-Fascism.
We hear this word a lot lately,
but just what is it?
The word comes from the Latin
word for this, a fasces.
The idea? Well, you can
break one stick easily,
but when you bundle
them together,
they become very strong
and, when a dictator
convinces an entire nation
to march together in lockstep,
they feel strong, too,
and, in fascism,
an ax symbolizes
that it's unity with discipline;
brutal, if necessary.
I'm Rick Steves
and, in this special program,
we'll learn from the hard
lessons of fascism
in 20th-century Europe.
Thanks for joining us.
[ Suspenseful music plays ]
[ Flames crackling ]
-[Speaking indistinctly]
-[chanting] Sieg Heil!
 Sieg Heil!
Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
♪♪
[ Chanting ]
♪♪
[ Cheering ]
♪♪
[ Shattering ]
♪♪
-With some thoughtful travel,
we'll see how entire nations
were, first, mesmerized,
and then, led astray
by their fascist leaders.
Our journey will take us back
nearly a century
to learn how, in Europe,
fascism rose and then fell,
taking millions
of people with it.
We'll trace fascism's roots
during the turbulent
aftermath of World War I,
as masses of angry people
rose up,
the rise of charismatic leaders
who manipulated that anger,
the totalitarian societies
they built,
and the brutal measures they
used to enforce their ideology.
We'll see the horrific
consequences:
genocide and total war.
♪♪
Along the way,
we'll talk with Europeans
whose families lived
through those times...
-We have to be vigilant.
-...and visit sites
related to fascism.
♪♪
In 1918, World War I ended,
leaving 10 million dead
and Europe in ruins.
The chaotic aftermath of the war
created fertile ground
for the seeds of fascism.
Nowhere was that more true
than in defeated
and devastated Germany.
[ Melancholy tune plays ]
Imagine Germany after 1918.
[ Rapid gunfire ]
For four long years,
they'd fought bravely,
lost over 2 million men,
and then surrendered.
Veterans limped home
to a country in shambles.
Their emperor had been toppled,
replaced by a weak democracy.
Their nation was humiliated,
with especially harsh
terms of surrender,
including an Allied demand
for Germany to pay
costly war reparations.
Cynical Germans were convinced
their own leaders
had sold them out
and surrendered too early.
They called it
the stab in the back.
The economy was horrible.
People needed jobs.
Terrible inflation
wiped out savings.
It took literally a wheelbarrow
of nearly worthless currency
to buy a loaf of bread.
Germans had no faith
in their government
to get society back on track.
♪♪
In this vacuum of power,
a fringe movement
claiming to be the champion
of the oppressed emerged.
They dressed in intimidating
Brownshirt uniforms,
roamed the streets in gangs,
and wanted to restore
Germany's national pride.
They called themselves the
National Socialists, or Nazis.
Their leader?
Adolf Hitler.
Those early Nazis found
a natural base here in Munich.
♪♪
While a pleasant
and idyllic city today,
this capital of Bavaria
was known
for its conservative
and nationalistic passions.
Nazi street gangs
violently attacked
unwanted outsiders,
Jews, and communists.
♪♪
In 1923,
in a beer hall like this,
the original Nazi leadership
gathered their followers.
They were impatient
and eager to take power.
Hitler waved his pistol
in the air
and called
for the revolution to begin.
[ Urgent, suspenseful
music plays ]
♪♪
Hitler led the ragtag
revolutionaries in the beer hall
into the streets of Munich,
planning to overthrow
the government.
♪♪
But that attempted revolt,
called the Beer Hall Putsch,
failed.
After a bloody confrontation,
the police crushed it,
here at Odeonsplatz.
Hitler was arrested
and sent to jail
and it seemed that Germany's
fascist movement was finished
before it got off the ground.
Unable to overthrow
the government by force,
[ Melancholy tune plays ]
Hitler resolved to take it
by political means.
While in prison, he wrote
"Mein Kampf," or "My Struggle,"
which preaches his message
of uniting all ethnic Germans
and giving them
more space to live.
The book remains potent
to this day,
particularly for Germans,
like Andreas Clemens.
Could Germans just buy this?
-Until recently, it was illegal
to buy or sell it in Germany.
-So if I was to read
"Mein Kampf,"
what's the writing like?
-Well, you can see that Hitler
had problems with grammar.
Part of it is gibberish.
It's very hard to get through.
The book is one of the most
published books in history
and every German household
had that book
and they probably tried
to read it,
but they gave up 10,
20 pages in.
-And this, I would imagine,
lays out the main points
of the fascist future.
What are those points?
-He's saying that democracy
doesn't work,
that it's a flawed system
that can be manipulated
by outside forces
for their own gain.
-Mm-hmm.
-He's blaming communists for it.
Ultimately,
at the end of everything,
it's the Jewish
World Conspiracy,
so Jews are behind everything
that is wrong with the world.
That he has a solution for that
and the solution is fascism,
or national socialism,
and that he
can make Germany strong.
He can unite the country;
he can unite the master race
and get us back
to our rightful status.
-Hitler may have been
locked up in prison,
but he was tapping into ideas
that had already
been percolating in places
around Europe.
One of those was the country
where the fascist ideology
would first come to power:
Italy.
[ March plays ]
In the center of Rome,
capital of Italy, stands
the Victor Emmanuel monument.
With its
Altar of the Fatherland,
it was designed to celebrate
the greatness of Italy
and, facing this monument
on Piazza Venezia,
nationalists would gather
to honor their nation.
