As Nazi Germany marches ever closer to Total War,
the pressure is on for the leaders of the Third Reich.
All the key members of Hitler's inner circle are all jostling their way,
trying to get as near to the centre of power as possible.
They're all stabbing each other in the back.
Göring, Goebbels and Himmler are holding their positions, just about,
but it's Martin Bormann, Hitler's enforcer, who's coming out on top.
You can imagine him thinking, now I've made it.
[archive] Sieg heil!
The biggest loser is Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess.
[James Holland] He's losing his marbles by this point,
he's starting to believe in ever-more wacky stuff.
And he dreams up a secret plan, it's a crazy idea, reckless and dangerous.
This has got to be the most loony plot that's ever happened!
This is the inside story of Hitler's henchmen,
the power struggles, blind ambition and fawning sycophants
that would create a monster and fuel the most brutal horrors of the Third Reich.
The top brass of the Nazi Party
take their places on the podium of the Reichstag.
Among them, Air Chief Hermann Göring and Party stalwart Rudolf Hess.
Göring is riding high in Hitler's favour following the military takeover
of Austria and Czechoslovakia without a shot being fired.
But Hess, despite having the grand title of Deputy Führer, is not a happy man.
They've come to hear their leader address the German people
and they know their fortunes hang on his plans.
Hitler is almost at the apogee of his power, he is so in control,
the atmosphere must have been electric.
You see these big, key figures in Hitler's inner circle,
sitting in the Reichstag, waiting for him
to make this absolute most key of keynote speeches.
[archive, Hitler makes speech]
Hitler says he desires nothing but peace.
Mocking Britain and America for demanding assurances
that Germany will not invade its neighbours,
he reads out a long list of countries
which the Reich has no hostile intentions towards.
Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland,
Hungary, Romania, Yugoslawia, Russia,
Bulgaria, Turkey, Iraq, Arabia,
Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iran.
[wild cheering]
But the Reich, he says, has legitimate interests and demands,
including the return of German territory in Poland to the Fatherland.
"We will make our own decisions, we will decide our own destiny,"
and that is the kind of speech that would go down really well
in front of Nazi deputies, who after all were
all the most vibrant and passionate Nazis you could find.
Nevertheless, the German Government is willing to...
Hitler claims Germany
is the innocent victim of foreign aggression, especially from Poland.
The speech is essentially a rousing appeal to the German people.
We stand at this point.
If it involves war subsequently, so be it, but we are in the right.
Powerful stuff, nonsense but powerful.
[cheering]
Not everyone is sold on Hitler's vision.
The old war hero Göring fears his Führer is biting off more than he can chew,
but it's Rudolph Hess who has the greatest sense of foreboding.
[James Holland] Hess is an Anglophile,
he understands the strength of Britain, particularly,
but also of France and the United States,
and he has severe reservations about how far Germany
should push things with Poland at this particular time.
Hess knows Hitler well enough
to understand that although the Führer talks of peace, he's preparing for war.
[Frank] He was thinking, look, it's all going to go the wrong way.
We're going to end up fighting the wrong war.
Instead of actually confronting Poland and the Soviet Union,
we're going to end up fighting against France and Britain. That's the wrong war.
Back in the old days, Hess was Hitler's closest confidant.
Hail victory! §
The party is Hitler!
Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler!
Hitler! Hail victory!
Hail victory!
His commitment to Hitler is fanatical.
Hail victory!
But after years of unwavering devotion, of all Hitler's courtiers,
he feels the least able to influence unfolding events.
He no longer has Hitler's ear, which in the early days he certainly did have,
and it's a slight... it's a fall in prestige that he feels very personally.
And although the two men share much in common,
Hess's obsessions are starting to grate on Hitler.
[James Holland] He's a very odd man, Hess.
When he goes and visits Hitler in the Berghof, for example,
he used to bring his own food. Well, Hitler really took against that.
I mean, it is quite rude on a number of levels.
If Hess is starting to feel paranoid, it's with good reason.
Even his own staff are plotting against him.
Six years before, Martin Bormann, a backroom administrator in the Nazi Party,
had impressed Hess with his quiet efficiency
and had been appointed to his personal office.
But since then, the ruthlessly ambitious Bormann has wheedled himself ever closer
to Hitler and never misses an opportunity to undermine Hess.
