0:00:01 > 0:00:06*
0:00:06 > 0:00:12This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.
0:00:44 > 0:00:49For 13 months, between July 1942 and August 1943,
0:00:49 > 0:00:53trains ran through the Polish countryside along this siding,
0:00:53 > 0:00:59disgorging thousands of men, women and children in this clearing.
0:01:04 > 0:01:08This used to be the SS barracks.
0:01:08 > 0:01:11This, the undressing room.
0:01:14 > 0:01:21And this, the route to the gas chambers - known by the Nazis as the path to heaven.
0:01:29 > 0:01:34This killing factory, one of six the Nazis built in Poland,
0:01:34 > 0:01:40is near a tiny hamlet whose name is still infamous today - Treblinka.
0:01:41 > 0:01:47How could it happen? How could such places ever come to exist?
0:02:04 > 0:02:11The Warsaw Ghetto. In 1940, the Nazis imprisoned Polish Jews in ghettoes like this.
0:02:11 > 0:02:15A temporary measure whilst they decided
0:02:15 > 0:02:18what the Jews' eventual fate should be.
0:02:18 > 0:02:25The Nazis brutally persecuted the Jews. They thought them racially inferior, but dangerous.
0:02:25 > 0:02:30They believed that there was a worldwide Jewish conspiracy
0:02:30 > 0:02:34which would destroy Germany and that the Jews carried Bolshevism.
0:02:34 > 0:02:41As a result, there had been some Nazi rhetoric saying that all the Jews should be destroyed.
0:02:44 > 0:02:51But even as late as 1940, there was still no Nazi plan systematically to exterminate the Jews.
0:02:51 > 0:02:54Up to now, the emphasis in Nazi planning
0:02:54 > 0:02:57had been on expulsion.
0:02:59 > 0:03:06The most bizarre plan was proposed in June 1940 by an official in the German Foreign Office -
0:03:06 > 0:03:11to resettle the Jews on a tropical island under German police control.
0:03:11 > 0:03:18"In the peace treaty, France must make Madagascar available for the solution of the Jewish question."
0:03:18 > 0:03:23But the Madagascar plan came to nothing.
0:03:23 > 0:03:27By the time these pictures were taken in the spring of 1941,
0:03:27 > 0:03:31Hitler had decided on a radical action
0:03:31 > 0:03:37that altered the course of the war and changed the Nazi policy towards the Jews.
0:03:37 > 0:03:40Hitler had decided,
0:03:40 > 0:03:46as the fulfilment of his great ideological dream, to invade the Soviet Union.
0:03:55 > 0:03:58The German operation, Barbarossa,
0:03:58 > 0:04:01began on June 22nd 1941.
0:04:24 > 0:04:26Ever since the 1920s,
0:04:26 > 0:04:30the Nazis had been ideologically opposed to communism.
0:04:30 > 0:04:35So, to them, this was not just a normal war, this was a crusade.
0:05:21 > 0:05:25Unlike the conflict in the West, the German soldiers knew
0:05:25 > 0:05:30that the war on the Eastern Front was to be fought without rules.
0:06:35 > 0:06:42Entering Soviet-held territory, the Germans encountered hundreds of thousands of Eastern Jews.
0:06:42 > 0:06:47Nazi propaganda made it plain what Germans should think of them.
0:07:04 > 0:07:10Hitler intended to colonise the captured territory in the East and settle Germans there.
0:07:10 > 0:07:18Special killing squads were ordered to cleanse the area of undesirables. In charge of the Einsatzgruppen
0:07:18 > 0:07:23was one of Hitler's most ruthless subordinates - Reinhard Heydrich,
0:07:23 > 0:07:2737-year-old head of the security police.
0:07:28 > 0:07:33He issued this directive after the invasion of the Soviet Union.
0:07:33 > 0:07:38"The following are to be executed - all officials of the Comintern,
0:07:38 > 0:07:44"officials of senior and middle rank, extremists in the Party and committees,
0:07:44 > 0:07:49"the people's commissars, Jews in the service of the Party and state.
0:07:49 > 0:07:56"No steps are to be taken against anti-Communist or anti-Jewish purges in the newly occupied territories.
