The Abyss: Rise and Fall of the Nazis – Genocide 1942-1944 (SBS Sunday 12 March 2023)

Genocide 1942-1944: At Sobibor, they only cared about one thing: killing as many Jews as possible from the Polish ghettos as quickly as possible. Sobibor, along with Treblinka and Majdanek, was part of the Nazi death camp network known as “Operation Reinhardt,” which killed approximately two million people in just a few months in 1942 and 1943.

Fewer people survived Operation Reinhardt than did the Auschwitz extermination camp. Niemann’s images depicted a German paradise with horseback riding, musical performances, and social gatherings, all while Jews were being murdered by gas and fire just outside the frame.

Airdate: Sunday 12 March 2023 at 5.30pm on SBS.

Season 1 Episode 8

Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, licking its wounds from the carnage of World War I, is the subject of the SBS documentary series The Abyss: Rise and Fall of the Nazis.

Authoritarian governments are on the upswing in this climate of growing discontent.

The Third Reich is examined in a new light from a worldwide and contemporary viewpoint in The Abyss: The Rise and Fall of the Nazis. How the Nazis were able to take over Germany and then the rest of Europe in just a few short years is detailed. With the memories of World War I’s atrocities still raw, how could anything be possible? How come it took so long to put a stop to them?

A fresh picture of Hitler’s dictatorship emerges from the combination of undisclosed archival material, historical sources, and an international team of experts. The series deconstructs the intricate chain of events that propped up a new dictatorship and made possible the unprecedented degree of bloodshed and atrocity that ensued.