Real Dictators - Adolf Hitler: Unassailable Führer (Part 15)

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

This is Part 15 of the Hitler Story. You can start listening here. Or, scroll down the Real Dictators feed for episodes on Hitler’s early years and rise to power. We pick up the tale in the mid-1930s. From struggling artist to veteran soldier of the trenches, now Hitler is transformed into Germany’s dictator. The new Third Reich is in the spotlight at the Berlin Olympics. Behind the scenes, the armed forces expand at an alarming rate. The infamous Nuremberg Laws are unveiled. And Hitler dispatches an old friend on a suicide mission... A Noiser production, written by Jeff Dawson. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's in this McDonald's bag? The McValue Meal. For $5.79 plus tax, you can get your choice of junior chicken, McDouble, or chicken snack wrap, plus small fries and a small fountain drink. So pick up a McValue Meal today at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. Prices exclude delivery. This is part 15 of the Adolf Hitler story. You can start listening here, or find parts 1 to 14 by scrolling down the Real Dictators feed. Berlin, August 1st, 1936. The afternoon is overcast, but the atmosphere is electric.

From the tunnel at the brand new Olympic Stadium emerges a solitary runner. He moves with ease, with confidence. His name is Fritz Schilgen. In Schilgen's right hand is a wooden torch. It bears the flame which has travelled in relay all the way up from Athens. He makes a lap of the pristine cinder track. One,000 spectators rise, their applause thunderous. Shilgin is a middle-distance star, but despite his turn as torchbearer, he has not made the cut for the national squad. No, today he's set-dressing.

With his blonde hair and Adonis physique, Shilgin has been identified as a perfect specimen of Aryan manhood. Cameras record his every move. When he reaches the platform between the arena's twin pillars, he turns to salute the crowd. All fall silent. On a discreet nod from his Fuhrer, he touches his flame to the great copper cauldron.

It will blaze above the stadium for the next two weeks. In this scene of peace and harmony, white doves are released. They swoop across the infield, over the teams lined up behind their national flags. The 11th Olympiad had been awarded to Germany in its previous incarnation, back when it was the Weimar Republic. It had been done to symbolise the country's rehabilitation, its welcome back into the international fold.

The Olympic Committee hadn't banked on Adolf Hitler. Berlin is in the spotlight, just as planned, only now as a showcase for the new Third Reich. But what a welcome Herr Hitler has laid on. The streets of the capital have been scrubbed, the paintwork is fresh. All traces of anti-Semitism, the graffiti, the slogans, have been sponged and expunged. The posters ripped down. Sports washing, quite literally. Famously, as the Berlin Games proceed, the great Jesse Owens, the fabled African-American

athlete, will cause a stir. His four gold medals as a sprinter and long jumper run counter to everything propagated by Nazi racial ideology. But not even Owens can thwart the Nietzschean superman. By the end of the fortnight, the fatherland will top the medal table, beating the mighty USA into second place. All will leave the games wowed by its facilities. Foreign guests have been treated with an unparalleled hospitality. All visitors can see as an affluent, efficient society on the cutting edge of modernity. Not to mention an impeccably mannered people, united in devotion to their leader.

The new Nazi Germany? What's not to like? From Neuser, this is the story of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. And this is Real Dictators. The Adolf Hitler of these Olympics is barely recognisable to the one of 14 years earlier. From struggling Viennese artist to Bavarian rabble-rouser, the only thing remarkable about Hitler was just how unremarkable he was. As a veteran soldier of the trenches, Corporal Hitler had been just one of many railing against the ruination of Germany and the perceived injustice of the Great War's peace settlement, the Treaty of Versailles. Young men with a grudge, the baiters of liberals, communists,

and especially Jews, those they blamed for Germany's demise. They would vent their anger in beer halls and street brawls. Hitler's unique brand of rage had received attention, however. He'd been promoted as the mouthpiece of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, the Nazis. They had evolved into a loud, albeit fringe, movement. The Nazis had nearly imploded. In 1923 Hitler hatched a harebrained scheme to mount a coup against the government of Bavaria.