0:07:56 > 0:08:01"On the contrary, these are to be secretly encouraged."
0:08:05 > 0:08:12Heydrich was a cold, desk-bound murderer who prided himself on being a man of culture.
0:08:23 > 0:08:25Heydrich was a talented musician
0:08:25 > 0:08:31and held weekend parties for his friends in the SS castle of Wewelsburg.
0:10:10 > 0:10:13Heydrich and his boss, Heinrich Himmler,
0:10:13 > 0:10:21would organise this quantum leap forward for Hitler - the murder of selected Communists and Jews
0:10:21 > 0:10:28as the German army advanced eastward. Hitler had always said the Jews were behind communism.
0:10:28 > 0:10:31The crusade in the East tried to crush both.
0:10:31 > 0:10:36Under Heydrich's command were four Einsatzgruppen, or killing squads,
0:10:36 > 0:10:41each with between 600 and 1,000 men. Each was led by an educated German.
0:10:44 > 0:10:48Einsatzgruppe A was led by Walther Stahlecker, doctor of law.
0:10:48 > 0:10:54Einsatzgruppe B was led by Arthur Nebe, head of German Criminal Police.
0:10:54 > 0:10:58Einsatzgruppe C was led by Otto Rasch.
0:10:58 > 0:11:04He held two doctorates in law and political science. So he was known as Dr Dr Rasch.
0:11:04 > 0:11:08Einsatzgruppe D was led by Otto Ohlendorf,
0:11:08 > 0:11:13a gifted economist and the most intellectual of the squad leaders.
0:11:13 > 0:11:20Bloodiest of them all was Stahlecker's Einsatzgruppe A which operated in the Baltic States.
0:11:29 > 0:11:33Einsatzgruppe A followed the German army into Lithuania
0:11:33 > 0:11:37in the early days of the invasion.
0:11:37 > 0:11:44Lithuanians were a Catholic people. But, in 1939, Stalin's Communists had invaded their country
0:11:44 > 0:11:47and oppressed their traditions and beliefs.
0:11:51 > 0:11:53So when the Germans reached Kaunas,
0:11:53 > 0:11:56Lithuania's second city,
0:11:56 > 0:11:59they were welcomed as liberators.
0:12:28 > 0:12:33Throughout Lithuania, symbols of communism were destroyed.
0:12:33 > 0:12:41To many of the Lithuanian nationalists, just as to Nazis, communism was linked to Judaism.
0:12:42 > 0:12:49In Kaunas, locals rounded up Jewish men, particularly those they believed had Communist sympathies.
0:12:50 > 0:12:57They turned on them in an act of revenge of the type Heydrich asked the Einsatzgruppen to encourage.
0:12:57 > 0:13:02A German army photographer witnessed what happened.
0:14:16 > 0:14:24Once all the Jews had been bludgeoned to death, one of the killers climbed onto the bodies
0:14:24 > 0:14:27with his accordion.
0:15:04 > 0:15:08But it was the Nazis who played the major role in organising
0:15:08 > 0:15:15the rounding up of those Heydrich had called to be executed. In the Baltic States,
0:15:15 > 0:15:19Einsatzgruppe A took Heydrich's directive as the bare minimum
0:15:19 > 0:15:23and soon began to arrest ALL young Jewish men.
0:15:25 > 0:15:29They were taken out of the towns and shot.
0:15:34 > 0:15:39That August, less than two months after the German invasion,
0:15:39 > 0:15:46Himmler visited Minsk, one of a series of morale-boosting visits he paid
0:15:46 > 0:15:51to the Einsatzgruppen, the police and other SS units in the East.
0:16:09 > 0:16:15A crucial part of Himmler's itinerary was not filmed for this propaganda newsreel,
0:16:15 > 0:16:19but it is mentioned in Himmler's appointment book,
0:16:19 > 0:16:23recently discovered in Moscow archives.
0:16:23 > 0:16:27The entry for the 15th August 1941 reads,
0:16:27 > 0:16:33"Vormittags, before lunch, attend execution of Jews and partisans
0:16:33 > 0:16:35"just outside Minsk."
