Hitler's bodyguard (2010)
Adolf Hitler caused the deaths of fifty million people. An entire nation followed him to ruin. Over a tumultuous 12 years Adolf Hitler went from being a minor rabble-rousing politician, to supreme leader of Nazi Germany. He was hated by those he persecuted, and even by some of his own commanders - yet in twenty-five years no one managed to kill him. This program shows how Hitler's bodyguards helped him cheat death on many occasions. They expanded from a handful of thugs recruited to protect political meetings and fight opponents on the streets, to many thousands - including some of the most fearsome secret police and paramilitary forces the world has ever known.
Seasons & Episode
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Hitler's personal protection squad grew from a few fiercely loyal, handpicked ruffians into an army with a complicated structure and intense internal competition.
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Beer hall brawls, street fighting, and several brushes with death marked Hitler's rise to power in the stormy politics of interbellum Germany.
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During Hitler's first year in office--as he steered Germany abruptly towards tyranny--he faced no fewer than a dozen attempts on his life.
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In one bloody, well-planned purge, Hitler eliminated his political rivals and ended the looming threat from Ernst Röhm's well-armed Sturmabteilung.
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As the Nazis amped up their anti-Semitic and expansionist activities, Jewish groups, Soviet Communists, and Otto Strasser's rival Black Front all targeted Hitler.
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By 1938, people inside and outside Germany--including some of Hitler's senior military personnel--planned preemptive strikes against the Führer.
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Convinced that a failed bomb plot had roots in England, a Gestapo counterintelligence officer engineered an elaborate sting to snatch British agents.
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Hitler liked to tour cheering crowds in a customized, open-top Grosser Mercedes and later a G4-a predilection that gave his bodyguards nightmares.
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Hitler appreciated the power of aircraft, not only as a military weapon, but as a political tool. During the early 1930s, he hired aircraft for election campaigning, often facing weather and mechanical problems, as well as specific assassination attempts.
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British operatives targeted Hitler's special train, the Führer-Sonderzug--a rolling fortress on rails--despite its heavy armor and tight security measures.
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Heavily camouflaged and fortified, Hitler's military headquarters in Poland saw several assassination attempts--including one that came closest to succeeding.
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Hitler's Alpine retreat in Bavaria offered opportunities for a pistol-packing German officer, a sniper, a long-range bombing raid, and even an aerial assault by the Allies.
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One member of Hitler's inner circle later claimed to have contemplated flooding the Fuhrer's Berlin bunker with nerve gas as the Allies closed in.