The Channel Tunnel linking Britain with France is one of the seven wonders of the modern world but what did it take to build the longest undersea tunnel ever constructed? We hear from the men and women, who built this engineering marvel. Massive tunnel boring machines gnawed their way through rock and chalk, digging not one tunnel but three; two rail tunnels and a service tunnel. This was a project that would be privately financed; not a penny of public money would be spent on the tunnel. Business would have to put up all the money and take all the risks. This was also a project that was blighted by flood, fire, tragic loss of life and financial bust ups. Today, it stands as an engineering triumph and a testament to what can be achieved when two nations, Britain and France put aside their historic differences and work together.
Charles de Gaulle, the first president (1958-1969) of the Vth Republic, France’s current system of government, left his mark on the country . He was statesman of action and has been compared to a monarch. This film depicts the general’s personality through the great events of his presidential term, at a time when the world was undergoing considerable changes.
Brief portrait of a conformist.
In 1415 a small English Army consisting mainly of Yeoman English and Welsh archers defeated and destroyed a much larger French army consisting mainly of the nobility of France at Agincourt. This film follows Henry Vth's campaign from his landing near Harfleur, his costly successful siege and his desperate attempts to cross the River Somme and escape to Calais culminating in the Battle of Agincourt on 25th Oct 1415. The BHTV team of military historians take you through the battle separating myth from fact to tell the true story of one of the most epic episodes of English history. The story is brought to life with re-enactment footage, maps and is shot on location in France.
This film tells the incredible story of Bletchley Park and the Ultra Secret. Filmed at Bletchley in collaboration with the Bletchley Trust and with interviews with Bletchley Veterans the BHTV team explain the importance of Bletchley to the Allied War effort. As Sir Harold Hinsley a Bletchley Veteran and Official Historian of British Intelligence during WW2 said, Ultra shortened the war by two to four year's and that the outcome would have been uncertain without it. The film also shows how the allies used the intelligence on land, sea and air. This film shows that the success at Bletchley was not just the result of a few brilliant men and women but the result of the efforts of thousands of unsung heroes.
Germany, 1929. Helmut Machemer and Erna Schwalbe fall madly in love and marry in 1932. Everything indicates that a bright future awaits them; but then, in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rise to power and their lives are suddenly put in danger because of Erna's Jewish ancestry.
It is not in the cards that young Anne Marie Christensen from Fanø ends up as one of the most notorious Danish war criminals from World War II. Nevertheless, she is recruited by the Gestapo under the name Jenny Holm during the occupation. She turns out to have agent skills beyond the usual. It is believed that she is responsible for many hundreds of arrests of enemies of Nazism. She is so skilled that she is recruited by Danish and British intelligence in the years just after the war, where she uses her skills to catch Nazi war criminals in Germany. Jenny Holm disappears into oblivion - until a day when a resourceful writer finds out where Jenny Holm ends her days. The trail ends surprisingly, at a celebrated alternative therapist with electric hands on Gammel Kongevej
Adolf 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.
Le Temps des vautours
A look at the rise of anti-Semitism and assaults against Jews in present-day France.
Two brothers who could not have been more different. The eldest, Hermann Göring (1893-1946), was a prominent member of the Nazi regime, head of the German Air Force, and a war criminal. The youngest, Albert Göring (1895-1966), opposed tyranny and was persecuted, but today he is still unjustly forgotten, although he saved many lives while his brother and his accomplices ravaged Europe.
In 1898, a Minnesota farmer clearing trees from his field uprooted a large stone covered with mysterious runes that tell a story of land acquisition and murder. The stone allegedly dates back to 1362. Initially thought to be a hoax, new evidence suggests the find could be real, and a clue that the Knights Templar discovered America 100 years before Columbus, perhaps bringing with them history's greatest treasure... the Holy Grail. Follow the clues as experts use erosion studies on the rune stone and match symbols in Templar ruins all over Europe to support this theory. Stones with similar markings have been found on islands across the Atlantic Ocean, and in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Is it possible the Knights Templar, long thought to have been massacred, escaped on an incredible journey and were leaving clues to the whereabouts of the stone?
The riveting story of the first all-Black tank battalion to fight in US military history. Under General George Patten's command, the 761st fought heroically throughout WWII and were the furthest east of all US troops in the European theater of war.
La Cause et l'usage
A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.
550,000 Jewish American men and women fought in World War II. In their own words, veterans both famous and unknown (from Hollywood director Mel Brooks to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) bring their war experiences to life: how they fought for for their nation and their people, struggled with anti-Semitism within their ranks, and emerged transformed, more powerfully American and more deeply Jewish.
Writer and historian Dr Helen Castor explores the life - and death - of Joan of Arc. Joan was an extraordinary figure - a female warrior in an age that believed women couldn't fight, let alone lead an army. But Joan was driven by faith and today, more than ever, we are acutely aware of the power of faith to drive actions for good or ill. Since her death, Joan has become an icon for almost everyone: the left and the right, Catholics and Protestants, traditionalists and feminists. But where, in all of this, is the real Joan - the experiences of a teenage peasant girl who achieved the seemingly impossible? Through an astonishing manuscript, we can hear Joan's own words at her trial and, as Helen unpicks Joan's story and places her back in the world that she inhabited, the real human Joan emerges.
Police à bout de souffle
The film begins with the First World War and ends in 1945. Without exception, recordings from this period were used, which came from weekly news reports from different countries. Previously unpublished scenes about the private life of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were also shown for the first time. The film was originally built into a frame story. The Off Commentary begins with the words: "This film [...] is a document of delusion that on the way to power tore an entire people and a whole world into disaster. This film portrays the suffering of a generation that only ended five to twelve. " The film premiered in Cologne on November 20, 1953, but was immediately banned by Federal Interior Minister Gerhard Schröder in agreement with the interior ministers of the federal states of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Nazi propaganda film “exposes” the United States and its plans against Germany and the German people. Shows so-called signs of decay, gang-wars, slums, riots of blacks, etc. Small wonder, the comment is, that the Statue of Liberty turns it back on America.