In the 1920s and '30s,
tens of thousands of Italians
would fill this square
to hear rousing speeches
delivered from that balcony.
The speaker proclaimed
the greatness of Italy
and promised them
a glorious future
[ Cheering ]
and the people followed.
-[Chanting in Italian]
-Once a rabble-rousing
journalist,
this charismatic speaker
became their leader, Il Duce.
The man was Benito Mussolini.
-[Speaking Italian]
Mussolini's rise,
like that of Hitler,
[ Explosions ]
had its roots in World War I.
-1918 is the end
of World War I.
There was a lot of discontent
in Italy after World War I.
[ Melancholy tune plays ]
The country was in pure chaos:
very high unemployment,
lot of strikes,
and was almost in a verge
of communist revolt.
-There was great
disappointment.
Even the fact of Italy was
on the winning side,
it felt that it did not
get enough
out of the peace treaties.
They talked
about the mutilated victory
that is the equivalent
of a German stab in the back
and so there is that and all
these veterans coming back,
having fought in the
trenches, for what?
-All of the soldiers coming
back from the battlefields
were not really welcomed back,
so there were a lot of street
fights and, basically,
the soldiers came together
in this party called
Fascio di Combattimento,
and they had a leader,
which was Benito Mussolini.
♪♪
-Mussolini capitalized
on a deep-seated frustration
among Italians.
Italy was still a young nation,
having only united in 1871.
The surge of nationalism
that came with unification
left Italians hungry
for greatness,
but feeling disappointed.
Its parliamentary democracy
was weak and ineffectual
and the economy was terrible.
And, as with Germany,
the Italians had just suffered
through World War I
and people were angry
about the way it was fought
and the way it was finished.
[ Suspenseful music plays ]
Mussolini seized this moment
to launch a new movement:
the Fascist Party.
While fascists won only
a handful of seats,
they were a potent political
force, and a paramilitary one.
Fascism was not just
an ideology,
but a campaign
of physical intimidation.
Gangs of armed,
black-clad war veterans,
called squadristi,
nicknamed the Blackshirts,
wielded violence against
their political opponents.
-Fascism starts as violence.
I mean, how did fascism start?
These were gangs of,
in most cases,
veterans of the war,
who went around the streets,
beating workers up,
beating up the socialists.
This is how it started.
-The Communist Party
was a threat
during the end of World War I
and, actually,
the Fascist Party was formed
because of the clashes.
-The Blackshirts broke strikes,
expelled socialist mayors,
and gave their base
the promise of action.
♪♪
In 1922, some 30,000 fascists
descended on the nation's
capital in a show of force:
the so-called March on Rome.
Without firing a shot, Mussolini
was handed the reigns of power.
Suddenly, Italy was
under fascist rule,
with a bold, if politically
inexperienced, new leader.
[ Cacophony of cheering ]
Piazza Venezia became the stage
for a new, amped-up
kind of nationalism.
Mussolini loved big rallies
and, from his balcony,
offering big promises and simple
solutions to complex problems,
he whipped his followers
into a mass frenzy.
-[Speaking Italian]
[ Cacophony of cheering ]
-They interrupted his speeches
with chants of,
 "Duce, Duce, Duce!"
-[Chanting in Italian]
-"Leader."
[ Cacophony of cheering ]
♪♪
-What I understand now is that
it was like a collective dream.
It was like hypnosis.
Standing in the crowd
with thousands of people
all focused on one man, who was
terrific at using his body,
his facial expressions, and
language to reach their hearts.
-[Speaking Italian]
[ Cheering ]
-They were going ballistic,
even for a hand gesture
or a facial expression
of Mussolini.
Mussolini was an actor
and, when he eventually
show up in that window
and he stood
in his typical posture,
with his imposing chin,
for the Italians,
he was the personification
of a greater Italy.
-He promised an Italy
that would be great,
that would be modern,
that would be finally unified,
where there would be work
for everybody.
-For his first 15 years,
Mussolini ruled with dictatorial
power and impressive success.
He pumped up the economy,
created jobs,
and invested in infrastructure.
-Costruire,
costruire, costruire.
"Build, build, and build."
-In the beginning,
I think Mussolini was able
to garner so much favor
because it really did seem
that he was making us
a modern country:
a lot of building,
a lot of modern infrastructure,
jobs, homes,
so, on the surface, at least,
it did seem that he was
actually getting things done.
-So Italians are happy
at the moment
'cause they come from the
pure chaos of 1918, 1919,
to having jobs
and having a society
that "apparently" works.
-He energized Rome
with grand projects,
like this Olympic stadium,
which is still in use today.
[ Outro plays ]
-Stop using steel and cement.
-Francesca grew up hearing
stories of Mussolini.
She shares some local insight.
This is an impressive stadium.
-Mussolini built this stadium
to promote Rome
for the Olympic games,
but also to promote sports
and physical prowess
as key elements
of fascist ideology.
These statues represent
athletes,
but they also represent
new fascist man,
a man who is physically strong,
proud, disciplined,
but who is also willing
to support the fascist dogma:
Believe, obey, fight.
-Believe,
obey, fight.
-So these mosaics are inspired
by Ancient Rome
and they proclaim
the greatness of the leader
and the achievements
of the fascist regime:
military events, Roman salutes.
-Oh, yeah.
-And for emphasis,
things are repeated:
"Duce, Duce, Duce, Duce."
-Look at that, 10 Duces.
-In fascism,
belligerence is celebrated.
Look at this:
 "Molti nemici, molto onore."
