Part 2: Invasion: The Normans • 2023 • episode "S1E2" • Invasion: The Normans

89:10

Examines the botched raid on the German-occupied harbour of Dieppe, France in August 1942, which resulted in the loss of around 4,000 Allied men and drove home just how costly an invasion of France would be. The programme also focuses on Hitler's order in 1945 to destroy any military or industrial facilities that could be useful to the enemy - which would have condemned the German people to utter desolation.

S1E4 • World War II in Numbers • 2019 • History

52:20

At the start of the 20th century, everything seemed to be plain sailing in the best possible of libertarian worlds, because anarchism had rid itself of its former demons. And thanks to the major waves of migration that carried the movement to the remotest areas of the world, it was able to rally a major part of the peasantry around to its cause. But to ensure their ideal triumphed, before the imminence of a world conflict, libertarians could no longer afford merely to indulge in wishful thinking and think up generous practices. They must take up arms and go on the offensive once again. And so, from the two shores of Mexico to the vast steppes of the Ukraine, in an era full of sound and fury, Nestor Makhno and the Flores Magon brothers found themselves at the forefront of the first major revolutions of the 20th century as they tried, once and for all, to change the world.

S1E2 • No Gods, No Masters: A History of Anarchism • 2016 • History

26:00

University of Glasgow, England, 1763. A young engineer tries, in vain, to fix a steam engine before finally understanding what is wrong with it. James Watt still doesn’t know it but he will soon revolutionize the world of industry.

S3E11 • Butterfly Effect • 2018 • History

52:00

1917. People have had enough of the war. Behind the scenes, uprisings are brewing, like the one that toppled the Tsar in Russia; on the front soldiers begin to mutiny as they did at Chemin des Dames in France. German submarine attacks in the Atlantic will finally pull the Americans into the war, but they arrive too late to help prevent the carnage of the Battle of Passchendaele.

S1E4 • Apocalypse: World War 1 • 2014 • History

51:45

Between 1931 and 1933, 4 million Ukrainians were to die of hunger. This famine was not preceded by any cataclysmic weather event, nor by a war. This was an ideological crime: decided by Stalin and approved by the Politburo, with the aim of punishing Ukrainian peasants who refused the collectivization of the countryside, cultivated a strong form of nationalism and showed resistance to communist ideology. The purpose of this famine, unprecedented in Soviet history, was to break all forms of opposition. How was it implemented? What was known at the time? What was said? What was seen? The most important event in pre-war Soviet history is taboo: all traces of it were immediately erased, and the evidence drowned in a flood of lies. And yet, within just two years, this famine killed twice as many Ukrainians as the gulag did Soviets in half a century. This state secret was particularly well-kept for more than fifty years and only revealed in its full magnitude after the disintegration of the USSR, when the archives were revealed. Drawing on previously unpublished material, on many Soviet films and on a number of particular points of view, including that of Welsh journalist and whistleblower Gareth Jones, this film retraces the story of that famine.

2022 • History

46:05

Mankind embarks on a new age of exploration, and tames the wilderness. In North America, Siberia and Australia, ancient traditions are swept away in the name of commerce and science. Within a hundred years, the irrational fear that produced a witch trial in Salem gives way to a very rational cry for freedom. American revolutionaries confront a mighty empire. The battle for the modern world begins.

9/12 • Mankind: The Story of All of Us • 2012 • History