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1-46 of 46
- John Thaw narrates this seven-part series telling the story of the Second World War through colour film, supplemented by the letters and diaries of those who lived during the most devastating conflict in history. The first programme traces the build-up of tensions during the 1930s, including the power of Nazi propaganda, the glorious imagery of George VI's coronation and Lloyd George's afternoon tea with Hitler.
- With France defeated and occupied, Britain found herself next in Hitler's sights. If the Luftwaffe could gain aerial superiority over the Channel, then the way would be clear for the Wehrmacht Invasion barges to launch an invasion force against Southern England. This episode covers the Battle of Britain and the bitter months that followed, concentrating on the role of RAF Fighter Command in defeating the Luftwaffe and the terrible suffering inflicted on British cities by Nazi bombers.
- "Not a tree stands. Not a square foot of surface has escaped mutilation.There is nothing but the mud and the gaping shell holes; a chaotic wilderness of shell holes, rim overlapping rim, and, in the bottom of many, the bodies of the dead? CAPTAIN ROWLAND FIELDING WWI WAS ON A SCALE NEVER KNOWN OR IMAGINED BEFORE.
- Between 1942 and early 1943, American bomber squadrons arrived in force in Britain and the Allies were able to mount evermore powerful and devastating strikes against Nazi targets. But the bomber formations would be met by swarms of German interceptors, and caught in merciless aerial battles stretching across hundreds of miles of sky. At the same time, the arrival of U.S. air power boosted the Allies' offensive capabilities in North Africa against an increasingly beleaguered Afrika Korps.
- 2003–2005TV Episode22 August 1962 and 20 July 1944 Two assassination attempts that, if successful, might have changed the course of history: the Algerian Secret Army's attempt to shoot President de Gaulle of France and Colonel von Stauffenberg's planting of a bomb under Hitler's desk.
- On the night of May 16-17 1943, Lancasters of 617 Squadron, using bouncing bombs devised by Barnes Wallis, destroyed the Mohne and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley. It was one of the most brilliant feats of bombing ever achieved. The special bombs had to be dropped from an altitude of precisely sixty feet with no margin for error - all the while under fire. The Dambusters Raid, as it has since become known, was also one of the most dangerous missions of the war. Of the nineteen Lancasters which took part, eight were lost and a further two seriously damaged. Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who led the attack, was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross. This historic DVD offers a unique, behind-the-scenes look at the mission, including previously unseen archive film of the Dambusters' Lancasters testing the bouncing bomb just before the raid. It features exclusive interviews with surviving pilots from the raid, as well as a fascinating insight into the development of the bouncing bomb given by Wallis's designer.
- The air war was fought in the Mediterranean and over the Western Desert was different in many respects from the air war over Europe. This episode covers the conflict from Italy's entry into the war in Summer 1940 to the establishment of an advanced wing of the Desert Air Force in Tripoli in 1942. It covers the invasion of Crete, celebrates the heroic defence of Malta, while in the Western desert, Allied air power played an important role in the defeat of the Afrika Corps, often under the most inhospitable of conditions.
- Air power would be an even more decisive factor in the defeat of Imperial Jan than Nazi Germany. This episode covers the air war in Burma, where the ability to deliver troops and supplies by air helped to convincingly defeat the Japanese ground forces. At the same time, as the Allies fought their way across the Pacific, Japanese cities easily came into range. Now even Tokyo found itself under fearsome attacks by formations of B-29s with their Mustang escorts. Japan fought on - until aircraft delivered the knockout blow. Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was no defense. Now a single airplane could destroy an entire city, Imperial Japan had no choice but to capitulate.
- National Geographic goes to Egypt to look into an underground vault that houses a ship of the Pharaoh Khufu and follows an researcher as he attempts to recreate the ancient rite of mummification.
- In the frozen wilderness of Antarctica, where oceans ice over and just staying alive is an achievement, one creature has perfected the art of survival - the emperor penguin. Eons of evolution have built an animal superbly adapted to the howling gales and sub-zero temperatures, but the emperor may have finally met its match. Parts of Antarctica are warming, giving birth to huge icebergs, and the consequences could be catastrophic for this majestic animal. In a place where all life is touched by the ice, it is a dramatic shift. Explore this region from its inhabitant's perspective, using state-of-the-art technology. By better understanding these amazing animals, researchers can help prepare for their future, as the balance of life in the Antarctic continues to change.
