Winter 1923.
And a failed Nazi coup has left Hitler's band of followers broken and splintered.
The putsch was frankly a disaster.
Sixteen Nazis are killed.
Along with their Führer, rampant nationalist Ernst Röhm
and devoted disciple Rudolf Hess are behind bars.
It made them almost political outlaws, terrorists,
and I think much of public opinion in Germany, of course,
thought that Hitler was really finished.
In hiding and seriously injured,
former fighter ace Herman Göring turns to drugs.
While a young Heinrich Himmler shelters with his parents.
But from the chaos, a new voice will galvanise the Party
and help lay the foundations for an empire of evil.
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.
In November 1923, the fledgling Nazi Party march into history.
It's an audacious attempt to seize power in Munich
and start a national revolution.
But it doesn't go to plan.
The putsch was frankly a disaster.
Sixteen Nazis are killed.
History would have been completely different if a bullet had gone one foot
to the right and hit Hitler rather than the Nazi standing next to him.
The failure leaves Hitler's followers in disarray.
[gunfire]
Seriously wounded in the hip and groin, Herman Göring,
the war hero and darling of the upper classes is on the run.
Göring, after the putsch, had a very unhappy time.
He was seriously wounded and rushed over the border to Austria
where the German police couldn't touch him, and became addicted to morphine.
Another founding member, the ever-loyal Rudolf Hess,
is also forced to flee and makes for the Bavarian Alps.
[gunshot]
The putsch may have ended in chaos
but Hess was thrilled to have fought alongside his beloved Hitler.
[Michael] Hess is a fascinating individual, fascinating personality.
He's the only one of all of them, I would say,
who had no real driving ambition.
He had an affection for the movement, but particularly for Hitler as a figure,
that goes beyond mere political judgement.
For others, it's worse,
the Party bully boy, paramilitary Ernst Röhm, is behind bars,
awaiting trial in Stadelheim prison.
Ernst Röhm's position after the putsch is rather strange.
He is, of course, a serving army officer and now he's a convicted terrorist.
Heinrich Himmler had missed action during the Great War,
so even waving a flag at the back of the march became a source of some pride.
[Michael] Himmler's reaction to the putsch is interesting.
He'd come out of the First World War
very disappointed that he hadn't played a role in it.
He hankered after some prize, military prize.
So he saw in the putsch, here's the opportunity.
[Guy] Himmler thinks that this is his big moment.
And so the putsch in many ways is the first time where he sees
proper action and in this action, he and his Party, they've completely failed.
Desperate to keep the dream alive,
Himmler visits his old boss Ernst Röhm in prison
but for now, the Party is quite definitely over.
In fact, the humiliation is so great
that he moves back to Munich and lives with his parents.
Far from the drama, at his parent's house outside Cologne,
is an aspiring young author and PhD graduate
as yet unknown to the Nazis, Joseph Goebbels.
Not impressed by the failed coup, he notes in his diary,
"another putsch by nationalists in Munich."
I think it's fair to say that the failure of the putsch
was really a disaster for Hitler and for the National Socialist movement.
It made them almost political outlaws.
[Michael] They had hoped it would be the beginning of something much bigger
than merely a Munich, Bavarian, movement.
It was meant to be the first step towards a national rising.
After two days in hiding, Adolf Hitler is caught and imprisoned,
potentially facing the death sentence.
The firebrand revolutionary is a broken man.
Hitler's behaviour immediately after the putsch fails
is not the kind of redoubtable behaviour we would expect of an Iron Cross holder.
He sees his political life, at least, completely falling to pieces.
He became very despondent and it was said by a number of his colleagues
that he genuinely contemplated suicide.
But in the ten weeks leading up to his trial, something remarkable happens.
Hitler undergoes a transformation.
Once Hitler had recovered from his sense of despair,
his sense of politics came into play,
and he realised that although he's going to be on trial,
it would provide a platform, for spreading ideas.
Rather than pleading for mercy, Hitler goes on the attack.
He realises this is centre stage and where else does Hitler love being more
than anywhere else but centre stage?
And so he turns the whole thing around to his advantage.
[Nigel] And remarkably, he shows an uncanny ability
to take from disaster, triumph.
He turns a humiliation for the Nazis into a sort of triumph
by presenting himself as a sort of martyr figure and a salvation.