0:16:37 > 0:16:44Among those who attended the execution was Lieutenant Frentz, a German cameraman.
0:17:24 > 0:17:30Himmler witnessed a similar Einsatzgruppen execution to this,
0:17:30 > 0:17:33filmed in sand dunes in Latvia in 1941.
0:18:09 > 0:18:16Himmler now announced an extension of the cleansing in the East. Since the Nazis thought every Jew
0:18:16 > 0:18:21was a Bolshevik, they now said that every Jew was a military threat.
0:18:21 > 0:18:26So women and children in the newly conquered areas were to be killed.
0:18:26 > 0:18:32Himmler later tried to justify the killing of Jewish children
0:18:32 > 0:18:40by saying the Nazis could not allow a generation of avengers to grow up as they'd cause problems in future.
0:18:40 > 0:18:47But Himmler was worried about his killers. Arthur Nebe, head of Einsatzgruppe B,
0:18:47 > 0:18:54told him that the psychological effect of murdering at such close quarters was affecting his men.
0:18:54 > 0:19:02So Himmler looked for a more humane method of killing - humane for the executioners, not the victims.
0:19:05 > 0:19:09The Nazis experimented with gas as a means of killing
0:19:09 > 0:19:13and filmed some of their experiments.
0:19:16 > 0:19:23Whilst the gassing experiments continued, the shooting carried on in the East.
0:19:24 > 0:19:29The Einsatzgruppen meticulously recorded their killings.
0:19:29 > 0:19:35In that summer of 1941, their records show the murders drastically increasing -
0:19:35 > 0:19:40coinciding with a increase in the number of police units sent East.
0:19:40 > 0:19:47The killing squads based in Kaunas had killed 4,400 Jews in July 1941.
0:19:47 > 0:19:53In August, they killed more than 38,000, including women and children.
0:19:53 > 0:19:57Stahlecker, Einsatzgruppen A, boasted that,
0:19:57 > 0:20:03"New possibilities in the East allow a complete clearing up of the Jewish question."
0:20:08 > 0:20:11In the Lithuanian village of Butrimonys,
0:20:11 > 0:20:18the consequences of this extension in the killing were felt on September the 9th 1941.
0:20:18 > 0:20:24Before the arrival of the Germans, the Jews here had been tolerated,
0:20:24 > 0:20:28though many villagers had envied them their supposed wealth.
0:20:28 > 0:20:33But now, with the prospect of theft and plunder, some locals were happy
0:20:33 > 0:20:40to respond to the German order to march the remaining Jews along this road out of the town.
0:22:00 > 0:22:06Riva Losanskaya and her mother escaped, but the remaining Jews were driven off the road
0:22:06 > 0:22:09towards where these trees now grow.
0:22:11 > 0:22:18Here, in scenes which were repeated throughout the Einsatzgruppen area of operation,
0:22:18 > 0:22:20the Jews were ordered to undress.
0:22:33 > 0:22:36Villagers had come to watch,
0:22:36 > 0:22:40some out of curiosity, others out of greed.
0:23:57 > 0:24:04The killing here was carried out by Lithuanian collaborators acting under German orders.
0:24:06 > 0:24:11The suffering is recorded in the Einsatzgruppen killing book as,
0:24:11 > 0:24:14"9th September 1941, Butrimonys.
0:24:14 > 0:24:18"67 Jewish men, 370 Jewish women,
0:24:18 > 0:24:21"303 Jewish children.
0:24:21 > 0:24:25"A total of 740 Jews killed."
0:24:26 > 0:24:29The same day in nearby Alytus,
0:24:29 > 0:24:34the killing book records 1,279 Jews murdered.
0:24:34 > 0:24:38The next day in Merkine - 854.
0:24:38 > 0:24:41And in Varena - 831.
0:24:44 > 0:24:50In the Baltic States, more than 80% of the killing squads were made up of locals
0:24:50 > 0:24:56acting under German Einsatzgruppen orders. Men like Petras Zelionka.
0:26:58 > 0:27:04After the war ended, the Soviets sent Petras Zelionka to a Siberian Gulag.
