Out of the ashes of World War One, Germany is crying out for a saviour.
A wealthy occultist, Dietrich Eckart, thinks he's found him.
He had the notion of a regenerated Germany,
but how was that to be achieved?
We need a messiah.
Young idealist Rudolf Hess becomes a first disciple.
This is the beginning of what almost becomes a love affair.
A teenage wannabe soldier, Heinrich Himmler,
finds the chance to fight for his crazy ideals.
Mythological, racial, biological ideas will hold immense appeal
and he'll never lose his absolute adoration for it.
And dashing war hero Hermann Göring
discovers a cause to fuel his own ambition.
[man] He wanted Germany to be in his image.
This small gang of misfits and heroes find each other in the violence
and disenchantment of their broken nation.
And their hunger for vengeance
will inspire them to commit the worst crimes in history.
[man] And it's these men who'll go from fighting on street corners
to end up taking over almost all of Europe in just 15 years.
This is the inside story of Hitler's henchmen, the jealousy,
power struggles and fawning sycophants
that will create a monster and fuel the most brutal horrors of the Third Reich.
The story of Hitler's inner circle
begins in the final days of World War One.
At an airfield in eastern France, the most famous German squadron of all time,
Richthofen's Flying Circus, await their next mission.
Seven months ago, they lost their legendary leader,
Manfred Von Richthofen, the Red Baron.
But a new hero has stepped in to fill the void.
A fighter pilot ace named Hermann Göring.
Göring is a national hero.
In the First World War, he's been a fantastically brave infantryman
and then he becomes a pilot and he becomes a brilliant pilot.
He shoots down 22 aircraft.
And for that, he deservedly wins Germany's highest honour
which is called the Blue Max.
Göring in his early days cut a handsome figure... and he carries himself well.
A man of principle, physical courage and bravery.
He's a hugely impressive figure to meet, he's funny, he's witty.
He's a natural leader, he's one of those guys
that you put in a room with 20 people and before you know it,
he's telling the other 19 what to do.
But Göring faces a crisis.
Rumours are rife that the German Emperor
is about to throw in the towel. But Göring is defiant.
The war may be going badly and his squadron
down to half but he's not for surrender.
Göring gathers his men together and tells them to fundamentally ignore
all these defeatist rumours that the Kaiser is going to desert them.
He is never going to do that, he says.
The Kaiser is going to be true to them, just as they are true to the Kaiser,
and will stick up for the glory and the honour of the fatherland.
Göring galvanises his men to prepare for a last death-or-glory battle.
But almost as soon as the cheers die down,
orders arrive halting all air operations on the Western Front.
[Guy] This order comes as a huge blow to Göring.
It means that everything he's fought for, for the past four years,
all those battles, all those combats in the air, it's meaningless.
[man] They've lost comrades, they've experienced extraordinary conditions,
and it all seems to be for nothing.
Everything disappears in smoke in 1918.
The Kaiser has abandoned them and fled to Holland.
Germany is on the verge of surrender.
It looks like the British, the Americans and the French are going to beat Germany
without even setting a foot on German soil.
For Göring, like many proud Germans, the news is a shattering blow.
There's a feeling of betrayal.
How could it have happened?
And I think there's a sort of mood of casting around for who to blame.
To Göring, this war was lost not by brave Germans on the battlefield
but thrown away by the cowardly back-room manoeuvrings
of left-wing politicians.
It's going to be the beginning for Göring,
as it is for so many millions of other Germans,
this feeling that they've been stabbed in the back.
Göring's orders are to hand his aircraft to the Allies
but he has no intention of obeying those who have betrayed him.
To stop them falling into enemy hands, Göring instructs his men to fly home
to crash-land their aircraft on German soil.
That sort of escapade reveals his sense of self-belief, self-worth,
and the idea he can ignore regulations and rules that don't apply to him.
Germany may have surrendered, but Göring will not.
But the Germany Göring will return to is a nation in crisis.
It was a total chaos in the country when the German army was coming back,
millions of people were unemployed.
It was an unrest politically but also economically.
Poverty and starvation are everywhere.
Law and order has broken down
and a socialist revolution is sweeping the country.
The German intelligentsia are deeply divided
between extreme left- and far right-wing politics.
And in southern Germany,
the Bavarian capital of Munich is a hotbed of these extremist views.
Among the city's outspoken right-wing elite
is a 50-year-old Bavarian poet and dramatist called Dietrich Eckart.
Dietrich Eckart is not a figure
that many people would associate with the Nazi movement today.