"Many enemies, much honor."
-Mussolini's ego is immense.
In fact, one of the motto was,
 "Mussolini ha sempre ragione,"
"Mussolini is always right."
-He certainly had a vision
of himself
as a man of Genius
with a capital G,
a man who had a superior vision
of society and the world.
-He truly believed
he was a new Roman emperor.
He wanted to somehow recreate
this new Roman empire,
[ Band playing march ]
and he couldn't stand
that Italy was not important
anymore in Europe.
[ Suspenseful music plays ]
-Mussolini championed
the revival of the glory
of Ancient Rome.
He created this grand
Boulevard of the Imperial Forum
for stately
and military processions
[ Melancholy tune joins ]
between the Colosseum
and his office
in Piazza Venezia.
He lined it with imposing
statues of emperors.
♪♪
Absolute rulers
enjoy each other's company.
♪♪
Mussolini built a futuristic
city at the edge of Rome,
called EUR.
This planned city
is the architectural
embodiment of fascism.
The uniform buildings
and the rigid grid-plan streets
celebrate order and conformity
while echoing a powerful past
and promising a glorious future.
♪♪
The centerpiece is called the
Palace of Italian Civilization.
-So the Palace of Italian
Civilization was intended
as a celebration
of the Italian people
and their many talents,
but there's something about it,
this monolithic
starkness it has,
that also seems to remind us
that fascist ideology
requires individuals to give
everything up for the state.
♪♪
-With the populists tired
of dysfunctional government,
Mussolini rose to power
with the promise of action
and, throughout Italy,
imposing architecture,
like this train station
in Milan,
seemed designed to remind all
that the state is more important
than the individual.
The state gets things done
and, of course,
with the leadership of Il Duce,
the trains will run on time.
♪♪
-His famous sentence,
"Trains were on time,"
so, an appearance of success,
at what cost?
At the cost of personal freedom.
-People didn't have a choice
to accept Mussolini
as their leader.
It was against the law to talk
against the Fascist Party.
Not even journalists
were independent
to write exactly
what they want to.
-There was this famous
fascist motto:
"Everything for the state,
everything within the state,
nothing against the state."
-While Mussolini was forging
the first fascist state
in Italy,
back here in Germany,
Hitler was taking notes.
Once out of prison,
he played on many
of the same themes
as Mussolini:
rousing a disillusioned
workforce,
reviving a struggling economy,
and fixing what was considered
a weak government.
At first, the boom times
of the Roaring '20s
blunted his populist message,
but then,
the Great Depression hit
in 1929.
The working masses
were angry again
and Hitler's promises
gained traction.
Fascism was now
taking root in Germany.
-[Speaking German]
[ Suspenseful music plays ]
[ Cheering and applause ]
-So Hitler promised
jobs, [chuckle] jobs,
jobs to everybody
and, of course,
people needed jobs.
That was exactly
what they wanted to hear.
-Hitler promised the people
everything,
everything they wanted.
He promised them
a bright future.
He promised them work.
He promised them Lebensraum,
living space.
-Hitler was a powerful,
mesmerizing speaker.
-[Speaking German]
-People were taken
by Hitler's speech,
not so much by the beauty
of his arguments
but by his sheer fanaticism,
by his anger, by his rage,
and his repetitive rhetoric
and people, eyewitness accounts,
describe it as a barbaric,
primitive effect.
-What he was telling people
was a disaster,
but the performance he delivered
was a big, artistic show.
-He repeated a lie endlessly
and he didn't make it
a small lie.
He made it a big lie
and he kept hammering it
into their heads.
He also dumbed it down
as much as possible.
-His simplistic promises
were made to order
for his political base...
[ Cheering and applause ]
...more prosperity
and expanded borders
for more room in which to live,
or Lebensraum.
-[Speaking German]
-Fascism is perceived
as a strong movement
with simple answers
for complicated problems.
-Giving simple answers
and simple solutions,
that's exactly
what people wanted to hear
because that gave them the hope
that it will change soon;
not in 10 years, but now.
-He blamed Germany's problems
on scapegoats,
like Jews and communists.
Fears that the communist
revolution in Russia
would spread to Germany,
people were singing,
"Deutschland,
Deutschland ueber alles,"
"Germany, Germany above all,
above all the world,"
and they trusted Hitler
to take them there.
In 1932, the Nazi Party won only
about a third of the seats
in Parliament,
but Hitler managed
to take power.
He put together
a ruling coalition,
partnering with conventional
conservative politicians
who figured
they could control him.
After struggling to find
an alternative,
German President von Hindenburg
reluctantly appointed Hitler
chancellor in January 1933.
It was the only way
he could form a government
with a parliamentary majority.
Suddenly, Adolf Hitler was
heading a new German government.
Then, just a few weeks
into Hitler's rule,
under mysterious circumstances,
[ Flames crackling ]
there was a fire in Germany's
parliament building,
or Reichstag.
♪♪
A disaster like this,
which many historians believe
was actually the work
of Hitler's people,
is an answer to an aspiring
dictator's prayer.
With this national-
security emergency,
Hitler now had his excuse
to crush the communists,
silence moderates,
and create laws
giving him sweeping new powers.
Suddenly, in Germany,
there was no middle ground.
You were either with Hitler
or against him.
Hitler followed a playbook
that has inspired autocrats,
left and right, ever since.
Hitler proceeded
to consolidate his power
in the most ruthless ways.
He locked up the few
courageous politicians
who voted against him
and established
his total control
of the German government.
