The Nazis would later try to rewrite history to say that Hitler became Chancellor simply because it was his destiny, but in reality, Hitler had been helped by economic circumstance and the support and miscalculation of others.

As the new century approaches, one historical question more than any other demands an answer.

How could a cultured nation at the heart of Europe be responsible for acts so heinous that they have altered concepts of what man is capable of.

How could the Nazis come to be? This series is the definitive television history of the rise and fall of the Nazis.

Part 1 – Helped Into Power

How was it possible that a cultured nation at the heart of Europe ever allowed Hitler and the Nazi party to come to power?

Part 2 – Chaos and Consent

If the Germans are famous for one quality it is efficiency. Yet the Nazi administration of Germany during the 1930’s was characterized by radical chaos.

Part 3 – The Wrong War

Hitler admired one country more than any other – Great Britain. His favourite film was the Bengal lancers which told the story of the British in India. In Mienkampf he spoke of expanding German territory tot he East. How was it possible then that in 1939 he ended up fighting the one country that he had started out wanting as an ally, Great Britain, and allied to the one country he had intended to take land from, Russia?

Part 4 – The Wild East

Poland was to become the epicentre of Nazi brutality; the place were Nazism achieved its purest and most bestial form. This is the story of the first two years of the Nazi occupation of Poland and the vicious power battles between the Nazi barons.

Part 5 – The Road to Treblinka

How was it possible that the holocaust ever happened? With access to extraordinary new material from Lithuania including an interview with a member of the Nazi killing squads this programme examines how the Nazi could commit acts which have caused estimates of how low human can sink for ever to be altered.

Part 6 – Fighting to the End

In the summer of 1943 the Italians, seeing which way the war was going, voted Mussolini out of office declared the war over. Why couldn’t the Germans do the same? Why did it take the near total destruction of their country for them to give in?