Chaos and Consent Nazis: A Warning from History


Chaos and Consent

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The Nazis were obsessed with images of order.

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In their museums, exhibits like this "glass man"

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showed how the perfect human body was ordered into one interlocking whole.

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And through their parades and pageants, they sought to show how one individual human being

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was but a part of the ordered national community.

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But in Germany, the Nazis only created an illusion of order.

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On January 30th, 1933,

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Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

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Chief among those who rejoiced at the news

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were the Nazi storm troopers, the party's paramilitary wing, led by Ernst Rohm.

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ALL SING ROUSING ANTHEM

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In '33, you thought it was the beginning of a new German

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wonderful period.

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It was a true, enthusiastic movement of the people,

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except the people who were, by their hearts, socialists

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who were, from the beginning,

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persecuted and had to emigrate or were in concentration camps.

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One knew of these camps. One said, "The communists would have done the same and this is a revolution."

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The first to be imprisoned in this revolution were the Nazis' political opponents,

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communists and socialists. They were rounded up and thrown into hastily-built concentration camps.

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Hermann Goering boasted that scores were being settled.

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All in an atmosphere of chaotic terror,

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-as one Nazi storm trooper admitted.

-"Everyone is arresting everyone else, avoiding official channels,

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"threatening everyone else with protective custody, with Dachau. Every little streetcleaner

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"feels he is responsible for matters which he has never understood."

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Amongst the first to suffer was Josef Felder.

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a Social Democrat MP.

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He was sent to the newly-opened Nazi concentration camp outside Munich - Dachau.

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Josef Felder was released after 18 months.

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The majority of those imprisoned here in 1933 were released after less than a year.

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The regime here was brutal.

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Beatings and psychological torture were common. But extermination camps were not yet born.

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Concentration camps were a tool of oppression, not yet of systematic murder.

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In 1933, to many Germans,

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they were an acceptable part of the Nazi revolution.

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To be a French nobleman in the Bastille was not so agreeable either.

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So people said, "Well, this is revolution."

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A peaceful revolution, but, partly, it IS a revolution.

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And concentration camps... Everybody said, "The English invented them in South Africa with the Boers."

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So, you know, eh...

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People couldn't look ahead.

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It was impossible for somebody in '33 to look ahead to '45.

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You can't.

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It was only 12 years, but it seems to be too much to look ahead... for 12 years.

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But Germans only had to look fewer than 12 weeks into Hitler's chancellorship

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to see what the status of the Jews would be in the new Nazi state.

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On April 1st, 1933,

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the Party organised a boycott of all Jewish shops which lasted one day.

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The Nazis made the Jews scapegoats for the loss of World War One and much else besides.

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In those early months of the Nazi reign,

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German Jews also fell victim to the storm troopers' arbitrary and violent attacks.

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In 1933, the storm troopers came

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and took my father away,

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together with many other Jews in Nuremberg. They were taken to a sports stadium

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where there was a lot of grass

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and they were made to cut the grass with their teeth, by sort of eating the grass.

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I found out afterwards. My father never talked about it.

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It was to humiliate them,

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to show them that they were the lowest of the low.

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It was simply to make a gesture.

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Nazi storm troopers made other violent gestures. In 1933,

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together with sympathetic students, they organised the burning of unsuitable books,

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particularly those by Jewish authors.

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Rohm wanted his storm troopers integrated into the regular German army. The army was horrified.

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Hitler sympathised with the revolutionary zeal of Rohm and his storm troopers.

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But by the summer of 1934, he knew that their power had to be curbed,

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and not just to please the army.

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Rohm had made a more dangerous enemy than the army leadership.

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Heinrich Himmler, ambitious for power himself, and still technically working to Rohm,

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plotted his downfall. He concocted a story

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that Rohm was plotting a coup and Hitler believed him.

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On June 30th, 1934,

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while on holiday in Bavaria, he was arrested.

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Two days later, he was shot.

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The army was glad to see the power of the storm troopers moderated.

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To show their gratitude, they volunteered to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler,

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who now, on President Hindenburg's death, was not just Chancellor, but head of state.

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Somebody was reading and we had to lift our arm, and, at the very end, say, "That's my oath."

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How seriously did you and your colleagues take this oath?

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VERY seriously.

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This accompanied me my whole life till the very end.

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I mean, oath is oath.

