How the Victorians Built Britain • 2018

52:04

Imprisoned and his followers scattered, Hitler in 1923 seems to be finished, until he and Rudolf Hess devise a new strategy and a new path to power

2/10 • Hitler's Circle of Evil • 2017 • History

25:09

Berlin Escapes 1961-89 The many and sometimes successful attempts to escape under the watchful eyes of the East German border guards. Set against the background of the history of the Wall. On August 13th, 1961 building commenced on die Berliner Mauer, the wall that would divide the world for nearly thirty years, as well as the city of Berlin. During that period more than five thousand people escaped to freedom, but over two hundred lost their lives. Even the phrase, Checkpoint Charlie, evokes the deception and fear that existed every day in the East and West Berlin. On a Sunday morning in 1961, shocked citizens awoke to the sounds of a barrier being built along the border separating East and West Berlin. Over the next three decades, thousands of of East Berliners risked their lives--leaping from buildings, crashing vehicles into gates, digging tunnels--in desperate attempts to breach the Berlin Wall and reach the West. In 1989, as Communist rule was collapsing throughout Europe, defiant Berliners began to tear the Wall down. Today, a few battered sections remain standing--a monument to those who died trying to escape to freedom.

17/20 • The True Action Adventures of the Twentieth Century • 1996 • History

51:37

The Battle of the Somme tells the story of one of the most iconic and tragic battles in history through its last survivors and through families at home. When the troops went over the top in June 1916 they imagined this was the attack that would end the war.

S1E2 • The First World War: The Peoples Story Series • 2021 • History

87:07

A look at the Battle of Britain, examining the limited resources the British military were left with following the retreat from Dunkirk, and the pressure on German forces to conquer England quickly, so attention could be switched to Russia. The second half of the programmes examines the US entry into the war, in defiance of the promise made by President Roosevelt during his re-election campaign.

S1E2 • World War II in Numbers • 2019 • History

58:58

Michael Wood tells the tale of China's first great international age under the Tang Dynasty (618-907). He travels along the Silk Road to the bazaars of central Asia and into India on the track of the Chinese monk who brought Buddhism back to China.

S1E2 • The Story of China • 2016 • History

55:25

Around 200,000 years ago, a new species, Homo sapiens, appeared on the African landscape. While scientists have imagined eastern Africa as a real-life Garden of Eden, the latest research suggests humans evolved in many places across the continent at the same time. DNA from a 19th-century African-American slave is forcing geneticists to re-think the origins of our species. The theory is that our ancestors met, mated and hybridized with other human types in Africa — creating ever greater diversity within our species.

Part 2 • First Peoples • 2015 • History