ITV Documentaries

The Day Hitler Died (2016x3)

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This new one-off partly dramatised documentary for ITV tells the story of the final hours of one of history’s most notorious dictators through freshly-unearthed interviews with those who were present in his bunker. The interviews filmed in 1948 with Adolf Hitler’s inner circle are previously unseen on British television, and along with rare archive material and dramatisations, they provide a unique insight into the moments when the Führer came to admit defeat as the Soviet army rampaged into central Berlin. Among those interviewed in the historic footage are Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge, leader of the Hitler Youth Artur Axmann, who found the dictator’s body, Eva Braun’s sister Ilse, press attaché Heinz Lorenz, army major Baron von Loringhoven, and adjutant Willi Johannmeier. They tell the story of how Hitler succumbed to personal and military defeat in the Second World War, eventually shooting himself in a suicide pact with his wife Eva Braun, whom he married in his Führerbunker beneath his headquarters on the day before they died. He had decamped there in January 1945 once it became clear that the Germans were going to be defeated, and killed himself on April 30 as the Red Army overran the capital. The interviews stem from persistent rumours in 1948 that Hitler remained alive. Nuremberg trials judge Michael Musmanno was so incensed by this suggestion that he set out to disprove it by interviewing on film those who were present during the final moments in the bunker. Judge Musmanno's interview tapes lay forgotten for 65 years until they were uncovered in an archive in Pittsburgh, USA, in 2013. Parts of the bunker were reconstructed for the programme using details from the eyewitness testimony to help build a full picture of the last hours, days and minutes of the Führer’s life.