In 1928, the fledgling Nazi Party is reeling from election disaster
and struggling for legitimacy.
Any observer worth his salt would have just written off the Nazi movement.
But global events will throw them a lifeline.
There's definitely an opportunity to access power
which even in their wildest dreams wouldn't have seemed possible.
Propaganda man Joseph Goebbels
devotes himself to tireless electioneering,
while former war hero Hermann Göring gets a foothold in Parliament...
...and wannabe soldier and backroom bureaucrat Heinrich Himmler
inducts a dangerous new ally into the inner circle.
He builds loyalty by giving people
who had had a breakdown of their careers a second chance.
In their fight for political and personal power,
the key players will turn on each other and one of them will be destroyed.
What takes place, of course, is one of the sort of
most infamous acts of political violence ever known.
[gunshots]
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.
May 1928.
Federal elections present the Nazis...
VOTE GERMAN NATIONAL
...with their first major assault on the German electorate.
Combining Himmler's obsessive organisation,
Göring's wooing of the establishment and Goebbels' relentless propaganda,
the inner circle have high hopes for political success.
But it's not to be.
The 1928 election for the Nazi Party was an unmitigated disaster.
The people didn't really buy into Hitler's policies.
Any observer worth his salt would have just written off,
and indeed did write off, the Nazi movement.
THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMAN WORKER'S PARTY
Despite throwing everything into a professional, well-branded campaign...
VOTE FOR THE FRONT-LINE SOLDIER HITLER!
...their message, one of economic doom, falls on deaf ears.
In Germany, the good times roll.
After years of financial crisis,
the country is riding high on American loans.
Things have never been better.
In 1928, the German public felt comfortable and they did not need
to be taken out of their comfort zone by Adolf Hitler.
Fringe parties at either end of the political spectrum
need a crisis to get into power.
The inner circle needs a miracle.
But then America delivers this committed group
the national calamity they have been predicting.
October 29th 1929 becomes known as Black Tuesday.
The American stock exchange on Wall Street crashes.
[Richard] Germany had prospered briefly in the 1920s on American loans.
It depended on an expanding world economy for German exports.
The Wall Street crash brought
the international economy to a grinding halt.
Overnight, millions of dollars' worth of American loans are recalled.
Germany and its economy go into free fall.
The Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression
are an enormous disaster for Germany.
Germany doesn't have the stability and structure
that can weather this extraordinary crash.
This is a major opportunity for the Nazis.
After seeming irrelevant, they now look like prophets.
In this chaotic climate,
it finally looks like the inner circle have a shot at real power.
When the coalition government collapses,
another national election is called for 1930.
For two of the Party's young guns, this is a chance to shine.
Propagandist and public speaker Joseph Goebbels
throws himself into the campaign.
This is a massive opportunity for Goebbels
who's now the Nazi propaganda chief.
You know, this is now a national stage
he can, well, not strut across, but limp across certainly.
And backroom boy and meticulous planner Heinrich Himmler
lends his organisational skills.
They want to make themselves visible, they want to be everywhere.
And top priority is paid to making sure
that there was a representative in every village and every small town.
Together, they run a campaign that aims to give the Party maximum exposure.
A political blitzkrieg.
[Guy] Every beer hall, every inn, every tavern, every restaurant,
every village hall, every town hall, you know, every little hut,
is going to have a Nazi meeting in it at some stage during this election.
And they use innovative, new ways to get their message to the masses.
They will drive around in a van, in a car, they will use loud speakers,
they will distribute a newspaper and pamphlets.
But most of all, their sheer energy and passion is relentless.
In the last four weeks of the campaign alone,
there are 34,000 meetings called by the Nazi Party.
It shows in this sort of pre-mass media age,
the sheer energy that's going into propagating the message.
And this tactic will prove devastatingly effective.
On September 14th 1930, the results come in.
The vote for the Nazis is absolutely enormous.
It's four times greater than it was just 24 months before.
They now win 6.5 million votes
and it gives them 107 seats in the Reichstag, up from 12.
This is a political earthquake.
For Goebbels, it's an unbelievable triumph.
Goebbels was actually taken aback.
He had hoped to do well in the elections, but not that well.
This marks the moment when the Nazi Party becomes a national force
and clearly a force to be reckoned with,.
They're not in power yet and there's still a long way to go
but they're on the map and as the second biggest party in parliament,
people are taking notice.
