A rigorous narrative analysis probes into the childhood, war experiences, and early political career of Adolf Hitler to assess how his defining years affected his rise to power.

How did Adolf Hitler and his small band of criminal conspirators persuade the German people to follow them into a nightmare of brutality, genocide, and military defeat? The documentary chronicles how Hitler rose to power by exploiting the economic turmoil of the time. Through archival film footage, interviews, and dramatic reconstructions, it's the true story of the rise and fall of the Nazis, from Hitler's recovery in a hospital at the end of WWI...

Documents the propaganda and politics that brought Nazism to power in one German town where the population was predominately Lutheran and the largest local employer was the Civil Service.

A hundred years ago, many theorists believed-just as they did at the beginning of our twenty-first century-that the world had reached a state of economic perfection, a never before seen human interdependence that would lead to universal growth and prosperity. Then, as now, the German mark was one of the most trusted currencies in the world. Yet the early years of the Weimar Republic in Germany witnessed the most calamitous meltdown of a developed...

November 1932. With the German economy in ruins and street battles raging between rival political parties, the Weimar Republic is on its last legs. In the halls of the Reichstag, party leaders scramble for power and influence as the elderly president, Paul von Hindenburg, presides over a democracy pushed to the breaking point. Chancellors Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher spin a web of intrigue, vainly hoping to harness the growing popularity...

"As the great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig confided in his autobiography, written in exile, 'I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions.' He was referring to the situation in Germany in 1923. It was a 'year of lunacy,' defined by hyperinflation, a political system on the verge of collapse, and separatist movements that threatened Germany's territorial integrity....