But he is in fact one of the most important figures within it.
And it's him who arguably sets in motion the whole political force.
Eckart is well known to be a heavy drinker,
but having made his name and fortune as a playwright before the war,
he's also wealthy and well connected.
He's a cultured individual, he's a well-known poet,
he's able to articulate his views reasonably well.
But those views are of the extreme far right
and in keeping with the times,
his paper, Auf Gut Deutsch or In Good German...
IN PLAIN LANGUAGE
...is a rabidly racist Jew-baiting sheet.
Eckart also has connections with a secretive rightwing occultist group
known as the Thule Society.
The Thule Society was a really out-there group of people.
One of the things they believed in was Atlantis...
There was a race of people called the Aryans
who almost superhuman in beauty and strength, all came from Atlantis.
[Michael] It's based on the notion that the Aryan or Teutonic peoples
were the great force, the great civilising force through history,
and they'd become Germanic... the German people...
the Aryan Teutonic people were the best
because that's how fate, providence, nature had intended them.
As bizarre as their beliefs seem, in the shattered German psyche,
the notion of a once-glorious past offers
a compelling escape from the reality of humiliation.
It's important in giving some shape to the Germans,
some sense of their own historic identity.
Germany as a state is only 40 years old.
What bound them together was this strong sense
that they wanted to discover the roots of Germandom.
What did it mean to be German?
But there's a dark side to the Thule-society myth.
They believe the superhuman Aryans had been weakened by interbreeding
with inferior and morally corrupt races.
Now these inferior races are in control
and the chaos Eckart sees in Germany is the result.
[Michael] It's the scapegoat notion.
What he's discovered, he claims, is that there is a worldwide conspiracy.
Eckart fervently believes that the enemies of Aryan Germany
are the Bolsheviks, the Communists, and most of all, the Jews.
The Jewish race is concerned to destroy all other cultures from within,
by infiltration, corrupting the body from within, the bacillus within.
There was not one shred of evidence for any of this.
But it became a cornerstone for one of the most powerful movements in history.
Eckart wants to hit back at these enemies within,
but to succeed, he must get his message beyond the elite and out to the masses.
He needs to reach the disaffected working classes.
[blows]
Meanwhile, with his squadron disbanded, Hermann Göring returns to Munich.
He comes out of the war a heroic figure in the eyes of many,
but with a burning sense of resentment, anger, frustration that Germany,
after this great effort and this great suffering,
which should've led to great, heroic victory,
has, in fact, led to a very humiliating defeat.
And Göring tastes the humiliation directly.
Street violence is rife, and former-military officers like Göring
are at the top of the socialist gangs' hit list.
[police whistles]
He is attacked by thugs who try to rip the military insignia from his uniform.
It is not the physical beating
but the flagrant disrespect for the uniform that will mark him forever.
Göring's bitterness is just entirely magnified by the fact that his uniform
and all the medals he's won are no longer marks and totems of respect.
This would have been incomprehensible.
It could not have happened a few months before and yet here it is.
What sort of homecoming is it for people like Göring?
Unable to find work in Munich, the fighter pilot ace is reduced
to scratching a living as a travelling stunt pilot.
In early 1919, he escapes the mayhem and flies out of Germany.
It's this compulsion to flee chaos
that will become a feature of his future career.
But others, like Dietrich Eckart, are determined to make a stand.
In early 1919, Eckart and the Thule Society occultists launch their plan
to spread their right-wing message.
They form a fledgling political group, the German Worker's Party.
It's just one of many small factions
that spring up and meet in the beer halls and cellars of Munich.
Throughout the 1920s, these beer halls
are sort of microcosms of political agitation.
[Guy] The early Party is nothing special. It's not unique.
At the time, it's just one of those
particularly noxious, vile, febrile, antisemitic little groups.
And normally they shout very loud
and no one takes them particularly seriously.
But Germany's humiliation is far from over,
and soon a further downturn in Germany's fortunes
will ensure Eckart's lunatic Aryan ideas find fresh ears...
In the summer of 1919, the victorious Allies gather in Paris
and on the 28th June, they and Germany sign a momentous document,
the Versailles Treaty.
There is widespread rejoicing across Europe,
but for Germany, the treaty is disastrous...
It demands compensation and revenge for World War One.
No one really anticipates quite how much the German people are going to suffer
because of the strictures of the Versailles Treaty.
Germany is fined more than 260 billion gold marks,
the equivalent of 860 billion dollars in today's money.
A fifth of their industry is taken over by the Allies.
And they are stripped of all overseas colonies.