For a schemer like Bormann, his boss is an easy target
because he's becoming obsessed
with pseudo-sciences like astrology and horoscopes.
He's a little bit like one of those people who's got a lot of money,
a lot of time on his hands and he doesn't know what to do.
[Guy] Hess was always a man interested in occultism,
what we would today call esoterica, he was interested in magick, with a k on the end.
He was interested in astrology, soothsaying, pendulums, telekinesis.
No wonder his own staff are ridiculing the Deputy Führer behind his back.
On one occasion, an aide comes into his office
to see the second most senior man in the Nazi Party
trying to exert the power of mind control...
...over a chair.
Frankly, anybody who thinks they can keep a chair from falling over,
just by using thought control, is clearly not the most stable personality.
Hess's insecurity increases when he discovers Nazi leaders
have been summoned to a crucial meeting in the Reich Chancellery
to plan the invasion of Poland, and he's not been invited.
[Richard] There's no doubt, I think, that in Hess's mind, this is a disappointment.
Where have I gone wrong, what do I need to do to get back into favour,
you know, why am I outside the loop?
He's not a very astute politician and he's surrounded by people, you know,
the Görings, the Himmlers and so on,
who are very astute politicians.
But despite his flakiness, Hess is right
to worry about all-out war in Europe.
And he is not alone.
As preparations for the invasion of Poland continue, Hermann Göring is also anxious.
He knows that Hitler is eyeing up Communist Russia,
and Poland is just the stepping stone to the main prize.
[Thomas] Göring has close contacts to Britain
and therefore believes far more than Hitler does that
an invasion in the East will lead to an entry of the United Kingdom into the war,
as a result of which Germany will ultimately be
in a two-front war in the East and in the West,
and that Germany is unlikely to win that kind of war,
and that is again why he is so hesitant in 1939.
Hitler's gambling that Britain is bluffing,
that it won't come to Poland's aid.
Göring fears the Führer is misjudging London
but realises there's no changing his leader's mind.
So he makes a tactical retreat.
[James Wyllie] Hermann retires to his estate, which distances himself
from the decision if it goes badly, but also, I think,
to safeguard his relationship with Hitler
to the extent that he didn't want to become a pain, as it were, to Hitler.
Anxious to prove his worth,
Hess tries to persuade Britain to stop supporting Poland.
He invites a senior British politician, Lord Buxton, to Germany for talks.
But even he can see that Hess no longer has the power to rein in the Führer.
[Frank] Lord Buxton came back and said, look, Hess is a busted flush.
He's got no influence over Hitler.
Yes, he's against the whole idea of invading Poland
and provoking a war with Britain
but I don't think he's going to have that big influence.
It broke out on January 13th this year.
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's trusted Minister of Propaganda,
has no reservations about going to war, and offers a pretext to invade Poland.
His propaganda machine pumps out stories,
some narrated in English for an international audience,
that ethnic Germans living in Poland are being attacked.
[archive news] Thousands of them flee from the persecution of Polish gangs.
Their homes are systematically burned down and devastated by the Poles.
[narrator] But these stories are all fake news.
They based their propaganda
onto these massive anti-Polish feelings within the German public.
And Goebbels was building upon that.
So it was easy for Goebbels to raise this anti-Polish feeling
and then there has to be war against Poland.
Then the propaganda is ramped up to blame the Polish government
for actually organising the attacks on Germans within its territory.
[archive news] Hundreds of thousands
of worn-out, distressed and panic-stricken people
pour daily into the German refugee camps.
[Toby] There were tales of brutality, of killings,
of confiscations of property,
of German families driven from their homes, abused,
denied their rights, discriminated against and persecuted.
[Frank] It's all rubbish, but, of course, it is believed.
This is the problem. The German public starts to believe this propaganda
because it has no access to any other point of view.
Because Goebbels has a monopoly over all the opinions.
The fake stories do the trick.
German military hardware is moved
close to the Polish border and primed for action.
Goebbels has prepared the fire.
All it needs now is the spark to ignite the flames of war.
And it's not long before they get it.
[machine-gunfire]
A German radio station near the border with Poland comes under attack.
Some of the raiders are killed. They're found to be Polish soldiers.
Later that night, Berlin radio broadcasts the news of this outrageous provocation.
But all is not as it seems.