0:27:04 > 0:27:09His former comrades, against whom he gave evidence, were executed.
0:28:06 > 0:28:12That autumn of 1941, whilst Petras Zelionka and his comrades carried on killing,
0:28:12 > 0:28:15Hitler directed the war in the East
0:28:15 > 0:28:21from the Wolf's Lair, his headquarters in a forest in East Prussia.
0:28:21 > 0:28:25Hitler's talk was of annihilation. In September 1941,
0:28:25 > 0:28:32he said Leningrad should vanish from the surface of the Earth. In this atmosphere of blood lust,
0:28:32 > 0:28:37he was also privately expressing his undying hatred of the Jews.
0:28:37 > 0:28:43"That race of criminals has on its conscience the two million dead of World War I
0:28:43 > 0:28:47"and now, already, hundreds of thousands more."
0:28:47 > 0:28:54To his staff at his headquarters, Hitler talked of taking revenge against the Jews.
0:29:28 > 0:29:35But even before America entered the war, Hitler showed no mercy to the Jews in the East.
0:29:35 > 0:29:41Now he was about to show no mercy to the Jews in the rest of the Nazi empire.
0:29:41 > 0:29:48In September 1941, two new measures showed that German Jews were under increased threat.
0:29:48 > 0:29:55Hitler agreed to an order which said that German Jews must, for the first time, wear the yellow star.
0:29:55 > 0:30:00A secret order from Himmler said that Hitler had authorised that,
0:30:00 > 0:30:07from autumn, all Jews from Germany, Austria and the occupied Czech lands should be transported East.
0:30:19 > 0:30:26350 miles west of Hitler's headquarters, Berliners relaxed by the capital's lakes.
0:30:30 > 0:30:35So far, they had heard only good news from the war in the East.
0:30:53 > 0:30:59But that autumn, there was one new sign on the streets
0:30:59 > 0:31:01that showed life was changing...
0:31:01 > 0:31:06at least for some of the capital's population - the Jews were marked.
0:31:10 > 0:31:14There's nothing to say. It's bad.
0:31:14 > 0:31:19It's bad you have a sign on you.
0:31:19 > 0:31:24Nobody would have thought that I was a Jew, but this...
0:31:24 > 0:31:27We had to wear it.
0:31:27 > 0:31:31The hate grew up.
0:31:31 > 0:31:34We felt it.
0:31:35 > 0:31:43The Germans always said, "The Jews are not Germans," and I said, "I am a German of Jewish faith."
0:31:44 > 0:31:47And for them, I am not a German,
0:31:47 > 0:31:50but I AM a German.
0:31:51 > 0:31:56In winter 1941, with the war bogged down in the mud of the East,
0:31:56 > 0:32:03the Nazis knew there would be no easy victory over the Soviet Union.
0:32:03 > 0:32:06There was a new enemy to deal with,
0:32:06 > 0:32:12for after Germany's ally Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December,
0:32:12 > 0:32:15Germany declared war on the United States.
0:32:15 > 0:32:23Hitler had meetings with Nazi leaders that December to discuss the consequences for the Nazi cause,
0:32:23 > 0:32:27and the fate of the Jews was also discussed.
0:32:28 > 0:32:35A new piece of evidence from Himmler's diary shows that on the 18th December 1941,
0:32:35 > 0:32:42Hitler met with Himmler and the topic was the Judenfrage - the Jewish question.
0:32:42 > 0:32:47The entry is written in Himmler's own hand. Also, cryptically, is...
0:32:47 > 0:32:50"to be exterminated as partisans".
0:32:50 > 0:32:53Though we can't know exactly,
0:32:53 > 0:33:01it's probably camouflage language to justify the murder of the Jews in the East to the German army.
0:33:01 > 0:33:06But the diary entry clearly links Hitler with the killings.
0:33:11 > 0:33:18In January 1942, a conference was called here at the Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin.
0:33:18 > 0:33:26By now, Hitler had authorised that all Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe should be deported to their deaths
0:33:26 > 0:33:31and the meeting here worked out the details.
0:33:31 > 0:33:34The discussion was chaired by Reinhard Heydrich,
0:33:34 > 0:33:42who months earlier had been asked to compile a plan for the "final solution" to the Jewish problem.
