Rise of the Nazis

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.