Hitler’s Bodyguard is a documentary series released by Acorn Media. It’s a four disk set with over 10 hours of runtime.

As the name implies it’s a documentary series dedicated wholly to Hitler’s Bodyguard and how he survived his rise to power, and the duration of the war. It sounds like a pretty refined scope, but Hitler’s whole life was surrounded by death threats and murder attempts. (Over forty!)

At some points the documentary seemed a little redundant, but every episode had a lot of educational value. Not only just about World War II, but the state of the rest of the world, Hitler’s rise to power, and personal details about Hitler and some other Nazi’s that I found particularly interesting.

For example, I didn’t know that Hitler didn’t drink Alcohol. (There is some other pretty interesting politics about Alcohol with the Nazi party as well.) Hitler’s niece (whom he was in a love affair with.) Was murdered in his apartment with his pistol before he was the fuhrer, and he served very little jail time. Then the last interesting thing I would like to point out is, at the beginning of the Hitler’s rise to power, he seemed to have more liberal views on homosexuality than today’s modern Mormon. (In fact at one point there was an entire platoon of flaming Nazi’s that earned quite a bad reputation.)

It’s amazing how well the in’s and out’s of the Nazi party were documented. Conspiracies, lies, even drama between Nazi officers. What wasn’t so surprising, yet still interesting was the accounts of Hitler’s bodyguards themselves. Sometimes he had over a thousand at a time, and was still at great risk. They talk about the formation’s the bodyguards would keep to make him as secure as possible, and they show tons of wonderful stock footage depicting its unbelievable reality.

I found the most interesting parts of the series were the historical accounts of his murder attempts. They have an entire episode dedicated to the attempt in the wolf’s lair that was just recently made into a movie, Valkyrie staring Tom Cruise. They also go into details about his attempts, (or rather successes) at murder. A full episode was dedicated to “Night of the Long Knifes.” the code name for an operation that allowed Hitler’s rise to power, by murdering practically everyone that could possibly stand in his way, and all in one night.

The information was all really engaging, and the series followed a steady natural progression starting with the foundation, and  ending with Hitler’s suicide in his bunker. I found that episode particularly interesting as I really liked the movie Downfall. (which is even more amazing now that I know more about the actual events.)

The stock footage was wonderful, a lot of it was in color. I found the narrator of the series to be informative, but a little over the top at times. All in all, I think it’s a great series, and it’s worth checking out even if you don’t find yourself terribly interested with World War II. (I know I’m not.)

This series is being released this coming Tuesday, and can be purchased from Amazon through this link!