[Michael] And he made harangues and speeches rather than answering questions.
He would launch into a political discourse,
which got applause, of course, from those in the court.
I did what I did in the putsch for Germany.
I did it for my German people.
I'm on trial, but fate will not judge me wrongly.
Hitler was always regarded as this kind of southern German rabble-rouser,
but actually, the courtroom has turned him into a national figure.
Hitler's audacious display doesn't just win applause in the courtroom.
It makes front-page headlines across the world.
For acts of terrorism like this, of course,
Hitler could have been sent to prison for a very long period of time.
He's given a five-year sentence.
I think it's clear that the Bavarian authorities
and Bavarian judicial authorities
had a good deal of sympathy for Hitler's position.
Although found guilty, Hitler receives a light sentence.
And more importantly, his performance in the dock has galvanised the right wing.
Even winning over the highly sceptical aspiring journalist, Joseph Goebbels.
Goebbels' first engagement with Hitler came through the transcripts
of the trial proceedings held in early 1924,
which were widely printed in German newspapers.
A brilliant writer, Goebbels is a complex character,
a young man with plenty to prove.
Joseph Goebbels, someone said rather cruelly,
that he was a physical and emotional cripple,
and although it's cruel, it has a strong element of truth in it,
because he had a deep, dare I use the term, inferiority complex.
And like Hitler, he holds a grudge against the Jews,
believing his writing career is stifled by Jewish publishers.
Although it will be many months before the two meet,
Goebbels and Hitler are on a collision course
that will shape the destiny of their country.
Goebbels was absolutely inspired,
and we can trace in his diary entries in March 1924
a growing fascination
with this unknown character with his ideas,
and in the course of a few weeks,
he moves to a kind of starry-eyed idealism
about this man and what he stands for.
Along with Hitler, fellow conspirator Ernst Röhm is also found guilty.
But Röhm is given a suspended sentence.
He is released on the very day Hitler is sent down.
[Richard] I think, for Röhm, there is a moment where he thinks,
well, the putsch failed, Hitler's going to be imprisoned,
maybe there's an opportunity for me now to play a larger role,
to be a bigger fish than I was before.
Hitler asks him to build up the SA,
the brown-shirted street muscle of the Nazi Party.
As a disgraced officer, Röhm relishes the chance
to create an army in his own image.
[Richard] Hitler is keen that the SA becomes a kind of political army,
waiting for him when he comes out of prison.
But Röhm has one man in his way.
Göring is still the official leader of the SA.
So Röhm travels to Austria to convince him to hand over control.
He finds Göring penniless and dependent on morphine.
Realising that Göring is in no position to put up a fight,
Röhm returns to Bavaria where he addresses his first big problem.
[Richard] The SA is formally banned in Bavaria.
And so, what Röhm has to do is to provide some kind of cover organisation.
So Röhm changes the name.
The SA becomes the Frontbahn, and with his many military contacts,
Röhm has no trouble finding recruits for this new paramilitary organisation.
Meanwhile, in Landsberg prison,
Hitler discovers he has admirers in high places.
His quarters are more like an officer's mess than a cell
and he is granted extensive privileges.
He has his own cell, it's furnished with books, some 200 books.
He even has an elaborate 35th birthday party there.
It was made into a fete, it was made into a day of joy,
and he had visitors, almost like a royal court session.
They would come and pay respects.
It was really a very joyous occasion, for somebody actually in prison.
And Hitler even has his own personal secretary, the devoted Rudolf Hess.
Intelligent army veteran Rudolf Hess
had been something of a drifter before meeting Hitler.
But now sentenced to 18 months for participating in the putsch,
he is delighted to discover he will be serving time alongside his idol.
I think Hess could not have believed his luck, actually,
that he ended up in Landsberg jail,
alongside Hitler, the man he absolutely idolises.
But in these early days, it is the devoted follower who inspires Hitler.
He had a good mind, he wrote an essay as a student that Hitler read,
which encouraged him to think of the national question,
and how it could be resolved, and Germany's plight, because of the war.
Now together in Landsberg Prison,
Hess encourages Hitler's ambitions and gently starts to coax him
into a new role, an authoritarian leader, a saviour of Germany.
It is just what Hitler wants to hear.
Being incarcerated in Landsberg with his hero Hitler
is a terrific opportunity for Hess.