The so-called Munich Putsch ended in violence, disaster, and prison. Though at his trial, Hitler's oratory gained him national recognition and an expanding fan base. During his short, lenient jail time, Hitler channeled his thoughts into a manifesto, Mein Kampf, and plotted a more serious path to power. By the early 1930s, the Nazis had built an unstoppable momentum. Hitler, the superstar everyman, was the new darling of the disaffected, promising to right wrongs, to restore German honour. Ten years on from the putsch, Hitler became Chancellor. He exploited emergency laws to suppress opposition and to shore up his authority.

The death of President Hindenburg, head of state, gave Hitler the opportunity to concentrate all power in himself. Even some close to Hitler had objected, like the leaders of his brown-shirted militia, the SA, and a handful of old nationalists. But no problem. The recent slaughter

of these rivals and the night of the long knives has seen Hitler anointed as the most effective gangster operating in Germany, and its unassailable Fuhrer. Thomas Weber is Professor of History and International Affairs at the University of Aberdeen. In 1934, Hitler is finally where he wanted to be. He is firmly in power.

With Hindenburg dead, he has no longer to worry that he might be dismissed. That really was what the Night of Long Nights was about, pushing all the traditional conservatives, the traditional German establishment off the cliff. He had kind of fooled the traditional elites into believing that he was with them, when in reality he wasn't. As ever, Hitler coats his authority with a veneer of democratic legitimacy. Opposition parties might be banned, the Reichstag parliament a rubber stamp, but he submits his premiership to a referendum. The public are sufficiently hoodwinked and, where necessary, intimidated.

On August 19, 1934, they affirm Hitler's supremacy with a 90% thumbs up. A triumphant Hitler retreats to the Berghof, his mountain home in the Obersalzburg, near the town of Berchtesgaden. The summer, to say the least, has been pretty intense. Here, in his grey civilian suit, Hitler relaxes with some of his gang. Josef Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Sepp Dietrich, Joachim von Ribbentrop and their wives not to mention his new pet Alsatian, Blondie From now on, Hitler will spend most of his time at the Berghof As with the Olympics, Berlin is just for show

The house is now a stunning hillside residence with whitewashed walls and a large terrace looking out across the Bavarian Alps. Hitler's new factotum, a man called Martin Bormann, has been overseeing the renovations. Helen Roche is Associate Professor in Modern European Cultural History at the University of Durham. European Cultural History at the University of Durham. Bormann, I think, is really interesting because he manages to insert himself within this structure of power. You have to get through Bormann first. Essentially, he's the gatekeeper.

He actually has an impact on who sees the Fuhrer and who doesn't. He's really the kind of chief courtier. And there's another up-and-comer on the scene, an initiate to this inner sanctum, a young architect with big, exciting plans for Berlin. Aged just 28, his name is Albert Speer. I see Speer as just someone who is insanely ambitious. One of the things that's really important

about how Hitler and the party and the movement saw itself was as a regime of youth. Himmler, Hess, Goebbels, Ribbentrop and Bormann are in their 30s. Hitler is still only forty-five. President Hindenburg had been eighty-six. Another fixture of the Berghof is a young lady named Eva Braun. She has become Hitler's unofficial living girlfriend. Last year, on her 21st birthday,

he showered her with gifts and jewellery. Hitler, if you remember, had met Brown when she was working as an assistant to his photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. He'd used his pick-up pseudonym, Mr. Wolf. Brown had been up a ladder, stacking shelves. The sight of her legs had got Mr. Wolf rather hot under the collar. She was just seventeen. He was already forty-one. They've pursued an affair across five

years, yet few outside Hitler's clique are aware of their relationship. In Munich, Brown stays in a separate apartment with her sister When Hitler telephones he does so only via a public phone booth At the Chancellery in Berlin she sleeps in Hindenburg's old room accessed by a servant's staircase At the Berghof, however where things are more relaxed

they've graduated to adjoining suites Though when officials visit, Brown is confined to her quarters under strict instructions not to come out. But today is different. They're among friends. The mood is celebratory, and so Brown moves among the guests as they drink coffee, slap each other's backs and indulge in horseplay. Her boyfriend even does a little jig. She captures it on the camera Hitler has bought her, a handheld Siemens Super 8.

