The Nazis: A Warning From History exposes the popular myths surrounding the rise and fall of the Third Reich. The series explores how the Nazis came to power, how they ruled, how they treated their occupied territories and above all, how a cultured nation could be responsible for such acts of inhumanity. This is the BBC / Laurence Rees production from 1997.

"Arguably one of the most important documentary series ever made, 1997's The Nazis: A Warning from History sets out to show that, far from being a uniquely German aberration, Nazism fed upon and was fostered by the prejudices and lemming-like inclinations of ordinary people. Although culminating with the atrocities of the Holocaust, these programmes are equally good on the motives of otherwise perfectly normal people, who needed only the tacit encouragement of the regime to perpetrate horrors against their enemies, their neighbours, or their own family. When confronted with evidence of their Nazi past, elderly former party members are often unable to find any other justification for their actions than simply that they could get away with it. Far from being a monolithic dictatorship which compelled the citizenry to act in rigidly prescribed ways, the Nazi state just allowed people to give their worst inclinations free reign."