# Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution (2005)

> A British documentary miniseries that examines the Nazi operation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Final Solution through testimony and historical record.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/6853

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 6
- Episode runtime: 60 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: documentary, history, war
- Network: BBC Two
- Cast: Linda Hunt, Linda Ellerbee, Samuel West, Horst-Günter Marx, Gordon Newell
- TMDB rating: 8.6/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446610/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: extreme
- Complexity: dense
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: somber, harrowing, sober, restrained, reflective

## What critics say

Audiences broadly regard this BBC documentary miniseries as an acclaimed, harrowing account of the Holocaust built on survivor and perpetrator testimony.

## Synopsis

Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution (2005) is a British historical documentary miniseries broadcast on BBC Two, produced as a six-part, one-season limited series of hour-long episodes. Narrated by Linda Hunt, Linda Ellerbee and Samuel West, it traces how the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp became the center of the Nazi plan to exterminate European Jews. The engine of the series is testimony: survivors recount deportation, selection and daily survival inside the camp, while perpetrator voices, including the camp commandant Rudolph Höss as portrayed by Horst-Günter Marx, reveal the administrative logic behind the killings. Captain Bill Cross appears among the figures whose accounts anchor the historical record. Each episode builds through archival footage, documents and interviews, moving chronologically through the rise of the Nazi state, the construction of the camp and the mechanics of mass murder. The tone is sober and restrained, with the weight of the material carried by the words of those who lived through it. Its presentation is unsensational, placing the horror in the bureaucratic detail of the crimes. Viewers drawn to Shoah, The World at War and Night and Fog will find the same moral seriousness and reliance on witness, in a series that treats its subject with unflinching respect.

## Shows like Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution

- [The Devil Next Door (2019)](https://ember.film/tv/80093)
- [Einsatzgruppen: The Nazi Death Squads (2009)](https://ember.film/tv/63771)
- [WWII in Color: Road to Victory (2021)](https://ember.film/tv/116700)
- [World War II: From the Frontlines (2023)](https://ember.film/tv/150708)
- [The Ripper (2020)](https://ember.film/tv/94492)
- [Uprising (2001)](https://ember.film/tv/1105169)
- [World War II in Colour (2009)](https://ember.film/tv/38530)
- [Holocaust (1978)](https://ember.film/tv/14520)
- [Hitler's Circle of Evil (2018)](https://ember.film/tv/66961)
- [Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial (2024)](https://ember.film/tv/168928)

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