The whole thing has been staged, the brainchild of SS boss Heinrich Himmler.
The raiders were in fact SS troops
in Polish uniforms and carrying Polish guns.
And the bodies left at the scene? They weren't Poles either.
A group of concentration-camp prisoners were taken from their normal confines,
they were shot, put in Polish army uniforms
and dispersed about this German radio station
to make it look as if there had been a Polish army attack.
Hitler now has his excuse to retaliate.
War is just hours away.
And Göring knows it.
He is absolutely cursing, he just goes, oh, my God,
this is going to be it, you know, that is the end of Germany.
But to survive in the inner circle,
you have to think fast, and the head of the Luftwaffe pulls himself together.
Once he gets over that shock and that despair, he then says,
"But the Führer is magnificent, you know, we are but pawns, you know,
we are but little people compared to his greatness and we must do his bidding."
Dawn on the 1st September 1939,
the point of no return to the deadliest conflict in human history.
Göring's Luftwaffe launches the Second World War
by bombing civilian targets in Poland.
Then the warships of the Kriegsmarine join the attack.
And the Wehrmacht storm across the border.
Now the conflict has begun,
with new enthusiasm, Hess signs the documents
that incorporate Polish territory into the Third Reich.
His fanatical devotion to Hitler
trumps any personal doubts he may have had about going to war.
Hess realises he has to do what Hitler wants,
and if Hitler wants to invade Poland, you know,
you either go along with it or you don't.
Two days after the invasion,
the whole game plan changes when Britain declares war.
Göring's prediction, which had been brushed aside by Hitler, has come true.
[Thomas] Göring is heard to have muttered,
"If we lose this war, then God may have mercy upon us."
At the same time, he knows this is not the time to challenge Hitler
and that Hitler would certainly not like to hear him say, I told you so.
So despite his reservations,
he decides he has to go with this, that he has to stick with Hitler.
Britain may now be in the war,
but it can't stop Germany overrunning Poland within five weeks.
Göring is the hero of the hour,
another feather in his cap after the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia.
Now Heinrich Himmler moves centre stage.
He unleashes the SS to crush any resistance.
But they go further, seeking out and targeting Jews and other undesirables.
It's another ominous step towards what will become known as the Holocaust.
So far, Hitler's grand campaign for new lands in the East
has gone perfectly to plan.
But now the inner circle is about to face an existential threat,
and it comes in the very heartland of the Third Reich.
In the autumn of 1939, the inner circle gathers in Munich
to commemorate the failed putsch of 1923.
As usual, Hitler will make a speech at the Burgerbrau beer hall where it all began.
He intends to fly to Berlin later that evening.
But as fog descends over the Bavarian capital, his plans have to change.
On the advice of his pilot Hans Bauer, he's told that he can't fly.
So the decision is made that he has to go by train,
which means that his set-piece speech in the beer hall has to be cut short.
So Hitler will be leaving the beer hall early.
A photographer is there as Hitler starts his speech ahead of schedule.
The Führer leaves the hall as soon as he's finished.
Precisely 13 minutes later...
The bomb had been planted right behind where Hitler would have been.
Eight people are killed and many more are injured.
[Roger] It knocks out the main pillar in which it's located.
It brings down the roof. It devastates the room and there's chaos.
[James Holland] Had he not got away 13 minutes earlier than planned,
it's inconceivable to think that he wouldn't have been killed.
[Roger] Hitler's life is effectively saved in 1939 because of bad weather.
[James Holland] It's one of those amazing what-ifs
and it's amazing how little it's known today.
[Deutschland Uber Alles plays]
Each henchman in his own way
tries to make capital out of the failed assassination
and use it to curry favour with the Führer.
Hess stages an elaborate ceremony to honour the "blood martyrs"
and, of course, to laud praise on the Führer's miraculous escape.
[Frank] I think this is another sign of him saying, look, I'm still here.
"I still love the Führer. I'd like to be back in your inner circle."
It's a kind of real... sort of... desperate, creepy moment, really.
Goebbels is also quick to turn the attack to his advantage.
[Roger] He gives the propaganda line to his newspapers almost verbatim
as to what line they should take,
which is basically that this has to be the work of the British.
It's the nefarious British Secret Service that is to blame
and thereby justifying the war against the British and the French.