This poignant memorial
remembers those
who tried to resist
Hitler's power grab.
The German equivalent
of congressmen and senators,
they were quickly silenced.
You can see the dates
they were arrested,
sent to concentration camps,
and executed.
-I think the rise of Hitler
was done
with a mix of two things.
One is fascination
and the other is terror,
so, basically,
give people something
that they can believe in
by false promises.
The other thing is:
whoever does not fit in
will get beaten up
or put in prison or killed.
-A lot of the Third Reich
was actually based on violence
or at least the implied
threat of violence.
-There was a private army
Hitler had.
He had terror on the streets.
He had a big protection
of his political movement.
-And, of course, people knew
about concentration camps
in Germany for political enemies
and they were supposed to know
so they would keep
their mouths shut.
-Hitler had hijacked
Germany's democracy.
He was given
extraordinary powers
to temporarily suspend
democratic procedures
in order to get things done.
A dictator now in charge
of a mighty industrial nation,
Hitler and his team begin
to lay out his plan
for Germany and the world.
♪♪
Inheriting a Germany economy
suffering from the
Great Depression,
including an unemployment rate
of nearly 30%,
Hitler quickly turned
to improving the economy.
He accelerated the previous
government's policy
of large public works
and infrastructure projects
financed with deficit spending.
As a result, employment
increased dramatically
from 1933 to 1936.
-The Autobahn is probably
the best-known example,
the highway-construction
program of Adolf Hitler
that gave a lot of jobs
to people.
-The Autobahn was actually
invented before the Nazis,
one or two years before that,
but the Nazis accelerated
the construction of the Autobahn
to bring Germany
to a more modern age.
-We didn't have the money.
It was all financed on credits
on a future war.
-Of course, these Autobahn
were empty because,
until the war started, hardly
anybody could afford the cars.
♪♪
-Despite this new focus on jobs
and the German worker,
the Nazis had no use
for labor unions.
-Well, fascism basically hates
everything communist,
or Bolshevik, as they called it,
so, they would not like
trade unions.
They were not within the frame
of the fascist movement.
-And so what the Nazis did,
one year into their government,
they declared May Day
a holiday for the first time.
The unions celebrated
and, the next day,
when they were hung over,
more or less,
they smashed the unions.
-They replaced
the now-abolished unions
with the Nazi Party-controlled
German Labor Front,
which all workers had to join.
-[Speaking German]
-Hitler spent large amounts
of state money
on a comprehensive
state welfare program
called the National Socialist
People's Welfare.
Despite having the term
"socialist" in the party name,
Hitler was a friend of industry.
He privatized many industries
and the corporations
that had supported his candidacy
continued to back him.
-Corporations would support
the Nazi government of Germany
because it was good
for their profits.
-I think, you know,
bigger corporations,
the steel industry, for example,
in Germany as a big one,
they were afraid
of communism, for sure,
but they also actually
supported Hitler
because it was easier for them
to kind of make their business
within a stable government.
-One German industry that
boomed was the auto industry
and one of the world's
most famous cars
was born during the Nazi era.
-The VW was the idea
that it's an affordable car
for everybody, that then
would fill these Autobahn in.
[ Fanfare plays ]
-With all this economic activity
and employment,
Hitler reenergized Germany.
-[Speaking German]
[ Triumphant music plays ]
♪♪
[ Crowd chanting in German ]
-Much of Germany was swept up
in Hitler's charismatic vision
and the country
had a common purpose.
-[Chanting in German]
Everywhere he went,
crowds adored him.
Women swooned
when his car drove by.
[ Suspenseful music plays ]
In clubs called
the Hitler Youth,
boys and girls pledged
their allegiance to him.
-A little boy in 1945,
when he looked at Hitler,
he would see a godlike person.
He was somebody who would
elevate the German people,
who would elevate
the people of this boy,
to become the perfect master
race, running the planet.
-Hitler became known
by a new title,
which meant he was their leader:
their Fuehrer.
-He coined himself the phrase
the Fuehrer, the Leader,
as also establishing himself
as a bit of a new god
for Germany,
so he was not part
of democracy anymore;
he was a godlike figure.
-A fascist system
needs a Fuehrer.
It's the big hero.
It's a saint.
It's the one-and-only
people believe in.
-He has the vision for everybody
and the others will follow him.
-[Speaking German]
-[Responding in German]
-Fascists believed,
in a fascist system,
you can unite everybody
that believes in the system
and it will be a strong,
a powerful, system
that can achieve
complicated goals.
-The idea about fascism is
to have a big community
that all operates
exactly the same way
and to have a common opinion
that covers all.
-There was one phrase
that was called,
"Ein Volk, ein Reich,
ein Fuehrer,"
"One people, one empire,
one leader," full stop.
-There was a dark side
to all this Nazi conformity:
Individuality was lost.
-Individualism doesn't even
exist in fascism.
It doesn't exist in any aspect.
It doesn't exist in art.
It doesn't exist in lectures
at university.
It doesn't exist
in newspapers and press.
-Individuality was something
that was deemed unfit
for a German, basically,
so what mattered was
the Volksgemeinschaft,
the society,
the common denominator
of the German people.
-All people who tried
to make it any different --
in their private life,
in their professions,
in the way
to express their opinions --
they all had to be stopped.
-For the Nazis,
the city that most embodied
their sense of national unity
was Nuernberg.
Nuernberg, so steeped
in German history,
was nicknamed the "most German
of German cities."
