SAS Operation Bulbasket: Part 1 - Das Reich and Oradour

WWII is entering its last phase: Germany is in ruins, but does not yield. The US army lacks crucial knowledge about the German units operating on the opposite side of the Rhine, and decides to send two German prisoners to gather information. The scheme is risky: the Gestapo retains a terribly efficient network to identify and capture spies and deserters. Moreover, it is not clear that "Tiger", who does not mind any dirty work as long as the price is right, and war-weary "Happy", who might be easily betrayed by his feelings, are dependable agents. After Tiger and another American agent are successfully infiltrated, Happy is parachuted in Bavaria. His duty: find out the whereabouts of a powerful German armored unit moving towards the western front.

Waffen-SS officer Otto Skorzeny (1908-75) became famous for his participation in daring military actions during World War II. In 1947 he was judged and imprisoned, but he escaped less than a year later and found a safe haven in Spain, ruled with an iron hand by General Francisco Franco. What did he do during the many years he spent there?

May 1944, a group of French servicewomen and resistance fighters are enlisted into the British Special Operations Executive commando group under the command of Louise Desfontaines and her brother Pierre. Their mission, to rescue a British army geologist caught reconnoitering the beaches at Normandy.

In Montauban in 1944, Julien Dandieu in a surgeon in the local hospital. Frightened by the German army entering Montauban, he asks his friend Francois to drive his wife and his daughter in the back country village where Julien has an old castle. One week later, Julien decided to meet then for the week end, but the Germans are already occupying the village.

This film tells the story of one of the most contentious combats of WW2, the actions of Kamfgruppe Peiper during the Battle of the Bulge.From the outset the King Tigers of December 1944, in poor winter weather, could not cut through the forest roads as the smaller Panzers had done in 1940 but were slowed down by determined resistance by small groups of American GIs, Obersturmbannfuhrer Jochan Peiper, commander of the elite spearhead, the Leibstandarte's 1st Panzer Regiment advancing west on one of the Division's three rolbhans became increasingly frustrated by enemy resistance and poor roads. Eventually anger boiled over into atrocity and the murder of US soldiers and Belgian civilians at Malmendy and elsewhere along the route. Experienced soldiers, historians and film makers analyse events on the very ground where they happened, stripping away legend and obfuscation of all kinds to present the facts for the viewer to make their own decision..

Discover the untold stories of D-Day from the men, women and children who lived through German occupation and Allied liberation of Normandy, France. Powerful and deeply personal, THE GIRL WHO WORE FREEDOM tells the stories of an America that lived its values, instilling pride in a country that's in danger of becoming a relic of the past.

Kurt Gerstein—a member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS—is horrified by what he sees in the death camps. he is then shocked to learn that the process he used to purify water for his troops by using Zyklon-B, is now used to kill people in gas chambers.

The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"

As U.S. troops storm the beaches of Normandy, three brothers lie dead on the battlefield, with a fourth trapped behind enemy lines. Ranger captain John Miller and seven men are tasked with penetrating German-held territory and bringing the boy home.

Bored with the limited and tedious nature of provincial life in 19th-century France, the fierce and sensual Emma Bovary finds herself in calamitous debt and pursues scandalous sexual liaisons with absolute abandon. However, when her volatile lifestyle catches up to her, the lives of everyone around her are endangered.

Love in a concentration camp. A young Jewish gay man, Otto, is protected by a "kapo" (a fellow prisoner) and an SS guard who unexpectedly ends up saving his life.

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

The Overlord plan called for the use of airborne troops to secure the flanks of the D Day landing and to form a buffer to keep the German counter-attacks away, thus allowing 3rd Division to advance from Sword Beach to seize Caen. 6th Airborne Division was given this task. It was later to be joined by Lord Lovat's Commando Brigade..These tasks included seizing Pegasus Bridge and Merville Battery by 9 Para, whose guns were thought to dominate Sword Beach.Meanwhile, the remainder of the 3 and 5 Parachute Brigades were to secure key objectives. In the event they were widely scattered and facing counter-attack by 21st Panzer Division. Despite this the men of 6th Airborne heroically achieved their mission.

