David Reynolds explores the reasoning behind the Second World War battles that took place in North Africa and Italy - an area labelled Hitler's `soft underbelly' by Winston Churchill.
A people destroyed. A landscape changed by war. From the streets of Warsaw to the titanic tank battles around the fields of Radzymin, and the horrors of Treblinka. Join Professor Alexandra Richie as she explores the brutal and bloodied history of Poland during the Second World War.
In 1942, Hitler ordered the construction of an extensive system of coastal defences and fortifications along the coast of continental Europe and Scandinavia as a defence against an anticipated Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe from the United Kingdom during the Second World War. The Atlanti...
By 1944, a third of the civilian population in Britain was engaged in war work, including over 7 million women. From compiling weather reports, maintaining aircraft, serving on airfields or working in intelligence, the work of women was crucial in the fight against Nazi Germany. Alice Loxton trac...
In February 1942, the Second World War came to Australia. The same Japanese fleet that had attacked Pearl Harbor only ten weeks before had set its sights on a new target. The harbour town of Darwin. In two separate attacks on February 19 1942, nearly 250 Japanese aircraft wreaked havoc on the lig...
6th June, 1944, the Allies embark on the liberation of Europe. Explore the events of Operation Overlord with our specially selected documentaries.
During the Second World War a storm of fire and steel was unleashed. Not just on front line troops, but on enemy society itself. All sides in the Second World War believed that aerial bombardment could decisively affect the strategic outcome of the conflict. But did the unprecedented onslaught fr...
In this short film, Chris Lloyd looks into the story behind the Spitfire that crashed into a Welsh mountain outside the town of Caerphilly during a training flight on 7 November 1941. Lloyd explores how the community of the town came together to remember a man, Canadian pilot Sergeant Ivan Raymon...
A look behind the scenes of Philip Stevens' short film on the Lancaster Bomber. This includes an extended cut of an interview with Les Rutherford, a World War Two and RAF veteran who served as a bomb aimer aboard a Lancaster Bomber.
Guernsey and its neighbouring islands have a unique distinction which sets them apart from the rest of the British Isles. Together with the rest of the Channel Islands, they were the only part of the British Isles to fall to Nazi Germany in the Second World War. In this documentary, Dan Snow disc...
On the 73rd anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden, Dan Snow accompanies British veteran Victor Gregg, a POW in Dresden during the raid, as he returns to the city for a historic meeting with Irene Uhlendorf, who was just 4 years old on the night of the bombing. Together they are able to talk a...
Aviation historian Victoria Taylor answers key questions about the air war of World War Two: from the significance of the Dambusters raid to how we should remember "Bomber" Harris.
80 years ago Wing Commander Joseph Watts was killed when his RAF Hampden Bomber crashed, as it returned from a bombing raid in Occupied Europe. He left behind a daughter, and also an unborn son. John Watts, born 8 months later, would never meet his father. But recently he discovered that at the R...
Just before dawn on 10 May 1940 the largest concentration of motorised vehicles in history roared into action. After months of quiet it was the start of Hitler’s invasion of the West. What followed was a stunning combination of new tactics and new technologies that left Britain and France – two w...
On 29 December 1940 London experienced one of its worst nights of the Blitz. German bombers dropped tens of thousands of bombs, destroying more of London than the city's famous Great Fire of 1666. The following morning, a photographer took a picture through the smoke and fire of Saint Paul’s Cath...
Narrated by Tom Selleck: Sunday, December 7, 1941 was a beautiful morning on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. A few sailors and soldiers were already up and playing a game of football near Pearl Harbor. Others were sleeping in their barracks or aboard ships after a late night of partying in Honolulu....
It’s 1940. And the world’s first real air battle is being fought in the skies of the UK. This is the Battle of Britain, in which the Royal Air Force would triumphantly fight off the threat of the German Luftwaffe. Behind the brave pilots and pioneering technology lies an often-forgotten secret we...
Dan Snow visits Coventry to tell the tale of the infamous bombing raid that struck the city on the evening of 14 November 1940, 80 years ago. Featuring Dr Kristopher Lovell and Victoria Taylor.
A series of films exploring the experiences of children during the Holocaust.
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.
After the Great War of 1914-18, European powers were desperate to avoid another conflict of that scale. But just 20 years later, they found themselves plunged into catastrophe on an even greater scale. The outbreak of World War Two has been blamed on the policy of 'appeasement' - with the Great P...
Operation Market Garden was the Allied operation to end the Second World War by Christmas 1944. The brainchild of Bernard Montgomery, it involved the combined use of airborne and armoured divisions carving a path through the Netherlands, securing several vital bridges, bypassing the formidable Si...
At his graduation from the Annapolis Naval Academy, Minter Dial was presented with a ring. When he shipped out to the Far East, shortly before America's entry into the Second World War, the ring went with him. He kept it throughout his harrowing experiences fighting in the Philippines and as a PO...