- In the days and weeks and months that followed D-Day, the Allies used their air superiority to help crush enemy concentrations holding up the land advance at Caen and Falaise, and to support the advance on Paris and through into Belgium. The Germans retaliated with their new 'Vengeance Weapons'. V-1 flying bombs fell upon Southern England and the RAF had to resort to desperate measures to intercept them. At the same time, it became vital to find their hidden launch sites and obliterate the flying bombs before they could be unleased.
- Churchill famously said that the only thing he was really afraid of was the U-Boat menace. If German submarines and surface raiders could destroy the Allied convoys bringing vital supplies across the Atlantic to Britain, then the nation would eventually be unable to fight, it was the Germans who first realised that air power had a significant role to play in the Battle of the Atlantic from 1940 to 1942, but the British soon caught on. Now RAF Coastal Command began to actively hunt down the submarines and raiders and take an ever more lethal toll.
- 2003–20057.0 (12)TV Episode2 December 1942 and 26 April 1986 The first controlled nuclear chain reaction heralded the atomic age, but Chernobyl's runaway chain reaction was the first warning. How did the most exciting scientific breakthroughs ever lead to the disaster that the world had dreaded?
- The summer of 1916 has the British army getting ready for Battle of the Somme.
- At exactly 5.32am on August 6th 1945, a B29 Bomber, The Enola Gay, took off from a small island in the South Pacific on a clandestine operation. It's mission? To drop a bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, a bomb unlike any other that would change the world forever. This film dramatises the minute by minute events leading up to the world's first ever atomic bombing. Based on extracts from President Truman's personal diaries which show the decision-making process reflecting America's real fear that the Japanese would never give up, Japanese eyewitness accounts of the tragedy in Hiroshima, diaries written on board Enola Gay, and the personal testimony of Colonel Paul Tibbets, the man who led the mission so secret not even his crew knew the enormity of what they were doing. One millionth of a second after detonation, Hiroshima ceased to exist as a city. As estimated 100,000 people were killed and 47,000 buildings flattened. Nobody knows exactly how many civilians died in Hiroshima but its impact will be felt forever.
- Their empire stretched from Ecuador all the way to Chile. Only 40,000 strong, they ruled ten million subjects and created one of history's greatest civilizations. But with one quick blow, the Spanish brought this mighty empire to its knees. it is one of the most dramatic and poignant stories in history. Unfortunately, the drama unfolding today is as disturbing as that which played out 500 years ago. As archaeologists struggle to understand and preserve what remains of a great culture, tomb looters and the forces of "progress" are pushing it ever closer to extinction. Across Peru, the past is colliding with the future as the demands of a growing population threaten to destroy its precious heritage. From high atop remote Andean peaks to just below a dusty shantytown on the outskirts of Lima, archaeologists are racing against time to preserve the legacy left by their ancestors.
- 2003–20056.9 (11)TV Episode9 November 1938 and 14 May 1948 Just ten years after the Nazis openly attacked Jews and their property - a huge step on the nightmare spiral to the Holocaust, the 2000 year old dream of a Jewish homeland becomes a reality and the state of Israel is Born.
- Episode: (2003)2003–20057.5 (9)TV EpisodeIt is 19th October 1977 and Concorde taxis onto the runway at Toulouse Airport. Onboard, the crew are preparing for an historic day - the first supersonic test flight to New York. At JFK airport, protestors are waiting with a hostile welcome, but for the Concorde team and the French and British governments it is a moment that represents the end of an exhausting struggle.
- The Luftwaffe had bombed London initially by mistake. Churchill retaliated by sending bombers against Germany. Now cities were legitimate targets. This episode looks at early strikes by RAF Bomber Command and the start of Britain's strategic air bombardment of Germany from Spring 1941 to Spring 1942. It also looks at how Germany used its air force in strikes against the Balkans and to support the invasion of Russia during 'Operation Barbarossa'.
- "Between the trenches are any amount of dead and decomposing bodies of our own men and Turks lying on the heather. The smell is awful.- CAPTAIN GUY NIGHTINGALE THE WAR ON THE EASTERN FRONT WOULD RESHAPE THE MAP OF EUROPE FOREVER
- The Premier episode gives a brief historical summary of all the major players in WWI right up to the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
- This documentary shows how the air forces helped win Operation Overlord before, during and after June 6, 1944.
