Attack of the Zeppelins

Professor 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.

Benito Mussolini: Anatomy of a Dictator

The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.

The 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.

The little known story of one of the worst non-combat disasters in the history of the US Navy, …AS IF THEY WERE ANGELS is a story of courage, heart, sacrifice and the heroism of miners & fishermen of 2 small towns, who risked their lives to save nearly 200 American sailors, shipwrecked on the rugged cliffs of Newfoundland. Narrated by Peter Coyote, it’s a deeply layered tale of navigation errors, courts martial mistakes, a steep loss of life, and resonates today as if the very telling of its deep humanity offers a lifeline for our fractured times.

In 1944, two prisoners miraculously escaped from Auschwitz. They told the world of the horror of the Holocaust and raised one of the greatest moral questions of the 20th century.

A 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.

A look at the recently discovered fascinating behind the scenes footage shot by the legendary Hollywood director John Ford at Pearl Harbor in 1942 while filming his popular World War II documentaries December 7th and The Battle of Midway.

The true, harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.

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.

In postwar Germany, an American psychiatrist must determine whether Nazi prisoners are fit to go on trial for war crimes, and finds himself in a complex battle of intellect and ethics with Hermann Göring, Hitler's right-hand man.

The Hindenburg Disaster: Probable Cause

Two 17-year-olds, Werner Holt and Gilbert Wolzow, are pulled out of school and into Hitler's army. Gilbert becomes a fanatical soldier; but at the front, Werner begins to understand the senselessness of war.

The untold story of a Royal "propagandist in pearls" whose wartime friendship with President Roosevelt became a vital catalyst to win back freedom for her tiny occupied country.

In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women – one a Jewish member of the underground, the other an exemplar of Nazi motherhood.

A sickly scrawny man in a striped uniform takes a shaving brush and foam, and with a sharp blade, he shaves the back of the head of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz camp himself. They will never speak with one another, and Joseph (we only learn his name during the credits) will never harm Höss, will not stop the flood of horrible murders with yet another murder. This short sketch about life of a death camp makes us feel pain and grief of millions of people who had passed beyond the walls of the shaving room during the imprisonment of Joseph, the man who outlived his torturer.

Lágrimas rojas

Vivre dans l'Allemagne en guerre

Free-spirited writer Juliet Ashton forms a life-changing bond with the delightful and eccentric Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, when she decides to write about the book club they formed during the occupation of Guernsey in WWII.

The "Alaska at War" film project was an effort to document events of World War II in Alaska. It was funded by the Alaska Legislature through the Alaska Historical Commission and was supported by the Alaska Historical Society and private subscription. The production work was performed by aurora Films, assisted by a citizen's advisory committee. The production "Alaska at War" was first shown in public on Alaska Day, October 18th 1986.