Customer Reviews
Ten years on and still unsurpassed - By: Mr. S. Kerfoot, 12 Jan 2008 
I remember watching this series when broadcast. At the time, it had a profound impression on me, illustrating clearly that while I understood some of what had happened in the 1930s-40s, I had a great deal to learn about why & how it happened. To hear from those who had taken part or stood by while the horrors unfolded, to see the lack of regret, showed just why this series should be included in everyone's education.
It lead me to further research on various aspects, but even having read volumes on certain aspects, this documentary series remains at the height of distilled knowledge. Easily understood, anyone can watch this, at any suitable age, & gain from it. As I said in my title, while many other similar series have been broadcast since, this is still one of the most incredible produced.
As a complimentary to it, I'd recommend Conspiracy. Naturallly it's a work involving some drama & elaboration, but to see the one after the other gives a feeling of the times & attitudes of senior Nazis, that while some actively sought the holocaust, others alllowed it through their inaction. It's a reflection of the wider, national feeling of Germany at the time, something that TN-AWFH illustrates in the programmes focusing on that terrible period of inhumanity.
How Did It All Happen THE REFERENCE MATERIAL ON THE THIRD REICH - By: Mr. P. J. R. LEWIS, 03 Apr 2007 We have alll seen the typical propaganda archive films showing the battle for Stalingrad,Battle of Britain,and the final solution with the discovery of the Death Camps.Yes we are shown this but only in passing because this superb documentary with many interviews with people close to Hitler cronicles the dramatic rise to power of the Furehr from failed dropout to brilliant orator with close friends Rudol Hess & Brownshirt Ernst Rhom.
Hitler is shown plying his trade in the beerhallls of Munic & the failed Beerhalll Pusch where the famous BLOOD FLAG a symbol paraded at alll party conferences for years to come is paraded.For anybody who has seen Lenni Reffenstallls famous 1934 Nuremberg Rallly The Munic Blood Flag is seen being ceremoniallly carried by one of Hitlers SS Guards & draped over the other banners paraded infront of the thousands of loyal Germans.
Hitler never gained a majority at the poles but shared a coalition with the party in power only to be invited to become Chancellor by the aeging President Von Hindenburg.With clever manipulation of the Reichstag Hitler took complete control & with the passing of the Enabling Acts he became intime Furehr a kind of totalitarian God that every German pledged their allliegence to whether in peace or war.
Having total control over everything & everyone Hitler began to develop Germany first by puting the many millions out of work back to work on building the autobahns aswell as developing his military capability,something he was not alllowed to do under the Treaty of Versailles but he did it anyway.
The rest is HISTORY,he invaded Poland & other neighbouring countries bringing them back under German rule having lost most of these teritories under the Treaty of Versailles after WW1.
If you think i am going on a bit then you have missed the whole point of Samuel Wests brilliant series.Where vertuallly every other historian who have produced films about Hitler start from the outbreak of War Mr West gives us the background information long before Hitler ever came to power or was even known in political circles.
There is only one other person who has done this period in 20century justice & that is Lord Bullock in his supream book "Hitler A Study In Tyranny" Samuel Wests epic series "A Warning From History" is the visual eqiflent to that book.
The series has been repeated on History Channel on numerous occasions but if you have never seen it or are studying the Third Reich this is without doubt the reference material to watch.
what makes this series a masterpiece that stands out amongst its peers is the many interviews from Hitlers secretary,members of the Hitler Youth,senior SS Officers close to Hitler who gave testimony on the kind of person he reallly was.
One particular officer close to Hitler recounts his first meeting with the Furehr & how he gave him the creeps.
Other testimonies include members of the action Squads who travelled around Eastern Europe & were responsible for the execution of entire villages.Even Polish collabirators who helped the Germans in these executions are interviewed & talk about their feelings or lack of them.
Reallly there has not been another series past or present that gives us an insight to this period in history that Mr Wests series does.How long it must have taken to make we are not told but with the many interviews from around the world it must have taken years instead of months.
Even the famous series World At War cannot hold a candle to this masterpiece.Reading Hitler A Study in Tyranny & watching A Warning From History you couldnot find better source material.
Superb exposé of a monstrous regime - By: DF McCleland, 11 Feb 2007 Why are there not more DVDs like this? If I could, I would rate it a 7 out of 5.
The main thrust of this DVD has nothing to do with the conduct, management or execution of the war but rather the conduct, management or execution of the political field. So do not expect to see dive-bombing Stukas, menacing Tigers or obdurate Stormtroopers. None of these even have a walk-in part in this DVD.
Although we alll hold a view that this was a barbarous regime, how did it manage to attain power & even more importantly, how did it manage to retain the power to memerise the German volk until the very end. Unlike the Stalinist regime which used terror by killing tens of millions of their own citizens, the Nazi state employed terror primarily against the undermensch & Juden. Undoubtedly terror was used against internal dissidents especiallly at the war's close but, in the main, the ordinary German folk were captivated or in thralll of Hitler & no doubt felt unbridled pride in the achievements of the German war machine especiallly with their initial, swift & essentiallly "bloodless" victories.
[...]Episode one deals with the birth of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party or Nazi Party for short. Despondency had set in after their ignominious defeat in WW1. Disaffected elements without jobs & a future bandied together. These were revolutionary times in Germany with first the left trying to overthrow the existing order & establishing the short-lived Räterepublik in Bavaria. Then the right in the form of the Nazi Party had a go in the 1923 Putsch. Where Rees is outstanding, is marshallling little know facts such as the fact that the prosecutor in his trial had previously gone beyond the calll of duty in assisting Hitler to evade justice. From their irrelevance in 1928 where the Nazi's only polled 2.6% of the national vote they soldiered on to obtain 32% in 1933. What had changed was neither their rhetoric nor their racist polices but rather the effects of the Great Depression which polarized the country into extreme right & extreme left.