At about 1230 on the 8th August 1944 near St Aignan in Normandy Hauptsturmführer Michael Wittmann the top German tank ace and Coy Comd in an SS Heavy Tank Coy (Tiger) was killed when his tank was knocked out in counter attack against British and Canadian Forces taking part in Op Totalise. Over the years much controversy had grown up over who destroyed Wittmann's tank Joe Ekins of the British Northants Yeomanry, a Canadian tank of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers or a rocket from an RAF Typhoon. In this film the BHTV examine the latest information on the ground, including testimony from German survivors and Joe Ekins himself.. The BHTV team believe that the main weight of the evidence shows that it was most probably Ekins Sherman Firefly that struck the killer blow.

In 1944 Poland, a Jewish shop keeper named Jakob is summoned to ghetto headquarters after being caught out after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements. Returned to the ghetto, the shopkeeper shares his information with a friend and then rumors fly that there is a secret radio within the ghetto.

With the Fifth Panzer Army fighting its way towards the River Meuse, the cross roads town of Bastogne, vital for the success of Hitler's last attempt to check the Allies in the west, the Americans rushed reinforcements to hold it. 101st US Airborne Division was resting in reserve near Paris when the call for immediate deployment to the Ardennes came and reached Bastogne just before the German ring around the town closed. Wearing only normal uniforms, the 101st joined the other garrison troops in a siege where they fought not only the enemy's panzers but the freezing, snowy, cold to hold the vital road junction. Filmed on the ground we tell the story of the heroic defence of Bastogne.

Jumping in to Drop Zones eight to ten miles from Arnhem on the second day of Operation Market Garden was always going to be difficult for Brigadier “Shan” Hackett's 4th British Parachute Brigade. With little information on how 1 Para Brigade's battle went the day before or what faced them on the ground the stage was set for an epic battle. John Waddy, v company commander in 156 Para Battalion and a team of Arnhem experts cover the ground where 4 Para Brigade fought with 9 SS Pz Div in the woods to the west of Arnhem in what was to be an unequal but heroic battle; the result of a flawed concept and plan.Driven back the Brigade was withdrawing across LZ P when the Polish heavy lift gliders swept in to cause. Captain Quirepel was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his action in helping stem the enemy advance long enough for the Paratroopers to escape across the railway embankment by nightfall.

The Battle of Arnhem, fought in the early autumn of 1944, remains without a doubt the most hotly debated battle of the North West European Campaign, both then and now. From its inception in the sixteen cancelled airborne operations during August, we will chart the problems, many of which were ignored by men desperate to get into battle, the compromises and mistakes that pitched lightly armed and ill equipped paratroopers and glider infantry into an unequal struggle against an SS panzer troops. We follow the eight mile route that 2 Para took to reach the bridge at Arnhem, slipping through the German defences.In Part 2, a separate film we look at their epic battle.

This programme follows the deployment of the main body of the SAS, the Recces on targets, the raids carried out both by the SAS and the bombing attacks they called in. As the SAS created havoc to the railway system the Germans were hunting them down. Eventually by the use of torture and information by collaborators the Germans tracked them down to their camp near Verrieres. The majority of the SAS were killed or captured. Those captured were later murdered by the Germans.. Their actions tied up large numbers of Germans in guarding the railways and imposed a severe delay on the movements of the 2nd SS Pz Div to Normandy. A few brave men had an impact on the liberation of France out of all proportion to their numbers

From 1940, around 25,000 Dutch people served in the Waffen-SS. In spite of their large number, they did not make much public disclosure after the war. Eight Dutch former SS men tell their story in this documentary. Never before have former SS men talked so openly about their motives, their (wrong) acts, their experiences on the (Eastern) front and their struggle with the memories of the past.