Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
HITLER’S FORMIDABLE GRAND PLANS
Tune in from 7pm tonight and tomorrow evening on theYesterday Channel to discover some remarkable insights into the thinking behind Adolf Hitler’s plans to change the face of Europe, and his eventual downfall at the hands of British Intelligence
He was one of the most notorious figures of the 20th century, with a brutal determination to rid Europe of the multi-ethnic communities he despised. Hitler’s far-right views and his haunting legacy are well known, but this weekend, the Yesterday Channel is screening a number of compelling, in-depth documentaries that offer revealing insight into the character and strategies of the Nazi leader.
HITLER’S CHAMPIONS
Though the Führer was not a sports fan, he did come to recognise its value in attempting to prove the superiority of Germany under the Third Reich. ‘There is just one goal for sports,’ said Joseph Goebbels, and that was, ‘forging the German character.’
This fascinating film tells the stories of the greatest German athletes – gymnasts, mountaineers, pilots, boxers and more – whose success was a critical matter of national pride to the Nazi regime under Hitler’s rule. As soon as he came to power, he began to pervert sporting and Olympic values into a tool for building the ‘new man’, and was prepared to do whatever it took to demonstrate his mantra of ‘faster, higher, stronger’ to the world.
The 1936 Berlin Olym were the culmination of Germany’s efforts to display sporting prowess, showcasing power in the athletics field and sports arenas and, in Hitler’s eyes, way beyond the medal winners’ podiums.
HITLER’S OLYMPICS
Next month marks the 80th anniversary of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels convinced his leader that it would be an opportunity to advance the Nazi cause domestically and outside Germany, but soon controversy erupted over the exclusion of Jewish athletes from the German team and many nations called for a boycott.
After much negotiation, 51 countries took part and the US fielded a team including five Jews and 19 African Americans – one of them, Jesse Owens. With host broadcasters and journalists referring to him as ‘the negro Owens’, he went on to dominate the Games, winning four gold medals, setting a world record in the long jump and helping to set one as part of the US 400-metre relay team.
This revelatory documentary features first-hand accounts of ‘Hitler’s Olympics’ from the late Royal Navy test pilot Captain Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown, who was taken to the 1936 Games by his father.
HITLER’S SPACE ROCKET
Discover the story of the infamous V2 weapons, the fabled secret armoury that Hitler boasted about. They were built by a group of ientists and a workforce shrouded ecrecy on a remote island in the altic, and he believed they could win the war for the Nazis. The 46ft-long V2 was the world’s first long-range ballistic missile, carrying a ton of high explosive, and capable of ravelling at such speed – 386mph – that it couldn’t be detected. It could launch from the Continent to reach London in under five minutes, meaning the first Londoners knew about the V2 was when it exploded with catastrophic impact on their streets.
In all, more than 5,000 V2s were launched, but only 1,100 reached Britain, though with devastating impact. The destruction of central London was so severe that the British government fed German intelligence the information that they had moved their headquarters to Dulwich in southeast London. It had the desired effect: the Germans changed the direction of their V2 attacks and central London received far fewer hits. But Hitler remained resolute in his mission, forcing Churchill’s intelligence staff to pursue smarter strategies to outwit the Führer.
THE CODEBREAKER WHO HACKED HITLER
When Gordon Welchman was born near Bristol in 1906, Hitler was dreaming of moving to Vienna and becoming an artist. Welchman, the son of a country vicar, grew up to become a brilliant mathematician who, just before the Second World War broke out, was one of four early recruits, including Alan Turing, invited to join the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. As head of Hut Six, he worked closely with Turing and their colleagues to develop the Enigma codebreaker, which went on to change the course of the war.
Welchman died in 1985, having moved to the USA after the war and begun work as a ‘secure communications’ consultant to the US military. However, his security clearance was revoked in 1982 on the publication of an account of his time at Bletchley Park, and he became an outcast in the free world he had helped to build.
Only in the last few years has Welchman’s remarkable contribution to the war effort come to light. This insightful documentary tells his story through a series of recently released interviews with co-workers and letters from the ‘forgotten genius of Bletchley Park’ himself. Saturday and Sunday from 7pm