That's one reason it was
a favorite of Hitler's
to showcase his nationalist
pomp and pageantry,
to inspire all of Germany
to get onboard.
[ Cacophony of chanting ]
There were three German
 reichs, or empires.
The first was medieval.
It was called
the Holy Roman Empire.
In fact, the emperor's castle
still towers above Nuernberg.
The Second Reich
was 19th-century:
the creation of the modern
German state by Prussia
under the leadership
of Bismarck.
And it was here in Nuernberg
that Hitler declared
the Third Reich,
a powerful German empire
to last 1,000 years.
When Hitler took power,
he made Nuernberg's
Zeppelin Field
the site of his enormous
Nazi Party rallies.
Today, the stark remains
of this massive gathering place
are thought-provoking.
German tour guide
Thomas Schmechtig
is joining me for some insight.
-Sieg Heil!
-For several years, increasingly
elaborate celebrations
of Nazi culture, ideology,
and power took place right here.
Fascist dictators understood the
propaganda power of big rallies
where they can manufacture
the adoration of their people,
bask in it,
and then broadcast it
to the rest of the population,
as Hitler said,
"Turning the little man
into part of a great dragon."
-[Speaking German]
-[Responding in German]
-Imagine Hitler stepping out
of that door,
overlooking the masses,
200,000 people being lined up.
He used propaganda
to create a new community.
In fact, we even have
a word for it.
It's called Volksgemeinschaft.
-Inspirational images
from Leni Riefenstahl's
propaganda movie
"Triumph of the Will"
were filmed at the 1934
Nuernberg rallies
and then shown in theaters
and schoolrooms
throughout the country.
The goal?
To bring a visual celebration
of the power of the Nazi state
to all 70 million Germans.
Nuernberg shows
the enormous power
of fascism's secret weapon:
propaganda.
-The media in Nazi Germany were
controlled by the government,
by the Ministry for Propaganda
and Enlightenment in Berlin,
headed by Joseph Goebbels,
so everything
that was distributed
to the people through the media
was controlled from Berlin.
-Goebbels used every means
available to him.
Along with the new
and powerful media of movies,
he used traditional formats,
such as newspapers,
posters,
and even postcards,
And perhaps
the most far-reaching
was the new medium of radio.
-Hitler was one
of the earlier politicians
to really make use
of a mass media
that was just coming on,
which was the radio,
so every German had
in the household
the Volksempfaenger,
People's Radio,
so his speeches would get into
every German's living room,
basically.
-Within something like
six years,
the number of radios in Germany
went from 4 million
to 17 million,
so they could really reach
almost every household,
and people listened to the radio
differently than they do today.
If there was an important
radio report,
it wouldn't just be
two people doing housework
or one person doing
housework next to it.
You would have the entire
family there,
maybe the neighbors, if they
couldn't yet afford a radio.
So those were special events
that appealed
to the family community,
that would appeal
to the neighbors,
so you would reach
a lot of people
through only one medium.
-Looming over a now-peaceful
lake in Nuernberg
is another remnant of the
dictator's megalomania:
his huge, yet unfinished,
Nazi Congress Hall.
Hitler, who believed he
would create
a new civilization based
upon fascist values,
modeled this building after the
Ancient Roman Colosseum,
but, even more colossal.
-Imagine 50,000 leading Nazis
in here, one-third higher,
covered by a roof,
 a window inside the ceiling.
Sunshine would have fallen down
to the podium once a year,
one speech, of Adolf Hitler.
-Another stage set
for this propaganda show
was Hitler's mountain-capping
Eagle's Nest.
This alpine getaway just south
of Munich, in Berchtesgaden,
was used
to soften Hitler's image
against a majestic,
almost theatrical, backdrop.
[ Tranquil tune plays ]
His visits were lovingly filmed
to show him
as the embodiment of all
that was good about Germany:
healthy, vigorous, respectable,
everyone's favorite uncle.
Set in the scenic foothills
of the Alps,
it was built in 1938
as a mountain retreat
for Hitler and his guests.
A stone tunnel crafted
with fascist precision
leads to Hitler's
plush elevator,
which still whisks
visitors to the top.
Because it was
in this corner of Bavaria
that Hitler claimed
to be inspired
and laid out his dark vision,
some called Berchtesgaden
the cradle of the Third Reich.
♪♪
By the mid-1930s,
fascism was well-established
in two of Europe's
leading nations:
Germany and Italy.
Germany was booming and building
up its massive military,
blatantly breaking
the Treaty of Versailles,
which ended World War I.
The ideology of fascism
was spreading
and the rest of the world
was viewing it with alarm.
[ Suspenseful music plays ]
Expansionism
was a key tenet of fascism.
Germany first annexed
neighboring Austria; then,
the German-speaking region of
Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland;
followed, shortly after that,
by the rest of the country.
Italy, under Mussolini,
invaded Ethiopia and Albania.
In 1939, Hitler and Mussolini
signed a treaty,
creating what they called
the Pact of Steel.
Further west, Spain and Portugal
were also flirting with fascism.
[ Suspenseful march plays ]
Spain,
like other nations of the time,
was making
the awkward transition
from 19th-century monarchy
to 20th-century democracy.
By the 1930s, it was governed
by a modern, but fragile,
democracy.
By 1936, the Spanish people
had become extremely polarized
[ Cheering and whistling ]
as the old guard of royalty,
military, and industry
pushed back.
Representing
this reactionary faction,
a military strongman,
General Francisco Franco,
invaded Spain
from Spanish Morocco.