Her home movies of these off-guard moments, shot in living colour, will provide a counterpoint to the regime's stark propaganda. The banality of evil. Eva Braun was this young woman who enjoyed life, who was very kind of forward-looking, who loved Hollywood, who loved stardom, who loved fashion,

who I think had a very real bond with Hitler over the years. If the path of true love never runs smooth, here it's strewn with potholes. Brown has already attempted suicide over her bow, a half-hearted effort to shoot herself. They'd managed to hush it up. This is par for the course when dating Hitler. Mitzi Reiter and Geli Raubel have already gone before her,

and Brown will not be the last woman unable to contemplate an existence without her Fuhrer. 200 miles north of Berchtesgaden lies the Bavarian city of Nuremberg. In the southeastern district, construction is underway at Zeppelin Field, a former sports and leisure park. Albert Speer is here, overseeing the building of a vast Romanesque auditorium, complete with huge towers, an altar, golden eagles, blazing torches and searchlights. The Nuremberg rallies are about to escalate, from party gatherings into quasi-religious happenings. In September 1934, Adolf Hitler bestrides the podium

at the climax of a six-day extravaganza. It's attended by an astonishing 700,000 people. This Third German Reich, he announces, to gibbering hysteria, will last for a thousand years. Hitler has long had something of a Messiah complex. In some of his earliest published writings, he compared himself to Jesus. On stage, he proclaims that he is answerable only to God. Nicholas of Shaughnessy is Emeritus Professor of Communication at Queen Mary, University of London. To understand Hitler, you must understand his belief not in God as we would understand it,

but in this kind of what he called providence. It's a synonym for fate, for some kind of consciousness in the universe which affects the story of mankind. He believed in that. He believed that he was walking with destiny, not actually making decisions at all, but just being driven by this strange force of destiny, which was affirmed time and again from the multiple assassination attempts of Hitler, which failed.

In total, I think there are about 25, which is far more than Queen Victoria had at four. But there are many, many attempts, and every time he lived, these affirmed his belief in destiny, which may kill him, but he would have made Germany great, and then his life would have been vindicated. Longevity does not run in Hitler's family. He himself does not foresee a life much beyond 50. There is work to be done.

The engine is about to shift up several gears. Dr. Chris Dillon is senior lecturer in modern German history at King's College London. Things changed very, very rapidly from 1933 onwards. You have the dismantling of a state which was still, for all its imperfections, governed by the rule of law up to 1933. And institutions which had stretched back quite a long way into German history, the judiciary, the army, the police, the individual German states. All of these pre-existing rival sources of authority to the Nazi regime are

swept aside in 1933, 1934, and momentum just keeps going thereafter. And one of the things that really sort of distinguishes Hitler's dictatorship from, for example, Franco's Spain is this constant motion, this constant creative destruction, whereas other kind of regimes that come to power with authoritarian worldviews tend to run out of steam. That's very much not the case with Hitler's Germany. First things first, as Hitler puts it, before foreign enemies are conquered, the enemy within must be annihilated. As we've explored in previous episodes, Hitler's anti-Semitism is virulent and long-standing. In the September of 1935, again at Nuremberg, Hitler unveils a pair of decrees,

the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor. Amongst other delights, marriages and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews are now verboten. Ancestry is scrutinized. Those with a quarter Jewish blood and more are disavowed as members of the German nation. In the new Reich, where Jews have already been driven out of many professions, these Nuremberg laws render their status official. They are now non-citizens.

I believe he had from the early 1920s already a preferred final solution that would have gone further than this. And we know this from comments Hitler made in private. He really wanted to kill Jews in an ideal world, but at this point, Hitler thought this just wasn't possible. So therefore, Hitler was willing to settle on second or third best final solutions to purge Jewishness from Germany.

The Nuremberg Laws are also a useful means of placating the SA, those troublesome brownshirts. This private Nazi army has been growing restless since its decimation during the Night of the Long Knives. So there's lots of from-below agitation, hassling of Jewish shops, demonstrations against German Jews, all of which amounts to a challenge or a call for the regime to live up on its promises of excluding Jews further from public life. In response to this, the regime develops the so-called Nuremberg Laws, and this is then used to put a lid on this agitation from below by the brownshirts. So it's a way of kind of like channeling these frustrations. Often you have people who might be slightly uncomfortable with one aspect of what Hitler's

