PBS Specials

Bugging Hitler's Soldiers (2013x14)

Ausstrahlung: Mai 01, 2013

Spied upon by MI19 in a bugging operation of unprecedented scale and cunning, 4,000 German POW’s revealed their inner thoughts about the Third Reich and let slip military secrets that helped the Allies win WWII. Based on groundbreaking research conducted by a German historian, the film tells the story of how those conversations were recorded and how they can now reveal, in more shocking detail than ever before, the hearts and minds of the German fighter. In total, more than 100,000 hours of these secret recordings were made. Only now have they all been declassified, researched and cross referenced. They represent a startling new body of evidence with which to revisit events of the war and they show the political divisions between those top generals who supported the Nazi ideology and those that did not. They also demonstrate the complicity of the rank-and-file soldiers in taking part in Nazi war crimes. Now, 60 years later the chilling and totally uncensored thoughts of the Nazi elite will be heard. The documentary includes intense, full-dialogue dramatic reconstructions that use the verbatim transcripts of these bugged conversations to reveal the dark heart of the Nazi regime as never before. Hearing these shocking conversations will be like taking a time machine back into psyche of Hitler’s Germany.