Using colonial troops
and borrowed Italian planes,
he attempted a coup d'état.
Like Mussolini and Hitler,
Franco vowed a return to order
and to restore Spanish power
and national pride,
but the democratically elected
government fought back
[ Rapid gunfire ]
and the nation descended
into a bloody civil war.
[ Explosion ]
Conservatives under Franco
fought the liberal
democratic government.
It was a brutal war
between classes and ideologies,
dividing both villages
 and families.
In three years of fighting,
[ Explosion ]
hundreds of thousands
of Spaniards died.
Franco used predictable
strongman tactics,
including intimidation
by police and the military.
Hitler and Mussolini,
who mistakenly believed
Franco would join
their fascist alliance,
threw gas on the fire.
[ Blasting ]
♪♪
One of the most tragic episodes
of this tragic war
was in Guérnica,
a workaday town in the Basque
region of Northern Spain.
It was here that the world
first witnessed
the terrible power
of the fascist state,
a prelude to World War II.
Guérnica was the capital
of an independent-minded
Basque community
that stood up to Franco.
-iAviación! iAviación!
-To break their spirit,
Franco enlisted the help
of Germany's Air Force
and the defiant town was
decimated in the world's first
[ Bombs whistling ]
saturation aerial bombardment.
♪♪
♪♪
The Spanish artist Pablo Picasso
heard the shocking news
and immediately set to work
sketching the destruction
as he imagined it.
In a matter of weeks, he wove
these bomb-shattered shards
into a large mural called
Guérnica.
In Picasso's masterpiece,
a woman looks to the sky.
Horses scream.
A soldier falls,
body shattered, sword broken.
A wounded woman flees
a burning house.
A bull, symbol of Spain,
ponders it all,
watching over a mother
and her dead baby,
[ Melancholy tune plays ]
a modern Pietà.
Picasso's painting
put a human face
on the horror of war
and threw a stark light
on the brutality
of Franco and Hitler.
To this day, Guérnica remains
 the iconic depiction
of fascist crimes
against humanity.
Hitler may have stoked
Germany's economy
and put people back to work,
but it was becoming clear that,
whatever benefits fascism
might bring
to its political base,
it had a darker side,
and it came at a huge cost.
Despite its veneer
of respectability
and its popularity
among ordinary people,
the thriving fascist state
relied on increasingly
brutal repression.
Hitler continued
his ruthless creation
of a totalitarian
fascist state.
The free press was silenced,
as were intellectuals
and universities.
-The Nazis' approach
to intellectuals
was to dismiss them.
They played no role.
A good way to describe it is
if you compare
Nazis and communists.
A communist needs
an enormous bookshelf.
He needs to start
with Marx and Engels.
He goes through Lenin.
There's dozens of books,
up until the present day.
The Nazi's bookshelf
has "Mein Kampf,"
and that is basically it.
-The Nazi approach to art
was the same.
Only one style was acceptable.
-The Nazis', or Hitler's,
approach to art
was quite simple.
Their idea of art was to be
as naturalistic as possible,
basically, blond, blue-eyed
people doing fieldwork.
When you look at these pictures,
you see the perfect
German family,
according to the Nazis.
Everybody is tall,
blond, blue-eyed,
beautiful, great shape,
and this is the idealized
version of the German people.
-Anything else that
would question society
or bring society forward,
which art is
quite well able to do,
would just be deemed like
unnatural;
or un-German, undeutsch.
-What they did not like
was complicated modern art,
what they called degenerate art.
That is something
that they either destroyed,
sold off to make some money,
or kept under wraps.
-In May 1933,
Hitler was chancellor
for just a couple of months.
We had the burning of books in
Berlin, in Muenchen, everywhere.
-Books that caused people
to question the Nazi agenda
were forbidden
and publicly burned with delight
by Hitler's supporters.
-The books of left-wingers,
psychologists.
For some reason,
the Nazis hated psychology.
Books by Jewish writers,
of course,
they would be publicly burned
in big ceremonies.
-If you have some books,
titles of those books
that were burned
the night before,
and you invite some people,
they can argue against you
because you have those books
in your private library
and even your roommate
has an argument against you.
You do not trust
in anybody any longer,
after the burning of books.
One famous German writer
and author said,
"Once you're burning books,
very soon, you're going
to burn people."
-Artifacts and posters
illustrate the Nazi notion
of a master race.
Anyone who didn't fit
into their model
could be viewed
as an enemy of the state
and sent to concentration camps.
The Nazis required those
they imprisoned to wear badges
that identified their status:
political traitor; lawbreaker;
foreigner; homosexual;
and a catch-all,
asocial:
anyone who would not conform.
A special badge,
the yellow Star of David,
went to Hitler's lowest
of the low: the Jews.
-The Nazis believed
that the German people
were the master race:
the toughest, the strongest,
the bravest, the smartest.
They said, "We should be
running the planet.
We just can't do it
because this conspiracy,
the Jewish World Conspiracy,
is in the way,
and, without them,
if we deal with that conspiracy,
then we will achieve
our rightful status again."
-[Chanting in German]
-The Nazis started putting
their anti-Semitic ideas
into action
as early as April of 1933
when they organized a boycott
of Jewish businesses.
-He specifically blamed
one group, the Jewish people,
for ruining things
for everybody else.
[ Melancholy tune plays ]
-For him, it was clear:
His scapegoat was the Jews.
They were the source of all evil
in Germany and in the world,
and he wanted to kind of
get rid of that evil
and that's what he worked for.
