Hitler’s Nazi cult was built on the myth of racial purity. Family background was critical. The Fuhrer’s followers had to prove they came from solid German stock. But while others were excluded and eventually murdered because of their family backgrounds, the Fuhrer’s family were a mystery. It turned out that his ancestors were far from the ideal of the superhuman Nazi master race. Nazi Underworld s1e5: Hitler’s Family
The product of a dubious dysfunctional background … There were cases of insanity in the family. ibid.
Rumours circulated that Hitler had Jewish blood. ibid.
His mother and father were distant cousins. ibid.
Hitler was the almighty leader who claimed to be a modest man of the people … It was a distortion of the truth. Far from the working class hero confected by Nazi propaganda it seems that Adolf Hitler, the pampered Bohemian, feasted on cream cake and was also a tax evader. His tax file still survives. Nazi Underworld s1e6: Hitler’s Money
It was among Munich’s conservative and predominantly Catholic upper classes that Hitler found much of his financial support. ibid.
Valuable foreign currency came from oversees benefactors including American companies. ibid.
Even some of the Nazi faithful began to question the lavish lifestyle of their leader. ibid.
He continued to portray himself as a poverty-stricken man with no assets anywhere. ibid.
Much of that income came from sales of his book Mein Kampf. ibid.
He was supposed to be the supreme leader of a master race. A paragon of physical and mental health. To lead Germany to a glorious future. But behind the Fuhrer façade was a fragile pill-popper. Dependent on a dubious daily diet of injections, tablets and tonics. Nazi Underworld s2e2: Hitler’s Drug Use Revealed *****
Drug abuse, sex stimulants, and psychological breakdowns. ibid.
Theodor Morell was the Fuhrer’s trusted personal doctor for nine years. ibid.
A Fuhrer off his face. A hapless hypochondriac, a higher Hitler. ibid.
A possible march to mental deterioration … Hitler himself suffered a fateful breakdown long before he became Fuhrer. ibid.
‘Neurotic bordering on psychotic. Masochistic tendencies. And strong sexual perversions’. ibid. Hitler’s medical file
As well as eczema, the Fuhrer was stricken with stomach cramps and chronic flatulence. ibid.
As well as pills and potions he gave Hitler sex hormone injections, some extracted from the prostate glands of young bulls. ibid.
Strychnine, or rat poisoning, in the Fuhrer’s anti-gas pills. An oil which we use to clean gun barrels in another gastric medication that had been banned for human consumption. ibid.
Hitler was riding high in 1941. ibid.
The so-called Wolf’s Lair … The dictator was brought down by a sudden bout of giddiness. ibid.
Up to 28 different potions and pills Hitler swallowed every day. ibid.
‘Symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease.’ ibid. Professor Richard Evans
Morell first noted Hitler’s tremor in 1941 and put it down to stress. ibid.
A man who destroyed millions of lives did so in the belief that his actions were sane and rational. ibid.
The public face of Hitler – this is how history remembers him. A ranting messiah mesmerizing a nation with the power of his words. His every move, his every image, fully controlled by the Nazi propaganda machine. But here’s another side to the Fuhrer – relaxed and off guard, surrounded by his closest confidants, filmed by his lover. Here we see him at the height of his power in rare private film. Hitler’s Private World, 2006
In the cellars under the house the soldiers found rooms stacked high with fine crystal, silver cutlery embossed with Hitler’s initials, books, furniture and pictures ... They uncovered roll after roll of colour film. ibid.
Himmler’s ‘project’ was of course the Final Solution. The extermination of millions of undesirables. The disabled, gypsies, Jews and homosexuals. Anyone who did not conform to the genetic purity of the Ayran ideal was slaughtered in the death camps. Then there is Hitler himself. Here the failed artist who banned decadent art expounds on one of his favourite subjects ... ‘Yes, they will all come to belong to the German people. I am merely a curator.’ ibid.
From the time Hitler took power to the time he died at his own hand there were seventeen planned assassination attempts on the Fuhrer. ibid.
As security tightened Hitler’s carefully crafted forest world was cut down for his own safety. On 23rd July 1944 one of those assassination attempts nearly succeeded when a briefcase bomb exploded at Hitler’s Polish headquarters. He survived but was injured. He visited men also caught in the blast. As ever image was everything. ibid.
But some experts now believe Hitler had Parkinson’s disease. And that it was made worse by the injuries he received in the bomb attack. ibid.
Ten days after his final appearance before the cameras Hitler committed suicide. The war was over. The Nazi nightmare was over. Hitler was silenced for ever. ibid.
How could it be that a cultured nation at the heart of Europe ever allowed such a man and the Nazi party he led to come to power? The Nazis: A Warning From History: Helped into Power, BBC 1997
In Bavaria by 1921 Hitler had become the leader of the small German workers party ... It was still one of many right-wing parties. ibid.
On January 30th 1933 the same day Hitler was appointed chancellor the Nazis held a torchlight celebration parade in Berlin. The revolution had begun. ibid.
His was not the daily regime of a workaholic: Hitler was indolent. The Nazis: A Warning from History: Chaos and Consent
From the first, Hitler openly said he didn’t have detailed policies. ibid.
What did Hitler want his new army for? At first it seemed the answer might be just to return the worst consequences of Versailles. In 1936 Hitler moved his troops into the demilitarized portion of Germany, the Rhineland. There was little international protest. The Nazis: A Warning From History: The Wrong War
In the mountains of southern Bavaria on the slopes of the Obersalzberg Adolf Hitler built his retreat – the Berghof. Here he would relax by watching feature films. And he liked one film in particular: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. ibid.
At the Berghof Hitler would indulge himself by planning the great cities he would build in his new Germany. ibid.
When not dreaming of future German cities or German expansion, Hitler would lose himself in fantasy by watching feature films. At the Berghof always two a night. He preferred escapist entertainment. And Goebbels always made sure there was plenty on hand. ibid.
The notion of Hitler, man of destiny, was a myth, based not on fact but on lies and fantasy. ibid.
Hitler himself never put his own views about the subject [Polish deportations] down on paper. The Nazis: A Warning From History: The Wild East
Stauffenberg left a bomb in his briefcase in the conference room on this spot at the Wolf’s Lair and then hurried away to Berlin. The Nazis: A Warning from History: Fighting to the End
Now the Fuhrer too was to take his own life. But only when Soviet troops were yards away from him. He shot himself shortly before 3.30 on the afternoon of 30th April 1945. ibid.
Hitler had said that when he died he would leave a great and strong Germany behind him. Instead he gave the world a very different legacy. New knowledge of what human beings are capable of. ibid.
The Fuhrer’s promises of peace and prosperity have fallen by the wayside leaving in their wake a path of destruction. The outrages committed by Hitler’s SS are a stain on the honour of the German army. Valkyrie 2008 starring Tom Cruise & Kenneth Branagh & Bill Nighy & Terence Stamp & Tom Wilkinson & Carice van Houten & Kevin McNally & David Schofield & Christian Berkel & Jamie Parker & David Bamber & Bernard Hill et al, director Bryan Singer, opening scene
You know, God promised Abraham He would not destroy Sodom if he could find ten righteous men. I have a feeling for Germany it may come down to one. ibid. Branagh to Cruise
Allied forces entered Germany in January 1945. British and Americans from the west, Russians from the east. In Berlin Adolf Hitler spent his last months in a subterranean fortress. The Fuhrer Bunker. What exactly went on in Hitler’s hiding place? And what did it look like? Do traces remain despite two attempts to obliterate it? Unsolved History: Inside Hitler’s Bunker s1e3, Discovery 2002