But as always with Goebbels, it's a lie.
The bomb wasn't the work of enemy agents.
It had been planted by a German acting alone.
Georg Elser had wanted to stop the war,
fearing it would lead to untold human suffering.
He is caught trying to flee across the Swiss border and confesses.
[Roger] He believed, and in retrospect absolutely rightly,
that Hitler was leading the country back to war.
And he decided, unlike many of his fellows
who would have been also dubious about Hitler,
he decided to actually do something about it,
which is the mark of Elser's bravery.
For Heinrich Himmler, the man in charge of Hitler's personal security,
the assassination attempt is very bad news.
[James Holland] Himmler is absolutely furious about this.
So, it sort of happened on his watch, really.
And according to the local Gestapo chief, Himmler doesn't hesitate
to take out his frustration on the prisoner.
Himmler personally intervenes for the part of the interrogation
and actually beats the hell out of this guy.
He felt humiliated and perhaps he was trying to show his own mettle
and show that he was as big and as tough as many of his rivals.
I'm going to really make sure that this guy is going to suffer.
[kicks]
Anyone who messes with the Führer messes with me.
Spring 1940, Göring's Luftwaffe leads the way
as Hitler unleashes the next phase of his masterplan to conquer Europe.
First, German troops occupy Denmark and Norway.
Then a huge invasion force pushes its way through Luxembourg,
the Netherlands, Belgium...
...and then defeats France within six weeks.
British forces in northern France
are overwhelmed by the speed of the German Blitzkreig.
They're pushed back to the coast and evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk.
Göring is confident he can finish Britain off when the time comes.
[Richard] Within a matter of two months,
the situation of Germany in Europe has been transformed.
And the situation for Hitler and his entourage will be transformed as well.
[military music]
The conquest of France is the high-water mark
for the military success of the Third Reich.
Hitler is triumphant, this victory has been his life's ambition
and sweet revenge for humiliating defeat in the First World War.
Göring basks in his Führer's success.
[Sönke] The fall of France meant also for Göring
that he reached the peak of his career.
He was still keeping his position
at the top of the pyramid.
Newly promoted to Reichsmarschall, the most senior rank in the military,
Göring heads to Paris, to the Louvre and rewards himself with the spoils of war.
So either Hermann or one of his buyers, would then go through all this stuff,
and just say, OK, put it on a train
back to Germany... It was wholesale theft, essentially.
The full scale of Göring's plundering will only be revealed at the end of the war
when his treasures are discovered by the Allies, hidden in Germany.
Inner-circle favourites Bormann and Goebbels are also in Paris,
riding high on the Führer's coattails.
Goebbels arranges the ultimate propaganda photo opportunity
of the conquering hero.
But there's one leader left out of the party in Paris.
The Deputy Führer.
[James Holland] What that tells you is that Hess's influence
is on the slippery slope downwards,
you know, he doesn't have that access to Hitler that he once had.
Other people who are cleverer, more Machiavellian,
who Hitler likes personally more are getting closer to him.
One of those now constantly at Hitler's side is Albert Speer,
formally a junior on Hess's staff, but now chief architect of the Reich.
He is steadily assuming the role of Hitler's confidant
and his writings record Hess's fall from grace.
[as Speer] "Hitler said to me after a conversation with Hess lasting many hours:
'With Hess, every conversation becomes an unbearably tormenting strain.
He always comes to me with unpleasant matters and won't leave off.'"
[Frank] So, we have some evidence there from a close acolyte of Hitler
that Hess is really, how I can put it?
I'll use the Liverpool vernacular, "He's doing my head in."
[Frank laughs]
So I think that is true, in the case of Hess
and it does reveal that Hess was getting to be hard work.
Shut out of the inner circle, the pressure is getting to Hess,
and the others can see it.
Göring gossips about how the Deputy Führer uses psychic powers
to divine if letters bring good or bad news.
While Hitler no longer takes him seriously, saying:
"I only hope he never has to take over from me.
I wouldn't know who to be more sorry for, Hess or the Party."
Hitler's waging world war, that's what really interests him at the moment.
He's not interested in Hess's anxieties about Party rivalries.
Barely three weeks after the surrender of France,
Göring's Luftwaffe launches an onslaught on Britain, the prelude to invasion.
The Battle of Britain is underway,
but it will see a turn in the fortunes of the war.