I mean, they are forced together, literally,
and it means that, you know, he can be by Hitler's side all day.
And as a result, the relationship between the two men
becomes incredibly close.
Hess uses the time together to seduce Hitler
with an aggressive new vision for an expanding Germany.
A philosophy peddled by his old tutor, Dr Karl Haushofer.
[Michael] Hess has been a student of Haushofer's, and he'd picked up
these very strange, esoteric geopolitical ideas...
LIVING SPACE BY RATZEL
...which are very hard to define, even,
but they amounted, really, to the idea that Germany
had a destiny and a fate and a right to expand.
[Guy] It's through Hess and Haushofer
that Hitler starts getting these ideas about Lebensraum.
The theory of Lebensraum or "living space"
becomes a powerful new motivation for Hitler.
It plants the seed of a new Germanic superstate expanding to the east.
So therefore Hess is a very important figure upon Hitler's thinking.
But perhaps Hess's greatest contribution to the Nazi movement
is encouraging Hitler to write down his vision for the future of Germany.
[Nigel] It was suggested Hitler could use his time in prison most usefully
by setting down in book form his ideas that would become, if you like,
the manifest of the movement and also an inspiring autobiography.
Hitler calls his book Mein Kampf, My Struggle.
But in reality, Hess is the co-author.
He has two major influences on Hitler,
one is emotional, and one is intellectual, ideological.
He was a conduit, a means of giving Hitler his ideas.
Together, Hess and Hitler create what amounts to a racist bible.
It dreams of lost Germanic empires,
blaming the country's current failure on the Jews and the Communists.
MY STRUGGLE BY ADOLF HITLER
If you look at Mein Kampf today, it reads like the words of a madman.
It blames the Jew, Jewishness, for all the world's problems,
for the problems of capitalism, the problems of communism.
It blames the Allies for overly punishing Germany
after the First World War.
It suggests that certain biological races
are better than other biological races.
It is a cesspool of hatred and it's all put through this mélange
of Hitler's very, very fevered nationalistic brain.
And it is the most extraordinary sort of vat of poison.
But although proud of their achievement, Hess takes no credit,
happily devoting his efforts to serving his leader as best he can.
Hess had a capacity for calming Hitler
and making him feel better about himself.
In so far as Hitler had friends, Hess would be one of the nearest to him.
Hess has cemented his place
as the first and most loyal member of Hitler's inner circle.
But other veterans of the failed putsch aren't doing so well.
For Göring, the years after the putsch are difficult years.
They repeat, really, his experience just after the First World War.
He's a drifter, he doesn't really know where he's going and what he's doing.
[Guy] He's in Austria, he's a wanted man back in Germany,
he is basically living on handouts.
This is not how Göring would have seen himself at this stage.
After all, this is a war hero, he's got the Blue Max round his neck.
He is now this incredibly marginalised figure.
In constant pain from his wounds sustained in the putsch,
he seeks solace in narcotics and becomes a morphine addict.
Unable to help Hitler or himself,
he's out of the loop and has left a vacuum for others to flourish in.
Eager to make his mark is Ernst Röhm.
[Guy] Röhm has immensely ambitious ideas for the SA and he wants to build it
to millions and millions of men, and he wants it actually to rival the army...
12 GATHERINGS TOMORROW
...if the Nazis ever get to power.
Renamed the Frontbahn, it has grown to 30,000 members.
The disgraced army officer has created his own private army,
a mercenary force ready to seize power for the Nazis when the time is right.
But back in Landsberg prison, Hitler is having second thoughts.
After one violent take-over attempt failed,
perhaps the time is right to try a different approach.
The most important legacy from Landsberg is probably not Mein Kampf.
Of course, that is vital, but it's actually Hitler's realisation,
his epiphany, if you like, that the way to power
is not through the barrel of a revolver or a machine-gun,
it's actually through the ballot box.
Röhm visits Hitler.
With his large army behind him, he is better prepared for a new putsch.
He believes he has the troops to put Hitler in power.
But he hasn't bargained on Hitler's new thinking.
And of course, Röhm's agenda is absolutely inverted to Hitler's.
Röhm is stunned when Hitler rejects his plans outright,
sending him away in total confusion.
Röhm's army is dangerous to Hitler.
The Frontbahn thugs could destroy Hitler's chance of an early parole.
