If you feel that the story of Hitler's rise to fame has been done to death, try this new take on that familiar but horribly fascinating topic.
Unlike the standard treatments - basically old newsreel with the events narrated in a dull, mechanical style - this one is a drama with subtlety and depth, showing the chain of accidents by which the strange team came together, all of them somehow damaged individuals with a powerful need to compensate for something.
We know that Germany was wanting someone to blame for its devastating defeat in 1918. But behind this lay a deep psychological need for a national mythology, how to make a shocked and starving people feel that they could touch hands with the Teutonic legends. This was behind the renewed celebration of the Aryan race and the warning of a world conspiracy to pollute its pure blood. The theories were promoted by a respected author, Dietrich Eckart, whose political mouthpiece was a small, obscure group called the German Workers Party (DAP).
It was when a shabby little army corporal, Adolf Hitler, was sent to spy on the DAP that Ekhart realised he had found what was missing - a populist orator, who could articulate the gospel with stunning force and conviction. But Ekhart saw him as the drummer, not the leader. The Munich putsch of 1923 would show who was the leader, the morphine-addicted Ekhart succumbing to a heart-attack just weeks later.
This is the first of a 10-part series, immensely strengthened by the narration skills of Alisdair Simpson - clear, engaging and involving. He is able to dramatise the squalid brutality of it all, while also touching on some themes that were richer and nobler than those beer-hall punch-ups. I just wish the lighting team had done an equally good job with the pug-faced professor from the University of Leicester who is made to look so sinister that it seriously distracts from the perfectly sound insights that he contributes.
Unlike the standard treatments - basically old newsreel with the events narrated in a dull, mechanical style - this one is a drama with subtlety and depth, showing the chain of accidents by which the strange team came together, all of them somehow damaged individuals with a powerful need to compensate for something.
We know that Germany was wanting someone to blame for its devastating defeat in 1918. But behind this lay a deep psychological need for a national mythology, how to make a shocked and starving people feel that they could touch hands with the Teutonic legends. This was behind the renewed celebration of the Aryan race and the warning of a world conspiracy to pollute its pure blood. The theories were promoted by a respected author, Dietrich Eckart, whose political mouthpiece was a small, obscure group called the German Workers Party (DAP).
It was when a shabby little army corporal, Adolf Hitler, was sent to spy on the DAP that Ekhart realised he had found what was missing - a populist orator, who could articulate the gospel with stunning force and conviction. But Ekhart saw him as the drummer, not the leader. The Munich putsch of 1923 would show who was the leader, the morphine-addicted Ekhart succumbing to a heart-attack just weeks later.
This is the first of a 10-part series, immensely strengthened by the narration skills of Alisdair Simpson - clear, engaging and involving. He is able to dramatise the squalid brutality of it all, while also touching on some themes that were richer and nobler than those beer-hall punch-ups. I just wish the lighting team had done an equally good job with the pug-faced professor from the University of Leicester who is made to look so sinister that it seriously distracts from the perfectly sound insights that he contributes.