0:33:42 > 0:33:50The Wannsee conference minutes were taken by Heydrich's specialist in Jewish matters - Adolf Eichmann.
0:33:50 > 0:33:58The minutes are deliberately euphemistic and the talk is still of the "evacuation" of the Jews.
0:33:58 > 0:34:04But we know that this was code for extermination
0:34:04 > 0:34:08because Hans Frank, the Nazi who ran part of occupied Poland,
0:34:08 > 0:34:13told his senior officials what the Wannsee conference was really about.
0:34:13 > 0:34:16"What will happen to the Jews?
0:34:16 > 0:34:24"Do you imagine they'll be settled in villages in the East? People say, 'Why bother? Liquidate them.' "
0:34:30 > 0:34:35Now deportations were occurring all over Germany.
0:34:35 > 0:34:41The forced eviction of these Jews in Dresden was filmed by an amateur cameraman.
0:34:46 > 0:34:53This was the final act in a series of incremental persecutions which the Jews of Germany had suffered.
0:34:53 > 0:35:00First, they had been denied Reich citizenship, then the right to a state education,
0:35:00 > 0:35:03then had their property confiscated.
0:35:03 > 0:35:09Now the Jews were told they were to be sent east to work camps.
0:35:20 > 0:35:26More Jews were deported from Berlin than any other German city - 55,000,
0:35:26 > 0:35:31many of them from the freight station here at Putlitzstrasse.
0:35:32 > 0:35:35We were trucked there.
0:35:36 > 0:35:39The truck was empty.
0:35:39 > 0:35:45The people were conducted immediately inside the car.
0:35:46 > 0:35:51And then... in the moment they went in,
0:35:51 > 0:35:56they had a package of four slices of bread,
0:35:56 > 0:36:01given from the community, the Jewish community.
0:36:01 > 0:36:05It was an atmosphere of...fear,
0:36:05 > 0:36:08an atmosphere of big fear.
0:36:11 > 0:36:17There were babies, there were little children and they cried,
0:36:17 > 0:36:22and the mothers said, "Behave well. Don't cry."
0:36:22 > 0:36:25We couldn't think.
0:36:25 > 0:36:28We couldn't think.
0:36:28 > 0:36:33There were Germans who helped Jews. Some even hid them.
0:36:33 > 0:36:42Most acted as Erwine Massuthe did, as he saw the deportations at Putlitzstrasse across the street.
0:37:40 > 0:37:45The fate of these Jews was supposed to be a secret -
0:37:45 > 0:37:50just how BIG a secret, switchboard operator Alfons Schulz learnt
0:37:50 > 0:37:58when a colleague overheard a top-secret conversation at the Fuhrer's headquarters in May 1942.
0:38:54 > 0:38:59Hitler wanted the Jews annihilated and he wanted it kept a secret,
0:38:59 > 0:39:03but it couldn't be kept a secret from everybody.
0:39:03 > 0:39:11Gunther Ruschin was on a train east when he learned his intended fate from an unexpected source.
0:39:11 > 0:39:16In Frankfurt an der Oder the train stopped at the station,
0:39:16 > 0:39:23and then we shouted, "Please, give us some water. We are thirsty."
0:39:24 > 0:39:28And we heard, crying back,
0:39:28 > 0:39:34"You damn Jews! Didn't they kill you yet?"
0:39:34 > 0:39:37The workers at the station...
0:39:38 > 0:39:40..in Frankfurt,
0:39:40 > 0:39:47if THEY knew, because they said, "Didn't they kill you yet?"...
0:39:48 > 0:39:51..the population must have known it,
0:39:51 > 0:39:58or must have imagined what would happen or what they were doing to us.
0:40:00 > 0:40:04CHORAL SINGING
0:40:04 > 0:40:11Nazi propagandists certainly didn't want the German public to dwell on the possible fate of the Jews.
0:40:11 > 0:40:16In the winter of 1942, as the Jewish deportations continued,
0:40:16 > 0:40:22THIS was the image of Germany that Goebbels preferred to sell.