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There's no doubt that I can't break the oath,

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otherwise I'm meant to commit suicide if I plan something else.

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This is very serious, the oath, for a soldier.

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With Rohm dead, Hitler appeared to have restored order.

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The revolution on the streets had subsided, and, with his hold on power secure,

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Hitler would come here to relax... in the mountains above Berchetesgaden in southern Bavaria.

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In 1938, a tea house was built on top of the high Obersalzburg,

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so that Hitler and his guests could enjoy the view.

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Hitler's own house was lower down the slope, and a whole complex grew up around it.

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This was the official guest house.

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But all that remains of Hitler's own house is rubble,

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the building demolished to prevent it becoming a memorial

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and quick-growing trees planted to obscure the famous view.

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When Hitler stayed here, as well as when he was in Berlin,

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the whole Nazi regime revolved around him.

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His personality determined the way in which Germany was governed.

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His was not the daily regime of a workaholic.

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Hitler was indolent - as those who worked for him discovered.

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He normally appeared shortly before lunch,

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quickly read the newspaper cuttings, then had lunch.

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When Hitler stayed at the Obersalzburg, it was worse.

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There, he never left his room before 2pm, then went to lunch.

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He spent most afternoons taking a walk. After dinner, there were films.

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In the 12 years of his rule in Germany, Hitler produced

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the biggest confusion in government that has ever existed in a civilised state.

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I've secured important decisions from him without his ever asking to see the relevant files.

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He took the view that many things sorted themselves out on their own, if one did not interfere.

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A very different picture of Hitler was projected here, at the vast complex of stadiums

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built in Nuremberg for the party's annual rally.

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What the public saw of Hitler in Nuremberg in the 1930s,

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was a confident and strong leader whose oratory promised a new, dynamic and powerful Germany.

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He was meant to be seen as the all-powerful,

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all-knowing leader, who prevailed over a system of total order.

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But the contrast between image and reality was quite a stark one

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because, far from it being a very orderly structure of command,

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in fact it was very disorganised.

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It is a quite remarkable system, if you can call it a system,

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where there is no collective government,

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yet where the head of state doesn't spend all his time dictating.

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SUNG IN GERMAN: "Happy Days Are Here Again"

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Hitler and the Nazis created a unique and peculiar form of government.

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Hitler was surrounded by acolytes who knew that their future depended on finding a way to please him.

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They strove always to be near him, accompanying him on whatever trips took his fancy.

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Though Hitler may have had little interest in regular hours of work or policy details,

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he did have visions of what he wanted for Germany.

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As Hitler talked in an endless monologue, ambitious Nazis would listen to him closely.

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Then, on their own initiative, they tried to think of ways in which his vision could become a reality.

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They made up the detail policy themselves and said they were acting on the will of the Fuhrer.

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From the first, Hitler openly said he didn't have detailed policies.

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But Hitler WAS open in saying what he wanted FROM the German economy.

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Chiefly, the weapons to build a new German army. Rearmament became his economic priority.

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The Nazis increased the army's budget so much in their first year of power,

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that the army wasn't able to spend all of it.

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The Nazis also promised to rid Germany of unemployment.

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And they did - mainly through huge work creation schemes like the Autobahn Building Programme.

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But building armaments and Autobahns

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could only be a short-term solution to Germany's economic problems.

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It would take time for these inflationary pressures to be felt.

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For the moment, everything looked rosy, especially when, in 1936,

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Hitler ordered German troops to re-enter the demilitarised portion of Germany, the Rhineland.

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Germans saw all this as one more sign that their country was regaining its self-respect.

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The Nazis organised pageants like Die Nacht der Amazonen - The Night Of The Amazons -

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held in Munich in the 1930s -

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Celebrations in which only those the Nazis considered racially pure could participate.

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But if you didn't fit the Nazi image of the perfect German, then life was very different.

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Here, in Munich, the same city where The Night Of The Amazons was held,

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the Nazis demolished one of the biggest synagogues in Germany. They wanted the space for a car park.

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The Jews were systematically excluded from German life. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws outlawed marriage

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between Jews and other Germans and declared that Jews were not German citizens.

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Other discrimination followed.

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Wasn't it a problem for you that you were working in a system

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that allowed Jews to be pushed out of their position,

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to lose their wealth, their property?

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Surely this was a great injustice.

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How did you feel about that?