-Then, in November of 1938,
the Nazis led a pogrom
against Jews throughout Germany.
During Kristallnacht, or the
Night of the Broken Glass,
as it was called,
Jewish homes, hospitals,
and schools were ransacked.
7,000 Jewish businesses
were damaged or destroyed
and over 1,000 synagogues
were burned
and 30,000 Jews were arrested
and put in concentration camps.
This was a turning point
from earlier
economic, political,
and social persecution
to physical beatings,
incarceration, and even murder.
It was the beginning
of Hitler's Final Solution.
Today, Berlin's
 Topography of Terror exhibit
stands on the rubble
of what was once
the most feared address
in Berlin:
the headquarters
of the Gestapo secret police
and the elite SS force.
It was from here
that government employees
managed the Nazi state
and dispassionately coordinated
its most ruthless activities.
The efficient
and heartless bureaucracy
behind Hitler's crimes
gave rise to the expression
"the banality of evil."
♪♪
Fascism continued to spread
and its militarism
threatened peace in Europe.
While the whole world
had gotten a preview
of the horrors
of modern warfare in Spain,
that was just the beginning.
[ Suspenseful music plays ]
In 1939, Germany invaded Poland
and World War II began.
The military might of Germany
seemed unstoppable.
Employing their fast,
lightning-war technique,
called Blitzkrieg,
Hitler's mighty tanks
and high-tech air force,
the Luftwaffe,
swept across Europe.
[ Explosion ]
♪♪
France fell quickly
and, suddenly,
Hitler was playing tourist
at the Eiffel Tower.
Soon, nearly all
of the continent was
under direct or indirect
fascist rule.
With their final victory
seemingly inevitable,
the Nazis tightened the screws
within their own society.
The evils of fascism
were incremental.
As its small evils
became big evils,
German society managed to be
oblivious to its own atrocities.
At first, concentration
camps contained
people who didn't conform.
Then, they became
forced-labor camps.
Eventually, the Nazis
built death camps,
which were located
outside of Germany
and therefore farther
from public view.
With what the Nazis called
the Final Solution,
the entire Jewish population
was targeted for extermination.
In total, approximately
6 million Jews died
[ Melancholy tune plays ]
from Nazi persecution.
2.7 million of those died
in death camps.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Poland,
was the biggest,
and most notorious,
concentration camp
in the Nazi system.
Seeing the camp
can be difficult,
but Auschwitz survivors
want tourists to come here,
to try to appreciate the scale
and the monstrosity of the place
in human terms,
in hopes that this horror,
known as the Holocaust,
will never be forgotten.
♪♪
As they entered
these work camps,
prisoners were greeted
with a sign over the entrance:
"Arbeit macht frei,"
"Work makes you free,"
a cynical lie.
Once inside, inmates were
either worked to death
or executed.
New arrivals were sorted
into two categories:
those who would be sent to the
gas chambers immediately;
and those who could work would
live, at least a little longer.
Halls are lined
with photographs of victims,
each marked with dates
of arrival and dates of death.
Inmates rarely survived
more than a couple of months.
Up to 1,000 people,
each tattooed with an ID number,
were packed into each
of these buildings.
The gas chambers,
where the mass killing was done,
were disguised as showers.
People were given hooks
to hang their clothes on,
conned into thinking
they were coming back.
The Nazis didn't want a panic.
Then, the inmates piled
into the shower room.
In this facility,
the Nazis gassed and cremated
over 4,000 people per day.
♪♪
To finally defeat fascism,
the alliance
of Hitler and Mussolini,
it took a massive and heroic
Allied effort,
led by Britain,
America, and the Soviet Union.
Germany had seemed invincible...
[ Suspenseful music plays ]
[ Blast ]
[ Rapid gunfire ]
...but, after his
ill-fated decision
[ Blast ]
to invade the Soviet Union,
Hitler was on his heels and the
tide was beginning to turn.
[ Smattering of gunfire ]
[ Explosions ]
[ Rapid gunfire ]
From the frozen Eastern Front,
the Soviet Red Army
began closing in on Germany.
From Britain, Allied planes
bombed German cities.
[ Bombs whistling ]
American troops swept up
from the South, through Italy.
♪♪
[ Cheering ]
Italian partisans overthrew
their fascist government,
switched sides,
and joined the Allies.
[ Gunshots ]
Defeating a totalitarian society
like fascist Germany
took total war,
and victory came at great cost.
To remember the final
chapter of this story,
we visit Normandy, in France.
On June 6, 1944,
called D-Day,
the Allies landed on the beaches
of Northern France
and began fighting
their way to Berlin.
D-Day marked the biggest
amphibious invasion in history.
After a furious
and bloody battle,
they established, first,
a beachhead;
then, a makeshift harbor;
and the long battle
to reach Berlin was underway.
The war raged on,
even after it was clear
that Germany would lose.
Death camps sped up
the mass murder.
Millions of German civilians,
as if hypnotized,
continued to support
their Fuehrer,
and great German cities,
like Hamburg and Dresden,
were destroyed under massive
aerial bombardments,
with huge civilian losses,
as the Allies attempted
to break the spirit
of the German people,
who fueled the Nazi war machine.
Germany was overwhelmed
as the combined
military might of the Allies
closed in on the Third Reich...
[ Blasting ]
...from the west,
[ Blast ]
[ Blast ]
south,
and east.
[ Rapid gunfire ]
Finally, the Nazi
capital of Berlin
was liberated by Soviet troops.
[ Cheering ]
-And both great fascist
commanders met gruesome ends.
