This is not the story of how Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany, this is the far more shocking story of how, and why, the German people gave it to him. A man with the power to mesmerise and terrify those around him, discover the truth behind Hitler's rise through fascinating insights and memories from some of the people around him at the time. This is their story, their version of how the Nazi party and its symbolic leader came to power.
A revealing perspective on a dark chapter in history, the reality of German life under the Nazis. Under the rule of its new Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, Germany experienced phenomenal economic growth and its people were happy to accept the lifestyle this new prosperity offered. Without looking too closely at how Hitler had brought about "The German Miracle", they revelled in their new-found wealth. Ordinary people were now able to enjoy regular work, good food and even holidays. But with the onset of war, everything was about to change for the German people.
During the darkest days of the Third Reich the most ominous sound was a knock at the door after dark. Everyone who lived under Nazi rule lived in fear of the secret organisation that made the night-time calls. Hitler called it his deadliest weapon and without it the Fuhrer's ambition could never have been realised. They acted as an instrument of state terror that has never been equalled.
Within six years of its inception the Gestapo had grown from a regional secret police force into a crucial element of the rise and expansion of the Third Reich. Under the guidance of its shadowy director Heinrich Muller it evolved into an instrument of terror whose success in crushing resistance to Hitler was unequalled. By 1939 few people in Nazi Germany dared risk opposing the Fuhrer or the Reich.
By 1942, Nazi Germany's armed forces controlled most of Europe. The Gestapo, Hitler's most potent and hated weapon of fear, was at full stretch routing out opposition and implementing Hitler's "Final Solution" - the extermination of the Jews. What had begun as a domestic secret police force had now gained the power of life and death over millions of people. Later, by 1945, as the Third Reich hurtled towards its destruction and Hitler raged in his bunker, the Gestapo was to reach new depths of brutality.
June 30th 1934, the date German freedoms and the rule of civilised law died at the hands of Adolf Hitler. In the hours that became known as the "The Night of the Long Knives" he murdered his way to dictatorship. Under his stewardship, a string of pitiless assassins worked for 48 hours to purge all who might contest him for absolute power or threaten to reveal his unsavoury past. At that terrible moment, Adolf Hitler went from being viewed as just another power-monger within a chaotic political machine, to a brutal dictator. It was a prelude to the holocaust.