more than five times the speed of sound once launched there are no effective countermeasures this technology is far in advance of anything the Allies have in 1942 one of their Rockets is even the first man-made artifact to reach space a landmark moment for mankind [Music] Rockets are the future Rockets are the future militarily as well as in terms of space exploration and a man of Von Brown's qualifications expertise and success could not be dismissed likely and the Americans want him the problem is that by anyone's standards Von Brown and his fellow rocket scientists are committed Nazis and are clearly guilty of crimes against humanity [Music] Brown a very black record in terms of his morality his factories his armaments production areas were based on slave labor some of the most appalling stories of suffering occur in those camps where those enforced labors are held the amount of people who died in the factories and camps that are associated with Von Braun probably numbers greater than the people who were killed by some of the Rockets he made so you know this is a very morally iffy area despite the awful atrocities he has committed the Americans decide they need him in this climate of escalating tension between the superpowers the Americans start breaking the rules everything 765 top scientists and Engineers from Hitler's military research programs are whisked away to America without undergoing any process of denotification this is part of the top secret Operation Paperclip and so a cover or a partial curtain is drawn over some the background of some of those arrested if they can be of use to the Allies individually then the denotification policy won't be followed through 100 but there are complications officially U.S law prohibits any Nazis from entering America and President Truman himself has expressly forbidden proven Nazis to be recruited to get around the slightly embarrassing fact that a lot of the scientists have got a link with the Nazi party the American intelligence agencies actually just just rewrite their pasts they they bleach out their Nazi associations give them sort of new sets of papers I mean it's really quite scandalous looking back on it what's done there was a cover-up say so that the true reality of what some of these Nazis had done would not be revealed [Music] with his record wiped clean Werner Von Brown becomes something of a celebrity in America [Music] of the US Army's Redstone guided muscle initially he works for the U.S army before becoming director of NASA's martial space flight center Fair Devon Brown is if you like the acceptable face of Nazism he's a man whose scientific achievements probably outweigh certainly in the eyes eyes of the West his sort of Nazi Association but the rocket scientists aren't the only type of Nazi the Americans recruit at a higher more secret level they also make illegal deals with the very worst kinds of Nazi those who are actually responsible for murder and genocide at the end of the war the West is committed to eradicating Nazism and hunting down all war criminals but the Advent of the Cold War and mounting tensions between East and West starts to shift the focus of the allies to denotification but there wasn't and the politics tells us why the Soviet on the west are at loggerheads Germany becomes the front line in this new conflict between East and West the division of Germany is agreed upon troops of the United States Britain and France are to occupy the Western portion of the country the Soviet Union the Eastern portion these zones separately controlled by the Allies create a hotbed of intrigue and Espionage fueling an atmosphere of Suspicion [Music] the Soviet zone encircles Berlin which itself becomes a divided City creating far-reaching problems for the occupying troops the West has a has a problem in the post-war period it wants to create new political communities that must be anti-fascists that must not have any taints with Nazi ideology in Germany but they also of course want leaders who are going to be anti-communist [Music] the rapid transformation of Stalin from Uncle Joe to the red Soviet Menace leaves the Western allies scrambling for Intelligence on their new enemy we genuinely felt that the Soviet Union represented a threat to our existence and ultimately you're going to use whoever you can to gain information about the new enemy the U.S needs help to tackle this new enemy but who can they turn to the only people who have got knowledge of how the Communists operate who got a determined anti-communist position are the old Nazis who are the only people who have the authority and the knowledge to counter the Soviet communist position the Nazis long-standing hatred of Communism had led them to gather data files on the Red Army they know how the Communists operate what is more they are used to tracking down and infiltrating Soviet intelligence cells they've been doing it for 15 years and already have agents in place to spy for them they've got a picture of Soviet politics and the Soviet decision making that a lot of people in in Britain and America just just don't have that's a sort of a big area of ignorance in the West to acquire this vital new intelligence the Americans need to recruit from the very worst Nazi agencies they need people from the gestapo and SS amongst those they recruit is former gestapo officer Klaus Barbie was a career Nazi with a brutal streak as a boy he had joined the Hitler Youth Barbie's Nazi career then flourished firstly he joined Hitler's elite SS perfect specimens of the master race hand-picked for their hatred of Jews and extreme fanaticism before moving into the Gestapo the Nazis dreaded secret police if you wanted to think of the classic kind of comic book pantomime gestap officer Klaus Barbie's gonna fit the bill he ended up performing absolutely foul acts of brutality on men women and children in the names of trying to extract information at just 29. Barbie is a brutal sadistic killer who laughs whilst personally torturing and murdering prisoners in France he became known as The Butcher of Leon actively participating in the worst crime of all the Holocaust