[archive news] The battle is fought above the clouds, but this is how it ends.
Another and another.
169 in one day!
[narrator] Against the odds, the Royal Air Force holds out.
And the Blitz, the intensive bombing of cities and industry across the country,
fails to weaken British resolve.
For the first time, the Nazi war machine doesn't look quite so invincible.
[James Holland] And this reveals one of Göring's great shortcomings
because although he is a great war hero, he's never been to staff college,
and actually, he just doesn't know what he's doing militarily
as commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe.
Göring's failure to crush Britain from the air
forces the planned invasion to be put on hold.
The reputation of the Luftwaffe commander is now looking rather tarnished.
His star may be waning but Hess, meanwhile, finds new resolve.
He begins to formulate a secret plan, an opportunity to redeem himself,
with the help of a skill he learnt many years before.
Hess is an experienced pilot. He flew biplanes in the First World War.
Now he familiarises himself with the prototype of the latest Messerschmitt,
taking it on flights under the guise of testing its capability.
The 110 is usually crewed by two pilots,
but Hess has it modified so he can fly solo.
And he has extra fuel tanks fitted to increase its range.
Hess knows that Hitler is preparing to invade Russia.
And he recognises that Germany cannot fight a long war on two fronts.
His outlandish plan is to go behind the Führer's back,
fly to Britain and try to meet an influential contact
who, he hopes, will introduce him to Winston Churchill.
The aim: to persuade the British to sue for peace.
He knew if he would be able to make peace with Britain
that would definitely please Hitler.
"Here, Führer, I bring you the peace with Britain."
This would also, of course, immediately overnight mean
that he would make it back in the inner circle again.
The person Hess hopes will act as a go-between
is someone he met five years earlier when the Olympic Games were held in Germany.
[string quartet plays]
Behind the scenes, the Nazi leaders laid on lavish parties for foreign dignitaries
and it's then that Hess is thought to have been introduced
to a well-known Scottish aristocrat.
[soundtrack only]
[Guy] It's at one of these banquets where it is said
that he met the Duke of Hamilton,
and there they forged some sort of connection Hess would use in the future.
Like Hess, the Duke of Hamilton was a keen pilot.
In fact, he was something of a hero in the aviation world
after being the first person to fly a biplane over Mount Everest.
To Hess, this dashing adventurer with a fancy title
must have come across as being at the heart of the British establishment,
someone very well-connected, who probably mixed with royalty
and perhaps even had a direct line to the British leadership.
[archive, German speech]
Now, five years on, Hess plans to renew that acquaintance.
He'll fly to the Duke of Hamilton's estate in Scotland
and ask him for an introduction to Churchill.
So, emboldened by all these sort of ideas
of fate and Nostradamus and astrology,
Hess decides that he's got one last card he can play, and if he plays it well,
he will have the eternal gratitude of not only his beloved Führer,
but also of the German people.
At the beginning of May, Hess visits the Führer in the Reich Chancellery.
It is to be their last meeting.
Hess never said what they talked about that day,
a fact that would give rise to a conspiracy theory
that maybe Hitler was in on the plan.
But does it stand up to scrutiny?
[Sönke] There is no evidence whatsoever that Hitler knew about Hess's plans.
And all the evidence we have is very clear
that Hitler was totally surprised by that step,
so to me, it's absolutely clear that Hitler did not know
that Hess was planning to fly to Scotland and try to negotiate a peace with Britain.
Six days after that meeting,
the most bizarre episode of the Second World War starts to unfold.
Rudolf Hess explains his intentions in a letter to Hitler.
He then leaves home, telling his wife Ilse he will return in a couple of days.
On the 10th of May, Hess plays his last card.
It's a card played by a desperate man.
Hess drives to the aerodrome.
He tells his adjutant to deliver a letter to Hitler by hand the following day.
There's no turning back now.
Hess's route takes him across Germany and over the North Sea towards Scotland.
He navigates right into enemy airspace
and reaches his planned destination south of Glasgow.
But in the fading light, he cannot see anywhere to land.
He decides he has no alternative.
He'll bail out.
[James Holland] It really is absolutely extraordinary, if you think about this.
He's never even done a parachute jump before.
