User Reviews

This is one of the best ever series on TV I have ever seen. If you want to know what really happened this is the one to watch. It's like "Nazism for Dummies". Not pretentious, not over academic and easily narrated with docudrama snippets with added "mini lectures" by historians. It really is compelling watching. The whole thing set to music that makes your hairs stand up. If there was a 12 stars this would get it.

A fascinating 3 part series that is very informative. Sadly it seems the lessons of Germany between 1930 and 1933 have not been learned. This show serves as a reminder to what happened after allowing democracy to crumble with no one there to stop it.

Fantastic 3 part docu-drama showing the political rise to power of Hitler and the nazi party. The experts are informative but not preachy and the cut scenes actually help with showing what happened rather than feeling like showboating. Would be 10/10 except for some unusual choices of experts in particular Ash Sarkar who has no connection to what the show is about.

A superb production,although I am left wondering a little what "expertise" Ash Sarkar brought to the table.

I really enjoyed this programme, despite the obvious subject matter. I did not know or had forgotten what actually happened in the lead up to Hitler being in power, so it was a very informative series and well done. The music was quite chilling in places and it made you think that had certain things happened or not happened, then the outcome could have been very different. Narrow opportunities that unfortunately did not happen and which could have saved many lives. It's hard sometimes, to see how things happened and how a lot of people had no moral compass, believing instead that what they were doing was right and in the interest of their country. Lessons that need to be carried into the future, no matter how many years have passed, to ensure that this never happens again, although there are countries around the world that are not so dissimilar in having a dictator in charge.

Even with a slow start and teathrical part of the docuseries sometimes being a bit too monotonic on a part 1 and sometimes unnecessary blurry, but I can loudly say Wow. Watched almost all documentaries on this subject, but this is something different. Easy to follow, but exceptionally detailed scenario, with great narrative. Commentary of multi-national expert historians along the docuseries makes it very dinamic. Spice of genuine footage from Nazi period overall and accurate theatrical recreation makes this docuseries very well balanced and stick to the screen for Nazi era history fans. Well done!

An informed look at Hitler's rise to power, and ultimately the rise of his party and Nazi Germany.

It's a little late to the party, its origins go back a little further than the point at which series one kicked off, initially seen as cranks, the party grew steadily, what was happening in the country at the time was so interesting, and helped explain the rise.

Some very valuable lessons in history to be learned from this series, sadly it feels as though those lessons have been forgotten, and history seems to be repeating itself, from small acorns, large Oak trees certainly do grow.

Truly informative, it of course focuses on Hitler, but you'll learn the fates, politics and power games of the main players, Himler, Goebbels, Speer etc.

It's a beautifully made series, superbly produced, the visuals truly do help tell the story, from original footage to reenactments, a lot of time and effort was put into making this look so good.

Each series focuses on a particular chapter, series two in particular was extraordinary, it'll be interesting to see where Series four goes, maybe looking at Germany's growth following its almost total destruction.

Very watchable, 8/10.

Unfortunately, the documentary starts 1930. To understand all the reasons for the "Rise of the Nazis" it should have started 12 years earlier. Even 'flashbacks' could have sufficed. But I did like the movie like approach.

True and relevant information is left out. Giving a very spin doctored version of how the Nazis rose to power

A much superior documentary is From the BBC The Nazis: A Warning from History by Laurence Rees. Released in 1997. Watch and compare the two. Notice how much they left out. The BBC also had Ian Kershaw, one of the greatest scholars on Hitler & WW2 help make the documnetary. In addition they also interviewed high ranking people in power, as well as normal people, who lived through that time period discuss what went on during that time.

The aftermath of World War I saw drastic political, cultural, economic, and social change across Europe. They are leaving quite a biit out on how Fascism rose in Germany. Just look at the Timeline of the Weimar Republic alone will demonstrate that this so called documentary, left out a lot of important relevant information out of the picture.

Example: The cooperation between the communist and Nazi parties in Germany to undermine social democracy must be one of the strangest and most extreme partnerships in politics. In the 1920s the Stalins leadership of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) declared that their main target was the Social Democratic Party (SPD). This is very important and ver relevant anmd cannot be dismissed in historical context.