0:40:22 > 0:40:25SINGING CONTINUES
0:40:51 > 0:40:59It is impossible to tell exactly how many ordinary Germans knew what was really happening to the Jews,
0:40:59 > 0:41:05but while this film was being shown in German cinemas, December 1942,
0:41:05 > 0:41:12a Nazi secret intelligence report records disquiet among some Germans in the south of the country.
0:41:12 > 0:41:17"One major cause of unease among those attached to the Church,
0:41:17 > 0:41:24"is based on news from Russia in which shooting and extermination of the Jews is spoken about.
0:41:24 > 0:41:31"The news frequently leaves great anxiety, care and worry in those sections of the population.
0:41:31 > 0:41:37"According to opinion in rural areas it's not certain we will win the war,
0:41:37 > 0:41:44"and if the Jews return to Germany, they will exact dreadful revenge upon us."
0:41:44 > 0:41:49By the time this secret report was written at the end of 1942,
0:41:49 > 0:41:55Nazi gas experiments had led to the creation of extermination centres at...
0:42:23 > 0:42:28And it wasn't just German Jews who were sent to the new camps.
0:42:28 > 0:42:33Now the Nazis had developed an efficient means to kill the Jews,
0:42:33 > 0:42:41they were to be eliminated all over occupied Europe - from Holland to Greece, and France to Poland.
0:42:48 > 0:42:53Other groups the Nazis considered a threat were also to suffer -
0:42:53 > 0:42:56most prominently, Europe's Gypsies.
0:43:02 > 0:43:10From all over Europe, trains converged on Nazi-occupied Poland and its extermination centres.
0:43:10 > 0:43:15Here, Bulgarian Jews are transported to Treblinka.
0:43:26 > 0:43:31In this remote spot, about 750,000 people were murdered,
0:43:31 > 0:43:35though we can never know exactly how many died.
0:43:35 > 0:43:41But, because a handful escaped, we CAN know what the camp looked like.
0:43:41 > 0:43:46This drawing was done by one of the escapees, Samuel Willenberg.
0:43:46 > 0:43:54It shows how complex the killing machine had become since the early Einsatzgruppen shootings.
0:43:54 > 0:44:02Treblinka station was designed to look as normal as possible, with train timetables and a waiting room.
0:44:02 > 0:44:06New arrivals would be led to the undressing barracks
0:44:06 > 0:44:13and they'd be told they were at a hygiene stop and must take a shower to be disinfected.
0:44:31 > 0:44:38A connecting path led from the undressing barracks through two high fences to the gas chambers.
0:45:04 > 0:45:10If any arrivals said they were sick, the Nazis directed them to the hospital.
0:45:37 > 0:45:43Samuel Willenberg is one of fewer than 70 known Treblinka survivors.
0:45:43 > 0:45:50More than 99% of those who arrived here were murdered, the majority within three hours of arriving.
0:46:40 > 0:46:43The Nazis didn't just kill -
0:46:43 > 0:46:45they stole.
0:46:45 > 0:46:48Once the victims had been murdered,
0:46:48 > 0:46:54their clothes and valuables were sorted and the plunder sent back to Germany.
0:46:54 > 0:47:02In 1943, their murderous work completed, the Nazis tried to eliminate all trace of the camp,
0:47:02 > 0:47:06but not because they were ashamed of their crimes.
0:47:06 > 0:47:13That same year, 1943, Himmler spoke to his SS colleagues about the extermination of the Jews.
0:47:13 > 0:47:19"We know what it means when 100, 500, or 1,000 corpses are piled together.
0:47:19 > 0:47:26"To endure this, and, at the same time, ignoring some moments of human weakness, to have remained decent,
0:47:26 > 0:47:29"this is what has made us tough.
0:47:29 > 0:47:37"It is one of the most glorious chapters in our history which has not and may never be written."
0:47:37 > 0:47:44But the crimes of the Nazis would be discovered, because by now they were losing the war.
0:47:44 > 0:47:52In the East the Nazis saw the enemy they feared the most, the Russians, doing the impossible and winning.
0:48:36 > 0:48:41Subtitles by Mary Easton and Keir Murray, BBC Scotland - 1997