Narrow Escapes of World War II episode 13: With their backs to the Dnieper River in January 1944, 60,000 German troops face encirclement by a larger Soviet force. After an airfield supplying the defenders falls to the Russians, their survival depends on rejoining the rest of the German army. They head for a narrow corridor flanked by Russian soldiers, tanks, […]
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Narrow Escapes of World War II episode 11: A Scottish soldier who hiked 200 miles through the Libyan desert without water or supplies recalls Ronald Moore, the leader of his party. With the Italians preparing to invade Egypt in the summer of 1940, the British armys Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) causes havoc far behind the front. But after an
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Narrow Escapes of World War II episode 10: The largest evacuation of the Second World War saw two million civilians and soldiers taken away in an extraordinary German operation that lasted for four months. As the war enters its final months, the nearly 2 million Germans living in East Prussia flee an advancing Red Army no longer distinguishing between German
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Narrow Escapes of World War II episode 5: Death-defying tales from WWII. How legendary Major-General Robert ‘Lucky’ Laycock rallied his ill-equipped unit to see off a German attack on Crete. After the German invasion of Crete in May 1941, Winston Churchill orders the 25,000 British and Commonwealth troops stationed there to defend the island at all costs. A force of
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Narrow Escapes of World War II episode 4: The 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, a depleted unit of black soldiers, risked everything to tenaciously fight off the Nazis at Bastogne. When Hitler launches his final major offensive on the Western front, everything turns on the ability of the U.S. Army to hold the town of Bastogne. Outnumbered 10 to one, an
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Narrow Escapes of World War II episode 3: The Chindits were the army’s elite jungle troops who beat the Japanese in a daring mission. Hear their jaw-dropping story. To take on the undefeated “supermen” of the Japanese army advancing toward India, the British call on Orde Wingate, who forms a special “Chindits” unit for sabotage inside Japanese-controlled Burma. 1943, Orde
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Narrow Escapes of World War II episode 2: In the wake of the humiliation of Pearl harbour, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle was asked to mount an astonishing raid. For the first time ever, bombers would be put onto aircraft carriers and shipped over near Japan. They would then hit Tokyo. The trouble was, the bombers couldn’t land on the aircraft carriers.
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