For the big players, the outcome of this election changes everything.
The 1930 election is a turning point
and they can now suddenly begin to think about the possibility
that they might even get to power one day,
that they might get ministerial jobs,
they might have political responsibilities.
For the first time in six years, their plan of achieving power
through legitimate means looks like a real possibility.
But for one member of the inner circle,
ambitious former war hero Hermann Göring,
the result means more than political gain.
The election actually really sees a fundamental restoration of Göring.
He's been in parliament since '28
but he's got what is now a safe seat in Parliament
and also he's got the ability to start lining his pockets.
[Michael] He is an industrialist himself, he runs his own companies.
And he's able to use the promise of what the Nazis might do
to encourage support among major figures in industry, for Nazism.
But in Hitler's inner circle, it never pays to take your eye off your rivals.
The Nazi Party is successfully moving forward.
But despite political gains, there remains a lingering problem
from their days of violence and revolution.
The SA Brown Shirts, the street muscle of the Party,
is becoming a redundant embarrassment.
[Guy] The SA look like the rabble they actually are.
Yes, they wear uniforms but actually they're a bunch of thugs.
They're causing a lot of trouble, and of course, they feel emboldened
because Nazism is now this huge political force.
During the lead-up to the election, at times, they'd abandoned their duties,
and in some cases, even attacked Nazi Party offices.
In the early 1930s, there's no doubt that the SA is a problem for Hitler,
sometimes they actually get involved in conflicts with Party members.
They urgently need a leader to get them under control.
With his military background, Hermann Göring is the obvious choice.
Göring was the commander of the SA before the Putsch in 1923.
There is this sense perhaps that this is a job that he might actually take on.
But Göring will be disappointed.
Heinrich Himmler has other plans.
He doesn't want to lead the SA himself but he sees the threat they pose
as an opportunity to shore up his own position.
His well-drilled SS offer Hitler an inspiring alternative,
one that Himmler has moulded to fit
the chivalric ideals of their mythical Aryan forefathers.
[Guy] Himmler wants the SS to be the embodiment of an ideal.
He doesn't want it to just be a bunch of thugs,
he wants it to be a highly disciplined, a highly politicised
and highly elite force.
DRESDNER ROAD §
But the SA, in direct competition with his SS...
GERMANY WAKE UP
...are a major obstacle to his plans.
Whoever takes charge of the SA needs to be sympathetic to his vision,
and he thinks he knows just the man.
A long-forgotten member of the inner circle, Ernst Röhm.
Five years ago, the World War One veteran and hardened street fighter
had been a leading light in the SA,
before a clash with Hitler over the militia's role
saw him excluded from the Party.
Soon after, he moved to Bolivia.
Throughout all those sort of years in almost self-imposed exile,
there's been a Nazi who's stayed in contact with Röhm...
...and that is the ever-thoughtful, ever-cunning Heinrich Himmler.
Himmler had been recruited into the Nazi movement by Röhm.
And now he sees him as a viable alternative to Göring.
Working behind the scenes,
Himmler smooths the rift between Hitler and his old friend Röhm and it works.
[Christopher] In 1930, Hitler asks Röhm to come back from Bolivia to take command.
Hitler never entirely trusted Röhm
but he recognised his skills were necessary to the movement.
Röhm is back.
For Himmler, the arrival of Röhm
restores the relationship which he'd had before 1923.
Himmler really thinks that there's a chance of collaborating with Röhm,
maybe this will help to strengthen his position in the Party,
which at the moment is still quite weak.
The move looks like a masterstroke.
Röhm will strengthen Himmler's position whilst undermining Göring.
[Guy] Hermann Göring desperately wanted to run the SA.
So Göring essentially regards himself as being somewhat marginalised.
It's another example of the shape of the inner circle shifting again.
Röhm's return is initially welcomed by propaganda man Joseph Goebbels,
but things soon go sour.
During the period after 1930,
a relationship between Goebbels and Röhm is not a particularly warm one.
Goebbels didn't like, really, the military formality that Röhm brings.
Goebbels quite liked the fact that the SA was pretty rowdy,
that it did go out and beat up and kill Communists.
GERMANY IS FREE!
As Goebbels loses his influence on the SA,
Göring sees a string of powerful jobs going to Röhm.
As Röhm's rise erodes their power,
it creates an unlikely alliance between the two rivals.
