The Hidden Truth of WWII episode 7: Determined to destroy the Soviet Union once and for all Hitler has ordered his armies to strike south and seize the vital oilfields of the Caucasus region. But first they must capture Stalingrad. But the Soviet defenders make the 6th German Army pay in blood for every inch of ground and draw the Germans into a trap from which…
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, artillery, and cavalry known thereafter as…
The US and the Holocaust episode 3 - The Homeless, Tempest-Tossed: First reports of the industrial scale of killing reach the United States. A group of dedicated government officials establish the War Refugee Board to finance and support rescue operations. As the Allies advance, soldiers uncover mass graves and liberate German concentration camps, revealing the full horror of the Holocaust. The danger of its reverberations soon…
The US and the Holocaust episode 2 - Yearning to Breathe Free: After Kristallnacht, Germany’s Jews are desperate to escape Hitler’s tyranny. Americans are united in their disapproval of the Nazis’ brutality, but remain divided on whether and even how to act as World War II begins. Charles Lindbergh speaks for isolationists, while FDR tries to support Europe’s democracies. The Nazis invade the Soviet Union, and…
World War II In HD Colour episode 13: The end of the War in the Pacific is one of the greatest and most terrible tales of modern history. The Japanese fought to the bitter end and continued to fight island by island, hill by hill. US Air Force command tried bombing Japan into submission, firebombing Tokyo but could not break the Japanese resolve. Over 200,000 people…
World War II In HD Colour episode 12: The months of the war in Europe were shocking and desperate. This film follows the British and Americans as they cross the Rhine and the Russians as they push through Poland into Germany itself. It covers the horrors of the liberation of Belsen and Buchenwald, and the final terrible street fighting in Berlin. The story culminates in the…
World War II In HD Colour episode 11: Since December 1941, a vicious war against Japan was being waged in the Pacific. The Japanese were driven back across the ocean, island by island, in savage hand to hand fighting. American dominance at sea was finally established in "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot", when radar gave the US Navy advance warning of a huge Japanese attack and…
World War II In HD Colour episode 10: In 1944 America and Britain in the West and Russia in the East began to close their pincer around Germany. But even now, the outcome was in the balance. The film explores the Allied disaster at Arnhem and the tragedy of the Warsaw uprising, when Polish freedom fighters were abandoned to their fate by Stalin. It tells the…