doing, but they're prepared to overlook that because often they're patriotic, they're nationalist, and they see what he's done in terms of enabling Germany to take her place on the world stage again. And so they might say, OK, well, this violence that we've witnessed or anti-Jewish legislation isn't exactly what we want and maybe it's not that civilised, but we've got all of this stuff that we can really feel proud of the nuremberg laws provoke outrage internationally particularly in the united

states but in britain and france people are more concerned by germany's territorial ambitions for the moment they can assure themselves that that Hitler's military capability is hobbled. After World War I, Germany was strong-armed into signing various disarmament pacts, a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles. Limitations have been placed upon the size of its armed forces. And Germany has had to recognize a demilitarized zone within its own borders, the buffer with France known as the Rhineland. Installed as Fuhrer, however, Hitler is already turning his gaze outwards, exactly as was

foretold in Mein Kampf. In October 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations, the international peacekeeping body. Since then, he no longer considers himself tied to any obligations. He wanted to make the First World War unhappen and he wanted to create a Germany that would never be in a position again to lose a major war. Avenge Versailles is what he famously did in the mid-1930s. This was the motive force to avenge the lost heroes of the Western Front, to restore prestige to the German flag.

But more than that, it was a kind of utterly delinquent vision for all of Europe. In other words, it was never really about German pride. It was about something far, far more, which was to establish an empire in the East. So it was about a new European order. This was the whole point, a new order for all of Europeans led by Germany. In secret, Hitler raises the Reich defense budget and proposes a trebling of the army from the permitted 100,000. And if Britain and France protest, he will move to split them. With the British, he pursues a charm offensive. On December 19th, 1934, Hitler hosts a dinner party for Lord Rothermere,

owner of the Daily Mail newspaper. As it happens, it's the 10th anniversary of Hitler's release from Landsberg prison, which always puts him in a good mood. Whining and dining, the Fuhrer riffs on their mutual loathing of the Communists, of Bolshevism. Hitler's relationship to Britain is complicated. She was, of course, Germany's great war enemy, but in many ways he admires the British Empire. He understands it as a racial hierarchy, a small number of superior administrators ruling over subjugated natives.

This is precisely the model of what he wants to achieve in Eastern Europe. So there was a sense that there was a partnership to be had between the maritime empire of Britain and German hegemony on the European continent. The evening with Lord Rothermere proves a masterstroke of PR. An influential portion of the British media is being softened up. In Germany's west, it's not just the Rhineland that has been carved from Germany. Under a League of Nations mandate, the industrial area of Saarland is now administered by the French.

But the 15-year Saarland is now administered by the French. But the 15-year term of occupation is up. In January 1935, a plebiscite is held to determine the Saar's preferred status. To remain under the League's administration, to join France, or to be returned to Germany. The Tsar votes by 90% to be reunited with the fatherland. In London, Rothermere and his newspaper hail the move. Scant attention is paid to the violence or the voter intimidation. But give Hitler an inch and he'll take a mile. Before long, the Nazis are brazenly revealing the formation of a new air force, a Luftwaffe.

Many of the planes, like the Heinkel 111 bomber, had been masquerading as Lufthansa commercial airliners. Military pilots, under Hermann Goering as Minister of Aviation, have been training under a sham organization, the League for Air Sports. According to the Versailles settlement, Germany had to agree to have a very limited number of soldiers and not really to have any real navy or air force. Even under Weimar, there had been tricks to get around this. Now under the Nazis, very quickly armaments spending was boosted.

Arms manufacturer Krupp ratchets up its production of tanks. Chemical giant E.G. Farben gets to work on synthesizing engine oil. These are merely anti-communist precautions, Hitler assures. All he wants is peace. A little peace of everything. A significant player on the scene now is a man called Joachim von Ribbentrop. By the late 1930s, Ribbentrop is in charge of Hitler's foreign affairs. Chimay is extremely weird that he was the kind of most unlikely person to end up in that position. He was a middle-class salesman for sparkling wine who had got this strange obsession with the aristocracy and who ended up becoming an aristocrat by having himself adopted as an adult man by this distant aunt who was a minor aristocrat in order to become a von Ribbentrop.