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Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda hugely exaggerated the number of Jews who were in professions.

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The Nazis never gave the reason why German Jews were concentrated in certain walks of life -

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that the Jews had been banned from other careers for hundreds of years.

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Thousands emigrated from Germany during the '30s. They realised they would not be safe during Nazi rule.

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Those who remained always risked the attentions of the Secret State Police -

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the infamous Gestapo.

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In the town of Wurzburg lies a clue to just how the Gestapo operated under the Nazis.

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Almost all Gestapo files were burnt by the Nazis as the Allies came into Germany,

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but in Wurzburg, American soldiers prevented their destruction.

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Only recently have the files been studied,

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and a surprising picture emerges of how the Gestapo functioned.

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There were only 28 SS officials

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for the entire Wurzburg region

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of nearly a million people.

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I think the Gestapo could not have operated

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without the co-operation

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of the citizens of Germany.

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By that I mean it would have been structurally impossible for them to do so.

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There were not enough Gestapo officials to go around.

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Between 80-90% of the crimes that were reported to the Gestapo came from ordinary citizens.

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The main job for the Gestapo

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was sorting out the denunciations.

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This seems to have been their preoccupation.

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The citizens of a town like Wurzburg didn't so much have to fear the Gestapo,

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as what their neighbours might TELL the Gestapo. Every German was at risk from denunciation.

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A woman who lived in this house on the outskirts of Wurzburg in 1938

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came to the Gestapo's notice when she was denounced by a relative.

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She was called Ilse Sonia Totzke, and her Gestapo file lies in the Wurzburg archive.

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After years of Gestapo harassment, she was sent to Ravensbruk Concentration Camp, where she died.

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Her crime was simple - she didn't fit in.

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She avoided her neighbours and had Jewish friends.

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She is put under very general surveillance, not by the Gestapo,

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but by the Gestapo asking her neighbours to keep an eye on her.

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What happens is that one neighbour after another, for one reason or another,

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comes forward with information, all adding up to one thing.

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She may be just too unconventional for her own good.

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What this does is that - small town mentality - people keep after her...

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they keep noticing her...

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and it's fuelled again and again by yet another denunciation.

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The denunciations in her file contain mostly gossip about her.

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That she is acting suspiciously and has shady friends, but little amounts to evidence against her.

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One denunciation hints that she may be a lesbian.

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"Miss Totzke does not seem to have normal predispositions." Typed in red,

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it is signed only "Heil Hitler."

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One denunciation is signed by a 20-year-old neighbour, Resi Kraus.

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"Since March, 1938,

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"Ilse Sonia Totzke is a resident next door to us.

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"She rarely has visitors.

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"Now and then, a woman of about 36 years old comes, and she is of Jewish appearance...

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"I would like to mention that Miss Totzke never responds to the German greeting, Heil Hitler.

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"To my mind, Miss Totzke is behaving suspiciously."

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We used to think that the population was manipulated and brainwashed from above.

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Now what we're beginning to see,

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by looking at the social history of the kind one sees in these Gestapo dossiers,

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is that the system is manipulated from below by lots of people for all kinds of reasons,

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some of them selfish, some of them - fewer - idealistic.

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We now get a dramatically different picture of what the system was like.

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Ordinary Germans could influence the Gestapo through denunciations.

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But no major policy

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could ever be successfully instituted unless Hitler blessed it.

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So for members of the Nazi elite, the search was always on for a new way of pleasing their Fuhrer.

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One way was to feed his anti-Semitism.

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Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister and hater of Jews,

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sought to do just that. He boasted that the Nazis had managed to exclude Jews from cultural life.

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In the autumn of 1938, Goebbels saw a chance to please Hitler more when he heard

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that German diplomat Ernst von Rath, had been assassinated in Paris

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by a young Jew, Hirschel Grynszpan, angry at his family's treatment.

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The Nazi elite were in Munich for the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.

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Goebbels asked Hitler's permission to let loose the storm troopers

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in an act of vengeance against Germany's innocent Jews. He agreed. And so began Kristallnacht -

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the night of broken glass.

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In the early hours of the morning,

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they broke the front door down and started to smash the place up.

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Hoards of storm troopers.

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We had two lots.

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One lot smashed things up and left, and then the second lot arrived.

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Three elderly ladies were living on the first floor. One was dragged out and beaten...