The Frontbahn, under Ernst Röhm, is committing more and more violent acts.
And Hitler knows that he has to be disassociated with this...
street violence, this incredibly pugnacious, violent behaviour.
If Hitler wants to be taken seriously as a politician,
he cannot afford to be associated with more violence.
In May, he makes a shock announcement.
Hitler has no choice but to resign as leader of the Nazi Party in July 1924.
He's in prison. And also the Nazi Party is officially outlawed.
He knows, to get back on top and get his new vision across,
he'll have to play the long game.
It's a gesture, it means that what's going on out there
is in fact not National Socialist
and that when he eventually leaves prison, then he'll start again.
Supported and encouraged by Rudolf Hess,
he distances himself from politics and stops receiving visitors.
With his release set for October, nothing can compromise his freedom.
HITLER MASS MURDERER
Without Hitler, the Nazi Party fragments.
FREEDOM AND BREAD NAZI-PARTY, LIST 9
[Michael] Hess once said that "Hitler is the Party, the Party is Hitler."
It was a very good expression to use as a leitmotif.
While he was in prison, the party of course continued...
NEVER!
...but it became fractured...
ONLY THE K.P.D. LEADS TO VICTORY
...and the elements, the disparate elements within it,
vie for dominance in the Party.
But the movement doesn't completely collapse,
and in the midst of the political chaos, pulling himself out of depression
and sensing an opportunity to make a mark, Heinrich Himmler is on the rise.
[Robert] For a while, he kind of retreats from political life,
although he continues to have a very active interest in right-wing politics
and is trying to find a way of reintegrating himself
into the movement as quickly as possible.
Key to Himmler's appeal is that he is hard-working and smart.
In a party of ideologues and hotheads, Himmler gets the job done.
He is a very conscientious man, he's very fastidious,
and any political movement, no matter how radical,
needs a very, very, very capable backroom boy, if you like.
Himmler takes on roles, he's a can-do figure in the Party.
I think increasingly people say, oh, we'll get Himmler to do it.
Following Hitler's resignation, local Bavarian Nazi chief Gregor Strasser
assumes the role of Party Leader.
It isn't long before Himmler becomes his deputy.
So with Strasser, as well as with others, it is partly about him
keeping a foot in the door but simultaneously about building networks
that can be utilised at a later stage.
And although the Nazi Party is, you know,
is by no means the redoubtable political force it will become,
he's proving himself to be absolutely invaluable.
Although officially Strasser's deputy, at just 24,
Himmler soon finds himself the de facto Nazi chief in Lower Bavaria.
And he's not the only young man rising amid the chaos.
Joseph Goebbels was born in 1897
into a lower middle-class family
in the town of Rheydt, in the Rhineland.
Like Hitler, Goebbels is something of a pampered a mother's boy.
Growing up, he finds it difficult to make friends.
As a youngster, Goebbels had a series of operations on one foot,
which left him with a permanent disability,
and he walked for the rest of his life with a pronounced limp.
So he developed as a bit of a loner, a bit of a solitary kind of character.
And just like Hitler, Goebbels believes he deserves better,
finding a ready scapegoat for his failings in post-war Germany.
Goebbels is a young man who has a very big ego.
He's got a doctorate behind him,
he's got books and plays that he's written but not published or staged,
and he's also got an extremely virulent strain
of antisemitism running through him.
Inspired by Hitler's courtroom performance,
Goebbels' political enthusiasm is boosted when, in 1924,
he travels across Germany, to Weimar, and attends his first right-wing rally.
Everything which later we associate with Nazi Party ceremonial and ritual
and with Nazi Party gatherings was present.
So, the flags, the banners, the uniform, the marching, the chanting,
the singing, the delivery of long speeches to enthusiastic audiences...
The violence, the attacks on passers-by,
people beaten up at the railway station,
drinking and conviviality in the evenings. That was all there.
Though not yet a Nazi member, he throws himself into right-wing politics.
But as a disabled evangelist, Goebbels' weapon will be language.
He gets a job on a struggling political newspaper.
He had to write the whole thing, and suddenly though, in his own mind,
he was a journalist and he had a proper job.
Before long, he takes his ideas on the road
and discovers he has something else in common with Hitler.
He can work a crowd.
And here, we start to see now the extraordinary work ethic
which drove him for the rest of his life,
because he combined this journalistic work with public speaking.
