Total War
By the time of the Allied landings in Normandy, everything has changed: it marks the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. Defeat is now just a matter of time, and this realisation marks a difference in the conduct of war: a radicalisation takes hold - it’s now a matter of ‘all or nothing’. It means showing no mercy towards your enemy, and it means having no scruples about sacrificing your own soldiers or your own civilian population. Hitler now demands ‘fanatical resistance’, even in completely hopeless situations. His views are black and white: there is only victory or doom. Self-sacrifice for the fatherland is proclaimed as the highest honour. Meanwhile, cities burn, lives are destroyed and trains continue to arrive at extermination camps. Yet despite all this, a large part of the German public is appalled by the 1944 plot to kill Hitler. Is this blind obedience, delusion, ignorance or coercion? Renowned historians like Ian Kershaw and Richard Overy and leading psychoanalysts help to offer explanations for questions that still pose conundrums: how did Hitler and the German public keep up a relationship of inter-dependency for so long? How did honest citizens become accessories? Why was there so little public resistance even in the face of devastating military defeats, inconceivable suffering by the civilian population, and in the knowledge of unparalleled crimes against humanity carried out in the name of the German people by their failing regime? Many young people in particular tragically continue to believe in ultimate victory right up to the end. Their indoctrination is complete. Some are prepared to join the party or even the military SS in the last few months of the war, even though the situation is undeniably hopeless. Others fight right to the end, scared of what might follow a defeat.
S1E2 49 min