While in Europe, they're forced to give up
a massive 13% of German territory and hand it to neighbouring countries.
Almost seven million Germans lose their citizenship
and are forced to become part of nations like Poland and Czechoslovakia.
[Richard] Nationalists like Dietrich Eckhart just simply couldn't accept
that Germany was going to be treated this way.
That somehow this was a massive example of national shame.
Eckart's once-proud Germany,
the rising industrial powerhouse of Europe, has been crippled.
In August 1919, a new, democratic government,
the Weimar Republic, takes shape...
...designed to replace the autocratic rule of the Kaiser and his generals.
But to Eckart, it's weak and dominated by Jewish and liberal politicians.
He's determined his party should take them on...
But to do that, he needs a man who can speak directly to the people,
an inspirational leader.
The word "messiah" is one that Eckhart uses more than once in his writings.
He had the notion of a regenerated Germany,
but how was that to be achieved?
We need a messiah.
Traditionally, leaders have been people with a pedigree but at the time,
there was this kind of common longing
for a totally new kind of political leader
who could not be someone who was an established figure.
[Guy] Eckart writes this very notorious poem in 1918
in which he describes this figure called The Nameless One or The Great One,
who is a common German soldier with blazing, fiery eyes,
who will come and save the German people.
In the autumn of 1919, at a German Workers Party meeting,
a spy lurks in the crowd.
He's been sent by the German army to report on proceedings.
But the young man finds the anti-communist and antisemitic opinions
chiming strongly with his own.
He finds that rather than spying on them,
that actually they're speaking a language that he understands.
Inspired, he stops taking notes and starts addressing the crowd.
He realises immediately that his voice is compelling. The hall falls silent.
He stands up and speaks, and everyone's incredibly impressed by this man
who's speaking with such passion and venom as well.
His name is Adolf Hitler. Eckart is transfixed.
He actually jumps on to tables
and gives these fantastically fiery pieces of oratory.
And very, very quickly, Eckart realises that this is the man.
He is the man who is going to lead them forward.
In Hitler, Eckart sees the man to take his message to the people
to spread the Aryan ideals beyond the metropolitan elite,
perhaps even inspire a nation.
[applause]
[Michael] When they first meet, there's a mutual attraction.
Eckhart uses this notion of the messiah, and says in less dramatic terms,
he's a man of great vision, Hitler, he's a man who can lead us.
He can do things other men can't.
Hitler and him bonded, although in many ways,
they're very different characters, because Eckart was a kind of bon viveur
and a smoker and a drinker,
neither of which was anything that interested Hitler.
[Richard] What Eckhart likes is that Hitler is a simple, ordinary soldier
and yet here he is up on a platform, able to articulate clearly ideas
that Eckhart can't really get across in quite the same kind of way.
Eckart isn't the only person captivated by Hitler.
In the crowd is a young university student, Rudolf Hess.
Rudolf Hess is a man who's very young, very impressionable,
but Hitler, when he sees him, he sort of hangs on his every word.
From a wealthy family,
Hess had been a brave and disciplined soldier during the war.
He too had found refuge in the mythical politics of the Thule Society.
And the moment he hears Hitler speak, he falls under his spell.
He goes back home to his girlfriend and says, "I've seen this man."
[Michael] His adulation for Hitler, he pours out to her
in this long description of his skills and ability, and charisma,
and messianic quality of the man he's met.
This is the beginning of what almost becomes a love affair.
The besotted Hess will become one of Hitler's first disciples
and a founding member of the inner circle.
He will soon be joined by others.
Among them is a troublesome 19-year-old schoolteacher's son.
His name is Heinrich Himmler.
Himmler had turned 18 in the final days of World War One
and had been desperate to prove himself as a soldier.
But it was too late.
One of the greatest frustrations for Heinrich Himmler
is that he was just a little bit too young to have served in the war.
And this is an immense frustration to him.
So, he has all this sort of thwarted military ambition.
Himmler, an avid diary writer and stamp collector, had been a sickly child.
Himmler is a fairly awkward young man.
He is, er, not particularly social, he's, er, I think one could say
sexually somewhat repressed.
[Michael] He had a deep inferiority complex,
which he overcomes by being very aggressive,
and being very destructive, literally, in his approach to people.
Himmler's father had been keen to keep him out of trouble
and had enrolled him to study agriculture at Munich University.
But Himmler's head is full of the same myths and monsters
as the occultists Eckart and Hess,
and his take on farming is very different to his fellow students.
Himmler is a mysterious figure in many ways.