At first, to very small, very local audiences,
but this is where he discovered
that he actually had a particular talent for this.
And in the space of a few short weeks,
he started to gain a reputation as an effective speaker,
and his reputation started to spread within the Nazi Party.
At 12.15pm on December 20th 1924,
having served just nine months of a five-year sentence,
Hitler leaves Hess in jail and is finally released.
After the sensational incarceration and recent leadership resignation,
this should be a big deal.
But there are no crowds to meet him, just a single car.
Things have changed and his country is no longer desperate for a messiah.
[Guy] Germany has become a very different place.
DREAMING LIPS
The economy's started to improve.
The Weimar Republic is starting to feel a bit stronger.
There feels more stability, there feels more confidence in the air.
It's a Germany which has coped with crisis and has now decided
it wants to settle down and wants to find a way of living within the terms
that have been dictated by the other powers.
In this climate and without Hitler's leadership, in the 1924 elections,
the Nazis take just 3% of the vote.
They look finished.
Membership that stood at 35,000 in 1923
has collapsed by half, and railing against American loans
looks ridiculous in a period of prosperity.
The mood has changed. He can't just sort of shriek and shout at street corners
or try to, you know, machine-gun people, that's not going to work.
With the Party on its knees, Hitler is now free to rebuild it
in line with the new political vision forged with Hess.
The Nazis must no longer be a revolutionary violent party.
They must adopt the forms of legalism, they must stand in elections,
they must enter Parliament, the Reichstag,
they must go through the motions of being a democratic parliamentary party.
Hitler sets out to regain control of his party,
but he quickly discovers the ghosts of the past are hard to shake off.
Ernst Röhm has been eagerly awaiting Hitler's release,
convinced that they can still work together.
Hitler is keen that it becomes a proper political party,
that they pursue the legal paths to power.
But there are people like Ernst Röhm,
who have a much more revolutionary outlook, who really think that,
you know, national revolution means national revolution.
Having given him the opportunity to develop the SA, even in a veiled form,
he suddenly finds that Röhm has thousands and thousands of followers.
It's a situation Hitler has to address.
On April 16th 1925, in his Munich home,
he confronts Röhm, laying out his political vision.
They've got to look like they are working within the political systems
and that they are a kind of real and credible political party
and not just a bunch of lunatics who try to seize beer halls in Munich.
But old-school fighter Röhm believes any revolution must start with a putsch.
[Michael] Röhm talks of revolution.
And Hitler says, very dramatically,
"Revolutions follow takeover of power, they don't precede it.
We take power first, and then we have a revolution."
[Richard] The relationship between Röhm and Hitler very quickly breaks down.
Hitler says to Röhm,
you've developed this huge political army and revolutionary dangers
I don't want that. It's not what I expected you to do.
And Röhm clearly is in a great huff about this.
Hitler knows how powerful Röhm is.
With an army at his disposal, it is a dangerous moment.
But, remarkably, it is Röhm who backs down.
It's a battle that Röhm cannot win because Hitler's grip on the Party,
although not as iron-tight as it will be, is incredibly strong.
Writing to Hitler the next day, Röhm resigns his Frontbahn and SA leadership
but pleads with him not to abandon their friendship.
Hitler doesn't reply.
[Guy] Röhm ultimately gets into a sulk and decides that he's going to go off
to Bolivia, um, you know, the other end of the world.
He decides, you know what, I can't win this,
I'm calling it quits, I'm out of here.
Cast out of the inner circle,
Röhm will head off to South America, but his chance will come again.
With Röhm out of the way, and Hess released,
the campaign to win back the Party
and the hearts and minds of the German people begins.
If the Nazis are to rebrand as a serious political force,
the process must start with the leader.
Hitler gets a makeover.
He can either present the kind of traditional German Volkish figure
in lederhosen and the long socks and the walking shoes...
That appeals to a certain element of the community.
He can also look much more technocratic and he can wear a very smart lounge suit.
And if he's at a great Nazi rally, he's in his uniform.
He settles on the technocrat.
He now looks like a well-rehearsed and confident leader...
...ready to regain control of the Nazi Party and take it in a new direction.
At the start of 1925,
the ban on the Party and its propaganda papers is lifted.
But the bad news is the newly groomed frontman
can't be unleashed on the German public.