Röhm was being given a position that intruded upon
the ambitions and advancement of those two individuals.
Röhm is dangerous to the interests of both men.
Now back in the inner circle, Röhm is making powerful enemies
but whilst the self-confident former street fighter has Hitler's favour,
they must bide their time.
Though former war hero Herman Göring may be sidelined
from military appointments, Hitler has need of his talents elsewhere.
Göring was probably at his best, really, as a socialite,
mixing with people, making contacts, trying to find funds.
Göring's a survivor, a wheeling-dealing man about town
but he'd be nothing without his beloved wife and society hostess, Carin.
Carin is a very important figure, I think,
in trying to beef Göring up to become a political figure.
They've been through everything together,
but at a terrible cost to her health.
Increasingly frail, in October 1931 Carin dies.
Göring is grief-stricken...
...but the inner circle will use any opportunity to improve their standing...
...and Carin's death provides an unlikely opening for Goebbels.
Throughout this period of turmoil,
Goebbels, you know, the firebrand orator, is starting to settle down.
He is a womaniser, Goebbels,
a very unlikely womaniser, if you look at him, but nevertheless he is.
He has a lot of charm and he eventually settles upon Magda.
[Toby] Goebbels and Magda were married in the snow
with a guard of Hitler Youth and Hitler as best man,
and it was a very happy occasion.
With Göring's wife gone, there's an opening for an ambitious hostess.
[Richard] There was always a great deal of competition between the Nazi elite
about networking, about socialising and so on,
and I think that Joseph and Magda Goebbels saw themselves
after the death of Carin Göring as the successors.
They both make the most of this opportunity
to secure their place in the inner circle.
The newly married Mr and Mrs Goebbels are the most charming Nazi couple.
So when their beloved Hitler comes round for tea or a drink,
there's, you know, Magda baking cakes,
and Goebbels meanwhile in sort of an awful display of fawning sycophancy,
on the record player has
some of Hitler's greatest hits playing, his speeches.
But Göring will fight back.
He soon overcomes his grief and now with nothing
to check his desire for money and power,
he makes himself available to Hitler 24/7.
We tend to think of Göring as this sort of fat, somewhat jovial figure
in these big silly uniforms, you know.
He looks like something out of a fancy-dress shop.
And actually, that belies the fact that up there
is a very calculating, very ruthless mind that will play the game.
And now he's a widower,
he can really dedicate his life to his own personal ambitions.
Against this backdrop of constant electioneering and internal rivalry,
one man is quietly moving up the ranks, Heinrich Himmler.
Himmler, meanwhile, the quiet backroom boy, is busy scheming.
He is very much building up his power base.
Both the SS and the SA grow rapidly in numbers with the Great Depression.
Unemployment brings a lot of the men into the movement.
You start to see the SS become more and more of an internal police force.
But although Himmler's SS is growing in strength,
not everything is going the way he'd hoped.
Himmler's plan to bring back Ernst Röhm is backfiring.
The SA are becoming even more powerful
and bully boy Röhm has no intention of following Himmler's lead.
Himmler feels like the junior partner,
feels like that Röhm's the big boy, the one with all the seniority.
Realising his error, Himmler focuses on building up his own SS force.
If he can expand their duties to cover Party security,
he will consolidate their role and strengthen his position.
Himmler's beginning to think more seriously about setting up
an intelligence service within the SS,
one that is independent from that of the SA and other Party organisations.
[Guy] He needs an apparatus within his organisation, within the SS,
that will spy not only on enemies of the Party
but also can spy on people within the Party,
under the pretext that they might be treacherous.
And so he forms this thing called the Sicherheitsdienst,
the Security Service, the SD.
Himmler needs someone to lead this new force,
someone he can trust, a new member of the inner circle
who will understand his vision and ambition
without compromising his powerbase.
In June 1931, Himmler meets a young man looking for a job.
This interview will shape the destiny of millions.
The man who comes knocking on Himmler's door
for this job of running the SD is a young man called Reinhard Heydrich.
With his strong Aryan looks, he makes an immediate impression on Himmler.
He's a vision of what he thinks the SS should embody.
And Himmler, the wannabe soldier...
GERMANY IS FREE!
...is also impressed by Heydrich's military background.
He's also very impressed by the fact that Heydrich can talk to him
in military language and explain his plans
for the creation of an SS intelligence service.