This is the deputy leader of the Nazi Party
on a lone mission in a Messerschmitt 110
flying over Scotland to a place that he doesn't know at all
and then parachuting out for the very, very first time.
The whole thing is... Frankly, you couldn't make it up.
But despite all the dangers, Hess lands safely.
[Guy] This is a near miracle, that he's managed to do this.
And maybe when he lands, he feels he's survived this epic flight,
and this epic parachute drop, and yet he's still alive,
and he must feel that, well, maybe providence is making this go well.
On hearing the plane crash,
a farm worker goes out to investigate...
...and comes face to face... with the Deputy Führer.
"I am a German," the well-spoken intruder announces.
"And I have an important message for the Duke of Hamilton."
Then the local Home Guard arrives on the scene.
And at this point, it all gets rather farcical.
What happens next, it's like something
out of one of those old-fashioned British comedies.
[James Holland] The farmer then takes him off to his house,
gives him a cup of tea in time-honoured British fashion.
[Guy] That's how we do things in Britain,
we always give people a cup of tea, even the second most senior Nazi.
But the warm welcome will be short-lived.
Eventually, he's taken off to a barracks,
where he's held, and then the real trouble starts for him.
The prisoner is positively identified as the enemy's deputy leader.
This is not the reception he had in mind.
[Roger] Hess is suffering from a delusion of viewing the British political system,
still almost in a feudal mindset,
as a system in which dukes and barons and so on
still have tremendous political influence.
In truth, they don't.
[Guy] He believes he'll be sent straight down, by special car,
to go and dine with Winston Churchill, where they'll have top-level discussions.
It's just so far from a practical idea,
and it's a measure of how detached Hess has come from reality.
That same weekend, Adolf Hitler is taking a relaxing break
at his Bavarian retreat, the Berghof.
On the Sunday morning, around the same time as Hess is identified in Scotland,
his adjutant arrives with a most important letter for the Führer.
[as Hess] "My Führer, when you receive this letter, I shall be in England.
You can imagine that the decision to take this step was not easy for me."
[Michael] Hess says, I've done this for the sake of your good self, mein Führer,
and for the sake of Germany.
War with Britain is not serving our interest, we must make peace.
[as Hess] "And if, my Führer, this project,
which I admit has but very little chance of success, ends in failure,
and the fates decide against me,
this can have no detrimental results for you or Germany.
It will always be possible for you to deny all responsibility.
Simply say I am crazy."
[Guy] High up in the Obersalzberg, up this mountain,
there was a maelstrom going on.
At the heart of it was Hitler, incandescent with rage,
that his most trusted, loyal comrade, from all those years back,
had just got off on a plane, in the middle of the night,
and flown off without telling him.
[soundtrack only]
The principals are summoned.
Bormann has no answers to Hitler's furious questions.
How could Hess have flown off without anyone knowing?
Why didn't anyone stop him?
He's in a very delicate position being still nominally Hess's deputy.
Will he be tainted by association to the traitor?
The control freak has lost control.
So what happens now?
[Frank] Within the inner circle, the question arises,
how are we going to present this to the public?
So Martin Bormann contacts Joseph Goebbels,
and he replies there are some situations
where propaganda hasn't got the answer, and this is one of them.
Rudolf Hess has lost the plot.
In his diary, Goebbels sums up the mood inside the inner circle.
[as Goebbels] "The entire affair is thoroughly confused at the moment,
a hard, almost unbearable blow.
The Führer is quite shattered.
What a sight in the world's eyes.
The Führer's deputy, a mentally disturbed man.
Dreadful and unthinkable.
Now we shall have to grit our teeth."
Goebbels does precisely as Hess suggested.
His radio stations report that Hess is mad.
[news, English] "A letter he left unfortunately shows in its confusion
the evidence of a mental derangement which leads us to fear
that Party Member Hess has fallen victim to a delusion."
HOUSE OF BROADCASTING
that the Deputy Führer has most probably crashed or met with an accident.
And that, as far as the stunned entourage round Hitler is concerned,
is the end of the matter.
Hess becomes a non-person, he is never to be mentioned in public again.
But it leaves an uncomfortable question in the mind of many Germans
but a question which no one dares voice.
If Hess was deranged, how come he was still in place as the Führer's deputy?
Precisely four hours after the German radio bulletin,
the BBC broadcasts this astonishing announcement.
[news] Here is the news from London.