He loved mystery. He loved the occult. He loved legend...
[Guy] One of the ideas that Himmler is obsessed with
is this whole notion of Blut und Boden, blood and soil.
German society will get back to its Volkish, its folkish roots,
and it will become a much more kind of agricultural economy.
And it will also become a very pure, biological Aryan race of people.
And in doing so, Germany will find enormous strength
and will be able to create an empire.
For a young man like Himmler,
these kind of quasi-mythological, racial, biological ideas
will hold immense appeal and he'll never lose his absolute adoration for it.
And soon, this wannabe soldier will meet the man to bring his dreams
to fruition and give Himmler the chance to fight for his crazy ideals.
For now, though, that man is far from the finished article.
Although Eckart believes Hitler is the prophesied redeemer,
he recognises that this young firebrand
is a rough stone that needs careful polishing.
Eckart, in a sense, became the mentor, we'd say now, of Hitler.
[Guy] Eckart basically dresses Hitler up to look respectable.
He gets him a tie, shirt, a proper suit and a nice trench coat.
And he then parades him around various wealthy backers and says,
look, this is the man who one day will liberate Germany and lead us.
But Eckart frequently finds the rough stone difficult to polish.
[Guy] Yes, you could put him in a suit and tie and comb his hair properly,
but actually, when he was at sophisticated cocktail parties,
he would start blurting out these sort of ill-advised diatribes
against the Jews, which kind of shocked the matrons.
And, you know, he would also sort of stuff food into his mouth
because he was obviously quite hungry and quite poor,
but he really had no table manners at all.
But gradually, Eckart refines Hitler's etiquette and these two men,
though more than 20 years apart in age, become close.
The relationship is fascinating, pupil and teacher, if you like, father and son.
There's a common, brotherly feeling between them.
With Hitler now installed as the Party's head of propaganda,
the two men get to work refining the theories and beliefs of the movement.
Together, they are a formidable team.
Hitler and Eckart complemented each other perfectly.
Although Eckart was in no way a decent public speaker,
he was a very good writer, a very good theoretician,
and Hitler meanwhile, his thoughts were very rambling
and he couldn't write very well.
So, actually what Eckart could do was to take Hitler's words,
polish them, order them, serve them back to him,
and then Hitler could then speak them and deliver them
in this fantastically powerful oratorical fashion that would woo audiences.
It worked brilliantly.
The Nazis pledge to take back the lands stolen by the Treaty of Versailles
and put an end to the crippling payments demanded by the Allies.
The genius of this is that they're very simple.
They're very easy to remember.
And therefore, they draw a lot of political water.
Eckart gives them their rallying cry, Deutschland erwache! Germany awake!
And the Party also gets a new emblem,
believed by Thule Society mystics to be of ancient Aryan origin, the swastika.
And the movement is rebranded as the National Socialist Worker's Party.
The Nazi Party is born.
The movement is slowly gaining momentum,
and powerful men are beginning to take notice.
Men like Captain Ernst Röhm.
For the Nazis, Röhm, still a serving officer in the German army,
could be a key asset. He has access to both men and weapons.
Röhm was a highly decorated soldier of the First World War,
had won numerous awards for bravery.
He loved war.
He loved the army, he loved combat, he loved conflict.
He believed that you could only achieve ends through violent means.
But under the Versailles Treaty, Röhm's beloved army has shrunk
to just 100,000 men, and the Allies are seizing and destroying their equipment.
So the army pick Röhm to secretly establish
unofficial paramilitary groups and stockpile weapons.
Röhm was building up a formidable power base.
He was an arms smuggler,
and this gave him the nickname, the Machine-Gun King.
And Röhm uses fear and violence to get the job done.
He's a deeply unpleasant character, he's a bully, a thug,
and he is also addicted to power, power and authority.
Röhm is inevitably drawn to the Nazi message
and to their charismatic new spokesman,
but his relationship with Hitler is no love affair.
To him, Hitler is a means to his own ends.
Remember, he's an officer, he's a captain,
so he sees himself as above Hitler and Hitler should be doing his bidding.
In its early days, the Nazi Party didn't regard Hitler
so much as its leader but as its drummer.
He was a man who could rustle up support.
And so for someone like Röhm,
who was a very powerful figure in his own right, this suited him perfectly.
So Röhm joins the movement, supporting Hitler financially
and introducing him to senior patriotic military officers.
The Party is growing, but if they are to make a real difference,
they must do more than rabble-rouse in beer cellars.