[Michael] As part of the parole settlement,
Hitler agrees not to speak in public until granted permission.
He doesn't keep his word, doesn't keep his parole, literally,
because he does make speeches.
And they ban him from speaking again until '27.
They're going to need someone new to help sell their vision.
When the ban on the Party is lifted,
Joseph Goebbels is amongst the first to join.
NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY
Goebbels was drawn to Nazism by its socialist element to begin with.
Philosophically, he believed the Marxist dialectic,
the idea of struggle between the classes, so he was in a position
to put into Nazism that essential notion of conflict,
that you get nowhere unless you engage in conflict.
Goebbels joins the Party in the industrial Rhineland
far away from the Nazi heartland in Munich.
He quickly builds on his reputation as a spectacular orator.
He is full of energy, he's full of ideas. He's full of zest and, you know,
it's partly thanks to Goebbels that the Party will rise up.
[Toby] He embarks upon a programme of continuous public speaking,
travelling ceaselessly, indefatigably, from one end of Germany to another,
speaking in beer halls, in meeting halls, in town halls.
[Guy] He makes speeches, he makes a lot of speeches,
he makes 189 speeches in 12 months, that is a serious amount of speeches.
[Toby] And clearly, his reputation spread across the Nazi Party,
and people across Germany started talking
about this young man from the Rhineland
who could give a particularly effective, exciting speech.
On Saturday 12th July 1925,
Hitler breaks his speaking ban to represent the Nazis at a right-wing rally.
The young orator Goebbels is in the audience.
[Guy] The first time Goebbels sees Hitler at this rally of right-wing parties,
he effectively falls in love with him.
Now, I mean this seems like a very strange word to use
but it is a form of love and the word "love" in relation to Hitler
appears time after time in Goebbels' diaries.
Goebbels becomes convinced Hitler is his future.
It's a life-changing moment.
Shaking Hitler's hand, he knows he wants to work closely with this man.
Goebbels was very anxious, keen, desperate,
to become part of the circle, if you can call it that, of Hitler's friends.
How to break into it, though?
So what he thought, what I'll do, I'll become useful, I'll become vital,
I'll become essential to the movement.
Goebbels' plan works.
The authorities may turn a blind eye to Hitler's appearances at a local level
but if he dares to go nationwide, he knows he will be arrested.
The Nazi Party needs a public face and Goebbels could just be that man.
GERMAN EVENING PAPER
[Toby] Hitler clearly had decided to try to bring Goebbels on side.
He had heard of Goebbels' reputation as a speaker
and saw him, potentially, as a valuable asset.
Hitler makes a play to bring this rising star into the inner circle.
[Michael] Hitler understood Goebbels' talents,
wanted to use them and therefore wanted him in the system.
Goebbels was only too willing to be part of the system.
Hitler plays Goebbels, flattering him in a charm offensive.
[Nigel] Once he came under Hitler's spell,
almost he developed this schoolgirl crush on this man.
With Goebbels on side, Hitler wants to see just what he is made of.
And Goebbels was not just invited to come visit Party headquarters there,
but he was invited to speak at the beer hall
which had been the centre of the putsch in 1923.
And Goebbels didn't let Hitler down.
[Toby] The meeting itself was a huge success. Goebbels spoke very well.
He said afterwards Hitler embraced him, he had tears in his eyes,
and we see, from this point,
the beginnings of a really strong personal relationship between the two men.
Goebbels becomes the newest recruit to the inner circle
and Hitler immediately sets him to work.
Without a strong voice in the capital, the Nazis will never achieve power.
Goebbels is sent to Berlin.
[Toby] Berlin is important to the Nazis for several reasons.
It's the capital of Germany, it's the administrative centre of Germany,
it's the largest population centre, it's the centre for publishing and media,
it's the seat of government, and it's a left-wing stronghold.
With just a few hundred members,
the Nazi Party is almost unrepresented in Berlin.
GERMANY WAKE UP
Those that are there are poorly led and paralysed by political infighting.
If they were to become a national party,
a party of government, clearly, they needed to be strong in the capital.
Once there, Goebbels sets about
galvanising the dysfunctional regional office.
Goebbels was a man who understood intuitively
modern methods of propaganda.
He would turn a funeral or a wedding or a rally into a Nazi Party event.
He would have lorries going through the streets scattering leaflets.