The well-educated Heydrich had held a highly prized commission
in Germany's diminished post-war navy.
But then he became embroiled in a sordid affair.
[Robert] He was simultaneously engaged to two women,
and one of the women's father
was a very influential man with good contacts.
But when the affair came out,
Heydrich treated the father's complaints with contempt,
an attitude that appalled the navy.
He kept one of his fiancées, but lost his commission.
He wasn't considered to be a man of honour.
So he was hoofed out. Now he was engaged at the time
and so therefore, you know, we are looking at a man who is desperate.
Now keen to impress, the inventive Heydrich
tells Himmler everything he wants to hear.
All he has done is read as a boy some detective fiction
and some spy novels and he uses his knowledge of those thrillers
to impress Himmler as to how an intelligence service would work.
That is the limit of his experience. But it's enough.
Heydrich learns on the job like no one else.
The ambitious Himmler and his new right-hand man
now control a security service
authorised to spy on their own Party members.
It's a tool they'll exploit to the fullest.
Whilst the inner circle jockey for position in the Party,
Germany is falling deeper into political and economic crisis
and Hitler continues to capitalise on the discontent.
One of the things that Hitler managed to do
in the period after the 1930 elections is to make the Party appear
more and more as a valid political party,
as a respectable political movement.
A series of elections bring steady political gains,
and by 1932, the Nazis are technically the single largest party in Parliament.
But a string of coalition governments and political alliances
conspire to deny them power.
WHO STILL BELIEVES IN THÄLMANN MUST BE OUT OF HIS MIND
By now, a massive 30% of Germany's workforce is unemployed.
UFA-FACTORY CELL
When yet more elections are called for November...
NATIONAL SOCIALIST FACTORY CELL ORGANIZATION
...the inner circle fear that if they don't seize this chance...
MINISTRY OF THE REICHSWEHR FACTORY CELL - KNORR-BREMSE PLC
...they'll miss their moment.
For a failed playwright and frustrated academic,
the Nazis have been good to Joseph Goebbels.
At just 35, he's in charge of a national election campaign.
This is his biggest opportunity to date.
Goebbels' approach is entirely innovative and brand new.
He is using all the theatrics at his disposal to present Hitler in a way
that no political leader's ever been presented before.
Goebbels devised a campaign device called Hitler Over Germany
in which Hitler flew from town to town, city to city, in a plane, filmed,
and the troops were on the ground waiting to see the Führer
descend from the skies like some sort of avenging angel
falling down from the clouds.
And it made an enormous impact on people whose lives were grey and narrow.
It's inspired. Joseph Goebbels makes Hitler look like a serious statesman,
a real leader, a viable option.
Hitler looks like a genuine 20th-century politician
and his rivals look as though they're stuck in the last century.
[cheering]
But despite their efforts, the elections don't hand them victory.
Sharing 50% of the vote between them,
the Nazis and Communists are locked in political stalemate.
If the inner circle are to tip the balance,
they'll need the support of the establishment.
But that's easier said than done.
[Richard] The German president, Field Marshal Hindenburg,
deeply distrusted Hitler.
He couldn't understand mass politics,
couldn't understand where Hitler was coming from.
Hindenburg cannot believe he has to do business with this former corporal.
Only President Hindenburg can give Hitler what he wants,
the Chancellorship.
Knowing this, a key member of the inner circle
seizes a chance to improve his standing.
Göring watches very closely what's going on late '32, early '33.
He's president of the Reichstag, of course,
he's in a good position to see what the possibilities are.
Using his reputation and contacts,
Göring's out to prove he's the only one
that can deliver Hitler this springboard to power.
Göring has a crowning moment in 1933.
It's Göring who effects the meeting.
He puts together these two men in a way perhaps no other man could have done.
Göring persuades Hindenburg to put his trust in Hitler.
And so this facilitation, if you like, is a really key moment for Göring
and sees him right back in the heart of the inner circle.
Göring has saved the day.
On January 30th 1933,
President Hindenburg finally appoints Hitler Chancellor of Germany.
[applause]
For the inner circle, it's an incredible moment.
Within ten years, they've gone from street-fighting terrorists
to politicians, part of a ruling coalition.
[Nigel] The day that Hitler was actually made Chancellor,
the SA Storm Troopers marched through central Berlin,
under the Brandenburg Gate,
each carrying torches and this had a visceral power over the masses.