In December 1920, Eckart and Röhm
see a chance to get the Nazi message out onto the streets.
They raise funds to buy the Thule Society's failing weekly newspaper.
It's an early foray into mass propaganda,
a tool the Nazis will learn to use with breathtaking efficiency.
THE PARTY OF THE TRUTH
The Völkischer Beobachter is a classic example of the way
the Nazis are using media to get their message across.
So, with this newspaper, it's big headlines.
It's really arresting content and powerful images.
You know, any newspaper editor today
would recognise those are very powerful tools.
At this point, Hitler is still officially just the Party's mouthpiece,
but Eckart, installed as the paper's editor-in-chief,
wastes no time in selling his vision of Hitler as Germany's messiah.
Hitler doesn't think of himself as a messiah,
he thinks he's probably John the Baptist,
and at some point the messiah will appear.
Eckart refers to Hitler as der Kommenden Grossen, the Coming Great One.
Ascribing to him the mystical powers of an Aryan mythical Teutonic chieftain,
it captures the imagination of his readers,
but also feeds Hitler's ego.
IN MEMORY OF ALBERT LEO SCHLAGETER
He begins to realise, encouraged by a man like Eckhart,
that he might be the person who will save Germany.
Hitler really started to see in himself
someone who had almost divine powers.
And Eckart isn't the only Nazi to see Hitler in this way.
The now-devoted Rudolf Hess throws himself into doing Hitler's bidding.
Hess is one of those individuals in the movement
who you could define as being adulatory.
He has a need to admire and to respect, worship.
Hitler seems to have been rather cool or cold,
but it didn't move Hess the other way.
It made him even more attractive, the mystique, possibly.
[Guy] Hess is almost in love with Hitler.
You know, he's mesmerised by him.
He's like a puppy dog. He's affectionate.
He realises that he's always going to live in the shadow of this man
and he wants to live in the shadow of this man.
Shortly after Eckart's article, Hess begins addressing Hitler
as the Leader, der Führer.
Hess's Führer is about to be transformed.
[soundtrack only]
In July 1921, the Nazi Party is thrown into crisis.
Eckart discovers that the Party's official leader, Anton Drexler,
is attempting to merge with other political groups.
Hitler is furious.
Why should their manifesto be polluted by other parties?
He immediately resigns.
But secretly, Hitler has no intention of turning his back on the Nazis.
This is a really, really smart move from Hitler.
He's basically resigning in order to get back into power.
How? Because he says,
“Well, you can either back me or you can make do without me."
He knows fully well, like any good negotiator,
that he has got the ace up his sleeve.
They're going to back him and he knows it.
It is through Dietrich Eckart that Hitler demands
to become chairman with dictatorial powers.
Eckart takes Hitler's ultimatum to the Party and calls a vote.
With an overwhelming majority, 543 to 1,
they ditch Drexler and make Hitler their official leader.
Eckart has handed Hitler complete control of the Nazi Party.
But he will soon live to regret it.
The Nazis are still only a small fringe organisation.
If they are to fulfil their plan to seize power by force,
they need more than words.
They need an army.
You have to remember at this time that politics in Germany
is an extremely violent activity.
Ernst Röhm starts creating the Party's own paramilitary force,
the so-called Sports Section.
By the autumn of 1921, it has 300 men
and a new name, the Storm Section or Sturmabteilung.
Röhm's SA ejects hecklers from meetings and intimidates political opponents,
but they're ill-disciplined.
They need a leader, and as an army officer, Röhm can't be seen to do it.
As if on cue, the perfect man for the job returns to Munich.
Renowned war hero Hermann Göring is back,
and the ambitious former fighter ace heads straight for the cause
that could hand him the power and influence he craves.
Göring thinks, actually, this is something I should join.
It's a small movement and I can be a big man in it.
Göring doesn't buy into all Hitler's extremist policies
but he's willing to set aside any moral objections
for his own personal power and recognition.
He saw in Nazism a means of achieving personal advancement.
He was looking after his own interests, he wanted Germany to be in his image.
A day after first seeing Hitler talk, the two men meet.
And Göring fully understands his worth to Hitler and the Nazi Party.
He is a celebrity, he's well-known,
people venerate towards Göring, he's good to have on your team.
Along with the other members of the growing inner circle,
they will begin to bring the fledgling Nazi Party out of the shadows.
With Hess recruiting ever more members
and Röhm securing secret army training,
Göring sets about turning the Sturmabteilung into a formidable force.
Göring was definitely a capable politician
and he was a capable organiser of the stormtroopers.