- At the start of World War II, biplanes were still thought of as viable. By its end, new generations of jets like the Gloster Meteor and Me262 dominated the skies. Rocket bombs could deliver a devastating payload across vast distances and one bomb - one aircraft - could destroy an entire city. Air power had changed almost beyond recognition and with it changed the very world we lived in. This last programme looks at the development of air power and speculates on its future potential from the vantage point of 1954.
- The Ottoman Empire joins the war on the side of the Central Powers. Armenian Genocide and Gallipoli Campaign.
- A polar bear family album. Discover the fate of a polar bear and her twin cubs at the icy top of the world. National Geographic cameras follow the family during a two-year Arctic odyssey filled with touching and unforgettable moments, many never before filmed. Watch in wonder as curious cubs emerge from their den for the first time after a three-month hibernation. Go 'icecrashing' with the polar bear family as they hunt for seals. Feet the tension as the mother protects her cubs from a hostile male, one of many dangers lurking on the ice flows. Just half of all cubs survive beyond their first year, and this polar bear family needs the mother's finely tuned instincts ~ and luck - to beat the odds.
- From the Spring of 1943 to early 1944, the Allies were pounding Nazi Germany by day and by night. By day, formations of 8th Air Force B-17 Flying Fortresses would battle their way through heavily defended skies to deliver their deadly bomb-loads. At night it was the turn of the Lancasters of RAF Bomber Command to take the war to Germany. There was much talk of 'area bombing' and 'precision bombing' - but ordinary German civilians paid a terrible price for their leader's ambitions.
- "If any man tells you he went over the top and wasn't scared, he's a damn liar. HARRY PATCH: DUKE OF CORNWALL'S LIGHT INFANTRY. BORN 1898 - THESE YEARS WOULD PRODUCE A NEW AND DEADLY EXPRESSION - "GOING OVER THE TOP"
- The mess and huge loss of life at paschendale. Told through archive footage contemporary memoirs, commentary, music and poetry, narrated and realised by Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Marius Goring, Cyril Luckham and Emlyn Williams.
- As the noose tightened around Nazi Germany, Allied air power seemed to be tipping the scales everywhere. The converging Allied air forces could be found in Norway, helping to beat off the powerful German counter-offensive in the Ardennes, in Italy, in the Balkans and on the Russian Front. Vast waves of bombers smashed the German communications and material production. The Luftwaffe collapsed almost completely under the strain of trying to defend the Fatherland and victory was assured.
- 2003–20057.9 (9)TV EpisodeThe coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth on June 2nd 1953, the first coronation ever to be televised. Despite the death of Queen Mary on 24 March, the coronation went ahead, as Mary had asked before she died, taking place as planned on 2 June 1953. On 31 August 1997, Diana was fatally injured in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris, which also caused the deaths of her companion Dodi Fayed and the driver, Henri Paul, acting security manager of the Hôtel Ritz Paris. Millions of people watched her funeral.
- As the 1930s progressed, it became obvious that war in Europe was inevitable. Equally, it became increasingly obvious that air power would have a significant role to play in the forthcoming war. Looks at the preparations for war from the mid-1930s to the Fall of France in 1940. It tells the story of the 'official' foundation of the German Luftwaffe In 1935, with its emphasis on offensive aerial capabilities and parachute forces capable of supporting the new 'Blitzkrieg' tactic. It also reveals France's failure to develop adequate air defences contributed to her swift defeat and looks at how the RAF prepared for the coming onslaught.
- One of the greatest achievements of television -broadcast from 1964 in 26 episodes. Use of extensive archive footage and sound effects, linked with contemporary classic music of that area. Concentrated by the commentaries by Michael Redgrave, and some of the finest male actors of the twentieth century. Still manages to be breathtaking despite the lack of special effects or modern gimmicks.
- The surprise aerial attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese in December 1941 was proof that the aircraft was now a potentially war-winning weapon. Once seemingly invincible battleships were exposed as terrifyingly vulnerable to the bomb-load from a single plane. The sea war in the Pacific would be decided by aircraft carrier task forces, launching waves of strike aircraft against each other. This episode covers the air war in the Pacific from Pearl Harbour to Ceylon and reveals how the Allies were almost completely unprepared to defend India and Burma from the air.
