The series uses four principal elements: rarely seen contemporary colour and monochrome film from archives, interviews with
survivors such as
Dario Gabbai and former
German Nazis such as
Oskar Gröning, computer-generated reconstructions of long-demolished buildings and detailed, historically accurate reenactments of meetings and other events. These are linked by modern footage of locations in and around the site of the
Auschwitz German camp.
Laurence Rees stressed that the reenactments are not dramatisations but are exclusively based on documented sources: There is no screenwriter… Every single word that is spoken is double – and in some cases triple – sourced from historical records. This reflects the conception of the earlier BBC/
HBO film
Conspiracy, which similarly recreates the
Wannsee Conference (an event briefly portrayed in Episode 2 of the series) based on a copy of the minutes kept by one of the attendees, although that film also includes speculative dramatised sections. The computer-generated reconstructions use architectural plans that only became available in the 1990s when the archives of the former
Soviet Union became accessible to Western historians. The discovery of these plans is described in the 1994
BBC Horizon documentary
Auschwitz: The Blueprints of Genocide. The start of the second movement of Johannes Brahms' A German Requiem, to Words of the Holy Scriptures, Op. 45 (German: Ein deutsches Requiem, nach Worten der heiligen Schrift) "Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras" ("For all flesh, is as grass"), is used in the opening credits of the BBC documentary film series The Nazis: A Warning from History, with various sections of this part of the movement being used for the closing credits. • Main theme:
Keyboard suite in D minor (HWV 437), composed by
George Frideric Handel, for the DVD menu and end credits. •
Symphony No. 3, composed by
Polish composer
Henryk Górecki •
Fratres and
Spiegel im Spiegel, both composed by
Estonian composer
Arvo Pärt •
Piano Trio No. 2, composed by
Schubert. •
The Twins (Prague),
Embers and
Europe, composed by
Max Richter. The last episode of the series also features
Introitus from
Mozart's Requiem in D minor, which is played just before the ending credits. ==Episodes==