On January 30 1933, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Hitler’s powerfully nationalistic, anti-communist and anti-Semitic rhetoric resonated with a terrified and disenfranchised German middle class who had "suffered, and yearned for messiahs and panaceas" (Louis Fischer) amid the political extremism, social chaos and financial humiliation of post-war Germany.

Hindenburg and von Papen, the Chancellor and President of Germany, erroneously believed that the fiery beer hall orator would be constrained within a framework of democratic legality. The brief ceremony displayed that the Nazi Party’s grip on the reigns of power was tightening by the minute. It also heralded the death of German democracy, and the strangulation of the fledgling Weimar Republic.

Just three months later, the Gestapo was established. Commanded by Rudolf Diels, it began life as simply a branch of the Prussian Secret Police. However, under the iron control of Hermann Goering, the Gestapo would become a brutal and largely independent entity, operating outside the legal system, torturing ‘subversives’ and administering the concentration camps.

The first instalment of this revealing documentary addresses the six years of Nazi rule which preceded the outbreak of the Second World War. As Hitler systematically destroyed every vestige of German bourgeois democracy, transforming Germany into a fascist dictatorship, the police were co-opted in order to protect the state from the people. We examine the violent days of the SA, outlining the intense power struggle between Himmler and Heydrich on the one hand, and Goering on the other.

We also reveal the often overlooked impact of Heinrich Müller, the career policeman who would enhance the organisation’s reputation far beyond its actual capabilities, striking terror into the hearts of the German population.

We reassess the Gestapo’s reputation as a flawless, coldly efficient machine, explaining that the organisation had many failures. Its network of black-clad officers allegedly crept into every crevice of Germany, yet in 1941 it boasted scarcely 8,000 officers; they were responsible for overseeing seventy million people. Though the Gestapo officer is usually portrayed as sinister figure clad in black leather, we reveal that most Gestapo staff were faceless bureaucrats, assembling information in the form of endless files covering an entire population.