Example See more here:" warhistoryonline. How Communists in Germany Allied with Nazis to Destroy Democracy

In addition to context, lookup the following events: The November Revolution of 1918 Bavarian Soviet Republic Alsace Soviet Republic Spartacus League

Also highly suggest reading or get the the audiobook of: The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933 by Thomas Childers (Author)

It wasn't just the Nazis trying to overthrow democracy during the Weimar Republic, but also the communists. This created political chaos, as there was constant fighting in the streets between all 3 with the NSDAP and KPD making temp alliances to go after the SPD who were in power. In addition there was also social & economic instability. Again To put things even in more context: Germany before WW1 was a cobbled together state divided by religion, regions, and classes. Rapid industrialization put its workers next door to artisans still in Guilds. Worse, the terrible post-WW1 reparations were not expected because propaganda kept the populace from knowing Germany was losing until the war was over. Then starvation killed a quarter million people and France occupied Germany's prized industrial Ruhr valley. Terror and instability reigned from 1919 to 1924 including assassinations on both ends of the political spectrum, enormous government debt, 9 cabinet changes, and (by 1932) frequent emergency powers decrees were commonplace.

This is the unfortunate story of how Hitler dealt with his troubles and restrains to become dictator in Germany.

It has a lot of detail from lawyers questioning the Dachau concentration camp to the convincing of President Hindenburg. I'm not sure we've dealt with all of these in high school history class (in Germany!), though frankly I may just have forgot.

It a nice way to remember those atrocious times and to see which hardships Hitler actually had to go through. Some problems of the German laws become quite clear that Hitler is able to find a gap in the regulations - in particular the unjustified power of the president back then. I found this quite weird: Hindenburg, not really a politician but rather a war hero, is given so much power over politics that he may not really understand that well. Consequences showed and well, that's why today's presidents in Germany have almost no power.

It's a decent documentary but the filming was a bit annoying from time to time. I'm not sure why they play the Moonshine Sonata all the time and I'm not sure what's the deal with these clapperboard scenes.

In particular, one expert was really upsetting me for some reason. His posture and speech pattern just really irritated me.

Nonetheless worth seeing to understand a piece of historic politics.

To call the Weimar Republic of 1918 to 1933 a "democracy" in the same way, say, the UK is a democracy is ludicrous.

For example in 1920, 12,000 soldiers occupied Berlin. Can we really claim that this would happen in a real democracy? Imagine thousands of soldiers in London with armed partisan gangs waging war on each other.

The fact is, when you look more closely at the actual events and surrounding societal problems in the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazi's seems inevitable.

Lest we forget the Nazis receive 33% of the vote in the elections of 1932.

But somehow this documentary makes it seem like they came out of nowhere and took over Germany through some sort of evil machinations when that wasn't the case at all.

I am a little disappointed with some of the Journalists, comments. Lacking real scholarship, in fact displaying a use of bias, even propaganda. The Rise of the Nazi's must be connected with the reparation exacted against Germany at Versailles in 1919. Also pre1900, when the Arts and Artists are attacked then the collapse of Society will not be long.

I've watched this series on the BBC twice now and am motivated to comment on it after learning its showing on PBS in the US. Back in 2017 the doyenne of US conservative writers George Will wrote an opinion in the Washington Post entitled 'The shady characters around Trump' and in particular looking at the hard right influences in his WH - such persons as Sebastian Gorka a Hungarian-American close to Hungarian PM Viktor Orban whose Fidez party has (and still is) dismantling all the checks and balances of a modern democratic state. Mr Will who is not given to hyperbole noted that what we are seeing now in parts of Europe and in the US is the rise of a philosophy that we thought had been defeated on the battlefield in 1945.

At the time in the US (2017) many thought Mr Will was a bit over the top but the Jan 6th violent attempt at take over of the US Congress and the subsequent total denial about it actually happening - despite tins of evidence- shows that this BBS/PBS series is very pertinent to today.

I note a number of comments on this set of comments attempting to justify Nazism.

The trendy camera work is poorly done and quite distracting. Camera switches incessantly between front view of speakers and side view, with no contextual need or reason. Makes it hard to follow the thread.

I'm being very generous to rate this "documentary" a 4 as my usual position is to rate any and all documentaries a 1 whenever they include innumerable recreations of historical events. It's my opinion that if you're going to employ actors, the use of costumes, and dressed sets that probably aren't the real locations for the events being portrayed anyway...then just make a goddamned fictional film already! Don't influence how the audience remembers history by having look-alikes stumble and bumble around whilst talking about them. And with regards to the re-enactments as portrayed in this particular series, they are trivial anyway: all we really get are shots of people sitting at desks, talking and walking around outside, answering telephones. If this crap had been omitted, this series could have said what it needed to say in 2 episodes instead of 3. But, if the point was to fill time and satisfy the contract for a 3 episode series, I suppose that explains their inclusion.

