Hitlers Imperium

From airplane engines to rockets to new types of guns, the Nazis innovated in many military areas. At first it was to equip the army for Hitler's campaigns, and then, as the war went on, they invented bombs and cannons in order to defend the fatherland from the Allies.

As the Soviet Army pushes the Nazis out of Poland, they discover a massive city of a thousand buildings that was unknown to the Allies, and using the latest science, experts reveal how Hitler was able to keep this sinister place hidden for so long.

Since the early 1980s popular German TV journalist and presenter Guido Knopp has unearthed a wealth of new material about the leading figures of the Third Reich. Subsequent to the successful series "Hitler - A Profile" and "Hitler's Henchmen", Guido Knopp and his team continue this significant television analysis of the Nazi period with a series of the six most important German generals. He has spoken to countless contemporaries and eyewitnesses, relatives and friends of these men, and has been given access to documents that until now have been kept under lock and key.

As the Allies storm the beaches of Normandy, Hitler orders the return of the Das Reich, the infamous Panzer elite division best known for its mass murders in the Ukraine and in Belarus, based at that time in southwest of France. Its mission: to push the Allies back into the Atlantic and turn the tide of the conflict in favor of the Germans. The SS division, with 15,000 men and more than 200 tanks, faces relentless attacks from the Resistance as it moves north through France. Along the way, it conducts vicious reprisals and massacres of civilians (Oradour-sur-Glane, Tulle).

Created, ordered and led by Hitler, the state apparatus of Nazi Germany rigorously controlled all aspects of life in the Third Reich from cradle to grave. To maintain his iron grip on the German people through the ministries of his dictatorial government, Hitler surrounded himself with a small clique of fanatical, devoted acolytes. Men such as Heinrich Himmler, the much-feared chief of the Waffen-SS and organiser of the Holocaust, and Hermann Goering, the bombastic head of the Luftwaffe, wielded enormous power and held the fate of millions in their corrupt hands.