Hitler generally had no sympathy at all for this kind of world, but Ribbentrop for him is different. Von Ribbentrop speaks fluent English. He's lived and travelled abroad. A rare thing for a Nazi. This has seen him elevated into the diplomatic corps, first as ambassador to Britain, later as the Reich's foreign minister.

He gets promoted into this enormous important position where he's helping to lead foreign policy, obviously, under Hitler's wing and under Hitler's direction. That goes to his head a bit, that he's meeting on an equal level with all of these other foreign ministers and feels himself to be dictating matters more than perhaps he is. dictating matters more than perhaps he is. A frequent liaison with Ribbentrop is Britain's League of Nations minister, Anthony Eden. Eden takes war very seriously.

He had served in the trenches opposite Hitler on the Western Front. He lost two brothers. As far as Eden is concerned, anyone who experienced what they did should recoil in horror at the prospect of a rerun. He restates his position at diplomatic exchanges in both London

and Berlin. Just as Ribbentrop speaks fluent English, so Eden understands some German. The background chatter suggests that what Hitler really fears is the Royal Navy. Hitler is justified in his concerns. In military terms, Britannia really does rule the waves. Its supremacy has been maintained by keeping naval strength at least equal to the next two

powerful fleets combined, currently France and the United States. The German navy, the Kriegsmarine, is by comparison small. Hitler proposes it should be allowed to equate to 35% of the tonnage of the British fleet. London rebuffs the notion, but Hitler won't take no for an answer. In private, he's already commissioned two battlecruisers, whose tonnage is skirt limitations. Pocket battleships, as they will be known. And in some circles, Hitler's demands do not seem unreasonable. Now in Britain specifically, there's a huge amount of guilt that what was done at Versailles

was the one thing Britons are supposed to abhor, to kick a man when he's done. It seemed to be a violation of essentialist British values. And so there's a huge amount of sympathy for Germany, a huge amount of fellow feeling. You have the massive sentimentalism towards Germany, the sense of having suffered a shared horror. And until 1935, you had a lot of fondness for Germany and for Hitler. This is what we can't imagine today. It was only with the Nuremberg Laws that that whole process of sympathy for Hitler, even fondness, suddenly ceased. But there was still the sense that Versailles was a pack of wrongs.

It was a bastardly thing to do. The Times of London suggests that a happy, secure Germany, for all its faults, is preferable to a seething nest of resentment. A Labour member of Parliament, Oswald Mosley, resigns from his party to launch his own copycat Nazi movement, the British Union of Fascists. Behind the scenes, Ribbentrop has been working his contacts in British high society. Chief among them, an American expat, a lady named Wallis Simpson. Mrs. Simpson has ended up in England courtesy of her second husband, a shipping magnate.

It's rumoured that she and Ribbentrop have had an affair. Simpson has also begun moving in the inner circle of Edward, Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne. Though still married, she will soon be revealed as his lover. And the good news for the Nazis is that the future Edward VIII can also be regarded as friendly. Edward has a meeting with a German diplomat, who relays back a message. The Prince of Wales once again shows his complete understanding of Germany's position and aspiration.

Unusually the main objector to German military escalation is neither Britain nor France. It comes in the shape of Italian fascist supremo Benito Mussolini. In April 1935, Il Duce, as he is known, hosts representatives of France and Britain at a conference at Lake Maggiore. Calling themselves the Stresa Front, they pledge to resist German rearmament. France goes one further and signs a treaty of mutual assistance with the Soviet Union. Things are getting messy. Hitler ups the ante. On Hero's Day, a vast military parade proceeds through Berlin. In May, he declares the Reichswehr. Germany's

Defence Force will be re-designated the Wehrmacht, a combined force, land, sea and air, with offensive capability. And it will start conscription. The peace of Versailles seems toast. Duly spooked, Britain backtracks and offers concessions. It is hoped that Hitler will cool off, see reason. The Foreign Office makes an extraordinary offer. If the Kriegsmarine expands to 35% of the tonnage of the Royal Navy, there will be no objection. And as for Germany's U-boat fleet, Britain can allow for tonnage to go as high as 45% of the Royal Navy's.