- The Second World War In Colour [1999] is a seven-part documentary which reveals hours of previously unseen colour film of World War II. As almost all newsreel film was shot in black and white, this DVD offers a completely new portrait of the war. Dramatic colour footage from as early as 1933 shows home movies of Adolf Hitler and his cohorts, the devastation wrought by the Blitzkrieg, life on the home front, D-Day and the Allied invasion of France, British bombers defying German fighters, the horror of the Holocaust that troops met as they entered Germany, and the jubilation of the final Allied victory. With John Thaw's narration intercut with spoken accounts from the letters and diaries of those who fought, those who survived, and those the war claimed as victims, this documentary is an extraordinary remembrance of a monumental time in world history.
- World War II was over. The U.N. tried to impose air controls but very quickly found itself embroiled in a new war, this time in Korea. Now new generations of jets clashed in Asian skies as MiGs met Sabres in ever faster and more lethal dogfights. The Cold War was heating up, and Britain both needed to develop a new approach to the Commonwealth air defence and to make a positive frontline contribution to N.A.T.O.
- The First Battle of the Marne, the Race to the Sea, the Siege of Antwerp and the First Battle of Ypres in the West; Austrian defeats in Serbia and in Galicia; reprisals against Germans in Britain; mass enlistment in the British Empire.
- Focusing on America's belated entry into the conflict after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the battle against German U-boats in the Atlantic, Nazi atrocities against Jews and gypsies, and the horrors of the Eastern Front.
- 2003–20057.1 (13)TV Episode26 November 1922 and 17 September 1822 Two days that brought ancient Egypt dramatically to life. In 1822, Jean-Francois Champollion cracks Egyptian hieroglyphs. One hundred years later, Howard Carter reads the name on a tomb and makes an amazing discovery.
- See the world's first MRI scan of a great white shark as Ultimate Shark reveals the extreme engineering and predatory abilities of one of nature's most near perfect predators. Hear firsthand accounts of people who survived harrowing encounters, including a surfer who was bitten on the arm and leg, towed by the surfboard ankle strap and miraculously escaped only with minor injuries. National Geographic demystifies the true motives and power behind their behavior. National Geographic shows you a different look at nature's near perfect predator.. .the great white shark. With bloodlines going back 400 million years, they are older than dinosaurs and even trees. But only now are we starting to understand the true power of great whites. ULTIMATE SHARK breaks down dramatic great white - human attacks and demystifies the true motives and power behind great white shark behaviour. Every minute is loaded with cutting edge science, state of the art graphics and gripping stories of great whites and the people who survived their harrowing encounters.
- "The First World War was certainly tragic, but it wasn't futile. In the First World War the Allies achieved a great negative victory; they prevented the domination of Europe by militaristic Germany.- DR. GARY SHEFFIELD, KING'S COLLEGE. THIS IS THE STORY OF 1918 - THE YEAR THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
- In 1954, the BBC produced an outstanding documentary series on aerial warfare from 1935 to 1950, comprising fifteen half hour shows that was aired on the first Monday after Remembrance Sunday. Taking two years to make, and compiled from nearly 12 million feet of Allied and enemy film footage, there had been little to compare with it in terms of scale, depth and content. This landmark series represents an important piece of television history and will give every viewer an honest telling of the development of airpower. Some of the highlights include; amazing footage taken from the nose of a Mosquito during low level attacks, camera's placed on the wings of various aircraft and a dozen other earth grazing operations. This series will make your hair stand up on end.
- War in Europe in 1915; German success at the Masurian Lakes; Russian Siege of Przemysl; German Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive; Russian shortage of materiel; Germans use poison gas at Ypres; British munitions shortage; the role of wartime industrial production.
- The 3rd installment of the series covers the first 3 weeks of the war. The initial Belgian resistance caves under withering German artillery fire. Initial victories by the French are quickly reversed, and finally the BEF arrive.
- National Geographic follows a group of volunteers who are trying to help a pod of beached pilot whales. It also investigates whether there is a link between whale beaching and the use of sonar by the Navy.
- The effects of protracted war on civilian life of the major powers. The sinking of RMS Lusitania, reprisals against foreign nationals. The founding of Lloyd George's Ministry of Munitions, employment of women in the war industry, resulting labor disputes.
- This episode covers the rarely mentioned air campaign fought in the skies over Italy from July 1943 to July 1944. It looks at how the Allies used their air superiority to support the Sicilian and Salerno landings and how the foothold gained on the Italian mainland allowed them to create forward bomber bases capable of striking previously unreachable targets. As the Allies pressed ever northward, air power would play a significant role in the Anzio landings, at Cassino and in the liberation of Rome.