He knew what he was doing.
Hitler would later state...
[actor as Hitler] I gave him a dishevelled rabble.
In a very short time, he had organised a division of 11,000 men.
But as the stars of Göring, Röhm and Hess are on the rise.
Dietrich Eckart finds himself increasingly pushed out of Hitler's circle.
He thought that Eckart really became a liability as a political operator.
He's too much of a drinker and he's all ideas and not enough action.
He's just not revolutionary enough.
Hitler has grown weary of his mentor and Eckart turns more and more to the bottle.
[Guy] Eckart is beginning to have serious doubts about Hitler.
He also accuses Hitler of having a messiah complex. This is ironic.
Why? Because Eckart is the one who's always been looking for a messiah.
And yet here is the messiah and it's not what Eckart likes.
Eckart is labelled by Hitler as a fatalist, a pedant and a pessimist.
[Richard] I think for Eckhart, he suddenly wakes up to, you know...
What have I created? Have I created a political monster here
which I'm not going to be able to control?
Ernst Röhm also faces a crisis.
He has started drawing the attention of his army commanders
worried by his increasing involvement in extreme right-wing politics.
He's given an ultimatum to choose between his career or the Nazi Party.
Röhm has a very clear choice between either staying in the army
and doing his bit to help restore the German army to its former greatness,
or he could go all in with the Nazis.
It's a very, very tough decision for him to make.
For now, Röhm continues to recruit willing fighters to his militia.
And one particularly enthusiastic young idealist catches his eye,
the wannabe soldier Heinrich Himmler.
The opportunity that the connection with Röhm gives Himmler is the uniform,
the idea, I can be a soldier, a toy one perhaps in some respects,
but I can be seen as a soldier, that's the attraction.
Röhm introduces Himmler to the growing Nazi Party
and in August 1923,
he becomes Party member 14,303.
At first, he remains under Röhm's wing.
There are few indications that he will become
the most murderous and feared antisemite of them all.
The key players are now in place.
All they need is an opportunity to make their mark.
Events conspire to help them
when Germany plunges into economic chaos
as hyperinflation grips the economy.
A loaf of bread rises from 165 marks to over one billion in just ten months.
The hyperinflation of 1922-23
has a deeply traumatising effect on many Germans.
Overnight, accumulated fortunes are worth nothing.
It's a year when many Germans just don't know what's going to happen.
Is everything going to collapse around them?
What is happening? How are you going to rescue Germany from this crisis?
The Weimar Government has no choice
but to default on Germany's repayments to the Allies.
In retaliation, French and Belgian troops
seize one of Germany's few assets,
the Ruhr, the country's industrial heartland.
For the first time, foreign troops are on German sovereign territory.
[Guy] There's nothing worse than for a people to be occupied.
And for the Germans, an immensely proud people, I'd suggest,
it comes as a real insult and a real humiliation.
For Göring and the Nazis, this is a call to arms.
[Frank] So now you've got the perfect conditions,
the complete collapse of the economy,
and the ruin of all the middle classes,
and so really they feel this is the point.
1923 is the point when we go, “Let's go for the coup."
Göring knows the clock is ticking and he wants to act now.
The economic crisis is hitting Party coffers hard
and his SA militia are becoming restless.
For Röhm, it's decision time.
He chooses to resign from the army
and gamble everything on a successful Nazi coup.
Röhm then eggs Hitler on, insisting that much of the army
supports them and won't stand in their way.
It's agreed, now is the time to seize power.
But how?
The inspiration comes from abroad.
Europe's most successful fascist, Benito Mussolini,
had stormed to power in Italy just months earlier.
He'd acquired huge popular support and marched on Rome
with his 30,000-strong militia.
Göring said, this is the way it works.
Don't wait for electoral support.
Don't wait for massive support from the people.
Take power now, as Mussolini did, and then justify it.
The plan is to take Bavaria first
before marching on the National Government in Berlin.
The aim of the putsch quite simply is to challenge
the Bavarian government in Munich
with the aim of challenging the government in Germany overall.
It's that simple.
Bavaria rests in the hands of three people,
the head of the police, the military,
and the State Prime Minister, Gustav von Kahr.
If they can get these three men on side,
they'd have the army and the police behind them.
But there's a problem.
Unlike Mussolini, Hitler is still largely unknown outside Munich.
To stand any chance of success,
they need a temporary figurehead with nationwide appeal.
They approach General Erich Ludendorff, hero of the German right,
and one of the great commanders of World War One.