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for no reason except she probably got in the way of someone.

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I was knocked about...

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and finally ended up in the cellar...

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which was where the kitchens were.

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I was being knocked about. When I came back, I went upstairs,

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and found my father dying.

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Dead.

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I tried...

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as far as I could... artificial respiration.

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I don't think I was very good at it. In any case,

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it was too late for me.

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I was absolutely in shock. It was beyond my comprehension.

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I didn't know the people, they didn't know me. They had no grudge against me. They were just...

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people who would come to do whatever they thought they should do.

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More than 800 Jews are known to have lost their lives as a result of Kristallnacht,

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and as many as 1,000 synagogues were destroyed.

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What was the reaction of the non-Jews you knew, when they heard of your circumstances?

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-Did anyone come up to you to say what they felt about it?

-No.

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In fact...

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..the people passing the next morning, ordinary Germans, threw stones at the windows.

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-Nobody expressed any sympathy?

-No.

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In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Hitler's popularity did not seem to suffer.

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As he never spoke about it in public, it was possible to believe,

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for those Germans who wanted to, that the responsibility lay with the hot-headed storm troopers.

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The love affair between Hitler and his followers continued.

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MALE SINGER:

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In 1938, a new chancellory was built, symbolising the power and order of Nazi rule.

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But inside its walls,

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Hitler was still pursuing methods which could only result in administrative chaos.

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The Grand Reich Chancellory was a hive of political in-fighting.

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Rivals with ill-defined jobs fought each other for Hitler's favour.

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Hitler's working life was organised by FIVE private offices.

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The office of the Reich Chancellory, under Hans Heinrich Lammers.

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The office of Hitler's Personal Adjutant, under Wilhelm Bruckner.

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The office of the Presidential Chancellory under Otto Meissner.

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On the second floor, the office of the Chancellory of the Fuhrer, under Philip Buhler.

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And the office representing the Fuhrer's Deputy, under Martin Bormann.

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All of these different offices claimed to represent Hitler.

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A large portion of their time was spent fighting each other.

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One of the more vicious power battles was over access to the mail,

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to the thousands of letters that arrived each week addressed only to "Mein Fuhrer"

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and which begged favours or blessings from Hitler.

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There were trivial letters asking if church bells could be named after Hitler

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and serious ones from individual Jews, pleading that they were special cases

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and should be exempt from the discriminatory laws.

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Access to this mail meant access to Hitler and a chance to form Nazi policy.

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Philip Buhler, an ambitious Nazi,

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managed to gain control of the mail and exploit it to his benefit.

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In late 1938 or early 1939,

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one chance letter which Buhler's office showed to Hitler, had a devastating effect.

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It was from the father of a mentally disabled child

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who asked the Fuhrer's permission to have the child killed. Hitler agreed.

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He had already ordered the sterilisation of the disabled.

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This one letter was to be the catalyst to their murder.

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Buhler was to devise secret policy for killing disabled children

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within days of their birth.

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This form had to be filled in when a disabled baby was born.

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Three doctors read the form.

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If they thought the baby should be killed, they each marked it with a cross.

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Within months, it was no longer just babies who could be killed, but disabled children, too.

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Gerda Bernhardt's brother, Manfred, was one of more than 5,000 children who were to suffer.

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Manfred had been mentally disabled since birth.

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But Aplerbeck was one of the Nazi's special children's units.

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By now, two years after the policy had begun,

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doctors in these homes had stopped filling in Buhler's form. In a typical example

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of how policies could spiral away,

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staff here, on their own, selected the children they wanted to kill.

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The official record of deaths at Aplerbeck

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lists Manfred Bernhardt as dying of measles on June 3rd.

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In the same week, eleven other children died.

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Manfred Bernhardt was murdered because he was not wanted in the Nazis' perfect state.

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The catalyst that caused his death was a chance letter to Hitler on a subject close to his heart,

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brought to his attention by an ambitious Nazi.

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Any idea in this system

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could, with the combination of a leader who spoke in visions,

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and enthusiastic supporters anxious to please,

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grow radically to an extreme almost in an instant.

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This was the way Germany was ruled in the 1930s.

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Now the world was about to suffer the consequences

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of the radical way decisions were taken in this Hitler state.

0:47:110:47:17

Ceefax Subtitles by Janice Hamilton BBC Scotland, 1997

0:48:000:48:04

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