No, make that 60%. Will that work? Hitler calls it the happiest day of my life. Privately, he's already set a target of matching British submarine strength one for one. In the northern city of Kiel, they're frantically building U-boats. Naturally, the French are fuming. So are the Russians. They now believe the British to be secretly in cahoots with the Germans. In terms of policy, everything is going to plan. But, once again, trouble is brewing in Adolf Hitler's private life. With the Führer a bachelor, publicly at least,

there is a vacancy for the unofficial position of First Lady of the Third Reich. Into the breach steps Emmy Sonneman, an actress. She recently became the second wife of Luftwaffe head honcho Hermann Goering. Unsurprisingly, Hitler's cloistered lover Eva Braun is green with envy. And so the usual pattern of events unfolds. Braun swallows 20 sleeping pills, resulting in a ritual pumping of the stomach, recovery, and the destruction of all medical notes pertaining to the incident. At the same time, Hitler has health issues of his own.

Aside from his chronic hypochondria, his rigorous speaking schedule has wrecked his vocal cords. Under the pseudonym Adolf Müller, he receives treatment in Munich and has a polyp removed from his larynx. It's around this time that Hitler is introduced to a doctor named Theo Morell, a man who's earned his reputation as a discreet curer of syphilis. Dr. Morell is a grubby, unhygienic character, but he's hailed as a miracle worker. The Führer, it's alleged, has an issue with flatulence, a consequence of his vegetarian diet. No problem for Morell, who dispenses the necessary pills. When an exhausted Hitler suffers

from a skin condition, Morell cures him instantly. Hitler is hooked. Soon Morell is enlisted as his personal physician, accompanying him everywhere. His own Dr. Feelgood, always on hand with a little pick-me-up. A pill here, an injection there, to keep the Führer going. Hitler was in many ways the first rock star. Morel was his quack, but Morel launched a pharmaceutical empire on the back of this relationship with Hitler. He was peddling Morel's pills or whatever all over Germany in massive amount of advertising and so forth. In other words, we have a court system. We have courtiers, and if you're in there,

you're in there, and it makes you a big man in Germany. Morel was actually pretty much poisoning him. He was filling him with stuff. And when you look at those later films of him in the war, he seems to have what looks like Parkinson. He has a kind of trembling arm and so forth. I mean, in other words, he probably wasn't long for this world. He'd been ingesting these cocktails of medicine under Morel's Death Star supervision for years. These little boosters that Hitler becomes reliant upon are amphetamines. Sometimes he's prescribed the pharmaceutical equivalent of cocaine.

The downers he takes are opioids, akin to heroin. Even Hitler's bowel medication, it turns out, contains strychnine, fatal in larger doses but in small measures known to produce states of extreme agitation. There's been much written about Hitler's drug use, some of it highly contentious, but there can be no debate that he will be a man prone to increasingly violent mood swings and psychotic behavior. While all eyes are on Hitler, it's Mussolini who kicks off the military adventuring. The Straser Conference was just a smokescreen. On October 3, 1935, Italy invades Abyssinia, present-day Ethiopia.

For Hitler, this war is a litmus test. What will the Western powers, what will the League of Nations do in response? The answer? Nothing. The League imposes half-hearted sanctions. France, it turns out, had given the Italian expedition its blessing. There is further reason for Hitler to be emboldened.

On January the 20th, King George V of the United Kingdom dies. The Prince of Wales is now King Edward VIII. Wallis Simpson is openly escorting him in public. As cables from the US Embassy reveal, Edward objects to Britain being pushed away from Germany and closer to France. He has reportedly dressed down his Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin. Hitler has got his green light. The demilitarized Rhineland Zone amounts to all German territory west of the Rhine River, plus a 30-mile-wide strip along its eastern bank. It includes the cities of Cologne, Dusseldorf and Bonn. On February 12, 1936, Hitler summons the French Chargé d'Affaires and asks him, you know, just hypothetically,

what would happen if Germany marched its troops in? With the British pursuing their own agenda and the Italians gone rogue, the ambassador shuffles evasively. It's all the answer Hitler needs. He duly sets Z-Day, code for the reoccupation, for Saturday, March 7th. Hitler, by the way, will always conduct shock moves on Saturdays, well aware that foreign offices will be closed over the weekend. And so German soldiers stomp into the Rhineland, recrossing the bridges they'd retreated over in 1918.

