Watching 1. Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels was the man who ‘sold’ Hitler and the Nazis to Germany. Joseph Goebbels was a club-footed socialist, university academic, and novelist who earned a doctorate in romance language and literature at Heidelberg University. He was the man who despised ‘Jewish’ American capitalism, and yet brought American advertising techniques in order to sell National Socialism.
2. Wernher von Braun
Of all the leading Nazis in the series, Von Braun is by far the most fortunate, rewarded with a new life and fame in the United States for one simple reason - he knew how to build rockets. Von Braun’s story is similar to that of passionate young scientists who will do anything to pursue their vision. His ultimate dream is space travel, but to get there he will cooperate fully and enthusiastically with the Nazis, even becoming an SS officer, and working directly to Heinrich Himmler.
3. Heinrich Himmler
Himmler, one of the most evil men in human history, began as a mild-mannered bookish intellectual who loved tradition, country pursuits, and nature. He became one of the most terrifying champions of the Third Reich, a monster even by Nazi standards. Himmler helped define Nazi ideology. His transformation into a Nazi monster is the story of the total collapse of morality and civilisation in Germany.
4. Albert Speer
Speer is the Nazi leader who escaped the noose and spent the rest of his life trading off his Nazi celebrity status. He was the architect who ‘designed’ and ‘branded’ the Nazis. He also murdered millions of worker slaves as head of the Nazi arms industry. At Nuremberg, he denied all knowledge of the holocaust.
5. Adolf Eichmann
The capture of Adolf Eichmann by Mossad in Argentina is one of the most dramatic of all Nazi hunting stories. His trial in Israel revealed to the world the workings behind the holocaust. Eichmann himself described how and why so many German public officials were so complicit with the crimes of the Nazis. The most terrible crimes in history were committed not by a few crazed serial killers, but by legions of government officials.
6. Hermann Goering
Hermann Goering‘s story is that of Germany’s military-aristocratic elite, who turned to the Nazis for salvation. The status and fortunes of Germany’s aristocracy were based on land, but by the early decades of the 20th Century, a new Germany emerged - an industrial and commercial Germany, in which the old nobility struggled to find a role and saw their incomes decline. Goering’s family is part of Germany’s old Imperial elite.
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