He would have flaming red posters, he had a rabble-rousing newspaper
whose title Der Angriff, The Attack,
says it all, really, about Nazi aggression and violence.
But Goebbels knows his most effective weapon is public speaking.
He developed a strong line in sarcasm,
in withering scorn and contempt for opponents and enemies,
and he was at his best dealing with hecklers.
Goebbels also reveals a ruthless side.
In Communist-dominated Berlin,
Goebbels backs his carefully crafted speeches with old-fashioned thuggery.
[man] Goebbels was not a classically masculine figure.
I think you can always see
a degree of trying to compensate with a love of violence.
Although the Nazis are pledged to keep things legal,
they're always going to try and push it, and so what Goebbels does is he whips up
violence on the street against Communists.
He gets, you know... organises punch-ups effectively.
He organises street fights.
You know, broken noses, smashed windows, broken bottles, broken chairs.
You know, this is the kind of the soundtrack to Berlin of Goebbels.
Under Goebbels, the Nazi Party bullyboys, the SA Brownshirts,
regularly spill blood to provoke the opposition parties.
[Toby] I have the sense that his reputation spread
that if you got Goebbels in to give a speech,
you were in for a good night's entertainment.
But by 1926, two years since leaving prison...
GERMANY WAKE UP
...Hess and his beloved leader, Hitler, have made little political headway.
And wider Party elements still aren't in step with their new vision.
It's time to shut down rival factions and regain control.
[Michael] They become anxious that the longer they wait,
before they start to realise the election results they're looking for,
the more difficult it will be, and he began to question,
is the Party structured in a way that's going to make it effective?
They relaunch the Party along their own lines,
creating a virtual government-in-waiting.
Hitler leads with the ever-loyal Hess acting as gatekeeper
and controlling appointments.
Leadership threats are quickly crushed.
Along with the new departments comes a new political protection force.
For wannabe soldier Heinrich Himmler, this is a great opportunity.
He now wants to run this elite group known as the Schutz Staffel or SS.
OUR GENERAL SS
[Guy] He sees the SS as this potential elite, warrior, Samurai-like unit.
They aren't just as a kind of local protection squad for Hitler,
what this is going to be is the crème de la crème of the Nazi vision,
and Himmler wants to put himself right at the heart of it.
While most regions pick their SS from Brownshirt thugs,
Himmler has different plans.
In Lower Bavaria, he will pick men who are more than elite bodyguards.
His SS will showcase Nazi racial supremacy
and reflect the ideal of German manhood.
In the first years of the process of building up the SS,
Himmler's investing a lot of time
in hand-picking the new members of his organisation.
He firmly believes, for example,
that your physical appearance is a reflection of your racial worth.
Poring over photographs,
he eliminates candidates who don't conform to the Aryan stereotype.
Even then, to be considered, you had to be able
to trace your German ancestry back to the 18th century.
Himmler's vision of the SS, really, evolves quite slowly in the 1920s.
He's very attracted to the idea, rather mystical idea
of kind of knights of the movement,
people who will be purer National Socialists than the rest.
Although the SS are technically still part of the SA,
Himmler guarantees that his men will stand apart,
an elite force of Nazi knights.
Himmler dresses his Aryan elite in distinctive uniforms,
made by clothes designer and Nazi Party member Hugo Boss.
[Christopher] You had to wear black boots, you had to wear black breeches
and they also have this skull and cross bones emblem, the totenkopf.
Symbolising strength and purpose, loyalty and commitment unto death,
it's a striking look.
You could compare the SS to a kind of imperial guard from ancient Rome.
Himmler's knights will be dedicated
to protecting and serving one man: Adolf Hitler.
He realises that the best way to advance that is to demonstrate
the particular loyalty of the SS to the Führer,
to remain particularly loyal,
to be on his side whenever there's an inner-party dispute,
and to defend the Führer's decisions at any opportunity.
NSDAP - GERMANY WAKE UP
Slowly, the foundations of Hitler's inner circle are set into place.
Hess manages day-to-day decisions and Party policy,
Goebbels is the Party's mouthpiece...
...and Himmler and his SS its police force.
For now, there is little animosity
between the Party's two high flyers, Himmler and Goebbels.
[Guy] Himmler and Goebbels, at this stage, are still comparatively young men.
They're in their mid twenties.
So, they are very much junior figures but they're very ambitious figures.