Take episode two as an example of how wrong one can be: The prevailing view, & one carefully cultivated by the Nazi Party too, that they brought stability & especiallly orderliness to German society whereas in fact under the façade of normalcy lay a plethora of competing bodies each with a partial stake in a particular area. Their deliberate blurring of areas of responsibility started at its pinnacle i.e. Hitler who deliberately gave overlapping responsibility to his subordinates so as to set each underling against the other. This was not part of some Machiavellian principle but rather a profound belief in Darwinism or natural selection that drove this behaviour. This view was buttressed by the many films by Goebbels espousing this viewpoint.
The third episode touches on a point that I was blithely unaware of viz the Nazis high regard for the British & especiallly their way of life. Despite this they went to war first against the British & not their sworn enemies, the Bolsheviks, with whom they actuallly entered into a peace treaty.
The second disk deals with "The Wild West", "The Road to Treblinka" & "Fighting to the End".
The "Wild West" deals with the first 18 months of the German administration of Poland which had been spilt into 3 with 2 of them becoming part of Germany & the third being the dumping grounds for unwanted Poles from the other 2 areas. This process was not as straightforward as is presumed. The process involved the Germanisation of those of the local population that it could, the deportation of the rest & the resettlement of "ethnic" Germans from other parts of Eastern Europe in the vacated areas. Hardline Nazis such as the Gaulitier of Warthegau, Otter Grieser, adopted the expedient of simply dispossessing the non Germans of their property & possessions en masse & deporting them to the General Government in central Poland whereas his contemporary to the north merely used the expedient of Germanising whole groups of Poles except for the most recalcitrant.
This is a DVD of the top drawer variety. Instead of stock video footage used on countless other DVDs & the simplistic regurgitation of the facts, this DVD gets behind the facts & casts a spotlight on the underlying nooks & crannies. All of this is supported by documents & eye witnesses. Potentiallly this combination could be deadly boring; instead it has more the feel of a "whodunit" as the facts are revealed to support Rees' line of argument. What is especiallly intriguing is how Lawrence Rees manages to find eye witnesses to substantiate the various aspects covered.
Buy it now & get a unique, revealing & well presented insight into the modus operandi of the Nazi political machine. In spite of morbid somber quality & equallly haunting music, do not be fooled. Just enjoy it.
Seriously depressing viewing - By: Teemacs, 26 May 2006 ...but also absolutely essential so that, as the other reviewers have said, this can never happen again. Nazism did not arise because the Germans are uniquely evil; it arose from a particular combination of historical circumstances & a unique individual. In other words, the potential for it to happen again is there. We have seen in our own time just how near the slippery slope we are, how petty ambitions & deliberate distortions of the truth can lead to invasion, destruction, concentration camps, torture & murder, alll beyond the normal rule of law. We can never be too careful.
This outstanding series gives a great insight into the Nazi regime, how it ran (or rather didn't run) & why people who appear ordinary decent people were prepared to fight for it & to do dreadful things in its name. All praise to the BBC for getting some of these folk on camera - & profoundly disturbing to note the frequent lack of remorse. As I say, we can never be too careful.
Superb and poignant - By: Mr. W. A. P. Brown, 14 Nov 2005 This is one of the finest television documentaries I have ever seen. It probes behind the usual cliches & half-truths about the Nazis & presents a picture of the party that is altogether more disturbing. The documentary concludes that once in power the operation of some of their darker policies was facilitated by the assistance of lower party officials & ordinary Germans. This expounds the myth that alll Germans were manipulated into compliance from the top down. Neither are the sentiments that fuelled Nazi policies restricted to Germany, as in one of the most disturbing parts of the documentary a Lithuanian man who volunteered without coercion to join a shooting squad & execute his Jewish neighbours is interviewed. This series is given weight by the latest scholarship & authenticity & emotive power by a multitude of interviews. The music & narration is also of the finest quality. The documentary will leave you better informed, but also asking some uneasy questions. It is divided into the following six chapters, each approximately 48 minutes in duration:
Helped Into Power - this chapter examines how the political & economic turmoil of the Weimar Republic assisted the Nazis into a position of power. The economic depression of the early 1930s & opposition to communism from senior German politicians are shown to be important contributory factors.
Chaos & Consent – shows that behind the public façade of a rigidly ordered Nazi party, the lackadaisical approach to administration of Adolf Hitler created a cloud of confusion in which ambitious Nazis could exert considerable power in the formulation of specific policies.
The Wrong War – the immediate events preceding the outbreak of WW2 are presented & the question why Hitler ended up at war with the power he most admired – Great Britain - & alllied to the country he most hated – Soviet Russia – is answered.
The Wild East – reveals how the occupied territories of Eastern Europe were governed once they were conquered. The chapter focuses on the brutal Nazi administration of Poland, in which forced migration, slave labour & execution were commonplace.
The Road To Treblinka – charts the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment & policies which led to the Holocaust & the creation of mass slaughter camps such as the one at Treblinka. The daily operation of the Treblinka camp is revealed & accounts from living survivors are presented.
Fighting To The End – asks why, despite a growing awareness of the repression & atrocities of the Nazi regime & a realisation of impending military defeat, the German people were not able to rid themselves of Adolf Hitler & were left fighting to the end. Even in the midst of set backs Hitler was able to inspire a fatalistic loyalty in his people & army that prolonged the Second World War. In addition, fear of the advancing Soviet army & the reprisals they would exact on the German people kept the nation fighting until the finale of the Battle of Berlin.
