Pride of Our Nation: June 1944 - August 1944 • 2007 • episode "S1E4" • The War

26:01

The Story of the Escadrille Lafayette Well before their country entered the Great War a number of adventurous Americans volunteered to fight for the British and French. Among them were a number of pilots, and in early 1916 they were formed into a special French fighter squadron, which fought with great distinction on the Western Front. Amazing aerial footage shows WW1 dog-fights as they really were. If the Wright brothers' 1903 flights in Kitty Hawk marked the birth of aviation, World War I can be called its violent adolescence—a brief but bloody era that completely changed the way planes were designed, fabricated, and flown. France's Yankee Fliers tells the story of the men who were at the forefront of that revolution: the daredevil Americans of the Lafayette Escadrille, who flew in French planes, wore French uniforms, and showed the world an American brand of heroism before the United States entered the Great War.

14/20 • The True Action Adventures of the Twentieth Century • 1996 • History

54:11

Learn how Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with an iron fist for almost 30 years. To maintain power, he used fear, intimidation and violence like few other dictators in history, but he made the fatal mistake of believing his regime could take on the world.

S1E2 • The Dictator's Playbook • 2019 • History

30:50

Corruption, loose morals, depravity – the German monk Martin Luther had enough of this and demanded a pure church and a pure faith. His goal was nothing less than a revolution: the Reformation of the church and the ousting of the "depraved" popes. Instead, the freedom within every Christian believer was to be expressed. The first example was the Peasants' Wars. Christianity once again became divided after the downfall of Byzantium: there were now Catholics, Lutherans and Reformed, for the rebels soon went their own way. The new longing for a purer Christianity soon led to the biggest catastrophe in Europe, the Thirty Years' War. It was not foremost a religious war, although it was easier to kill more mercilessly without a legitimation than have to worry about "eternal life." Europe lost half of its population during this period. The horror of the roving hordes of soldiers, the plunge into the most terrible atrocities that humans are capable of, caused the educated to doubt the beneficial power of religion. The separation of church and state is the result of the European experience of so-called religious wars. Outlining the provincial causes and ravaging effects of Europe's Thirty Years' War, this program illustrates the ability of religious fervor to inflame nationalism and drive the quest for power. With background on Martin Luther's split with the Catholic Church and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, Dr. Helmut Neuhaus of Friedrich Alexander University offers detailed analysis of the Hapsburg-Bohemian conflict, the shifting alliances of Catholics and Protestants, and the mercenary campaigns of Wallenstein—leading to a comparison with large-scale natural disaster. The program clearly identifies the three-decade inferno as an inspiration for later divisions of church and state.

S1E2 • The Holy Wars: War and Religion • 2004 • History

43:29

A great short history of the Japanese Empire, from the early mediaeval strife of the time of the code of the Samurai which carried through to to the opening of Japan to Western trade. There's good detail on how Japan began to rely on its military caste and its deification of its Emperor. The search for Empire is its very undoing as the military seize political power and begins to rival the colossus of the USA for domination of Asia, a disastrous policies that ends beneath the foreboding mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

S1E2 • The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire • 2011 • History

46:46

How Britain planned for a Nazi invasion - from tank traps and sticky bombs, to the Home Guard and tragic story of heroism. Alice Roberts looks for visible traces of Britain's rearmament in preparation for a German invasion. How did the Home Guard come about and what was the role of women in the offensive defense? We meet Indian-American Noor Inayat Khan, a special agent who worked with sabotage activities in German-occupied France, and hear her tragic story as one of the war's forgotten heroines. Alice learns about the deployment of the Home Guard, and Danielle travels to the Channel Islands, the only part of the British Isles under German control, to visit the only concentration camp built on British soil in Alderney. She explores life under occupation and visits the underground hospital Festung Guernsey.

S1E2 • Fortress Britain • 2022 • 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