But, the history this series covers is too timely and important to totally dismiss, especially at this time in history as in many countries around the world (and yes, particularly the United States) the same ominous signs seem to be present so a reminder of the significance studying how the Nazi Party came to engulf and control the government of Germany and managed to subvert and fester within the democratic process in order to achieve total power is an invaluable lesson worth examing. There are, in fact, various quotes and observations stated about events eighty-odd years ago that could be applied verbatim to what's been occurring during the second decade of the 21st century.

Made at a crucial time in American and British democracy, this is the BBC and their media millionaire friends attempting to associate the Brexit vote and the Trump vote with the vote for Hitler.

After which, they scuttle back to their second homes and tax-avoiding accountants, all the time decrying the inequalities in society.

This is propaganda, not history. Any historians on this programme should be ashamed.

Missing many details of actual history. Typical british short sighted documentary that appears to have another motive, namely that in 2019 the world was headed to repeat history. Not true then, but true now.

What is left out is that the Nazi's were financially backed by Prescott Bush and Wall Street financiers.

What was most interesting is to see what the SA logo is made of: a lightning bolt and a pair of compasses. Look up their meaning and you will get a deeper insight into who was behind the Nazi's.

This series leaves out a lot of actual history and spins what it does include in bizarre ways. It seems to have an agenda, spinning events today as if they are similar to what has happened in the past. This attempt at rewriting history does no one any favors, as a misinformed population does not a good society make.

If you think your party and your ideas are better than others, you should be able to truthfully and honestly demonstrate that, not having to lie about your opponent to demonize them in the minds of others.

As far as the intimation that similar events are happening today, neither Britain or America have been destroyed and severely punished by a world war they started a decade before. That was Germany circa 1930. Second, Hitler was a Socialist and the Nazi party literally has the German word for Socialist in the name.

This doesn't mean there are no marauding groups of partisan, violent thugs. That would be Antifa, who I think are fairly compared to Hitler's Brownshirts and Mussolini's Blackshirts. But this series seems to not see actual comparative similarities between then and now.

If you are telling people your show is about history then there should be a factual basis for what you claim. Here that basis is mostly opinion, supposition and plain old false presentation.

This one's a shock to the system as far as documentary on nazis and world Wars are concerned. Dramatized, biased,made-up situations and dialogues, making-up situations which is clear to all concerned is just a second-guessing and not a fact written anywhere. Jumping of years for no reason at all and just felt like a school-play concised by the students themselves.

Being a war documentary fanatic,still completed the whole series and was left flabbergasted as to why this was difficult to make . This should've been hit out of the ball-park for a winner.

The panel of experts is a bit of a joke to which others have commented and their lack of factual knowledge is evident from the beginning. Their need or comical dramatics in less understood however!

There are some great documentaries on the same subject both from PBS and BBC and this one should be canned like the old film reels and buried somewhere along with the nazis!

BBC putting their own spin on history and pushing their centre left political agenda. Instead of examining the hard facts and having an intelligent, refreshing or credible debate on how the Nazi party managed to obtain and enforce such power.

This feels like a poor attempt to package some new information, and seeing as the BBC had already produced the brilliant "The Nazis: A Warning from History" I can't really see the point of this. It's not really a documentary, but not really a docudrama either as the reenactments are narrated and there's no dialogue. There's a lot of filler footage of reenactments where it would have been better to show actual footage or interviews with participants, but instead we get talking head historians & very little actual film of any of the principal subjects. It felt as though more time is spent introducing the historians than the actual historical figures - the first appearance of many of the figures involved are of the actors playing them, rather than photos or film of the actual person!

There is some new ground covered but I think the whole subject is covered in the much superior TNAWFH which has tons of archive film and a superb narration by Samuel West. Use your time to watch that instead.

Very good series covering the factual aspects of the period in great detail. However it could have been so much better were it not for the shameless promotion of some pointless commentators.

Often, as is the style with most BBC documentaries, there is an annoying repetition of detail we have just witnessed. There is an assumption that the viewer has no memory. Pointless waste of film time and quite frankly demeaning. Also irritating is the laughable, and deeply insulting, speculation as to the innermost thoughts of the Nazis and victims involved.

Most of this is obvious fantasy extrapolation from events, however many of the commentators are amazingly contradictory despite this. The worst error however is boring, banal and unsupported commentary parading as knowledge.

Commentary from vacuous individuals purporting special knowledge gains zero out of ten, the quality of the "run of the mill" documentary makers ensure it is so much better than the headline flops.

Interesting point of view of the rise of Hitler and the psychology and role of the powerful people around him.

Too bad the story is interrupted by too many so called expert commentaries which in many cases are simply well known facts. Too many experts of whom some are not even historians. It looks like they had to be on the show for politically correctness reasons.