The Nazis: A Warning From History

Description: Combining unseen archive footage and a wealth of interview material with "ordinary" people who witnessed or even participated in Hitler's reign, this eight part 1997 documentary brought fresh light to bear on the rise and fall of The Third Reich. Inevitably, the episode dealing with the Holocaust immobilises the viewer in its harrowing detail and a further blow against that rump of humanity who refuse to believe the genocide ever occurred. Yet of great interest also is the depiction of the nature of Hitler's dictatorship. He was, it seems, not a driven, workaholic ideologue but a lazy man who, having set his ideas in motion was content to let his subordinates do all the administrative work, fighting for his favour. The series also featured interviews with unrepentant Nazis. There's a telling moment in which an interviewer confronts an elderly woman with a letter of complaint to the Nazi authorities about a supposedly "subversive" neighbour, bearing her signature. The letter sent the hapless neighbour to her death. At first the woman denies knowledge of the incident, then, when faced with the evidence, glibly wonders why anyone should still bother about events that occurred so long ago.