[Guy] Ludendorff looks the very model of a Prussian-looking general,
and actually, he's an enormously respected figure amongst the German people.
When the Nazis hear that Prime Minister von Kahr is holding
a public meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller, one of Munich's main beer halls,
and that the chiefs of the Bavarian army and police will also be there,
they know they have to move fast.
When they learn of this, the Nazis fear
that von Kahr is going to steal a march on them.
They are immensely suspicious that von Kahr is going to declare
Bavarian independence from Germany, and the Nazis do not want this at all.
They think, right, we must act quickly. We've got to do it now.
Göring immediately mobilises his SA stormtroopers.
He and Hess will lead an assault on the Burgerbraukeller itself.
Their plan, to hijack the meeting
and capture the three key players in one fell swoop.
Once they're secured, SA units, including Röhm's and Himmler's,
will take control of the key military and police buildings around the city.
They await the call to go.
For Göring, it's the moment he's been waiting for.
He puts on his best regalia,
his full military uniform with the Blue Max.
It was a golden moment for him,
here was a chance to assert his military aspect again.
Göring at this stage thinks big,
he thinks that this is the spark that will light the prairie fire
that will be the takeover in Germany.
[Guy] For all these men, the members of Hitler's inner circle,
this is the moment they've been waiting for.
They know this is their opportunity to seize power by force
and show the world what they're made of.
Göring arrives at the Bürgerbräukeller
with 100 of his heavily armed elite SA shock troops.
In all, 600 SA surround the hall.
Göring's troops are an immensely disciplined, well-dressed-looking bunch.
And so when they get off their trucks outside the Bürgerbräukeller,
the local police force just assume they're actual regular army units
and just let them get on with it.
It's actually a marvellous bit of deception.
Inside, Gustav von Kahr is addressing the crowd and as predicted,
the chiefs of the Bavarian police and army are with him.
Göring and his men smash through the doors into the Bürgerbräukeller.
They set up a Maxim machine-gun at one end of the hall,
which gives them an absolute ability to wipe out everybody in that room.
Then they barge their way through the middle of the hall,
making way for Adolf Hitler.
[Michael] Hitler marches in with the SA, they take over.
He fires a shot into the ceiling,
all the plaster and the wood came hurtling down.
Hitler declares the National Socialist revolution has broken out.
They bundle the triumvirate into this side room
and they begin their negotiations.
Hitler tries to convince the three state leaders to join the coup,
but they refuse.
Von Kahr and the other two just... they're just not going to have it.
They're just not going to say to Hitler, we support you, we're behind you.
Hitler desperately needs the persuasive power
of their national figurehead, Ludendorff, but he hasn't arrived.
This major figure who's been recruited
to add this sort of gloss of refinement and authority just hasn't turned up.
Pistol in hand, Hitler threatens them but they won't budge.
Hitler realises that he and his fellow Nazis
can't just start shooting everybody.
That's not going to achieve anything. It's rapidly becoming an utter shambles.
Back in the main hall,
Hess targets senior political opponents for kidnap to remove them from the city.
While Göring keeps the crowd in check.
Göring is trying to keep control within the main beer hall.
And so, in order to do so, he sort of shows his authority
by ripping open his tunic to reveal his Blue Max medal.
He joked around with them and told them
they should be calm, they had beer to drink.
It is really here that we have Göring at his best or his worst, if you will.
With the beer hall locked down, Röhm gets the call to action.
He orders his men to march on the Bavarian War Ministry.
Himmler proudly carries the old imperial banner.
It's said he managed to gravitate
towards the rear in order to encourage others to go forward.
Now, whether that's a slur upon his character,
one could argue, but he was literally a flag waver in the march.
I'm playing a soldierly role now, I'm doing a really brave thing,
I'm now actually with the people, with the troops on the ground.
All over the city, SA units close in on their targets.
But back at the beer hall, Göring struggles to maintain calm
and Hitler's negotiations are in stalemate.
In a desperate attempt to turn things around, he makes an impassioned speech
to the crowd, lying that the government have agreed to back them.
Amazingly, the crowd believes him
and then, as if perfectly choreographed, Ludendorff arrives.
Ludendorff works his magic and the leaders of Bavaria agree to join them.
The Nazi coup is suddenly ignited.
Out on the streets, Röhm and Himmler's unit
have seized control of the War Ministry
and some army and police units around Munich even agree to join the uprising.
It begins to look like the coup is going to succeed.
Hitler then decides to leave Göring and Ludendorff in charge
to check on Röhm's progress.
