Hitler’s Bodyguard: How history’s most evil tyrant survived 25 years of terror
Directed by Alexander Kluge. $79.99. 13 episodes; 10 hours on 4 DVDs.
Between Hitler’s early days in Munich and the war’s opening, his security detail mushroomed from a few street thugs brawling at beer halls to tens of thousands of soldiers, paramilitary types, and secret police. Who were they? And what did they all do?
This surprising series, which originally aired on Discovery’s Military Channel, traces how the octopus-like security apparatus surrounding the führer grew, and in the process spawned the internecine turf wars and confused lines of authority typical of Nazi bureaucracy. Hitler’s Darwinian faith in the survival of the fittest was complemented by his self-protective tendency to divide power among his closest followers and observe the result.
The SS (shortened from Schutzstaffel, or protection squad) demonstrates that principle at work. It began in 1929 as a small group chosen from the ranks of the much larger and more powerful SA to guard the führer. Its adept and preternaturally ambitious leader, Heinrich Himmler, was soon building it into a fanatical power base. By 1934, when Hitler needed to crush the threat posed to his political power by SA leader Ernst Rohm and millions of followers, Himmler’s minions murdered Rohm and other SA barons on the Night of the Long Knives. The SS’s ascendance quickened; it would eventually total over a million men with tentacles reaching into all areas of Nazi power.
With fresh footage and intelligent commentary, this series tracks the most important of 40-something assassination attempts, examines Hitler’s transportation—including his beloved specially designed Mercedes—from a security perspective, and deconstructs daily life at his fortress-like retreats at the Wolf ’s Lair and Berchtesgaden. Its adept pacing, thematic variety, and insight leavened with ironies keep it compelling. Take the screw-ups due to competing layers of security—and why they almost didn’t matter: Hitler often said bodyguards couldn’t save him from a determined assassin, that his best protection was luck and randomness. So he religiously made and changed his itineraries on the fly. It left his bodyguards scrambling—sometimes literally. But it saved his life more than once.
Originally published in the June 2012 issue of World War II. To subscribe, click here.