The celebrations, naturally orchestrated by Goebbels, are spectacular
and give the world a taste of what's to come.
But they're not there yet. Their leader may be Chancellor,
but the Nazis only hold a few cabinet posts in a tenuous coalition government.
And beneath the veneer of a united Nazi Party,
the competition for those roles means inner-circle rivalries intensify.
[Robert] Once Hitler becomes Chancellor,
there's growing competition between individuals
who aspire to high political office,
and some of them will end up without a job...
...whereas others will be propelled to great political importance.
Among those awaiting the trappings of success is campaign genius Goebbels.
He expects to be given prestige and privilege,
maybe even a ministerial job in the new cabinet.
[Guy] Whenever a new government comes to power,
all the leading lights of the successful party
are waiting next to their telephone,
waiting for their leader to give them this plum job or that plum job.
But although thanked for his incredible efforts,
Goebbels' years of terror tactics and aggressive campaigning
haven't made him popular in Berlin.
GOEBBELS SETTLES THE SCORE
Goebbels suddenly realises as he waits by the phone that it's not ringing.
Hitler can't afford to be associated with anyone
that might wreck his tenuous grasp on legitimate power.
He realises that he hasn't got a job, that he's not one of the Nazis
who is going to be appointed to the cabinet,
and he was utterly cast into depression.
But whilst one star fades, others shine bright.
GERMANY WAKE UP
Göring's reward for securing Hitler the Chancellorship
is to be made Minister for the Interior of Germany's largest state, Prussia.
Göring's elevation to be Minister of the Interior, Home Secretary,
gives him a vast, controlling voice
in all the internal domestic affairs of Germany in effect.
Prussia is his base, his stronghold.
Göring now focuses the resources
of his vast new bureaucratic and administrative empire
on achieving Nazi goals.
It means that he can turn the Prussian police into a new type of police force.
And a police force the world really hasn't seen.
Göring calls it the Secret State Police. Actually, we know that as the Gestapo.
And the Gestapo, as we all know, becomes
this absolute terrifying embodiment of state terror.
Initially, the Gestapo are tasked with political intelligence,
but with their wider powers of arrest and imprisonment,
in Prussia, under Göring, they soon tear up the rule of law.
[Richard] His role as the Minister of the Interior in Prussia
is really used to impose the Nazi revolution
on the whole area of northern Germany.
His police now enforce the Party's views, attacking Communists
and turning a blind eye to any aggressive Nazi activity.
Göring's so attuned to that form of control.
He's naturally aggressive in politics, and as Minister of the Interior,
he has the means to put that aggression into genuine effect.
Göring's seizure of Prussia through police control
is enthusiastically approved by Hitler.
But in others, it arouses serious resentment.
There are two other members of the inner circle
who look at Göring's success with really, really envious eyes.
One of them, of course, is Goebbels who just sees
the success of anybody else with huge jealousy.
His nose is really put out of joint. And the other man is Himmler.
Himmler thinks of himself as...
I am the security and police person. I'm the person who gathers intelligence.
I know about this stuff. Why the hell is this bloated former pilot
now suddenly in charge of the Gestapo? No, no, this should be me.
But even if Göring senses a growing enmity against him,
he feels secure, he's got a couple of aces up his sleeve.
[Richard] He sets up his own research office which begins to investigate
other members of the Party
and he holds dossiers and files which he's going to use at some future date.
He shows a good deal of political cunning.
[Guy] What the Gestapo also has is a great head start for Göring
because it's got all Prussian police's files on Göring's fellow top Nazis.
So this gives him a lot of power.
Better still, within a few weeks of taking over Prussia,
he acquires the Holy Grail of intelligence gathering.
Phone tapping, which was a very modern device at the time,
becomes a very important source of information for Göring,
and he's able to surprise people at times
by saying something to them they'd said on the phone.
If Göring is attacked by the others, he'll be ready.
Now the Nazis prepare to make their next move.
They're still part of a tenuous coalition,
with just a few cabinet posts.
This is not absolute power.
Although the Nazis are in power, they really wanna strengthen their grip.
The inner circle decide they must raise their game.
They argue the coalition is doomed to fail and call for yet another election.
They now have just two months to secure a majority.
Their plan? An all-out attack on their main political rivals, the Communists.
NEVER WITH HITLER!
