The determination of the German forces to keep on fighting in the face of defeat had disastrous consequences. After the Allied landings in the summer of 1944, the Wehrmacht was on the defensive on all fronts. It was clear to the German generals interned at Trent Park that Germany would soon lose the war. In mid-1944, Gerhard Graf von Schwerin chose to use common sense instead of blindly obeying Hitler's orders. He decided to surrender the city of Aachen to the US army to avoid bloodshed. Other commanders such as Field Marshal Ferdinand Schorner kept on pushing their soldiers to give their all. Despite being outnumbered by the Soviet forces, Schorner forced his soldiers to hold out in Sworbe, a 200 square kilometre peninsula on the coast of Estonia. Thousands of soldiers died. Yet Schorner's attitude and the urging by Hitler and Goebbels to hold out were accepted by a large number of young soldiers. By April 1944, the Ruhr pocket was completely surrounded, yet Field Marshal Model refused to surrender, so that 1.2 million German soldiers and a large number of Allied soldiers died between January and May 1945.

The film tells the story of the ill-fated Nazi Land Speed record attempts. This is a story of engineering excellence, Grand Prix racing, Nazi propaganda, celebrity, and an intense rivalry which would leave a speed record unbroken for 79 years and one of Nazi Germany's best racing drivers dead. During the rise of the Third Reich two German car manufacturers were ordered to build the most high performance vehicles the world had ever seen. What followed was a rivalry that would reap Grand Prix victories, international domination that was a propaganda coup, and provide world fame to its drivers who risked their lives smashing speed records that would stand for 79 years. All under the direct orders of the Fuhrer himself.
Bugatti and Alfa Romeo dominated racing before 1934. But the years from 1934 to 1939 were six tumultuous years in which Grand Prix racing was dominated by the German Auto Union, the arranged marriage of Audi, Horch, Wanderer, and DKW, and Mercedes-Benz teams and provided a spectacle of speed, sound and fury never previously attained and never since matched. There are few periods of racing that have excited as much interest, event attendance and sophistication of equipment as the era of the Silver Cars. They were so far ahead of their time that many of their accomplishments were not duplicated until Mercedes went racing again in the early 1950s. There is also something about men who faced the challenges of staying in a cockpit of a highly sophisticated machine capable of 200 mph with no safety systems. They were giants and among them were Italian Tazio Nuvolari and two greatest German pilots of the thirties, Rudolf Caracciola of Mercedes and Auto Union's Bernd Rosemeyer who duelled with faster, more innovative and sleeker machines, developed in wind tunnels.
This special documentary charts the rise of Nazi Germany's dominate 'Silver Arrow' Grand Prix and Speed Record cars of the 1930's. Leading motor racing and World War 2 experts James Holland, Richard Williams, Eberhard Reuss and Chris Routledge tell the story of the Nazi funded Auto Union and Mercedes Benz 'National Racing Cars'. Hitler's Supercars interweaves the rise of the Third Reich with the racing exploits it funded and what propaganda messages these racing cars where sending.

Among the ranks of the Wehrmacht there was limited opposition to Hitler. Most officers initially felt enthusiastic about the prospect of war and were grateful to Hitler whose war-mongering had furthered their personal careers. Furthermore all soldiers had to make an oath of allegiance to the Führer and, up until the very end, there were many who felt unable to break this pledge. There were, however, some officers who opposed Hitler. For some it was on moral grounds and for others because they thought that his military tactics would lose them the war. There were plots against Hitler and attempted coups, the best known being the July bomb plot led by Claus von Stauffenberg. Some soldiers refused to bear arms and were shot, others deserted, others still carried out quiet acts of sabotage and subversion. By and large, however, the Wehrmacht carried out the orders Hitler issued, even if it involved perpetrating acts of atrocity.

One of the main battles of the Second World War took place inside the brain of a mathematician called Alan Turing. During the war, the allies' key objective was to crack the German army's encrypted communications code. Without a doubt, the key player in the game was this interdisciplinary scientist and a long-forgotten hero.
Alan Turing's breakthroughs, his story and tragic destiny, gives us a chance to look at the Second World War from a different angle.

This illuminating ten-part series tells the story of World War ll through the ten most pivotal turning points in the conflict. Gripping story-telling illustrated with exquisitely restored and colourised archived films and supported by a global cast of stellar historians bring this crucially important era in history to life.
In the first chapter, Britain and France declare war when Hitler invades Poland. In May 1940 the Germans attack Holland and Belgium as a decoy. As the Wehrmacht comes through the Ardennes and the Luftwaffe strikes in force, French leaders are caught like rabbits in headlights. The Germans are on a drug called Pervitin, which beats off fatigue, and reach the Atlantic coast. There is a danger that the Germans will encircle the Allies and cut them off from the sea. But Hitler issues his Halt Order and some 340,000 Allies are evacuated.

Beer, as popular today as ever. Beer, an ever present in changing times. German beer, protected for 500 years, it's a mark of quality and an export success the world over. This documentary looks at the history of beer starting with the Sumerians, who invented it 5.000 years ago, to the Middle Ages and to the new trend of the future: craft beer. Prost!