Airing on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. – In 1930 Germany was a liberal democracy. Just four years later democracy is dead, Germany’s leader is a dictator and its government is in the hands of murderers. This series tells the story of how this happened. Leading historians and experts get inside the heads of some of the key players, whose political plotting, miscalculations and personal ambitions helped to destroy democracy and deliver control to Hitler.
Then there are those who were prepared to make a stand in order to try to stop the Nazis. With the intensity of a political thriller, the series sets out the plots and intrigues at the heart of the government, which transformed the Nazis from a fringe political group to the most powerful party in the Reichstag. It outlines the power struggles between prominent Nazis, which transformed Germany into a brutal police state that exercised state sponsored detainment and murder, allowing Hitler to go from being chancellor to all powerful Führer of the Third Reich. Powerful drama and stark use of archive brings an immediacy to this gripping and resonant story.
Nov. 10: “Politics”
Learn the chain of events that propels Hitler from the fringes to the heart of the government. After leading a failed coup in 1923, he turns the Nazis into a legitimate, mainstream party and plots to overthrow Germany’s political elite. Watch online.
Nov. 17: “The First Six Months in Power”
Discover the measures Chancellor Hitler takes to dismantle the German state. The Nazis have the power to ban free speech, books are burned, and Jewish people, gay people and those holding anti-Nazi beliefs begin to disappear.
Nov. 24: “Night of the Long Knives”
See how Hitler finds himself caught between Germany’s president and the Nazis’ power base. His advisors persuade him to destroy the Nazi stormtroopers and their leader – one of his oldest friends – to make the SS Germany’s only paramilitary force.
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