In Italy, angry citizens turned
on their dictator with fury,
executing Mussolini
by firing squad,
then hanging his body
upside-down for all to see.
And Hitler finished his life
here in Berlin,
deep underground,
in a bunker below my feet.
With his capital
smoldering in ruins,
the dictator committed suicide.
Finally, in the spring of 1945,
the war in Europe ended.
[ Melancholy tune plays ]
The death toll was staggering.
In addition to 6 million Jews,
the Nazis killed hundreds
of thousands
of so-called undesirables:
over a million political
and religious prisoners;
and nearly 9 million
Soviet and Polish citizens.
♪♪
With fascism defeated, many
of its leaders and supporters
had to account for their deeds.
In Italy,
there were violent reprisals
against former fascists,
but few formal trials.
In Germany, Nazi criminals
had to face trial.
The most famous were
the Nuernberg Trials,
where 22 major Nazi criminals
had to face justice
from the Allied powers.
♪♪
Europe's experiment with fascism
left the continent devastated,
with entire societies
needing to be rebuilt.
Germany had to be reconstructed,
inside and out.
Italy was left
bloodied and weak.
♪♪
While Spain stayed
out of the war
and its dictator, Franco,
would remain in power
for the next decades,
it also paid dearly,
left isolated from the world
community and behind the times.
♪♪
The sweeping impact of fascism
can be felt to this day
in the many memorials
across Europe
that remind us
of those horrific years.
Its felt in the German
concentration camp memorials.
♪♪
They make us pause
and attempt to comprehend
the unthinkable numbers.
The Anne Frank House
in Amsterdam
humanizes the horror
of the Holocaust,
through the story of just one
of its 6 million victims.
At the D-Day memorials
in Northern France,
we try to appreciate
the sacrifice it took
to defeat the hateful ideology
and reestablish freedom.
In Spain near Madrid,
a towering granite cross marks
the Valley of the Fallen.
Originally famous as the site
of Francisco Franco's tomb,
today, it's considered
a memorial
to all the victims of Spain's
devastating Civil War.
In Berlin, the memorial
to the murdered Jews of Europe
is a touching
and evocative field
of gravestone-like pillars.
It's designed
to cause people to think
and to ponder this horrible
chapter in human history.
♪♪
A common refrain at many
of these memorials is
"Never Again,"
but, even today,
in well-established democracies
throughout the West,
societies are facing many
of the same emotions,
frustrations, and inequities
that, a century ago,
opened the door
to fascism in Europe.
-If I ask myself,
"Could it happen again?"
I would say no, but,
it has happened in Germany,
[ Suspenseful music plays ]
and it might happen again.
-So if you bring all
of these elements together:
a moment of crisis,
a strong leader
who knows how to take
advantage of the fear,
and you don't have
a really true press,
where there's no exchange
of opinions,
I think there's a possibility
for these things
to happen again.
-Fascism happened here
in Germany,
the center of civilization,
in the land of Beethoven,
Goethe, and Schiller,
and, if it could have
happened here,
it can happen anywhere
in the world.
-Today, Germany
deals responsibly
with the legacy of pain
it brought Europe.
Germany knows the importance
of a well-informed electorate.
Every schoolchild learns
of the Holocaust
with a visit
to a concentration camp
and Nazi documentation centers
in major cities tell the story.
It's all part
of an educational program
to teach how fascism
took hold here
and how it led to some of the
worst horrors in history.
-In Germany,
we definitely believe
that education is one
of the main ways
to make sure that something
like this will not be repeated.
-Because, if you know
what mechanisms were working
and what mechanisms
of economy and politics
were at play
in the 1920s and '30s,
then you can see
what is happening today
and try to prevent it.
-Education is everything.
Even for there to be
an electorate
that is capable
of thinking independently,
you need that electorate
to be educated.
-Focus on the education system;
make citizen
more than consumers;
and, very importantly, having
media that are not biased,
independent information.
-But perhaps most important is
the preservation of government
by the constitution
and the rule of law
and not by the dictates
of a charismatic,
all-powerful leader.
-When there's great fear
of the future,
where what people have
feels threatened
and they're afraid to lose it,
then it's easy for populism
to come into play,
and it's easy for leaders
who present themselves
as interpreters of that
to take hold.
-One of the things
that you can do
to make sure that something
like this will not happen here
or in other countries is not
trust people that promise you
very easy answers
for very complicated problems.
It never works.
-Democracy is fragile and it
should not be taken for granted,
so, to defend it,
I think, is important.
I think we can learn not
to follow leaders into the abyss
and to maintain critical,
independent thinking.
-As we've seen through the story
of fascism in Europe,
charismatic leaders rose
to power
through the democratic
process and, then,
seized extraconstitutional power
by unlawful means.
When citizens allowed leaders
to do this,
individual freedoms and rights
soon fell by the wayside
and democracy was lost.
While democracy was restored
to western Europe,
it easily could've
been lost forever
and the cost was
millions of lives.
As history continues
to unfold around us today,
[ Chanting and whistling ]
it's important to remember
that freedom and democracy
are not guaranteed.
We are all participants
and we are all responsible.
The story of fascism in Europe
has taught us
that strong
and charismatic leaders
can capitalize on fear
to lead a society astray.
Democracy is fragile.
It requires a vigilant
and engaged populace
and, if you take freedom
for granted, you can lose it.
Thanks for joining us.
I'm Rick Steves.
Until next time,
travel thoughtfully.
♪♪