The threat, or the imagined threat, posed to Germany by the Communists
was a vital part of the Nazi narrative
and Goebbels lost no opportunity to capitalise upon this.
Goebbels campaigns hard, with his slogan, Attack on Marxism.
But they know propaganda alone won't be enough.
At this stage, there's no doubt
that what the movement needs is some crisis of some sort,
something to do down the Communists who are, after all,
the largest party still in the Reichstag.
But however hard the Nazis try to provoke a major outrage,
the Communists refuse to oblige.
In February 1933, Joseph and Magda Goebbels
are entertaining Hitler and other Party leaders at their apartment
when they are delivered a miracle.
[phone rings]
The Reichstag is on fire.
[Michael] When the fire breaks out in February,
after he's taken power a month earlier,
all the evidence circumstantially would be that it was started by the Nazis.
This was denied at the time and Hitler's reaction,
when Himmler and Goebbels told him of the fire,
suggests he didn't know about it.
Nazi conspiracy or not, this is a situation that can be manipulated.
A young Dutch Communist is arrested at the scene of the fire.
Hitler had always said that he was the force of providence.
He was genuinely outraged by this attack by the Communists, as he saw it,
on the symbol of power, the Reichstag.
Hitler seizes the moment.
Within hours, he convinces Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree.
Under the pretence of protecting the public,
civil liberties are suspended and the Nazis are effectively handed
the legal authority to suppress any opposition.
[Toby] The Reichstag fire thus gave the Nazis precisely the ammunition they needed
to argue that the Communists were about to stage a national uprising.
The Reichstag fire was the signal, the beacon that was lit
for the unleashing of unrestrained Nazi violence across Germany.
Röhm's SA, Göring's Gestapo and Himmler's SS all leap into action
to brutally and systematically destroy all political opposition.
[Christopher] You have the Prussian police descend on Germany
with pre-prepared arrest lists of leftist activists.
At the same time, the SA and the SS are unbound.
The SA now enrolled as auxiliary police are able
to pretty much attack and kidnap their Communist opponents,
drag them off to torture cellars
and submit them to violence, terror and extortion.
Marxism was effectively crushed at that moment.
After all the Nazis' propaganda and scaremongering...
FROM NOW ON DRASTIC MEASURES WILL BE TAKEN
...this savage repression is generally welcomed...
DAILY EVENING PAPER
...by the German public and the Party's popularity soars.
Just two weeks later, at the elections of March 1933,
the work of Goebbels and Göring pays off.
The Nazis win almost 44% of the vote,
still not a clear majority, but they are now the dominant force in the coalition.
The Nazis are now in the driving seat.
Once again, the inner circle await their rewards.
Power-hungry Göring already holds numerous political positions
but now a new ministry is created with his talents in mind.
He's tasked with secretly developing
and building the world's first modern air force.
[Richard] This is the point at which Göring is no longer
just a minister in Prussia,
he's somebody with a national responsibility.
He's the natural choice to set up an air ministry
and the air ministry is going to be a veiled way
of rearming Germany in the air.
Independent of the established army and navy
and with its own substantial budget and swanky uniform,
Göring is in his element.
Joseph Goebbels also finally gets the recognition he craves.
[Toby] It was the fulfilment of a lifetime's ambition for Goebbels
to be made Minister of Propaganda in an entirely new ministry.
He was very proud of the idea that he was the youngest man ever
in Germany appointed to ministerial rank,
and he was absolutely delighted
with the opportunities that this new role offered.
It is a role he relishes and rapidly expands.
After a number of months' preparation, he brought all of Germany's artists,
writers, musicians, painters and sculptors together in one organisation.
Just ten years earlier, this young man was a bitter and frustrated journalist.
Now he's at the helm of German cultural life.
It's the first significant step on a road to absolute control of all media.
This will become his empire and make him insanely powerful.
With the Nazis in power,
law and order must now reflect their vision and enforce their values.
The nation's police forces must be centralised
and brought under the control of one of the inner circle.
It will be a prized and powerful position.
[Richard] Göring thinks that he is the natural person to do that,
he's set up the Gestapo in Prussia, he's played a very important part
in bringing the police over to the regime's side.
But Göring has an unexpected rival for the role
in rising security boss and meticulous bureaucrat Heinrich Himmler.
The relationship between Göring and Himmler in 1933-34
is a very uneven one.