The moment is captured by foreign press photographers who've been airlifted in by Berlin's Ministry of Propaganda. The bells of Cologne Cathedral peal in celebration. The 35,000 German troops are welcomed as heroes. It's something that people also saw as very impressive as proving the dynamism of the regime, both people within Germany and people looking in from the outside as well. And I think for those people, even who weren't particularly impressed by it, they still thought, well, we kind of have to go along with this, like the power is too great.

Hitler was just overnight eliminating that buffer zone. He just marched in and the response to the world was basically just to say, well, good for them, good for the Germans, because ultimately, why should they not have control over their own territory? So in a way, this would have been the moment where the West could have stood up against Hitler and could have tried to implement a policy of containment. But what essentially happened here was that Britain, and to some extent other countries, just let France and Belgium stand in the rain.

Hitler will later admit that this was the most nerve-wracking 48 hours of his life. If the French had marched into the Rhineland, he says, we would have had to withdraw with our tail between our legs. Back at the Berghof, Hitler retires to his screening room. Here he watches his favourite film, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, a swashbuckling British Raj adventure starring Gary Cooper. The Rhineland recovery has been offset by some bad news. Hitler's chauffeur, Julius Schreck, has died of meningitis.

On their long road trips, he had become something of a confidant. If only there was somebody Hitler could talk to. You may have noticed in this episode the absence of a character who had featured heavily through Hitler's rise, a man named Ernst or Putzi, a wealthy influential businessman and a graduate of Harvard. He and his wife Helena had always been there for Hitler. They had taken him into their Munich home when he was down on his luck. He is godfather to their son, Egon, now 15.

Hitler had made Hamstengel his unofficial spokesperson. But Hitler has heard things of late. It seems Puzzi is having grave misgivings about the Nazi direction of travel. He's seriously concerned for his Fuhrer's mental health. These whispered warnings have reached Hitler's ear via a young British woman, a socialite, 21-year-old Unity Mitford. Unity is one of the famous Mitford sisters. She is of aristocratic stock,

and her sister just happens to be married to English fascist leader, Oswald Mosley. Unity Mitford had gone to Germany and simply decided to become a friend of Hitler. How would you do that? It ain't easy. But she'd noticed he went regularly with his goon squad to a particular particular tavern and they'd sit outside. And so she started going there and sitting within earshot and kind of making seductive glances. And eventually they did end up talking and eventually they did become friends. He just enjoyed that kind of admiration.

And it was something different from the quality of the applause he was getting in Germany. It struck a different note, a different register, and it charmed him. Ultimately, she will be another to add her name to the list of maidens willing to end their lives for the Fuhrer. maidens willing to end their lives for the Fuhrer. That summer, Hitler extends an invitation to Unity to attend the annual Wagner Festival at Bayreuth. As ever, this is of immense frustration to Eva Braun. It is here, just a week before the Berlin Olympics, that news comes to Hitler via German officials in Morocco.

There is an intrigue developing in Spain. A nationalist army officer named Francisco Franco is about to lead a revolt against the republican government. The new French administration under socialist leadership has pledged support for the republicans.

Italy has set to back Franco. Franco has requested German military assistance. For Hitler, socking it to the Reds, not to mention tying up Mussolini, is an opportunity not to be passed up. It's also a chance to test his newest military toys, but he won't rush a decision. First, he must take soundings, dispatch an emissary to Franco's camp, and he has just the man for the job. On the runway of Leipzig-Altenburg airport, dusk descending, a Junkers transport plane taxis for takeoff. On board, among the 17 cabin seats, is a solitary passenger, Putzi Hamstengel. He looks pale, he sweats, his suit is crumpled. Since he's been on the outs with Hitler, Putzi has been looking over his shoulder.

Since he's been on the outs with Hitler, Puzzi has been looking over his shoulder. Now he's being sent to rendezvous with Franco's compadres. And there's a twist. Over hostile territory, in the middle of a war zone, he must bail out and land by parachute. Hamstengel is not especially fit. He's never been a military man, and he's not exactly dressed for the part. Not to mention, he's never made a parachute jump in his life. The plane rattles and bumps down the runway.

