World War One

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  • The Forgotten Battle of World War I

    This documentary sees military historian Alex Churchill travelling through Germany and the Belgian battlefields, retracing the opening weeks of the First World War - a blood battle that took place before the trenches, barbed wire and gas we typically think of when we think "First World War" - ins...

  • The Christmas Truce

    On Christmas Eve 1914 many sectors of the Western Front in France and Belgium fell silent. Troops from all sides put down their weapons and sang carols, exchanged gifts and buried their dead in No Man's Land. The following day the truce continued in many, but not all areas, and troops gathered in...

  • The Western Front

    The Western Front, a 400-plus-mile stretch of land weaving through France and Belgium from the Swiss border to the North Sea, was the decisive front during World War One. Despite the global nature of the conflict, much of the world remembers the scars of the Great War through the lens of these ba...

  • 1916

    Last year audiences around the world were astounded by Sam Mendes' incredible World War One epic, 1917. This autumn, Dan Snow was invited to take a look at a recreated World War One trench network in the UK, built by military historian Taff Gillingham. In homage to 1917, we decided to film this w...

  • Archaeologist Spies of World War One

    Archaeologists excavated the ancient past during peacetime, but in war they had a different mission - to play a vital role in modern military intelligence. Historian of archaeology Dr Amara Thornton explores a network of archaeologist-spies, codebreaking, mapping and running agents, and with expe...

  • The Untold Story of the Unknown Warrior

    The First World War was a conflict like nothing the World had ever known. More than 700,000 men mobilised in the UK would die during the conflict. Roughly 250,000 of those would have no known grave. The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior became a place where all those people who were denied a grave to v...

  • The Western Front Tunnels

    The creation of man-made underground tunnels played a huge role in the outcome of the First World War. They were first dug to mine under enemy positions and detonate bombs or attack in desperate and fierce fights. As the war dragged on, nevertheless, they developed another purpose: providing sold...

  • Ghosts of the Romanovs

    At about 1am on 17 July 1918, in a fortified mansion in Ekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains, the Romanovs – ex-tsar Nicholas II, ex-tsarina Alexandra, their 5 children, and their 4 remaining servants – were awoken by Bolshevik captors and told they must dress and gather their belongings for a swif...

  • Living History: The Somme Battlefields

    The Battle of the Somme, which began on 1 July 1916, is remembered as one of the bloodiest events of the First World War. On the first day of the offensive, one man was killed every 4.4 seconds, making it the bloodiest single day in the history of the British Army. There were over a million casua...

  • The Lost Wrecks of Jutland

    The Battle of Jutland was the decisive naval clash of the First World War, pitting the German High Seas Fleet against the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet in an all or nothing battle for supremacy and survival. At the end of the war, the defeated German fleet was scuttled at Scapa Flow. Or so we thought....

  • The Room Where It Happened: Versailles 1919

    Join Dan Snow and a hand picked team of experts for a thought-provoking panel discussion that delves into one of the most consequential diplomatic agreements of the 20th century: the Treaty of Versailles.

    Representing Woodrow Wilson and America is Historian Alexandra Churchill, taking the perspe...

  • The Road to 1914: Myths of Nationalism

    Margaret MacMillan talks to her nephew Dan about her seminal book 'The War That Ended Peace: The Road To 1914'. They discuss the importance of Storytelling to the historian's process, the ways in which political actors at the time viewed the relation between fate and choice, the role that masculi...

  • Sam Mendes on 1917

    1917 is a new film directed by Golden Globe winning film maker Sir Sam Mendes. Set in early 1917, at the height of the First World War on the Western Front, Mendes uses the backdrop of the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line as the stage for telling a story inspired by the memories of Alfred Me...

  • Germany's Wars: One Man's Life

    From the trenches of WW1 to rise of Hitler and the Nazis, never before seen diaries & photos reveal the life of German Soldier & Teacher Wilhelm Kurtz.

    Hidden away since his death in 1982, they are part of an extraordinary archive of documents and personal photographs from the frontline of histo...

  • Untold Stories of World War One

    Dan Snow introduces four projects funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council over the last four years, highlighing underexplored aspects of First World War history, from German wartime photography to miltary training in Northern Ireland.

  • Salisbury Plain: Training for War

    Salisbury Plain is the Ministry of Defence's largest training ground, covering an area the size of the Isle of Wight. Dan Snow is shown around the Plain by MOD archaeologist Richard Osgood, to explore how British, Commonwealth and Allied troops prepared for the two great wars.

  • War Art of the Western Front

    It was the war to end all wars. In 1914, catastrophe struck Europe as great power diplomacy failed and alliance systems mobilised vast armies against one another in a conflict that dragged on in bloody stalemate for four long years. Nations geared their entire economies towards victory and called...

  • The Cutting Edge: Tanks in World War One

    On 15 September 1916 the battlefield changed forever. At Flers-Courcelette, during the brutal, bloody fighting on the Somme, the British army released a new weapon designed to combat the devastating power of the machine gun: the tank. Moving on caterpillar tracks and protected by plated armour, t...

  • Bristol: Aerospace Museum

    This was our first city road trip for Snow on the Road - 3 days in Bristol visiting its most interesting historical sites. What's so wonderful about Bristol is how its history is interwoven into the fabric of the city. World treasures like the SS Great Britain and Underfall Yard are visible all a...

  • Fighting Proud: A Gay History of the World Wars

    At the end of World War Two the British public wanted to get back to ‘normal’. The gay men who had served their King and country found themselves subjected to a vigorous enforcement of the draconian law that would put them into prison if they were found guilty of indecency. But servicemen living ...

  • The Blue Book: Armenian Genocide

    In the period 1915 to 1917, between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire died in what is the regarded as one of the first cases of genocide in the 20th century.

  • They Shall Not Grow Old: In Conversation with Peter Jackson

    They Shall Not Grow Old is a remarkable new documentary made by Peter Jackson. The Oscar-winning director has restored and colourised World War One footage from the Imperial War Museum, adding a soundtrack with original audio and transforming the entire project into 3D. In doing so, he has create...

  • The Devil's Porridge

    Dr James Rogers visits the Devil's Porridge Museum to find out more about H.M. Factory, Gretna - the United Kingdom's largest cordite factory during World War One. He discovers the untold story of the young 'Gretna girls' that worked in the Factory and the dangerous task they faced creating the p...

  • Forgotten Faces of the Great War: The Chinese Labour Corps

    China started out as a neutral country during the First World War. But by early 1917, one thousand Chinese men were on their way to the Western Front. Tens of thousands more would follow, to provide logistical support to the Allies. They constituted one of the largest labour corps of the war. The...