They're both obviously aware of each other.
They both recognise each other's talents.
[Michael] They did respect one another, and I think they saw in one another,
competence, efficiency, effectiveness, dedication, a thoroughness,
in the other which they admired greatly.
Working in different spheres,
these two young achievers are putting all their energy and effort
into the success of the Party.
In 1927, the ban on Hitler's public speaking is finally lifted,
and the Nazi Party can release their most potent weapon on the German public.
NSDAP - GERMANY WAKE UP
His message: Germany must take back
control of their finances from the First World War victors.
When he is allowed to speak, he picks up on what becomes quite a big issue.
Recovering Germany must not put itself
under the control of financial forces outside.
Hitler pushed himself forward quite effectively,
becoming a prominent figure speaking up for German interests.
GERMANY WAKE UP
Hitler's populist speeches woo the German masses,
but the Nazis need Germany's power brokers on side too.
In the past, Hermann Göring had been that connection.
But he's in exile, an enemy of the state,
who, for the last four years, has been struggling with pain and morphine.
Finally, a door opens for Göring.
To celebrate President Hindenburg's 80th birthday,
Parliament agrees an amnesty for political exiles.
Göring takes full advantage.
[Guy] In 1927, he returns, thinking that he's going to be welcomed back
with open arms by the Nazi movement,
and Hitler's going to say, oh, come back, Hermann, we're old pals.
Instead, he finds the kind of response and the welcome he gets is a little frosty.
[chamber music plays]
Hitler realises that Göring's talents would be invaluable.
The one asset that Göring has when he comes back
is that he's a big personality, he's sociable, he's got contacts.
With his hero status and social skills,
he markets himself as an ambassador for the Party.
He quickly becomes the link
between the Nazis and Germany's conservative establishment.
[Richard] They don't see him as this dangerous political terrorist.
He's not like the Himmlers and Goebbels.
He's going to be quite useful for the Party
in terms of building bridges with conservative forces.
With the inner circle reunited, now they need to rise to the challenge
and take their chances in the 1928 national elections.
Public speaking, leafleting, behind-the-scenes wheeler-dealing.
Everyone has a role.
WOMEN ASSOCIATION
It's time for the years of rebuilding to pay off.
[Richard] For Hitler, this is a test.
He's very confident, in fact, that 1928 will be a turning point, you know.
If the legal path to power means anything, it means winning votes and winning seats.
But while the Nazi machine runs smoothly,
their message of impending crisis is out of step with the general mood.
The 1928 election for the Nazi Party was an unmitigated disaster.
It really was the Nazi attempt to show that they were a legitimate party.
That actually, this nationalist and socialist vision
for Germany was the way forward.
The people didn't really buy into Hitler's policies.
Polling just 2.6% of the national total,
they are 100,000 votes down on the 1924 election.
After four years of hard campaigning, it's catastrophic.
[Toby] Even in Berlin, where Goebbels had campaigned tirelessly
and courted all sorts of trouble to try to get notoriety and publicity
for his small movement, they had built up more support
but they were nowhere close to being the majority party.
As long as Germany remains prosperous,
no one wants to hear their tales of doom and gloom.
[Guy] Fringe parties at either end of the political spectrum
need a crisis to get into power.
In 1928, the German public felt comfortable and they did not need,
you know, to be taken out of their comfort zone by Adolf Hitler.
The Nazis gain only 12 of the Reichstag's 500 seats.
Of Hitler's gathering entourage,
only Goebbels and Göring become elected members of parliament.
It's scant consolation.
By late 1928, it's clear the National Socialist Party is facing crisis.
Where is it going? It's not getting enough votes.
Membership is growing but growing slowly.
It's clear that what they really need is crisis.
The Party is not going to become a major political player unless there is a crisis.
With their predictions of financial catastrophe falling on deaf ears,
the Nazi Party are on the verge of disappearing as a political force.
They need a miracle and they get it.
On 29th October 1929, the American Stock Market on Wall Street crashes
and American financiers call in their loans to Germany.
Overnight, the country returns to the anarchy of unemployment and bankruptcy.
Only one man had predicted this: Adolf Hitler.
He is immediately transformed from political footnote to prophet.
As the country collapses into chaos, the ambitious men surrounding Hitler
are delivered a golden opportunity, one they will grab with both hands.