
Self - Commander of the U.S. 10th Army (archive footage)
Self - Commander of the Japanese 32nd Army (archive footage)
0.0Professor Saul David uses the BBC archive to chart the history of the world's most destructive war, by chronicling how the story of the battle has changed. As new information has come to light, and forgotten stories are remembered, the history of World War Two evolves. The BBC has followed that evolution, and this programme examines the most important stories, and how our understanding of them has been re-defined since the war ended over 70 years ago.
6.9Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.
6.9The lifelong friendship between Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker is put to the ultimate test when the two ace fighter pilots become entangled in a love triangle with beautiful Naval nurse Evelyn Johnson. But the rivalry between the friends-turned-foes is immediately put on hold when they find themselves at the center of Japan's devastating attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
7.6A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
7.9In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
7.6Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
7.0The lives of Erik Lanshof and five of his closest friends take different paths when the German army invades the Netherlands in 1940: fight and resistance, fear and resignation, collaboration and high treason.
8.1A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.
7.8During the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.
7.2A Blind Hero depicts Otto Weidt's story as told by award-winning journalist and author Inge Deutschkron, who tells the incredible tale of Weidt's efforts to save her and the rest of his employees from the Nazis, including Alice Licht, the love of Otto Weidt's life.
A special tribute to the immortal B-25 bomber. Features an assemblage of outstanding aerial footage through air strikes against the Afrika Korps, the Italian campaign, Burma, and the famed Doolittle-Tokyo raid.
5.0A documentary about the decisions parents made in evacuating their children out of harm's way (the Nazis), and being forced to stay behind, the parents realize that this may possibly be the last time they will see their loved ones.
8.0In Japan, more than four million young people survive by taking on precarious jobs. They are called “freeters”. The film gives voice to these “discard-after-use” workers, who regard their situation with both lucidity and desperation, as well as to ex-freeters who have become activists in the fight against exclusions.
0.0Adolf Hitler's Nazi megalomania knew no limits. The most daring of his plans World War II involved German fighter planes crashing into Manhattan's skyscrapers as living bombs, like the Japanese kamikazes. Hitler understood the huge symbolic power of Manhattan's skyscrapers. He believed suicide bombing would have a devastating psychological impact on the American people and the U.S. war effort.
6.0The real Great Escape didn't feature Steve McQueen racing through the Third Reich on a motorcycle like in the 1963 movie, but the big breakout was still thrilling in every way. This program sheds new light on the audacious escape of 76 Allied airmen from a Nazi POW camp during World War II.
6.1Karlskov is a self made, successful owner of a large electronics factory, has a wife and five children. They live the good, privileged upper-class life on Strandvejen north of Copenhagen when the Nazis occupy Denmark in April 1940. Karl struggles to continue production at the factory, but to protect his family and employees he reluctantly begins to produce for the German market. It brings him into a controversial collaboration with the occupying power and causes painful breaks in the family.
6.7In the puppet state of Manchukuo in the 1930s, four Communist party special agents, after returning to China, embark on a secret mission. Sold out by a traitor, the team find themselves surrounded by threats on all sides.
6.0Created as a companion documentary to the film "Valkyrie," this documentary details the true story behind the plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
6.6A WWII military pilot makes a valiant effort to be certified insane in order to be excused from flying missions. But there's a catch.
6.4In 1930s fascist Italy, adolescent Luca just lost his mother. His father, a callous businessman, sends him to be taken care of by British expatriate Mary Wallace. Mary and her cultured friends - including artist Arabella, young widow Elsa, and archaeologist Georgie - keep a watchful eye over the boy. But the women's cultivated lives take a dramatic turn when Allied forces declare war on Mussolini.
6.0Ronnie lost her brother. Faye lost her first love. These two best friends set off on a debaucherous road trip to the mountains to get over the death of the man they both loved.
7.4The Marx Brothers take on high society and the opera world to bring two lovers together. A sly business manager and two wacky friends of two opera singers help them achieve success while humiliating their stuffy and snobbish enemies.
6.1A duo of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations about a greedy wife's attempt to embezzle her dying husband's fortune, and a sleazy reporter's adoption of a strange black cat.
5.6It's the end of the century at a corner of the city in a building riddled with crime - Everyone in the building has turned into zombies. After Jenny's boyfriend is killed in a zombie attack, she faces the challenge of surviving in the face of adversity. In order to stay alive, she struggles with Andy to flee danger.
6.9A small mountain community in Canada is devastated when a school bus accident leaves more than a dozen of its children dead. A big-city lawyer arrives to help the survivors' and victims' families prepare a class-action suit, but his efforts only seem to push the townspeople further apart. At the same time, one teenage survivor of the accident has to reckon with the loss of innocence brought about by a different kind of damage.
6.7Research chemist Barnaby Fulton works on a fountain of youth pill for a chemical company. One of the labs chimps gets loose in the laboratory and mixes chemicals, but then pours the mix into the water cooler. When trying one of his own samples, washed down with water from the cooler, Fulton begins to act just like a twenty-year-old and believes his potion is working. Soon his wife and boss are also behaving like children.
6.0In the White Deer Village in Shaanxi Province the two most important families - Bai and Lu - and their sons have always lived together in peace. But the turmoil leads to a fierce struggle for land ownership.
7.4Intertwined stories from the gladiator/athletes participating to the Calcio Storico Fiorentino yearly championship.
7.9A day in the life of an unfaithful married couple and their steadily deteriorating relationship in Milan.
7.0Django is on the trail of some renegade outlaws who raped and killed his wife. En route, he rescues a horse thief from an impromptu hanging. He discovers the man knows who committed the murder. The men team up and head west for revenge.
An extraordinary group of artists and musicians, in the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, creates an underground arts movement and transform a community.
7.9As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so immersed in their own psychic pains that they are unable to offer her the support she needs.
6.0A British spy is banished to Panama after having an affair with an ambassador's mistress. Once there he makes connection with a local tailor with a nefarious past and connections to all of the top political and gangster figures in Panama. The tailor also has a wife, who works for the Panamanian president and a huge debt. The mission is to learn what the President intends to do with the Canal.
6.6A young man returns from Rome to his sister's satanic New York apartment house.
5.7A feud between the Owens and the Gillettes ends when the last remaining Gillette is killed, but new trouble erupts for the mountain folk with the arrival of a U.S. revenue agent and his assistant.
7.0A group of strangers come across a man dying after a car crash who proceeds to tell them about the $350,000 he buried in California. What follows is the madcap adventures of those strangers as each attempts to claim the prize for himself.
5.2A womanizing lawyer follows his wife and son to a trip to Egypt in a last-ditch effort to make up for his infidelities. Also travelling to Egypt is a bumbling police chief who's desperate to keep his rebellious daughter from becoming a showgirl. The two meet during a Nile cruise. Calamity ensues.
7.0Mikael Blomkvist, publisher of Millennium magazine, has made his living exposing the crooked and corrupt practices of establishment Swedish figures. So when a young journalist approaches him with a meticulously researched thesis about sex trafficking in Sweden and those in high office who abuse underage girls, Blomkvist immediately throws himself into the investigation.
7.5A renowned New York playwright is enticed to California to write for the movies and discovers the hellish truth of Hollywood.
6.7Father Maurice, a priest living in a residential college for priests in Rome, is called out one day to "exorcise" the devil from someone. The devil turns out to be in the form of a fun-loving man called Giuditta. What Father Maurice doesn't know is that this type of devil will turn his life around.