Rudolf Hess, Hitler's Deputy, has flown from Germany
and landed in Scotland by parachute.
[narrator] The newsreels gloat over this bizarre turn of events.
Hess's unexpected arrival in Scotland
is a moment of light relief during the dark days of the Blitz.
[news] His name is David McClean.
He works on a farm not far from Glasgow.
He saw Rudolf Hess coming down in the dark by parachute.
Yes, I'm the man that captured Rudolf Hess.
The British treat it as one big sort of laugh.
I went over to the farm and the only weapon I could find was a pitchfork.
What is this all about? This can't be real.
The man refused tea and would only have a drink of water.
Churchill doesn't take any notice of it.
It's treated in the British press like one big laugh.
What is going on here?
Rudolf Hess may have thought he would be invited to have tea with Churchill,
but instead he's taken off to the Tower of London.
"The wisest course of action," Hess tells his interrogators,
"would be for Britain to seize this chance to make peace with Hitler
and form an alliance against Soviet Russia.
And if king and country would just allow Nazi Germany
a free rein in continental Europe, Britain and its empire will be left untouched."
The interrogators can't work out if Hess is deluded or plain mad.
And his arrival in Britain had coincided
with one of the worst air raids of the Blitz,
in which 1200 people had been killed.
Winston Churchill is in no mood to talk peace.
[James Holland] So, the whole thing has been an absolute catastrophe
from any which way you look at it, whether you be Hess,
whether you be Hitler or whether you be Goebbels or anyone in Nazi Germany.
Back at the Berghof, Bormann's keen to fill the new vacancy
and so immediately moves to distance himself from his former boss.
He has Hess's wife, Ilse, interrogated
and threatened with eviction from the family home.
But she appeals to Eva Braun and Hitler accepts she was not in on the plan.
In happier days, Bormann had named two of his children Rudolf and Ilse
after their godparents.
Now he promptly changes their names by court order.
Within days, having ridden the storm, Bormann's loyalty is rewarded.
Hitler abolishes the post of Deputy Führer,
and despite strong objections from both Göring and Goebbels,
appoints Bormann as Head of the Chancellery,
his closest aide and formal gatekeeper.
With fox-like cunning,
the backroom operator has finally reached the pinnacle of his power,
at the heart of the injustice, violence and terror of the Third Reich.
[Richard] You can imagine him thinking, now I've made it,
and Hess is yesterday's man, you know.
I've got all this in front of me... sitting down, putting his feet up perhaps,
putting an ashtray on the table so he could smoke.
You can imagine that for Bormann this is a unique moment.
Back in Britain, Hess is moved to a safe house outside London.
Hess is being held captive, and he's feeling that he must have failed,
he's feeling lonely, and more lonely than he did in the Third Reich.
And he must be aware of the fact that, really, his future's deeply uncertain,
and he knows he must be being vilified by not only the inner circle back home
but also in the world at large. He's being written off.
Hess is in the depths of despair. To him, there's only one way out.
[Roger] He reaches his lowest ebb and tries to commit suicide
by throwing himself over the banister, down into the hall of the building.
But Hess fails again.
He breaks his leg on landing,
is in tremendous pain and that must have been his lowest moment.
Not only had he failed in his mission but he'd also failed to take his own life.
Rudolf Hess will remain behind bars for the rest of his life.
He pours his heart out in Red Cross letters to his family and friends.
[as Hess] "Dear all, you can imagine how I am thinking of you.
My thoughts are no less with the Führer and with the whole nation.
Some day, I shall return home. I am looking forward to it with pleasure.
True, I achieved nothing.
I was not able to stop the madness of the war
and could not prevent what I saw coming...
...but it makes me happy to think that I tried."
[Guy] You know, on one level, that is
a pretty sympathetic thing to have written.
It looks like a man who desired peace, rather than war, and it looks like
he was probably, of the inner circle, the least martial of the lot.
And yet we mustn't be too kind to Hess.
He was a man who propagated and helped to bring to power
one of the most evil regimes the world has ever seen.
With one man down, Hitler's henchmen reassess their positions.
Göring is looking vulnerable...
...while Goebbels and Himmler are holding their own.
And Bormann is stealing a march on all his rivals.
But as the war progresses, the infighting among Hitler's inner circle
will become even more intense.