The wartime contributions of five prominent Hollywood film directors during World War II are profiled. The documentary focuses on five directors – John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens – whose war-related works are analysed by modern filmmakers, respectively Paul Greengrass, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, and Lawrence Kasdan. In the first episode, John Ford's The Battle of Midway was approved directly by President Franklin D. Roosevelt while Frank Capra fights to get Why We Fight made.

Japan's role in World War II gets a whole new perspective in this consisting entirely of full colour footage, including colour films from Japan that were recently discovered. As the visuals of the world war take on a new vivid immediateness, the story of the rise of the militarists in Japan is told through the personal writings of the Japanese themselves. From the first overconfident tastes of victory, to the devastating losses that led to an unthinkable defeat amidst the ruins, the Pacific Theater of World War II is told through the Japanese's eyes.

For the first time, you will see dramatic moments of WWII that were captured in 3D with stereographs and then shuttered away in secret archives and attics, until now. This stunning collection of colour 3D photos includes Allied reconnaissance photos, a trove of images that documents the rise and fall of the Third Reich, and photos secretly taken by a civilian in occupied France. WWII IN 3D also features an actual 3D motion picture film shot by the Nazis in 1943 and creates a fully immersive, three dimensional portrait of history's largest and bloodiest conflict.

What was the Wehrmacht? A group of obedient yeasayers? A murdering band of thugs? An army of millions of abused young men? This series in 5 parts provides differentiated and conclusive answers based on the latest historical and comprehensive investigative research, bringing many new facts to light – among them documents proving for the first time ever, what many among the officers actually thought. Blitzkrieg, the lightning war, in German incorporate modern weapons and vehicles as a method to help avoid the stalemate of trench warfare and linear warfare in future conflicts. The first practical implementations of these concepts coupled with modern technology were instituted by the Wehrmacht in the opening theatres of World War II. The strategy was particularly effective to Germany in the invasions of Western Europe and initial operations in the Soviet Union. These operations were dependent on surprise penetrations, general enemy unpreparedness and an inability to react swiftly enough to German offensive operations.

Between 1850 and 1950, three cataclysmic revolutions shook China to the core, but out of them, today's China emerged. The film begins in Canton with the meeting of a US missionary and a Chinese student. Inspired by the Christian story and calling himself God's second son, Hong unleashed the bloodiest war of the 19th century, the Taiping Rebellion.
As imperial China weakened, foreign influence grew. Treaty ports expanded, bringing growth and wealth, trams, railways and western sensibilities. But this provoked another surge of violence, the Boxer Rebellion, an attack against the foreigners, which was crushed by those same foreigners, who extorted a huge indemnity - $60 billion in today's money.
Then in 1912, the empire fell, and many groups contested China's future. In World War I, China sent 100,000 men to the western front, only to be humiliated at Versailles when German colonies in China were handed to Japan. Between the two world wars, the disparity between rich and poor, city and countryside increased. We visit Hong Kong's Peninsular Hotel in the jazz age and then follow Mao on the Long March to Yan'an, the heartland of revolution.
World War II came to China two years earlier than it did in the west. Wood talks to a survivor of the Japanese massacre of Nanjing in 1937 and then charts the triumph of the communists, before ending the story with Mao's death and the boom time of the last 30 years. The series ends with the warmth of the Chinese family and, at Beijing's Altar of Heaven, a final haunting glimpse of eternal China.

This series, narrated and written by Oliver Stone and co-author Peter Kuznick, will focus on human events that at the time went under reported, but crucially shaped America’s unique and complex history over the 20th and 21st century. The series is a re-examination of some of the under-reported and darkest parts of American modern history using little known documents and newly uncovered archival material. The series looks beyond official versions of events to the deeper causes and implications and explores how events from the past still have resonant themes for the present day." The fist episode examines World War II. It offers special attention to the Spanish Civil War, Roosevelt's desire to enter the war on the side of the allies, the strategic Japanese decisions that lead up to Pearl Harbor Attack, and the often overlooked role that the Soviet Union had in winning the war.