Göring is at the very top of the political hierarchy
whereas Himmler is still kind of manoeuvring,
trying to find his feet, trying to find his role.
He's very busy laying the foundation for his subsequent power.
This is Himmler's big chance.
He wants to be in charge of a unified police state,
run along the same lines of his established SS.
He approaches Hitler to set out why he's the man for the job.
[Richard] He delivers, he's a can-do man and he's a very good organiser.
Here's somebody who, you know, is clearly going to be able
to deliver effectively a national police system.
Himmler gets his way and is handed control
of the nation's state-police forces, except for one, Göring's Prussia.
Göring retains his valuable Gestapo.
And though he's lost out to Himmler for the bigger prize,
he recognises the young bureaucrat as a good man to get on side.
He soon recruits him as his deputy in Prussia.
He comes to the realisation that Himmler can be quite useful.
So they decide to work together, but, of course,
Göring is the more senior person within this partnership.
Once again, he's underestimating Himmler,
his ambition and his ability to build an organisation.
Göring has an ulterior motive for recruiting Himmler.
He wants the combined force of his Gestapo
and Himmler's SS and secret police
to take down someone he sees as a major threat: Ernst Röhm and his SA.
[Christopher] By early 1934, the size of the Brownshirt Movement
had increased to three to four million.
This starts to go to Röhm's head.
Röhm starts to make speeches calling for the SA to become a people's army.
[Nigel] There was a real bid for power
from within the Nazi Party from the Brownshirts,
that with some justification, had seen themselves
as the battering ram that had opened the gates for the Nazis.
The SA remain fixated on the idea of a second revolution.
A military junta with them on top.
Although Hitler and Röhm still appear close,
they are ideologically poles apart.
As Hitler starts to mature politically and as he starts to grow away from...
what is described as the drummer, you know,
summoning men to arms on street corners,
Röhm starts to become more of an embarrassment for Hitler,
who is this sort of corpulent homosexual attached to him.
Röhm's homosexuality has never been a secret,
but now, as clean-cut legitimate leaders,
it's becoming an exploitable issue
for main rival Göring and his new recruit, Himmler.
Himmler, once Röhm's closest inner-circle ally,
now finds himself in direct competition with him.
There's a fascinating love-hate relationship between the SS and the SA
and indeed between Himmler and Röhm.
By 1934, Himmler wants his noble SS order independent
and not tainted by association
with the crude thuggery and perceived depravity of the SA.
Himmler finally decides his old comrade, Röhm, must be dealt with.
[Nigel] Himmler, the leader of the SS, was a master bureaucrat,
a brilliant behind-the-scenes manipulator.
And he got together with Göring to organise a plot against Röhm.
[Guy] They both regard Röhm as acting against their wishes
and they also see an opportunity if Röhm is brought down,
then there's a potential land grab for both Himmler and Göring.
They need to focus all their resources,
so Himmler's sidekick Reinhard Heydrich is brought on board...
...tasked with finding damning evidence.
He puts his new SD on the case.
[Richard] They begin an intelligence surveillance programme,
in which they try to find out what the SA is thinking,
and they bring all this material together
and they're gonna feed it to Hitler.
Despite targeting Röhm's homosexuality, Hitler isn't that receptive.
As old colleagues, he's fully aware and has put it aside,
but the plotters know which buttons to press.
[Richard] No secret was made when Göring and Himmler
were trying to persuade Hitler to act that there was
a decadent element in the SA.
There's absolutely no doubt that Hitler is homophobic
and the thought that Röhm and the SA leadership
were all indulging in homosexual orgies is something he can't take.
Hitler is told that Röhm's influence
is not only corrupting the SA's hierarchy but also the wider Nazi youth.
A disgusted Hitler finally gives the conspirators the green light.
Now it's open season on Röhm and his SA.
Heydrich is ordered by Himmler to start finding out information about him,
confected information, but it's gonna be enough.
The Nazi way is make stuff up and throw it at the person,
find him guilty, and this is what's gonna happen to Röhm.
In June 1934, Hitler prepares a purge of the SA.
He cancels their annual military exercises
and orders them to go on leave.
Dispersed across the country in small groups, they will be easier to manage.
One of the strange things about the purge of Röhm,
of course, is Röhm's naivety.
He seems to have no sense, really, that he's perceived as a threat.