Hitler leaves the Bürgerbräukeller
and goes off to the barricades where he finds Röhm.
And he embraces Röhm and says to him, "We're on."
The new Reich government is being formed.
Back at the Bürgerbräukeller, the atmosphere is now more relaxed
but with Göring distracted fetching drinks for his men,
Ludendorff makes a grave error.
It appears that Kahr persuaded Ludendorff to let him go
and Ludendorff said, okay, you know, give your word that you won't back out.
Von Kahr assures Ludendorff he won't betray them.
He walks past Göring's drunken troops and leaves.
In another beer hall across town,
Dietrich Eckart, Hitler's one-time mentor,
is completely oblivious to the putsch taking place.
[Guy] You don't need a greater example of how far out the inner circle
Eckart has been pushed by the fact that he knows nothing about the coup
until he receives a phone call after midnight.
He was telephoned by a colleague to say, where were you and look what's happened.
And the party's over. Literally, the party's over.
When the caller informs Eckart that von Kahr has been released,
he sees the danger.
He knows he can't trust von Kahr
and he exclaims, “We've been betrayed."
CREDIT BANK OF CENTRAL GERMANY
Eckart's instincts are right. Von Kahr quickly rallies the army.
In an instant, the tables are turned on the Nazis.
The coup has stalled, and as the sun rises the next day,
Göring and the rest of the inner circle are unsure what to do.
GERMANY WAKE UP
That morning, Eckart heads to Nazi Party HQ.
The SA troops are chanting his slogan, Germany awake,
but Eckart, the man who'd helped ignite it all,
has been totally left out of the coup.
Then, his former protégé arrives.
Hitler's automobile comes to a very, very sharp stop before Eckart
and Hitler shoots him an angry glance and tells him,
“Get in the car behind and follow me."
This will be the last communication these two men will ever have.
In an attempt to keep the coup alive, Ludendorff now takes the initiative.
Line up!
It's Ludendorff who seizes the moment and says, "We will march."
The Nazis set off for the centre of Munich
in a last, desperate roll of the dice.
Göring, Hitler, Ludendorff, yes, they're all in line...
...and they link arms.
But the authorities are waiting for them.
Göring is shot in the leg and is badly wounded.
Göring is shot, can't walk or can only drag himself.
They are caught in a narrow street.
[Guy] It's a complete shambles. The Nazis are utterly routed
and so they all have to flee.
In the mayhem, 16 Nazis are killed and many more injured
and Hitler only just cheats death.
A bullet narrowly misses Hitler by a foot.
If it had gone a foot to the right, history would have been very different.
[rapid gunfire]
Eckart watches as the man he'd moulded as The Great One flees to save his life.
The coup has ended in complete disaster.
Badly injured, Göring escapes to Austria,
exiled from his country, a wanted man, his dreams of glory shattered.
Rudolf Hess also flees to Austria.
While Himmler returns to his mother's house,
not yet a big enough player to attract the attention of the authorities.
Röhm turns himself in and is jailed along with Hitler.
The putsch was a total failure, the inner circle is broken,
their party disbanded and their Führer behind bars.
Nobody would have thought
these people would come into power again to push the world into bloody total war.
But together, they have learnt a valuable lesson.
This kind of revolutionary politics didn't work.
In the end, you would have to subvert democracy by becoming democratic.
In the years to come, the failed putsch will be rewritten
into Nazi folklore as a triumphant struggle.
It's glorified.
And any members of Hitler's inner circle who were there on that very fateful day
have their place in the inner circle cemented.
[Robert] The putsch creates this bond of blood,
between future, senior figures of the Third Reich.
But Dietrich Eckart won't live to see the rise of the Third Reich.
Just six weeks after the failed coup, he lies dying.
Years of alcohol abuse have taken their toll.
His final words are prophetic.
"Follow Hitler. He will dance, but it is I who called the tune!
Do not mourn for me.
I shall have influenced history more than any German."
[Thomas] Here we have quintessential Eckart.
He presents himself as the kind of puppet master who had been the real person...
the real architect of the new Germany that was to come.
Eckhart's untimely death ends that first dramatic act in the Nazi movement,
but the legacy is there.
Eckart is never going to know it, but in public at least,
Hitler will always respect him almost as a permanent member of the inner circle.
He'll dedicate the first volume of Mein Kampf to Eckart
and call him the spiritual father of National Socialism.
Eckhart may die but his ideas don't die with him
and, of course, they are carried forward by Hitler and his inner circle
and will bring the world to near destruction.
Hitler's circle of evil isn't finished yet.