this is a absolute primer Facey war criminal historians estimate that Barbie was directly responsible for the deaths of up to 14 000 people including the deportation to Auschwitz of 44 Jewish orphans [Music] but Klaus Barbie has also been specially trained in counter-espionage skills he's honed amongst others on the Russians these same skills in infiltrating communist networks make him and others like him hugely attractive to the Americans you know the world changes very very quickly and what someone like Klaus Barbie is very good at doing is recognizing that you know the tables have turned despite being near the top of the list of wanted war criminals when Barbie is finally caught he is amongst a small group allowed to cut a deal with the Americans this is sort of the ugly face of the Nazi regime but he knows things and he has information and he has contacts that are reviews to the West so without anybody wanting to shout this from the rooftops he becomes one of those people who the British and then the American intelligence services use as a way in to the Soviet networks uh in in Germany for the Americans at this stage the ends justify the means Barbie provides a link between the CIA and his old Networks and the Americans are very pleased with the information he's feeding them he is an opportunist he will go wherever the cash is and whoever is going to save his skin but in June 1949 the truth comes out the man the French had sentenced to death for war crimes is working for the Americans by 1950 the writings on the wall for Barbie's usefulness as an agent and it's proving very embarrassing to the Americans to have someone who's committed some pretty Bastille and heinous acts on their payroll but rather than hand him over to be tried for war crimes U.S intelligence opts for a conspiracy plan straight out of the Nazi handbook what the Americans decide to do is they think well they'll send him down what has now become called the rat line [Music] operation rat line is an american-run Escape Route set up to get rid of embarrassing employees after being given a new passport a new name by the US Barbie becomes Klaus Altman the Escape lines ran basically through Germany Austria and across the Alps into Italy and they're normally out for a port like Genoa within weeks of leaving Germany he was on board a ship with five thousand dollars in his pocket destination South America [Music] it will be 32 years before he is seen in the west again but in South America under his new identity he gets new blood on his hands he is one of these people who thrives in dictatorships and all the way through the 50s and 60s and 70s he manages to work with various horrible corrupt regimes I mean you know if there's something shifting going on in Latin America in the 60s and 70s you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that Klaus Barbie's involved in it somewhere he actually makes himself really quite wealthy although cases like Barbie are few and far between as the years pass the Zeal to pursue Nazis begins to fail denotification is officially ended in 1951. [Music] disgusted at how reluctant the authorities have become increasingly it is down to individuals to take matters into their own hands these are the Nazi Hunters Nazi Hunters are an extraordinary and curious phenomenon these were people who had themselves suffered individually at the hands of the Nazis there's therefore a sense of personal mission a mission of justice as much as of Retribution it devolved to people like Simon wiesenthal independent people who tried to hunt down Nazis using limited resources and really that just shows you how little there was of a Nazi hunting mentality amongst the Allies it was sort of let's forget about it don't mention the war these documents show that geckos was not only a member of a police Battalion which carried out the liquidation of Jews but for individuals the Fight Continues statements of eyewitnesses former Nazis are meticulously tracked down even as far afield as South America the people are aware of the fact that Klaus Altman is indeed Klaus Barbie and among them are these couple of Nazi Hunters called surgeon BR to clarsfeld and it's bjarta clausfeldt who decides to go to South America and you know harangues the bolivians that they've got Klaus Barbie in their borders [Music] thanks to the efforts of the class Felts Barbie is sensationally returned to France where he is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment he dies in the same Leon prison where he committed so many vile acts in the 1940s although never simple and at times morally questionable denodification wasn't a sham it did succeed its best Testament is to look at what Germany is like today [Music] Nazism has not been a significant political force in Germany since 1945 there's been a sort of massive change in the way that Germany deals with the Third Reich they are now facing up to their past with the building of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin the opening up of all these concentration camps as Memorial sites poignant Memorial sites Germany has in fact embraced a democracy and pluralism and individual freedoms with a degree of zest and commitment which puts other countries to shame ultimately denotsification did succeed in Germany those that had been mind captured had their eyes opened the Nazis had used lies and deceits at a time of economic crisis to seduce Ordinary People into committing heinous crimes by seizing power a small group of criminals were ultimately responsible for the death of over 40 million people this remains a warning to us all [Music]

Channel: Free Documentary - History

Views: 1,008,655

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full Documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), History, History Documentaries, Free Documentary History, History Documentary, The Rise of the Nazi Party, Rise of the Nazi Party Full Episodes, Adolf Hitler Documentary, Third Reich, Third Reich Documentary, Nazi Germany Documentary, Nazi Party Documentary

Id: fszhtAgwQRM

Length: 48min 10sec (2890 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2023