And yet I think he really thinks that he's a help to Hitler,
the SA will help to push the revolution in a way that Hitler might want.
[Christopher] In June 1934, Röhm, obviously, isn't particularly alarmed
by some rumours circulating that there was going to be some action against him
and he went down to Bad Weissee, a lake in Bavaria, for a holiday.
It will prove a fatal error.
Göring, Himmler and Heydrich
have been working around the clock to discredit Röhm
and have finally found their trump card.
By the end of June 1934, amazingly,
the evidence that Röhm is a traitor has been found.
And there's this kind of documentation that shows
he's the recipient of millions of marks from the French government
to try and overthrow Hitler on their behalf.
Of course, it's completely manufactured evidence.
ERNST RÖHM COMPLICITY
Armed with their apparent proof
that Röhm is a traitor as well as degenerate,
the plotters move to convince Hitler he must act fast.
Röhm's fate is sealed.
What takes place, of course,
is one of the sort of most infamous acts of political violence ever known.
It's called the Night of the Long Knives and, boy, were those knives sharp.
Faced with the falsified evidence, in an extraordinary move,
Hitler, the Chancellor of Germany, takes matters into his own hands.
He drove in a convoy of cars with SS men, armed SS men escorting him,
to the resort of Bad Wiesse.
At 6.30 in the morning, Hitler charges into the hotel, brandishing a pistol.
[Nigel] He makes his way to Röhm's room...
...opens the door and says,
"Get up, you're under arrest for high treason."
A sleep-bedazzled and bewildered Röhm
doesn't understand what's going on, gets up.
Hitler and his group also arrest SA men who are actually in bed together.
This is something that the Nazis will use after the event
to show they were actually trying to get rid of the sort of moral turpitude,
they call it, of the SA to regard it as this very sort of homosexual force.
Proving their role as pure knights of the Nazi order,
Himmler's SS round up 200 senior SA officers,
wiping clean the decadence of the SA.
Over the next 24 hours, many are shot.
This is actually, in some ways, the opportunity
for which Himmler has prepared the organisation for a very long time.
[gunshot]
They are demonstrating very clearly
that they are the most loyal instrument of the Führer.
[gunshot]
Others, including Röhm, are imprisoned.
[Nigel] Out of sentimental regard for Röhm personally,
Hitler wants to spare his life, but he's persuaded otherwise
by Göring and Himmler who say, it's no good, mein Führer,
if you kill all the underlings of Röhm, if you spare the chief pig himself.
After going this far, there can be no turning back.
The following day, Hitler holds a tea party for his cabinet ministers
and their families in the gardens of the Chancellery in Berlin.
While this tea party is going on,
the playing out of the Night of the Long Knives is almost pure Godfather II.
It is like a gangster film.
There are people being massacred,
literally just butchered, shot, killed.
But there's one death Göring and Himmler still crave.
During the afternoon, they steadily work on Hitler and finally he relents.
Hitler is still very reticent about having Röhm shot
so he sends word that Röhm should be made aware
that he could take his life himself with a revolver.
The SS guards give Röhm a pistol with one bullet in it.
[Guy] He is told, you know what to do,
if we don't hear a shot in ten minutes, we'll go and do it ourselves.
It might be checkmate, but Röhm's no traitor.
Ten minutes passes, not a sound.
A fighter to the end, he's not going to give them the satisfaction.
Two SS men open the door... and he says,
"You would have to shoot me yourselves or Adolf Hitler should shoot me."
[gun cocks]
So they shoot him three times in the chest and once in the head.
Röhm's death is the bloody finale to Göring and Himmler's murderous purge.
We still don't know how many died in that bloody, long weekend of violence.
But it was certainly in the hundreds.
And it gave a notice, not only to Germany, but to the world,
that you opposed the Nazis' slightest whim at the very peril of your own life.
Within weeks, the mighty SA is nothing more than a ceremonial organisation.
And with Röhm gone, the major players of the inner circle have one less rival.
[Richard] After the Röhm purge, the entourage around Hitler
all begin to develop their own power base,
their own interests, but the critical thing is that Hitler is at the centre.
You had to remain loyal, you couldn't be a Röhm,
because you would suffer the consequences.
Two weeks later, the ailing President Hindenburg dies
and Hitler merges the posts of Chancellor and President,
declaring himself the supreme leader of Germany: the Führer.
The inner circle is now unstoppable.