Soon it's banking upwards into the clouds. After an hour or so, the pilot starts descending. They can't be anywhere near Spain yet, Puzzi calculates. They seem to be making a long, slow turn back towards home. Indeed, the pilot has radioed the tower. There's a problem with the starboard engine. They must head back to the airport and get it checked out. Off mic, the pilot pokes his head out of the cabin for a private word with his passenger.

There is no mechanical failure. He has just learned that Hamstengel's parachute strings have been cut. Hitler has dispatched him on a deliberate suicide mission. Hitler has dispatched him on a deliberate suicide mission. Wanting no part in this assassination, the pilot has faked a technical fault. Back on the ground, while the ground crew tinker, he ushers Hamstengel to a phone booth and tells him to make arrangements to get the hell out of Germany. Pussy Hamstengel had been one of Hitler's closest associates ever since the early 1920s.

But ultimately, his star starts to sink. And a part of what's happening here is that I think some people just ultimately realize that Puzi Hamstengel is a bit of a fool. And so everyone starts to get kind of irritated with Puzi Hamstengel, including Hitler. His other rivals, particularly Ribbentrop, they really want to push him to the sidelines.

And this is kind of the end of Putzi Hammstengel III. Within a few hours, Putzi has grabbed his son and boarded a train to Switzerland. Egon is told to hide in the lavatory till they're safely across the border. Agin is told to hide in the lavatory till they're safely across the border. After all that, the Spanish flight will turn out to have been the mother of all practical jokes. One giant wind-up. The pilot was in on the ruse, cooked up by the Fuhrer to scare the bejesus out of Puzzi. And it was all filmed for his amusement. Even Hitler's sense of humor is cruel.

But it will be Hamstengel who has the last laugh. A friend of the Roosevelts from his days in New York, he will end up in America working for US intelligence. Helena will head back across the Atlantic too. Egon, when he comes of age, will join the US Army Air Corps. In December 1936, a spanner is thrown in Hitler's works. Over in London, King Edward VIII has been forced to abdicate.

His refusal to end his relationship with Wallis Simpson, not yet divorced, is all the British establishment needs to oust him. Britain is slipping out of reach. Hitler needs an ally, someone with whom to form a bulwark across Europe. He must patch up his fractious friendship with Mussolini. This isn't part of cause because they're ideological bad fellows, but it's not just that. It is just also driven by necessity.

As far as Hitler is concerned, he certainly would have preferred an alliance with Britain because Britain is so much more powerful than Italy. But short of that happening, obviously it's much better to have an alliance with Italy rather than to have no alliance at all. And Hitler is really willing to pay a very high price for that. In October 1936, they propose not just a new bloc,

but an unwavering alignment of their strategic interests, backing each other on all international matters. Then in November, Hitler signs an anti-communist pact with Japan, extra insurance against Russia. Germany must be ready for war with the West within four years, the Fuhrer briefs his generals. The Spanish Civil War has been a useful testing ground. German flyers have been working on a terror tactic, the aerial bombing of cities.

In April 1937, they level the town of Guernica. September 28, 1937. The Olympic Stadium in Berlin. Just 13 months after the Games. After dark, Hitler and Mussolini take to the podium. It's the double bill of all dictator double bills. Gone are the international flags. There are absolutely no doves. The clouds are laden,

a storm is brewing. To the packed stadium and the million more gathered on the adjacent fields, To the packed stadium and the million more gathered on the adjacent fields, Hitler proclaims Mussolini a visionary. Mussolini in return hails Hitler as a maker of history. In an act of generosity before the whipped-up crowd, Hitler gives over the finale to his guest. Though he's clearly been keeping an eye on the weather, it's about to buck it down.

Sure enough, as the thunder rumbles and lightning cracks, a bedraggled Ilduce signs off in a deluge, the audience rushing for the exits. But he repeats a theme that's been gaining currency on the airwaves of late. This new pact, this bloc, will be something around which all European states will revolve. An axis. Germany and Italy, twin masters of the continent and the Mediterranean. The democracies of the West are yesterday's news.

Old, decaying, weak. They are the strong men, the men of destiny. In the next episode, Hitler expands the Third Reich, swiftly annexing Austria and the Sudetenland. Britain and France seek a diplomatic settlement. They will sit down with the Fuhrer at Munich. Meanwhile, in Germany,

the Nazis will stir up an orgy of anti-Jewish violence. Kristallnacht. That's next time.